Vladius

Thinking about it further after I wrote it, I realized why I originally liked The Force Awakens and looked past all the stuff about it being a remake. It was the interactions of the new characters with Han. Despite everything else, that was a new dynamic. Han was back to being a smuggler again unfortunately, but now he was a believer in the Force and he took something closer to a mentor role. I’m sure Harrison Ford and Lawrence Kasdan and the rest were chomping at the bit to kill him off, but that was a big mistake. Not because you can’t kill characters or I think Han should be invincible, but because it took away one of the main things they had going for them. It’s no coincidence that the one scene everyone likes in Rise of Skywalker is when Kylo has a vision of his dad.

There is a lot of (mostly justified) complaining about the constant churn of sequels, reboots, remakes, remasters, etc. with virtually everything nowadays. As we all know Star Wars was part of this with the sequel trilogy, and everyone has pecked it to death for all its flaws.

But what are good examples of how to hypothetically do it right?

The two rare examples that I can think of that demonstrate the right way to do this are Top Gun: Maverick and Cobra Kai. Arguably they surpass the original source material. They didn’t try to just revive and remake the former stuff, they actually tried to improve on it.

In these cases the legacy actors were front and center. Their characters had developed and were placed into new contexts that suited their age and experience, but they were still the main characters and the main draw for the audience.

Top Gun brought back Tom Cruise of course, but Cobra Kai did something even more impressive, bringing back every single actor from every main character in all three Karate Kid movies (that have Daniel), with no recasting whatsoever, minus maybe the love interest from 3 I think. Every villain and several minor characters were also brought back. Not only this, but every one of these characters was given something to do. All the villains were given multiple seasons of development, and were better villains, or heroes or antiheroes, in the show than they ever were in the movies.

In addition, effort was taken to make a new generation of characters. I could absolutely see the equivalent of Cobra Kai show up in another 30 years, using the new characters as senseis. But they were integrated very closely with the legacy characters. You saw them bond and take the time to learn from them, sometimes through conflict and disagreement.

For people obsessed with “flawed” characters, the legacy characters are certainly flawed people. Daniel LaRusso is given plenty of time to show imperfection, hypocrisy, aloofness, poor parenting, and an overly rigid philosophy. There’s a subplot in the final season where he loses some faith in Mr. Miyagi because he learns new things about him, and it messes with his head. But he never stops being a good guy, a family man, and a teacher for his students. You want to see him succeed and learn because he’s still the hero and still one of the protagonists. Johnny Lawrence is always a highly flawed alcoholic, abrasive antihero but also an extremely compelling underdog story.

While I don’t think this is the right fit for Star Wars, Cobra Kai also fully develops the idea that there is room for a passionate, aggressive side in life that is just as legitimate as a passive, defensive side, and that both can learn from each other. For anyone who craves some kind of gray Jedi thing or is under the misconception that dark side = emotion, Cobra Kai is a satisfying exploration of that concept in a setting where it makes sense.

Is this to say that maybe the sequels would have been better as a TV show so that you have time for all this development and complexity? Maybe but not necessarily. Luke, Han, Leia, Obi Wan, etc. were likeable from the very first movie. The primary thing you would need, other than charismatic actors, is to have the new characters coexist with the original characters in believable ways so that the torch passing feels right.

Imagine how much more you would like Rey, Finn, Poe, and Kylo Ren if Luke, Han, and Leia lived through all three movies and constantly interacted with them and each other. Imagine how much more compelling Kylo Ren would be if he were actually mentored directly by Darth Vader somehow. Imagine if they made Boba Fett a main character antihero with a fully fleshed out backstory, and he ends up in a situation where he has to team up with Han or something. (They kind of did this with The Mandalorian and it was insanely popular. I don’t mean the character of Boba Fett in The Mandalorian, I mean The Mandalorian himself as a version of what people wanted from Boba Fett.)

We can talk about the goofiness of various plot stuff with maps, Starkiller Base, Sith wayfinders, hyperspace tracking, etc. or how they messed up by not including Coruscant or explaining the political situation, etc. But I don’t think any of that would matter if they got the characters right.

