The Last Spoiler

Or

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Porgs

So Scooter and I went to see The Last Jedi on Thursday, a week after it opened. Because I wanted to view the movie with as few spoilers as possible, I managed to avoid the online backlash (39 point negative critic/audience gap) and the backlash against the backlash. I have a few things to say about it myself. But to avoid spoiling anyone who still may not have seen it, I will hide it behind a break.

BE WARNED: THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD!

By no means am I trying to convince anyone that the movie was great. I liked it. But I loved Cloud Atlas, so what do I know?

Belghast has a post out listing his grievances with the latest chapter of the Star Wars saga. While I agree that some of the questions I have had since The Force Awakens were not answered—or the answers were not satisfactory—I disagree that the movie is completely about jettisoning our childhood memories. For example:

Rey's Parentage

All but one of the fan theories regarding Rey have been obliterated. Naturally, much like Harry Potter/Hermione Granger shippers, fans who had theorized about Rey Skywalker or Rey Kenobi were vocally disappointed. While I initially thought Kylo may have been lying to Rey about her nobody status, after reading a few different takes on the themes of the movie, I remembered that George Lucas once said something about Star Wars being the story of the Skywalker family. I remembered that, when I heard or read that, I thought it was a terrible misunderstanding from the creator himself about why the saga is so important. Star Wars is not some crappy soap opera about the Skywalkers. That sort of thinking is part of what ruined the prequel trilogy. I think it is fitting that Rey not be a scion of one the Great Houses of the Force.

Snoke's Origins

We want Snoke to have a story. I want Snoke to have a story. He was Plagueis; a fallen Mace Windu; "Darth Jar Jar." He is The Emperor to Kylo Ren's Vader impersonation.

No, he is just another puppetmaster who got his own strings cut. We forget that we really don't know where Darth Sidous came from either. Not based on the movies themselves, anyway. And despite the fact that unaligned Force users have been shown thoughout the canon and legends, we cannot accept that Snoke is not Sith. But this is not Snoke's story, it is Rey's and Kylo's and the new generation of rebels and so on. Much like the matinee serials from Lucas' youth, we are not given all the answers to episodes we missed, we are given just enough in the opening crawl to understand what is about to happen in this one. And Snoke's origins are not important to that.

Also where did Admiral Holdo come from? I'm sure there's some non-film media that address that, as perhaps there will be about Snoke. However, here Johnson does something that is a long tradition of the Star Wars Saga, introducing new people important in only one movie with out a proper introduction. We fans were spoiled by Lucas' obsession with going back and explaining character origins. Need I remind you, though, that this is how we ended up with Kiddo Vader and Jar Jar Binks?

And the female fighter pilot that figured so prominently in the beginning of the movie; I thought she would be way more important. Then she got blown up before even taking off as the fighters scrambled just after the hyperspace jump (I may be misremembering the plot sequence).

Poe's Gambit

The whole franchise is founded on the idea of the single decisive battle turning the tide of a rebellion—in the original film it was a single shot by the soon to be legendary Luke Skywalker. But wars are rarely won in decisive battles. Especially rebellions. Wars are won when the losers run out of resources or the will to fight. The Resistance, and Poe in particular, are depending on a spectacular finale, but the First Order apparently has enormous resources, while the Resistance no longer has the backing of a Republic.  The flight of the Resistance is a microcosm of the slow grind of real war.

There are some story beats that I find I agree with Belghast to some degree. Whether it was the result of toxic masculinity or youthful impetuosity, Poe's gambit at the beginning cost a lot of Resistance lives and equipment and may or may not have been pointless.  But for the more seasoned leaders, Organa and Holdo, the sacrifice was too great and the payoff not great enough. Poe's secret plan to disable the hyperdrive tracker on Snoke's flagship was also in vain, even leading to DJ revealing Holdo's plan to the First Order.

As always, the filmmakers seem to be playing fast and loose with concepts of distance and time in this movie (see also, Rey's training vs. the limited space chase). The First Order dreadnought might have destroyed the Resistance cruiser after the first hyperspace jump, or maybe they were able to move beyond its effective range as well as the lesser star destroyers. The point is that we only know what we are shown. The film does not really give us enough information for what-ifs.

