Photo Credit: Lucasfilm
Star Wars: The Last Jedi did not live up to expectations and predictions, and that’s what’s great about the movie!
A retrospect of Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Tasked with the impossible expectation of repairing, rebooting and continuing the most beloved franchise in modern history, J.J. Abrams didn’t shirk away from his responsibilities. So careful in his execution to get “that” feel of the classics, once discarded by George Lucas quicker than Anakin’s limbs tumbling into a molten lava river, that his new version of our heroes and their adventures bordered on plagiarism.
Whatever you think, it worked. Disney could give you 2.068 billion little green pieces why they would agree.
Accepting The Force Awakens for what it was on the surface, a reboot/sequel akin to A New Hope, maybe on some subconscious level, we all were hoping for The Empire Strikes Back Redux. We didn’t get that movie.
Rian Johnson’s script made sure to crap all over whatever Abrams tried to recapture and your childhood at the same time. He made sure to show you that the Force was more than mind tricks and moving rocks, a la, Leia morphing into a crystalline Star-Lord in the dark chasm of space before performing her best Mary Poppins impersonation.
He made sure to show you that allegiance is just a strange synonym for whoever gets you through the moment as DJ (Lando-lite played by Benicio Del Toro) plays both sides only to live and get paid — means to an end. And, that legends are just propped up myths, flawed and human and still prone to making the same mistakes that beset them on this journey.
Photo Credit: Lucasfilm
The Last Jedi is a beautiful letdown
The Last Jedi is a complete letdown and beautiful one at that. Written from the perspective of a man who walked into Kathleen Kennedy’s office and said, “You know, the script seemed to take off about halfway through when I dropped enough acid to kill an actual Wookie.” And, she said, “Ok, great!” We were expected to get answers to questions like: What is Rey’s mysterious lineage? How did Snoke manage to corrupt Ben Solo and create The First Order?
Who cares, he said. “Well, where were the Knights of Ren we’ve waited to see? Where was the ultimate lightsaber showdown that has become the staple of all Star Wars films? It was deeper than that.
All the characters, like Disney’s version of the franchise, are struggling to move forward. Caught up in the cosmic ordeal of light and dark, of bloodlines and perpetual war. Stuck in an endless loop –The Jedi and the Sith have waged the same fight over and over, only the names and the combatants have changed.
Poe has the looks and heart of a natural leader, unrivaled as a pilot, but he wants to play the hero. He shows an absolute lack of discipline and focuses when taking out a dreadnaught, another superweapon with flawed engineering, that he sacrifices an entire bomber fleet against Leia’s wishes.
To his disappointment, he loses rank with his general, but he still hasn’t learned a valuable lesson: he can’t win the war by himself, not in one moment, and not by himself. Instead of reflecting, Poe goes on a rogue and treasonous run, until finally, in the end, watching Luke, he understands that sacrifice and living another day can be the spark for the rebellion.
Photo Credit: Lucasfilm
Shades of grey.
Finn finds life outside the conflict is more gray than black and white. Rose tries to show Finn what the fight is truly about as the Star Wars galaxy’s version of the one percent on Canto Bight, the arms dealers, live lavishly, profiting from war and slavery. Even The Resistance funnels payments to them to acquire weapons for the fight. But, more than that, Finn is still trying to reconcile his place within this new life as a person and not a number before Rose shows him the things worth fighting for.
The holy triumvirate of the force; Luke, Rey, and Kylo are essentially struggling with what has weighed us all down at one time or another: the past.
Rey finally meets Luke, a man who was revered through the galaxy as a mythical hero, a space god with a laser sword, only to find a cynical old hermit who has cut himself off from the Force altogether. Give him a bottle of Jack, some Lucky’s and the best Mark Hamill Joker voice, and he’s the perfect hobo.
He believes that the galaxy’s dysfunction stems from the hubris of the Jedi and Sith and that he was complicit in that arrogance by believing in his own legend — that he failed a boy with that mighty Skywalker blood. Through Rey’s persistence and a little help from your friendly neighborhood force ghost, Yoda, Luke realizes that the Jedi can endure as long as they evolve.
Rey deals with the past in her way. She, like, the audience, believe there is more — that her parents must be someone. She must be a Skywalker, a Solo, Ben Kenobi’s granddaughter or the reincarnation of Anakin Skywalker (an idea I love but would never work). Sadly, unexpectedly, quite shockingly, we find out she’s nobody, and it’s brilliant.
See, before the midi-chlorians and the Jedi temples, before the sequels and prequels and the expanded universe, Star Wars was much simpler. In some ways, it was about something more relatable, our place. We were all Luke Skywalker. A farm boy who felt stuck with what his uncle and the universe thought he should be — gazing out amongst double sunsets with the comprised posture of someone just waiting for the opportunity to bust out of his own skin and jump on the first cruiser, laser beaming him straight off the planet.
What George Lucas accomplished is making you believe that the energy that flowed through him flowed through us all. That anyone from any walk of life, with the proper training, direction and focus could wield it while being guided by it—that we all played a part in destiny.
What are Midi-chlorians?
Then came the prequels and the force became clinical, sterile in feel—just a swab of your blood and, maybe, just maybe, you could be a force wielder, too. While, as fantastic as The Empire Strikes Back and nearly as good Return of The Jedi were, the force took a dynastic turn.
But, in Rian Johnson’s Star Wars, the inclusion that Rey’s parents are, in fact, junkers and drunks who sold her for a fix, meant that someone from the meekest background could change destiny.
Then, there’s Kylo Ren. Say what you want about Adam Driver and his portrayal of the unstable antagonist, which has been the joke of many YouTube videos, Twitter feeds and countless memes, but Driver, Johnson, and Abrams have crafted something in the character that the MCU and DCEU have not: a complex villain.
Driver plays the character with a ferocious intensity, his face always wears an unsure look, as if he’s ever dangerously close to falling off the edge of a cliff. He’s a villain who accepts being a monster, not because he’s sadistic and enjoys the brutality in death, but only because he believes it’s the only way forward and the only way to break from the path that Luke and Snoke set upon him.
With his helmet smashed to little black bits on the floor, Kylo has chosen to move on from Darth Vader. But he’s still unsure. Rey can see the good in him, Snoke, the raw dark power. In familiar Star Wars fashion, he needs to rectify the two. Johnson gives him a third option, an escape; himself.
Photo Credit: Lucasfilm
Let the past die
Kylo wants merely to obliterate the past (Kill it if you have to). Not realizing that the rage that moves him forward is rooted in the past, he’s doomed to repeat the sick cycle until his death or everyone else’s. Unlike Luke, who accepts his failures and faults, especially with Ben, and moves forward from the force like a Skype Obi-Wan Kenobi. And, Rey, who accepts the past and can move towards the present, just the latest last Jedi.
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We all had a vision of what this film would be. I know I did. I was happy with the formula. Disney could’ve been, too. I’ve heard the cries about Snoke but what was Palpatine but a shadowy, influential figure named The Emperor by Return of the Jedi.
Rey could’ve been the long-lost descendent of Darth Bane, hell, she still might be, we don’t know anything except the letdown of her origin lifted her to great heights. And, we could’ve had the clash of titans, with red and blue lights whirring and cracking each time Luke and Kylo’s sabers met but we’ve seen that story seven times already.
Rian Johnson took all your tropes, set up your expectations and subverted all of them with stunning visuals and multiple twists that we’re all still trying to work out. He tore all our heroes down, stripped them, and made them question everything just as he asked the audience too. In some ways, we’ve got wonder if Rian Johnson is the last Jedi because he just played the greatest mind trick on us all.
Next: TLJ Easter eggs you may have missed
Star Wars: The Last Jedi releases on Blu-ray on March 27.