The Last Jedi Is Too Terrible to be Good and Too Well Done to Be Awful

The latest installment of Star Wars juggles many themes, such as sacrifice, trust, legacy, inner turmoil, letting go of the past, and hope for the future, but I think the grander lesson can be summed up as this: screwing up someone's plan will have short term consequences, but everything will turn out alright in the end. This is reflected both in the characters' actions, and by Writer/Director Rian Johnson's decision to apparently throw out whatever plan, if any, was in place from The Force Awakens.

Many of the film's defenders describe it as bold and/or ballsy for digging into the characters' consistent failures and for scrapping any respect for their expectations. And they're right. It is bold for telling the audiences that what they were expecting to see doesn't matter to him, but those defenders don't get to take umbrage when some interpret that as a giant middle finger. The films succeeds in doing the unexpected in a familiar way, but I hesitate to give it credit for choices that weaken the narrative. For simplicity's sake, I'm saving my nitpicky Star Wars Fan criticisms for another post.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

Rose and Finn's Excellent Adventure 

I don't have much to say about this, so I'll get it out of the way first. This side quest was a fun diversion from the main story line and gave more depth and texture to the galaxy. But the fact that it went almost nowhere made it undeserved screen time. As far as I can tell, the only significance it had to the larger story was giving Finn the opportunity to fight Captain Phasma, and messing up the Vice Admiral's evacuation plan. Neither of which felt like a proper finale to a mini-adventure that took place on a far away planet. With a movie that's longer than average, it might have been more effective to have Finn and Rose board the First Order ship right away, and then have a Mission Impossible style adventure sneaking around Phasma and the evil rolling droid. This would then lead to getting captured, breaking out, and a final confrontation with Phasma. There's clearly a lot going on between her and Finn, but in the current version, we get mere minutes to explore it before its all over.

 

This also would have given Rose more to do than just comment on how terrible the galaxy is. She was the original instigator of the mission, but after that, she had almost nothing to contribute on the mission, and then later, she saved Finn from a plan we have no reason to believe would not have worked. Don't get me wrong, I like her and thought she was definitely a fresh faced character we hadn't seen before, but she was basically the sidekick in Finn's mini-story. She was also a forced love interest that no doubt devastated Poe/Finn shippers. Again, expectations mean nothing to Rian Johnson.

Rey's Story

One of the many lingering questions from TFA was Rey's parentage. There were several signs that she was somehow connected to the Solo/Skywalker clan, such as her Force vision reaction to Anakin's lightsaber, her natural talent with the Force, her intuitive mechanical skills, Han acting as father figure, and Leia hugging her the first time she sees her. Many fan theories were bouncing around for the last two years. Readers of the Legends continuity hoped she would be Han and Leia's daughter and thus a modern version of Jaina Solo. Other hoped she would be Luke's daughter and the heir to his legacy. The suggested parentage branched out even more to include Obi-wan and Palpatine. The point is, many fans were expecting a big grand reveal on par with Vader's, "I am your father."

Well after several scenes building up to the reveal in The Last Jedi, including a visually cool vision, Rey learns her parents are ... nobody important. So unimportant they don't even get names or faces.

SURPRISE!!!

Suffice to say, this was disappointing to those who had invested in the idea that Rey's lineage had some sort of significance. I was in the Jaina Solo camp for a long time, and as I was watching the story unfold, I grew more convinced of it.

Heirs of the Force

Part of what made the case for Rey being Leia's daughter so compelling is her conflict with Kylo Ren a.k.a. Ben Solo. If you disregard the knowledge of her actual background, this conflict takes on the appearance of estranged siblings trying to come back together, but ultimately fighting over their parent's legacy. For instance, they both spend much of the film trying to convince the other to join them. Kylo respects Rey's power enough to want her as an ally, and Rey, knowing that Ben came from good, wants to redeem him. It's a clear echo of the Luke/Vader relationship from the original trilogy, even down to the paths each took to get there. Kylo was lured to the dark side, betrayed his master, and took his place as a powerful darksider leading an interstellar empire. Rey on the other hand, grew up an orphan on a desert planet, wondering about the parents she never knew, eventually met a man from the previous generation, was given a lightsaber that released her true potential as a Jedi, then took some lessons from the betrayed Jedi master, now living in seclusion.

