Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is an idiosyncratic work that has produced far more controversy than it warrants. Fanboys and cultural reactionaries view it as something akin to heresy: a repudiation of the character of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and a work of progressive propaganda. Most critics and progressive viewers celebrate its racial diversity and its turn away from bloodlines and the chosen-one narrative central to myth. Both sides of the divide are missing the point, as we began to explore in our roundtables following the film’s 2017 release. The Last Jedi is not a rejection of all that makes Star Wars special, nor is it a radically new statement. It is a work of subversion, but primarily subversion of audience expectations in the service of trying to illuminate the original appeal of the Star Wars franchise, which is its celebration of heroism, goodness, and wonder. Formally stunning if narratively uneven, The Last Jedi deserves credit for being far bolder than most films released under the Disney corporate umbrella.

In many ways, and perhaps in contra to some of the assumptions out there, The Last Jedi is not so different than The Force Awakens. Both films are faithful to the Original Trilogy in terms of style and narrative approach. But J.J. Abrams, who co-wrote and directed The Force Awakens, and Rian Johnson, who holds sole credit as writer and director of The Last Jedi, show their fidelity to the classics in different ways. Where Abrams demonstrates a compulsive need to repeat the narrative beats of the Original Trilogy in order to conjure nostalgia, Johnson in contrast has a compulsive need to invert and subvert, zigging when the Original Trilogy zagged, flipping things on their head when a more straightforward approach would be more satisfying. But both approaches—that of repetition or inversion—are beholden to the original. Whether you want to flip things on their head or repeat an original course, you’re still ultimately subject to that thing, tied to it and relying on its foundation to inform your identity.

Both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi pay tribute to the power of Star Wars, but they do so in different ways, and succeed in very different things than the other does. Thus, although The Last Jedi is a sequel to The Force Awakens, it doesn’t follow the normal sequel approach of repetition and amplification. The Force Awakens set up grand questions and The Last Jedi has little interest, even to the point of flippancy, in answering them. However, it is still intimately tied to its predecessor and exploits the viewer’s familiarity and nostalgia in order to surprise viewers this time around.

The plot picks up exactly where The Force Awakens left off, which has never been done for a Star Wars film. Rey (Daisy Ridley) has found Luke Skywalker and begs him to train her. Surprisingly, he refuses and she spends half the film following him around on the temple island of Ahch-To, urging him to reconsider. This is not the heroic Luke Skywalker audiences expected from the triumphant ending of The Force Awakens, but it’s important to remember that Luke is a man in exile, and that The Force Awakens set up this narrative obstacle in the first place. Rey’s appearance does not erase his reasons for the exile in the first place.

Back in the known regions of the galaxy, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) evacuate the remnants of the Resistance in the face of an aggressive First Order counterstrike, following the destruction of Starkiller Base. They flee on cruisers and transports to try to outrun the First Order at sublight speeds, since the First Order has developed the ability to track ships through hyperspace. Finn (John Boyega) hatches a plan with Resistance engineer, Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), to disrupt the tracking and the two of them splinter off on their own mission to crack the First Order’s defenses.

As in parts of The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith, The Last Jedi sends the heroes on their own individual quests. However, unlike in either the Original Trilogy or the Prequel Trilogy, the three central heroes in the Disney Trilogy—Rey, Finn, and Poe—have never occupied the screen at the same time. So instead of failing to repeat pre-established dynamics or play up heroic banter between the three, the film neither develops any connection between all three heroes nor forms a central dynamic to latch onto. Abrams delayed giving us these heroes together, expecting the sequels to do so, but then Johnson delays this further. This approach is indicative of Johnson’s refusal to play to expectations as well as Abrams’ narrative set-ups; our desire to see the three team-up to happen is Johnson’s very motivation for insuring it does not.

