Rey and Luke in The Last Jedi
Critically acclaimed yet divisive amongst fans, Rian Johnson’s Star Wars sequel has had a lasting effect on the franchise, as explained by Ben van Welzen, one of our newest regular contributors.
“Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.” These words, spoken by antagonist Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) in Star Wars Episode VII: The Last Jedi, were ubiquitous in the criticism and analysis of the film upon its release in 2017. Correctly citing it as writer/director Rian Johnson’s thesis when creating the film, detractors have used it to bash Johnson’s callous approach to a beloved franchise while admirers have used it to praise the fresh voice and new life he brought to the seventh film in a 40-year-old series. In the eight years since the film’s release, every new piece of Star Wars or Rian Johnson content reopens the court of public opinion and reignites the debate on whether The Last Jedi demolished the franchise’s past, present, and future, or if it was the fruitless attempt of a loving fan to send the canon in a new direction. Though this debate will never resolve, the intense outrage has left its mark not only on Star Wars media, but on Disney and big-budget blockbuster franchise film on the whole. After overwhelming negativity, the creative team course-corrected for the final entry in the trilogy and in the years that followed, effectively reserving a seat for the mass public in the writers’ room from then on.
Ignoring the bad-faith criticisms of the film’s political messaging and inclusive casting, the fans’ backlash is not completely unwarranted; Rian Johnson’s film does shake up the Star Wars canon and reject many of the firmly held truths of its past. Perhaps the most common disappointment comes from the updated take on the old hero Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). Formerly an unshakable defender of goodness and hope, the Luke we see in The Last Jedi has become jaded, haggard, and cynical, isolating himself on a private island to die along with the Jedi faith. A now-infamous image sums up Luke’s transformation: after Rey (Daisy Ridley) hands Luke a lightsaber with seven movies’ worth of history and reverence, a history that resonates with the fans as much as it should with Luke, he carelessly throws it behind his back and silently trudges away.
Regardless of one’s emotional attachment to Luke and that lightsaber, the deadpan toss sets the tone for Johnson’s new vision. Not only do these icons of the past not hold any weight, but they’re reduced down to a throwaway gag. Johnson’s direction, though isn’t a simple exercise in subverting expectations; rather, The Last Jedi is a crystal clear mirror held up to the fans, forcing us to examine our priorities and preconceived desires for a Star Wars film.
By confronting our attachment to beloved imagery, Johnson’s film removes the superficial sheen of nostalgia and opens up the galaxy far far away to new moralities and new modes of thinking. Up to that point, Star Wars had been clear-cut with its good vs. evil, light vs. dark moral structure. The internal conflict of each Skywalker — Luke in the original trilogy and Anakin (Hayden Christensen) in the prequels — was always on which side of the moral binary they’ll land. In these moments, the older films go so far as to silhouette half of their faces to signal their inner tug-of-war. The Last Jedi, though, takes direct aim at this sharp division; Johnson bridges the gap between Rey and Kylo, light and dark, good and evil by reexamining and reimagining the principles of the Force.
When first introduced in A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi describes the Force as an “energy field created by all living things” that “surrounds us, penetrates us,” and “binds the galaxy together.” Nevertheless, the subsequent films strayed further from this idea as the Force became more about moving objects and acrobatic flair, a trend that The Last Jedi takes direct aim at. When teaching Rey, Luke just tells her to close her eyes and “reach out,” and when she extends her arms, he picks up a leaf and tickles her palms, quipping, “That’s the Force … wow, it must be really strong with you!” and then slaps her hand away to end the gag. This quick joke targets the pretending-to-be-a-Jedi games we (or at least I) would play as a kid, rejecting the misrepresentation of the Force as simple telekinesis and reestablishing it as a hallowed, omnipresent energy.
