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beyond-far-horizons · 6 years

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My thoughts on Last Jedi, the backlash and its relation to the archetypal storytelling of the Star Wars Saga.

I have been trying to gather my thoughts on this film, the reaction and the Sequels in general. My overall reaction, after two viewings, some reflection and looking at both sides, is the same as it was when I first saw it - mixed. But given how much the series means to me and others I think analysing our reactions is important.

Spoilers for Star Wars including TFA and TLJ and the film Labyrinth. This is my opinion - repeat just my opinion and won’t be tagged because I don’t want to get into a fan war or debate. Aggressive attempts to do so will just be blocked so play nice ;) Warning for a long-ass post.

Let’s start with what I liked -

It was fun overall.

The opening fight with Poe was amazing, fast, funny and emotional.

More Poe was a good thing (mostly) and his dynamic with Leia was great - I loved that they had a headstrong male pilot with Leia as his mentor. I also liked the fan observation that Leia puts up with some of his antics because he’s like the son she should/could have had (no disrespect to Ben/Kylo.) Oscar Issac even notes the maternal relationship and that is super cute.

Leia - nice to see her more front and centre - a general, a stateswoman, a force-user (yes), a mother, a sister and still looking fabulous. Carrie will be missed so much. I grieve for her, her family and for the story we could have gotten in Ep 9.

That moment between Leia and Kylo - sad face.

Rey, Kylo/Ben and Reylo - very happy they went in this direction. I can understand certain people’s/groups misgivings about this when projecting a RL dynamic on it, however the large section of us that enjoy this dynamic, I believe, do so on an archetypal level - which is primarily what Star Wars is about. The fairy tale, the myth - the Light and Darkness battling it out to transcend the opposites in the end. I loved their connection (even though the cuts were quite modern), I always adore it when the hero/heroine and villain start off hating each other, are opposed to each other and then gradually find parallels and similarities, and since ESB, Star Wars has always been fantastic in finding that Yin Yang and Jungian Shadow concept. The way they show the dangers of the path - that Rey could make the same mistakes as Ben and therefore why she wants to save him, just as Luke did with Anakin. It’s so human. The acting was fantastic, the moments soft and then intense - I loved the ‘Force skypes’ and the Throne Room scene. Indeed that application of the Force was just an extension of Luke and Vader in ESB and in a deleted scene in Jedi too. Also as sad and heartbreaking as it was I’m so glad Rey did reject him and didn’t give into his bullshit. I can sympathise with him but she didn’t compromise herself and that is so important. Like in the film Labyrinth at the end, Rey chooses her own sovereignty and morality despite temptation and it was the right thing to do. Also I feel (without getting too RL and social justice on this) women are often seen as the always loving, forgiving redeemers, the healers, the saviours and the nurturers - a powerful archetype that can sometimes be in play but also can be terribly damaging when constantly applied. No person can forever hold the weight of an archetype and in some cases shouldn’t, no matter how sad it is. Rey did her best but Ben ultimately needs to save himself, to make that choice as Vader did and that can be a hard pill to swallow especially when we see he hasn’t got the critical mass (yet) within himself to do it.

Rey - in two minds given how TLJ treated plot points from TFA - but I continue to love her spirit and vulnerability as well as her moments of humour.

The Throne Room confrontation was fricking epic! I loved it and I loved seeing the Battle Couple/Back to Back Badasses/Dark and Light take on the guards.

Rose - not so keen on the plotline but the character was adorable and we need more like her. It was also special for me because for years when I was training to be an actress in London, the friend who let me live with her for minimal rent had a Far East background and looked like Rose and always struggled to get decent parts despite her talent and tenacity. Seeing the hope and inspiration Rose gave to her in her career recently was amazing.

The planets!!! Ahch-To and Crait just blew me away - oceans and islands - check, crystals, deserts and rock formations - check. Glorious!

Those crystal foxes!

I will always be a Reylo fan but Finn and Rey still have a special place in my heart and that hug at the end was gorgeous. If they get together at the end it’s okay with me as long as I can have some Reylo resolution too.

Rey and Poe finally meeting. Okay I’m Reylo, I like Finn and Rey…but I always liked the idea of Rey and Poe too - yes I can have my cake and eat it thank you.

The Supremacy - I may consider joining the Dark Side if I can have that ship!

The Codebreaker - there’s always a place in Star Wars for crafty grey characters and I liked DJ, not 100% keen on where they went with it but I liked him.

Holdo’s sacrifice - amazing - those shots and that silence - just epic.

The initial idea of Luke as a hermit and the Balance which they sort of went with and then…hmm we’ll talk about that next!

