Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Review

This review is spoiler free!

To be honest with you, I may need to see this film again to really give you my full impressions of this movie and let it sink in a bit. As for right now though, I can say that when I exited the theatre after seeing the Force Awakens, I had a smile on my face, but the smile was even bigger after seeing the Last Jedi. I mean, I really liked this movie. I don't want to say the L-word too soon, or else I'll be like 90% of all the critics out there that say "this is the best one yet! I loved it!" because I remember saying that at the end of Spider-Man 3. Your opinion often changes on a movie after letting it sink in after a while or watching it again. However, I am pretty confident in saying that this Star Wars movie was absolutely awesome. What did I like about this movie? Well, it feels like a different movie inside of the Star Wars universe. What do I mean by that? Well, the Force Awakens' plotline was extremely similar to A New Hope. It felt like a Star Wars film because of the structure alone. This film, while still consisting of stormtroopers, X-Wings, lightsabers, the force, etc. this film takes you through some turns. This doesn't feel like they totally ripped off another storyline from one of the previous movies. Now sure, Luke Skywalker trains Rey on the island much like Yoda trained Luke in the swamps on Dagobah and there is a scene that resembles the Emperor's Throne Room from Return of the Jedi, but it feels refreshing to see characters we like expand and go on different adventures and to different places that we've never seen before. There is a planet that looks a bit like Naboo, but it's full of a bunch of rich, arms dealers and everything is super squeaky clean, a big contrast to what you might find on Jakku or Tatooine. New creatures, new ships, new planets, all of which are great additions to the Star Wars universe. We also meet some new characters which are nice to see. Rose, a ship worker for the Resistance who goes on a side quest with Finn to help the Resistance, Admiral Holdo which I will admit may have been the wrong casting with Laura Dern (which by the way, John Williams has a new melody in this film that resembles Jurassic Park quite a bit) and DJ played by Benicio Del Toro was a nice addition as well. But what makes this movie truly special is that we get to see Luke Skywalker again and he along with Rey, Kylo Ren, Poe Dameron, and Finn expand the on-going story in ways that I wouldn't have expected the story to go. Since I was invested so much with the characters and always on the edge of my seat wondering where the story would take them next, it automatically made the action scenes just that much more intense and exciting. Like, these are some great space battles and high-intensity action sequences. I could go on and on about speculation about Episode XI, but I couldn't do that with spoiling anything. Also, feel free to message me if you guys want to talk about Star Wars and dive into spoilers. I'm always down! So it's no question in my mind that this gets a perfect score because I haven't left the theatre with that big a smile on my face since Baby Driver this year. The only question that remains is when do I see it again and who do I take?