Rey’s attempt at the Force in The Last Jedi
More excitingly, Johnson introduces a completely new direction for the diegetic power and non-diegetic narrative potential of the Force by bridging Rey and Kylo through the Force plane. While on opposite ends of the galaxy, the two central figures often see each other in their surroundings and have conversations almost as if they’ve teleported to each other. Though this isn’t the first time Star Wars films have had telepathic communication, Johnson’s clever direction uses onscreen/offscreen counterpoint to explore a new side of these mystical abilities. These scenes all play out in a standard shot-reverse shot structure, strictly obeying the 180-degree rule to keep the viewer oriented and subconsciously signal the relative positions of the two players. However, these are not POV shots; we do not get a direct look at the Force-users’ heightened perception, but the dark interiors of Kylo’s shots against the bright sunlit exteriors of Rey’s shots beg us to imagine the muddy, confused, just-out-of-reach middle-ground through which they communicate. The confrontations maintain the standard light vs. dark visual language of the franchise, but hint towards an unexplored crossing of the two, opening new avenues for the moral structure of Star Wars.
The new moral implications Rian Johnson brings to the franchise don’t stop at formal technique, either. With just a few narrative moves that upset die-hard fans to no end, The Last Jedi directly suggests uncharted territory for the franchise’s future: in the scene at the center of the film (and thus the entire trilogy), Kylo kills off Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) and asks Rey to reject the Jedi, Sith, light side, and dark side to rule the galaxy in a completely new way. With this scene, Johnson frees the films from mirroring the original trilogy by removing the copy-and-paste emperor villain that is Snoke and asserting a bold vision beyond the constraints of pure good and pure evil.
Nevertheless, when confronted with these radical shifts in the canon, lifelong Star Wars fans resisted the change, instead calling Johnson’s effort blasphemous, pointlessly subversive, and childhood-ruining. In the months and years that followed the film’s release, Star Wars superfans latched on to The Last Jedi, churning out hours upon hours of vitriolic content, posting videos and articles finding an issue in every scene to retaliate against the damage done to their perception of Star Wars. Online communities like Saltier Than Crait with 117,000 currently active members have gone frame-by-frame in the fight scenes to find flaws in the choreography, they’ve read books on screenwriting to try to find “objectively” poor writing choices, and they’ve investigated every corner of the canon to find any discrepancy or contradiction that Johnson may have accidentally manifested. More than any blockbuster film in the modern era, The Last Jedi fueled an anger so fiery that studio executives and filmmakers could not help but react.
Disney had two options when approaching the final entry in the new Star Wars trilogy: one, they could double down on the new attitude of Rian Johnson and see through the fresh ideas he brought, or, two, they could attempt to appease all fans and create a final film that reneged on the promises of The Last Jedi. With one final effort, Disney chose the latter; in Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker they brought back the director of Episode VII, resurrected the villain of the original six movies, and leaned heavily on the principles of redemption and good vs. evil that the predecessors had built. In an attempt to please everyone, the final film of the so-called Skywalker Saga pleased nobody, its shameless fan service failing to fool the diehards, and the abandonment of The Last Jedi’s ideas disappointing those who appreciated Johnson’s new direction.
The reactionary response to the Star Wars sequels begs the important question of the role of the fan in modern, big-budget, franchise blockbusters. Must a new entry in a beloved series attempt to please an entire fanbase, or must it try to keep the franchise fresh and explore new avenues; is it possible to do both? Defenders of The Last Jedi often turn to The Empire Strikes Back, the second entry released in the series, as a film that dared to twist and contort the attitudes of its predecessor, opting for dark mystery as opposed to an adventurous hero’s journey. When watching Empire, the viewers are forced to grapple with the failure of our heroes, with the shortcomings of the new hope found in the original film. After 40 years of rabid fandom, do the artists not owe audiences another such self-confrontation? Are we allowed to let the past die, or will the fans kill it if they have to?
The Last Jedi was screened at IU Cinema on May 4 as part of the May the Fourth Be With You: Star Wars Sequel Marathon, which also included The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker.