Thoughts on “The Last Jedi,” or Reaching Out With Your Feelings
As has become tradition in this new era of Star Wars movies, I saw two screenings of The Last Jedi on Friday. Some reactions below, after a bit of preamble to push spoilers well down the page.
Sometime about a decade ago, I had a blinding realization that I was watching movies the wrong way. This was hard to fathom — growing up, going to movies was my favorite thing in the world. A friend often joked that the movie theater was where I got my oxygen. One year, for my birthday, my parents took me to the movies three times in one day. There was little else that I’d rather do. But at some point, probably around when I started thinking that I wanted to pursue a creative career, something changed. Perhaps it was a drive to become more critical, to prove that I had taste or a viewpoint, or to show that I knew enough about how to read and analyze stories that I should be allowed to make them.
But by 2005/2006, it became clear to me that the strategy I’d adopted to prove myself a discerning viewer had been serving me poorly as an audience member and as a creator. When I took a step back and looked at how I watched a movie, I saw that my thought process went like this:
- Walking in, have a picture of what I thought the ideal version of this movie would be
- As I watch, make mental notes of where the film deviated from what I thought it should do
- For every shortcoming, dock points. Not actual numerical values, per se. But small deviations meant small quibbles, and big deviations meant that it sucked.
I don’t exactly know when I started. And I wish I rembered what movie it was that made me realize I was doing this. But whatever it was, I do remember walking out of the Arclight Hollywood suddenly aware that this process was making me miserable. Nothing was enjoyable. Every screening was about identifying flaws, dwelling on the shortcomings. As if my job as a moviegoer was the same as judging a skating competition. My joy in going to the movies had become poisoned. (And though I’m talking about movies, this same held true for tv shows and books too.)
I made a decision that day to change the way I watched. To engage with what was on the screen, instead of what wasn't. To put my attention on what I liked, instead of looking for what I would have done differently. When I started using this new process, two things happened almost instantly. 1) I had a lot more fun going to the movies and 2) My own creative work became much, much easier.
Once I cut the filmmakers some slack, I was able to do the same for myself and my own creative process. Because I think I’d fallen into a trap, a habit of displacement. Lurking at the root of my old way of watching was an cold truth — jealousy. I could see what was wrong, why couldn’t the filmmakers? How unfair was it that they got their projects produced and I didn’t?
This is an old story, and many new art movements — the French New Wave, punk music, fanfiction––have been founded on this kind of anger. But it only works if the anger compels you to create. Otherwise, you sit in your seat, stewing, curdling, drowning in fury.
So I changed. I don’t want to say I became less critical, I just approached criticism differently — trying to find the film’s intention, paying attention to how a movie made me feel, counting successes instead of failure. It made a much happier filmgoer. If I saw something I didn’t like, I could shrug it off more easily. I was less angry. Nerd rage — that toxic combination of orthodoxy, righteous indignation, possessiveness, entitlement, and grief —disappeared almost completely. (Almost: I’m looking at you Star Trek Into Darkness).
SPOILERS FOR THE LAST JEDI FOLLOW.
Sitting in the theater watching The Last Jedi, one question kept cropping up: “Why aren’t I loving this?” I mean, I wanted to. I was hopeful. I’m always guardedly hopeful when seeing a new Star Wars movie. Nothing could be as disappointing as Attack Of The Clones, right?
But while I was immersed in the flow of the film, I kept feeling a distance, a coldness, a remove. This is the biggest challenge to my current way of watching, because the distance calls out with one giant question: “What’s wrong?” And once you ask that question, its so hard not to try to answer it.
One of the reasons that two immediate screenings is a good strategy is that it gives you space to let the shock of the new wear off and allows for a more measured response after the second show. And sometimes, the particulars of a single screening can intrude upon the experience, change your mindset, and alter your relationship with the movie. For the first screening, I was high up in the theater, almost at the top of the screen; I wondered if there was something about that angle, about not having the screen looming over me, about not having to look up, that kept me from being immersed in the story. So I was hoping that the second screening would allow me to fall in love with this movie as much as I wanted to. Alas, it was not to be the case.
The Last Jedi is good. It’s very good. It’s very accomplished technically and it looks gorgeous. But it makes some odd choices that derail it from being great in my eyes. What makes it difficult to parse out is that some of these strange choices are meant to subvert the expectations of the audience and alter the state of the mythos. I think many of those choices work, and that there are some very dense, interesting thematic choices at work here. But some of the choices lead to this distancing feeling, lead to making me feel locked out, unable to immerse myself in the story.
In some perverse way, it almost feels Brechtian, the way The Last Jedi strives to distance itself from the established mythos, to subvert and pull you out of the tropes that make up so much of the rest of the Star Wars saga. But, as a friend of mine used to say, “Whenever I heard somebody describe a show as ‘Brechtian’ I assumed that meant it was bad.”
