Star Wars: The Last Jedi

• 1. Introduction

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  Star Wars: The Last Jedi is dedicated to Carrie Fisher, who played General Leia Organa and died on the 27th of December 2016. Written and directed by Rian Johnson, the film is the second installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, following 2015's The Force Awakens. It is also the eighth episode of the nine-part "Skywalker saga." The film reached theaters in December 2017 to strong reviews, four Academy Award nominations, and record-setting ticket sales. Yet it also became one of the most argued-over films the franchise has produced. Some of the argument centered on Rian Johnson's choices about Rey's parents, about Luke Skywalker's fate, and about whether the Jedi should continue. Some of it turned uglier, aimed at one of the film's own actors. What was it about this particular Star Wars film that split its audience so sharply, even as it broke records at the box office?

• 2. A New Kind Of Jedi Story

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  Rian Johnson had his story group watch older war and adventure films for inspiration while shaping the story. Their list included Twelve O'Clock High from 1949, The Bridge on the River Kwai from 1957, and Gunga Din from 1939. He also drew on Three Outlaw Samurai from 1964, Sahara from 1943, and Letter Never Sent from 1960. Johnson found it difficult to write the sequel while The Force Awakens was still being finished.

  In one scene, Rey enters a mirrored cave hoping for a vision of her parents. She sees only herself, a moment Johnson wrote to symbolize her search for identity. Rey later learns that her parents were "nobodies," which Johnson has said was meant to be "the hardest thing" she and the audience could hear. He compared it to Luke Skywalker discovering that Darth Vader was his father in The Empire Strikes Back, released in 1980.

  During production, Mark Hamill openly disagreed with the direction Johnson took his character, Luke Skywalker, feeling his disillusioned state clashed with who Luke was. Hamill later said he regretted airing those misgivings publicly. He compared the friction to his own disagreements with George Lucas while filming Return of the Jedi in 1983.

  Luke very nearly burns down the Jedi library at one point, hesitating at the last moment. His old master's Force spirit, Yoda, then appears and destroys the library himself, summoning a bolt of lightning. Yoda tells him to learn from his failure, a line that captures how Johnson wanted this film to treat the legacy of the Jedi.

  Getting that gamble on screen would soon face a different test, whether it could be built as a practical film rather than a digital one.

• 3. Built By Hand

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  Second unit photography began at Skellig Michael in Ireland on the 14th of September 2015, during pre-production. The shoot was meant to last five days, but poor weather and rough conditions canceled the first day entirely. That same month, Benicio del Toro said principal photography would begin in March 2016. Production actually started on the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios on the 15th of November 2015, with Rick Heinrichs serving as production designer.

  In January 2016, script rewrites pushed the shoot back to February. A looming strike between the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television and the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union threatened further delay. On the 10th of February 2016, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that filming had begun under the working title Space Bear.

  Additional scenes were shot in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from the 9th to the 16th of March 2016, and again in Ireland that May. Filming took place at Malin Head in County Donegal and the headland Ceann Sibeal in County Kerry. To heighten the intimacy of Rey and Kylo's Force-vision scenes, Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley were both present on set for those sequences. The battle on the planet Crait was filmed at the Salar de Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia, with additional filming in Mexico. Principal photography wrapped on the 22nd of July 2016, though Lupita Nyong'o still hadn't filmed her scenes as of early September. Sequences from the film were later confirmed to have been shot in IMAX, in February 2017.

  Production designer Rick Heinrichs said the original script called for 160 sets, twice what he might have expected, before Johnson did some "trimming and cutting." The crew ultimately built 125 sets across 14 sound stages at Pinewood. Creature designer Neal Scanlan said the film used more practical effects than any other Star Wars movie, building 180 to 200 creatures by hand. Some of those creatures were cut from the final edit. For Yoda's return as a Force spirit, the filmmakers used puppetry, just as they had in the original trilogy, instead of the computer-generated imagery used for Yoda in most of the prequels. Johnson felt a digital Yoda would not have matched how Luke remembered him from The Empire Strikes Back.

