Day 87 of the challenge! After weeks of (impatiently) waiting to get my hands on the home media release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, (which I absolutely love) I was finally able to sit down and watch The Director and the Jedi, the feature length documentary about the creation of the film that debuted at SXSW and was included as a special feature on the home release.
There might be some bias here on my part since I am a longtime (and somewhat obsessive) fan of Star Wars, but I found The Director and the Jedi to be an incredibly intimate and personal look at the hectic journey Rian Johnson and crew took to get The Last Jedi made. As a video producer with a background in film studies, I always get a kick out of seeing the "behind the scene" features of movies I love. It's literally getting a look at the magic and learning how to do it. With The Director and the Jedi however, there was also a sense of extreme catharsis and emotion that rivaled watching the actual film itself.
Moments involving Rian defending the story he wrote whilst simultaneously questioning himself have a melancholic quality to them when taken into account with how divisive The Last Jedi was amongst the fan base. Interviews and footage with the late (and great) Carrie Fisher are as heartbreaking as they are hilarious. The heart (or spark) of the documentary however, is Mark Hamill's return to the character of Luke Skywalker and the ensuing struggle. While Mark does a good job at explaining how he feels about Luke and Star Wars as a whole in press interviews and such, it's the quieter and more intimate moments that The Director and the Jedi shows us that really drive those points home. Mark quietly and pensively petting his dog in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon or his reaction at seeing the Yoda puppet speaks in ways interviews can never do. It's these moments and many more like them that make The Director and the Jedi worth a watch to any Star Wars fan.