For the third straight year, I’m going to know what happens
in the latest Star Wars movie as many as 48 hours earlier than you will.
This time, some mates are joining me.
The “crazy scheme” – well, crazy for a 44-year-old with kids
– of going to the first midnight showings of Star Wars: The Last Jedi has been cosigned by two friends who used
to work with me. Then again, one of them isn’t working at all right now, and
the other isn’t starting work the next day until 1 p.m. So I still “out-crazy”
them.
If it’s possible, I am even more ignorant about this movie
than I was with either of the previous two since Disney bought Star Wars. In those
instances, I never saw a full trailer, but I did see snippets of footage here
and there, due to the difficulty of fully avoiding that type of thing. This
year, I somehow never found myself in front of any footage, never needed to
avert my eyes. Even though I’ve been going to the theater at least once per
week, and certainly haven’t been consciously avoiding the types of movies that
might expose me to these trailers, I have not had to cover my eyes or plug my
ears even once.
I wonder if it’s been easier to avoid temptation because
this is the first of the recent Star Wars movies not to contain anything “new.”
The Force Awakens had new characters, plus the first glimpses of what the old
characters looked like at this age, in their familiar duds. Rogue One had an (almost) entirely new
cast of characters. The Last Jedi would figure to involve mostly characters we
met last time, and even though we didn’t get to see Luke in action, we did see
him, so he’s not a huge novelty either.
On the other hand, I can’t believe the temptation hasn’t won
me over simply because of how good I expect this to be.
You got the sense that Disney was confident in J.J. Abrams,
and rightly so – he delivered a very satisfying Star Wars movie, one that was
probably safe in some respects but actually quite risky in others. However, at
that time, Abrams was not tasked with directing any other movies in the series.
(He has since replaced Colin Trevorrow on Episode IX.)
With Rian Johnson, we have the recent announcement that he
is going to be directing three more
Star Wars movies. No creative personality other than George Lucas has been
given this much control over the vision and trajectory of Star Wars. In fact,
if all goes as planned, by the late 2020s Johnson will have directed as many
Star Wars movies as Lucas did.
I hardly think that kind of commitment would be warranted if
this movie weren’t fucking awesome.
Unfortunately, it’s also fucking long, the longest in the series to date. When you factor in
trailers and commercials, the 152 minutes of The Last Jedi will be dumping me
out on the street, blurry but hopefully giddy, at 2:53 a.m. And I need to be at
work at 8:30.
You know, maybe I’ll skip that midnight viewing of Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Either that or planned to be unemployed.
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