This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Star Wars

A fan’s reaction to The Last Jedi in long-form. TL; DR — I loved it!

Spoiler warning! This reaction piece contains some spoilers for the movie. If you have not seen it yet, I’d recommend you do so before reading it. This is not a movie review, will try not to give away plot elements or twists, but will discuss thematic outcomes and intent. It is an attempt to put my thoughts into the mix as the movie is slowly digested over a thousand years in the Sarlacc pit of its fan’s minds.

The Meek Shall Inherit the Galaxy

There is a series of moments in Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi featuring an individual alone going up against astonishing odds in the form of an entire army, armada, or large grouping of people. From the opening of the movie all the way to its denouement I counted five obvious set-pieces that do this (listing them would be too many spoilers for my appetite). There may be more or less I point to after a second viewing tomorrow.

Why is this new? Before you dismiss the observation as another case of “Luke against a Death Star” consider what most of these moments weren’t: A Chosen One using the Force, or gumption, or skill to get a Fated Outcome. Instead this movie featured a flawed supporting character taking a risk that didn’t pay off. 3 of 5 times, they were mere misguided plebes, not a Skywalker or a Jedi.

Star Wars has somewhat pretentiously been about the Hero’s Journey. George Lucas has talked about how the original three film saga was the story of Luke Skywalker taking said journey, hitting all of Joseph Campbell’s prescribed notes. He ultimately redeems his father Anakin/ Vader whose own quest-chain had gone horribly wrong in the prequels. At a pivotal moment in the last saga movie Lucas made, Obi Wan Kenobi screams in anguish at his friend turned nemesis: “You were the chosen one!” On the nose much, Mr. Lucas?

This is where Rian Johnson’s movie departs from the formula — sort of. It puts a finger on a central conceit of all Star Wars before this: that a Skywalker is needed to ‘save the galaxy’. Fundamental questions are then asked about how saving a galaxy might work.

Empire ends on that iconic shot of Luke and Leia and the droids watching from a Rebel Cruiser as Lando and Chewie set out to save Han. The royal family intrigue will be resolved next time, it seems to promise. The Last Jedi ends on a nobody stable boy with a broom and a Resistance ring, looking to the stars in hope.

At one point a jaded, reluctant Luke points out truths that generations of fans have only reluctantly acknowledged: that while one man might kill a villain or a figurehead in the central family/ cultist intrigue, he doesn’t have a clue how to set about doing away with galactic tyranny. He also points out that the Jedi Order are over-romanticized: after all, at the height of their powers they allowed the rise of Darth Sidious. Would the Order’s resurrection really be a good thing? That last remains unanswered. (more on that in a bit…)

In one of the most poignant moments, Luke also comments on the two-edged sword that is his ‘powerful Skywalker blood’. On that theme, the movie addresses the question of Rey’s origins almost as an aside and resets the board — nay, changes the game — in so doing. This is no longer the Saga of the Skywalkers. It is simply a continuing story of a galactic populace’s struggles against tyranny. A band of unlikely nobodies are the true heroes of a ragged Resistance.

For all its twists, turns, and shocks, this movie will most be compared to Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, and deservedly so. But consider this telling contrast: Empire ends on that iconic shot of Luke and Leia and the droids watching from a Rebel Cruiser as Lando and Chewie set out to save Han. The royal family intrigue will be resolved next time, it seems to promise. The Last Jedi ends on a nobody stable boy with a broom and a Resistance ring, looking to the stars in hope. Where it goes from here is anybody’s guess.

In a post-Financial Crisis, post-Occupy world Star Wars has finally stopped being the story of the 1% of Force-endowed Skywalkers and their Jedi friends, the saviors elite. On the nose much, Mr Johnson?

Dappled Light, Dark, and Grey

Light side good, Dark side bad. That’s been accepted wisdom for fans of the movies from the beginning. There are shades of grey in the now non-canonical Expanded Universe novels, games, and comics, and there are shades of grey in the canonical expanded universe such as in the Star Wars: Rebels animated series. No such ambiguity was allowed to creep into the main money-makers of the franchise though, this far.