Ostensibly, The Last Jedi is the middle chapter of a trilogy, but it doesn’t entirely play into what we expect of middle chapters in the Star Wars series. For certain, it is more “serious” than its predecessor and deals with the enemies striking back after the triumphs of the first film. As well, it follows the broad strokes of The Empire Strikes Back, with Rey’s time on Ahch-To mirroring Luke’s training on Dagobah, and with Poe and Leia’s fleeing the First Order fleet similar to Han and Leia’s fleeing the Empire in the asteroid belt. It even has Finn, who fulfills the Han role in this new trilogy, attempting to flee the conflict once again, much as Han pondered fleeing the Alliance and settling his debts in the opening moments of The Empire Strikes Back. But it plays into this expectation that it’ll simply be a mirror of The Empire Strikes Back—just as The Force Awakens was a repetition of A New Hope—in order to then subvert our expectations and surprise us.

The Last Jedi also doesn’t seem particularly invested in the thematic resonance of Finn’s and Poe’s arcs, beyond emphasizing their need to mature. To be sure, it spends time with these characters. Poe has to learn to lead with his head and not just his heart, while Finn has to fully embrace the Resistance and his new identity. But neither arc is particularly satisfying, even if John Boyega and Oscar Isaac are charismatic performers. The Finn subplot that takes him to the casino world of Canto Bight and develops his relationship with Rose Tico is often singled out for how narratively unimportant it is—none of their actions have much lasting effect on the course of the film—but Poe’s plot is perhaps even more frustrating as a means of buying time for other plot threads to develop. 

For instance, the central conflict between Poe and Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern) relies on Holdo refusing to simply explain her tactics to Poe—a simple conversation with her lead pilot would’ve clarified everything, while still imparting her lesson about needing to follow orders. Focusing too much on narrative implausibilities is a fool’s errand, and the hallmark of superficial criticism, but it’s important to at least acknowledge the shortcomings of the narrative that bloats the film’s runtime to a series-high 152 minutes (especially considering that exceptional movies make us forget about implausibilities during their runtime).

It seems that Johnson’s main interest with these characters is to buy time for his other plot threads to develop and to allow him to indulge his idiosyncratic interests and leave his artistic stamp, visually and tonally. Johnson is one of the foremost cinephile directors working today and, much like other film nerds such as Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright, he can’t help but reference his favourite films in his works. The entire Canto Bight sequence, for instance, allows him to recall the lavish costumes and arch tone of a Josef von Sternberg film—the tracking camera and gold costumes in the casino of Canto Bight are direct references to The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and other works like Wings (1927). Other moments let him play with film noir tropes, most notably in Rose’s dialogue: “I wish I could put my fist through this whole lousy, beautiful town.”

This old-school approach is charming and idiosyncratic, but it’s not entirely successful, especially with scenes involving Tran, who is overwhelmed by the tricky dialogue and whose emotional earnestness is incompatible with the arch tone of the material. Benicio del Toro fares better with the dialogue since his character, DJ, fits the mold of an Old Hollywood B-movie character type, right down to the stutter. His lines are odd for the series—“Old man Snoke’s boudoir” to describe the Supremacy and “What’s your story, roundie?” to BB-8—but del Toro is among the most immersive actors in modern cinema and he doesn’t spend too much time belabouring the dialogue, spouting it off with the speed and cadence that it needs.

More successful as an homage is the opening sequence which recalls Johnson’s favourite World War II aerial combat films, most notably Five O’Clock High. As Poe distracts General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and blows up the surface cannons of the Dreadnought, Resistance Bombers move into position over the Dreadnought ready to drop their payload of bombs. The sequence relies on tactics of deception, in addition to sheer skill and blunt force, and foreshadows Johnson’s own mode of storytelling. It’s an example of Johnson improving upon the approach to action scenes in The Force Awakens. It’s also an example of Johnson’s technical skill as a filmmaker. For all of his narrative idiosyncrasies, he knows how to move a camera and layer a scene to emphasize its production design. His visual imagination is not limited to references to the Original Trilogy.

