Person of Interest: Season 5

Samaritan's power seems unmatched, with the American government now fully on-board with its operations after it brutally ends a gang war in New York City (with limited attention to due process). Howard Finch and his allies, bruised from several defeats and with one of their number missing and the Machine's power curtailed, now have to make a fateful decision: to take the war to Samaritan and try to end it forever, or accept a future where humanity's destiny is out of its hands.

Person of Interest's final, somewhat curtailed final season (with only thirteen episodes compared to previous year's twenty-plus) has a lot to accomplish. Over its lifetime, Person of Interest has built up a huge number of storylines and character arcs it needs to service if it wants to nail its ending.

Fortunately, it succeeds with unusual ambition. We still get PoI-of-the-week storylines, perhaps unexpectedly given how close to the end we are, but most of these are still connected to the main storyline in one form or another. The show's off-kilter sense of humour remains intact, with an early storyline where the Machine's facial recognition fails, making all the actors have to play one another's characters, being a highlight (alas they don't sustain it for a whole episode).

The biggest weakness of the season is having to keep the gang split up; Shaw was captured by the bad guys late in Season 4 and the show is not in any hurry to have them reunited. This does give us one of the show's finest hours, where Shaw is subjected to countless VR simulations of what would happen if she escaped, but arguably keeping the gang split up and not having the rest of the team trying to rescue her (Finch seems to think she's dead but is not fully convinced) with vigour is strange.

As the show approaches its endgame, it's refreshing to see it shed any writing or commercial inhibitions. There are some well-executed major plot swings, but the show's biggest moment is saved until the end. The show's finale, Return 0, is possibly the show's finest hour. A killer soundtrack, borrowing music from Philip Glass and the Ex Machina soundtrack, frames a non-linear depiction of the final showdown between the Machine and Samaritan, with our characters trying to swing the balance in the Machine's favour (and showing hesitancy about entrusting humanity's favour to another AI, albeit a "good" one). The episode is filmed in a style and atmosphere completely unlike the rest of the series, feeling more like a big prestige drama than a CBS procedural, and it works brilliantly.

Few long-running shows deliver a solid ending, and Person of Interest does that, making it an exception to the rule. The ending allows for the viewer to speculate about what happens next whilst also not leaving too many unanswered questions. The viewer may also feel the ending, and the show as a whole, feels a lot closer to reality now than when it originally aired a decade ago.

Person of Interest's final season (****½) maybe takes a bit too much time to regroup from the Season 4 finale before pushing the main storyline forwards, but when it starts moving, it does so with determination and focus. A superb finale, illuminated by great performances, confirm the show's position as one of the most underrated genre series of the past decade. The show is available on physical media and streaming platforms worldwide.

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Person of Interest: Season 4

A powerful new AI has been created and allied with the United States government. However, Samaritan has its own agenda and no interest in being shackled by human control. Meanwhile, the Machine has gone undercover, trying to resist Samaritan or align its goals with humanity. With this becoming less likely, the Machine's operatives - living incognito for fear of discovery - have to take the fight to Samaritan where they can, whilst also dealing with a burgeoning gang war in New York.

Person of Interest's fourth season marks a significant shift in the show's format. Our erstwhile heroes are living under cover identities they cannot endanger without immediately being detected and eliminated by the Samaritan AI and its operatives. This forces them to have to act within the normal confines of their job at all times, even when dealing with their regular "persons of interest." This adds an interesting new tension to the show.

This tension means our characters can't go in all guns blazing as much as they did in previous seasons, and helps with the problem last season that our team was too overpowered, between Finch's elite hacker skills, Reese's formidable military abilities, Shaw's exceptional infiltration skills and Root as an even eliter hacker and competent combatant and AI-assisted assassin, not to mention access to two highly competent police officers (before one of them was killed off). Our crew have to be more circumspect in Season 4, forcing the writers to be more creative.

The result is probably the strongest run of episodes in the show's history. The already exemplary cast is expanded by the addition of some pretty big names (either at the time or in the years since) including Cara Buono (Stranger Things), Winston Duke (Black Panther), Wrenn Schmidt (For All Mankind) and Jamie Hector (The Wire), who are all superb. John Nolan (uncle of showrunner Jonathan and his director brother Christopher) continues to impress as semi-antagonist John Greer, and Enrico Colantoni has a bigger role as recurring frenemy gangster Carl Elias. Camryn Manheim also continues to be superb as "Control," this season moving from enemy to extremely reluctant, situationally-dependent ally.

What is interesting is that format encourages both greater serialisation and a renewed focus on the person-of-interest-of-the-week cases, an unusual move in a show with a continuing storyline in its penultimate storyline, when you'd expect the serialisation to have completely taken over. Instead, the threat of Control or the growing war on the streets between Elias and new kingpin Dominic often take a backseat to whomever the person of interest is.

This has several benefits, most notably it encourages the main storyline to be less convoluted than if it had had to fill 22 episodes. The show notably eliminates several factions this season to make the main storyline much clearer: The Machine versus Samaritan, who is allied to the US government, but some government officials are very uneasy about the deal they've made.

The gang war storyline could threaten to be formulaic, but it is elevated immensely by Winston Duke and Jamie Hector (here playing the right-hand-man rather than the boss, which prevents too many comparisons with his epochal turn as Marlo on The Wire), whose formidable charisma makes the Brotherhood are force to be reckoned with. The show also cleverly integrates the gang war into the main storyline with Samaritan, in a way it never managed with the HR storyline which dominated the first two-and-a-half seasons and threatened to become tedious. This storyline is better-handled and better-paced, being wholly contained within this one season. There's also a number of short arcs revolving around new recurring characters, and some PoIs from previous seasons return in clever ways.

The season also features several of the show's very best episodes: The Cold War features the first direct confrontation between the Machine and Samaritan, whilst If-Then-Else has the team trapped and the Machine has to run tens of thousands of simulations on their best way of escaping. The what-if nature of the episode is tremendous fun, allowing the characters to have several moving/dumb-as-hell death scenes. One sequence, where the Machine cuts the detail of the simulation to move things along faster, resulting in the characters becoming paper-thin descriptions of themselves, is the funniest thing the show has done so far. A twist ending prevents the episode from being too lightweight.

The back half of the season suffers a little from losing one of the regular castmembers due to behind-the-scenes circumstances beyond their control, which makes some episodes feel a bit clunky, with the introduction of some recurring characters clearly meant to just stand in for the missing one. It's not a major problem and some of the new characters are interesting, but it is a slight bump in the road. As we get to the end of the season it throws up another one of the show's best-ever episodes with Terra Incognita, where Reese has to investigate one of Carter's cold cases, resulting in the return of Taraji P. Henson in flashback sequences. The two-part season finale is also huge, packed with big plot twists and revelations that are quite satisfying.