After two screenings, I feel like there are two major problems with the film — and they are intertwined. I say this not because I have a perfect version of this movie, but because these are the places where I feel like the movie pushed me away rather than drawing me in. If I had a copy of the film on video, I’d rewatch it a few more times to try to find some exact points to use as examples, but since that’s not possible, I’ll pull from what I remember.
Problem #1: Escalation
The entire second act hinges on the slow-motion pursuit of the small Resistance fleet as it runs out of fuel. I’ve read several reviews that poke holes in the logic of this setup; that’s not really my concern. I’ll grant them the conceit that this is the dilemma. But in order to do that, the sense of the First Order closing in has to keep getting ramped up. They try to make that happen through the one-by-one loss of the different ships as they run out of fuel. But it doesn’t work. We don’t know who these ships are, we don’t have a sense of who is on them. We get short little bits of each ship drifting back and being destroyed, but because we don’t have a clear sense of the size of the fleet, the losses don’t build on each other. We hear numbers like 18 hours or 6 hours, so we know there’s a ticking clock. But there’s little feeling of a ticking clock.
We are instead given a series of Resistance soldiers sacrificing themselves to save the others. But because this rising tension doesn’t really feel like its rising, these sacrifices feel repetitive, blunting their power. Heck, Vice-Admiral Holdo sacrifices herself twice, and while the scene of her taking the Raddus to hyperspace to ram into the First Order fleet is beautiful, it ultimately lands less impactfully as it could have. And Holdo is introduced and dispatched so quickly, that it’s only by virtue of the amazing Laura Dern that it lands at all.
The ragtag band getting picked off one-by-one is a venerable trope of adventure stories. But it can be done so much more powerfully than this. Whenever tension should rise and stakes increase, they instead go slack. Which ties directly into the second problem.
Problem #2: Cross-cutting
The original Star Wars trilogy is a master class in editing. The attack on the Death Star, the Battle of Hoth, the climax of Return of the Jedi — the cross-cutting, the balancing of the stories, the increasing momentum are so well-tuned that we barely notice them anymore. Volumes can and should be written on the contributions of Marcia Lucas to the power of the first three movies.
But the cross-cutting in The Last Jedi is off-kilter. The balance of sequences are all wrong. We cut from scenes on the Raddus to Canto Bight to Snoke’s throne room seemingly haphazardly, more because we need to keep tracking events in the other places rather than the stakes of the moment. This ends up deflating the stakes and the momentum again and again. It makes scenes and sequences feel over-long — especially the entire Canto Bight detour which ends up feeling hemmed in. It’s a shame, because this feels like an easy fix, like another pass or two or a fresh set of eyes could have seen this.
The other problem here are the jokes. It’s not that they’re not funny, in-and-of themselves. They’re just repetitive. How many times can Hux be slammed around without the returns diminishing?
Even worse, for a movie that already has major problems with slackening the tension, the jokes puncture it further. Again and again, throwaway jokes sap the scenes of rising tension instead of propelling them to greater heights.
It’s not Phantom Edit-level, but there’s an opportunity for some intrepid editor to take the video release and recut the whole middle of this movie to make something much punchier.
These problems are made all the worse because there is a ton of really great ideas and themes in this movie. The execution mars their delivery, but the benefit of an ongoing saga like this is that these ideas will continue to play out through in the next episode. There’s a lot to like, a lot to discuss and argue over, and a lot to appreciate in this movie. To me, here are the best:
Luke
I see a lot of people who are unhappy with how this movie continues — and ends — Luke’s story. I understand why they feel that way. We want Luke to triumph, to be rewarded, to fulfill the hopes the first trilogy gave us for him. To deny him that it painful. It’s tragic. But ultimately, I’m hopeful that it will clear the way for the future of the franchise.
Luke’s story is explicitly about the rejection of history, of dogma, of the way things have always been done. For a franchise that always been about Campbellian mythos, this is a radical act. It’s a stake in the ground that says “we do not have to be defined by the past.” And it gives Episode IX the room to go just about anywhere.
Also, Mark Hamill is just incredible in this film. He’s never gotten the credit he’s deserved for his performances in these movies, because its too easy to conflate a callow character with a lightweight performance. I’m hoping we’ll now get to see him bring his gravitas and humor to a whole bunch of other big projects in the next few years.
Rey’s Parents
It’s a neat inversion: in The Empire Strikes Back, we learn the true identity of Luke’s father and it changes everything. In The Last Jedi, we learn the true identity of Rey’s parents, and it changes nothing. She’s not a secret Skywalker, a hidden Kenobi, or from any aristocratic lineage. And it’s thrilling.
Because finally, the Force belongs to everyone, not just the “chosen one.”
This has always been a problem with the Star Wars mythos, and the way the hero’s myth has been interpreted in general. The discovery that the orphan nobody is secretly royalty is deeply alienating and reinforces aristocratic thinking. I can almost imagine some long-ago storyteller preaching an early version of the hero’s journey, being jailed by the local King for inciting rebellion, and making a deal for freedom in exchange for changing the story so that the hero is a secret branch of the pure, incorruptable royal blood line: a royalist snake in the hero’s garden.