Snoke’s throne room on the Supremacy recalls Emperor Palpatine’s throne room on the Second Death Star, but the smooth red walls and reflective black floor go beyond the visual design of that film and bring a new sheen to Star Wars design. Johnson is especially adept at using colour, whether in this scene or during the final showdown on Crait. In that scene, the white of the sand and the red of the dirt contrast in stunning ways. Each action seems to wound the planet, leaving a bloody streak of red in its wake.

Johnson also doesn’t simply rely on Lucas’s films for influence. He looks to the films that influenced Lucas. The colour works of Akira Kurosawa such as Ran and Kagemusha are particularly important here, visually and narratively. The use of red and white on Crait, the cascading armour of the Praetorian Guards in Snoke’s throne room, and the emphasis on footwork in the duel between Kylo Ren and Luke recall Kurosawa’s samurai films. Johnson also relies on Rashomon in the three flashbacks to Ben Solo’s destruction of Luke’s Jedi Temple. As in Rashomon, the three flashbacks differ from each other, but one holds more truth than the others. In these scenes, Johnson is showing how everything depends on point of view, as Obi-Wan warned in Return of the Jedi, especially our understanding of the Dark Side and the Light Side of the Force.

Thus, despite all the technical marvels and the exceptional fight choreography between Rey, Kylo Ren, and the Praetorian Guards in Snoke’s throne room or Holdo’s thrilling monochromatic kamikaze attack, the real interest here is the balance between the Dark Side and Light Side, personified by Kylo Ren and Rey. Johnson is primarily interested in the characters of Rey and Luke Skywalker, and especially Kylo Ren, who is the most conflicted and interesting character in the new series and played by its most intriguing star, Adam Driver. Luckily, despite the film’s uneven structure and narrative dead-ends, it does give ample focus to this fascinating set of relationships and the legacy of the Jedi as a whole.

Much has been made of Kylo Ren’s ominous words, prominently featured in the marketing for the film: “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you were meant to be.” Critics have argued that Ren is voicing Johnson’s own thesis there: that the Star Wars series needs to do away with its baggage in order to fulfill the promise of its future. But it’s unwise to take any of Ren’s words as gospel; he is not speaking for Johnson, but for himself as a conflicted character. He is justifying his past actions—namely the murder of his father—and trying to come to terms with the man he’s becoming. He is conflicted, just as Rey is conflicted about becoming a chosen hero when she has formed such a strong identity as a nobody and an individual on the margins of the galaxy.

One of Johnson’s most fruitful decisions in The Last Jedi is to link together Kylo Ren and Rey both narratively and thematically, which allows him to develop their characters and comment on the larger implications of the Force. Within the narrative, Snoke links their minds in an effort to stoke their conflict and bring Rey over to the Dark Side while amplifying Ren’s powers. However, his linking is not just a plot device; it allows Johnson to have his two central characters hold conversations over the expanse of space, as if they’re sitting in the same room. 

In the Original Trilogy, and especially in the Prequel Trilogy, George Lucas would link characters through editing. Occasionally they would be in dialogue, as during the finale of The Empire Strikes Back, when Luke talks to Vader following his defeat; but often the linking would be through silence, as during the stunning sequence with Anakin and Padme midway through Revenge of the Sith. Johnson has taken Lucas’s tactic and embedded it into the very story itself; he has pulled subtext into text and brought the inherent thematic tensions in the franchise to the surface.

Rey and Kylo Ren stand in for the Light Side and the Dark Side, respectively, so by allowing them to hold a dialogue and explore their individual and collective purposes, Johnson is exploring the Balance of the Force in the process. These scenes are dramatically intriguing, but they also develop our understanding of the Force and the ways that both Jedi and Sith are drawn to the opposing sides. Luke was drawn to the Dark Side in Return of the Jedi just as Vader was drawn to the Light. Here, Rey is similarly drawn to the Dark Side, lured by its desire to satisfy her intrinsic desire to have a firm sense of identity and family. After Luke senses her mind wandering to the dark cave on Ahch-To, Luke comments that she “went straight to the Dark” and says to her that the Dark Side “offered something you needed and you didn’t even try to stop yourself.” These characters are all too human and driven by their emotions and their enemies prey on these emotional imbalances.