Person of Interest's fourth season (*****) is potentially its very best, with excellent ideas and plot twists being undertaken by a cast at the top of its game. 

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Person of Interest: Season 3

The Machine continues to provide intelligence to both the United States government to deal with large-scale threats to national security, and to its creator, Harold Finch, to deal with crimes that are "irrelevant" on the large scale but hugely important on the individual. But, to Finch's distress, the Machine has also chosen a new operative, the hacker of dubious morality known as Root. As Root operates as the Machine's free-roaming agent of chaos, Finch's police allies are consumed by the battle against corruption, and Finch slowly becomes aware that a second, potentially more powerful AI is about to be born.

Person of Interest's first two seasons were mostly made up of procedural, episodic stories linked by a few continuing arcs. The third season nominally continues in this mode but the story arcs are now much more front-and-centre. We have former antagonist Root gradually coming in from the cold as a fellow ally (albeit a very unpredictable one) in the service of the Machine, and the police storyline becomes more desperate as a now-demoted Carter and still-in-the-loop Fusco work to finally expose the machinations of HR. The team's ability to deal with the numbers has been augmented by the full-time joining-up of Sameen Shaw, though having two extremely competent ex-government agents on the team does threaten to make them a bit overpowered.

For a show that basically started off as a two-hander between John Reese and Harold Finch, it's now quite busy, with an ensemble cast to rival any other show's, to the point that Reese feels like he's getting lost in the mix a bit. The results in a mid-season decision to reduce the cast by one, with a huge build-up to a major climax that finally resolves the long-running HR storyline. I'm going to be honest and say that this storyline was never the most gripping, and only really worked because the actors involved (particularly Taraji P. Henson's Carter and Clarke Peters's Alonzo Quinn) are so damn good. Still, once it's wrapped up, it's at least wrapped up for good.

The show shifts gears in the latter part of the season thanks to a superb episode where Finch is reunited with one of his former friends (an outstanding guest turn by Saul Rubinek) and learns that a second AI may be on the verge of coming into existence, which triggers a complex multi-episode story arc involving our team, the intergovernmental organisation Decima, the US government, and an anti-surveillance state hacktivist terror group known as Vigilance. Though this arc risks getting a bit convoluted at times (there's only so many secret organisation names one can take), it remains pretty gripping, as well as timely.

This storyline exposes Person of Interest's central core theme, and the one that will span the rest of its run: the struggle to create an AI Aligned with human interests, and will therefore protect us, and the dangers of creating one that is Unaligned with them, and may simply choose to destroy us, with the Machine as the former and Samaritan as the latter. This was science fiction in 2014, when this season aired, but is a distinctly closer idea now.

The strengths of the show remain the core cast's excellent performances, the strong exploration of increasingly topical ideas, and the show's interesting willingness in maintaining its number-of-the-week storylines, sometimes right in the middle of critical arcs, always giving each episode its own identity instead of completely losing itself to serialisation. It's a tricky balancing act the show handles well.

On the negative side of things, the HR storyline outstays its welcome by at least a few episodes, and the interweaving of different conspiracies from multiple organisations risks tripping up the plot a few times, but the show at least is willing to kill off significant recurring characters and entire organisations to maintain a strong plot focus.

Person of Interest's third season (****½) is its strongest so far, with some gripping storylines and thorny questions raised, with no pat answers given. The show is available on physical media and streaming worldwide.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Person of Interest: Season 2

Harold Finch and John Reese continue to use the predictive powers of the Machine to help people in trouble, but a new factor has entered the equation: Root, a skilled hacker with an evangelical belief in the Machine. Whilst Root goes deep undercover to track down the physical location of the Machine, New York becomes a battleground between the feuding criminal gangs, the police and HR, a shadowy cabal of corrupt police officers and public officials.

Person of Interest's first season was a solid, if slow-burning, introduction to the series. It set up the central characters and premise, and gradually complicated the premise as the series drove on. Serialisation was embraced only slowly, as some apparently one-off characters became recurring allies, enemies or potential frenemies, with the main focus remaining on the mystery-of-the-week.

Season 2 basically continues this format, although serialisation is embraced a little bit more. It takes two episodes for the cliffhanger ending of the first season, where Finch is kidnapped by Root, to be fully resolved and this makes for a great storyline pitting talented actors Michael Emerson and Amy Acker against one another, whilst Reese (Jim Caviezel) tries to keep up on the still-incoming numbers with the help of Detectives Fusco (Kevin Chapman) and Carter (Taraji P. Henson). Along the way they acquire a dog, Bear, who quickly becomes an integral part of the team, and help a conman named Leon, played by Emerson's Lost colleague Ken Leung, who becomes a reluctant ally.

The throughline of Season 2 seems to be "let's make the team bigger," with some episodes seeing Finch, Reese, Fusco, Carter, Leon and returning ally Zoe (Paige Turco) joining forces to deal with cases, which can be a bit jarring after the more claustrophobic first season which was basically the Finch 'n' Reese Show. Most episodes don't require this level of all-hands-on-deck though, so the show develops multiple subplots such as a new love interest for Carter, Beecher (Sterling K. Brown) and a new criminal conspiracy storyline involving Carter, Fusco, returning occasional frenemy Elias (Enrico Colantoni) and the shady Alonzo Quinn (The Wire's Clarke Peters). In fact, the acting firepower of the season is impressive, with Peters and Brown particularly impressing.

The show does a good job of developing these subplots whilst keeping the main storyline ticking over, with a surprisingly light touch. I was expecting Root to play a much bigger role this season but her appearances are sporadic, and more impactful when they do take place. The stories-of-the-week are quite entertaining, though at times they do feel they're feeding off a big book of TV stock premises, such as the main character and a female lead having to go undercover in suburbia to uncover a hotbed of murder and mayhem, or the mob hitman who falls for his target. Still, these stories are usually well-executed.

The season takes a huge upward swing with its sixteenth episode, Relevance, which introduces Sarah Shahi as government assassin Sameen Shaw (with as sterling guest turn by Ebon Moss-Bachrach as her partner), whose number is picked up by the Machine. Uniquely, the story is told from Shaw's point-of-view exclusively, with Reese and Finch showing up without much warning. The clever script plays with and breaks the conventions of the show, and Person of Interest's tendency to pull its punches to keep the mass audience happy goes out the window. Shaw is a sympathetic and wronged character, but she is also resourceful and ruthless in a way that makes even Reese look amateurish. Shahi's performance is absolutely outstanding, and the twists and turns in the plot make this easily the best episode of the first two seasons. Making Shaw a regular after this (though it takes a few episodes for her to come back) is a no-brainer.