Mr Johnson spins the Light/ Dark dichotomy in a very Zen direction with this movie, and for the first time in 8 movies focuses on what a ‘balance’ between them might actually mean. This is much more like a Life/ Death, Creation/ Destruction dichotomy from innumerable Eastern myth cycles than a simple and simplistic Western absolute Good/ Evil one. In a contrast against Empire again, Luke’s ‘Failure at the Cave’ is countered by Rey’s ‘Understanding at the Mirror’ which doesn’t really say Dark is Bad.

Come with me for a moment gentle reader, all the way back to the chronological in-universe beginning of the mythos. The prophecy concerning the immaculately conceived Skywalker patriarch was that he would “bring balance to the Force”. It was presumably out of balance because the Jedi were all powerful and the Sith were a (sorry!) phantom menace. Then the tables turned and the Sith became the Empire and the Jedi were wiped out.

While the movie never goes full grey, in the paired protagonists that are Rey and Kylo Ren it makes for the first time an argument for a balance where the Light and Dark coexist.

I was one of the fans who thought that by killing the Emperor at the end of Return of the Jedi, Anakin/ Vader fulfilled his prophecy; both cults were effectively wiped out. That is a very nihilistic argument actually. In its most positive formulation it is an argument against having power concentrated in a chosen few. In its most negative it seems to say heroes and villains as peaks of white and black just make life worse for the silent majority living in the grey.

While the movie never goes full grey, in the paired protagonists that are Rey and Kylo Ren it makes for the first time an argument for a balance where the Light and Dark coexist. That is a powerful departure in what has always been a morally simplistic mythos.

If the Jedi are no longer an assured Good, and the Sith have their first empathetic Dark Lord who explicitly wants to “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you are meant to be.” we are left asking what the central conflict of the saga is now? Is it literally a conflict of a Fascist First Order against the dregs of a Democratic Resistance?

But wait — doubt is cast on that as well, because in what seems like a mostly pointless excursion to a casino planet we find out that the only people making hay from these endless wars are the ones who vend weaponry to both sides. In another departure from established practice, The Last Jedi points out in a series un-ironically named “Star Wars” that thrives on the spectacle of said conflict that the wars in question have a human cost.

Well that’s not topical in this day and age at all. #sarcasm

Demolishing the Boogeyman

For the Dark side to be evil, and for our heroes on the Light side to be good we require a boogeyman. In the prequels and original trilogy it was the shadowy Emperor and to an extent the ominous presence that was Darth Vader. There was absolutely nothing sympathetic about successive villains — Sidious, Maul, Dooku, Grievous, Snoke. Even Vader finds empathy/ sympathy only in his son’s jaundiced eye once they share the experience of a lopped off limb.

You were allowed to hate these guys — all but Vader at least — because that’s what they were for. You cheered when they died, because like Osama Bin Laden in the real world, they represented pure, unsympathetic evil. That’s all done with, isn't it? Snoke is off the board in a very off-hand way and nothing changed as a result!

This movie takes the Star Wars on Terror bravely into a post-Bin Laden world. The Galaxy far far away resembles the morass of Syria much more than the world as it was on 12 September 2001.

The Dark Side is no longer the outright evil it used to be. It is tellingly devoid of the boogeyman leader as well. It is now led by an impulsive, identifiable boy who just wants to be a hero that does what is needed, not necessarily what is ‘right’. He has entered the uncharted waters that lie beyond where Vader and Luke’s journeys ended — in a magnificently meta callback to the Throne-room battle from Return of the Jedi he did turn at the last minute to kill ‘his true enemy’ and saved the Naive Savior who Believed in Him. He just didn’t turn all the way back to the Light.

He’s also not all that different from his less conflicted foil who is a beacon of hope to the rebels she saves. In the wake of their mentors they lead their sides with uncertain casus belli and indeterminate goals.

