The Last Jedi: The Missteps of a Singular Vision
A few days ago, on a brisk March morning, Star Wars: The Last Jedi released on Bluray and DVD. I know, it’s a little known franchise. Sounds like some kind of SyFy channel original movie, right? Probably stars some B-listers with a script written by a monkey. I bet it made like two bucks at the cinema.
Okay, sarcasm aside, I think most of the world is pretty familiar with this multibillion-making franchise. The marketing is endless. You can’t go anywhere without this space opera seeping into culture. Merchandising is practically the heart of the machine for Star Wars success as an intellectual property.
But merchandising means nothing if it’s not based on a story or a product that people are enamored with. No one’s buying toys based on props from Manos: The Hands of Fate or Plan 9 From Outer Space. There must be something the audience likes about this film franchise that has allowed it to stand the test of time. What is it?
When George Lucas set out to make Star Wars, he wanted to capture the adventure, romance, and spirited fantasy of the action serials and westerns he grew up with. We’re drawn to the call for something greater, something that jolts our hearts with excitement. Lucas tapped into that inner cavity with his films and he did it to the march of millions of dollars.
So, why is it that The Last Jedi, the eighth episode in this long-running franchise, is adamant on disavowing so much of what makes the series what it is? Did Director Rian Johnson foresee the clash of icons, the pitfalls of fandom, when he decided to create and craft the script for this film? Yes. No. Both.
He’s given a number of interviews over the past four months. The documentary on the disc covers some of what transpired during production between himself and actor Mark Hamill. One thing to me became clear: he had a singular vision for the film. He knew what he wanted from the script, his actors, and the general through-line of the movie. This was, in my opinion, to the film’s detriment, because Johnson simply wasn’t prepared for what he meant to accomplish.
There are flashes of brilliance in the film. I don’t hate the movie, in spite of what I’m about to say. I think, had he merely been a co-writer or only the director, Rian Johnson might’ve made something truly worthy of the praise it’s garnered from critics. But, being perhaps the singular mind behind the work, he fell to the same sin we’re all guilty of: pride.
In his hubris, Johnson either didn’t understand or chose to ignore all the negative voices pushing against his authorial intent. To Johnson, Star Wars is about capturing that youthful enthusiasm he had as a boy playing with his action figures. To Johnson, being the director of this film meant he could take the story in bold new directions, that he could liberate the franchise from the dregs of repetition and the basic setups.
But he’s not successful. Johnson, whose appearance behind the camera shows him to be quirky and off-beat, didn’t have a finger on the impulse of Star Wars. He didn’t get it in the way that most have throughout the forty or so years of its existence. So he made mistakes. He pushed himself so much into the work that he forgot what he was making.
THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS. OBVIOUSLY.
Every Star Wars film opens with a ship in space and subsequent conflict.
Episode 1: Jedi Knights board a Trade Federation vessel and negotiations go sour.
Episode 2: An assassination attempt is made on Senator Padme’s life.
Episode 3: The Battle Over Coruscant takes place as the Jedi race to save Chancellor Palpatine.
Episode 4: Darth Vader pursues Princess Leia to retrieve the stolen Death Star plans.
Episode 5: The Empire discovers the Rebels’ hidden base on Hoth and send in their army.
Episode 6: Vader boards the second Death Star and reveals that the Emperor will be making a personal visit soon.
Episode 7: The First Order begin the descent to Jakku where they’ll slaughter villagers in the search for a map to Luke Skywalker.
Episode 8: The First Order appears over the Resistance Base on D’Qar. Conflict is imminent. So Poe Dameron makes a daring and devastating maneuver known as—a prank call.
Let’s stop and look at that. All the films open with the promise of conflict. Said conflict is taken seriously as if there are lives at stake. There are, occasionally, moments of light-hearted humor in a few of these openings. “The negotiations were short.” But it’s not until Episode 8 that our first introduction to the conflict is through the humor itself. It’s bizarre. It throws the tone of the movie into an immediate tumble from which it never really recovers.
Poe then does his thing and the fighting begins. He makes some rash decisions and lives are lost. He’s now got a character arc to undergo! Hooray! It’s a shame that it comes at the cost of a coherent plot and basic logic. Once the bridge of their ship is blown up and the Resistance comes under the leadership of Admiral Holdo, everything falls apart.
But before we get to that, let’s point out that we’re reintroduced to most of our primary characters with humor:
Poe through a prank call.
Finn through a leaky suit that looks ridiculous.
