Last year, a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump hated the Star Wars spin-off Rogue One too. The film had, how dare it, a cast filled with ethnic diversity, which fans of the current President don't think is good at all. They started a boycott campaign which, by error, called the film "Rouge One", and the idiots must have puked over their Pepe the Frog pins when the blockbuster made $1bn worldwide.

Well, it's time to man the hashtags again, boys! Because Star Wars: The Last Jedi plays from start to finish like this new wave of right wing ideology is the planet Alderaan, and director Rian Johnson has come to smash it to smithereens.

Yes, the film is great without this layer; a superbly-directed, handsome, well-plotted, surprisingly funny bound through franchise tropes old and new. But it sure is fun to spot its allusions to the current political situation - and marvel at how the fightback against bigotry has planted roots in America's most famous franchise.

For, like Rogue One, the actors hail from many different races, and the main roles are split evenly between men and women. That is the nod to acceptance, but the greater protest comes from the plot itself.

The story goes that the First Order are in control and the Resistance is being further pegged back. This First Order are fascist in clothing and outlook, and almost exclusively white and male too. The Republicans of Trump, in other words, for who Mike Pence has perfected the death stare. The Resistance, meanwhile, are idealists so Democrat that their members, if they had a permanent home, would get the New Yorker each week. The organisation even has not one, but two female leaders.

All of the heroes - Leia (Carrie Fisher), Luke (Mark Hamill), Rey (Daisy Ridley), Poe (Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega) and excellent newcomer Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) - are, of course, on the side of The Resistance, while even The First Order's chief villain, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), has doubts about his employers. It sets up the idea of the people in power being narrow-minded, oppressive and evil; with the Resistance representing the rest and best of us, and then asks what we do about it.

For instance, when Finn and Rose fly to a resort town called Canto Bight for a mission, they talk of the place being populated by the worst of the galaxy which, in Star Wars speak, has always meant barroom degenerates and lowlife scrappers, scary-faced drunks who will snarl so hard they deserve to get their arms cut off.

Here, though, they mean the casino-dwelling superrich. The one percent.

Finn and Rose go to Monaco, essentially, and discover everyone is awful and dealing arms to boot. It adds in a complexity about societal complicity in ruling parties that Star Wars has never before touched upon, and certainly doesn't seem like coincidence in a year when Trump is pushing tax cuts for the highest earners.

Minute-by-minute, The Last Jedi pushes the good guys back. Nothing they do works and the men in power are always a step ahead. Fine people, on one side, die. Their cash-strapped vehicles are running out of fuel. They call out for help, but the echo comes back empty. Toward the end, they are so few and the government forces so many and rules so severe. Do they give up? No. A final, brilliant, spine-tingling minute or two suggesting anything but.

The ending holds that the future is there for the taking. "Resistance is not about destroying what you hate, but protecting what you love." It's a right-on line, hell, but it's right, and this film is right to address this, because art should act as a protest against power, which is exactly what this huge blockbuster is doing.

Pop culture is the beating heart of youth, and, as Johnson shows here, is too important to not tackle issues that matter.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is released Thursday 14 December

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