Top Gun: Maverick doesn’t tell you which country is the “enemy”, it’s a vague amalgamation of Iran/China/Russia/North Korea, and you never see any of their faces or learn anything about their motivations. The setup is very similar to the Death Star trench run. But when you’re watching it you couldn’t care less because you want the characters to win and survive.

Cobra Kai is this ridiculous pastiche world where roughly 40% of the population are bullies ready to throw down at the drop of a hat, and it’s a synthwave version of California where 2010s kids still love going to arcades. Multiple psychos are willing to do anything including murder depending on what version of martial arts is getting taught to 20-30 kids at a strip mall. (It’s a lot like the memes about Yu Gi Oh and “children’s card games.”) But you don’t care because it’s well done and you like the characters. You get invested in it because they are.

What do you guys think?

NFBisms said:

“basic storytelling logic” he “should” be the wise mentor figure here who has something to teach the next generation

i don’t believe in this

That’s because you’re being contrarian on purpose.

BedeHistory731 said:

Whining about The Last Jedi is still a big red flag for me. So what, a bad movie came out that didn’t do what you wanted with a character? Move on with your life and just never acknowledge it.

The more I realize it, the more I just wish we never had sequels to ‘77.

Red flag for what?

It’s a Star Wars forum about Star Wars movies where people talk about them. Move on with your own life.

Channel72 said:

Vladius said:

Channel72 said:

Vladius said:

Channel72 said:

I hate Messianic prophecies in general, or the very idea of a Messiah, because it encourages the idea that all hope for the future is dependent on one dude, instead of like, the group effort that is required in real life.

Granted, Star Wars doesn’t incorporate a true Messiah into the mythology. Vader is more like a very round-about Messiah who only saves the Universe after he fucks over the entire Universe. So it’s at least a twist on the idea of a Messiah, kind of like Dune. But I still don’t like it, because it shrinks the Universe by elevating one guy to cosmic significance. At one point, Luke was just a random farmboy and Vader was just a cyborg SS officer carrying out the will of his government. There was a backstory intertwining the two of them, but it was personal, not a matter of cosmic importance.

Nothing is really a “true Messiah” because the Messiah is from Judaism, and (except for Messianic Jews) believe that the Messiah hasn’t come yet. The actual Messiah according to Christianity was of course Jesus Christ, who was a perfect being and the only possible person who could save humanity from sin and death. Jesus specifically rejected the people who wanted him to be like the conquering hero Messiah we have in fiction. He repeatedly told everyone to repent and get their own lives in order, and didn’t fulfill their fantasies of overthrowing the Romans or making himself king in a mortal sense.

There aren’t any messiahs, chosen ones, etc. in fiction who are anything close to that. It’s just a phrase people throw around like destiny or prophecy. The concept has a very specific real world context that often gets tossed out the window.

I mean, I think most people would interpret the word “Messiah” simply to refer generically to the idea of a “Chosen One” who is prophesied to appear at some designated time and play a pivotal role in overthrowing an oppressor. The Jewish concept in the OT (Old Testament, not Original Trilogy 😉) is the origin of the idea, yes, and is also a straightforward implementation of the concept, even though mainstream Judaism teaches the Messiah’s coming is a future event. The concept obviously morphed over the years, going from a prophesied savior from the Romans in the first century modeled after the O.G. King David (with various historical claimants appearing in the first century and failing badly) to various Rabbinical reinterpretations over the years.

The Christian Messiah is a Rian Johnson style “twist” on the original Jewish Messiah concept. Paul of Tarsus was like: “Oh, you thought your Messiah would come and overthrow the Romans with his laser sword? Try again, idiots. Instead, your Messiah will appear briefly and provide free healthcare to a few random people, deliver some cool parables and magic tricks, then get arrested and killed, but then rise from the grave, thus recontextualizing all Old Testament Messianic prophecy as part of an eschatological continuum beginning with Original Sin and culminating in a “second coming” event, where the Messiah will return upgraded with new super-powers and kick lots of ass, rather than a boring Maccabee-style Jewish Warrior King who implausibly defeats Tiberius Caesar. Expectations subverted.”