Luke and Rey through him casually tossing a lightsaber over his shoulder.
The First Order (Hux and Kylo Ren) through slapstick humiliation by their leader.
Already, there’s a pattern of humor undercutting the seriousness of the film. This never goes away, not completely. It’s not as pervasive as some believe, but it’s there. Imagine Guardians of the Galaxy sans charm. That’s what we’re dealing with.
Alright, so the conceit of the film is that the Resistance is being tracked through hyperspace by the First Order. They’re running out of fuel. The slowest chase that any space feature has ever seen ensues. Why don’t the First Order finish them off? Because their fighters would be out of range, says Hux.
What? Since when do the bad guys care about losing men? On the off chance that they’d lose a few fighters, wouldn’t it still make sense to secure their victory rather than delay it and give the Resistance a slim opportunity to escape?
But I’ll let that slide. Villains are almost always prideful in fiction. That’s a valid enough excuse to work with. What the Resistance does as a reaction is far less functional.
Leia gets blown into space, becomes Superman, and goes into a coma. Admiral Holdo takes over. She has no patience for flyboys like Poe Dameron, that hothead. Didn’t he just get demoted? Better not let him know that they have a plan to survive. One should always keep those you believe will act impulsively in the dark. Never tell anyone in your crew the truth. Authority reigns.
Poe, who hasn’t read the script, thinks Holdo is being a coward and a traitor. He, along with Maz Kanata, devises a way to stop the First Order tracking them alongside Finn and new character Rose. So the latter two embark on a side-quest to find an NPC with rogue skills so they can bust into the First Order’s lead ship. Said character is located on a casino planet called Canto Bight, home to the wealthy 1% of the galaxy.
And so the adventure of a confused message, bad dialogue, and weird plotting begins! If I’m to take this section of the story seriously, I have to turn my brain off. I have to ignore that:
There’s really no valid justification for why the First Order aren’t tracking the small ships that would make obvious escape vehicles.
That a superior officer neglected to fill in someone they believe to be a hothead that there’s a plan in place for no compelling reason. You don’t have to tell him the specifics. These people are kind of scared for their lives, Holdo. You’d think it’d be better to reassure them with that hope you keep talking about in that overly long line of dialogue that repeats as one of the film’s messages.
How does Maz know this codebreaker will be on Canto Bight at this exact moment in time? How does any of them know that he’ll even be at this particular casino? Has anyone stopped to think of the sheer improbability of this?
Why is freeing the animals worth it? Why are they more valuable than the child slaves? Why does Rose’s character do nothing but make poor arguments, speak horrible dialogue, and generally get in the way of solid plotting?
Alright. So Canto Bight happens. They don’t get the NPC they want, but a shady character joins the party. Luckily, he’s got the hacker skills they need to pull off this quest and level up. They’ll be doing raids together before we know it.
Poe, meanwhile, continues to suspect that Holdo is an idiot. Because she is. If she’d told Poe what he needed to know, the unfortunate fallout of Canto Bight wouldn’t happen. It’s mind-boggling how much of a stretch the logic for this scenario is.
Let’s go elsewhere for a bit. On an island, Luke and Rey become the best of friends. Wait, no they don’t. Luke’s a grumpy old curmudgeon with a strange sense of humor and a taste for green milk from the teats of a sea cow. I’m not making that up. Oh, and he wants no part of the fight. He doesn’t want to be a Jedi anymore. He wants the religion to die. He wants himself to die.
Okay, this is interesting. Why does he feel this way? Who did he lose? What makes a loving, optimistic, and hopeful individual like Luke Skywalker turn to nihilism and living the life of a hermit while his friends die in a brutal war? The answer, I think, shows why Rian Johnson’s vision of Star Wars isn’t in tune with its heartbeat.
I’ve joked that the alternate title for The Last Jedi should be: The Assassination of Luke Skywalker by the Coward Rian Johnson. Lest you think I’m being uncharitable or even hateful, know that this is in jest. I don’t think he’s a coward and I don’t harbor any real ill will toward him. I just think he fundamentally doesn’t understand the character and that, in my mind, is what makes him unqualified to use that character the way that he does.
Luke is the hero of the original trilogy. He undergoes a transformation from naïve farm boy to Jedi Knight. It’s his path to stardom that we witness in those first three films. We see him battle with his own darkness. We watch him make mistakes and root for him in spite of his failures. And when, at the end, he decides not to indulge those impulses of darkness, we admire him. As a Christian, I understand the struggle to do good in the face of overwhelming sinfulness – both in myself and others.