  In July 2013, Kennedy confirmed at Star Wars Celebration Europe that John Williams would return to score the sequel trilogy. Williams confirmed his assignment for The Last Jedi at a Tanglewood concert in August 2016. He said he'd begin recording the score "off and on" from December 2016 until March or April 2017. Recording was underway by the 21st of February 2017, conducted by both Williams and William Ross. Instead of a traditional spotting session with Johnson, Williams worked from a temp track built from his own earlier scores as reference. Walt Disney Records released the official soundtrack on the 15th of December 2017.

  None of that practical craftsmanship meant anything without the right people standing in front of the cameras Lucasfilm had chosen.

• 4. From Sale To Set

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  George Lucas sold his production company, Lucasfilm, to the Walt Disney Company in October 2012. Disney soon announced a new Star Wars trilogy, naming J. J. Abrams director of its first entry, The Force Awakens, in January 2013. By June 2014, Rian Johnson was in talks to write and direct the next episode, with Ram Bergman producing. Johnson confirmed in August 2014 that he would direct Episode VIII, and in January 2017 Lucasfilm revealed its title as Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

  In September 2015, Disney confirmed Mark Hamill and Benicio del Toro for the film. Del Toro denied reports that he would be playing a villain. Joaquin Phoenix was courted for the role of DJ but ultimately passed on it. By February 2016, at the start of filming, Laura Dern and Kelly Marie Tran had been cast in parts the studio kept undisclosed. Lucasfilm didn't reveal until April 2017 that Tran would play Rose Tico, a role Johnson called the film's largest new addition. To keep Frank Oz's return as Yoda secret, producers left his name off pre-release marketing and kept him on set throughout the shoot.

  Joonas Suotamo took over as Chewbacca from Peter Mayhew, who suffered chronic knee and back pain and was credited instead as "Chewbacca consultant." Jimmy Vee took over as R2-D2 from Kenny Baker, who died in August 2016. Mark Hamill also voiced a minor alien character named Dobbu Scay, after the film's editor Bob Ducsay. That character mistakes BB-8 for a slot machine in a scene set in the casino town of Canto Bight. Prince William, Prince Harry, and singer Gary Barlow all appeared briefly as background stormtroopers. A stormtrooper cameo filmed with Tom Hardy was cut from the final release.

  Tickets for the film went on sale months before release, at a pace that crashed Fandango's servers before a single showing had played.

• 5. Chasing Box Office History

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  Star Wars: The Last Jedi premiered in Los Angeles on the 9th of December 2017. It then opened across the United States and Canada on the 15th, playing in 4,232 theaters. The film's worldwide opening reached $450.8 million, the eighth-biggest of all time. IMAX screens contributed $40.6 million of that total, the second-biggest IMAX opening ever. Thursday night previews alone brought in $45 million, the second-highest preview total ever, trailing only The Force Awakens' $57 million. The film made $104.8 million on its first day, including those previews, and $220 million across the full opening weekend. Both figures were the second-highest ever recorded at the time. Domestic IMAX screens contributed $25 million to that same weekend, the biggest IMAX opening of the year.

  After its second Friday, ticket sales fell 76 percent from the first, the worst Friday-to-Friday drop in the franchise's history. The film's second weekend gross fell 67 percent overall to $71.7 million, still enough to lead the box office. A third weekend brought in $52.4 million, again finishing first. By then its domestic total reached $517.1 million, overtaking Disney's own Beauty and the Beast as 2017's highest earner in the United States and Canada. A fourth weekend gross of $23.6 million was overtaken by Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Insidious: The Last Key.

  Overseas, the film earned $60.8 million in its first two days from 48 markets. By the end of its opening weekend, it had made $230 million outside the United States and Canada. It set all-time opening-weekend records in France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Finland. In China, the film opened to $28.7 million, but exhibitors cut its showtimes by 90 percent within a week. Its third weekend gross there fell to just $910,000, ninth place at the Chinese box office behind films including Ferdinand and Wonder. The Last Jedi's total China gross ended at $42.5 million, far short of the United Kingdom's $109.3 million on its own.

  Worldwide, the film totaled $1.333 billion, combining $620.2 million domestically and $712.5 million abroad. That made it the highest-grossing film of 2017, the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time, and the second-highest-grossing Star Wars film to that point. It crossed the $1 billion mark on the 31st of December 2017, only the third Star Wars film to do so. Analysts had estimated it would need to gross $800 million just to break even. Deadline Hollywood later calculated its net profit at $417.5 million once production, marketing, and talent costs were factored in. That ranked it first on the outlet's list of 2017's most valuable blockbusters.

  Home viewers got their own chance to weigh in starting the 13th of March 2018, when the film was released digitally in HD and 4K. Blu-ray and DVD copies followed on the 27th.

• 6. Critics Take Sides

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  Metacritic tracked The Last Jedi as the 25th-most-mentioned film on annual "best of the year" lists. It also ranked as the 22nd-most-mentioned film on "best of the decade" rankings. Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film four stars out of four, praising its surprises and risks. He wrote that it "works equally well as an earnest adventure... and a meditation on sequels and franchise properties." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave three and a half stars out of four, praising Johnson's direction and the cast, especially Hamill. Travers wrote that the film "ranks with the very best Star Wars epics." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times also gave three and a half stars out of four, praising the action and humor. He noted that the film "lags a bit in the second half."

  Will Gompertz, arts editor of BBC News, gave the film four stars out of five. He wrote that Johnson "has not ruined your Christmas with a turkey." It was, he added, "a cracker, a blockbuster movie packed with invention, wit, and action galore." Alex Leadbeater of Screen Rant called the death of Snoke "the best movie twist in years."

  Richard Brody of The New Yorker disagreed, writing that the film "comes off as a work that's ironed out, flattened down, appallingly purified." Kate Taylor of The Globe and Mail gave it two stars out of four. She argued the trilogy "struggles to maintain a balance that often seems just out of reach." Owen Gleiberman of Variety criticized it as derivative, writing that it was "now repeating things that have already been repeated." He called it "an official monument to nostalgia."

  George Lucas, who had no involvement in the film's production, described it as "beautifully made" shortly after its release. That reaction was warmer than the one he had given The Force Awakens.

  Within days, audiences polled by CinemaScore would grade the film very differently from the voters flooding Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.

• 7. A Fractured Fanbase

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  CinemaScore polls taken over the opening weekend gave The Last Jedi an average grade of "A" on its A+ to F scale. PostTrak gave it an 89 percent overall positive score, a 79 percent "definite recommend," and a rare five-star rating. SurveyMonkey found that 89 percent of its polled audience rated the film positively.

  User-generated scores on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic told a different story, drawing considerable coverage for running far more negative. Those sites require only registration, not proof that a voter had actually seen the film. Outlets including Quartz and Bleeding Cool suggested that coordinated vote brigading from online groups and bots had skewed the numbers. Rotten Tomatoes initially rejected claims of tampering but said in 2019 that The Last Jedi had been "seriously targeted" by a review-bombing campaign. Scott Mendelson of Forbes called the backlash "alleged," dismissing it as based on "easily trolled online user polls." He also criticized Disney for later placating what he called the "vocal minority" while making The Rise of Skywalker.

  Emily St. James of Vox found that dissatisfied viewers considered the film too progressive, or disliked its humor, plot, or character arcs. Others felt betrayed that it dismissed popular fan theories. Many fans had expected Rey to turn out to be Luke's daughter, or otherwise tied by blood to a character from the original trilogy. The film's answer left that theory unfulfilled. Other viewers felt Snoke's character was underdeveloped, or that Luke's choices contradicted the hero they remembered from the earlier films. Reviewers noted that plenty of viewers still praised the film's action, tone, and willingness to break from Star Wars tradition.

  Much of that anger over diversity and tradition would soon fix on one actress in particular, Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose Tico.

• 8. Targeting Rose Tico

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  Kelly Marie Tran's casting as Rose Tico made her the first woman of color to hold a lead role in a Star Wars film. That casting drew a racist and misogynistic backlash. Critics accused her of representing "forced diversity" imposed by "social justice warriors" because of her race. After enduring sustained harassment over her ethnicity and appearance, Tran left social media entirely.

  John Boyega had faced a similar kind of abuse two years earlier, after his own casting in The Force Awakens. Once Tran stepped away, Rian Johnson and her co-stars Mark Hamill and John Boyega spoke out publicly to defend her. Broader criticism also targeted the ethnic and gender diversity represented across The Last Jedi as a whole.

  That same pressure over fan expectations and representation carried into The Rise of Skywalker, which closed the sequel trilogy in 2019. Despite a mixed critical reception, that film still turned a financial success.