Ah, Star Wars The Last Jedi. To say this movie has caused a divide in the fandom of the Star Wars franchise is easily an understatement. Before I get into my full review here about this movie, I need to get a few things clear and out of the way. These things may save you time, as depending on who you are, you may stop reading right now.
1. The Last Jedi has been out sometime now. As the title says, this is SPOILER FILLED. If you have not seen the movie yet, I advise you see it before reading this blog as many, many key parts of the movie will be given away here and discussed thoroughly.
2. I liked this movie. This means according to the internet that I "Can't be a true Star Wars fan", or that I'm "paid by Disney" for how I feel about it. Trust me, this guy ain't paid by Disney, or Lucas Film, Industrial Light and Magic, or even YouTube as the channel hasn't even had enough views yet to make pennies from Google. I liked the film. I will tell you why I liked it, but I won't try to make you like it. The people out there that truly hate this film are more than entitled to their opinions, however, they seem to want to change the opinions of people that did like it. This won't happen here.
3. You are more than welcome to comment your thoughts here on the article, or Star Wars, however, I will not tolerate personal attacks of my opinion or ignorant comments. Trolls, keep to yourself as no one wants you here....or well....generally anywhere. And besides, I won't approve the comment if I feel you are being abusive or offensive anyway.
4. Enjoy this post. This is yes, to defend my opinion on the film, but also hope to show why I feel that way about it. If you disagree, then great! Again, absolutely everyone is entitled to their opinions, but I'm sure some people simply won't like what I have to say here.
5. This will probably be a very long post.
And with that out of the way, "This is where the fun begins".
According to my good friend, I am "that" friend he has that knows everything about Star Wars. Admittedly, I don't know everything or probably even 50% of everything Star Wars (Especially if we include the now "non-existent" EU), but I do love it. I am passionate about it. Like a good little fanboy, there's probably not much that Star Wars could put out that I wouldn't enjoy to some degree. I absolutely adored the way The Last Jedi shook things up in the Star Wars universe, making it completely fresh again. When The Force Awakens first came out in theatres, I remember watching it opening night with friends and they were cheering and clapping at the end of the movie. I, on the other hand, was thinking "Really? Another Death Star? This movie was just like A New Hope..." Yes, I was one of those people. Don't misunderstand me here either, I enjoyed then and still enjoy now TFA, but the similarities between those movies simply can't be ignored. TFA couldn't be called a remake or even a rehash of ANH, but it was very, very familiar to audiences, by design of course. J.J Abrams took the "new but safe" view of Star Wars. Rian Johnson's vision of Star Wars was all about risk-taking. Still familiar and different, but way outta' the reach of "new but safe" and for that I applaud.
Johnson's first shot of the movie set the tone for the rest of it. It's a Star Wars movie. We still got the title crawl; the movie still opened on a planet and a spaceship, but instead of panning somewhere like the rest of the saga, the camera does what the whole movie does: it dives right through what you thought you were going to see. It surprised me simply because I didn't expect it. That is what the movie was about. Telling people like me, "I know you think you know Star Wars, and that's OK, but you don't know it like this". And so begins the divide of the fan base.
Now, some of the criticisms of the film from Star Wars fans are extremely legitimate and totally justified (looking at you Canto Bight scenes). Some are just not though. Some are outright lies or are simply wrong. I'm not talking about opinions now, as no one's opinion is ever wrong. I'm talking about why they have those opinions. So, for starters, let's dive into the "Johnson threw everything that Abrams made out the window". This is simply, and utterly wrong. No matter how you spin your opinion on this, it just isn't true. You may not have got the answers YOU wanted from the questions asked by TFA, but they were answered, which means they were also not ignored or missing. Yes, I as well was let down by the reveal of Rey's parents to be basically no one. As I understand the need for her parents to literally be no one special for Rey's over-all arc to work, I disagree with the choice made here. I get that the hardest thing for Rey to know is that she really comes from nowhere, but I, like many other Star Wars fans not only theorized of who her parents were but wanted to connect the dots of the galaxy far, far away (I believed the Palpatine arc). I also realize if her father was to be, say the Emperor, that it would make the universe that much smaller, and was the complete opposite of what Rian was trying to achieve here. Although I was disappointed with this, I wasn't about to fire-bomb the movie because what I wanted to happen didn't though. It's really selfish for me to think that this movie should have adhered specifically to what I thought it was going to do. If it had kept all the theories out there about Snoke, Rey's parents etc then this movie would have been a complete mess, and simply wouldn't have worked at all, as those theories were so far spread from the insane "that isn't even possible" to the "wow that could be true".
