The last thing the internet probably needs is yet another opinion about the latest Star Wars movie, but if you’ll indulge me, I have some thoughts that are simply too long for a forum post. If you’ve simply reached your limit for such things, feel free to ignore me completely. If you do decide to read it, be warned that this entire article presumes that you have watched the movie, and as such is intensely spoiler-heavy.
You might be asking why now, and not back in December, when the movie was fresh in theaters and the united thinktank was eagerly chewing over every plot point. Long story short: I’m not a theater person. I never have been. Even as a kid I didn’t beg to go to the movies. I watched my fair share of things on family outings, but now, as an adult, I don’t get anything out of the “theater experience” that watching a movie in the comfort of my home doesn’t give me. I’m not theater-phobic, I just don’t have that strong desire to go sit in a theater to watch a movie. So I’m content to wait until the ever-shrinking time when a movie I want to see is available to watch on my own television.
Of course, this does present some problems, chief among them staying spoiler-free for a handful of months. And with a Star Wars movie—especially one as talked about as this one—it’s a chore. Thankfully I don’t do much social media at all, and the Fwoosh is my only forum, so it’s manageable.
But even going on an information blackout, it’s impossible to stay completely cut-off. Much of what I knew going in was that this movie was going to be controversial. It had damn near fractured the fanbase. There were decisions made with characters that made people give up on Star Wars, or at least had made them disavow these new movies. Even Mark Hamill himself had spoken out against the choices made with Luke Skywalker. As the backlash grew louder and louder I had to become even more wary than usual in order to avoid spoilers. Of course, the world is what it is, so I didn’t go in completely ignorant, but it is what it is.
The anger and blood that had spewed out of the other side of this movie was impossible to ignore. I can appreciate and understand that level of devotion. I am not what one would call just a “casual” Star Wars fan. I’ve watched the Original Trilogy too many times, have bought too many toys, have wallowed in the excitement of a galaxy far, far away for far too long to just disconnect myself from it. My curiosity had grown exponentially.
I will say first off that what people say about movies doesn’t affect me much. I have my own likes and dislikes, and they’re not going to be swayed by other people’s opinions. Hype doesn’t affect me positively or negatively. And just the same, I wasn’t going to like this movie just because it was Star Wars. It had to be more than be a good movie. It had to be a good Star Wars movie.
I think the most important point that these sequels are not the sequels I wanted. Any fan of the Original Trilogy no doubt has an idea of how they want this story to continue. In many ways, we’ve already had the chance to see it happen. Between the old Marvel comics run of Star Wars stories to the Dark Horse canon and into the various novels, the Extended Universe is bloated with stories detailing every aspect of the continuing adventures of Luke, Leia, Han and their children and children’s children. But none of those were the movies, and the movies are now all that matter. The story, begun in a cinematic trilogy, can only continue in a cinematic trilogy.
So here we are, with a brand new trilogy that is, in many ways, uninterested in delivering exactly what many of us wanted to see, myself included.
And in a way, it’s all the better for it.
I watched The Last Jedi last week, and I’m still thinking about it. I know that sounds like an obvious statement, but I can’t tell you how many movies I watch that pass by without leaving any presence or effect. That doesn’t deaden my enjoyment of them, because it’s perfectly okay for a movie to exist purely as a piece of two-hour entertainment, in the same way that a dessert doesn’t need to provide any dietary necessity other than “damn, this thing tastes good.” Movies-as-entertainment is just as valid reason for existence as movies-as-art. Thor:Ragnarok is another movie I recently watched months after the rest of the world saw it in theaters. And it was an entertaining, enjoyable film. But a week later, was I giving it a second thought?
No. Not in the way I am with The Last Jedi. I hesitate to say I’m haunted by The Last Jedi, because that’s just too melodramatic, but it has stuck with me. It has stuck with me much more because of the choices made that I would not have made than it ever would have if it provided a hollow paint-by-numbers version of events that played out as I would have wanted, I think.
I had expectations. Blockbuster movies are so formulaic that you can predict how things will go, based on our own expectations for how a story should unfold. Superman and Batman will end up getting along. The Avengers will beat Loki, and then Ultron, and then Thanos (seriously, they will, just watch). Captain America will throw his mighty shield.
The Last Jedi took expectations and not only subverted them, but it killed them. Sometimes literally. I had no idea what would happen from one minute to the next. When we saw Luke at the end of The force Awakens, staring at his father’s lightsaber with that mixture of sadness, trepidation and suspicion on his face, did anybody think he would casually toss it over his shoulder like a meaningless token?
I was sold from that moment on. I was ready to let this movie do whatever it needed to do. I was open. My expectations had been completely destroyed within seconds, and they continued on being destroyed.
I expected Leia’s final moment to be when she was blown out of the ship, to die in space. Knowing the real-life fate of Carrie Fisher, I knew we would be seeing her final moments in this movie, but I didn’t expect it to be so soon.
A side-note of appreciation for the late Carrie fisher before I move on with this point. Look at that expression on her face just before she’s sucked backwards. Go back and rewatch it. Look at the subtlety of that brief second’s worth of facial performance. Read the resignation of a lifetime lived in a single moment, the knowledge of certain death. That is a master class in acting, and shows just how far she had come as an actress. For the sudden tragedy of this to be her final performance, everything that Fisher did in this movie was weighted with a gravitas that honored her legacy. She owned every scene she was in.
Anyway, despite the certainty of death, the expectation was ripped away as Leia finally gets a chance to show off her force powers.