The season ends with an impressive two-parter which blows open a lot of the show's premise. We learn what's been going on with the Machine in the presence, and what happened to Reese and Ingram after turning it over to the US government. Root makes her long-awaited move and the value of having Shaw on the team becomes clear, with the show building to a big cliffhanger, even if maybe it hedges its bets a little so as not to make a return to the status quo impossible.

Still, Person of Interest's second season (****) is a sharp improvement on the first season's promise. Expanding the cast is a good idea which brings more storylines and ideas into play, and the show admirably mixes some good serialised plots with some inventive episodes-of-the-week (though there's a few rote ones as well). The show's improvement in quality impresses. The show is available on physical media and streaming worldwide.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Person of Interest: Season 1

A decade ago, a genius computer programmer named Harold Finch (Michael Emerson) created the Machine, a powerful AI capable of detecting crimes before they happen. The US government wanted to use the Machine solely to forecast large-scale threats, like terrorism, whilst Finch wanted to use it to help solve everyday crimes as well. Finch still has a line to the Machine, which feeds him the social security numbers of people who are about to be the victims - or sometimes the perpetrators - of crime. With an old injury inhibiting his ability to work in the field, Finch recruits ex-CIA operative John Reese (Jim Caviezel) to assist. Reese, living off the grid and suffering trauma after the death of his girlfriend while he was overseas, reluctantly agrees and finds the work is giving him a sense of purpose again. But their laudable actions soon attract the wrong kind of attention from the police...and Reese's old bosses.

Back in 2011, Jonathan Nolan, brother of director Chris and co-writer on many of his movies, went solo to work on a new procedural TV series, with J.J. Abrams producing. Person of Interest eventually ran to 103 episodes airing over five seasons, attracting significant critical acclaim and wider popularity in the process. It also gave Nolan the springboard to work on Westworld for HBO and now Fallout for Amazon.

This first season gradually eases the viewer into the world and premise. In fact, it might be a bit too gradual. The show spend a lot of its time on its mystery of the week format. The Machine spits out a social security number, Finch does some data-searching and Reese then saves/neutralises the person accordingly. Finch's seemingly infinite hacking skills and Reese's one-man army combat skills overcome almost every obstacle with ease. Complicating matters are Reese being hunted by both the police (represented by Taraji P. Henson's Detective Carter) and various former CIA colleagues.

The show does start to mix things up by bringing in serialised elements, with the hunt for the mysterious criminal mastermind "Elias" and the hacker "Root" forming key story arcs in the latter part of the season, along with the well-meaning Carter getting closer to Reese and Finch meaning they have to consider the risks vs reward of bringing her onto the team. This also leads to the development of the main cast. Just having Reese and Finch with Carter pottering around in a B-plot in the background risks getting a little claustrophobic, hence bringing in recurring characters like Kevin Chapman's Detective Fusco (a dirty cop Reese blackmails into helping him, but later decides to go straight) and Paige Turco's Zoe, a con-artist and political operator, is a good idea. Brett Cullen also recurs as Nathan Ingram, Finch's partner in the creation of the Machine and the public face of its design (hence how Finch is able to operate undercover). Ingram only appears in flashback, in an occasionally surfacing storyline about how the Machine was created.

These ongoing storyline elements make the show more interesting, but are treated with a light touch. From start to finish, the season is primarily concerned with its person-of-interest-of-the-week format and everything else is subservient to that. This means the serialised storylines are usually held off at arm's length which can be refreshing - arguably too many other shows ditch their interesting format too quickly to embrace serialisation, which can devolve into soap opera if the writers are not careful - but also frustrating. Whenever Person of Interest's main story arc starts building any momentum, the show kills it stone dead for another 3-4 episodes of self-contained adventures.

It's fortunate that the self-contained stories are usually pretty good. Reese's one-man army/Batman-without-the-mask spiel and Finch's savant-like IT skills are toned down a bit and complicated by increasingly effective and smarter opponents as the season goes on, to keep things fresh throughout. The serialisation does return with a vengeance in the last few episodes, leading to a hell of an effective cliffhanger that paves the way for the wider-scaled and scoped second season.

The performances of the leads are effective, with Michael Emerson (Lost) especially sympathetic and engaging as the stiff-upper-lipped Finch, whom we learn has made some questionable decisions and is now trying to atone for them. Kevin Chapman makes Fusco likeable and loathsome by turns, and Taraji P. Henson is engaging as Carter, at least after some initial abrasiveness in the character is toned down a bit. More of a mixed bag is Jim Caviezel as Reese. Caviezel seems to have trouble settling on a tone for the character, which to be fair is reflected in the writing. It's very easy to take a character who's supposed to be reserved, analytical and stoic and make them just dramatically inert instead, and the writers and Caviezel make that mistake a few too many times. Whenever Caviezel is stretched with material delving into his character's past or requiring more emotion, he can be quite good, but there's a few too many episodes where he comes across as checked out. Still, he's never terrible.

The show is often mentioned in the same breath as another Abrams project from the same time, Fringe. Both shows are contemporary dramas with science fictional themes laced into them (Fringe much more obviously so, and more upfront), and both shows start off as almost rote procedurals until the creators feel confident to slam down the accelerator on the main story arc, where the shows promptly improve and become more compelling. Both shows also last for five (well, four-and-a-half) seasons. Interestingly, whilst Fringe only ever did okay at best and was on life support for at least its last two seasons, Person of Interest was a much bigger crossover hit and enjoyed a larger viewership, which tailed off significantly towards the end. Both shows are also have a reputation for being somewhat underrated, and have pretty well-regarded endings. The similarities end there, as their stories and aesthetics are quite different, and I do have to say that Fringe after its first season felt like its main story arc had engaged more decisively and interestingly than Person of Interest's.

Still, Person of Interest's first season (***½) starts okay and quickly becomes quite strong, even if Caviezel's performance and the writing can be a little uneven throughout. Both the serialised plots and the stories-of-the-week can be quite good, and the other castmembers are excellent. The tail end of the season hints at a much bigger, more epic story unfolding behind the scenes as well, providing a good impetus to carry on. The show is available on physical media and streaming worldwide.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Paramount shelves the STAR TREK "Kelvinverse" permanently

Paramount have decided to shelve the Star Trek "Kelvinverse" setting created by J.J. Abrams, apparently for good. This setting was the home to three Star Trek movies, Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016), starring Chris Pine as Captain Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock and Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy.

