Star Wars: The Last Jedi falls short of lofty expectations
Nostalgia is a powerful force in our current culture. There’s a steady undercurrent of rose-colored memory running through our lives, from entertainment to politics. On one hand, this nostalgia is fun and harmless—Stranger Things is an entertaining throwback to the commonly held remembrance of a 1980s childhood, from Huffy bikes to video arcades to vague government conspiracies.
However, we have also recently witnessed a political campaign based on nostalgia, promising to “Make America Great Again” through impossible promises and dog-whistle hatred. Memory is a complicated thing. Tennessee Williams called time the “longest distance between two places,” and claimed that “memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits details.” He said, “others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.”
It’s the heart that colors the memory and the heart that reveals the illusory truth—nothing is exactly as remembered. It might seem strange to use the brilliance of Tennessee Williams to discuss a Star Wars movie, but for most people my age, Star Wars shaped our understanding of storytelling. The memory of these stories inspired a generation of filmmakers and storytellers to create their own visions.
The point being: Star Wars matters for many film fans. It’s something beyond just silly space opera. And so, when J.J. Abrams took that audience back a long time ago to a galaxy far, far away he did so with the hearts of those fans in hand. His vision was well-received, due to his safe retelling of A New Hope.
There’s no doubt that film was mostly fan service, but he did manage to tell a new story, with its own mysteries and secrets to unlock. The continuation of that story was given to writer/director Rian Johnson, who was responsible for Looper as well as a handful of Breaking Bad episodes.
Johnson’s The Last Jedi has some wonderful moments, to be sure, but overall the film suffers from missed opportunities and poor narrative choices. It seems to be a departure from the Abrams continuity—although with the micromanagement of Disney, it’s very possible that these stories are exactly as intended.
The biggest issues with the narrative of The Last Jedi stem from the fan service in The Force Awakens. Abrams might have leaned into the recreation of A New Hope, but the novelty of a new Star Wars film featuring the characters from the original series was enough to stave off criticism, as was the decision to focus on practical effects rather than the CGI that plagues the prequels.
Johnson doesn’t have that luxury. The return to this galaxy is no longer new—particularly with the success of last year’s Rogue One. Audiences might expect more than rehashed scenes from The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi.
Critics have praised Johnson in this regard, calling his recall of particular scenes as a subversion of expectations. Nothing in this film seemed subversive, however. Scenes and events lifted from the original series weren’t exactly the same—how could they be? But adding small twists and turns within the narrative isn’t the same as reversing the original ideas.
Johnson plays at it on occasion, but his attempts are far too telegraphed and ham-fisted. For a good example of subversion in recent popular film, look to last year’s Logan, which had a dramatically different take at the superhero genre.
Had Johnson wanted to subvert the Star Wars storytelling style, he might have left the greater war alone and focused entirely on the relationship between Rey and Luke, building an understanding between the characters and filling in their histories over the past few decades through thoughtful conversation.
I’m not necessarily advocating for this—I’m simply pointing out that The Last Jedi is still very much a Star Wars movie. Rather than subverting, Johnson spends an inordinate amount of time on an unnecessary B-plot that was overwhelming dull and ultimately pointless.
He also makes the tired Hollywood movie mistake of creating conflicts that could be easily solved with a thirty-second conversation. It’s frustrating storytelling, to say the least.Still, the film is beautiful in many places and charming in others. While I might fundamentally disagree with certain character choices, no one asked me to write the script and I can understand, somewhat, the reasoning behind them.
The goal of this trilogy is clear: remove the old guard and pave the way for a new generation. The Last Jedi succeeds in doing that—but what we’re left with is less than what we had. Perhaps it’s time for the Jedi to die and be resurrected by the Walt Disney Company. George Lucas certainly wasn’t doing it any favors. It’s inevitable, anyway. Besides, being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else.
There’s always next year.