In which I have opinions about why you’re wrong and The Last Jedi is fantastic

So in the interests of not spoiling people (Not because that’s a thing I care about all that much, but because I know y’all do) I’ve not posted about the new Star Wars film so far, I didn’t think I needed to tbh. But I’m seeing a lot of hot takes that I believe to be wrong and I’m nothing if not the sort of person to weigh in when someone’s being wrong on the internet, so I’m going to do so here, and go into a lot of spoilery detail just in case anyone was interested in my opinion (considering how other than politics, movies is the other thing I tend to talk about a lot)

The short, spoiler free version: I liked it. Like, a lot. Beyond that, here be dragons. And spoilers.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…

Episode I: Star Wars Into Darkness

When J.J. Abrams was announced as the guy helming the new trilogy, my first reaction was vague disappointment. Don’t get me wrong. Abrams is a very talented filmmaker, and certainly a better film-maker than I am a critic. I trusted that he would safely make a ‘good’ film, but his skills have always struck me as being without a defining ‘style’ a la Guillermo Del Toro or Spielberg. Competent, but not necessarily artful, and I couldn’t help but imagine what this franchise might look like with riskier pick that might have paid off more. In the end I stand by that. Abrams’ work on Super 8 was masterful in large part because he was aping someone else’s style, and what made The Force Awakens so successful in my eyes was down to how that particular chameleonic skillset was so well suited to sending a clear message that “Star Wars is Back” to all those disillusioned by the prequels. The Force Awakens ‘felt’ like a Star Wars film again, and that was the biggest hurdle Disney had to clear in reviving this franchise and they did so with flying colours.

But already I was starting to see the things I didn’t like about Abrams creep in around the edges in ways that did not impact the quality of the film, but left me less hopeful for the others going forward. Stylistically, there is one thing Abrams is well known for (Lens flare jokes aside) and that’s the “Mystery Box” storytelling technique which basically boils down to “Cram a whole bunch of questions into your story so you can answer them in the denouement.” A technique that seems to forget the point of mysteries in fiction entirely.

So let’s detour away from Star Wars to talk about another movie I saw recently: Murder on the Orient Express. Possibly one of the most famous murder mysteries ever, and certainly one of the most famous answers to a murder mystery. In my view, what makes Orient Express work and endure is the fact that the answer means something thematically. The book and the film aren’t actually ‘about’ Whodunnit. They’re about Poirot’s rigid view of black and white morality, and how the answer of Howdunnit and Whydunnit profoundly shakes that to the core. That might seem obvious, but think about Abrams’ mysteries in the Star Trek reboot films and think about how thematically empty they are. Who is John Harrison, really? He’s Kahn. Why does that matter? Because the audience knows who Kahn is from a different film that’s not even in continuity with this one. Would the film have been dramatically different had John Harrison been… just John Harrison: Some guy who is angry at the federation? Nope.

There’s a bunch of dangling plot threads in The Force Awakens that made me worried this trend would continue. A lot of questions were posed for the audience to ask that didn’t really strike me as the sort that could amount to all that much thematic weight. Questions like “Who are Rey’s parents?” “Who is Snoke?” “How is finding Luke Skywalker supposed to save the Galaxy?” All wrapped up in that final shot of Rey holding out the lightsaber. It’s not a shot that says anything really all that meaningful beyond “Boy it sure took us a long time and a lot of energy to get to this point. I bet you’re wondering how all this will get resolved, huh!” Wrapping up all those questions into a literal plot baton for Luke to pick up and answer.

And then The Last Jedi opens and he throws it off a cliff.

I seriously could have applauded, because the central message of Star Wars, the first one I mean, before “Luke I Am Your Father” (Yes I know that’s not the actual quote, don’t @ me…) Before Anakin, born of a virgin to save us all (HAH.) Before “The Son of Skywalker must not become a Jedi”, the story was about how a simple farm boy could save the galaxy not because of who he is, but because of what he does. Sure his dad was a knight onceuponatime, but that’s why he wants to go do stuff, not why he can. And here’s that farmboy taking decades of mystery box baggage and literally and metaphorically throwing it off a fucking cliff. Bravo.

That is actually the central metaphor and theme of the rest of The Last Jedi, and why when its title finally drops it’s so powerful. (Hint: Titles are usually important to stories, and often sum up what a story is “About”) You are not special because your dad (Or grandfather) was the chosen one, you aren’t special because you’re secretly someone else. Take off that ridiculous mask, son. You are special if and only if you choose to be. Snokes and Emperors and legendary Skywalkers aren’t the point. The point is a girl who came from nothing and chose to be something, and a boy who came from everything but thought that he was nothing more than a legacy and chose to play dress-up.

In short, the fact that the context of the title drop is actually a reversal, to whit the phrase “I am not The Last Jedi.” coupled with that fucking INSPIRED last shot of the film (Which I’ll come back to later) and what that all means just all comes together to make this little film critic very happy.

So what does it all mean? Well let’s talk Chosen Ones for a second, and also comic books, and cultural context.

