KYLO REN'S SUPER FUN SURPRISE CHRISTMAS STOCKING STUFFER YEAH!
POP CULTURE STAR WARS WOW
Basically this is my version of Beyoncé’s “Lemonade”, instead of a visual album of songs and images you can’t get out of your head this is lots of ideas about The Last Jedi I can't get out of mine. (Also, Jay-Z will not be figuring prominently.)
If you haven’t seen Last Jedi, stop reading this right now. It will ruin the movie, your Christmas and everything you have ever loved.
If you have seen it, I hope this offers a couple good ideas to chew on in between courses of ham or turkey. Ho ho ho!
SECTIONS
I. DON’T LECTURE ME ABOUT LUKE, I'LL TELL YOU THE REAL CONTROVERSIES
II. FIVE FUN FACTS I LEARNED WHILE TRYING TO GET MY HEAD AROUND WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO MY CHILDHOOD
III. WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO MY CHILDHOOD
IV. ALL THE MIDDLE CHILDREN LOOK ALIKE
V. RHYMIN’ RIAN
VI. LUCAS
VII. OTHER PEOPLE PUTTING ALL OF THIS SIMPLER AND BETTER
VIII. EPISODE IX
I. THE LAST JEDI: THE REAL CONTROVERSIES
What is the point of Phasma anyway?
Everyone always refers to R2-D2 as “he”, but as far as I can tell she must be a woman, because she just turned 40 and they have literally replaced her with a younger model.
Han’s been dead for weeks and Chewie still hasn’t gotten his freaking hug.
Not the royal hug we're looking for, but it is a start.
II. FIVE FUN FACTS I LEARNED ONLINE WHILE TRYING TO GET MY HEAD AROUND WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO MY CHILDHOOD
YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED: The Porg (aka stuff of children’s nightmares) were actually (supposedly) created not because they are instant merchandise dollars, but because the island where they filmed the Luke/Rey scenes were inhabited by puffins who were constantly getting in the shots. Rather than digitally edit them out/wipe them out, all of them, they decided to lean into the problem and print money.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS UNTRACKABLE: Some people thought the whole idea of the hyperspace tracker was a cheat (because technology never advances, especially in war time). But in fact if you rewatch Rogue One, in the scene where Jyn is looking through the Empire archives for the Death Star plans she mentions other things the Empire is working on, which include a hyperspace tracker.
(I’m assuming Han’s golden dice are going to play similarly in the upcoming Han Solo film. I mean okay, apparently they are there in the original trilogy...
...but they have absolutely never been a thing. Last Jedi writer/director Rian Johnson said there was a scene about them in the initial version of The Force Awakens. It got cut. This does not help us.)
YOU DON’T NEED GRAVITY TO DROP THE MIC: There was apparently some chatter that Johnson et al don’t understand how space works i.e. that if you open a cargo bay door in space things are not going to automatically drop out, what with there being no gravity and all to pull at them.
Come on, people. Give the R-Jo a little credit. The bombs have a magnetic component that draws them towards the ship below.
And why aren’t they drawn instead back to the ship which is also metal? Um, probably maybe because the ship’s hull is magnetized the same as the bombs, causing them to repel rather than attract. Or something.
It just works, okay?
WE ALL GRIEVE IN DIFFERENT WAYS: Han barely gets a mention in Jedi. Which isn’t exactly surprising, given the fact the Resistance spends the movie running like hell, and Leia quite a bit of it in Jedi-restore mode.
But apparently the braid she wears in her hair is apparently an “Alderaanian mourning braid.” Which is a nice detail (and totally fits if you think about it, there is a quiet wryness to her throughout the film).
It also confirms once again that Amidala women like to speak through their hair. (But then again who doesn't.)
EVERYBODY IS NOBODY IS NOBODY: The kids in the Canto Bight casino planet have names. Temiri Blagg is the Force-sweep kid; the girl is Arashell Sar, and story boy is Onilho Zaya.
(The character names are plays on the kids’ actual names: Temiri Blagg is played by Temirlan Blaev, Arashell Sar by Sara Heller, and Onilho Zaya by Josiah Onilha. How cool is that?)
Their back story is also interesting: all the kids in the stables were left on the planet by parents who had lost all their money gambling. In other words, just like Rey.
III. WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO MY CHILDHOOD
A lot happened in Last Jedi. Not sure I’ve ever been to a Star Wars movie where I thought, Could you please stop for now because this is enough and I need some time to deal with it? But Ri-Jay, he just would not let up.
