Why The Last Jedi’s “Problems” Are Its Strengths
Star Wars is undeniably one of my favorite franchises of all time. I’ve watched each movie countless times (prequels included) and have consumed large portions of my life to the franchise. Whether it be from reading books and comics to playing the video games to watching the TV shows. I’ve done it all.
With that being said, I’m well aware of a single fact. It’s the same fact that I believe Rian Johnson chose to zone in on while making The Last Jedi. Before jumping into the meat of this post, I feel like I should give the obligatory warning.
***SPOILERS BEYOND, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED****
Star Wars has gotten stale. Sure, we still watched the movies and waited with bated breath for every new trailer or snippet of our favorite franchise. But every Star Wars movie has followed the same basic model, meaning that we always know what to expect. That was the biggest black mark against The Force Awakens for some people. It walked the exact same ground that A New Hope did, just with updated characters and locations. Rather than follow that same path with TLJ, Johnson decided to throw that formula to the wind, which was personified by Luke Skywalker throwing his lightsaber over his shoulder and off a cliff.
“But Luke wouldn’t do that! He’s supposed to be hopeful!”
Luke’s opening moments of this movie are the perfect starting place for what I want to touch on here. So much of the criticism that I’ve seen online has featured some form of condemning the actions of Luke throughout the film. Whether it be his tossing the lightsaber over a cliff or brushing off his shoulder during the climactic battle or his negative attitude in the entire movie. According to most people on the internet, these aren’t things that Luke Skywalker would do. To which I ask, how do you know that?
If your answer references either the Original Trilogy or the Expanded Universe stories that are no longer canon, then it’s the wrong answer, in my opinion.
Simply put, we have no idea who this particular form of Luke Skywalker is. He’s not the young kid he was in the Original Trilogy. He’s not the wise Jedi Knight that we knew from the Expanded Universe. That was the whole point of Disney retconning the Expanded Universe. To create new stories. If we simply followed the same storylines and actions and character arcs of each person in the film, it wouldn’t be anything new. It would simply be adaptations of stories that have been around for almost 30 years.
The Luke we watched in TLJ was a completely new version that we have no prior knowledge of. A lot has happened to him since the end of Return of the Jedi. He put all of his effort into training not just a new Jedi, but his nephew, and it blew up in his face. Not only did that Jedi turn evil, but Luke almost killed said Jedi, who again, was also his nephew. That’s enough to royally mess with anyone’s psyche. For Luke Skywalker, it was clearly enough to rock him to his core.
It’s no wonder that he acted that way he did in this movie. He lost faith in himself and in the Force. Why would he want to try and teach someone else the ways of the Force with the possibility remaining of that person again ending up evil?
As far as some of the more comedic bits that Luke had, does anyone not remember Yoda in Empire Strikes Back? That was the kookiest freaking person you’ve ever seen. Now, I’m not saying that Luke = Yoda by any means. I’m merely saying that it’s not unheard of for a person to want a little bit of fun after being stuck on an island with some creepy care keepers for like 20 years.
At the end of the day, I think that people had latched too much on to what we’ve seen of Luke in other mediums over the last 30 years and were unable to square that with what we saw on screen during TLJ. I hope that we can all agree that his death scene was beautifully done, though. Watching the twin suns set as he was taking his dying breath was a fitting sendoff for one of the best characters in science fiction history.
“But Snoke was supposed to have more of a purpose!”
Supreme Leader Snoke only meant so much because we all made him out to be that way. Why did we make it out to be that way? Because we’ve been conditioned to think that people who appear in holograms are the main figure heads in a Star Wars movie. Johnson again took what was the cookie cutter Star Wars script and flipped it on its head with the flick of a wrist from Kylo Ren.
This was a decision that makes so much sense and was a key part in giving Kylo the attention and status he deserved.
While Darth Vader was surely the big bad of the Original Trilogy, he was always but a mere puppet to Emperor Palpatine. He was the muscle Palpatine used to do his bidding. That is surely an oversimplification of Vader of which I am fully aware. But bear with me here.
Vader didn’t get to break out from under Palpatine’s shadow until moments before he died. He never got to make his own overarching decisions on how to proceed since Palpatine always had the final say and ran the show. We got the amazing scene at the end of ROJ that was Vader’s final redemption, but it came so late in the trilogy.
By flipping that script in TLJ and having Kylo kill Snoke, we now get more uncharted territory when it comes to the main villain. Not only will we get to see more of Kylo acting as the muscle à la Vader, but we get to see him act as the brains à la Palpatine for the final film of this trilogy. That is such a thrilling prospect to me.
Even in the 30 or so minutes we got to see him in that role during the third act of TLJ, we can see that Kylo won’t really change his ways now that he’s in charge. He will still be as emotionally charged and reckless as he was before taking control over of the First Order.
The killing of Snoke was simply another example of Johnson telling us to forget everything we thought we knew about these characters, Star Wars, and even the Force.
“But Rey was supposed to be somebody! We spent so much time guessing her lineage!”
Much like Snoke, we are products of our own doing when it comes to Star Wars. We spent so much of the last two years theorizing and guessing who Rey’s parents were that almost any answer was going to be a letdown.
If she had been Luke’s daughter, which was my initial theory after I saw TFA, so many people would have been upset that this trilogy was going to turn out as just another sequence in the Skywalker legacy.
If she had been any one of the other theories people had come up with, people would have been upset that she was one theory and not the other.
Simply put, there was no lineage of a recognizable nature that could have appeased everyone. Rather than try and dabble into the myriad theories out there, Johnson went a direction I saw almost no one think about in the two years since TFA.
Rey is nobody. Her parents were drunks who sold her off without a thought. It’s so brilliant!
Had Rey been given a backstory relating to some family we recognized, it would have cheapened her story and her significance. Instead of looking at her for who she is, we would all be thinking of how she fits into the overall scheme of the Star Wars universe.
With her being a nobody, however, she can quite literally make her own legacy. She’s not Rey Skywalker or Rey Kenobi or Rey Palpatine. She’s just Rey.
In my eyes, that makes her even more powerful. She’s not gifted due to her being the descendant of a powerful Jedi like Luke, but she’s gifted because she’s just that amazing. I know that her not being from a known family line may have been a letdown to some, but that was only because we talked that up so much. Had we not given that line of thought so much weight, it would have been easier for some to stomach.
Rey being her own person doesn’t just help her own legacy, however. The fact that a random girl from Jakku can become such a powerful Jedi shows that anyone can be a Jedi. The final scene of the movie even drives that point home. Some random kid on that one casino planet (I refuse to Google the name of said planet due to how much I loathed that whole storyline) uses the force to grab a broom.
That’s how the Jedi will survive.
Not by continuing to breed more and more Jedis from famous families. But by random people all across the galaxy discovering their powers and gifts. I’m pretty sure that’s what we’ll walk into with Episode IX. We’ll have more Jedi that will help the struggling Resistance take down the First Order once and for all.
As I’m sure you can tell, I loved this freaking movie. I thought it was just what Star Wars needed to break out of its cyclical funk and burst into the age of modern storytelling.
Did it take many liberties with the franchise? Yes.
Was it funnier than any Star Ware movie before it, almost to a fault? You bet.
Was it the best movie in the franchise? Nope.
Was it another strong entry into one of our most beloved franchises of all time? Hell yes.
That last question is all that matters to me. I don’t care if it was different or if it was nothing like what we’ve ever seen before with a Star Wars movie.
I had a great time watching it and I can’t freaking wait until Episode IX. I hope that given time, fans will come around and see this movie in a similar light.