A fourth film in the setting had been mooted for years, but Paramount had repeatedly flip-flopped on the idea, at one point considering a new film focusing on Chris Pine's Kirk travelling back in time to meet his father from the first film, played by a pre-Marvel Chris Hemsworth. They then shelved that idea to consider a pitch by Quentin Tarantino, who wanted to make a whole new Trek film with a new cast based on the classic episode A Piece of the Action. A new Kelvinverse movie was put into development a couple of years ago, with the cast all eager to return. However, Paramount have apparently grown cooler on the idea. The three films were very expensive but only the first one was a smash hit success, with the latter two generating modest returns at best. All three films also generated mixed critical notices, with praise for the cast and the general acting, but criticism for aspects of the visual design and the stronger focus on explosions and visual effects than the character-based storytelling Star Trek is best-known for. A common criticism was that the three films felt more like Star Wars than Trek, and it's telling that momentum for the films stalled when Abrams skipped town to work on actual Star Wars, directing both The Force Awakens (2015) and The Rise of Skywalker (2019).

In the meantime, the Star Trek franchise has returned to its ancestral home on television, with first Star Trek: Discovery and now Star Trek: Strange New Worlds taking on the classic time period, with new actors playing Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura etc.

Firm plans for the new Star Trek movie have not fully settled, but it's rumoured that Paramount is considering a back-to-basics approach about the "origin story" of the Federation and Starfleet. This has alarmed Star Trek fans already annoyed with the franchise's obsession with going backwards rather than forwards, and its increasingly self-contradictory canon and continuity, already stretched by this constant revisiting and rewriting of the show's past.

Simultaneously, Scott Bakula has been pushing for a return to the franchise in his role from Star Trek: Enterprise as Jonathan Archer, the captain of the original NX-01 Enterprise who later became one of the first Presidents of the Federation. It would be interesting if these ideas merged and we got a new, hopefully more grounded and less explosion-driven Trek film featuring one of its more popular leads, but this may be rather an optimistic idea.

The future of Star Trek should become clearer in the coming months. In the meantime, Paramount+ should air the fourth season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and the first season of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy in 2026.

Happy 20th Anniversary to LOST

Era-defining TV show Lost celebrates its 20th anniversary today. The Lost pilot episode aired on 22 September 2004 on ABC, and was an immediate smash hit. The show chalked up 121 episodes over six seasons, concluding in 2010. Widely sold around the world and shifting tens of millions of DVD boxed sets (becoming, alongside Battlestar Galactica and 24, a prime motivator of the "box set binge" phenomenon), Lost was arguably the biggest global TV "watercooler" hit prior to the release of Game of Thrones, which debuted just one year after Lost concluded.

The show opens with the crash-landing of Oceanic Flight 815 on a somehow-uncharted, large island in the South Pacific. The plane had been flying from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles. The pilot episode establishes the chaos of the initial crash and the attempts to regroup. Although there are forty-eight survivors, the show initially zeroes in on fourteen of them:

• Jack Shephard: a divorced doctor from LA, who was in Australia to retrieve the body of his alcoholic father. Jack rapidly becomes the group's de facto leader, to his own disquiet.
• Kate Austen: a criminal who was on the run for murder. She had gone to ground in Australia and was being brought home for trial. She is very careful about whom she shares this information with.
• John Locke: a middle-aged worker with a dull office job, but who has studied survival techniques and has a huge amount of knowledge about wilderness survival. He becomes the group's go-to expert on hunting and finding food and water. He is initially happy to take a back-seat role but eventually starts clashing with Jack over their plan to survive.
• Sawyer: a con-man with an eye on the prize. He loots the plane early on and sets himself up as a shop, giving out supplies in return for favours, including medicine, to Jack's annoyance.
• Sayid Jarrah: an Iraqi war veteran, who formerly served in the Republican Guard as an interrogator. His no-nonsense practicality and knowledge of weapons and survival techniques are in great demand on the Island.
• Hugo "Hurley" Reyes: an fun and laidback guy who is a good source of morale-boosting ideas, but who is harbouring secrets about his background and why he was on the plane.
• Charlie Pace: the guitarist and songwriter of one-hit-wonder band Driveshaft, from Manchester. He is frustrated at not being taken seriously by the other survivors, and struggles with his heroin addiction and withdrawal on the Island.
• Claire Littleton: a friendly and outgoing young Australian woman, who is eight months pregnant. How to handle the impending birth causes stress and tension in the group.
• Jin-Soo Kwon and Sun-Hwa Kwon: a married couple from South Korea. Jin, who cannot speak English, initially appears controlling and hostile, whilst Sun is meek and submissive. However, as their stay on the Island unfolds, Sun learns to stand up for herself and Jin realises he can't expect to get anywhere through constant hostility.
• Boone Carlyle and Shannon Rutherford: step-siblings who have a difficult relationship, with Boone portraying himself as a self-made businessman (who was actually given his company by his rich mother) and Shannon coming across as a spoilt rich girl. In reality, Shannon is far more resourceful than it first appears.
• Michael Dawson and Walt Lloyd: a construction worker from New York, who was coming back from Australia with his estranged 10-year-old son after the death of Walt's mother. They have a prickly relationship, as Walt barely knows his father. Michael's construction skills soon come into demand on the Island.

Early storylines revolve around securing supplies of food and water, exploring at least the local part of the Island, and avoiding a large, weird-sounding creature that operates in the jungle. After several weeks pass with apparently no rescue operations being launched, the survivors also start planning how to build a boat or raft to escape from the Island, whilst rumours spread of the presence of "other" people, who were already on the Island. Boone and Locke discover a strange metal hatch in the jungle, and a crashed light aircraft, suggesting the Island might not be as uninhabited as it first appears.

By the time Lost ended, this story and mythology had expanded to include electromagnetic weirdness, multiple competing groups of "Others," a Scottish guy living in the hatch, polar bears, confused kamikaze birds, time travel, and an exploding cow (the producers maintain the cow did not explode, but I remain sceptical).

Lost's mix of compelling character arcs, its addictive format of splitting episodes between a contemporary, on-Island story and a flashback for each character in turn, and intriguing mysteries about the Island and its mythology saw it raking in a massive audience each week, starting north of 20 million. Fans gathered on forums like The Fuselage to discuss the latest episode, literary clues (which book Sawyer was reading that week become eagerly followed, with a book club set to read each book in turn and discuss its applicability to the plot of the show) and attempting to build maps of the Island. The show became a phenomenon not just in the United States, but elsewhere in the world. Channel 4 in the UK commissioned its own special trailer and idents and the show was a smash hit for the channel (alas, from Season 3 onwards it aired on Sky TV, an expensive satellite channel with a far smaller viewership, and the show dropped out of the cultural conversation). The show was a huge unit-shifter of DVDs and then Blu-Rays, which showed off its gorgeous Hawaii filming locations all the better.

