This is one of those movies where people either really love it or they completely fucking hate it; hard to find any middle ground among the fanbase on this one.What writer/director Rian Johnson basically did here was create this
Star Wars film that would actively try to challenge and subvert a lot of expectations and tropes. Sometimes that works and works well, sometimes it doesn't and it definitely runs the risk of putting people off (Which it had/has). But Johnson is boldly swinging for the fences here. And let's try to figure out if he succeeds; five months later, I'm still trying to figure it out too.
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| You're never going to be able to convince me this scene isn't phenomenal. |
For starters, this is the only main entry in the ongoing
Star Wars saga so far that doesn't have a considerable time jump between installments. Roughly three years separate
The Empire Strikes Back from
A New Hope.
Return of the Jedi takes place months after its predecessor. There's approximately a decade in between Episodes I and II; five years in between II and III. By taking place right after the ending to
The Force Awakens, there is this greater sense of urgency from the start that carries over the course of the narrative; a significant portion of the story is a running gunfight, like an interstellar version of
Dunkirk as the Resistance mounts a desperate evacuation while being hunted by the First Order.
I know a lot of people (including Mark Hamill initially) had a lot of problems with Luke Skywalker's character arc from jump in
The Last Jedi. The big hero of the original trilogy now broken and haunted living on an island waiting to die alone is a big departure from how we last saw Luke. You could kind of make an entire movie about what drove Skywalker to leave it all behind and hideaway and I kind of wish they did; it would've given his abandonment the room to breathe it kind of needed. I never really minded Luke tossing his lightsaber when we first see him; he had run off into deep space in a self-imposed exile so some young woman handing it back to him silently wouldn't be the push he needed to get back in the game. And I found myself more affected by his death than Han Solo's in
The Force Awakens: Han's death is pretty heavily foreshadowed and coupled with Harrison Ford's desire to kill off the character as early as
Return of the Jedi. Luke's death has a Zen resonance to it as the character finally makes peace with himself before fading away as he watches a binary sunset like all those he observed growing up on Tatooine.
Luke's initial rejection plays into
The Last Jedi's overall theme of our heroes making mistakes in a subversion of expectation. We expect the hotshot, high-flying antics of an ace pilot like Poe Dameron to save the day not endanger the entire Resistance on a reckless, unauthorized mission. We expect a scoundrel analogue like Benecio del Toro's DJ to rediscover his moral compass to save the day not turn on the heroes and expose their plan. We expect the suicidal charge against the First Order on Crait to pull off a surprise victory not almost be wiped out to the last. We expect Rey to successfully appeal to Kylo Ren's lost good nature not have the aspirant Sith take charge of the First Order with deadly effect.
And the really big twists? That Rey is actually the child of space junkies abandoned while they look for another fix and Supreme Leader Snoke killed off anticlimactically before we learn his backstory? I love that shit.
Star Wars has this thing, reinforced by
The Force Awakens, that we all come from somewhere special. Rey being the child of nobodies speaks to the strength of her character; it subverts that trope while providing a protagonist that has risen to the top in spite of her humble origins instead of being beholden to them. As for Snoke, think back on Emperor Palpatine: Before the prequels, before the Expanded Universe when he just appeared in
The Empire Strikes Back and
Return of the Jedi, he was just the Emperor; didn't even get that surname. No detailed backstory, no personal connection to the characters evident. And we didn't care. I feel the same way about Snoke: A powerful bad guy driven by pure, uncompromising evil; nothing more, nothing less. That Kylo Ren takes the mantle is a welcome, fascinating surprise and really the only plot thread going into Episode IX that I give a shit about.
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| "See you around, kid." |
Now just because a film is bold and challenging doesn't mean it gets a carte blanche and there are some things about
The Last Jedi I wish were better executed. The sequence on Canto Bight does provide valuable insight on Rose's character and build up the false hope that Finn and Rose will save the day...but for a movie about being on the run it goes on a bit too long and throws off the pacing. I've never had a problem with Leia being able to use the Force (don't know why people would, honestly) but it's goofily rendered here. Also, why didn't they just tell Poe Dameron the Crait plan? Could've saved some grief there and him inadvertently jeopardizing their evacuation. That silent shot of Holdo's hyperspace sacrifice always takes my breath away though.
The heroes of
The Last Jedi fuck up a lot and fuck up pretty massively when you stop to think about it. Consequence matters again in that galaxy far, far away which is a welcome development. And now we have Porgs. Bring on the end.
I know a lot of people (including Mark Hamill initially) had a lot of problems with Luke Skywalker's character arc from jump in The Last Jedi. The big hero of the original trilogy now broken and haunted living on an island waiting to die alone is a big departure from how we last saw Luke. You could kind of make an entire movie about what drove Skywalker to leave it all behind and hideaway and I kind of wish they did; it would've given his abandonment the room to breathe it kind of needed. I never really minded Luke tossing his lightsaber when we first see him; he had run off into deep space in a self-imposed exile so some young woman handing it back to him silently wouldn't be the push he needed to get back in the game. And I found myself more affected by his death than Han Solo's in The Force Awakens: Han's death is pretty heavily foreshadowed and coupled with Harrison Ford's desire to kill off the character as early as Return of the Jedi. Luke's death has a Zen resonance to it as the character finally makes peace with himself before fading away as he watches a binary sunset like all those he observed growing up on Tatooine.
Luke's initial rejection plays into The Last Jedi's overall theme of our heroes making mistakes in a subversion of expectation. We expect the hotshot, high-flying antics of an ace pilot like Poe Dameron to save the day not endanger the entire Resistance on a reckless, unauthorized mission. We expect a scoundrel analogue like Benecio del Toro's DJ to rediscover his moral compass to save the day not turn on the heroes and expose their plan. We expect the suicidal charge against the First Order on Crait to pull off a surprise victory not almost be wiped out to the last. We expect Rey to successfully appeal to Kylo Ren's lost good nature not have the aspirant Sith take charge of the First Order with deadly effect.
And the really big twists? That Rey is actually the child of space junkies abandoned while they look for another fix and Supreme Leader Snoke killed off anticlimactically before we learn his backstory? I love that shit. Star Wars has this thing, reinforced by The Force Awakens, that we all come from somewhere special. Rey being the child of nobodies speaks to the strength of her character; it subverts that trope while providing a protagonist that has risen to the top in spite of her humble origins instead of being beholden to them. As for Snoke, think back on Emperor Palpatine: Before the prequels, before the Expanded Universe when he just appeared in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, he was just the Emperor; didn't even get that surname. No detailed backstory, no personal connection to the characters evident. And we didn't care. I feel the same way about Snoke: A powerful bad guy driven by pure, uncompromising evil; nothing more, nothing less. That Kylo Ren takes the mantle is a welcome, fascinating surprise and really the only plot thread going into Episode IX that I give a shit about.
The heroes of The Last Jedi fuck up a lot and fuck up pretty massively when you stop to think about it. Consequence matters again in that galaxy far, far away which is a welcome development. And now we have Porgs. Bring on the end.