Things I didn’t like or thought could have been handled in another way -

This is interesting and has taught me a lot about how we project ourselves onto stories and what we do or do not get or expect to get out of a story. As we know this film has caused huge dissension and rather than throw crap at people - I respect they have their opinions - I want to analyst mine and other’s responses and find out why. I’ll note my personal reactions and then the issues that may have contributed to such a division.

Luke’s arc - I can see the de-constructivist allure of having Luke fail and why some people have taken heart from that message but as Mark Hamill has said it just isn’t Luke to me. As for him trying, even in a moment, to kill his nephew and best friend’s son after he was willing to sacrifice himself and everything else for his ideals to show his father - Darth freaking Vader - a better way, also doesn’t ring true. Then to abandon the Republic/Rebellion for the First Order to take over - nah…If they want me to buy it, they need to give me more than what we got.

Admiral Holdo - ugh. I see what they were trying to do but if you have to withhold plans and make a character hold the Idiot Ball for you to do a plot twist it just doesn’t work. Also the whole feminist message was patronising and I say this as a woman and lifelong feminist. Treating men like idiots isn’t going to make them respect you. Also as others have pointed out, Leia was already a trope-breaking example of this done in a much better way in ANH. People were making the point that Holdo was soft and feminine and that’s why Poe and the menfolk in RL didn’t like her or feel she could have been in the military. I’m all for surprising people and frankly she can wear what she wants even though it was incredibly impractical but as an actress I noticed in her physicality she does not convince as someone of any gender who has been in a military force let alone in command. It does something to the way you stand and behave that she didn’t have and putting examples like her in only undermines the progressive course to me.

Godspeed? God fricking speed?! We are in a Galaxy far far away! It’s the Force you idiot! Also ugh her and Leia just sounded like they were at a socialites party in the US not Star Wars when they say goodbye. I’m so up for female bonds and unexpected characters and roles but it was handled badly in my opinion - an example of shock value, not well thought out world-building.

Snoke - WTF? Don’t build him up just to kill him off early! He is the reason all the shit in the Galaxy has happened - the return of the Dark Side, the corruption of Ben Solo, Luke’s Hobo arc - how does he link to the OT or even the Prequels (it’s a saga remember - a family saga, themes etc). To kill him now, without those answers, undermines the whole plot and undermines Kylo Ben as a result. Snoke was the reason he did all those heinous things, Leia says in the book he has been essentially grooming her son since he was in the womb (gross!). The OT draws out the Emperor until ROTJ and the Prequels spend 3 movies giving us insights on his dynamic with Anakin that primes us to understand (despite poor execution at times IMO) Anakin’s fall to the Dark side. We have none of this for Kylo bar a few hints. This lends weight to the accusation he is a pathetic, whiney (angry, privileged, white) boy who turned to the Dark Side cos Mummy and Daddy (our OT heroes) didn’t love him enough. Then we are given a vague flashback that Luke Skywalker of all people wanted to kill him for an instant and yeah…it doesn’t do anyone - Kylo, Snoke, Leia, Han or Luke - a service. Plus the ridiculousness of Kylo and Hux at the end undermines the finale and the hopes for Episode 9. I admit Snoke freaked me the f out - the undertones of the child molester/evil guru were strong and might have been a bit too much for kids but hell a good writer could have found a way to develop it properly without being too full on.

Canto Bight - Finn and Rose. It was…okay…but again I could see the message loud and clear and there’s a difference between an archetypal mythic theme and hitting someone on the head with identity politics. Also I loved Finn and Poe’s dynamic and Finn and Rey’s dynamic in TFA - I wanted more of that. The plot arc just didn’t interest me or feel woven into the main plot as much as I wanted it to. And that sucks because Finn and Rose were cool and it was groundbreaking for Star Wars to include them in their own arc. Due to the lacklustre scenario I felt Finn wasn’t utilised enough. I felt he was slightly short changed by TFA and TLJ didn’t really shift that for me.

The Crait Plan - why not tell people the plan? To have it suddenly appear like a Deus Ex machina was shoddy esp when the First Order find out immediately anyway.

Leia’s Superman impression. It was a shocker and beautifully filmed. Extra poignant when remembering Carrie’s loss but…it’s not Star Wars! There’s a difference in developing the world-building and the magic system (I know this as a writer) and crapping all over it to introduce something ‘cool’. I have wanted Leia to use the Force since ROTJ. I would have totally been down with her using it here (like Nynaeve in The Wheel of Time) when she finally surrenders to this mystical power she doesn’t understand (and likely associates in her heart with Vader) in the face of her political and military might being crushed. It had the potential to be such a beautiful moment. She could have been in a pod or something and then dragged the exploding pieces back together - that would have been in line with previous Force users - Yoda, Dooku, Vader. But to be exploded into space where the vacuum alone could kill you, lack of air, cold etc etc and then fly like Superman just felt so wrong. Yes you need to suspend your disbelief to watch SF/F but the created world needs internal consistency (look up Tolkien’s On Fairy Tales or Mark Wolfe - Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation or the Laws of Sanderson for confirmation on this.)

