Towards the top of Star Wars: The Final Jedi, considered one of our heroes stares out towards an unlimited, bleached-out vista that’s peppered with low-slung space-junk (I wouldn’t dare say which character it’s, and even what planet they’re on; such data would rankle most Power-fans, and a demise mark’s not a straightforward factor to dwell with). It’s a shot that might have been lifted straight from the unique Star Wars trilogy, and thus one of many few moments of pure franchise-fealty in writer-director Rian Johnson’s in any other case rebellious new movie, which is the springiest, most assured Star Wars entry in years—and a film that drops a proton torpedo into our beloved galaxy far, far-off. In Final Jedi, previous allegiances are frayed, household bonds are lightsaber’d in half, and even an ex-farmboy like Luke Skywalker should deal with a deep, depressive existential disaster. It’s the gazillion-dollared, 152-minute equal setting hearth to all your childhood Star Wars toys within the yard, and getting excessive off the fumes that observe.

The Final Jedi begins not lengthy after the occasions of 2014’s Star Wars: The Power Awakens, director J.J. Abrams’ modern if sometimes slavish regional manufacturing of 1977’s A New Hope, and a film that united orphaned desert-scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley) and ex-stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) towards Kylo Ren, the millennial foul-kin bad-guy sired by Han and Leia (and performed, with brooding-beefcake woundedness, by Adam Driver). However in contrast to a few of the earlier Star Wars movies, which regularly allowed years to move between installments, The Final Jedi doesn’t have time for downtime, plunging instantly right into a deep-space skirmish between Normal Leia’s Resistance fighters and the evil First Order (commandeered by Domhnall Gleeson’s sneering, delightfully peeve-faced Normal Hux). By now, everyone knows what Star Wars battle appears like: hovering TIEs, roaring laser-blasts, and many aerial acrobatics. These are all current right here, in fact, however so is a wordless face-off between Kylo Ren and Leia, in addition to a daring, ticking-clock on-board mission that Johnson mounts with Ackbar-rattling rigidity—the primary indicators that Final Jedi is extra inquisitive about reinventing the thrills of Star Wars than it’s merely re-reawakening them.

Final Jedi then hyperdrives to the plush Jedi temple the place, on the finish of Power Awakens, we noticed Rey method Luke (Mark Hamill) together with his previous lightsaber—a second that ended with the unusual previous hermit giving her the silent therapy. Because it seems, Luke’s failure to correctly prepare his nephew—thus giving rise to Kylo Ren—has prompted him to primarily tune out the Power, and to show towards his once-idealistic, hubristic former Jedi self. So he lives largely solo, aided by a crew of cranky-alien carekeepers, and consuming inexperienced milk offered by native space-anteater-thingees (he’s additionally surrounded by porgs, small island-dwelling bird-critters which can be one half Furby, one half gag-gift slipper).

The unique trilogy made good use of Hamill’s kewpie-cute, oft-twerpy boyishness, however Final Jedi finds him shaggy and feral—he appears like he simply walked out of the interior sleeve of Led Zeppelin IV—and weary from many years of high-casualty household battles. But there are flashes of sarcasm to Previous Man Luke, who’s performed by Hamill not as a tragic, elder sage, however as a I’m-getting-too-old-for-this-Sith crank and occasional trickster (he will get one of many film’s greatest laughs earlier than uttering a single line). The Star Wars films have by no means been particularly humorous, no less than not deliberately so, however Final Jedi has a stunning lightness at instances, and by no means extra so when Luke and Rey are locked in some intra-generational squabble.

Because the jaded Jedi and his undesirable visitor start an uncomfortable, at instances combative, coaching session, the dwindling members of the Resistance are huddled beneath the command of Leia, who’s attempting to maintain her small fleet intact—a activity that’s sometimes undermined by the hot-dog maneuvering of Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac). Carrie Fisher handed away shortly after finishing her Final Jedi scenes, and it’s heartbreaking to see how rather more at-ease she is right here than she was in Power Awakens, as absolutely in charge of her character as Leia is in charge of her crew. And whereas Leia will get in just a few good traces, as all the time, Fisher’s greatest moments are those by which her face holds the display in silence, her regal heat a drive of its personal.

Talking of which: There are a lot of staring-toward-the-screen scenes in The Final Jedi, which is filled with psychic-connection chats between characters, and which pushes the metaphysical powers of the Power additional than any earlier Star Wars movie (although it does so, fortunately, with out as soon as mentioning these dreaded midichlorians). There’s loads to marvel over in Johnson’s film, from the bloody-chic decor of Supreme Chief Snoke’s throne-room to the intriguing background beasties to the seat-levitatingly superior third-act dogfight. However what’s most spectacular is the best way it illuminates the connective energy of the Power, which is depicted right here not as some hokey faith, however as a transcendent type of communication and understanding. In The Final Jedi, nearly everyone seems to be attempting to close down or eradicate some a part of their previous, and also you get the sense that Johnson was (politely) trying to do the identical factor with Star Wars itself, jettisoning the sequence’ long-running penchant for quasi-mystical mumbo-jumbo, and pushing the movies towards a extra intelligently designed model of religion.

Nonetheless, for all of Johnson’s efforts to refine the franchise, this can be a Star Wars film, which implies you continue to get a few of the sequence’ primo balderdash dialogue—various scenes are saddled with heated Huxposition—to not point out the inevitable low-tech-versus-big-gun third act. A lot of Final Jedi’s weakest moments, together with a pointless and way-too-literally-cartoonish Maz Kanata cameo, are leftover sins from The Power Awakens, which had extra characters than a Mos Eisley Cantina trivia night time, and which arrange just a few relationship dynamics that Johnson doesn’t a lot ignore as placed on maintain. And as for its size: Two and a half hours of Star Wars is a lot of Star Wars, and for many who bear in mind the (comparatively) brisk delights of The Empire Strikes Again or A New Hope, it’s onerous to not stroll out of the theater feeling as if you’ve bought a case of hibernation illness…

…however then, just a few hours later, you’ve bought your senses again, and also you’re able to revisit Final Jedi but once more, if for no different cause than to strengthen your personal psychic hyperlink to what you’ve simply seen. At one level within the film, a personality points a warning: “This isn’t going to go the best way you assume.” It’s a line that might have been included in Final Jedi’s opening crawl, and one which additionally sums up the movie’s many surprising pleasures. It’s a film that lures you in with the acquainted and the beloved, solely to as an alternative flip into one thing wiser, deeper, and extra true than you could possibly have ever guessed. It’s a entice, and a near-perfect one at that.