Welcome to my first opinion piece! I decided that I’d hop right in and tackle one of the most divisive hotbeds of rabid discourse in all of fiction. Three and a half years after sitting in the theater and soaking it in, I’m ready to talk about The Last Jedi- my favorite Star Wars film.
Even typing those words, I can hear a million voices cry out in fury. The loudest conversation around The Last Jedi after its initial release focused on how it systematically destroyed everything Star Wars fans love about Star Wars. It took a long time for the anger surrounding the film to simmer and settle, but so it has. I’d like to come in and stir the pot- just once- so all I ask is that you, a fellow fan, take a page from the ancient Jedi texts and let go of your anger long enough to hear me out. We’ll start before the beginning.
2015’s The Force Awakens was tasked with a heavy load. To reprise a franchise that produced the most beloved (and then hated) cinematic legacy of all time, and to appease the most passionate fan base in the geek dominion, the filmmakers could either build a new story starring known characters or retell an old story with new ones. They did a bit of both, but more the latter than the former. In the face of overwhelming, unprecedented pressure, this was probably the safest choice.
There’s much that Episode VII gets right, but it pushes many of the difficult decision making on to the next film. By seeking to court its audience with familiarity, it avoided the hate that The Last Jedi earned by trying to tell its own story while paying dues to its past. Now, I could use this platform to accentuate the movie’s various technical and visual boons, but I’m a writer, not a cinematographer, so I’ll talk about the script. I’m going to focus on the movie’s ever-relevant primary theme- screwing up- and how well it’s drawn through the character’s journeys.
Every central character in The Last Jedi deals with their own personal failures, some more serious than others, in ways that break from audience expectations. At the same time, the film intentionally subverts those expectations to reflect the character’s mistakes.
(Disclaimer: I won’t be discussing The Rise of Skywalker here. That’s its own piece, and I’m already trying my luck as your drunk friend at the party who won’t move on from the conversation everyone else forgot about an hour ago.)
Part I: Poe
“Permission to hop in an X-Wing and blow something up?”
Poe Dameron is played by Oscar Isaac and flies a super fast starship that shoots laser beams, and is, therefore, insanely cool. He’s so cool that, to him and to us, it barely matters what he’s doing as long as he’s playing the hero. In the film’s first action sequence, he defies orders from General Organa to draw back and bravely charges forward to take down an enemy battleship. The victory is more important to him than the casualties that come with it, both the loss of lives and war assets. It doesn’t slow Poe down a beat when Leia demotes him for poor leadership, because storybook heroism isn’t questioned or criticized. That’s why he, and we, immediately dislike Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern(!)) when she steps in to lead the Resistance. She openly criticizes and belittles him, but only after he approaches her, the commanding officer, brashly and inappropriately.
Poe repeatedly assumes that he knows best in this movie, and the women in power whom he underestimates try to tell him otherwise. It’s only after his plan catastrophically hits the fan- and after Holdo sacrifices herself in a truly selfless and necessary act- that he understands the value of making the right choice over heroic action. Poe proves himself as a true leader only in the film’s final act when, rather than rushing out against the First Order, he seizes the opportunity to guide the remaining Resistance to safety.
Part II: Finn
“Where’s Rey?”
Finn’s whole life has been wrapped up on the other side of the war, so it makes sense that he wants nothing to do with either. Beyond soldierly/janitorial duties within the First Order, his understanding of and exposure to reality is about the same as the kid from Room. Friendship is the best thing that’s happened to him, so it tracks that for the first half of the movie, his sole motivation involves finding Rey. Even after he meets Rose, a true believer in the Resistance who initially idolizes him as a symbol of the cause, Finn is completely uninterested in living up to that ideal. When it becomes clear that saving the Resistance means keeping Rey safe, Finn buys into Poe’s scheme and goes down the Canto Bight rabbit hole with Rose (Kelly Marie Tran). There, she urges him to take a closer look at how the First Order’s oppression has trampled lives to sustain a never-ending party.
Not long after, DJ (“Don’t Join”, played by Benecio Del Toro having so much fun) holds a dark mirror up to Finn’s ambivalence. DJ knows the score, but like the guy who never returns the buggy at Walmart, the moral grounds are too muddy for him. He tries to sell Finn on the concept of living in the grey area between, never swaying one way or another. Here, Rose serves as a countermeasure against apathy. She knows the score, having lost her childhood to the First Order’s oppression and her sister to the Resistance’s heroics. She’s the perfect person to drive the point home for Finn: when lives are at stake, not picking a side means you’re still on the wrong side. With this, Finn matures into the angrily compassionate phase of youth. He leans so hard into the Resistance that, in the end, he’s willing to die like a dummy for it until Rose smacks him (and his ship) out of it- though mostly because he’d seen Holdo do the same thing, like, five minutes ago and figured it would work here, too.
