This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

starring: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Kelly Marie Tran, Benicio del Toro(?), robots

directed by: Rian Johnson


I'm supposed to start by telling you how disappointed I am in all of this. See, I'm not a professional review-smith, so I'm supposed to have very mixed feelings about all this new Star Wars business, to say the least. And this wherein "mixed feelings" means garment-rending condemnation including accusations of laziness, ineptitude and MAYBE ACTUAL CHILD MURDER?!?!?

Probably not the last one, but only because I included the word "actual." The internet is rife with charges of metaphorical childhood murder, e.g. "George Lucas murdered my childhood with this stupid fucking prequel movies" and the like. It really was the first time I became aware of the idea of murdering another person's childhood with the deeply problematic Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The point is that the fandom is there, it's ever-present; it's vocal, it's melodramatic, it's violently obsessive and it has access to social media. When they are disappointed, they will be heard and the depths of their bullshit will not be bound by any measure of human rationality.

You want to know what they're not, though? Fickle. They are not fickle. They are absolutely constant in identifying the thing that they like. And the thing that they like is the thing that they saw in 1977 or a copy of the thing made in 1977 (in whatever remake/reissue format they happened upon at whatever magically impressionable age they first encountered a Wookiee). Scrappy band of rebels on the edge of defeat band together to blow up a murder-laser machine. YES PLEASE. Anything else? The sort of pure, unbounded hate we normally reserve for puppy-killers and modern-day Republicans.

I know you're thinking "but Empire Strikes Back didn't have any planet-killer-laser machines and everyone thinks that's so so great." Well, first of all, watch the condescending tone. Secondly, did everyone always think Empire was great? Or was that a begrudging admission years later after the retread Return of the Jedi came out and put all of those dark plot points into context and the mastery of the middle film could no longer be credibly denied?

Am I saying The Last Jedi is Empire? Nope. But I'm telling you right now: I loved it. I mean I properly loved it. And I know I really loved it because the more I think about it, the more I realize how much I loved it.

I've already been in a few (good natured) Facebook fights about this because apparently I'm the only one who loved it. And I say this knowing this movie wasn't really made for me.

I was born in 1974, or in super Star Wars nerd parlance, 3 BBY.* I didn't see it in the first run in theaters, but I did see it in a drive-in because VHS didn't really exist and popular movies popped up in theaters and drive-ins from time to time because people would pay money to see them again. For all intents and purposes, I was of that first generation of Star Wars fans, just old enough to catch RotJ in theaters on the first run.

So did I hate the prequels? Yep. But I've since reconsidered them with the idea that they were meant for a new generation of children that didn't include me. It's something that should have occurred to me sooner since I had tickets to see Episode I that I had to abandon because my oldest son was born on that day. I couldn't have asked for a more literal signal of a generational shift. And I'd been trained enough in critical thinking as an academic to pull away the obscuring veil of nostalgia and take it in with unclouded eyes. And in the end I came to the conclusion: fuck Jar-Jar Binks. That shit was hot garbage.

The Force Awakens was not universally loved because it was so deliberately derivative of the original film, but it was done with such competence and obvious affection, it's film that is almost impossible to stay mad at. I watch it whenever it's on cable, or large parts of it at least. But young people thrown together by circumstance conspire to kill millions by self-destructing a habitable super-weapon. We all get it.

The Last Jedi on the other hand has it's explicit mission--openly stated by several characters throughout the film, over and over again--to kill the past. To replace it with something else. And in the replacing, we will be left rudderless and alone, to fend for ourselves, with little or no idea of what is to become of us in the looming, darkening years ahead. But that's what this movie does, again and again and again. The tent-poles from the first films--Han, Leia, Luke--are being kicked away, the second one less by plot and more tragically by actual life. Even the structure of the evil dark-side overlord has been purposely and purposefully derailed so that the whole thing has come crashing in on us. It would be scary and unsettling enough if it weren't done with such brio and glee one might, if it's misunderstood, take for disdain.

I didn't take it that way. I took it all as an invitation into something larger, wider, outside the narrow channel of George Lucas and his repeating leitmotif and story-rhymes. And I took it with the realization that this, too, was not made for me. It was made for the now-grown-up children who saw Episode I and grew up with that as their Star Wars. And it's for those former children's children.

All of this happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I don't remember Empire in its first run. So for the first time that I can recall, it finally feels properly like a galaxy, an infinitely wide space from a human perspective, where not everyone is connected to everyone else by coincidence, romance or blood.

But I'm not here to convince anyone. Maybe try, though: close your eyes. Breathe. Maybe don't reach out with your feelings because that's pseudo-spiritual hippie bullshit, but try lightening up a half a touch. The Canto Bight stuff wasn't great. And the milk thing was gross and gratuitous, sure. It wasn't perfect. In two years, though, maybe it will get a lot closer. Just like Empire did. I can't wait to see.


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*only "sort of" nerds, I know, Jesus...