Luke becomes a legend over the course of his adventure. He blows up the first Death Star. He saves his friends from capture and death. He redeems his fallen father and takes up the mantle of peace in the presence of utmost darkness. That’s a man whose heart is in the right place.
But Rian Johnson doesn’t know that man. He thinks Luke learns nothing over the course of the OT. In Johnson’s playbook, Luke is a man whose failure defines him. So Luke does the unthinkable, is ashamed, and goes into exile. He no longer cares about the fate of his friends and family. His greater good is rooted in a false ideal of ending the Jedi.
Luke, the man who believed there was good in his homicidal, genocidal, child-murdering father, commits an act that is rather heinous and nefarious. His nephew, Ben Solo (Kylo Ren), shows signs of darkness. Rather than seeing the good in his own flesh and blood, creepy uncle Luke decides to sneak into his nephew’s bedroom and invade his mind. This is already a betrayal of Luke’s character, but then he ignites his lightsaber, thinking briefly that he can end Ben’s darkness before it begins to infect the galaxy.
What just happened? Truthfully, I’m not sure that much thought was given to the event by the writer. It seems to be primarily to give Luke another failure and Kylo some sympathy. That it comes at the expense of the most hopeful and optimistic person in the original series is of no concern to Johnson. He needs us to feel something for the villain. He needs us to empathize so that the next convolution can occur.
Rey and Kylo begin to have conversations through the Force. They’re bonded by an unseen power (later revealed to be Snoke, the leader of the First Order) and become kindred spirits. These scenes are beautifully acted. Their infatuation is believable in so much as the actors pull hard to make the absurdity of it work. I like these scenes – so long as I divorce them from the surrounding contexts of patricide, mass murder, and everything that would clearly drive a pretty permanent wedge between the two.
Whether or not love is blooming isn’t made 100% clear, but the inclination and intimations are there. So now we’ve got something new to Star Wars but not to fiction: the potential redemption of the bad boy by the plucky heroine. It’s an old trope that can work if nurtured correctly. I’m not sure that Rian Johnson does that, but he gives it his all.
Stuff happens. Luke and Rey argue. She leaves to try to bring Kylo back to the light. Luke sulks until Yoda burns a tree and talks about teachers and failure. In space, the chase doesn’t end and neither does Holdo’s inadequacy as commander of the Resistance. Finn, Rose, and their latest party member board the Supremacy at the same time as Rey meets with her new beau. Let the reenactment of Return of the Jedi begin, right down to some choice music and dialogue!
More stuff happens. Kylo turns against Snoke! Rey and he fight together against the guards! But then Rey won’t join Kylo to kill her friends! Finn and Rose fail their side-quest! The obvious traitor is obvious and the First Order knows what’s going on! Poe mutinies and it goes horribly for him, but that’s okay because the gals in charge like him, even Holdo! Transport pods away! Some get blown up because of the side-quest that’s at least partially Holdo’s fault! Time for a breathtaking sequence involving a lightspeed ram that decimates the First Order’s fleet and gives Holdo a heroic moment!
Why hasn’t anyone done that before? Why don’t they have droids or autopilot? Who knows! No time for coherence, only visuals and character assassination!
When everything’s said and done, our characters end up on the planet Crait. It’s salt, not snow. Did you know those aren’t the same thing? Rian Johnson wants you to know that, so he has an unnamed character tell the audience. Because it wasn’t clear based on the fact that it looks like salt.
Anyway, it turns out that there’s an old Rebel base there. That’s where Holdo was taking them with her cockamamie and untold plan. Good thing she didn’t tell Poe, otherwise more people might’ve lived and they wouldn’t be able to fit into the Millennium Falcon later. Oops. Spoilers.
A big door stands in the way of the First Order’s victory. But it’s okay because they have miniaturized Death Star tech. Convenient. So Rebels – I mean Resistance – lead a last stand to ram the cannon and blow it up. Poe, having learned his lesson about rushing headlong into danger and the necessity to blindly follow authority, tells them to pull back.
Finn won’t. He’s going to make a difference, darn it! He’s making his life and his character mean something beyond a few jokes. His sacrifice will allow them all to live another day!
Rose has other plans. She decides to nearly kill him and herself to stop him from killing himself. I mean, she couldn’t have possibly known that either of them would survive the crash, but that doesn’t prevent her character from ruining a good moment and delivering poor dialogue that basically everyone has mocked by now.
“I saved you, dummy.” No, you almost killed him and yourself, crazy woman. Now, ridicule your dead sister’s big moment earlier in the film by trying to argue that sacrificing oneself for a good cause isn’t worth it. Oh, and ignore the fact that you allowed the enemy to blow up the big door which is hiding your allies and friends.
Rey provides backup in the Falcon. Merchandizing – I mean Porgs – and Chewie pilot her to victory. A little time passes. The First Order elects not to blow up Finn and Rose despite them being right there next to the walkers and cannon. Luke shows up, but it’s not really Luke, but you don’t know that yet.
Luke has a standoff with Kylo after shrugging off a barrage from the walkers. Impressive feat! He must be really powerful and in tune with the light side of the Force once again to accomplish that. Oh, wait, the twist is that he’s not really there? He’s a projection? That’s not really that cool.
He buys the Resistance time to flee. They’ll be sure to tell of the Legend of Luke Skywalker (registered trademark) to all the galaxy. Hope will spread! Wait, what do you mean they didn’t really see any of the fight because they were waiting for Rey to lift some rocks? Oh, that’s kind of a hole, isn’t it. Kind of hard to spread a message if no one is around to see or hear it but the enemy – who have no incentive to increase the recruitment drive of the Resistance.
Luke dies. What little was impressive about the projection becomes even less so. Exhaustion kills Luke Skywalker in the few brief moments that resemble the character we followed for three earlier films. Yay. But at least there’s a binary sunset, so it’s all good.
Everyone piles into the shame car – I mean the Millennium Falcon – and the movie ends with the promise of igniting the spark that will light the fire that will provoke hope that will plant the seed of a poorly constructed line of dialogue. Also a kid uses the Force to pull a broom after playing with his action figures that resemble a person he’s never met and couldn’t possibly know about.
It would take far more time than I care to devote to go into each of The Last Jedi’s numerous flaws. But the problems can be summarized thus:
Offbeat humor undercuts the seriousness of film’s events. Star Wars isn’t a humorless franchise, but the way it’s utilized in this film is completely contrary to brand.
The plotting makes several missteps. The basic conceit of the film (the space chase) hangs on the thinnest string of credibility.
Characterization of Luke Skywalker is outright terrible. This is the most polarizing aspect of the film and the driving force behind the backlash. It’s fine for Luke to fail, even do something dark, but the circumstances presented in the film simply do not mesh with the character. It’s a bad read and that’s on Johnson.
The prevalence of general weirdness: milking space cow nipples, the “free the animals but not the children in slavery” subplot, the nothingness of certain revelations in the film including Rey’s background, the worrying love connection between a psychopath and the supposed big female hero of the new movies, etc.
I said earlier that I don’t hate the film, although given it’s detest or ignorance for the source material, I think it’s perfectly valid to call this the worst Star Wars film. Still, it’s mostly enjoyable and there are pieces of it that I think show Rian Johnson’s potential as an author/artist. He’s certainly earned a few accolades in his career that I likely won’t. But the film is mired in so much gunk that it’s a struggle to pull out the nuggets of gold.
Honestly, the backlash against the backlash offends me more than the film itself ever could. The disrespect shown to those who dislike the film is appalling. Labeling the opposition as racist and sexist is a pathway to nothing and nowhere but further anger and hate. That’s the enemy (Satan) at work in even the mundane superficialities of life, IMO.
“Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers all offenses.” (Proverbs 10:12)
I don’t know what I’d rate The Last Jedi. I have such mixed feelings about it that it’s hard to quantify with a number or a grade. I guess I’d say that I appreciate the effort put into the film. I think all the actors did a tremendous job with what they had to work with. Johnson never gained his footing, but everyone did their best. I applaud them and love them for that and because I know how difficult it is to put your work on display for a wide audience.
This has been a long post. Perhaps the longest I’ve done on this blog? Obviously, I’m passionate when it comes to the things I like and writing in general. There’s a fair bit of satire and sarcasm in there, but it’s not meant to impose any angry overtones. Hopefully, you’ve read this and walked away not with a sense that I harbor any hatred for the people involved (I don’t) but with the idea that I simply thought The Last Jedi could’ve been a more polished and competent film.
Thanks and praise be to God that I even felt committed to writing this. I wasn’t sure how it would unfold or whether I’d enjoy breaking the film down, but I think I needed to do this. However this comes across, I’m grateful to Him that I know I have a loving Savior, my Lord Jesus Christ. There’s almost no evangelism in this post, but I hope His influence on me shines through nevertheless.
Thank you for reading, God bless, and peace be with you.