However, the strain of making 25 episodes a season quickly started telling. Co-showrunner Damon Lindelof suffered from nervous exhaustion and vanished for a week mid-production. Two actors were arrested for drunk driving in Hawaii. The set was riven with relationship drama. One actor was unable to get home to Britain to attend the funeral of his parents, leading him to later quit the show in anger. Last year, allegations of systemic bullying emerged, leading to Lindelof to acknowledge and apologise for issues in the production of the show.

The writing also suffered as ABC attempted to keep the gravy train going as long as possible. Early Season 3, which saw an overly-drawn out prison storyline and flashbacks now resorting to stories about Jack's tattoos, convinced ABC that they needed to set an end-date for the show and a reduced episode count. This allowed the writers to steamroll towards an ending they had mapped out three seasons ahead of time. Despite this, the show was increasingly accused of making it up as they went along, with unsatisfying answers to long-term mysteries or, in a few cases, no answers at all being given.

Producer-writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach published a lengthy account of the making of the first two seasons a few years ago. In this account he confirmed that several major storylines were planned and in place from the pilot episode, or very early in Season 1, despite not coming to fruition on-screen for several years. However, other storylines, subplots and especially character arcs were reached more organically, with sometimes major character details (such as Locke being in a wheelchair) not being decided until the episode in question was being filmed. The conclusion was that more of Lost was pre-planned than is generally thought, but not every storyline was.

Lost's finale was divisive, with some viewers confused over whether they'd been in purgatory all along (they had not) and why the story ended in a random church (something that even annoyed Joker in one of his battles with Batman). In retrospect it was a flawed ending rather than a disastrous one - the contemporaneous ending to Battlestar Galactica was more negatively received, and both were blown out of the water by the endings to shows like Dexter and Game of Thrones - and the reception to the ending seems to have grown warmer now newer viewing generations can sit down and watch the whole thing from start to finish over a few weeks rather than six years.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary, the pilot is airing in some cinemas in the UK and USA over the next week or so, and a new documentary, Getting Lost is also getting a limited release.

A few years ago I did a full rewatch of the show, details of which can be found here.

Lost is currently streaming on Hulu in the USA and Disney+ in the UK.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

New STAR TREK movie loses director to FANTASTIC FOUR

The extraordinarily convoluted saga of the next Star Trek film has taken another twist, with director Matt Shakman dropping out to helm Marvel's Fantastic Four.

The next Star Trek movie, the fourteenth overall in the franchise and the fourth produced by J.J. Abrams, has been in development hell ever since the release of the last instalment, Star Trek Beyond, in 2016. In the six years since then - during which time the franchise has made a hugely successful return to television - plans for a new movie have swung between a continuation of the Abrams incarnation to yet another reboot to various side-stories involving different characters. Even Quentin Tarantino was on board for a while, musing a feature-length remake of the classic series episode A Piece of the Action.

After a huge amount of development, Paramount settled on a script by Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson, with WandaVision director Matt Shakman signing on to direct in July 2021. The film originally had a slated release date of June 2023, but this was delayed as the Chris Pine-led cast from the last three movies only signed on to reprise their roles on the film in February this year. However, pre-production had not yet started, apparently a result of the studio having to wait until the schedules of the ultra-busy cast had aligned. This delayed production so it would not be possible for Shakman to direct both the Star Trek picture and Fantastic Four, which now as a locked-in release date of 8 November 2024.

Marvel has been developing Fantastic Four for the last couple of years, which will mark the fifth live-action film to feature the classic Marvel superhero team but the first to bring them into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Jon Watts, who had helmed the Sony-Marvel Spider-Man trilogy starring Tom Holland, had been attached but apparently received a counter-offer from elsewhere within the Disney empire to work on a Star Wars TV show instead. Marvel had apparently held talks with other directors, both inhouse (Ant-Man helmer Peyton Reed was reportedly considered at one point) and from outside, before landing on Shakman as their preferred option after his work on Game of Thrones, The Great and WandaVision showed he could handle epic productions, the latter two earning him Emmy nominations as well.

Paramount have now resumed their hunt for a new director. J.J. Abrams remains attached to produce, with actors Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana and John Cho all confirmed to return. The studio has also confirmed that the role of Chekhov, played by the late Anton Yelchin who sadly passed away in 2016, will not be recast.

Next STAR TREK film to reunite the Chris Pine-led reboot cast

JJ Abrams and Paramount have confirmed that the next Star Trek film will reunite the "Kelvin Timeline" cast led by Chris Pine as Captain Kirk. This cast previously anchored three movies in the franchise - Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016) - but their future had been in doubt as the development process over the next movie had gone through convoluted hoops.

Originally, Paramount had pursued a time travel story which would have united Chris Pine as Kirk with Chris Hemsworth playing his father (a role he briefly played in the 2009 reboot movie), until that ran afoul of a pay dispute and was dropped. They then developed a remake of the classic Trek episode A Piece of the Action, with Quentin Tarantino attached to write and direct. Tarantino reduced his involvement to writing and producing, which seemed to defuse Paramount's enthusiasm for the project and it fell off the radar.

Noah Hawley, of Fargo and Legion fame, then came up with a new Trek idea, apparently revolving around a whole new ship and crew not connected with any prior incarnation of the franchise. Paramount developed the idea for a while, before ultimately passing. Star Trek: Discovery writer Kalinda Vazquez then pitched a new idea, but that also didn't seem to go anywhere.

In July last year, momentum seemed to pick up again with WandaVision director Matt Shakman was hired to direct the film, in what was seen as a coup for Paramount given the immense success of that show. Writers Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson were assigned and JJ Abrams signed back on to produce. It appears that this idea may have been partially developed with the notion of recasting the crew, but Abrams and Paramount have now confirmed the established cast will return.

As well as Pine as Kirk, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg and John Cho are expected to reprise their roles as Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty and Sulu respectively.

A sad absence from the cast will be Anton Yelchin as Chekov, who sadly passed away in an accident at his home in 2016. He will not be recast.

