My 2017 Year In Movies, Part 4: The Last Jedi

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The Last Jedi: Sorry, I’m still clinging to a time when these movies had simple titles, like Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, and not Star Wars Episode XI: The Seriously OCD Way Of Naming Movies Just In Case You Didn’t Know What Series They Were From: A Star Wars Story.

…but not clinging so much to that time that I can’t see a new, post-Return of the Jedi (timeline-wise) Star Wars movie and not recognize its awesomeness.  Especially for odd naysayer reasons like, “Luke would NEVER make those choices,” or, “the politically correct casting ruined this movie, or, “it should have been the green lightsaber,” or, “she’s way too overpowered for an untrained Jedi, or, “nothing anybody does in this movie makes any difference in the end,” et cetera, et cetera, et-fucking-cetera.

Look, like many of you, I have a deep love for Star Wars.  Seeing the first one in the drive-in, at five years old, in the back of the neighbor’s white pickup truck in the summer of 1977 is quite literally the oldest coherent memory I have.  When it started airing on Showtime waaaaay back in the late 70s/early 80s I watched it as often as I could (they aired it A LOT in a month’s time, and it was back like every other month), and would get in trouble because it really pissed my younger brother off when I recited, alongside the actors, the entire film.  Line by line.  Inflection by inflection.  Accent by accent.  Beeps by beeps.  “MOM!  Brian’s quoting the movie again!”  “Brian Alexander, I told you not to quote the movie!”  Empire happened and, once again, drive-in, pickup truck, neighbors.  I had some action figures- not an expansive collection, by any means, but a pretty good number of them.  I swear I remember the R5-D4 figure clicked differently than the R2-D2 one when you rotated its head because, in the film, R5-D4 had a bad motivator.  Or did I just have a defective one?  Also, I had one of those super-rare vinyl cape Jawas…. that melted because I left it standing on top of a light bulb after a Saturday play session.  The first images of Return of the Jedi I ever saw contained those red-clad Imperial Guards and oh boy, did that spark some conversation and debate during Catholic school recess.  One kid swore he had the actual info and that they were, somehow, clones of Darth Vader, born, somehow, from a volcano that Vader had crashed into after the first Death Star battle.  I knew this kid was full of it, but hey- it was still exciting Star Wars talk.  Basically, at the risk of sounding like a dirty hipster- I was a Star Wars Nerd before there were such things as Star Wars Nerds.

It is because of all of this that I am utterly baffled by the negative responses to The Last Jedi.  Especially from lifetime fans.  Super-especially from lifetime fans that were in on the ground floor of this thing.

Don’t get me wrong- I understand how opinions work, and I understand the disappointment that comes from any movie not living up to its hype, especially when that hype lasts for decades.  I mean, FUCK- George Lucas made THREE of those fuckers from 1999-2005 that are, in my opinion, three of the worst movies ever made.  Like, ever.  And in my opinion, they don’t even remotely feel like Star Wars movies.  They were overflowing with new, flashy special effects, yet utterly devoid of feeling.  They contradicted many of the things that were alluded to in the three movies that preceded them, not in an interesting way, but in a “George Lucas forgot what happened in his movies” way.  Characters tonelessly spouted out scientific dialogue to try and define what is essentially magic.  To me, those, along with Jar Jar Fetchit and his poopy fart jokes, bad emo acting with bad emo dialogue, and waaaaay over-the-top swordfights that try to be epic just for being epic’s sake, are valid arguments as to why a movie might not be so great.

“The Luke Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi would never do the things that the Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi does,” however, is NOT a valid argument.

I guess we might as well get specific here, so let’s look at that statement.  “The Luke Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi would never do the things that the Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi does.”  Uhhh… why?  Because he had a part in saving the galaxy and is all happy and content at the end of ROTJ?  I mean, sure, I get that… and if he became a grizzled old hermit the morning after the Post-Death Star II Ewok Rave, then yeah- that wouldn’t make sense.  But it wasn’t the next day.  It was thirty years later.  Are you telling me you’re living the exact life you thought you would be thirty years ago and nothing bad ever happened to you in the interim?  Have you never even considered running from a problem?  Hell, Luke’s two mentors did exactly that, so where does your surprise come from?  Besides, it’s not like he went into this self-imposed exile for nothing- the movie explicitly details the events that led him there.  Did you watch the movie?

OK, so you did, and you just don’t like that they took it in that direction.  Fine.  Opinions.  But where does this extreme vitriol about it come from?  Is it because you wanted the continuing adventures of Luke Skywalker?  They made it pretty clear a few years ago that that’s not what you were getting (remember Rey, Finn, and Poe?  These are their movies).  Instead, you got something fresh- a new, powerful character seeking out everyone’s favorite farmboy-turned-hero for guidance… and getting turned down.  His human flaws obviously weren’t doing anyone any good, so he hid away to avoid that kind of thing.  And yeah, I know people wanted to see Luke training a new generation of Jedi, but… where’s the story there?  A new Jedi academy where “younglings” (ugh) wave lightsabers around?  Where’s the conflict there?  Jolly mentor Luke teaching Rey to pick up a box and lift some rocks?  Been there, done that.  Kylo Ren turning bad and going against his brethren?  We already saw that story as quick flashbacks in the last movie, which was enough.  Also, we saw a version of that with Anakin Christensen in that third prequel movie.  It was the opposite of interesting.  Besides, so many people complained that The Force Awakens was too derivative.  In The Last Jedi we get something entirely fresh- a surprising deconstruction of the last 30 years of Star Wars in a movie that still feels like Star Wars.  I’d elaborate on the “deconstruction” thing, but this is a rambling semi-rant, not a jagoff thinkpiece.  Just click THIS, then see the movie again.