By the time the two meet for their confrontation, they each have followed in the footsteps of an older character. Kylo has obviously mirrored Vader, and Rey has mimicked Luke. It's a clear callback to Return of the Jedi, but changes up the ending to distinguish itself. Neither sways the other and then end up in a literal tug-of-war over Anakin's lightsaber. I particularly enjoyed this because it symbolized their mutual struggle to claim the Skywalker mantle. For Rey, the weapon represents all that is good and heroic about being Jedi. For Kylo, it represents the respect, admiration, and reverence that he has yet to live up to. Eventually, the lightsaber breaks in half because neither one can really be everything that Luke or Vader were and they both have to let go of those standards.

It would have been a wonderfully effective duel between these two characters if not for one thing. Rey isn't related to the Skywalkers whatsoever. She has no claim to Anakin or Luke's legacy, she has no agency or stakes in wanting to redeem Kylo nor in wanting to be a Jedi. In fact, her entire motivation is completely muddled. We know she wants to find her parents, and wants to help the Resistance, but that's all. Everything else just comes off as going through the motions in a weaker recreation of the original trilogy. In the end, there are no personal consequences for her if she fails. Kylo likewise has no reason to care about her, or make an effort to court her to the dark side. If anything, he should be hell bent on killing her because as far as he knows, she's just some untrained waif who kicked his ass in her first lightsaber duel ever.

I'm not saying Rey absolutely had to be a Skywalker, but the story as it's currently structured doesn't make sense without that component.

Where There's Snoke There's Fired 

Another lingering question from TFA was, who is Snoke? We knew he was some sort of powerful darksider with a messed up face who turned Ben Solo evil and functioned as the Palpatine equivalent to the First Order. But that's all. The Last Jedi added almost nothing to that information and then unceremoniously killed him. Again, a bold move on Johnson's part that some took as having their hopes quashed. I'm of the opinion that it's important to understand how and why Snoke formed the First Order, and his relationship with Ben Solo. We learn that he got to Ben while the latter was still training with Luke. Which then begs the question of how he did that. Did he work at the Jedi school? Was he telepathically communicating? Was he pulling a Palaptine double identity gambit? All are possible, but none are specified. 

Much like with Rey, there were many fan theories to Snoke's identity. Was he Mace Windu? Dark Maul? Palpatine's father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate? Unlike Rey, I didn't think he needed to be someone we knew already, but I think it was important to give the audience something to understand the threat he posed. 

Now you may be thinking, "wait, Palpatine didn't really have a backstory in the original trilogy and everyone was okay with that. Why is it a problem here?" The reason ROTJ could get away with it is because they gave us enough information in the first film. The galaxy used to run by a Republic, but at some point the Emperor took power and converted it into a military dictatorship administrated by cruel governors who have no regard for human life. It's understood that the Empire spans almost everywhere and it represents is a great evil that must be overthrown to restore peace and justice to the galaxy. We can even excuse ridiculous war contraptions like the Death Star because we understand there's a massive military industrial complex behind it.

On the other hand, we don't know what the First Order is, how it came to be, or even what its trying to accomplish. We know it's outside the Republic, but didn't directly challenge the Republic. We know they somehow scraped up enough resources to build a fleet and Starkiller base, but without knowing the scale, that has a flimsy justification. And what's Snoke's role in it? Does he fancy himself the next Emperor? Is overthrowing the Resistance a means to an end. Is he just an asshole? You see how it's hard to understand the stakes when we don't know... what's at stake.