Although I enjoyed most of the humour in TLJ, I also admit that some of it doesn't quite fit in a Star Wars movie. The scene near the start where General Hux thinks that Poe can't hear him over the communicator is very well done, and made me laugh, but is not really Star Wars in my opinion. I felt the same in TFA when Poe first spoke to Kylo Ren saying, "Who talks first? I talk first? You talk first?". It was just out of the realm of SW. They both felt more like a Saturday Night Live skit. However, I have now seen TLJ at least five times, and the humour grew on me. I still laugh when I see the Hux scene.
Speaking of humour, another huge debate right now is the scene where we finally get to see Luke Skywalker for the first time (actually do something) in 30 years. Rey hands him the light-sabre, he looks at it a moment, then quite literally throws it over his shoulder and walks away from it and her. Again, I laughed when I saw it, but was also taken back by it. I think a place Rian missed here is the symbolism that blue-bladed light-sabre has within the SW fan base. That sabre was Anakin Skywalker's originally. It survived through The Clone Wars; was passed down from Obi-wan to Luke. Survived a battle against Darth Vader on Besbin, and then (somehow) survived another 30 years with Mos Kanata to be literally tossed aside like it didn't matter at all. But as a movie lover, I looked deeper into that scene during the next few viewings. That light-sabre is symbolizing something else that people may not get the first time they see that scene. It symbolizes the entire original sage, and Rian was basically saying, "Throw away what you already know". As a metaphor, that scene works extremely well. Again, not a scene I loved, but I understand why it is there.
OK, let's go to the elephant in the room: The Snoke scene. Let's start with the fact that I wasn't into Snoke. Even in TFA, I didn't really like his character. Again, I saw him as "another emperor". Yes, he turned out to be powerful in the dark-side of the force, but he's not a Sith. So then why do I care who or what he is? "He could be so much more than a Sith," or, he could just be the plot point that moves Kylo Ren's story along. Which is exactly what he is. He was the driving force (no pun intended) behind Kylo Ren's transformation from Ben Solo to Kylo Ren (yes, yes, we'll get to the Luke scene). Ben needed a real reason to begin poking at the darkness within him. If the character of Ben Solo was ever going to be a villain, someone has to bring out that darkness, that Vader that runs in his blood. Snoke's character did that.
Some out there are claiming that, "Luke created Kylo Ren when he attacked Ben". This is one of those scenes that truly divided the fan base. This is where we get into the "Luke would never attack his students" or, "A Jedi never quits, or would never do that". The people that believe this need to take a few things into consideration before making these claims. "A Jedi never quits or would never do that" is simply not true. We forget sometimes that our heroes are still human, and as such, should have layers to them. They should make mistakes. They should be flawed in some way. Let's not forget that in Revenge of The Sith, Mace Windu, one of the wisest of Jedi and head of the Jedi council, tried to kill Chancellor Palpatine. Yes, we knew him also as Darth Sidious, but Mace did not. In the banter between Anakin and Mace it is said,
Mace Windu: "I am going to end this once and for all."
Anakin: "You can't. He must stand trial."
Mace Windu: "He has control of the Senate and courts. He's too dangerous to be left alive." and would have killed him if Anakin hadn't have stopped him. This for me is a direct parallel to the scene where Luke looks inside Ben and see's the evil that has festered within him. Fairly, we don't know what Luke saw; maybe he saw the 30 billion lives Ben would help kill using the Star Killer base. Maybe he saw the betrayal at the Jedi Temple. Maybe he saw a new Vader. People make the fight, "He saw the good in Vader and still fought to save Vader. Why give up on Ben?". Maybe Luke saw that Ben was simply not redeemable, at all. I feel like in that one instance, Luke looked at Ben the way Mace did to Palpatine and wanted to end it before it really began. We have all had moments of temptation or second thoughts. Luke is human and no different. "But a Jedi would never give into their fear like that", well there's a problem there too. A Jedi of the Yoda Republic, no they wouldn't, but Luke didn't go through the same training as they did. Luke knighted himself a master Jedi and surely did not learn everything the way say Qui-Gon Jinn did.