It’s not surprising or new to have characters struggling with internal conflict, but the focus on the conflict and shifting balance between Dark and Light plays into Johnson’s reliance on inversion and subversion. Johnson cannot give us the expected at any point in the film. His love of genre is reliant on the way that genre has conventions that can be exploited. He does this in Brick, Looper, and most notably in the recent Knives Out, but never more controversially than in The Last Jedi. However, Johnson does vary in his manners of narrative subversion here; some are simple provocations, while others are truly meant to reorient our appreciation of this story.

Take, for instance, one of the first actions in The Last Jedi: Luke takes the lightsaber from Rey and tosses it over his shoulder. Our expectations have been thrown to the wayside, but we should not have expected an easy resolution to Rey’s finding Luke, or else such resolution would’ve undercut Luke’s very exile in the first place. Luke tossing the lightsaber is a provocation, much as Poe’s communications gag with Hux is, or Snoke’s command for Kylo Ren to get rid of his helmet. But it’s also an early entreaty not to trust our expectations or to be too tied to the conventional structure and resolution of this series. Johnson, through Luke, is teaching us how to watch his movie.

However, it would be a mistake to think the characters are voicing Johnson’s opinions throughout. To be clear, Johnson is too easy to bait, and thus, too defensive in his work; moments like Luke telling Rey that “This is not going to go the way you think” or his mocking question of “What do you think was going to happen here?” seem to be examples of subtext becoming text again. He appears to be predicting fan reactions to the film and then constructing scenarios in which to confront those feelings in the work itself, which is not a fruitful approach to art. In this way, he is as sensitive to fan reactions as J.J. Abrams is. It’s just that he wants to provoke fans in the same way that Abrams wants to placate them—both are constructing their art with the fan, not the story, primarily in mind.

Other moments are more surprising than truly subversive. For instance, the new approach to hyperspeed that underlies the entire Resistance plotline is confounding because it reworks our understanding of how space travel operates in these films. Johnson is not bringing out elements that have merely been teased in other films; he is simply rewriting how the storyworld operates to suit his interests. Remember that in the opening scene we see Poe use hyperspeed for only a fraction of a moment to race towards the Dreadnought, but later, apparently the Resistance cruiser is too far from the First Order fleet for their cannons to do any damage. If Johnson had followed his own new rules, the First Order could’ve simply used hyperspeed for a second like Poe did and bridged the distance in a moment. Thus, the new way of understanding hyperspeed is not offering us an illuminating perspective on a familiar feature of the Star Wars world, but simply shaking up things for the sake of novelty. 

However, these moments are sheer provocation and should not overshadow the more seismic events in the film. They do little to determine the film’s thematic approach. More important are the ways that the film constantly subverts our expectations of the narrative to provide a bigger emotional payoff. Luke’s force projection during the Battle of Crait is probably the most controversial reveal in the film, but it is subversive in how it teaches us to appreciate the Force in a different way. When Luke mocks Rey early in the film, he mentions that it is childish to think he could face down the entirety of the First Order with his lightsaber. However, when he appears on Crait, it seems he’s about to do just that. 

From the get-go, Poe suspects that Luke is simply buying them time to escape, and so he doesn’t get lost in the supposed enormity of what they’re about to witness; he goes to work to find a way out of the caves. However, Luke’s approach baits Kylo Ren in exactly the way it baits the audience: Ren assumes it’s the ultimate showdown meant to settle the fate of the galaxy. But it’s actually a distraction and a bluff, since Luke is merely force projecting from Ahch-To. It’s still an immense display of power and a spark of inspiration to the heroes of the Resistance, but it is not an awesome display of force and magic in the way that viewers expect. It frustrates expectations in order to make a point about how a comprehension of the Force is broader than the ways that typical viewers conceive of it. Sometimes, grand displays of power can be used to preserve and not to attack; as Rose says, the good guys can win not by “fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.”