Episode II: Why Spider-Man’s Web Shooters Are Totally Mechanical rather Than Organic and How That Serves A Valuable Thematic Point and I am a serious critic… Honest…

There’s a question in popular culture that really gets to the heart of storytelling that I find very fascinating: Are Spider-Man’s webshooters organic or mechanical? Or possibly it’s how did Andrew Garfield’s Amazing Spider-Man movies bomb so badly? Or possibly it’s how did Marvel, despite opening with basically their D-lister hero set with almost no wide pop-culture recognition beyond comics fans manage to create a media empire spanning 18 movies to date with no one film being able to be classed as anything less than “Yeah, it was alright. I enjoyed myself, but I probably won’t see it again.” While DC, despite having the three biggest names in comic book heroes managed only one bona-fide hit, while Justice League has a box office result less than half that of Thor - Ragnarok: The follow up to what is (in my opinion) the most “Meh” of the Marvel films? Or possibly the question is why is Batman such a huge thing? Or possibly it’s what was the defining difference between Marvel and DC heroes on a philosophical level when Stan Lee first started working on this stuff? Or possibly these are all the same question. Maybe.

The answers are, in order: “Mechanical, obviously. Fight me.” “The Amazing Spiderman duology were shit films” “The Marvel films were mostly good films, while the DCEU were mostly shit films apart from Wonder Woman and 60% of Justice League, and Thor Ragnarok is a goddamned masterpiece.” “Batman’s fucking cool.” and “DC tells stories about broad arch concepts and gods and modern mythmaking, and Marvel tells small stories about characters framed by big, world-ending happenings.”

Or possibly it’s “Wish fulfillment fantasies about how you might secretly have been special without knowing are fundamentally less compelling than wish fulfillment fantasies about how you, yes you, might make something of yourself someday.” or to put it shorter “Spider-Man is a better hero than Harry Potter.”

You see all of Marvel’s films are basically about people with no preordained greatness learning (and re-learning) to become great. Or, in the case of Thor, how having preordained greatness doesn’t make you jack shit unless you can learn the hard lessons about how to be great regardless. This theme, funnily enough, is also present throughout Star Wars. (That second part in particular is something The Dreaded Prequels were very much about with the “Fall of Anakin Skywalker” narrative. Shame about… you know… the “everything else” part of those films…)

You don’t need to be preordained as great to become great, and preordained greatness is useless without an understanding of how to be great. In fact a sense of entitlement about Preordained Greatness can be incredibly toxic and corrupting.

Sound familiar, Kylo?

So let’s talk about the rest of the film.

Episode III: Why Carrie Fisher’s last line is just about the most perfect thing ever and shut up, I’m not crying, you are!

So there’s a whole extra Star Wars story I haven’t talked about yet. Let’s call it the story of “Poe Dameron and the Order of the Phoenix.” Or “Oh Fuck I Just Killed Everyone By Having A Sense of Entitlement About My Own Preordained Greatness and Not Trusting That Anyone Other Than Me Could Know What They Were Doing: The Movie.”

So many of the criticisms of The Last Jedi are about this little Cul-De-Sac of a plot and how ultimately the movie would have been a lot shorter, and the rebellion a lot less dead, had it simply not happened. To which I say… “Uh… Yeah? That’s kinda the point?” You see the film opens with Poe essentially sacrificing a whole bunch of the Resistance/convincing them to sacrifice themselves to take down a dreadnought. In previous films this would be a sad, but ultimately victorious moment at the end of a film. The Last Jedi opens with this and immediately has Leia, the character who is basically there to spell out to the audience how they should feel about certain things, get devastated by the losses, angry with that decision, and demotes Poe. Then the new character of Rose is introduced, and she is a person who is directly effected by those losses and she becomes central to this plot. This is not an accident. If Rey’s story is all defining who gets to be special, and comes up with the answer: Everyone is, then Poe, Finn and Rose’s story is all about how to be special, and it’s summed up by two quotes. One from Rose and one from Leia. Rose’s quote comes just after she stops Finn from sacrificing himself to destroy the big laser cannon thingy. “That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love.” and Leia’s is about Admiral Holdo: “She was more interested in protecting the light than seeming like a hero.” TBH, I’m not sure I really need to say much more about this part of the movie.

So about that ending. Everyone’s dead, Poe is understandably sad, and asks Leia how they can possibly win and she looks at him, and at their little found family of people celebrating getting away, and says “We have everything we need right here.” Which I thought was a great summation of all the themes of the movie: That anyone can be special, and that love is the thing that will help you get there. In the context of it possibly being the last thing we ever get to hear Carrie Fisher say on screen, that just… well… I had an emotion. Let’s just put it like that. And then that last shot happened. A little kid uses the force to grab a broom and holds it like a lightsaber, and he’s wearing the ring with the insignia of the resistance and that shot is a great big metaphor that says when Carrie Fisher says “We have everything we need” that includes you, Star Wars fans fighting with broom handles in the backyard and looking up at the sky. The ‘New Hope’ is all of us, who haven’t inherited the legacy of an old story but instead are inspired by them to write a new one. The thing that makes Star Wars valuable as a cultural phenomenon isn’t its legacy, but the way it inspires us all and Rian Johnson really gets that, and more importantly is interested in telling us stories about that, and I can’t wait to see what he does next…

What’s that?

JJ is directing the last one?

OH FU-*Roll End Credits*