This really is also a display of why Luke is the way he is in TLJ. He's broken by the guilt of that 1-second mistake in judgement. He did not create Kylo Ren, but he did make Ben "crap or get off the pot" though. He certainly didn't help Ben, but Kylo Ren was clearly already created. Ben returned that night, as the movie said, to destroy the temple with the Knights of Ren. If we are to believe the force vision that Rey saw in TFA, then Kylo already had his helmet. Therefore, was already planning on something big like this. Admittedly, that force vision from TFA still actually makes no sense at all in the timeline. If we are to believe that it takes place as I've described, then how did Kylo get his Blue light-sabre forged into his cross-guard sabre with a red blade in what I would guess is a short time Luke was unconscious? People have said the vision still hasn't happened yet. OK, so then I guess Kylo, who has not only decided for almost the entire Last Jedi movie to go mask-less and then literally destroyed the mask, will choose to wear it for that scene with the Knights of Ren again? I find that a little far-fetched too. Oh well. small holes (or large ones) are normal in a SW movie too.
One last point about, "Luke just wouldn't do that". It should be "Luke just wouldn't have done that" because 25-year-old or 30-year-old Return of The Jedi Luke would absolutely not even have the thought of killing his own nephew. 30 years later, things might be different. Anyone that says their views, opinions and themselves are identical at 30 as they are at 60 are full of dung. "Your focus shapes your reality" was said in The Phantom Menace, and it is so true. The truth is, we are just starting to find out what happened to Luke in the 30-year gap between Return of The Jedi and TFA. We have no idea what trials Luke has gone through. What pain he has endured. Maybe eventually we'll hear Luke lost Mara-Jade over those years, for any of you EU lovers out there. I actually liked that part of an EU storyline that Luke was married. For those that aren't huge SW nerds, EU is Expanded Universe and is no longer considered Canon or "really happening" in SW as of 2014.
Apparently, I could write novels about why parts of the movie are misinterpreted, or misrepresented. So maybe I will break this blog posting up into different groups or ideas rather than one over-all view. I still haven't even touched on Poe's characterization, Leia's "Superman" scene, Force Projections, Force "Skype", no light-sabre real battle, Canto Bite as a whole, Rose and Finn's "Romance", Rey's training. The list could actually continue. So maybe I'll cover off segments of the movie in future blogs.
1. The Last Jedi has been out sometime now. As the title says, this is SPOILER FILLED. If you have not seen the movie yet, I advise you see it before reading this blog as many, many key parts of the movie will be given away here and discussed thoroughly.
2. I liked this movie. This means according to the internet that I "Can't be a true Star Wars fan", or that I'm "paid by Disney" for how I feel about it. Trust me, this guy ain't paid by Disney, or Lucas Film, Industrial Light and Magic, or even YouTube as the channel hasn't even had enough views yet to make pennies from Google. I liked the film. I will tell you why I liked it, but I won't try to make you like it. The people out there that truly hate this film are more than entitled to their opinions, however, they seem to want to change the opinions of people that did like it. This won't happen here.
3. You are more than welcome to comment your thoughts here on the article, or Star Wars, however, I will not tolerate personal attacks of my opinion or ignorant comments. Trolls, keep to yourself as no one wants you here....or well....generally anywhere. And besides, I won't approve the comment if I feel you are being abusive or offensive anyway.
4. Enjoy this post. This is yes, to defend my opinion on the film, but also hope to show why I feel that way about it. If you disagree, then great! Again, absolutely everyone is entitled to their opinions, but I'm sure some people simply won't like what I have to say here.
5. This will probably be a very long post.
And with that out of the way, "This is where the fun begins".
According to my good friend, I am "that" friend he has that knows everything about Star Wars. Admittedly, I don't know everything or probably even 50% of everything Star Wars (Especially if we include the now "non-existent" EU), but I do love it. I am passionate about it. Like a good little fanboy, there's probably not much that Star Wars could put out that I wouldn't enjoy to some degree. I absolutely adored the way The Last Jedi shook things up in the Star Wars universe, making it completely fresh again. When The Force Awakens first came out in theatres, I remember watching it opening night with friends and they were cheering and clapping at the end of the movie. I, on the other hand, was thinking "Really? Another Death Star? This movie was just like A New Hope..." Yes, I was one of those people. Don't misunderstand me here either, I enjoyed then and still enjoy now TFA, but the similarities between those movies simply can't be ignored. TFA couldn't be called a remake or even a rehash of ANH, but it was very, very familiar to audiences, by design of course. J.J Abrams took the "new but safe" view of Star Wars. Rian Johnson's vision of Star Wars was all about risk-taking. Still familiar and different, but way outta' the reach of "new but safe" and for that I applaud.