I’ve seen the movie a couple times at this point. And what I find is The Last Jedi is about going back to the origins of the Star Wars saga and recovering parts of what makes Star Wars great that have gotten a bit lost.
FARMBOYS, BACKGROUND CHARACTERS AND GARBAGE PEOPLE R US
Case in point: Who is this series about, anyway?
There is no more iconic scene in A New Hope than Luke watching the dual suns set over Tatooine, wishing for a future, a purpose, a freedom he does not have. It’s a moment that everyone can relate to, and that’s in large part because in A New Hope Luke Skywalker is pretty much everyone. Yeah, his dad was somebody, but Luke is just some goofy dreamer kid. Even when he blows up the Death Star with his eyes shut, the point isn’t “Hey our boy Luke is something special”, it’s that the Force is real and incredible and that when good people overcome their own fears and selfishness to help each other they can overcome insane odds. There is hope no matter how overwhelming everything seems.
As Empire begins the situation is much the same; Luke may be training with Yoda, but he’s still that boyish everyman who was going to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters and has a lot to learn.
WE ARE GO FOR YODA MIC DROP
But then at the end we get this enormous reveal that Luke’s dad the somebody was actually Darth Vader, and just like that Luke becomes someone special, and Star Wars a saga about Skywalkers.
Over and over in The Last Jedi Johnson subverts that shift. It happens right from the start, with the bombing run on the new First Order star destroyer. The sequence is a clear replay of big beats from the battle of Yavin: Poe destroying a series of cannons that look straight off the Death Star; bombers getting blown up left and right, including one about-to-be-debris saying something like “They’re everywhere” (a very-ANH-like line). Finally there’s just one bomber, on her own, somehow moving forward amidst a million enemies’ fire; pilot Paige Tico gets knocked around by a blast and then can’t hear Poe, who’s asking what she’s doing, just like the Rebellion bosses do with Luke; and her own efforts to get the controller she needs to release the bombs includes a use-the-Force-like spiritual moment where she holds a medal and prays or something before trying one more time; and then, controller in hand, she releases the bombs into a bigger version of the Death Star’s port.
But Paige is not a Jedi. She’s not some new franchise character, either. She gets killed within seconds of releasing the bombs. She’s just another member of the Resistance. One of a million characters in the background of every Star Wars movie.
The Rey identity reveal is exactly in keeping with this; “Who are you?” Luke keeps asking her early on. “Nobody”, she says. And it turns out, that’s exactly right. Not a Skywalker, not a Solo, not a Kenobi, just some kid whose garbage parents discarded her.
And the Force, as Luke sees it, is not the purview of just the Jedi, either. It’s something everyone is a part of, and therefore everyone has a part in.
Last Jedi’s trailers seemed so focused on the Luke-Ben-Rey of it all that you couldn’t help but wonder what they were going to do with everyone else. But it turns out this was a classic head fake. The central ongoing story of Last Jedi is not “Who is Rey” or “Where was Luke” or anything to do with Ben; it’s the Resistance trying to survive. And, unlike the long chase sequence in Empire, here we’re not just following three or four characters in one ship. It literally is the entire Resistance that has to go on this journey. This story is theirs.
That’s Johnson’s point in a nutshell, I think: Star Wars isn’t about one family; it’s about everybody. And it’s not about special powers, either, ultimately, but community. Rose puts it so so well: “That’s how we win, not by fighting those we hate but saving those we love.”
SO YOU WANT TO BUILD A STORY ABOUT KEEPING HOPE ALIVE?
I never realized it before watching Last Jedi, but the original Star Wars trilogy kind of let the characters off easy. Yeah, Luke loses a hand and has to deal with a monster dad. Han gets frozen in carbonite. Carrie Fisher has to say some of the absolute worst dialogue. (Watch Return of the Jedi again, and tell me she doesn’t deserve an Oscar for just how hard she tries to sell some really atrocious Lucas-logue.)
That's not acting, it's horror.
But despite the crazy circumstances they find themselves in, none of the main characters in Star Wars dies. Not one. Han comes back to the Death Star just in the nick of time to save Luke and the Rebellion. Vader for some reason decides twice not to kill Leia, even though she’s been nothing but trouble. Jabba for some reason doesn’t want Han dead, and Lando actually turns out to be kind of a good guy.
No one significant gets kidnapped, hurt or killed on Yavin, Hoth, Cloud City, Endor or in Jabba’s Lair. Neither the space worm nor the mynocks living inside it nor any TIE fighter or star destroyer or stormtrooper or asteroid ever do the Falcon any significant damage. Artoo always succeeds in saving the day.
