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reginasrandomthoughts · 6 years

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Kill your heroes - an opinion on why The Last Jedi feels different

(guys, you know the drill, I wanted to do something short, it became long, it is under the cut, I am tired, as per usual, so I probably lost my train of thought at points, if you are interested read it, if not not, if you wanna correct me at any point or discuss with me, please do so. I love a good talk)

Even before I saw The Last Jedi I was aware that some people had issues with it. Chatter was that it mishandled Luke’s character and that it did not feel like a Star Wars movie, and I have to agree with it, It does not feel like the other Star Wars movies because it is purposefully trying to distance itself from them. Or, to quote my bae

“Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to”

This approach was a bit of a shocker to me as well, especially after The Force Awakens tried its absolute damnest to remind us of what the original trilogy was like. It was basically New Hope 2.0 with a few tweeks. TFA set up a pattern and expectations and The Last Jedi decided to shit all over it, but it didn’t come out of the blue.

TFA already sets up the scene: The victory at the end of Return of the Jedi was hallow, Palpatine’s death did not matter because the Empire rebranded and came back swinging and the New Republic fell apart. Everything fell apart and our heroes couldn’t keep it together. That is already pretty depressing. Even the Extended Universe, that had the same job of continuing from RotJ didn’t go that far. It was always “oh, there is still some Empire commanders fighting isolated battles”, “oh, some new invaders are coming”. It gave our heroes their victory so that was what we were expecting, but TFA already took it away from us.

Furthermore, it underlined that our heroes might not be as good of a people as we imagined. We knew nothing of Leia and Han’s parenting skills, only that their son ended up being the main enemy. (Yes, I know about Jacen Solo. Don’t spoil, not there yet in the Legends Era *spits into the corner*) Also, Han and Leia are not together. Their relationship fell apart and Han pretty much abandoned her in a difficult situation. Han also didn’t change, didn’t step up to be a better man and he also lost the Falcon, something that became very special to all the fans. And of course, Luke disappeared and we already know that he trained B/Ren.

TFA already claims that our heroes are failures, or at the very least more flawed than we are willing to admit.

Enter The Last Jedi.

The Last Jedi knows what the audience expects from it. And it deliberately refuses to give it to us.

The greatest example is Poe. Poe is the new Han Solo: he has the swagger, the arrogance but also the skill. He is an amazing pilot but he hasn’t an ounce of respect towards the chain of command and thinks he knows better than everyone else. Now let’s see how the Star Warstm pattern works out for him:

First action scene, he has an insane near suicidal plan but he pulls it off. But at what cost? Many people died, the bomber fleet is gone and we have to face the fact that there is like 3?4? Resistance ships left with roughly 400 people. Poe refused to get out of there when he was ordered to, many people died and in the end it was proven useless, because the First Order found them again withing 30 seconds. This already undermines our expectations: we expect them to get away with it like Luke did when he blew up Death Star #1. But this is not that Star Wars anymore.

Now the next stunt is basically the same as in RotJ when the Rebel Alliance has to by time to knock of the shield generators. This time around they have to buy time so Poe’s insane plan of getting a codebreaker in there to get the tracker offline so they can get away. The stakes here are different: they aren’t fighting for victory, they stand no chance. They are fighting for survival. The bloody miracle that bought the Rebels their victory is devalued into something that now is good enough only to buy them a little bit more time alive.

And they cannot pull it off. Poe is a gambler. He likes the kind of high stakes, high rewards plans that Star Wars (Orige Trige) was known for. He acts as we expect him to act, but he cannot pull of the miracle. Finn and Rose bring back a codebreaker. Then get it. Smooth sailing right? It will be a close call but they will make it. Look, DJ even gives Rose back her necklace, he must be one of those Hollywood outlaws with a heart of gold who will come through when necessary. But no, they get captured and get sold out. Poe’s plan did not only fail, thanks to it the rebel transporters get picked out one by one. They loose so many people. Most of the Resistance dies because Poe wanted to make one of those Star Wars gambles and he couldn’t pull it off.