With the next Star Trek film expected to start shooting soon for the 22 December 2023 release date, that means this iteration of the Enterprise crew will become the longest-serving in terms of a film franchise, with over fourteen years passing since their first appearance. The original crew, led by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and Deforest Kelley as Kirk, Spock and McCoy, made six films in thirteen years between 1979 and 1992 (although Shatner, James Doohan as Scotty and Walter Koenig as Chekov did briefly return in 1994's Generations, which handed the franchise over to the crew of TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation, who made four films between 1994 and 2002).

At seven years and seven months, this will also become the longest gap between Star Trek films since 1979, surpassing the six years and five months between Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and Star Trek (2009).

Next STAR TREK film lands WANDAVISION director, gets green light

Paramount's next Star Trek feature film has hooked WandaVision director Matt Shakman to helm the feature.

Paramount has spent five years playing musical chairs with writers, directors and even castmembers for the follow-up to 2016's Star Trek Beyond. Quentin Tarantino and Noah Hawley both developed scripts, J.J. Abrams signed on and off as producer several times and even the film's setting and cast changed several times, with Paramount considering everything from a film featuring a completely new crew and ship unrelated to any previous version of the franchise to a remake of the classic series episode A Piece of the Action to a straight-up sequel to the previous movies, with Chris Pine's Kirk returning.

Paramount have now greenlit a completely new project, with a script by Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson, with Shakman signed up after he guided WandaVision to a startling 23-Emmy nomination haul. It is still unclear if this new script will see the return of the Chris Pine-led "Kelvin" timeline but that should hopefully be clarified soon as casting announcements are made. Paramount wants to fast-track the movie with shooting to start no later than Spring 2022. The film, the fourteenth overall in the franchise, already has a pencilled-in release date of 9 July 2023. J.J. Abrams will return to produce.

Meanwhile, work on the next TV instalments of the franchise are continuing. Animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks and Prodigy are expected to drop over the summer, whilst Season 4 of Discovery is gearing up for an autumn launch, ahead of Picard's second season in early 2022 and Strange New Worlds' first season a few months later.

Paramount schedules mystery STAR TREK film for 2023

Paramount has set a release date of 9 June 2023 for the next Star Trek movie, but they have not yet revealed what that movie actually is.

Paramount have spent the five years since the release of Star Trek Beyond developing a large number of potential new film projects to no avail. A direct follow-up to Beyond, focusing on Chris Pine's Captain Kirk teaming up with his father, played by Chris Hemsworth via time travel, was in development for a time before being dropped over a pay dispute. The film was later put back into development again, and then paused a second time.

At the same time, Quentin Tarantino started developing new project. This was eventually revealed as a remake of the classic Star Trek episode A Piece of the Action, in which the Enterprise crew arrive on a planet that's developed into a parody of early 20th Century gangster movies. Tarantino was very enthusiastic about the project, even considering directing, but later committed only to writing and producing. Without Tarantino directing, Paramount's interest in the idea seemed to dry up.

Fargo and Legion showrunner Noah Hawley then committed to a new Star Trek movie idea, one which would apparently revolve around a whole new crew and a whole new story. With Hawley much in-demand for Hollywood projects, Paramount seems to have entertained the idea for a while before passing on it, due to a lack of an exciting hook to get people interested.

Finally, just a few weeks ago, Star Trek: Discovery writer Kalinda Vazquez was hired to put together a new proposal, the details of which remain unknown.

According to io9, this new project is not related to any of these ideas. The only thing that is known is that J.J. Abrams will be producing (but not directing) and to get it out in just over two years, they're going to need to put it into production shortly. Very mysterious.

Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker

The First Order has conquered much of the galaxy, but the Resistance is continuing to be a thorn in its side. As Supreme Leader Kylo Ren continues his search for Rey, he is contacted by a most unexpected source: Emperor Palpatine, mysteriously returned from the dead in the Unknown Regions of the galaxy with a powerful new weapon he will gift to the Order, in return for their help. The stage is set for a final showdown between the Light and the Dark Side, the Sith and the Jedi. Until the next one.

The Rise of Skywalker concludes the Star Wars sequel trilogy, an exercise in film-making where one writer-director gets to write the opening movie a trilogy, another one gets to trash it and do something completely different, and then the original writer-director comes back and trashes what the second one did but can't do his original plan (because it's been trashed) so says screw it and just turns in a greatest hits compilation. The Rise of Skywalker is fanservice turned into nothing less than avant-garde performance art, an unrelenting assault on the senses where it feels like the director spends two and a half hours playing you sound effects and video clips of the previous ten Star Wars movies and yelling "Remember that this was cool when you were twelve?"

We'll skip over the main storyline, which is a mostly forgettable travelogue of unoriginal new planets, including the 476th desert planet to appear in the franchise, in search of increasingly forgettable maguffins (a magic dagger, a droid memory decoder and a magic pyramid thing) and meeting almost completely pointless new characters. Richard E. Grant, Naomi Ackie and Keri Windsor are all great but have maybe 15 minutes of screen time combined. Palpatine - a screen-chewing Ian McDiarmid on fine form - has maybe less.

Instead the focus is firmly on our new friends: John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver, with an even tighter focus on Ridley and Driver. The Rey-Kylo Ren relationship drives this entire trilogy and is the best thing about it, and it's especially the best thing about The Rise of Skywalker. The ambiguity of their relationship, Rey's pull towards the Dark Side and Kylo Ren's pull towards the Light Side makes this all quite tense and interesting in a way that Lucas never quite managed with either previous trilogy (since we already knew how Anakin was going to go and we never really thought that Luke was going to go bad). This thread gives the movie a spine to hang onto even when the overload of plot coupons, laser fights, fake-out deaths and lucky escapes get out of hand elsewhere. Expect a "Reylo Cut" of their relationship to emerge after the final film comes out on physical media which strips away a lot of the distracting frippery.

That distracting frippery gets very distracting as the movie builds towards its bombastic but - as with so much of this trilogy - strangely weightless climax. There's no real worldbuilding depth to this trilogy, with ships continue to be able to jump in and out of hyperspace directly from planetary atmospheres, and almost from planetary surfaces (ignoring the first six films which established you couldn't do that). The movie does bizarrely retcon the hyperspace ram from The Last Jedi, revealing it's not actually possible and they're not sure how it was done. This is probably the most overt of several decidedly juvenile, snide digs Abrams gets in at his predecessor film which feels both infantile and also hubristic; The Last Jedi had a lot of issues of its own, but it is also a more coherent, original film than The Rise of Skywalker.

