Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Given that this movie has been out for only a day and a half or so, I'm going to put a big spoiler buffer paragraph here.

The Last Jedi is the middle piece of the sequel trilogy, written and directed by Rian Johnson. Johnson made a name for himself with the indie movie Brick (which I actually saw right when it came out,) a Noir detective film set in a high school with teenage characters that managed to have its cake (be a gritty noir film) and eat it too (deriving humor from its unusual setting and the shrunken power spectrum of teenagers.) I actually haven't seen his other original films, but he also earned a lot of respect directing television, like some of the best episodes of Breaking Bad (including the legendary Ozymandias.)

So what do I think of his take on Star Wars? The truth is that I'm still digesting it, but I think in a good way.

SPOILERS AHEAD:


The Force Awakens drew a lot of criticism for aping many of the plot points of A New Hope - a poor young person in the desert who discovers a connection to the Force and gets swept up in a rebellion against an oppressive, fascistic regime whose ace in the hole is another powerful Force-user who has turned to the dark side.

What salvaged episode seven, and indeed made me quite like the film, was that the new characters introduced: Rey, Finn, Poe (though he gets more in this one) brought new dynamics to the series. The key to a good story is good characters, and even if we're seeing echoes of ones we've heard before, a good character can make it all worthwhile.

One could level similar complaints against the Last Jedi, borrowing its general tone and plot from The Empire Strikes Back. One may be forgiven for forgetting that the Force Awakens did see the destruction of the New Republic that we had pinned all our hopes on in the original trilogy. The First Order has taken over the galaxy, practically reestablishing itself as a Second Empire, but the Resistance has become a full Rebellion.

That Resistance spends the entirety of the Last Jedi in retreat. In fact, by the end there are so few of them left that they all fit on the Millennium Falcon. And yet, there is hope, proclaimed like prophecy by the man who will not be the Last Jedi of the title.

But let's back up.

The Last Jedi splits the action between the doomed Resistance fleet, a desperate sabotage mission, and Rey's attempts to bring Luke Skywalker back from the Jedi temple.

After a devastating attack, the Resistance leadership is nearly wiped out (RIP Admiral Ackbar,) save for Leia, who uses the Force to return from the cold vacuum of space (there'll be an irony about this survival I'll get to later on.) In a plot reminiscent of one of the first episodes of the Battlestar Galactica reboot from... God, thirteen years ago? Jeez. Anyway, the First Order is tracking the fleet and relentlessly pursuing them, without letting them stop to resupply.

Finn, who wakes up from his coma after the battle with Kylo Ren in the previous film, decides that what really matters to him is getting back to Rey. As he attempts to flee, he's confronted by Rose, a technician whose sister died in the film's opening battle. Together, they figure out how the First Order is tracking them, and theorize that if they could get onto Snoke's command ship, they could disrupt it for the next jump, allowing the Resistance a 6-minute window to jump again and lose their tail.

The story actually winds up being a shaggy dog, but keep that in mind - it's a theme. The two of them travel with BB-8 to a planet that's some kind of Casablanca/Monaco hybrid, where they see how war profiteers luxuriate with their ill-gotten gains at the expense of the poor and downtrodden (there's also an interesting note where they point out that the people selling the First Order its TIE fighters are also making the Resistance's X-Wings.) It does serve to build out the world and see how such a despicable regime like the First Order gets by on the shrugging toleration of the wealthy class.

They are there to get themselves a hacker who can break into the First Order's systems, but wind up in jail instead, only to meet another gifted hacker, DJ. After they escape the planet, they get onto Snoke's ship, but they wind up getting caught - the hacker sold them out. Only due to events that I'll get to later on are they able to escape, where they are able to participate in the final battle.

Meanwhile, Poe is demoted for his daring but costly bombing run on the dreadnought at the beginning of the film. They take the ship out, but at the cost of every last one of the Resistance's bombers. With Leia incapacitated after her unintended space walk, and Ackbar dead, the highest-ranking survivor in the fleet, Vice Admiral Holdo, takes charge. But while Poe desperately tries to take some kind of action instead of just waiting as the fleet gets taken out ship by ship, she holds the course. Ultimately, Poe mounts a mutiny, but Leia recovers in time to stop him from ruining their plan - to settle down in a long-abandoned Rebel base on a mineral-rich planet nearby.

Again, Poe's plans to foil the First Order fleet ultimately come to nothing. Another failure.

At the meat of the story, however, is Rey's journey to the First Jedi Temple, where she meets Luke. After the dramatic helicopter shot at the end of the Force Awakens, Luke tosses his lightsaber behind him and hides. Rey pleads with him, but Luke is far from eager to do anything.

It is during this time that Rey realizes she and Kylo Ren have a connection - they are able to speak with one another across space. Luke and Kylo have their own stories about the way that Luke's Jedi order fell. First, Luke says that he went to confront his nephew over the growing darkness within him, only for Kylo - then still "Ben" - to pull the hut down on him and then proceed to slaughter those students who wouldn't join him. During one of their communions, Kylo explains that Luke had come brandishing his lightsaber, about to kill his student in his sleep. The final version we get, and perhaps the true version, is that Luke did ignite his lightsaber in a moment of weakness, but could not "sheath" it before Ben woke up and drew his own to fight.

Since then, Luke has blamed himself for everything that has happened. He created Kylo Ren, and he believes that the Jedi as a way of life and religion have to end. Luke was a legend, but that legend gave him the hubris to fail his nephew Ben and bring down everything that he had fought for.

But Rey is not convinced. In a moment reminiscent of Luke's own journey into the tree in Empire, Rey delves into the deep cavern where the Dark Side is strong to balance the Light of the temple. Her visions there are abstract - an endless reflection of herself. She had been seeking answers about her true identity, but all she finds is an endless repetition of herself. Perhaps that is all the Dark Side has to offer - no answer, just a spiral of self-absorption.