And I think this is why it was important? good? to keep Holdo’s plan a secret from the audience. We were emotionally invested in Poe’s plan. When he stages his rebellion we were with him, trusting this to go off well, bc that is what Star Wars taught us would happen. And then suddenly Leia comes in, wacks Poe’s takeover and we realize that there was a much safer way to do things. Something that would have worked if not for Poe. Is it stupid in universe? Most likely, yea. Holdo should have told someone. But from a message point of view it paid off. Poe pretty much managed to off the Resistance with his stupidity, but he learned his lesson.

The next classic Star Wars moment, the suicide run against the battering ram cannon (hello X-wing runs from New Hope) is one where he recognizes that he cannot pull it off. It cannot be done. Choose life, and live to fight another day. And that’s what he does and that is the good call, we see it because it almost costs Finn his life.

These insane last minute saves are such a great part of the identity of Star Wars. New Hope has it, Return of the Jedi has it, The Force Awakens has it, heck Rouge One is one big Ave Maria. We are conditioned to expect them to work, but here they simply don’t. That is a large part of why it might not “feel like a Star Wars movie”.

Another part of course, is the Jedi. Luke. Luke is the big legend, the idol, the savior of the galaxy far, far away and we, just like Rey, expects him to live up to it. But Luke failed miserably. He got arrogant then he got in way over his head, buying into his own glory and he made a mistake. He did not catch Ben being corrupted then he got scared and wanted to murder him, quintessentially spooking him into being Ren. Luke’s failure as a master and as FAMILY created Kylo Ren. And what did he do after? He ran away. Not the glorious hero we expected.

And if this is not enough then the Jedi, the universally accepted good guys of the Star Wars universe get shade thrown on them as well. We cannot pretend that oh, its Luke’s training not being complete. He was alone, of course he failed. He reminds the audience that Darth Vader was trained by Jedi as well, and why did Anakin fall? Because the Jedi demanded from him to kill his humanity. The Jedi order’s very code created Vader. And if that is not enough than the raise of Palpatine happened at the height of the Jedi’s power. Yet they got whiped out.

And that is not something that was invented in TLJ or TFA, it was in the Original and Prequel films. TLJ does nothing more than tear down the wall of nostalgia around these things and highlights how incompetent these people were.

And now let’s move on to Luke’s death. Luke’s death is Obi-Wan’s death: the old master facing the monster that was born from the student he failed. He dies pretty much the same way as well, short fight, gets killed, turns into a Force ghost. Why? Luke has to die because he is a part of the old Jedi order, because he is a failed hero but why does he get Obi-Wan’s death? Why make the purposeful call back? Because now we have context. It adds a layer to Obi-Wan as well. These are two man who are facing down their own mistakes and they are both arrogant about it. “Strike me down and I will stay with you forever” “Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine”. They plan to haunt their killers, to be a reminder to them that there is some power outside if their reach. To choose how they die is the only victory they can achieve.

But Luke here can be assumed to be trying to accomplish something else as well: Yoda told him to teach Rey his failure. Can he possibly be trying to show Rey that Ren is irredeemable? That would be a very Jedi thing to do, wouldn’t it? In Phantom Menace Yoda wants to throw away the obviously very talented and powerful Anakin because he is not a perfect Jedi candidate, Obi-Wan refuses to acknowledge Vader was ever Anakin for quite a while and of course Luke decided that Ben needed to be gotten rid of since he has a taint. The Jedi, Luke’s Jedi, demanded a kind of inhuman perfection and that has to die, especially since Rey shows to be different from them. A new kind of Jedi, a new kind of hero.

Another aspect in which Obi-Wan and Luke’s death are similar is that they are leaving behind a new apprentice to take down the monster. But as we saw with Poe’s example’s, this is not that game anymore, so Luke’s gamble is not nearly as sure, especially since Rey is different than what Luke was.