Johnson's first shot of the movie set the tone for the rest of it. It's a Star Wars movie. We still got the title crawl; the movie still opened on a planet and a spaceship, but instead of panning somewhere like the rest of the saga, the camera does what the whole movie does: it dives right through what you thought you were going to see. It surprised me simply because I didn't expect it. That is what the movie was about. Telling people like me, "I know you think you know Star Wars, and that's OK, but you don't know it like this". And so begins the divide of the fan base.
Now, some of the criticisms of the film from Star Wars fans are extremely legitimate and totally justified (looking at you Canto Bight scenes). Some are just not though. Some are outright lies or are simply wrong. I'm not talking about opinions now, as no one's opinion is ever wrong. I'm talking about why they have those opinions. So, for starters, let's dive into the "Johnson threw everything that Abrams made out the window". This is simply, and utterly wrong. No matter how you spin your opinion on this, it just isn't true. You may not have got the answers YOU wanted from the questions asked by TFA, but they were answered, which means they were also not ignored or missing. Yes, I as well was let down by the reveal of Rey's parents to be basically no one. As I understand the need for her parents to literally be no one special for Rey's over-all arc to work, I disagree with the choice made here. I get that the hardest thing for Rey to know is that she really comes from nowhere, but I, like many other Star Wars fans not only theorized of who her parents were but wanted to connect the dots of the galaxy far, far away (I believed the Palpatine arc). I also realize if her father was to be, say the Emperor, that it would make the universe that much smaller, and was the complete opposite of what Rian was trying to achieve here. Although I was disappointed with this, I wasn't about to fire-bomb the movie because what I wanted to happen didn't though. It's really selfish for me to think that this movie should have adhered specifically to what I thought it was going to do. If it had kept all the theories out there about Snoke, Rey's parents etc then this movie would have been a complete mess, and simply wouldn't have worked at all, as those theories were so far spread from the insane "that isn't even possible" to the "wow that could be true".
Although I enjoyed most of the humour in TLJ, I also admit that some of it doesn't quite fit in a Star Wars movie. The scene near the start where General Hux thinks that Poe can't hear him over the communicator is very well done, and made me laugh, but is not really Star Wars in my opinion. I felt the same in TFA when Poe first spoke to Kylo Ren saying, "Who talks first? I talk first? You talk first?". It was just out of the realm of SW. They both felt more like a Saturday Night Live skit. However, I have now seen TLJ at least five times, and the humour grew on me. I still laugh when I see the Hux scene.
Speaking of humour, another huge debate right now is the scene where we finally get to see Luke Skywalker for the first time (actually do something) in 30 years. Rey hands him the light-sabre, he looks at it a moment, then quite literally throws it over his shoulder and walks away from it and her. Again, I laughed when I saw it, but was also taken back by it. I think a place Rian missed here is the symbolism that blue-bladed light-sabre has within the SW fan base. That sabre was Anakin Skywalker's originally. It survived through The Clone Wars; was passed down from Obi-wan to Luke. Survived a battle against Darth Vader on Besbin, and then (somehow) survived another 30 years with Mos Kanata to be literally tossed aside like it didn't matter at all. But as a movie lover, I looked deeper into that scene during the next few viewings. That light-sabre is symbolizing something else that people may not get the first time they see that scene. It symbolizes the entire original sage, and Rian was basically saying, "Throw away what you already know". As a metaphor, that scene works extremely well. Again, not a scene I loved, but I understand why it is there.
OK, let's go to the elephant in the room: The Snoke scene. Let's start with the fact that I wasn't into Snoke. Even in TFA, I didn't really like his character. Again, I saw him as "another emperor". Yes, he turned out to be powerful in the dark-side of the force, but he's not a Sith. So then why do I care who or what he is? "He could be so much more than a Sith," or, he could just be the plot point that moves Kylo Ren's story along. Which is exactly what he is. He was the driving force (no pun intended) behind Kylo Ren's transformation from Ben Solo to Kylo Ren (yes, yes, we'll get to the Luke scene). Ben needed a real reason to begin poking at the darkness within him. If the character of Ben Solo was ever going to be a villain, someone has to bring out that darkness, that Vader that runs in his blood. Snoke's character did that.