While Luke cautions against any hope for Kylo Ren, Rey believes that there is good in him. Just as Luke went to Vader to try to draw that good out, Rey does the same to Kylo, sending herself in one of the Millennium Falcon's escape pods right to Snoke's massive flagship.

And as it turns out, it was Snoke who was facilitating the communication between them, eager to draw Rey in with what he sees as Kylo's weakness. Rey is thoroughly unprepared for this confrontation, but when Snoke orders Kylo to kill her, Kylo manages to channel the same hatred that Snoke is cultivating in order to kill Snoke himself.

Also, of note, in this scene, we finally learn the mystery of Rey's parents. And, it's... no one particularly special. It turns out that you don't have to be a Skywalker or a Solo to be an important person in Star Wars. Some might find this disappointing. I liked it. So no, it's not Rey Skywalker. It's not Rey Kenobi. It's not Rey Palpatine. It's just Rey, from Jakku.

What follows is a fist-pumping battle sequence as Rey and Kylo Ren fight Snoke's personal guard - Jedi and Sith tag-team. However, when the enemies are defeated, Rey's hope is truly undercut: Kylo was not interested in turning to the Light. In fact, he was doing what so many Dark Force users do - killing his mentor so that he can take his place. Rey draws Luke's lightsaber to her, but Kylo pulls at it as well, and ultimately, that sword that had meant so much is broken and shatters.

Kylo Ren, recovering, assumes control of the First Order, doing what even Vader never managed to do. He leads the attack on the old Rebel Base, but not before Holdo, the last person still on the Resistance capital ship after the others have fled in transports, jumps to hyperdrive right through the First Order fleet. This moment is one of the most striking in the film, as a streak of light, so bright it darkens the rest of the battle around it, slashes through the fleet, obliterating many star destroyers and slicing off an enormous chunk of Snoke's ship.

But the ruse is up - again, the plan failed. The First Order finds the old rebel base and mounts an attack. Poe, Finn, Rose, and other surviving pilots attempt to destroy the First Order's battering ram cannon, but even though Finn is willing to die to destroy it, Rose knocks his speeder out of the way, unwilling to lose him.

And yet, when all seems lost, that hero of legend arrives. Being a legend himself, Luke no longer sees the Jedi as the perfect guardians they once were. They allowed the Empire to rise at the peak of their power after all. So he goes to set fire to the tree that holds the ancient Jedi texts. And then Yoda shows up.

Remember, guys, Force Ghosts don't have an expiration date. So there's no reason why he couldn't show up (especially given that Frank Oz is still around.) Yoda, in his typical ways, laughs to see his student now so old and grizzled. But he agrees with the sentiment, and rather than using a small torch, Yoda calls down a massive lightning bolt, finally really giving us the "more powerful than you could ever imagine" street cred.

So when all hope is lost, Luke appears, standing off against the armies of the First Order. And the legend seems to be real - Luke easily steps out of a massive barrage of AT-AT fire without a scratch on him. Kylo descends to confront him, lightsaber to lightsaber, and after several minutes, during which the Resistance is able to retreat to a tunnel where Rey is waiting to "lift rocks" as she naively thought Jedi were all about and clear the path to the Falcon, where Leia, Poe, Finn, Rose, and the other rebels are able to escape.

In the final confrontation, Luke announces that the rebellion is just starting, and that he will not, in fact, be the Last Jedi. And then Kylo Ren strikes him through - to no effect. Because Luke was never there to begin with.

Projecting his image - the image of the legendary Jedi Master who could stand down an empire - Luke never left the temple. Instead, he sits in a state of transcendental communion with the Force. With hope reignited and Rey in a position to carry on the Light side of the Force, Luke looks out, a second sun appearing in the sky as his body vanishes, becoming one with the Force.

There is this interesting theme at work: after obsessing with becoming the new Darth Vader, Kylo Ren claims that what he wants to see is something new, to rid the galaxy of both Jedi and Sith, to kill his mother like he did his father and even Snoke. It's not clear that he's wrong, except perhaps in his methods. Luke was the hero, but now he has to move on. As Yoda tells him, the Old Master always has to make way for the next generation. And in investing his hope in Rey and giving the Resistance the time needed to escape, Luke has donned his hero's mantle one last time.

Where are we left?

The Resistance is extremely diminished, but they're not there to be the full Rebellion. They're there, as several characters say, to be "the spark that lights the fire" that burns down the First Order and restores freedom to the galaxy.

Snoke, the sequel trilogy's clear Palpatine analog, is dispatched halfway through the trilogy, with little sense of backstory. It's clear now that Kylo Ren is the true antagonist of the series, even though he is conflicted. He has now been given a chance to step away from the Dark Side, but he rejected it, and tried to pull Rey away from the Light. She, on the other hand, has affirmed her connection to the Light side, now seeing the emptiness in the Dark.

On a meta note, with Carrie Fischer's passing, her character is ironically the one member of the original trilogy's core trio whose character is still alive. I don't know how they'll deal with that in episode nine, but on a larger level, we're left with the character reunited, but unlike Empire, there's no grand quest to pull us forward - just a desperate search for strength. Rey is all on her own now in her explorations of the Force, and it does not look like Kylo Ren is going to be redeemed. Presumably we've got two years to discover what happens next.

I feel like there's more to write about that I didn't fully touch on here, like the theme of failure as a learning experience or the color motif of deep red, both in Snoke's throne room and the mineral planet where the rebels make their stand. But I did only just see it, and I'll have to let it digest some more.