Part III: Luke
“You think what? I’m gonna walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order?”
As shown when shiny-eyed child stars break bad and age into cautionary tales, people are prone to extremes. Luke Skywalker is no different. He already went through the hero’s cycle and came out the victor, went to the party and the after party, then tasked himself with the responsibility of starting a whole new Jedi Order. Well, these movies tell us that the plan didn’t really work out.
In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke senses that his friends are in danger and impulsively defies Yoda to rush to the rescue. Though he does help to save them, he also finds himself short a hand and saddled with the worst family reunion imaginable. Luke’s conflict with Kylo Ren is a great contrast to that arc. When Luke sensed the suffering that Ben Solo was already on course to cause, it was that same love and fear for his friends that drove him to raise a weapon against his own nephew. Whether or not he would have carried through, that terrible, heroic impulse set everything that followed into motion.
Here’s the thing: Luke has never been great with the prospect of failure (watch how quickly he gives up on lifting his ship out of the swamp in Episode V), and helping to create Kylo Ren is his most disastrous flop. When Rey tracks him down, it makes sense that he’s so committed to punishing himself for his mistakes, though the movie makes clear this is just another way of not dealing with them. It takes the reluctant acceptance of a new student and a final bolt of wisdom (lightning) from Master Yoda to finally teach him that his role as a teacher is not to prevent Rey’s mistakes, but to give her, and himself, permission to learn and grow from them. Only then can he embrace and become the symbol he’s rejected for so long and give himself to a cause. It’s a bonus that, in his final act, Luke embodies the purpose of a Jedi by saving lives and facing down an army while remaining completely non-violent.
P.S.: This guy has always loved milk.
Part IV: Rey
“I need someone to show me my place in all this.”
Rey is more of an audience surrogate than the rest of the cast because, like us, she keeps looking for one thing and finding another. Searching for a wizened master to make her a Jedi and help save the day, she finds a crusty, lard-milking star war vet. Expecting a mother and father, and a lineage that explains her role in the story, she is met with a mirror. Hoping to redeem a conflicted Ben Solo, she instead faces the resolute Kylo Ren.
Rey’s expectations are subverted every time she searches for a solution outside of herself, because her story demands that she look inward. Failure teaches her to become the hero the Resistance has been looking for, and ultimately, she’s the one to save it. She controls her narrative and does the right thing without having to learn the same lessons as Finn or Poe, just by trusting herself.
Part V: Kylo Ren
“Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.”
In Kylo/Ben, the film presents a paramount of misses. Kylo failed to resist the sway of the dark side. He failed to emulate Darth Vader. He failed to live up to Snoke’s expectations, and he failed to defeat the Resistance, claim revenge on Luke, or sway Rey to his side. By not taking the chance to kill Leia, he even fails himself. In fact, his only real success is a dark reflection of Rey’s. By eliminating Snoke, he has no one to lean on and only stands to gain by taking leadership of the First Order, but this only steers him further down a dark path.
When he tells Rey that “[letting] the past die… is the only way to become who you were meant to be,” Kylo is embracing an opposite but equal mistake as Luke when he ran away. Killing the past is another way of not looking at it. He’s burned so many bridges that it’s just easier to keep burning.
Part V: Us
“This is not going to go the way you think!”
I’ve heard plenty of gripes about the writing, visual content and pacing of the film, much of which I disagree with, but the film certainly has flaws. Any film of its size does. The editing is choppy (typical of big Disney vehicles), the symbolism is heavy-handed at times (it has a lot to get across), and there’s a kiss that doesn’t feel entirely earned (typical of big Disney vehicles). I can find a way to defend this film from ANY angle; it’s a knee-jerk reaction at this point. But I do feel that its thematic storytelling and clever subversions are unfairly condemned. We deserve a Star Wars movie that doesn’t give us everything we want, because that would be fan fiction. When we call a movie that plays on our expectations “emotional manipulation,” what we’re really saying is that we don’t want a film to challenge us.
The Last Jedi is a film you can grow from, especially in the time it was written. Failure and discouragement surround us always, on a personal and global scale. There’s so much wrong with the world we have no idea how to tackle. It feels good to post something reactionary on social media, to underline the mistakes of others, and to rage against our enemies, ideological or otherwise. It’s so much harder to take meaningful action, acknowledge our own shortcomings, and to cultivate and protect what really matters to us. Rose says it best in the film’s thematic summary: “That’s how we’re going to win. Not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.”
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Ishmael spends his time bouncing from one form of entertainment to another as a kind of extended vacation from his ongoing existential crisis and it’s going very well for him, thank you. Married to the kindest woman in the world, who patiently abides his crippling Star Wars/Star Trek/Dungeons & Dragons triple-threat nerdhood.