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Critic Reviews
"Rian Johnson’s film is the real deal, a bold, risky venture unafraid to tell its own story, freed from the weight of nostalgia and formula."
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"While there are some solid nuggets of deep-cut easter eggs for hardcore fans, what is so extraordinary about The Last Jedi is that this is the first post-Lucas Star Wars film that feels free to dance to its own beat."
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"Like many before it, The Last Jedi has already been hailed as the best Star Wars movie since The Empire Strikes Back, and while that’s true, it’s too faint a compliment. It’s a film of genuine beauty, one where you come away as eager to talk about the set design and the choreography as you do the fate of the galaxy or what might happen next."
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"Star Wars: The Last Jedi launches the franchise to another level of action and humor thanks to incoming writer-director Rian Johnson, whose imagination seems boundless as George Lucas’ 40 years ago."
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"An excellent middle chapter bursting with wit, wisdom, emotion, shocks, old-fashioned derring-do, state-of-the-art tech, and stonking set-pieces."
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"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."
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"Sure, it’s just a space Western, but “Star Wars” is one of the our most popular modern mythologies. Johnson respects that. He’s infused the storyline with new energy and artistry, and I can’t wait to see it again."
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"Writer/director Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a sprawling, incident- and character-packed extravaganza that picks up at the end of “Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens” and guides the series into unfamiliar territory. It’s everything a fan could want from a “Star Wars” film and then some."
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"A triumph of comic irreverence and dramatic purpose, Episode VIII dazzles like the sci-fi saga hasn't in decades."
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"It’s less Star Wars as you’ve never seen it than Star Wars as you’ve never felt it."
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"Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the quintessential Star Wars movie. It embraces everything in the franchise that came before while taking big risks to push the story into new and unexpected places."
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"The movie is smart, stirring and deeply exciting, but more than anything, it is surprising. This is a Star Wars movie that plays with your assumptions and upends them, but it never betrays the story, characters and ethos at the series’ core. It expands the idea of what a Star Wars movie can be. It’ll knock you over."
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"Under the fastidious guidance of writer-director Johnson, The Last Jedi turns the commercial restrictions of this behemoth into a Trojan horse for rapid-fire filmmaking trickery and narrative finesse. The result is the most satisfying entry in this bumpy franchise since “The Empire Strikes Back” in 1980."
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"No matter how much money has been poured into a movie, it’s emotional generosity that matters, and Johnson gives without squandering. His great gift is that he knows when to stop."
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"What’s important in The Last Jedi is what happens to, and what we find out about, all of these characters along the way. In retrospect, The Force Awakens feels like a short introduction to these characters. After The Last Jedi, I feel like I’ve gone on a week-long road trip with them all."
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"Yes, the latest “Star Wars” installment is here, and, lo, it is a satisfying, at times transporting entertainment. Remarkably, it has visual wit and a human touch, no small achievement for a seemingly indestructible machine that revved up 40 years ago and shows no signs of sputtering out (ever)."
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"Star Wars: The Last Jedi is striking, stunning, visually hypnotizing, thrilling - everything "epic" about the famed franchise rolled into a tremendously overcharged start to Rian Johnson's Star Wars career."
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"The Force is, to me, still silly Star Wars mumbo jumbo, but Johnson finds a way to underscore it with humanity, with a classical Greek rumble of true pathos. On that front, The Last Jedi is a pure success, accessing the molten core of its drama and grappling with it in nuanced ways."
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"Writer-director Rian Johnson has certainly made the busiest Star Wars film of them all, but he keeps it from becoming a slog by infusing it with humor, verve, and visual charm."
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"The space battles and lightsaber duels are appropriately exciting, but Johnson keeps a close eye on the human element that girds this galactic odyssey. Rather than simply regurgitating Star Wars’ past, The Last Jedi emphatically builds on it."
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"The new movie truly passes the torch by making the next generation of Resistance heroes — Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), Poe (Oscar Isaac) and new addition, Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) — every bit as compelling as the old guard. Even more surprising, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) evolves from the whiny brat in “The Force Awakens” to a three-dimensional menace."
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"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."
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"While Abrams peddled name recognition, Johnson understands that the classic characters have to reignite the torch before they can pass it on, and gives both Leia and Luke defining moments. "
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"Star Wars: The Last Jedi has more than enough action, humor and stuff blowing up to thoroughly satisfy fans of the long-running franchise. "
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"The Star Wars universe is the best toy box a fanboy could ever wish for, and Johnson makes sure that Jedi is bursting at the seams with knockout fun surprises, marvelous adventure and shocking revelations that will leave your head spinning."
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"Last Jedi is deep. It’s also rollicking. It’s right up there with the very first “Star Wars” in terms of its enjoyability factor. It’s a triumph."
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"Much will be resolved by the final chapter of the trilogy, to be directed by Abrams. As much as I enjoy his brand of canny populism, I prefer Rian Johnson’s wilder, generous, far-flung imagination."
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"The Last Jedi tries to do a little too much in its overlong 2½ hours, yet writer/director Rian Johnson still turns in a stellar entry that owes much to George Lucas’ original films while finding a signature vibe of its own and unleashing a few welcome twists."
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"Huge, important things happen to characters secondary and primary. Surprises big and small abound. As is the case with all of the “Star Wars” films, where there is evil there is heroism, and where there is bravery there is sacrifice — and sometimes where there is love, there is heartbreak."