Han’s cockiness and selfishness get him into trouble, but never hurt anyone. Leia always makes the right decisions. Luke never gives in to the Dark side. He also gets to face the Emperor and Vader alone, no stormtroopers or Jedi-lite Praetorian Guard with swords that become ninja weapons that become jump ropes to step in and join the fray. And for some reason the Emperor’s electrocution death cuticles takes an awful long time to kill him.
Keeping hope alive when all seems lost, trusting in the Force no matter what—these are fundamental concepts to Star Wars. But they only really make sense if all does seem lost. So Johnson gives us the asteroid belt chase without any asteroids to provide cover, and with the life of every single person in the Resistance on the line. And he takes the arrogance of Poe seriously, such that when he ignores the command of his commanding officer people die. A lot of people. As well as most of their ships. And the Resistance almost fractures.
And when Finn and Rose meet a hacker who seems so shady their first instincts are to stay in jail rather than trust him, and then they do trust him, it goes so bad that a lot of the remaining Resistance members get killed.
And unlike in the original trilogy, Luke actually does get tempted here to do something terrible, and the consequences are terrible, and he’s now trapped in his own shame.
And what ships the Resistance finds on the salt planet Crait have absolutely no chance against AT-ATs and TIE fighters, plus there’s only a few of them. And their stronghold is easily broken, and there’s no way out. And even when the way-cooler-than-Porg ice foxes find a way out, it proves impossible for the Resistance fighters to follow. It all gets so bad that even Leia ends up saying, “Yeah, no, I was mistaken, there is no hope.”
Things going wrong, people’s imperfections making a difference – THAT, says Johnson, is faith as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And that’s what Star Wars is all about.
STAR WARS, OUR GIANT RED VELVET CHEESECAKE
The other side of Ri-Craig John-Son’s take, though, is once you’ve offered such definitive statements about the saga, what else is left to say?
No matter J.J. Abrams’ capacity for magic, it’s difficult to imagine a stronger out for the saga than the slave kid on the gambling planet using the Force while looking up at the stars.
Luke has his happy ending – complete with that lovely moment where he catches a glimpse of Tatooine’s setting suns. Leia’s gone, Han’s gone, Chewie apparently just eats Porg now while Artoo sleeps all day.
And while yeah, Ben Solo is still out there in the wild scowling and wanting to destroy the Resistance, in a sense Last Jedi has trained us to see that’s the natural state of things. There’s always going to be dark and light. And with the rekindling of hope it seems like the Resistance is already saved, doesn’t it?
In fact the last shot of the Resistance, them all sitting around happy and chatting on the Falcon, is a deliberate hearkening back to the last shot of Return of the Jedi.
There are, of course, little bits and bobs that Johnson put in place to set up the future. Ben sees killing Snoke as finally cutting ties with his past, but that’s what he thought after he killed his dad, and then he still couldn’t kill his mom. Plus, like two minutes after he thinks he’s free of it all probably the most important figure from his past shows up and tells him he’s still haunted by his father. So yeah, Ben’s story is not over.
It’s also clear Johnson set up Leia for a key role in Episode IX. (God Carrie Fisher is good in this movie. Harrison Ford might have gone on to get all the roles but Carrie was always the best of the leads in the original series. She is wry, encouraging and wise.) Who knows where Mary Poppins Space Leia would have taken us.
But basically, it’s like Leia says at the end: “We have everything we need.” What more really is there?
IV. ALL THE MIDDLE CHILDREN LOOK ALIKE
(If you live in Kansas City and you're having a baby, clearly you need to work with this photographer.)
Last week I did a list of things that typically happen in middle Star Wars movies. Here’s how The Last Jedi did.
THERE’S A CHASE AMONGST ASTEROIDS: NO, BUT ALSO SORT OF YES.
The Last Jedi has no asteroid chase. But if you look closely, the battle over D’Qar which begins the film-long, definitely Empire Strikes Back-inspired pursuit of the Resistance has an asteroid belt in the background.
I’m going to say that’s not an accident.
THERE’S A LOVE STORY; IT IS CHEESY: SORT OF.
We have the Finn/Rose story, which gets a little kissy smooshy there near the end. (Dear Finn, when a person saves your life and then in what might be her last act on earth lifts herself up and kisses you, you needs to not be a cube of ice, even if the fact is you’re team Rey/Poe.)
We also get the Ben/Rey psychic hotline, which while not being romantic (at least not for Rey) definitely involves a developing emotional relationship that towards the end becomes kind of loving.
It’s pretty amazing, actually, how much ground the movie is able to cover in their relationship. Who could ever have expected they’d make it from mortal enemies to “Why won’t you change for me?” more-than-friends in just under three hours?
THREEPIO LOSES LIMBS AND IS RESCUED BY ARTOO: I WISH.
Artoo gets only one scene in The Last Jedi, meanwhile BB-8 is stealing all his lines (like fixing the sparking wires in Poe’s X-Wing). Threepio gets a couple nice moments, and I guess he almost loses all his limbs. But yeah, no. Nothing like this happened.
Speaking of droids, though -- you know how the other ships that eventually run out of gas and get blowed up were supposedly empty? In fact according to The Last Jedi Visual Dictionary many droids on those ships stayed behind to leave more room for their living colleagues. #TheRealHeroes
A HERO GETS A VISION OF LOVED ONES IN PERIL AND MAKES A VERY DANGEROUS CHOICE THAT CHANGES ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING: 100% YES.
Rey does get a vision, not of her loved ones in peril, but about saving someone (and in doing so the Resistance). And as a result of that vision she does make a crazy dangerous choice to go meet Kylo/Ben on Supreme Commander Snoke’s spaceship, which isn’t even supposed to happen until the third movie. And oh boy does it change everything.
Whether in the end her choice will save or ruin the universe (or do something else)? TBA.
SOMETHING MIND-ALTERINGLY ENORMOUS AND UNEXPECTED IS LEARNED: YEP.
In a complete reversal of the Luke story, Rey learns/accepts that she is nobody. And it turns out to be just as enormous and shocking a reveal, because it’s the opposite of what we’ve been trained to expect from Star Wars. Suddenly not everything is about Skywalkers.
Right now we talk about “The Star Wars Saga”. Seems like going forward it really should be “Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga”, because clearly there are a lot more sagas a long time ago in a galaxy far far away than that.
(I totally want those kids at the end to get a saga of their own.)
A HERO IS MADE AN OFFER TO JOIN THE DARK SIDE. AND THEY REJECT IT: MM-HMM.
Yep. Last Jedi gives us word for word the same offer Vader makes to Luke in Empire and Dooku to Obi-Wan in Clones. The twist is, instead of it being father/monster/mentor figure offering the universe to a young person, here the offer comes from one young person to another.
You could also say that a hero rejoins the Dark Side in Last Jedi, as Ben does in fact “fulfill his destiny” and takes on the mantle of boss of everybody.
THE MOVIE ENDS UP BEING IN PART ABOUT FATHERS AND SONS: OH GOD YES.
Well, since one subtitle of the movie could have been “Ben Solo Keeps Trying to Kill His Dads”, yeah, I think we could say it’s a little bit about father figures.
But rather than being about accepting them or being seduced by them, Last Jedi ends up being about resisting and overcoming them (Ben) or at the least seeing them for what they are (Rey).
But Jedi is also a journey about being a parent or mentor. We’ve never really seen that in Star Wars. The Luke we meet on Ahch-To is basically a failed father, one whose big error of judgment has led to so much destruction. (The beautiful Luke/Leia scene at the end is in part there to make it clear that Ben was definitely going to Sith-out even if he hadn’t woken to his uncle looking like murder; but be that as it may, the effect of waking up to Jedi Knight with drawn light saber cannot be underestimated. It’s one thing to harbor evil in your heart; it’s another to have someone who is supposed to love you indicate there’s nothing good left in you. Luke, you got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.)
On the one hand Luke has locked himself away on Porg Island and away from the Force in an act of self-punishment. I'm a monster, I can’t be trusted, get off of my lawn.
But he’s also been hiding from the full implications of his mistake. He hasn’t had to watch the path of destruction Kylo and Snoke have run. He hasn’t had to face Leia and Han. He might be wearing sackcloth and ashes but only because only on his terms. That way does not the path of freedom lie.
As I’ve written here before, I think of Star Wars films tend to revolve around the exercise of mercy. Young 80s Luke shows mercy towards his father and in doing so saves the universe; Anakin does not show mercy to the Tusken Raiders, and it sets him on a path to its annihilation.
There’s still some of all that in The Last Jedi; Rey feels the conflict within Ben just as Luke did inside Vader, and tries to save him. But the bigger story of mercy here is all about Luke having to face and forgive himself.
It leads to an unexpected question: What if we and Luke have been misunderstanding the Dagobah vision of Luke's head in Vader's helmet for all these years?
At the time it seemed like a warning – get your act together or you could end up just as awful as Vader is. “You’re no better”, understood as “So you better watch out”.
But what if it wasn’t a warning but a revelation, the Force trying to show Luke the fundamental truth of who he is? “You are no better” understood as “You, too, have an unavoidable capacity for monstrousness. See it and accept it.”
In that terrible moment of temptation with Ben, Luke finally comes face to face with that truth of the tree – right down to the fact that he was thinking about killing kids, just like his Dad did at the end of Revenge of the Sith. And for the first ten years or so after he runs; just like after the initial vision he does everything he can to prove it wrong.
His journey in Last Jedi is to finally accept the Dagobah tree’s lesson. To stop buying into about some idealized version of who he was supposed to be, face the truth of himself and finally be free.
A HERO LOSES AN ARM: SADLY, NO.
Nope. No Poe-while-flying-gel-catastrophes, no limbs lost – unless Phasma comes back in Episode IX for yet another frustrating what-might-have-been cameo, having lost an arm in her plummet.
OUR HERO LOSES A BLUE LIGHT SABER: SURE DOES.
This happens not once, but twice in Last Jedi: Luke tosses the saber aside when Rey hands it to him (which is itself kind of a playful riff on the fact that Anakin was always almost losing the blade); and in the very end the saber gets ripped in half by the Rey/Ben force-pull-duel, a metaphor for how RiJoJo feels about J.J.’s mystery boxes if ever there was one.
ULTIMATELY THE HERO LEARNS SOMETHING THAT THE GOOD GUYS DON’T WANT HIM TO LEARN. AND IN BOTH CASES, IT HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH MERCY: YES.
Rey certainly does learn a secret Luke doesn’t want her to learn, about what happened with Ben. And it does end up having to do with mercy, in that it helps lead Luke to forgiving himself.
It looks nothing like the previous iterations of this beat, but yeah, it’s all there.
SOMEONE SAYS “I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS.”
This wasn’t on my initial list, but I had talked about it as something that happens in every Star Wars film and that maybe we didn’t need to hear any more because it was getting stale.
You might have noticed, no one seems to say the phrase in the film. But it turns out that’s an incredibly being-ist prejudice you’ve got going on there, buddy. The film opens on Poe flying towards the ship-killer First Order Dreadnought. And BB-8 whistles and beeps something to which Poe responds “Happy beeps, buddy! Happy beeps!”
The thing BB-8 said: “I have a bad feeling about this.”
V. LAYIN’ DOWN LIKE A CLOWN PLAYIN' FOR TIME WITH MY RHYME
Last week I pointed to an article that thought of Star Wars as a sort of poetry, with its own internal rhyme, i.e. words, images or ideas that get repeated or riffed on in other installments. So the recurrence of “I have a bad feeling about this” or new takes on the destruction of the Death Star.
That article talked in part about the danger of all the rhyming, how it can pull you out of the moment and make the whole thing seem kind of staged.
Well, it turns out no Star Wars film has alluded to its predecessors than Last Jedi. Not by a long shot, I’d say. Nor to greater effect.
An almost-certainly-only-partial list of the riffs:
STRAIGHT OUTTA HOTH
The movie begins with an escape sequence from D’Qar reminiscent of the end of the escape from Hoth, ships flying away while lasers from above try to destroy them. It also ends with Hoth, what’s left of the Resistance hiding in a bunker on what looks like a snow planet (including flakes of snow-which-is-actually-salt-gross falling at the end); we even get a replay of the classic Hoth shot of closing the massive doors while Leia looks on, although here instead of sadness at the thought of Luke and Han being out in the freezing weather it’s the sadness that the First Order is coming.
So Last Jedi actually reverses the Hoth story – it moves from escape to hiding out with the bad guys coming – feeding that sense Johnson wants of everything going wrong. We even get, near the end, their own version of the snow speeder v. AT-AT battle, except now with speeders that are garbage and odds that are impossible.
DEATH STARRY NIGHT
As I mentioned, the bombing run above D’Qar comes right from attacking the Death Star at Yavin, with the twist that almost all of the good guys die and the bombing is totally inconsequential in the larger scheme of things. (When will they learn, there will always be another Death Star/Death Star surrogate?)
Finn and Rose’s entire mission later is also a repeat of Ben and Luke’s in A New Hope. First, they have to go to a wretched hive of scum and villainy to hire someone. Then, they have to break into the bad guy’s scary-dangerous HQ and turn something off. And whereas they succeed in A New Hope, in Last Jedi it all goes bad. And then really bad.
Fun fact: In A New Hope the thing they have to shut off is the tractor beam. In Last Jedi, it’s the tracker. (Johnson is such an evil genius.)
DAGOBAH PART TO
So much of the Rey/Luke business on Ahch-To comes from Empire. We have the grouchy mentor-in-hiding who is afraid of the young Jedi because they show qualities they’ve seen in others who went bad. We have the mentor being talked into helping them, and playing with the young Jedi while teaching them about the ways of the Force. (The “I feel it” scene between Luke and Rey has got to be in the top five funny Star Wars scenes. It’s also the best description of the Force of them all, I think in part because for the first time they made it visual instead of just talk in hushed tones.)
(It’s also a great example of what a spiritual retreat is meant to be like. Minus, you know, all the moving rocks.)
We have Luke’s X-Wing underwater, living arrangements being close to a place filled somehow in the Dark Side, and a vision in that place that ends with the young Jedi seeing themselves.
(Did anyone else wonder if Rey was going to see James and Lily Potter?)
We have the young Jedi having a vision which makes them think they have to leave to save everyone, and a warning from the mentor that they don’t have the full picture, and the young Jedi leaves anyway, and the mentor in the end is both right and wrong.
And, bigger picture, it turns out their Jedi mentor was fundamentally flawed. People never really think that about Yoda; he’s so holy-sounding and Luke has so much to learn. But Yoda wrote off Anakin, lied to Luke about who he was, and was training Luke to kill him. The original films never explore this, but these are serious, messed up issues.
And here’s a fun fact – the screwed up things that Yoda and Ben wanted of Luke are exactly the things he was tempted to do to Ben: give up on him and kill him while there’s still time.
On this point, it’s worth noting that when he comes to Crait and Leia confides that she knows Ben is lost, Luke says “No one is every really lost.” It’s the same insight that allowed him to save his father. It makes me wonder whether part of the reason he doesn’t somehow hurt Ben is not just because he’s not really there, but he believes because Ben’s story isn’t over either. Having finally faced his own stuff, he can return to his essential posture of mercy.
HERE WE SPELL BESPIN WITH A “TATOOINE”
The casino planet sequence definitely has echoes of Cloud City, with its luxury, its brief locked-in-jail sequence and the introduction of DJ, a shady character who is friend and enemy.
But with its race track and slave kids, its deeper association is clearly Young Anakin’s Tatooine. And I think maybe the whole sequence is Johnson trying to face (and right) a wrong from Phantom Menace. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan get stuck on Tatooine, end up finding a force-powerful kid with a talent for mechanics and race piloting, and use him to escape, while leaving the kid’s mom and al the other slaves. It’s a moment that has never made sense to me; Jedi do not leave people enslaved.
It's totally fine. I don't mind two strange men taking you and leaving me here at all.
You could say Last Jedi repeats the error; the kids don’t get freed. But Finn and Rose are not exactly flying home, either; their next stop is Snoke’s cruiser. And in Rose we have a character who has lived the life of those kids and forces Finn to see them for who they are. After Finn says it felt good to wreak some havoc among the powerful of Canto Bight, Rose takes the saddle off their space-horse ride and sends him on his way. “Now it feels good,” she says. Again, it’s not about taking down “the man”, it’s about helping people.
And Johnson is not content to leave the children’s story there, either. They get the very last scene of the movie, first telling each other the story of Luke Skywalker (itself a riff on Threepio retelling the Star Wars saga to the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi, but now made meaningful because it is a story of hope told to those who need hope, rather than just an exciting fairy tale told by a goofball to infantilized Wookies), and then with that incredible ending moment of the main kid turning out himself to be Force-sensitive, like Anakin, and looksing to the sky with dreams for his future, like Luke.
Phantom used slavery as a plot device. Last Jedi says Star Wars is the story of the forgotten and discarded most of all.
GIVING UP THE GHOST
It was a surprise to everyone, I think, that Luke goes from bad mentor in hiding to back in the game to poof all in just one movie. There are so many earlier points where it felt like Last Jedi could have ended – the Resistance arriving at Crait; Luke stepping out of the shadows in the bunker; Luke walking out towards the First Order; Luke standing there before the First Order; Luke brushing off his shoulder after the lasers don’t touch him.
But it turns out his arc in Jedi is pretty much Ben's story in A New Hope.
Okay, not that part of Ben's story. But the rest of it.