And now let’s move to one more piece of deconstruction of the old Star Wars tropes. Vader and Luke vs Palpatine / Rey and Kylo vs Snoke. It plays out pretty similarly for a while but with a quite a bit of a difference: Rey cannot talk Ren into turning back to Ben. As we established, this is not how it will work anymore. A few nice words and an “I believe in you” won’t right the wrongs and save the world anymore. One of the bigger differences here is that Ren is not dying. For him turning back would mean something very different than what it did to Vader and anyway, Ren likes being Ren. He feels like he has a place where he is and that he was rejected in the chaotic world of the Resistance. Ren’s story wouldn’t conveniently end with a “yay I turned now I am dead” just so the good guys can pretend they saved him.

In many ways TLJ saw Ren come into his own. He, just like Rey and the audience clung to the nostalgia, he idolized his predecessor, Vader and in this film very early on was challenged in his identity as the new Vader. “you are no Vader just a kid in a mask”. So he destroys the mask. He destroys his pretense of being Vader. He does what Vader never did and makes a connection to someone on the light side of the Force. He is no mere petsy anymore either. The minute he rejects the Vader persona he starts acting on his own accord: he gets into his ship, he commands his small platoon and he makes the critical choice of not killing Leia. In the previous movie killing a parent was a step closer to the dark side, towards becoming Vader but now he rejects it. Is it that he cannot bring himself to do it this close to another? Is it that his commitment to the dark side is wavering? Or is it that he refuses to walk a path he does not truly wants to? At that moment he does not want Leia to die and from this perspective Leia’s survival makes sense.

Tangent: I know that Leia surviving the way she did was stupid from an in universe perspective because she never exhibited Force control powers before and for her to pull something on this scale, but it makes more of a sense if you think about this as an unconscious thing. Pure survival instinct kicking in. AND it was important bc the TIE fighters showed us what Ren was supposed to do, they made sure we know that yes, he could have killed Leia. But he didn’t. So Leia was saved via Force Powers bc.... you know, Ren uses the force as well so it is a sorta weird stand in. Execution was weird here.

BTW, this was the point where Snoke signed his own death warrant. He wanted a new Vader but he ripped Kylo’s identity as the new Vader away from him, forcing him to look for something else to be. And part of that was rejecting Snoke’s demands to kill his still living parent, Rey and to be a petsy. Vader was a glorified henchman and REN refused to be one. So he offed Snoke. And with that Supreme Leader Ren was born.

Now, I use this title because it is very fitting at this point because Ren is pretty much the driving force, or at least the manifestation of the driving idea behind The Last Jedi. Ren stood on both sides and was disappointed in all of his heroes, all of our heroes. Leia, Han, Luke, Vader, heck even the new replacement Snoke proved to be a failure. Ren came out on the other side of the experience wanting to “Let the past die”. He says “Kill it” but only “if you have to”. He wants to get rid of all of this past nonsense, get out of the shadows of those coming before him, stop being a copy only there to repeat patterns and to live up to what other people expect him to be.

Ren’s decision changes the game. The minute he decides on his new path, when he lets go of Darth Vader things shift: Poe’s final miracle happens before that, but after Ren changes his platoon wrecks the lead ship sending Leia into a coma, without the proper leadership the Resistance gets into a bad situation where Poe acts against orders trying to play according to the old rule book, he fails. Ren is not Vader, he is not Palpatine or Snoke, the same tricks do not work with him and the Resistance reaches some success only when they change tactics (e.g. retreat rather than do a suicide run against the battering ram cannon).

So Ren changed the game, he wants to burn down the old, so the question is what will remain or what will emerge? That is Rey’s job to answer. Ren tells us what the new trilogy isn’t but Rey should define what it is. What stays? What becomes new? Episode IX’s job will be to establish what the new Star Wars is like and yea, maybe the backlash will make Disney chicken out and revert to the old ways but I hope it won’t.

We, the audience should learn to be a bit more like Rey and Ren and let go of the past, stop glorifying it and stop letting it define what the present and the future can be.

#sw tlj meta #sw tlj spoilers #regina shitposts #she is still horrible at it #and now she apparently got into the habit of writing meta???

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