The Last Jedi feels like a Star Wars movie made by a fan unafraid to take risks.
Luke Skywalker’s peaceful and solitary existence gets upended when he encounters Rey, a young woman who shows strong signs of the Force. Her desire to learn the ways of the Jedi forces Luke to make a decision that changes their lives forever. Meanwhile, Kylo Ren and General Hux lead the First Order in an all-out assault against Leia and the Resistance for supremacy of the galaxy.
Fantastic Bonus Features on 2-Disc Blu Ray
Even better, this is quite possible the most extras stacked disc ever awarded to a Star Wars film on it’s initial release. That’s damn exciting for those of us who loved the movie. Everyone else will only find more reasons to whine about The Last Jedi on this disc, if only because it essentially stars Rian Johnson. The biggest and most substantial feature is a 95-minute documentary about the making of the movie from Johnson’s point of view. It’s a fascinating presentation of what it’s like to be at the center of such a massive production, coming from a guy who loved the experience so much that he’s visually emotional as the project nears completion. The doc is filled with incredible footage, from the massive nippily milk puppet being helicoptered over to Luke’s isolated Irish island, to Carrie Fisher cracking wise with her castmates on her last day ever playing Princess Leia. It’s an extraordinary doc for those who care, featuring moments guaranteed for internet infamy (get ready for more jokes from Hamill about Johnson’s take on Luke and a Solo spoiler that’ll piss off anyone who didn’t consider the origin of a certain prop for ten consecutive seconds) as well as very quiet human moments that grounds a massive production in ways rarely seen on a DVD promo doc. It’s a special thing. It’s also very telling that the Rogue One DVD doc focused on Kathleen Kennedy and her team of producers, while Johnson is the focus here. But that’s a different discussion for a different day.
Since the main Last Jedi doc is such a specific director’s journey dealing with the day-to-day realities of film production, Johnson also gets a second 10 minute documentary about his theories on the nature of the force as well as a delightfully detailed audio commentary track over the feature. Both boast quite in depth discussions about the motivations behind his storytelling decisions and prove what a thoughtful and measured filmmaker he truly is (despite what you may have heard from WampaLover69 on Twitter). There are also three technical breakdowns of particularly challenging scenes that’ll be catnip for special effects nerds (running just over 30 minutes total), a wonderful peak at Andy Serkis’ pre-mo-cap performance and a half hour of deleted scenes with optional director’s commentary. In a pleasant surprise, there are actually some damn delightful dropped scenes here. For the sake of pacing and The Last Jedi not stretching to 3 hours, Johnson and co. made the right call cutting all the excess material. However, the hysterical deleted scenes with the frog force nuns are almost worth the price of the disc alone. It was actually worth cramming all of this material on the supplements disc for once. Thank god.
So what we have here is easily the best stand alone Star Wars Blu-ray release to date for easily the best Star Warsmovie since the 80s.