<i>The Last Jedi</i>: The Best <i>Star Wars</i> Movie Since 1980?
Like its immediate predecessor, <em>The Force Awakens</em>, director Rian Johnson’s installment trades a little too much on nostalgia. But it does so with cleverness, verve, and depth.
When Star Wars: The Force Awakens hit theaters two years ago, my reaction to it—like that of many people—had two distinct phases: initial elation (it’s erased all signs of the prequels!); and, later, mild disappointment at the over-reliance on nostalgia and recyclings from the first trilogy (another Death Star?). This was always going to be a tricky balance—long-awaited fan fulfillment versus something genuinely fresh—and I suggested at the time that final judgment on the movie would depend in part on its sequels: If they branched out in new directions, The Force Awakens’s flaws would be easily forgiven; if, on the, “we again find our heroes lassoing AT-ATs on a snow-covered planet”—à la —it would be a bad sign for the franchise.