This movie takes the Star Wars on Terror bravely into a post-Bin Laden world. The Galaxy far far away resembles the morass of Syria much more than the world as it was on 12 September 2001. I know, I know — the analogy is a bit tenuous. All I’m saying is this very American tale no longer has a big bad.

Thwarting Expectations, Deconstructing Certainty

Forgive the cliche, but where JJ Abrams had set up a nice game of Checkers in The Force Awakens, Rian Johnson has changed it to an open ended game of 3D chess and thrown away the rule book. When Abrams comes back to pick up on Episode IX he has a completely broken down Lego set with no blueprint on what to build next.

The Last Jedi is more aware of the fact that it is a Star Wars film than any movie before it. It bristles and snarls at the idea, it gores and kills many of the tropes and conventions and expectations that comes with, and it lovingly but definitely buries its legacy with a headstone so it may never rise again.

Rian Johnson has done the equivalent of serving deconstructed sushi at a neighbourhood diner where one goes for a nice, greasy, post-hangover breakfast.

The trouble is not everyone goes to a Star Wars movie expecting such a deconstruction. Like The Lord of the Rings , post-Empire Strikes Back Star Wars has built a reputation for being predictable and despite all its spectacle and simplistic philosophizing — anodyne.

Rian Johnson has done the equivalent of serving deconstructed sushi at a neighborhood diner where one goes for a nice, greasy, post-hangover breakfast. The choices he makes in the story beats are provocative. He does this in two ways: a) by constantly setting up and thwarting expectations, and b) by discarding the comfortable, familiar plot superstructure in this middle act of a trilogy.

There are any number of examples I can give of the former but in the interest of keeping spoilers to a minimum let me be cryptic. Poe’s opening gambit, Rey’s training and confrontation of the Dark, the Ascendancy of Kylo Ren, Luke’s climactic battle — all of these have familiar beginnings and us fans are lulled into expecting certain story beats and outcomes familiar from previous installments, only to have things take left turns.

Some left turns are subtle, others not so much. This I think goes a long way in explaining why some fans might react negatively to the plot. I was certainly challenged and uncertain of how I was liking it myself; not a common feeling when watching Star Wars!

Then just as you fall into the ‘expect the unexpected’ rhythm, Mr Johnson breaks the rules of trilogy-making in the movie’s closing set-piece. There is no cliffhanger, no obvious next story beat, and no clear personal crisis for the protagonists as the movie closes. Both sides of the political conflict have taken a beating and retreated to their corners with whatever Pyrrhic wins they can claim. Episode IX is going to have to start narrating an almost entirely new plot. and it’s part 3 of a trilogy!

Is it though? I wonder if Disney/ Lucasfilm are even really going for a trilogy here. Will they continue to simply belt out a movie every two or three years, ad infinitum? The possibility is worrying. Mr Johnson’s argument almost seems to be that unless the mythos moves away from its conventions and the trilogy structure it cannot thrive. We sort of knew that, but this movie makes us confront it.

In Conclusion

Will Star Wars be better leaving the Skywalkers alone? Will it buckle under the weight of its own legacy? Is it a good idea for Lucasfilm to take a 25 year break before attempting another trilogy in the Saga? Does the Saga have enough meat left on the bone at all for another trilogy?

These are all questions we fans were asking when The Force Awakens was announced, and in its wake. The Last Jedi puts them in sharp relief and seems to be making an argument for trying something new and unexpected. It takes the mountain of expectations before it and in a very respectful but tongue-in-cheek manner questions their validity and then defies them.

I did not go into this movie expecting to be challenged. I expected twists, sure. I thought Rey might fall to the dark side, or even that Luke might be revealed to be either her father, or struggling with being a Sith. I did not expect what we got however. I come away from it delighted and nervous.

As far as Star Wars movies go, this is a good one. It has some flaws (my biggest gripe is that it is about 15 minutes too long) but when it is hitting those high notes, it is masterful. Hence my delight.

My nervousness comes from the fact that this movie shows they did not have a course charted when they made The Force Awakens. That worries me. In the wrong hands Star Wars may run into catastrophe.

But hey — at least there wasn’t a fourth Death Star in this one!