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"If having pure fun at a “Star Wars” movie is wrong, I don’t want to be right. So for me, The Last Jedi falls right behind “The Empire Strikes Back” and maybe the original film in providing the thrills and the heartbreak, the heroism and villainy, and the romance and betrayal that makes these films such a treat even for those of us who can’t name all the planets or the alien species or even the Empire’s flunkies."
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"By the rousing final act, Johnson has brought an apocalyptic grandeur to the lightsaber duels and airborne combat. His often-stirring addition to the saga finally lands on an affecting point about the importance of preserving essential cultural tradition without clinging too strictly to the dogma—and the texts—of the old way."
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"The film simply drags too much in the middle. Somewhere in the film’s 152-minute running time is an amazing 90-minute movie."
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"Audiences will likely come away from The Last Jedi with a lot of complaints and questions. But they’re at least likely to feel they’re in the hands of someone who cares about the series as much as they do, someone who loves its history, but sees the wide-open future ahead of it as well."
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"Rian Johnson’s main feat is being savvy enough to know that sometimes the best thing to do is cherishing the past before burning it to the ground."
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"“Star Wars” has always been about destiny, fate, and legacy. However, perhaps like no film in the franchise yet, The Last Jedi seriously considers the hubris that comes with certainty, and how knots from the past that can keep you bound from moving forward."
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"The Last Jedi checks off all the boxes you want from a Star Wars movie, including one of the coolest lightsaber fights in the series’ 40 years, but Johnson is also interested in exploring new territory, including a consideration of the shadings and nuances to the Light and Dark Sides of the Force."
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"If The Force Awakens raised a lot of questions, The Last Jedi tackles them head-on, delivering answers that will shock and awe in equal measure. Fun, funny but with emotional heft, this is a mouth-watering set-up for Episode IX and a fitting tribute to Carrie Fisher."
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"The Last Jedi gives you an explosive sugar rush of spectacle. It’s a film that buzzes with belief in itself and its own mythic universe – a euphoric certainty that I think no other movie franchise has. And there is no provisional hesitation or energy dip of the sort that might have been expected between episodes seven and nine. "
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"By breaking down some of the old mythology, Johnson has staked out new territory. For the first time in a long time, a “Star Wars” film feels forward-moving."
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"Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the eighth movie in the series and one of the better ones. I’d rank it behind “The Empire Strikes Back” (still by far the best) and the first film, but it’s about on par with the enjoyable last episode, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which also awakened the long-moribund franchise."
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"The Last Jedi is a film of moments. There are perhaps a half-dozen of them: goose-pimple inducing, fist-pump encouraging, heart-racing bursts of cinematic satisfaction. The problem is that the narrative threads connecting them are lazily knitted and sometimes tangled or broken. "
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"Star Wars: The Last Jedi unspools like a one-movie binge watch, a lively if overlong and busily plotted second chapter to the latest Star Wars trilogy that advances the story and deepens its characters with a combination of irreverent humor and worshipful love for the original text."
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"You don’t see many sci-fi action extravaganzas that are about late middle-aged disappointment, about wondering what it’s all about and whether any of it was worth it. It’s this element that gives The Last Jedi an extra something, a fascinating melancholy undercurrent."
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"These sequels trade directly on the emotional legacy of the originals (The Last Jedi makes some leaps into sentimental hyperspace, particularly in the way that it handles Fisher on-screen), and the more of the aged Luke and Leia we see, the more we chip away at the mythic power of characters as Lucas left them: Young, strong, immortal."
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"For all its strengths, The Last Jedi is a very manic film, fueled by excellent ideas that could have been parsed out in smarter ways."
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"Does the movie, like its predecessor, rely on familiar tropes a bit more than it should? Yes, I think it does. Is it, at a solid two-and-a-half hours, considerably longer than it needed to be? Yes, that too. But it’s still a pretty damn good movie, arguably the best the franchise has offered since Empire."
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"While Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a good movie and a worthy entry, it would have been stronger if Johnson didn’t telegraph those new directions before leading us to them."
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"A narrative that mixes, not always successfully, stirring moments and sensational action with angst and grim conflictedness on a galactic scale."
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"Loaded with action and satisfying in the ways its loyal audience wants it to be, writer-director Rian Johnson's plunge into George Lucas' universe is generally pleasing even as it sometimes strains to find useful and/or interesting things for some of its characters to do."
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"The latest entrant in this now-Disney-owned franchise is largely content to further the themes and narrative strategies of J.J. Abrams's predecessor."
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"Star Wars: The Last Jedi yokes Johnson’s formidable cinematic intelligence to an elaborate feat of fan service that feels, above all, like the rhetorical and dramatic gratification of a religious sect."
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"Although The Last Jedi meets a relatively high standard for franchise filmmaking, Johnson’s effort is ultimately a disappointment. If anything, it demonstrates just how effective supervising producer Kathleen Kennedy and the forces that oversee this now Disney-owned property are at molding their individual directors’ visions into supporting a unified corporate aesthetic."
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"Ridley, full of charming spunk playing a skeptical rebel recruit in The Force Awakens, is the biggest disappointment here. She is less engaging now that she is committed to the fight and plays most of the later action on a single note of earnest desperation; Johnson's script leaves her little else."
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"Intentions and inspiration aside, Last Jedi doesn’t add up to an “Empire Strikes Back” for this trilogy. There’s no romance, little pathos and no real punch-in-the-gut moment. Its emotionally sterile tone was set with “The Force Awakens,” and that’s proven hard to shake, new innovations and plot twists aside."
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