The final thirty minutes of the film play like The Return of the King's five endings but on crack, with so much fanservice hurled at the audience that it is physically exhausting. Almost every single spaceship that's ever been in a Star Wars film or TV show turns up. Tons of characters from all three trilogies get cameos (some so short that you wonder why they bothered), and they even live-action canonise (albeit only through audio clips) several characters from the Clone Wars and Rebels TV shows. Fan-favourite musical cues from across the series are weaponised with merciless efficiency by John Williams on autopilot, who in lieu of new material seems to have merely hit "shuffle" on his Star Wars Greatest Hits playlist and handed it over to Abrams. The very end of the film goes full overload in burying the audience with cheese. It's not totally ineffective - it turns out that a sunset shot and John Williams' stirring theme still can't get old after forty-two years - but it feels a bit obvious and a bit safe.

The Rise of Skywalker (***) puts all of its dramatic heavy lifting on the shoulders of Adam Driver and Daisey Ridley's shoulders and they pull it off with aplomb, giving the film and the trilogy a dramatic spine which is really fascinating and well-played, when the movie remembers to focus on it. The rest of the time the move is an unrelenting popcorn rollercoaster ride which never stops moving and never stops hurling references to the previous movies at the viewer. On a base level that's fun, but those hoping for some new twists on the classic formula will leave disappointed.

The Rise of Skywalker is on general release worldwide.

Fourth STAR TREK reboot movie to be directed by FARGO creator

Noah Hawley, the creator-writer of the Fargo television series and Legion, has been brought on board to direct the fourth Star Trek reboot movie, rescuing the project from development hell.

Work on Star Trek 4 began in 2016, before Star Trek Beyond was even released. Producer J.J. Abams developed a story involving Kirk going back in time and meeting his father, both as a way of raising the emotional stakes of the film and also bringing on board Chris Hemsworth and his newfound star power from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Hemsworth's appearance in the 2009 Star Trek movie came two full years before his debut in the MCU as Thor).

However, development on Star Trek 4 stalled after Abrams was parachuted back to Lucasfilm to help rescue the next Star Wars movie (which hits cinemas next month) and Quentin Tarantino developed a pitch for a more adult-themed Star Trek film. Paramount have felt that the Abrams Trek movies have underperformed compared to their expectations but have also been reluctant to cancel them, since aside from the Mission: Impossible series they don't have a current, reliably bankable franchise.

This is also the reason why the original Star Trek 4 ran into trouble: director S.J. Clarkson was hired to take over the movie, but the studio got into a salary dispute with star Chris Pine (Kirk) after Paramount proposed a fee cut for the entire cast to help fund the movie. The rest of the cast agreed, but Pine held out, especially after Hemsworth also refused to join the project without a salary boost to his expected, post-Infinity War and Endgame levels. The project stalled, whilst CBS All Access achieved significant levels of success on television with Star Trek: Discovery (which returns for a third season next year) and has built significant hype for Star Trek: Picard, which sees Patrick Stewart return to the franchise for the first time in almost twenty years (Picard debuts on 23 January).

The new Star Trek 4 is apparently a completely different project to the one Abrams worked on, with Hawley working on a new script from scratch. Hawley's involvement also seems to have energised the cast, with Pine reportedly ready to sign back on.

Tarantino's script also remains in development, but Tarantino has rowed back on previous suggestions it could be his next film, suggesting it remains a fairly speculative project at present.

Star Trek 4 is expected to shoot in 2020 for a late 2021 or early 2022 release.

Lucasfilm release STAR WARS: EPISODE IX trailer and title

Lucasfilm and Disney have released the trailer and title for the next Star Wars film, now officially called Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.

The trailer confirms several early reports that the late Carrie Fisher would still be starring in the film, despite passing away shortly after the completion of the previous movie in the series, thanks to an entire secondary storyline filmed for The Force Awakens that was cut for time.

The trailer also features the return of Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian, as he takes control of the Millennium Falcon in live action for the first time time since using it to destroy the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi (1983), although he has since voiced the character in animated series and video games.

Tantalisingly, the film also features the voice of Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor, despite his death in Return of the Jedi, and a shot of what appears to be a large chunk of the second Death Star lying on the surface of (presumably) Endor. This is interesting from a plot perspective since that is also where the Emperor died, suggesting that the characters may find a key to defeating the First Order and Kylo Ren in the place where the Empire was defeated the first time around. McDiarmid also joined a Rise of Skywalker panel at a Star Wars convention this weekend, suggesting that his role may be more than just a voiceover,with some fans theorising he will return as a dark Force ghost to banter with Rey.

Some may take issue (I certainly did!) with a large chunk of the Death Star II apparently surviving the end of Return of the Jedi, which may be worthy of more exploration at another time.

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, directed by J.J. Abrams, will be released on 20 December 2019.

New STAR TREK movie in difficulties over pay

The fourth film in the Star Trek reboot movie franchise (which began with J.J. Abams' 2009 film) has hit a major snag in development. Star Chris Pine - who plays Captain James T. Kirk - and guest star Chris Hemsworth - who played Kirk's dad in the first film and is returning in this one, presumably as part of a time travel story - are both claiming that Paramount has reneged on their previously-agreed pay deal and have refused to commit to the project until their previous pay package is honoured.

Chris Pine and Chis Hemsworth are part of the current Chris Movement in American cinema, a period exemplified by a profusion of Chrises in major blockbuster film franchises. Peak Chris began in 2018 when Evans, Hemsworth and Pratt co-starred in The Avengers: Infinity War and will conclude when its sequel is released in May 2019.

To rewind, the reboot Star Trek franchise began with Star Trek in 2009 and continued with Into Darkness in 2013 and then Beyond in 2016. Even before Beyond was released, producer J.J. Abrams (despite being busy working on the Star Wars movies) had apparently pitched and won early approval from Paramount for a fourth film featuring Kirk meeting his father, and early deals for the regular cast and Hemsworth were put in place.

However, a major snag then developed: Star Trek Beyond, despite positive reviews and being widely credited as the best of the reboot movies (and possibly the best Star Trek movie since the release of First Contact in 1996), did not do well at the box office. It returned $343 million against a budget of $185 million, a drop of $120 million compared to Into Darkness (which had an identical budget). It only just scraped into profit via home media sales and streamings.

Paramount's interest in a new film cooled - possibly not helped by Abrams' decamping from the franchise to work on The Force Awakens (2015) - and they began exploring other takes on the series, including possibly an R-rated film directed by Quentin Tarantino, to the bemusement of fans.

However, with Abrams making himself available again after The Force Awakens and Tarantino deciding to fit in another film before the Star Trek project, Paramount decided to push forwards with the fourth Star Trek film earlier this year, possibly buoyed by the success of Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access. Abrams' 2016 pitch was dusted down and put into development with new director S.J. Clarkson on board.