Obi-Wan Kenobi had spent most of his life hiding in a distant part of the galaxy, protecting Luke but also suffering on account of his failure with Anakin. After receiving a message begging for his help he reenters the fray, but then just an hour or so later creates a distraction that allows the good guys to escape, a distraction that culminates with him warning his opponent that killing him is only going to make things worse, then disappearing.
(Also, if you see the movie again, pay attention to Rey’s first real line to Luke: “Master Skywalker, I’m from the Resistance. Your sister Leia sent me. We need your help.” It’s clearly a riff on Leia’s hologram to Obi-Wan. Even the rhythm Daisy Ridley gives it hearkens back to Leia’s most famous line. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope”.)
Luke’s story looks a lot different, but it’s only because the film takes the time to take his guilt seriously. With Ben everything was kept hidden.
THE SNOKEPEROR
I very much liked the portrayal of Vice Admiral Commander Colonel Snopety Snoke Spoke Snoke: his bizarre need to project himself as a giant; the for-lounging-and-apparently-murder robes he likes to wear (because when you're oppressing the galaxy you want to feel comfortable); and his interactions with Ben and Rey. I was as surprised as anyone to see him split so early. It really left me divided. He was, in his own way, such a cut above.
But when you step back and look at how he’s used in Last Jedi, he is actually just the Emperor Mk. 2. His main scene there at the end is almost entirely a repeat of the big finish of Return of the Jedi: Rey comes to him voluntarily, with a goal of saving Ben, just like Luke with Vader; Snoke tortures her – this time for information, not to turn her, and along the way reveals that he knows the Resistance’s secret plan to get away (just as the Emperor revealed that he knew about the troops on Endor); he also shows her the destruction of her friends in his magic mirror, just as the Emperor let Luke watch the Rebellion being destroyed out the window.
As Snoke goes on Ben becomes conflicted, just as Vader did; meanwhile Snoke calls on him to strike Rey down and “fulfill his destiny” just as the Emperor did of Luke. And Ben ends up turning on Snoke, just as Vader did the Emperor.
Given all the parallels, I wonder if there’s not a bit of foreshadowing of Ben’s choice to go Dark Side in the fact that he kills Snoke. After all, the Emperor wanted Luke to kill Vader. But the “rule” of Star Wars is pretty clear, to kill your foe is to become him. Anakin kills Dooku, and two hours later he’s Vaded up hard.
Really the main original element and purpose Snoke serves in the story is to set up (and fulfill) Ben’s quest to cast off every shackle of the past and be his own bad self. And, unexpectedly, to echo the murder of Ben’s father. One of my favorite moments in the film, in fact, is watching Ben step up to Rey and say, “I know what I have to do,” exactly as he did with his dad. And then, once again, he kills his “father”.
(Han, Luke, Snoke...the kid really has a thing about murdering his dads.)
(Also, this is a Google search you should look at. The Ben/Han memes are amazing.)
The battle with the Praetorian Guard in the end scene seems totally new in every way. But in a way it’s another example of Johnson’s thoughts about Star Wars: we’ve seen the crimson commandos in many of these movies, and they have never had the chance to do anything. There are no background characters here. Everybody is somebody, everybody is interesting. So here, finally, they get to show what they got.
VI. LUKE IS
BEN IS LUKE
Snoke tells Ben he has too much of his father in him – the same thing that Yoda says of Luke. But the thing that they have too much of is the opposite; Luke is feared to have too much of his father’s impulsivity, but is actually better than that. Ben is feared to have too much of his father’s goodness, but is actually far more impulsive than Snoke even realizes.
LUKE IS LEIA
At the end of Empire, when Luke is in trouble he calls out to Leia. She hears him and makes them turn the Falcon around for him. In Jedi, when Luke finally reopens himself to the Force he senses her in her coma. This time she calls out to him, and he responds.
LUKE IS ALSO HAN
Luke’s final words to Kylo, “See you around, kid”, may not be a direct quote of Han talking to Luke in the original series, but they are so close as to might as well be. Another great moment of everything coming full circle.
LUKE IS ALSO WRONG
At the start Luke mocks Rey for coming to get him. And he asks her something like “What, did you think I was going to face down the entire First Order by myself?”
At the end of the movie, that’s exactly what he does.
Likewise, when Rey arrives Luke asks what she knows of the Force. She says “It’s a power that the Jedi have that lets them control people and...make rocks float,” which Luke derides. And later, when asked to reach out with the Force, she literally reaches out her hand. Again, she’s told she’s wrong.
At the climax of the movie, she and Ben fight for the blue light saber using the Force, with their hands extended. And to save the Resistance she has to make rocks float.