Luke’s Force Projection and Death - it was beautiful and shocking (again) but (again) didn’t ring true with Star Wars for me even with the call-backs to the Binary Sunset and Obi-Wan’s cloak. Those just made me sadder. If they wanted to make it more Star Wars, more full circle, then why doesn’t he do a proper Obi Wan - face Kylo and become one with the Force in their duel? Also I just felt there was so much more for him to do, so much more to be shown and frankly as much as I love the Sequel characters, I and most of us are here because of the OT characters. This is and always was Luke’s story. We care about Anakin initially because of his connection to Luke even if he wasn’t really in the Prequels, so to have him go out that way and have so little relevance ultimately to the story of the Sequels just felt wrong. I’m not ready for this to be fully Rey’s story yet as much as I like her and what she brings to it.

There was no real training arc - Luke didn’t even finish his third lesson to Rey. I would have loved to have seen Luke and Rey training and duelling. This also highlighting the unfortunately implication that Rey is a little bit of a Mary Sue and I hate that. The Force just made her awesome - again not consistent with Star Wars. Anakin and Luke, even after training, get their asses handed to them by Dark sider users. Yes Kylo had handicaps and Snoke does well to highlight them in TLJ but it would have been much better to either have had her train under Luke before and had her memory wiped or be trained now to account for her aptitude. It undermines her positive points as a character and it is irritating now to look back at TFA and see her so good at everything just..because…

A main point many people have pointed out - TLJ doesn’t respect the plot points and setups of TFA. This is worse than not respecting the previous trilogies because it’s bad storytelling and each episode is supposed to reinforce the arc of the others. Sure Lucas made similar mistakes but Abrams, Johnson and Disney had years of reflection and fan reaction to draw upon to make sure that didn’t happen and mostly in the OT Lucas made it work to a point they do make senseas whole. Why aren’t Disney and co making these stories to fit each other? They are a trilogy - a beginning, middle and end, not an opportunity for each director to ‘make their mark’ on Star Wars or ‘bring something different’. That’s like hiring a new director for each LOTR film! Again people can cite upending expectations but this was throwing out substance for the sake of shock value and that never works. The Vader plot-twist worked because it deepened the story, the plot-twists that Snoke and Rey’s force sensitivity and parentage don’t matter cheapened it. For the record I liked her parents being nobodies but we don’t get to see her explore that and JJ drops numerous Chekhov’s Guns about Rey’s background in TFA - Han, Leia and Kylo’s reactions to her, Maz’s talk, her visions, Luke’s reaction - that all now looks stupid. Kylo lets an officer go after his tantrum then force grabs him as soon as he mentions a girl. This and his latter interactions with Rey, esp in the novel, make him look like a desperate virgin that has never been exposed to a human female before.

Phasma - where art thou?

I could go on but those are the main points.

Now to the deeper issues -

Most of us loved the Original Trilogy and while we want to repeat the magic - to have the same but different - that story was essential told. It has a poignant, satisfying ending - Luke redeems Vader, the Empire is defeated, the Jedi are reborn, Leia and Han get together. It reached a natural conclusion and that conclusion gave it its power. That is a lesson that many of us and especially the entertainment industry don’t want to learn, hence why they milk franchises and stories until they mean nothing. Just as death gives life meaning so does the ending to a good story. However I have always been intrigued by a Sequel trilogy because it was something Lucas toyed with for a long time. I heard rumours of Leia and Han’s children in a forest scene for years and that was so magical! What happened next?! Lucas was notorious for tinkering with his creations and then saying he planned it that way all along (read Star Wars - A Secret History for confirmation and also an amazing insight into the creative development.) As an aside I think that part of the creative process is that it evolves and it interests me how many directions and stories could be told branching from A New Hope, ESB, Jedi and then even TFA. The stories that different groups wanted to be told and the story we got. However something that lent more weight to the Sequel idea was also Lucas’s inspiration of Flash Gordon, Buck Rodgers and those old sci-fi serials that suggested the story could have gone on for episodes before you arrived in the cinema and continued long after, so I was interested to see if they could make it happen. Perhaps it would have been better done years earlier so the original leads could have had a more active role or set in the future so their legacy would have held longer but this is a family saga so…