While you can debate whether a subversive approach to that moment is necessary or not, it’s hard to argue with Johnson’s masterful manipulation of our expectations leading to the earlier showdown in Snoke’s throne room. Leading up to the Rey and Kylo Ren’s showdown with Snoke and his Praetorian Guards, Rey and Kylo both have a vision of turning the other to the Dark Side or the Light Side, respectively. They tell the other how they think the situation will turn out, building up our expectations as a viewer. Johnson knows that we’re familiar with the Star Wars series and Return of the Jedi in particular, and so he uses this familiarity to create tension: who will turn, Rey or Kylo Ren? Because this is Star Wars, we are confident in assuming it will be Kylo Ren, but the film does not simply repeat the arc of Darth Vader.

Once Rey and Kylo Ren appear in Snoke’s throne room, Snoke reveals that it was he who linked their minds and that their visions of turning the other were actually all a part of his machinations. He lords his manipulations over them, reveling in how his understanding outpaces the understanding of our main characters—just as we as viewers, in dramatic irony, get satisfaction from figuring out a plot detail before the characters do when watching a movie. In many ways, Snoke is the stand-in, not for Johnson, but for the viewer, and just as he is most confident in his powers and understanding of the story, he is struck down in surprise. Kylo Ren goads him into letting down his defenses by playing into his expectations of this confrontation with Rey, just as Johnson goads us into assuming the outcome of the scene will be similar to Return of the Jedi. Thus, when Ren ignites the lightsaber and cuts Snoke in half, Johnson has similarly dismantles our familiar understanding of narrative payoffs in the series. He has surprised us, giving us something we didn’t know we wanted in a highly-thrilling manner.

There are ripple effects to Snoke’s elimination, especially the enduring confusion over his identity in the first place, but the way that Johnson wipes him off the board is a stunning act of narrative subversion and bravado. At its best, The Last Jedi subverts expectations in order to give us a deeper satisfaction in the long run. It confounds in the short term for an immense emotional payoff in the long term. It also serves to educate the characters—Rey, Finn, Poe, Luke, Snoke—and the viewer—not to judge things too quickly. After Rey has fled Ahch-To, Luke goes to burn the ancient tree holding the Jedi texts, but Yoda appears as a Force vision and calls down lightning to burn the tree to the ground before Luke can do so. He calls Luke’s bluff and lectures him. Luke is aghast that Yoda has destroyed the ancient Jedi texts, but Yoda rebuffs: “That library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess.” It’s a classic example of Yoda obscuring meaning in his confusing syntax: he doesn’t mean that Rey has the necessary powers within her, but that Rey literally took the Jedi texts with her on the Millennium Falcon. Luke assumes one thing is true, but after a bit of a patient wait, the film shows us that actually the opposite is true.

This is how The Last Jedi approaches the myth of the Jedi and the heroic narrative as a whole. If we take Luke and Kylo Ren’s words for gospel, then the Jedi should end and the past should be destroyed. If they are correct, then The Last Jedi is a democratization of the chosen one narrative and repudiation of the idea of heroes and legends and the power of the Light Side and the Jedi within the Star Wars saga. But Rian Johnson is not speaking through Luke and Kylo Ren. And a bit of patience reveals the true meaning of the film’s subversive tactics.

The film’s opening crawl states that “General Leia Organa’s band of RESISTANCE fighters stand against the rising tyranny, certain that Jedi Master Luke Skywalker will return and restore a spark of hope to the fight.” Later, Vice Admiral Holdo mentions that the Resistance is the “spark that will light the fire that will restore the Republic.” On Crait, after watching Luke go out to face Kylo Ren and the First Order, Poe is inspired and mentions that the Resistance is the “spark that’ll light the fire that’ll burn the First Order down,” proving these words in the opening crawl to be true. Luke has inspired hope and restored the legend of the Jedi. As Rey tells him on Ahch-To, “The galaxy may need a legend.” and it does.