VII. OTHER PEOPLE PUTTING ALL OF THIS SIMPLER AND BETTER
The L.A. Times did a great interview with Rian Johnson about all kinds of things about the movie, like how he came up with the “ForceTime”, the implications of Luke’s Force projection and Leia’s powers, the unexplained mystery of Snoke, and whether Kylo Ren has ever kissed a girl.
Uproxx also had a great interview with Johnson about the Weird Al Yankovic implications of Last Jedi, the choice to go with the version of Yoda from Empire Strikes Back and how he decided Luke had to die/vanish in this movie and ruin our Christmases.
If you’re interested I also did a piece for America Magazine on how The Last Jedi is all about faith, hope and love.
Apparently they showed The Last Jedi to Carrie Fisher’s dog, Gary. The results were pretty poignant.
Carrie Fisher also apparently helped write some of her best scenes in Last Jedi.
Before Last Jedi came out Mark Hamill talked about getting the script and having a really hard time with its take on Luke. At the time he explained how he’d let go and put his trust in Johnson.
Now he’s talked in more detail about what his problem was: “Jedis don’t give up.” How he resolved that issue for himself is pretty interesting, too. Being the main character in the world’s biggest, longest-running franchise, man, it’s not easy.
Mark Hamill has also been making the rounds telling funny stories about Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, including this great piece about how Ford reacted when he found out Hamill had kept from him the fact that Vader was Luke’s dad.
There are more fun reveals in the Visual Dictionary, such as how Carrie Fisher told Rian Johnson they needed “space jewelry” (who doesn't), which led to some pretty cool pieces; that the door to Luke’s hut on Ahch-To was actually from Luke’s X-Wing; that in fact Rey stole the Jedi books before she left – apparently you can see them in the Falcon -- so they didn’t burn after all; and the significance of Snoke’s black ring. (It has a very cool connection to Vader.)
VIII. EPISODE IX
FRIENDS OF BEN
Luke says “see you around, kid” just before he vanishes from Ben’s sight. It could be just a turn of phrase, another indication that Luke understands the extent of Ben’s guilty conscience. But what if Luke means it literally? What if, for the first time, we have a Force Ghost haunting the villain?
Also, if we embrace Luke’s idea in Last Jedi that everyone is capable of participating in the Force, what about seeing Ghost Han?
You know you want it.
CHEWBACCA DAD
One of the things that will make Episode IX interesting and original is it’ll be the first story of a new generation figuring things out without the benefit of mentors to either guide them or stand as their opponents.
But that’s not to say there aren’t any older figures around. Chewbacca had almost nothing to do in Last Jedi but hang out with the Porg. But he’s got so much to offer. He has seen it all, and always was Han’s wiser half and conscience.
As Rey and the others work out how to proceed, Chewbacca seems like a great candidate for encouraging father figure/uncle.
POE DAMERON, SITH LORD
So there’s a weird detail about Commander Awesome Snoke that’s come out since the movie dropped: he trained at least one other pupil to the Dark Side. The movie has zero allusions to that, so you might think it’s not canon. But it comes from Lucasfilm’s precis on him, so....
If Episode IX were to go that way, it could very well mean introducing a new character. But what if instead it turned out that Poe Dameron was secret Sith all along?
That might sound crazy, but consider:
In The Force Awakens, he just plain disappears from the film after he and Finn crash land. Later he’s suddenly back at the Resistance base, but we’re never shown how he got there.
In Last Jedi, he got the Resistance fleet’s entire bomber squad destroyed. And he tried to foment a rebellion within the Resistance. And he led a group of those rickety salt speeders which got a whole bunch more of their pilots killed. And he insisted no one go out to help Luke.
Also he’s a ridiculously good pilot, better than anyone we’ve ever seen. Now who does that sound like?
And there’s just something off about him, isn’t there? It could be Isaac’s performance – he seems incapable of not sounding like he's flying through the twentieth first century. Just compare Harrison Ford in the Death Star cell block trying to convince someone on the radio that everything is copasetic and Oscar Isaac leading the “Can you hear me now” bit at the Last Jedi. Yes, the writing in the latter is a little more modern, but even with that, there’s something in the way he talks. It just never sounds quite right.
Maybe that’s a hint in hiding. Maybe Poe seems a little off because Poe is all the way off.
Okay, that's it. It's 4:30 here and we got some Santa-snacks and some churchin' to do. Hope you enjoy this. And if you have other friends that are into Star Wars, feel free to send 'em my way. Plenty for everybody.
Merry Christmas!
