Star Wars: Ranking Every Final Battle From Worst To Best
2. The Last Jedi
The Last Jedi's finale is brilliant and emotionally complex. It takes everything audiences expect from a Star Wars finale and weaponizes those expectations in its favor.
There's always a giant imperial laser cannon aimed at the Rebel base, one lone fighter goes in alone and manages to stop it. Not here. Finn's attempt to stop it is in vain, only being saved by Rose. There's always one final lightsaber duel. Again, not here. What initially appears to be a showdown between Luke and Kylo Ren is in fact just a distraction, with Luke force projecting himself to Crait from millions of miles away.
All of this while also delivering some serious emotional payoff. For the first time in the entire film, the entire cast is united and every overarching narrative and theme comes together. As Luke says over top of the images of the characters themselves, in Poe "the rebellion is reborn today", for Finn "the war is just beginning", and for Rey, that he is "not the last Jedi".
It's a finale whose spectacle is based entirely in character, and it is all the stronger for it.