Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)

🎬 Introduction

The Last Jedi is the movie that broke the fandom. Released in 2017, it took the “mystery boxes” set up by J.J. Abrams and threw them in the trash. Who are Rey’s parents? Nobody. Who is Snoke? Doesn’t matter, he’s dead. What is Luke doing? Being a grump.

For a Dad who grew up idolizing Luke Skywalker, this movie is a tough pill to swallow. We wanted the Jedi Master. We got a depressed hermit who tried to kill his nephew in his sleep. It feels cynical. It feels like the movie is making fun of you for caring about the lore.

That said, it has moments of brilliance. The Throne Room Fight is incredible. The Holdo Maneuver (silent lightspeed crash) is a visual masterpiece. But these moments are islands in a sea of questionable storytelling choices.

For our movie/TV series hub, see Star Wars Skywalker Series Watch Order & Guide.

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🧠 Story & Themes

The Resistance is fleeing the First Order in a slow-motion space chase that lasts the entire movie (fuel issues? in Star Wars?). Rey tries to convince Luke to return. Finn and Rose go to a casino planet to find a codebreaker.

The theme is Failure. “The greatest teacher, failure is,” says Yoda. Everyone fails here. Poe fails to lead. Finn fails to escape. Luke fails his student. Rey fails to turn Kylo. It’s a bold theme for a blockbuster, but it makes for a depressing watch.

Letting the Past Die. Kylo Ren’s mantra. “Kill it if you have to.” The movie seems to agree. It wants to burn down the Jedi, the Sith, and the Skywalker legacy to build something new. But then it pulls its punches at the last second.

War Profiteering. The Canto Bight sequence tries to add social commentary about who sells the X-Wings and TIE Fighters. It’s an interesting idea, but it feels completely out of place in a movie about space wizards.

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🎭 Characters & Performances

Mark Hamill gives a fantastic performance, even if he disagreed with the character direction. You feel his pain, his regret, and his bitterness. When he finally reconnects with the Force, it’s powerful. But the writing lets him down.

Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley. Their “Force Skype” sessions are the heart of the movie. The intimacy and tension between them is the only plot thread that really works. You believe they could switch sides.

Carrie Fisher. This was her final performance (filmed before her death). She brings a regal sadness to Leia. The “Mary Poppins in space” scene (where she flies through the vacuum) is… well, it’s a choice.

Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico. She got a lot of unfair hate. The character is fine—an earnest mechanic—but her storyline (the casino) is a dead end that wastes 40 minutes of runtime.

Snoke (Andy Serkis). Set up as the big bad, he is sliced in half without us learning a single thing about him. Subversion? Yes. Satisfying? No.

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🎨 Visual Style, Animation & Audio

Rian Johnson is a visual stylist. The movie looks incredible.

• Crait: The red dust under the white salt creates striking imagery for the final battle.
• The Throne Room: Deep reds, stark blacks, and a fight that feels messy and desperate.
• Ahch-To: The grey, rainy island feels ancient and lonely.

The Holdo Maneuver. A ship jumping to lightspeed through another ship. The sound cuts out completely. It is visually stunning. It breaks the lore of space combat (why don’t they always do this?), but in the moment, your jaw drops.

John Williams. He weaves the old themes with new motifs. The use of the “Binary Sunset” theme when Luke dies is emotionally manipulative, and dammit, it works.

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👨‍👧 The Dad Perspective

Runtime: 2 hours 32 minutes. It is LONG. The longest Star Wars movie. And you feel it. The casino sequence drags. The slow chase drags. Kids get bored.

Suitability:

• Violence: Snoke gets cut in half (graphic). Guards get shredded in the fan. It’s fairly violent.
• Complexity: The plot is convoluted. “Why can’t they just jump away?” “What is a hyperspace tracker?” You will have to answer a lot of logic questions.
• Tone: It’s dour. There isn’t much “fun” adventure here. It’s a deconstruction.

Rewatch Value: Low. Once you know the “twists,” the slow pacing makes it a chore to sit through again. We usually skip the casino scenes entirely.