We expect Poe to be the dashing rogue who leads a righteous mutiny. We expect Laura Dern to be in the wrong. The dashing rogue is never in the wrong, right? But then Leia zaps Poe and practically puts him over her knee. The righteous hero was wrong.
We expect Rey’s parents to be…somebody. But they’re nobody. She just happens to be strong in the force, and that’s it.
We expect Snoke to have a scintillating back-story. Instead, he’s just…Snoke. And then he’s sliced and diced. He’s not the second coming of the Emperor, or…anything. It’s not his story.
And, most important, there is Luke.
In the week since watching the movie, I’ve done a lot of thinking about Luke. It’s hard not to assign some measure of importance to “The Hero” of the franchise I’ve grown up loving. He’s Luke Skywalker. “The Hero” is supposed to end up happy, surrounded by friends and loved ones, and continue on having adventure after adventure. But instead, our her ended up alone, cut off from his friends, isolated, allowing the rest of the galaxy to suffer under the second coming of the Empire. Is this the hero we’ve all come to know?
In a way, it is.
From the very first movie, Luke is as flawed a hero as there is. If anything, having Luke lead a heroes life of unblemished adventure runs counter to everything we’ve seen with Luke.
Yes, Luke blew up the Death Star in Episode IV, channeling the force to send a missile exactly where it needed to go. But he was very close to being blown out of space, until Han came rocketing down at the last minute to blow away the remaining TIE Fighters. If not for Han, Luke would have been just more space-dust.
Yes, Luke confronted Darth Vader in Episode V, but he did so by skipping out on valuable training, recklessly endangering his friends, ignoring the advice of Yoda and Ben, and then found himself completely overmatched by Darth Vader, who toyed with him until slicing his hand off. If not for Leia hearing his cries for help, he would have fallen from that antennae and died.
Yes, Luke defeated and redeemed his father in Episode VI, but that was only by driving himself to the brink of the dark side. And even then, when he renounced evil, declaring himself himself a Jedi, the Emperor easily overmatched him. It’s very easy to see that the Emperor was killing him—would have killed him—if not for his father’s interference.
Luke was a competent Jedi, but he was deeply flawed. That the galaxy saw him as a hero, despite the fact that he nearly died at the end of the major turning points of his life, well, that doesn’t lessen who he is, but it does show that he’s not the perfect icon of heroism.
So we skip ahead thirty years, and we find an older Luke, who has seemingly failed everyone.
The main point of contention is how can Luke, this hero we have come to know and admire, have come so close to killing not just one of his students, but his own nephew? For the hero to stand over a sleeping young man, and contemplate igniting his lightsaber to commit murder…how can we reconcile this with Luke Skywalker?
Because, quite simply, Luke believes that he knows something that those around him might not know. Yes, he might have done some wonderful, impossible things, but when it comes right down to it…he might not be strong enough again.
He barely survived Vader once. He nearly died at the hands of the Emperor. Luke has been to the abyss and has seen ultimate evil first hand, has felt the electricity from true horror surging through his body. He did not grow up at a Jedi Academy. His teachers were an old man and a much, much older creature, both of whom died before they could fully teach him everything there is to know about the ways of the Jedi. Luke is older, but still carrying that impetuous streak of his youth. He sees in his nephew an immense power—a power that flows through the Skywalker bloodline—and knows how easily that power can be corrupted.
Luke has seen what happens when a being of immense power takes control. Luke has seen a galaxy suffer. Maybe Luke wasn’t afraid when he saw how powerful his nephew was. But after seeing visions of what he could be capable of…all the death and suffering that he had seen once before?
Luke is no stranger to the taking of a life. Fear is a powerful motivator.
Fear is also a strong avenue to the Dark Side. Fear, and doubt, combining and colliding.
No, it isn’t heroic for Luke to stand over Ben Solo and contemplate igniting his lightsaber and ending his life before he could become a galactic terror. In black and white terms, it’s cowardly, it’s wrong, and maybe even a little evil.
It is not heroic to have considered such a thing, but it is heroic to not go through with it, to fight off the quick and easy answer offered by the Dark Side, and find the integrity to denounce that path.
Unfortunately, the damage had been done. Ben Solo became Kylo ren in that instant, and Luke saw the damage that spun out of his own hubris.
It isn’t heroic to flee into exile, to shut off your family and friends. But it is human. Luke is heroic without being a hero. Luke is flawed. Luke craved adventure, and, when he got it, realized how hollow it all is, and began to doubt everything he believed.
Luke was a boy who wanted to be a hero, but boys grow up and adventures end. Luke was a man who became a hero, but men know that heroes only exist in fairy tales. Luke was a hero who wished to be a man, but heroes are burdened by their legacies.
So at the end, when Luke projected an image of himself across the vast distance of space, utilizing the force in such a way that he knew, without a doubt, would be his last act, who was he? Was he a man looking to be a hero one last time? Was he a coward, afraid to join the battle in the flesh? Was he, maybe finally a Jedi Master?
Maybe none of those things. Maybe he was just Luke Skywalker, a flawed enigma who, at the end, wanted to do the right thing, in the only way he knew how. The same man he had always been, and, now, would always be.
These were not the sequels I wanted. Luke isn’t single-handedly fighting off a horde of brand new Sith. Han isn’t wisecracking while Leia smirks and blasts the bad guys. Artoo and Threepio aren’t trading synthesized barbs while Chewbacca plays reluctant babysitter to a second generation of Skywalkers and Solos. I don’t know what will happen in Episode 9.
I don’t know, and because of that, I’m looking forward to it that much more.