Despite their love for Star Wars and its superficial appeal I’m not sure JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson and Disney understand the core of Star Wars and the archetypal themes underpinning it. This is the absolute core of the issues with Sequels (the Prequels) for me - I think it could have worked despite everything else but you need to understand the archetypal motif which is textbook Star Wars. A fantastic book that illustrates this is Star Wars - The Magic of Myth. I think they got bits of it but they didn’t really understand the whole and had other agendas in play that meant the worthwhile messages in Leia/Poe/Holdo, Finn/Rose and Luke/Rey’s storylines were lost, dissonant or just sledge-hammered in without respecting the characters, plot or themes. I was so looking forward to seeing a development in the mythos of the Light/Dark sides of the Force and the Balance - how acknowledging anger, abandonment and desire for power and control aka the Shadow, can help you understand yourself and the human experience but not(like Kylo did) by giving into it. This understanding grants you Balance and Transcendence - a true expression of the Jungian Individuation process and the Taoism way that Star Wars was inspired by. This could have been accomplished even with Luke going off to be a hermit which is counter to his character as Mark Hamill stressed. If you want a new story you need to set up conflict and this would have been a great conflict for a more mature Luke to have - that the Dark Side will always return in some way, so how does one counter it? When we found out in TFA he had gone looking for the first Jedi Temple, then we got the 1st trailer and the hints about the Balance of Light and Dark, I was excited. Luke hadn’t abandoned his sister and friends and the Galaxy! He had a painful setback but was still searching for something more. When they dismissed that in the movie and had him be this despondent bum who had vanished just to find some hole to die in, I was so disappointed. Yeah you could have it (as they did) as part of his character arc, to learn failure, to repeat the cycles/mistakes of his masters and be reminded of his younger self in Rey, but as others have pointed out Yoda and Obi Wan went into exile because they needed to and Luke transcended them at the end of Jedi anyway. So it needs a deeper reason for me than what we got.

The Backlash/Conflict and the questions it raises.

It seems broadly to come into two camps, but there are also many people in the middle across a number of different issues. The main camps boil down to either loving the OT - its themes, characters and relationships within the Skywalker Saga and feeling the Sequels haven’t respected that, and the other is enjoying the new direction of the Sequels and feeling Star Wars is now more modern, more progressive, more inclusive, either as a worthy development of the OT or without caring about previous instalments.

This, as I said at the start, comes down to stories - our stories, internally and in the outside world, and the archetypal stories we cling to across generations. Star Wars was always going to matter because it is one of a kind - a modern myth that called to us on this archetypal level as well as being so pervasive in the physical world through advertising, merchandise and different media that it has literally become a religion to some people and inspired many more.

Given that, the stories I’m hearing from the media and the progressive side is that the Last Jedi is fantastic because it’s breaking boundaries, it’s passing the torch, it’s giving us feminism, inclusivity and life lesson moments that are much needed in the current climate. And in a way stories do need to change and adapt to stay meaningful or, as we see, people change them to fit - create fanfiction, art, create their own worlds, write meta taking the pieces that make sense to them. Many people feel more included in the Star Wars saga and as such a powerful phenomenon I’m glad about that.

However to others, Star Wars already deeply meant something to them and some feel the Sequels, in their urge to move things along or having done so brashly, haven’t respected that legacy. Although there are undoubtedly racist, prejudiced idiots out there using Star Wars as part of their ideology, this goes against everything Star Wars and Lucas was trying to convey. So personally I think a lot of the deeper backlash is because of the Sequels ignoring the archetypal hero journey and themes at the heart of Star Wars - a journey first brought to us by Luke and his companions. Star Wars is not the type of story that lends itself to deconstruction, shock value twists and hopelessness - it’s a hopeful fairy story, that while filled with peril and battles with evil, nevertheless gives us the strength to face the dark symbolically and find the best in ourselves. While it has had its storytelling and world-building issues (especially with the Prequels hence the backlash with them at the time) it does have its own mythos and internal consistency, something I feel the Sequels have ignored time and again,and even undermining the setups in TFA. To call people ‘losers’ stuck on simple nostalgia or ‘man babies’ (as a friend of mine did) for having these objections is unfair. Archetypal stories/myths come from the Collective Unconscious and that moves very slowly in relation to society which is why we read stories from thousands of years ago and they still resonate. That doesn’t mean you have to copy the Hero’s Journey from the OT point for point - there are a galaxy of myths out there and our own minds for exploring how the legacy of the OT can be respected and yet developed, as well as including more women and POC as it needed to.

I will still watch Episode 9 and take the things I liked from it, TFA and TLJ, but to me the OT will always be the true Star Wars. However nothing is in vain and honestly I think this debate can be used by anyone to learn from the power of stories - what works and what doesn’t for them and go on to create their own original narratives as Lucas did all those years ago…I’m also really interested in getting the perspectives of kids seeing the Sequels vs the Prequels and OT as these will be ‘their’ Star Wars and the things we see and love as children always have special significance as they are the first to charge our awakening imaginations.

#personal #opinion

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