Yes, the initial revelation might feel like a letdown, and I’d be curious to learn if this was always the plan or if this was something that Rian Johnson changed. But ultimately, this is a great choice. As we see with the stableboy who calls the broom in the last scene, the Force is strong with a lot of people. It could come from anywhere and everywhere. And the Skywalker bloodline is ultimately not important.
Ben Solo
The single best choice anybody has made so far with this new trilogy of movies is casting Adam Driver as Ben Solo. The pain, rage and conflict that play across his face in every moment is impossible to look away from. The set piece battle in Snoke’s throne room is best part of this movie, as it swings back and forth on the choices Ben and Rey make about their relationship with each other.
Much has been written elsewhere about how entitled, embittered, privileged, full of rage and deeply miserable Kylo Ren is the perfect villain for today. And all of that is true. But I wasn’t prepared for what this movie had to say about that.
Because let’s be honest. One of the weirdest, most off-putting choice George Lucas made in the original trilogy was the idea that Darth Vader — evil, murderous, sadistic Darth Vader — could somehow be redeemed and brought back to the light.
It’s an appalling story choice, one that says that the billions of people that Vader was responsible for slaughtering don’t matter as long as he does something to protect his son from the madman who rules the galaxy.
One of the tensions in discussing these new movies is that Kylo Ren is a killer. We watch him kill his own father. And yet, the storyline seems to be laying the groundwork for his potential redemption, and The Last Jedi flirts with making that happen before turning away from it. It’s excruciating, but beautiful. Vader’s implacable mask hides his true face until the end, and it’s only through Luke’s words that we get the sense that he might be reachable.
But Kylo Ren loses his mask right away, and Driver shows us every agonizing thought that flits through his conflicted mind. We see the potential for him to turn back to the light, we see how close Rey comes to reaching him. We watch Ben Solo tiptoe up to the edge of coming back before he chooses the darkness. It’s the essence of tragedy.
And it’s made even better by what comes next. Leia says she know he’s gone. Luke doesn’t try to get him back. And most crucially, at the very last moment, when he reaches out to Rey and says, “Please”––she shuts the door on him.
I cannot overstate how important this moment is. It’s not merely a rejection of the absurd Vader redemption story, it’s also a statement that reflects the world we find ourselves in right now.
Malevolent forces are real. They can’t be reasoned with. They can’t be reasoned back to the side of right. That they come out of human weakness, pain, and fear means they are understandable, but that cannot excuse their crimes.
When someone in your world––your son, your nephew, your party, your government––turns to the dark side: YOU CANNOT REASON THEM BACK. You must shut the door on them. And stand and fight.
It’s always possible that with J.J. Abrams returning for Episode IX, they may backtrack on this. But I hope not, for all our sakes.
Understanding Versus Feeling
When I finished my second screening, I tweeted that on initial review I’d slot The Last Jedi in bewteen the last two films: I liked it less than The Force Awakens but more than Rogue One. All three of these movies have made clear to me that there are two kinds of Star Wars fans, and I know which one I am.
Many of the problems I have with The Last Jedi are worse in Rogue One. It’s a muddled jumble of a film, and it doesn’t know what it’s trying to say. There are a ton of good things in it but above all, Rogue One seemed mainly concerned with narrative logic — connecting the dots between Jedha, Saw Gerrera, Scarif, the testing of the Death Star, leading up to the moments before the beginning of the first film. But it didn’t work for me because the story did not make emotional sense. The core of the film — the relationship between Jyn and Cassian — doesn’t land at all. I did not know why Jyn did what she did, other than “because her father.” There was enough in the movie to understand that Cassian changed his mind, but not enough to feel that change. The characters change motivations becuase the plot needs them to, but the film does a poor job of letting us feel those changes. There are a ton of people who love Rogue One, for whom this narrative bridge-building is the height of pleasure. But I’m not one of them.
I love The Force Awakens. Is it derivative of the first movie? Ok. Does Starkiller Base feel hokey? Yup. Are the specific differences between the Republic and the Resistance confusing? Sure. But all of those are outweighed by the film’s unerring ability to convey the emotional journey of its characters. I know more about Rey––and care more about her–– after her single introductory sequence than I do about Jyn after the entirety of Rogue One. I’m always floored by the moment after the battle at Maz’s castle, when Kylo takes Rey prisoner, and Finn — who’s spent the entire movie running away from the First Order — turns and runs towards them shouting her name, willing to face his most terrifying fear if it means saving her.
And when Rey calls the lightsaber — it’s moments like that for which the cinema was invented. If a movie can give me that feeling, I will forgive just about anything else.
Though The Last Jedi had a lot of similar ingredients similar, it didn’t quite get there for me. It’s not bad, but it could have been so much better.
We’ll be talking about this movie a lot for the next two years. Even with its many flaws, I intend to watch it several more times. Because even the worst Star Wars movie is worth spending time with (albeit with copious side-eye for the awful Attack of the Clones).
Now if we can only get a tie-in novel to explain why we were supposed to care about Snoke…