And since this is a rambling semi-rant, I’ve lost the thread.  Vitriol.  I mentioned vitriol.  Where does it come from?  Yes, taking things in a direction you didn’t expect might raise your hackles, but the extreme hate?  That’s something darker.  I think that’s some kind of odd psychology going on.  And I realize I’m risking alienating people I adore as well as strangers here, but this stuff is boiling my brain so I’ve got to type it out.  I watched a video recently that showed a very large theater full of people watching the Last Jedi trailer for the first time (Comic-Con, maybe?  Not sure).  The overall response was excitement, cheers… general positivity.   But then they interviewed a few people, and that’s when it got uncomfortable.  Mostly because of superfans like the woman who was beside herself in tears over this amazing thing she just saw.  Which was a commercial.  For a space flick.  I know movies can be a two hour escape from your banal/shitty/complicated life… but I’m thinking if you’re hanging so much hope on a space fantasy sequel that watching a two-minute series of random images and voiceovers promoting it reduces you to uncontrollable sobbing… well… it may be time to talk to someone.  Sorry.  That sounds elitist of me.  But I am of the belief that if you’re putting all of your emotional eggs in one basket, you’re setting yourself up for some clinical-level disappointment.

Besides, you are owed nothing from these characters.  They exist to tell you a story written by people who have, in one way or another, for better or for worse, been put in charge of telling you that story.  And all the misguided online petitions in the world can’t change that.  Star Wars has become a huge, unwieldy cultural phenomenon that will never, ever completely live up to every faction in its fanbase’s hopes and dreams.  Besides, what if, by some miracle of dumbassery, a petition signed by only 80,000 people actually got Lucasdisneyfilm to (somehow) officially drop their multi-million dollar Star Wars movie from the, uh… “Star Wars canon?”  I’ll tell you “what if”- an equal (or, really, greater, considering that number) number of people would push back because, and I really hate to break this to you here, PEOPLE LIKE THIS MOVIE.  Hell, even I have accepted that lots and lots of people out there dig the bugfucking prequels, but you don’t see me trying to get The Walt Lucas Company to wipe them out.  You know what I do instead?  I DON’T WATCH THEM.

OK, deep breath.  Man, I’m telling you- if George Lucas had just left well enough alone we wouldn’t be in this predicament.

But he didn’t and here we are… with a Rian Johnson Star Wars movie that injects new life into this ambling, repetitive world by… and please excuse this seriously overused term… subverting expectations.  But never simply for the sake of subverting expectations- everything happening here moves us forward organically, logically, emotionally.  Uncomfortably, to be sure.  Awkwardly?  Yeah, at times.  The Last Jedi is interestingly dark in its world-building (world-destroying, really), but it isn’t the second coming of Empire Strikes Back.  It ain’t perfect (for the record, Empire is far from perfect as well, but its charms definitely outweigh its flaws).  But after being very on the fence about it following my opening night viewing I gave it another go and found, as I usually do, that many of my issues with it were, in fact, non-issues.

Hey, let’s look at that.  Click HERE.  It’ll open in a new window.  And here’s how I feel about those things now:

1. No longer an issue for me.

2. Now fine with this.  Hux’s sniveling ineptitude brings about some great moments of dark physical comedy- getting suddenly thrown to the ground mid-sentence by Snoke is funny in a “toady gets slapped” kind of way, but scary in a “no one is safe at any distance” kind of way.  Besides, a little fun keeps this movie from being a total downer.

3. Still stands.

4. Still stands.  This is not a dig on Williams.  He’s done his due diligence.  But let’s let some newer blood keep things interesting.

5. Yeahhh… I get the Vegas sequence.  I really do.  It’s an eye-opener for Finn.  Really, he’s not even a member of the Resistance- he’s simply a First Order deserter that just wants to save his friend.  So the mission to Canto Bight is technically about finding a guy to break a code to give what’s left of the good guys an edge, but in the long term it’s really about showing this (for lack of a better term) “sheltered child” the way the world really works.  And yeah, it sets up the future of the Resistance through his and Rose’s interaction with the stablehands.  So I get it.  I just don’t love the execution of it.  It’s messy.  It feels to me like there was a clearer narrative that got lost in favor of a crashtastic action sequence.

6. See: deconstruction.  And think Han Solo.  Describing this as “plot busywork” was absolutely wrong of me.

7. Just a nitpick.

8. Add two more exclamation points.

9. Wurd.

10. Double-wurd.  And I really, really hope that this + his final line to Ren = Obi Wan-style specter that, instead of guiding Rey, is a “Marley’s ghost”-style character that haunts Kylo in the next flick.  Make it happen, JJ!

So that’s it.  My unfocused, confused, totally non-review rant of the newest Star Wars movie.  If you liked the movie, great.  If you didn’t like it, maybe give it another try?  Chances are you’ve seen the original trilogy at least a dozen times over several years (or decades).  You’ve seen The Last Jedi once.  Unfair advantage.

If you hated it so much that it’s got you spewing acid at your screen, you’ll probably never be swayed.  Just consider one thing- if you’ve got the wall of posters, or the prominently displayed glass case full of action figures, or the Vader-head toaster that burns the Star Wars logo into your morning Wonder Bread, remember- you bought that stuff for the movies you already loved, not for the ones you don’t.  And those movies you love ain’t going anywhere.

May the For… oh whatever.  It’s just a goddamn movie.

The end.

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