Star Wars: The Last Jedi is only days away, but the first reviews are in and not only does it live up to the hype – it surpasses it. For the first time in many of our lifetimes, here is a Star Wars film being compared to A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, and we could not be more ready.
Mashable's own Chris Taylor reviewed the film and has already seen it twice (he's a bit of a fan), and he said it "triggers strong emotions and hard feelings, but also gasps of sheer delight and roars of laughter in multiple audiences." It's "highly-concentrated Star Wars juice" (with a side of Porgs) that fans will devour.
For more on what critics thought of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, read on.
Cut to the chase: Does The Last Jedi live up to the hype?
Esther Zuckerman, Marie Claire:
Rey's gratifying journey aside, let's be clear: The Last Jedi is fantastic. It's a constantly churning engine of wonder and excitement that grapples with elemental questions of good and evil that have always been the driving force of this universe.
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox:
And yet, if The Force Awakens was a great variation on a theme, then The Last Jedi is another movement altogether in the symphony. There are images in this movie that provoke awe and delight, and creatures that feel lifted out of half-remembered childhood dreams. And though it briefly appears to lose steam in the middle, that’s short-lived, with a third act harboring sequences that feel like a maestro conducting a concerto the size of the cosmos.
Justin Chang, The Los Angeles Times:
With “The Last Jedi,” those doubts have been laid satisfyingly to rest. Written and directed by Rian Johnson, it’s the series’ eighth official episode and easily its most exciting iteration in decades — the first flat-out terrific “Star Wars” movie since 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back.” It seizes upon Lucas’ original dream of finding a pop vessel for his obsessions — Akira Kurosawa epics, John Ford westerns, science-fiction serials — and fulfills it with a verve and imagination all its own.
Ira Madison III, The Daily Beast:
Not since George Lucas’ original trilogy has a Star Wars film felt like a dime store paperback, loaded with pulp and space operatics...The Last Jedi harkens back to what made Star Wars so important in the first place — it’s fun, it’s kind of all over the place, but it’s dripping with emotion and pathos and, most importantly, it tells a hell of a story.
Rian Johnson leaves his mark
Manohla Dargis, The New York Times:
Mr. Johnson...also seems like he had a good time at work. He brings lightness to his banter, visual flair (not simply bleeding-edge special effects) to the design, and narrative savvy to Rey and Kylo Ren’s relationship. Mr. Johnson’s use of deep red is characteristic of how he turns ideas into images, most vividly with a set that looks like something Vincente Minnelli might have dreamed up for a Flash Gordon musical with Gene Kelly.
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox:
As written and directed by Rian Johnson, The Last Jedi doesn’t just feel like a well-executed Star Wars movie — it feels like a well-executed movie, period, one that keeps its eye on the relationships between characters, and how they communicate with one another, in addition to the bigger picture...one of Johnson’s strengths as a writer and director has always been injecting humanity and intelligence into characters who live inside familiar genres; they’re definitely characters, but they’re people, too. He knows how to make us feel for them.
Justin Chang, The Los Angeles Times:
Johnson is a pop savant steeped in Star Wars arcana, and you can sense his reverence for the legacy with which he’s been entrusted. As in The Force Awakens, there are sequences here that duly recall some of the original trilogy’s most memorable moments, from a one-on-one Jedi training session to an advance by an army of new-and-improved AT-AT walkers. But this time the nods feel less like obligatory acts of fan service than mythological reverberations, signaling a deeper, more intricate narrative intelligence at work.
Ira Madison III, The Daily Beast:
It's the work of a master helmer and writer who has operated in the sci-fi, pulp, and noir genres and knows how to blend them effortlessly to breathe new life into stories that pop culture has been telling for years. There are many familiar beats to The Last Jedi, yes, but they're done with such aplomb, such reckless abandon, that they feel not only fresh but absolutely fucking awesome.
Tasha Robinson, The Verge:
Johnson finds plenty of room for familiar thrilling Star Wars adventure, from a Rogue One-style information-and-infiltration scheme to Phantom Menace-style rambunctious, CGI-forward chase sequences. He piles on the space dogfights and lightsaber duels. He significantly expands the roster of Force-related powers, in ways that are going to prompt endless fan debate (and resistance, and resentment, and backlash) after the fact, but that provide plenty of surprises along the way.
A New Cast
Manohla Dargis, The New York Times:
With Mr. Driver — who delivers a startlingly raw performance — Mr. Johnson delivers a potent portrait of villainy that suggests evil isn’t hard-wired, an inheritance or even enigmatic. Here, it is a choice — an act of self-creation in the service of annihilation.
Justin Chang, The Los Angeles Times:
The wise decision to cast Ridley, Boyega and Isaac in The Force Awakens — dismissed as a sop to gender and ethnic quotas in some particularly noxious corners of the “Star Wars” fan-verse — pays off with even richer dividends here. It isn’t just that their characters have grown in emotional stature, but that they feel like living, breathing embodiments of a stirring new franchise ethos. You might argue that there’s something calculated about the movie’s rousing “You go, girl!” sentiments and pointed displays of non-white-male heroism, and you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong.
Ira Madison III, The Daily Beast:
Laura Dern's character is straight out of a mid-20th century queer novel—not in sexual orientation; there are still no gay characters in the Star Wars universe, which has only now found its first heroine of color in Rose, so baby steps—but in how over the top, snarky, and derisive of Poe's chauvinistic antics she is. Mix in delicate close-ups of Oscar Isaac's hard-boiled stubble, Adam Driver's pecs, and a heart-swelling kiss in the midst of an epic battle and you've got pulp dialed to 11.
Susana Polo, Polygon:
Laura Dern navigates a tricky character in Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo, while Kelly Marie Tran is instantly lovable as Rose Tico. Benicio del Toro’s character — if he had a name, I never got it, and I’m not even certain he did — is an outright scene-stealer.
The funniest Star Wars yet
Tasha Robinson, The Verge:
Johnson’s only radical step here is to extend that humor past the heroes, and let it briefly disrupt the villains’ solemnity as well. For a series that’s so often treated its primary antagonists as towering, intimidating bastions of evil, that feels radical, but it also punctures their balloons and makes them a little more ridiculously human.
Esther Zuckerman, Marie Claire:
The Last Jedi is also perhaps the funniest Star Wars films ever. Take, for instance, the opening sequence, which manages to pack in genuine belly laughs (the screening audience was in a literal state of LOL), nail-biting action, and devastation.
Susana Polo, Polygon:
With good ideas, it turns out, and good acting and good writing and good direction and, most of all, good humor. The Last Jedi might be, scene for scene, the Star Wars movie that attempts the most jokes. But it never dispels tension when a scene needs tension or undercuts gravitas when a scene needs gravitas.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi arrives in theaters Dec. 15.