From the news reports, it sounds like Paramount wanted to renegotiate contracts on the basis of Beyond's underperformance. This would help lower the budget and reduce the cost of the movie compared to its forebears. Apparently the rest of the cast, including well-known (and healthily-remunerated) faces such as Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg and Zachary Quinto, had agreed to the adjustment to help get the film made. However, Chris Pine has recently established himself in the Wonder Woman movie franchise and Hemsworth has starred in six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films as Thor (including this year's $2 billion-grossing Infinity War) since his previous Star Trek appearance, and neither are willing to drop their price tag.

Negotiations are apparently now suspended, although the film's development is continuing, which is usually a sign that the studio expects negotiations to resume and the problems to be overcome. Solutions would include dropping Hemsworth's character from the film altogether and adjust the script, recasting Hemsworth (which may be viable as his character was in the first film for about five minutes), recasting Pine (much less likely) or simply meeting their pay requests, or making a new pay deal somewhere between the two stools, although this may go down badly with other actors who have already agreed to pay reductions.

Whatever the outcome, it is likely the Star Trek movie franchise will continue. In the meantime, CBS All Access has doubled down on the success of Star Trek: Discovery by commissioning a series focusing on Patrick Stewart's character of Jean-Luc Picard at an advanced age.

Billy Dee Williams to return to STAR WARS in Episode IX

Billy Dee Williams is returning to the Star Wars franchise. He will be reprising the role of Lando Calrissian in Episode IX, which is currently in production for a December 2019 release.

Williams played the role in the films The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), but has returned to the role in projects including The Lego Movie (2014) and episodes of Star Wars: Rebels (2015), as well as video games. Apparently both J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson considered including him in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, but ultimately decided he didn't really have a role.

The sad passing of Carrie Fisher (who played Princess/General Leia) and the on-screen elimination of Harrison Ford (Han Solo) and Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) means that Williams will be the highest-profile returning member of the original cast in Episode IX, alongside Anthony Daniels (C3-PO) and Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca).

A younger version of Lando was played by Donald Glover in the recent Solo spin-off film.

Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi

The Resistance has destroyed Starkiller Base but has failed to prevent the First Order from toppling the Republic. The new rebels are now on the run. On a distant planet Rey has found Luke Skywalker and asks for his help for the Resistance and for herself, as her Force powers are growing exponentially. But Luke has been broken and demoralised by the betrayal of Kylo Ren. Rey and the Resistance both face their lowest ebb as Supreme Leader Snoke himself arrives to oversee the final battle...but there is still the possibility of hope.

Back in 2015, The Force Awakens had the unenviable task of resurrecting a Star Wars franchise that had been let down by three disappointing prequel movies. It succeeded mainly by creating and developing an intriguing new cast of characters, all played by great young actors, whilst furthering the themes of the Force, heroism and self-sacrifice and adding an interesting major new theme of redemption in the shape of Adam Driver's new villain, Kylo Ren. Unfortunately, the film was also highly derivative of what came before, with a new Death Star and a few too many nods at the previous Star Wars movies that were less homages and more re-stagings. Still, it was fun, pacy and energetic and this overwhelmed many of the movie's weaker moments.

The Last Jedi is, fortunately, not as derivative of The Empire Strikes Back as its forebear was of A New Hope, although there are some similarities. It has a similar underlying structure - our Force novice hero (or heroine, in this case) is off training up as a Jedi whilst our other characters are on the run from the Empire - but these plots go in very unexpected directions. A battered, post-traumatic Luke is reluctant to train Rey following his own failure with Kylo Ren and the movie delves deep into this relationship and backstory, as well as expanding on Ren's fascination with Rey and Snoke's desire to train Ren as his heir apparent. This dynamic is compelling, fantastically well-acted (Driver and Daisy Ridley holding their own against a never-better Mark Hamill and another astonishing digital performance from Andy Serkis) and takes several turns which are surprising, refreshing and fascinating. We're light-years from the simplistic "corruption of Anakin" story from the prequels here, and we get several outstanding lightsabre battles along the way.

This is handy, because of the rest of the film is a little bit more variable in quality. It's good to see Finn (John Boyega) back on his feet and he's soon off on a solo adventure with Resistance mechanic Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), who is a breath of fresh air in the franchise. Their story is fun and - rather unexpectedly - taps into weighty issues like capitalist exploitation of disenfranchised workers (although we still don't get any discussion of why enslaving sentient droids is okay). Benicio Del Toro shows up and does vaguely Benicio Del Toro things before abruptly disappearing from the narrative. It's all okay and vaguely amusing but at the end of the movie you realise that Finn's entire story could have been jettisoned from the film without losing anything (other than a couple of dozen minutes from the film's overlong running time) other than a few discussions about the value of friendship and family which, whilst nice, aren't exactly revelatory.

The biggest problem lies in the movie's core chase sequence, where the First Order fleet relentlessly hunts down the last remaining Resistance warship. This creates a rather major plot hole where the storyline could have been resolved at any moment by a couple of the First Order ships making a micro-hyperspace jump ahead of the Resistance and cutting them off, which they don't do because...well, it's never explained. Later on the Resistance use a hyperspace manoeuvre in battle which is, as established in the previous movies, physically impossible (and, if it was possible to do it by tweaking a ship's drives somehow, it would have been used frequently before). Given that this storyline forms a large chunk of the movie's running time and is where Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaacs) and General Leia (Carrie Fisher), along with Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), are hanging out, along with a welcome expanded role for Lt. Connix (Billie Lourd, Fisher's daughter), it's quite a big issue for established Star Wars fans who know the background and canon quite well. Casual viewers likely won't care.

The film brings all the characters back together for a surprisingly twisty climax, complete with at least two stand-out musical homages to the original trilogy and some moments of real humour. Much has been made of the "surprises" in the movie and there are a few things that definitely don't go the way people will be expecting. But ultimately this is Star Wars and there are limits to Lucasfilm's conceptual boldness, even if they do press up against them from time to time.

The Last Jedi (***½) is, once again, energetic, well-directed and has some great dialogue and fantastic performances. Also once again, the central storyline is more than a little stupid and there are plot holes big enough to pilot Supreme Leader Snoke's 60km-wide Super Duper Star Destroyer through, which grate a little bit more this time around (since I think Rian Johnson is a better writer and director than Abrams, but he doesn't knock it out of the park here). The best Star Wars movie since Empire? No. The best once since Rogue One, and that's still entertaining enough for now. But Episode IX will really need to up its game. The film is on general release now.