No Star Wars film has split its audience more cleanly than The Last Jedi. Rian Johnson’s second chapter in the sequel trilogy arrived in December 2017 and promptly ignited a debate that still hasn’t died down. Some consider it the boldest creative decision the franchise has made since The Empire Strikes Back. Others view it as a fundamental misunderstanding of what Star Wars is supposed to be. The truth, as with most creatively ambitious films, lives somewhere in the middle.

What’s undeniable is that Johnson made deliberate choices. This is not a film that stumbled into controversy through incompetence or carelessness. Every subverted expectation, every broken tradition, every creative risk was intentional. Whether those intentions result in something you love or something that frustrates you probably depends on what you want Star Wars to do and be.

Ambition, Visual Mastery, and a Reinvented Luke Skywalker

Several sequences in this film stand alongside anything in the franchise’s history. The throne room confrontation, where Rey and Kylo Ren fight side by side against Snoke’s Praetorian Guard, is breathtaking in its staging. The entire sequence is bathed in deep crimson, creating an environment that feels hostile and alive. The choreography, the shifting alliances within the scene, and the sheer visual confidence on display make it one of the most memorable action set pieces Star Wars has ever produced.

Visually, nothing in the film surpasses the Holdo maneuver, in which a Resistance cruiser jumps to lightspeed through the First Order fleet. The screen goes white and silent for a beat that feels eternal. It’s a purely cinematic moment, and regardless of its implications for the franchise’s internal logic, its execution is flawless as a piece of visual storytelling.

Mark Hamill delivers the performance of his career as a disillusioned Luke Skywalker. This is not the hopeful farm boy or the confident Jedi Knight. This is a man who tried to rebuild an ancient order, failed catastrophically, and retreated from the galaxy in shame. Hamill brings genuine pathos to every scene, and his final confrontation with Kylo Ren on Crait is both visually stunning and emotionally satisfying. The reveal of how he accomplishes it recontextualizes his entire arc in the film and gives him a death that feels earned rather than arbitrary.

Adam Driver continues to be the sequel trilogy’s secret weapon. Kylo Ren’s journey in this film, from Snoke’s apprentice to Supreme Leader, is the most compelling character work in any of the sequels. The Force connection scenes between him and Rey crackle with tension and vulnerability. Driver plays the character as someone desperate to shed every attachment, every identity, every expectation, and the tragedy is that he can’t. His offer to Rey in the throne room is the film’s most dramatically rich moment.

Johnson’s script is also willing to engage with Star Wars on a thematic level that few entries attempt. The idea that the Force doesn’t belong to any bloodline or institution, that heroism can come from nowhere, that legends are constructed and imperfect, these are bold ideas for a franchise that often defaults to dynasty and destiny.

Where The Last Jedi Loses Its Footing

Canto Bight is the film’s most significant structural weakness. Finn and Rose Tico’s mission to find a codebreaker on a casino planet eats up a considerable chunk of runtime without generating proportional dramatic payoff. The thematic intent is clear: Johnson wants to show that the galaxy’s wealthy profit from war and exploitation. But the execution feels disconnected from the urgency of the main storyline, and the tonal register shifts too far toward comedy for a film that otherwise commits to weightier material.

Pacing suffers from the film’s dual structure. The Resistance fleet slowly running out of fuel while being pursued creates a ticking clock that should generate tension, but the repeated cutaways to Canto Bight break that momentum. The film is asking you to care about two storylines operating at very different energy levels, and the contrast works against both.

Humor is deployed unevenly throughout. The opening exchange between Poe and General Hux lands differently depending on your tolerance for tonal shifts, and several comedic beats on Ahch-To feel at odds with the gravity of Luke’s situation. Johnson clearly wanted to prevent the film from becoming ponderous, but some of the lighter moments deflate scenes that would benefit from sustained seriousness.

Some viewers also take issue with how the film handles characters and mysteries established in The Force Awakens. Snoke is dispatched without explanation of his origins. Rey’s parentage is declared irrelevant. Captain Phasma is again sidelined. These choices work thematically, reinforcing the film’s argument that the past should be let go, but they can also feel dismissive of audience investment.

The Challenge of Deconstruction Within a Franchise

Johnson attempts something remarkably difficult: he tries to interrogate the mythology of Star Wars while still delivering a Star Wars film. It wants to ask whether legends are healthy, whether the Jedi Order was actually good, whether inherited destiny is a meaningful concept. These are fascinating questions. But they create a tension with the franchise’s fundamental nature as crowd-pleasing adventure entertainment that not every scene successfully resolves.

It works best when its thematic ambitions and its emotional storytelling align, which happens most consistently in the Luke, Rey, and Kylo triangle. It struggles when it tries to deliver crowd-pleasing spectacle and metatextual commentary simultaneously, which is where Canto Bight and some of the humor fall short.

Should You Watch The Last Jedi?

If you value ambition and risk-taking in blockbuster filmmaking, this deserves your attention regardless of whether you ultimately agree with its choices. The performances are universally strong, the cinematography is the best in the franchise’s history, and several individual sequences are legitimately extraordinary. Viewers who appreciate character-driven drama over pure spectacle will find the most to appreciate here.

Approach with caution if a consistent tone is important to you, or if your attachment to these characters is built primarily on expectations from previous films. The Last Jedi is a film designed to challenge those expectations, and that challenge doesn’t work equally well for everyone.

The Verdict on The Last Jedi

The Last Jedi is simultaneously the most interesting and the most uneven Star Wars film. Its highest points are extraordinary, featuring the best performance Mark Hamill has ever given, the most visually ambitious sequences in the saga, and genuine thematic depth rare in franchise filmmaking. Its weakest stretches feel like a different, less successful movie grafted onto the one Johnson clearly wanted to make. That unevenness is what makes it so divisive, and also what makes it worth discussing years after release. It reaches higher than any other sequel trilogy film, even if it doesn’t always hold its grip.