Talking Points: Why was Luke so sad? Is it okay to run away from your mistakes? (Answer: No, you should face them). Also, the idea that anyone can be a hero (Broom Boy), not just people with famous last names.

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✅ What The Last Jedi Actually Gets Right

Look, we rated it a 6. That’s not a hate crime against Rian Johnson, and it doesn’t mean the movie is a dumpster fire. There are things here that are genuinely excellent — and any honest review owes them their due.

The Kylo/Rey Force-link scenes. Nothing in the sequel trilogy, and arguably nothing in the entire saga, matches the intimacy of these moments. They can see each other across the galaxy. He’s sitting in a rain-soaked command shuttle. She’s standing in a hut on an island. They reach out, almost touch, and both pull back. It’s strange, it’s new, and it completely sidesteps the franchise’s usual lightsaber-swinging shorthand for character development. Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley earn every frame. The idea that the best relationship in a Star Wars movie is between the hero and the villain — and that neither can fully explain it — is legitimately bold filmmaking.

The Throne Room fight. We already praised this above, but it deserves its own paragraph. The sequence earns the word “visceral” in a franchise that usually settles for “cool.” There’s no choreographed-ballet nonsense here: the guards fight dirty, the heroes are exhausted, and they don’t win because of destiny — they barely survive because they cover each other’s backs while hating each other’s guts. The staging is tight, the red design is oppressive, and the moment Snoke’s chair splits is more surprising than any plot twist in the film. This is the saga at its action peak, and no amount of casino subplot drags it down.

Yoda as a puppet. He shows up to burn the tree. He laughs. He does the little eyebrow thing. He was built as a physical prop, not rendered on a server farm, and you feel the difference in every frame. The scene is warm and strange in exactly the way that the original trilogy was warm and strange — there’s a lightness to it that most of The Last Jedi never finds. It’s Kershner-worthy. It is the single best callback in the sequel trilogy.

The thematic argument of “Let the past die.” Kylo Ren is wrong — the movie establishes that clearly enough — but the idea itself is worth taking seriously. Every generation of Star Wars fans has been invited to worship the same symbols: the lightsabers, the Jedi Order, the Skywalker bloodline. Johnson’s argument is that this worship is part of the problem. The Jedi were arrogant, the institutions failed, and clinging to mythology is a way of avoiding responsibility. That’s a real idea. It’s under-earned here — the movie argues it without fully living it — but it is a genuine thematic argument, not just shock-value deconstruction. A franchise that never questions its own mythology gets stale. The Last Jedi at least had the nerve to ask.

None of this saves the movie from its own worst choices. But pretending these moments don’t exist is as dishonest as defending the casino subplot.

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From the screen to the shelf: the Millennium Falcon flies on through The Last Jedi — and our LEGO Millennium Falcon (75375) review covers the 25th-anniversary brick version.

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📌 FAQ — Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Luke try to kill Kylo?

The movie says he had a “moment of pure instinct” when he saw the darkness in Ben’s mind. He stopped immediately, but it was too late. Ben saw the lightsaber and reacted. It’s a tragic misunderstanding.

Is Rey really a nobody?

According to Kylo Ren in this movie, yes. “Filthy junk traders.” (Spoiler: The next movie retcons this hard).

What is the Holdo Maneuver?

Vice Admiral Holdo aims her cruiser at the First Order fleet and jumps to lightspeed, acting as a kinetic missile. It destroys the fleet. It’s cool, but raises the question: Why didn’t they do this to the Death Star?

Did Luke die?

Yes. He projected an image of himself across the galaxy (which killed him from exhaustion) to buy the Resistance time. He became one with the Force, like Obi-Wan and Yoda.

Is The Last Jedi worth watching despite the controversy?

Yes, once. It is visually the most accomplished Star Wars film, and the Kylo/Rey dynamic is the best character work in the sequel trilogy. Watch it as a standalone experiment. Just don’t expect the satisfying plot of the originals.

Does my kid need to see The Last Jedi to understand The Rise of Skywalker?

Technically yes, since TROS directly addresses and reverses several of TLJ’s choices. But fair warning: TLJ is long (2h32min), has very little fun adventure, and the plot is confusing for kids. Consider reading a plot summary together before going in.