Canon Comic Review: The Last Jedi Adaptation (#1-6)

The Last Jedi jumps to the comics’ page! Does it contain material worth revisiting, or nothing more than you already possess?

Adaptations are becoming more and more odd, but they are also becoming (seemingly) more unnecessary. Since this is a review of The Last Jedi‘s comic adaptation, let’s take a look at all of the film’s adaptations. The film was released in the middle of December. The novel, young readers’ novel, and the Storybook were all released March 6, about three months later. The DVD was released weeks later, March 27. That means that you had about three weeks to read these three books (if you so choose, and so I did) before having the actual DVD/Blu-Ray/digital copy to watch anyway. I’m sure, though I don’t speak from experience, that adaptations were incredibly helpful back in the day. If you had to wait years or months before having the chance to revisit the movie on home video, at least you would have the comic and the novel to tide you over. Now, the adaptations come months after the film’s release, and not only that, but they are released mere weeks before the home video release. The comic came out even later: issue one was released in early May, almost two months after the film’s home release. This strange time table makes it hard to decide whether or not we truly need adaptations anymore anyway, right?

That being said, an adaptation can be a good thing if it does a few things. One: can it translate the original material well into a new medium? Two: does it take advantage of this new medium to tell new angles on the familiar story, or is it simply copying and pasting the same material? Third: does the new adaptation allow for new scenes? This review seeks to answer these questions in relation to The Last Jedi.

So, let’s answer these questions in the order provided above. Does Gary Whitta (of Rogue One fame) transfer the movie from script and screen to page faithfully? In one sense, yes: mostly everything that you saw on stage is represented somewhere on the page. Chuck Wendig’s The Force Awakens adaptation struggled to do this entirely well: it felt like watching the movie in fast forward. Whitta is able to transfer most of the material to the page well, especially considering that both issues 1 and 6 were oversized to help cram a bit more of the material into the mini. Jody Houser’s mostly excellent Rogue One adaptation struggled a bit in the last issue to fit everything else that it needed to, unfortunately, but that issue seems corrected here. Even the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story adaptation looks like it is moving in the right direction as it will also start with an oversized issue 1.

Now, the story translated well enough. It is hard to argue that The Last Jedi has some of the most striking visuals of any Star Wars film. (That doesn’t mean some people won’t argue, it just means that they are wrong to do so!) Michael Walsh (penciler) and Mike Spicer (colorists) take on the challenge of transferring the Holdo Maneuver, the throne room scene, and the salt planet Crait to the page. Unfortunately, I didn’t find that Walsh was entirely the best artist for the series. The art felt inconsistent at times, ranging from dynamic action scenes to some heavy lines making it hard to see facial features. Walsh’s art style matches Luke Ross’s art from Darth Maul to the point that I believed Ross was back for this series. That being said, I like Walsh’s art and would be happy to see it again, I just wasn’t sure that it matched the tone of this series very well.

Toward the next question: how do Whitta and Walsh do in terms of interpreting familiar scenes and adding new scenes? Let me start with a specific example so you know what I mean when I talk about interpreting scenes from the film. I’m not sure who made this decision, but one scene bugged me that I do want to talk about for a moment. When Luke and Kylo are facing off on Crait, Luke tells Kylo that the war had just begun, the Rebellion was reborn, and that he wouldn’t be the last Jedi. In the film, each clause of this sentence features a shift in perspective, switching from Poe to Finn to Rey. In the comic, these transitions are wiped out, focusing on Rey for all three clauses/panels. I thought this was a sad way to remove Finn and Poe’s impact on the story and refocuses Rey as the center of both the Resistance and the Jedi Order. As much as I love Rey, this is too much to put on a single character’s shoulders, especially since the film was reticent to do so itself. This reflects part of the balancing act of writing an adaptation, though: we want new content, but we also want the movie to be recreated faithfully. This would be a challenge, I imagine, to even some of the best authors.

There are not many new scenes in the comic, so if that is going to influence your decision, I am happy to tell you right away. Most new scenes that it features are not even new to the comic if you have already read the novels. Jason Fry’s excellent The Last Jedi novel starts with three chapters of new material, ranging from Rose and Paige’s sister time and Han’s funeral, starting the story a bit late in favor of adding new scenes. Whitta generally keeps to the same pace of the film, maybe adding one or two new panels on the end of a scene. Some conversations gain a crucial new panel, such as Leia and Ackbar discussing the evacuation on board the Raddus or in the conversation between Holdo and Poe after she takes charge of the fleet. These serve more as interpretations of the scene, showing why Whitta thinks Holdo would withhold information from Poe, but I generally believe that these examples help clarify these exchanges to the point where most critiques can be answered well and bring even some detractors on board.

In terms of entirely new material, I enjoyed Whitta’s take on Luke. Rather than add too much new dialogue or new scenes between Luke and Rey, we’re given a glimpse into Luke’s mind. (This, though unstated above, is a good example of adapting the material. Can’t read a characters mind on the screen!) Luke watches Rey and reflects on how much she reminds him of himself. This was a nice touch, bringing explicitly out of the film what I imagine Rian Johnson meant to include, only much more subtly. If you are a die-hard Luke fan, this is worth checking out for these reflections alone.

I do have to make one more comment, unrelated to anything listed above. The price of adaptations is driving upwards so fast that they may alone determine whether or not you want to read them. Generally, we at the Manor prefer to review adaptations as completed series, usually in TPB form. That being said, this is becoming a big enough personal issue I thought it pertinent to mention here. Both issues 1 and 6 were five dollars each, with 2-5 at the regular price of $4. This made the entire series $26 – the same price as the MSRP of the novel, or $8 more expensive than the TPB. Now, I know that the TPB is generally a better deal than the collected issues, but at an almost ten dollar difference, this difference is becoming almost too large to not reconsider buying the individual issues.

Writer Gary Whitta was assigned a pretty tough task: take The Last Jedi from the screen to the page, do it faithfully, add new material to entice new readers, gainfully interpret some scenes left vague in the film, and do it all within six issues. Part of me is reticent to entirely cast blame on Whitta if all of these criterion are not met, as they were most certainly handed down from on-high. Thankfully, a revolving editorial team helped keep this in line: issue one credits Jordan D. White and Mark Paniccia, Heather Antos, Tom Groneman, and Emily Newcomen while issue 6 only credits Tom Groneman and Mark Paniccia. For the most part, I want to point that this series has a lot to offer. I think most of the decision on whether or not to visit this adaptation is up to the individual reader, as even the best adaptation may feel extraneous in comparison to simply watching the film that is coming soon or has already been released months prior.

You can follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisWerms, and of course, you can follow the Manor on Twitter @MynockManor!

Movie Reviews:
The Last Jedi