However, there is some argument as to whether the hope in the film is Luke Skywalker or the Resistance—whether we’re supposed to be inspired by Luke’s supernatural powers and his heroic bloodline, or whether the democratic, diverse assemblage of Resistance fighters are the inspiration for restoring peace to the galaxy. Like the opposing sides in the debate over the film’s worth mentioned in the opening paragraph, this presents a false choice of either/or. The film is advocating neither zero sum reading. The Jedi and the Rebellion were linked in the Original Trilogy, just as the Jedi Order and the Republic are linked in the Prequel Trilogy, just as the Jedi and the Resistance are now linked in the Disney Trilogy.

Furthermore, for all of the film’s discussion of the worth of the Jedi and the need to ignore the past, the ending makes clear that the Jedi are necessary and good, and that the power of this particular story about the Jedi continues to hold sway over us. The Jedi are like the hope mentioned in the opening crawl—and throughout the Star Wars series—and the spark that Poe speaks of on Crait. And as Holdo mentions to Poe, Leia is fond of saying that “Hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it, you’ll never make it through the night.” Just because The Last Jedi has flirted with a world without Jedi does not mean the Jedi were not there, waiting to return to the fight and inspire the universe with a new hope.

While on Ahch-To, Luke teaches Rey three lessons. The first is about the interconnectedness of the Force. In a stunning montage, Rey witnesses the elements of life and death on the island on Ahch-To and learns that the Force is the balance and energy that binds these things together. She learns that she does not own the Force, but that neither do the Sith; the Force is beyond the possession of the Light Side or the Dark Side. Luke’s second lesson is that “The legacy of the Jedi is failure.” He teaches Rey what hubris can lead to and educates her about the costs of failure: “The greatest teacher, failure is” as Yoda tells Luke later. Luke does not teach Rey a third lesson. She flees Ahch-To before he can get to it. But Johnson never intended for us to hear this lesson. There is no lecture that could substitute for the lesson that we learn from watching the climactic events of the film play out.

After the Resistance has fled Crait aboard the Millennium Falcon and Luke has become one with the Force on Ahch-To, Johnson does an unusual thing: he continues the story for a few moments longer. We return to Canto Bight and watch the children from earlier playing with toys resembling Luke Skywalker and the First Order. The one child tells the epic deeds of Luke Skywalker facing down the First Order; already, this story has entered the realm of legend, much as the events of the Original Trilogy were like bedtime stories when C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) told them to the Ewoks on Endor. 

Suddenly, the stable owner appears and drives the children back to work and the stable boy who helped Finn and Rose free the Farthiers, who looks a lot like Anakin Skywalker did as a boy on Tatooine, goes outside to sweep up. He extends his hand and the broom comes to meet him, showing that he’s Force adept, even if he doesn’t know it. He then goes to sweep, but catches sight of the night sky and looks up. There’s a shooting star and we hear John Williams’ beautiful music swell, the “Binary Sunset” theme that has haunted us ever since Luke Skywalker first gazed out upon the twin suns of Tatooine, dreaming of adventure and a better world. The stable boy holds up his broom like a lightsaber and the music swells and we cut to the credits. The legend is alive. The Jedi are not gone. The past is not dead, but it can be learned from.

As this ending shows, Rian Johnson believes in the Star Wars legend just as much as J.J. Abrams. Abrams may emphasize the power of myths where the legend chooses you, while Johnson emphasizes the importance of you choosing the legend, but both filmmakers are beholden to this dream of a galaxy far, far away. They are allured by its power, bowing to its influence, and consumed by its never-ending sway over our hearts and minds. As the boy shows us, for him and for us, in this story and beyond it, the Force is alive, the spark has lit the fire, and the fire is sure to burn for a very long time.

9 out of 10

Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi (2017, USA)

Written and directed by Rian Johnson; based on Star Wars created by George Lucas; starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie, Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, Frank Oz, Benicio del Toro.