Canto Bight

Many people apparently have an issue with the casino planet. I actually liked the stampede through the gaming tables. My only issue is, why did Finn and Rose think it would be okay to park their shuttle on a beach outside the city instead of—pretty much anywhere else, really? That led directly to the ultimate failure of the mission when DJ betrayed them. I also didn't quite make the connection between Rose's background on a mining planet and the resort city. I mean, it fits in a general, haves and have-nots, sort of way. But she seemed to have a personal animosity toward the gamblers even before having seen the children on the racetrack or the obvious abuse of the animals. However, in the broader theme of the movie about nobodies rising to be heroes, it makes sense. The filmmakers show who is ultimately profiting off the conflict between the Reistance and the First Order. (Hint: it's obviously not the rebels or the stormtroopers.) The Empire was not just the Emperor, just as the Nazis were not just Hitler (hello Godwin). Evil regimes give evil men (and women) license to commit evil. But the Darkness is there already.

Plus, Canto Bight gives us the context to understand the force sensitive boy at the end, inspired by the mechanic and the former stormtrooper who led the fathiers to freedom (at least until they get rounded up again off screen).

Grumpy Old Jedi

Even Hamill himself initially had issues with the direction Rian Johnson took with the iconic Luke Skywalker (though he clarified that he'd come around to the director's view of the character). Much of Luke's development into the curmudgeon we see in The Last Jedi happens between the Ewok celebration and the moment Rey finds him on Ahch-To. Much like Snoke's origins, we don't get to see it. We see a little of it through flashbacks from both his and Kylo's perspectives. But I would imagine that coming off the high of being the Hero of the Rebellion to the sense of failure that followed the collapse of his new academy at the hands of Kylo Ren and his Knights may have broken him. Of course he didn't respond to Rey's pleadings for herself and in the name of the Resistance; he had cut himself off from the Force.

Luke has convinced himself that the Jedi were wrong. And I can't say I disagree with him. The Jedi were arrogant, and their methods of taking babies from their families never sat well with me. Nor did their initial rejection—and subsequent mistreatment—of Anakin Skywalker. (I won't go into the failings of the prequels themselves here, suffice it to say the Jedi leadership deserved their fate, if not the younglings.) In fact, I believe depiction of the First Order practice of kidnapping children and brainwashing them into stormtroopers was a direct commentary on virtually the same practice by the Jedi, and their complacence regarding the clones. Jedi were so sure of their own righteousness that they didn't see the ways in they were rotting inside just like the Republic.

Luke's fear of Ben Solo's power led directly to his failure as a teacher. And his fear of Rey's power almost leads to disaster as well. Ultimately, it is Rey who saves Luke. Along with some sage advice from Force ghost Yoda, reminding Luke to focus on the problem at hand rather than dwell on some horizon whether in front or behind.

Remember the Cave

Entering the Cave on Ahch-To, Rey learned what Luke never had—and what we, audience never did either. We thought that Luke seeing his own face behind Vader's mask was a foreshadowing of his parentage (which, as a storytelling device, it was). But Yoda told him that he would find in the cave "only what you take with you." As Rey discovered in the cave, the Dark Side does not have any answers. It is empty of everything but what you bring to it.

That's not to say that emptiness might not lend power, temporarily. Powerful winds occur at the margin between atmosphere and vacuum, enough to shred living flesh and even break metal bulkheads. Almost all canon use of the Dark Side seems to have led to some sort of physical deformity of the user, either directly or indirectly. The Dark Side only takes, it never really gives.

Rey tried to convince Kylo of that, even as he tried to tell her that only with him, a scion of the Skywalker legacy, could she achieve greatness. But the Force-sensitive Skywalkers occupy a mere 70 years of the millennia that intelligent beings existed in that Galaxy Far, Far Away. Could it be that bringing balance to the Force may involve getting rid of the family line that was apparently started by some Dark perversion of it?

Lost Childhood?

I feel that both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi are far superior to any of the prequels. And have no more flaws than the original Star Wars. I love that film, the whole original trilogy, in fact. But I wonder how they would hold up if released today? We still talk about inadvertent problems that arise from the story evolving as they went. The Kiss, anyone?

Letting go of the old is not the same as killing it; as Kylo tried to do with Han and then failed to do with Leia. We can learn from the past—appreciate it—but then shed the unnecessary and even harmful traditions to forge something new and, hopefully, better.

After all. Star Wars is and always has been about Hope.

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