Let me put this another way. Let's say someone was making a movie trilogy about World War I. For the sake of argument, assume the audience in this scenario knows nothing of history. We have a massive unprecedented conflict with the "good guys" being the British/French/Americans and the "bad guys" in the Germans/Ottomans. (I know this is an oversimplification, just bear with me). They fight and they fight and eventually the good guys win and the trilogy ends with peace throughout the world, which was implied at the end of Return of the Jedi. 

Now imagine there's a sequel trilogy that takes place during World War 2. It picks up just as the Battle of France is ending. The opening crawl says something like "The Nazis lead by the evil Chancellor Hitler are on the march across Europe, driving the Allies back to the sea." Again, if the audience isn't familiar with history, its very confusing where this new threat came from. Who is this guy Hitler? Who are the Nazis? Are they like the Germans from the first trilogy? What are they trying to accomplish? What happened to the world peace? 

This is how it feels watching the First Order run around. They're like the original bad guys, but not. They're doing similar things, but not necessarily for the same reasons, and rather suddenly they're the top dogs in the galaxy. How? Admittedly, some of these question should have been answered in TFA. But it kicked the answers down the road in lieu of getting audiences reacquainted with the SW universe. So it became The Last Jedi's responsibility to answer them. But Johnson passed on filling us in and, to add injury to insult, he killed Snoke and crushed all hopes that answers would ever come. Just to let this sink in, over the course of two movies, Snoke had about as much screen time as Darth Maul and met the same fate.

The Past is Prologue

One of the primary themes of the film is letting go of the past to move onto a better future. This is told most effectively through Luke's story as he struggles to overcome the mistakes of the past. The burning of the Jedi sanctum and his final confrontation with Kylo is one of the better examples of execution. In both cases, the lesson is the same. You can't destroy the past, but you can learn from it, then let it go because you can't stop the changes of the future.

The Last Jedi fancied itself as a transitional film. With the death of Luke, Han, and the unexpected death of Carrie Fisher, none of the original trio will ever return. The torch has been painfully passed and the old has been pushed out to make way for the new. This sentiment is echoed by the film's defenders as a counterargument to its flaws, but where I think it stumbles is not that it shed the old, but that it lost too much of the new along with it. Snoke and Rey's parents were both teased in TFA then dumped in TLJ. So for some fans, the film delivered a one-two punch. It took out what they loved about the old, and quashed what they had embraced from the new. Under those circumstances, it's understandable how some regard it as the worst Star Wars ever.

Conclusions

While it is difficult putting up with such polarizing opinions on this film, it isn't surprising. It shares a lot in common with the finale of Lost, which also left several plot threads unexplained and gave disappointing reveals to others. And like TLJ, it has its share of defenders who are satisfied with all the meaning they were given, and simply enjoyed the ride. 

I know I'm placing a lot of blame on Rian Johnson. As both the writer and director, he bore most of the creative burden. But I know there are other forces at work within Disney/Lucasfilm. Watching TFA and TLJ back-to-back feels very rough because there was an unexpected change in direction. It's possible that there was no plan for the threads in TFA, so Johnson decided to just dump them rather than dig the hole any deeper. And with Force Awakes directer J.J. Abrams is coming back for Episode IX, those threads might suddenly come back in a different form. In the end, what this trilogy seems to lack is a single cohesive vision that George Lucas brought to the original trilogy, and even to the prequels, as flawed as they were. If directors and writers are going to constantly ignore, revamp, or undo each other's ideas, its going to be difficult to tell a good story split over multiple films, even though audiences will still flock to see them. Self-contained films like Rogue One may perform better as they're theoretically easier to manage. 

Despite the stumbles of The Last Jedi, I do think the future is bright for the franchise. Johnson has proved himself to be a creative mind, and left to his own devices, could probably tell a stronger story. Despite my criticisms, I am looking forward to his new trilogy as it will hopefully have the single vision I mentioned. Additionally, by scrapping story threads, he's given Abrams the freedom to do what he needs to wrap things up in next film, for better or worse. Perhaps the greatest thankless gift TLJ gave is that it gives the audience permission to let go of continuity. Hardened fans may not appreciate the tactic, but its short term hate for hopefully long term gains.