Some out there are claiming that, "Luke created Kylo Ren when he attacked Ben". This is one of those scenes that truly divided the fan base. This is where we get into the "Luke would never attack his students" or, "A Jedi never quits, or would never do that". The people that believe this need to take a few things into consideration before making these claims. "A Jedi never quits or would never do that" is simply not true. We forget sometimes that our heroes are still human, and as such, should have layers to them. They should make mistakes. They should be flawed in some way. Let's not forget that in Revenge of The Sith, Mace Windu, one of the wisest of Jedi and head of the Jedi council, tried to kill Chancellor Palpatine. Yes, we knew him also as Darth Sidious, but Mace did not. In the banter between Anakin and Mace it is said,
Mace Windu: "I am going to end this once and for all."
Anakin: "You can't. He must stand trial."
Mace Windu: "He has control of the Senate and courts. He's too dangerous to be left alive." and would have killed him if Anakin hadn't have stopped him. This for me is a direct parallel to the scene where Luke looks inside Ben and see's the evil that has festered within him. Fairly, we don't know what Luke saw; maybe he saw the 30 billion lives Ben would help kill using the Star Killer base. Maybe he saw the betrayal at the Jedi Temple. Maybe he saw a new Vader. People make the fight, "He saw the good in Vader and still fought to save Vader. Why give up on Ben?". Maybe Luke saw that Ben was simply not redeemable, at all. I feel like in that one instance, Luke looked at Ben the way Mace did to Palpatine and wanted to end it before it really began. We have all had moments of temptation or second thoughts. Luke is human and no different. "But a Jedi would never give into their fear like that", well there's a problem there too. A Jedi of the Yoda Republic, no they wouldn't, but Luke didn't go through the same training as they did. Luke knighted himself a master Jedi and surely did not learn everything the way say Qui-Gon Jinn did.
This really is also a display of why Luke is the way he is in TLJ. He's broken by the guilt of that 1-second mistake in judgement. He did not create Kylo Ren, but he did make Ben "crap or get off the pot" though. He certainly didn't help Ben, but Kylo Ren was clearly already created. Ben returned that night, as the movie said, to destroy the temple with the Knights of Ren. If we are to believe the force vision that Rey saw in TFA, then Kylo already had his helmet. Therefore, was already planning on something big like this. Admittedly, that force vision from TFA still actually makes no sense at all in the timeline. If we are to believe that it takes place as I've described, then how did Kylo get his Blue light-sabre forged into his cross-guard sabre with a red blade in what I would guess is a short time Luke was unconscious? People have said the vision still hasn't happened yet. OK, so then I guess Kylo, who has not only decided for almost the entire Last Jedi movie to go mask-less and then literally destroyed the mask, will choose to wear it for that scene with the Knights of Ren again? I find that a little far-fetched too. Oh well. small holes (or large ones) are normal in a SW movie too.
One last point about, "Luke just wouldn't do that". It should be "Luke just wouldn't have done that" because 25-year-old or 30-year-old Return of The Jedi Luke would absolutely not even have the thought of killing his own nephew. 30 years later, things might be different. Anyone that says their views, opinions and themselves are identical at 30 as they are at 60 are full of dung. "Your focus shapes your reality" was said in The Phantom Menace, and it is so true. The truth is, we are just starting to find out what happened to Luke in the 30-year gap between Return of The Jedi and TFA. We have no idea what trials Luke has gone through. What pain he has endured. Maybe eventually we'll hear Luke lost Mara-Jade over those years, for any of you EU lovers out there. I actually liked that part of an EU storyline that Luke was married. For those that aren't huge SW nerds, EU is Expanded Universe and is no longer considered Canon or "really happening" in SW as of 2014.
Apparently, I could write novels about why parts of the movie are misinterpreted, or misrepresented. So maybe I will break this blog posting up into different groups or ideas rather than one over-all view. I still haven't even touched on Poe's characterization, Leia's "Superman" scene, Force Projections, Force "Skype", no light-sabre real battle, Canto Bite as a whole, Rose and Finn's "Romance", Rey's training. The list could actually continue. So maybe I'll cover off segments of the movie in future blogs.
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