If you are a Christian, it isn’t a twist on the concept. It’s the original concept that the Jews didn’t understand because they weren’t really paying attention to the prophecies.

Yeah, I understand that. Stuff like Isaiah 53 and all that. I wouldn’t say the Jews weren’t paying attention - I mean, the Rabbis analyzed all this stuff for a living for thousands of years. They just interpreted most of the Messianic prophecies as referring to the nation of Israel collectively, or to an unknown future descendant of David, rather than the specific Messiah from Nazareth named Jesus/Yeshua. The Jewish interpretation is at least more straightforward in the sense that it assumes a straightforward political coup/revolution and doesn’t require the Messiah to first die, rise from the dead, then come back to finish the job after an indeterminate number of centuries (and also doesn’t associate the Messiah with an entirely new covenant doing away with the old Laws or at least “spiritualizing” their interpretation - although some Biblical prophecies hint at this). On the other hand, the Jewish interpretation arguably doesn’t handle certain Biblical prophecies as well, mostly the ones presumably describing a Messianic figure as somebody who is meek and must suffer for the sins of Israel.

Anyway, in popular culture, a Messiah is a way more flexible concept and usually reduces to a generic “Chosen One” like in the Matrix or Harry Potter.

The professional rabbis didn’t exist until after the return from Babylon around 500 BC. Before that there were actual prophets, and Jesus refers to them murdering a prophet named Zacharias some time in the interim before the New Testament.

That’s why they call it a Chosen One and not a Messiah. Messiah is a very particular cultural concept and really the only other big place you would find it is in Dune. Dune also plays fast and loose with various other religious concepts, mainly from Islam, but it’s done well and it makes sense given that it’s a mishmash of cultural elements they inherited from 10,000 years of human history.

The premise of the prequels is that the Republic is decaying and unraveling, and not at its height anymore, so it would make sense for everything to have a used future look as well.

Channel72 said:

I agree the Jedi should use lightsabers more sparingly. Although, the “defense only” thing is hard to salvage even with the OT alone, given that Kenobi was supposed to be a war-time General. Even in A New Hope, Kenobi violently murders those two alien thugs in the Cantina. It was self-defense, obviously, but Kenobi could have handled them in some non-lethal manner, presumably. I mean, he could have tried to “mind trick” them into leaving Luke alone, for example.

This reveals that the Jedi underwent some conceptual evolution even between 1977 and 1980, because in Empire Strikes Back the Jedi as described by Yoda are much closer to a “defense-only” Zen Buddhist school of thought, whereas Obi Wan Kenobi in Episode 4 had at least some traces of the stereotypical haughty Samurai who doesn’t hesitate to whip out a katana sword and put some unruly peasants in their place.

In practice, George Lucas sort of side-stepped the whole issue in the Prequels by making all the “bad guy minions” to be droids whom the Jedi can freely stab and slice to pieces while bypassing ethical dilemmas and undesirable MPAA ratings.

You can have both. That was clearly defense either way. The idea that everyone can disarm people pointing guns at them with fast kung fu moves is a movie/TV thing that’s just as fantastical as lightsabers, and at that point Star Wars just had one and not the other one.

Channel72 said:

Vladius said:

Channel72 said:

I hate Messianic prophecies in general, or the very idea of a Messiah, because it encourages the idea that all hope for the future is dependent on one dude, instead of like, the group effort that is required in real life.

Granted, Star Wars doesn’t incorporate a true Messiah into the mythology. Vader is more like a very round-about Messiah who only saves the Universe after he fucks over the entire Universe. So it’s at least a twist on the idea of a Messiah, kind of like Dune. But I still don’t like it, because it shrinks the Universe by elevating one guy to cosmic significance. At one point, Luke was just a random farmboy and Vader was just a cyborg SS officer carrying out the will of his government. There was a backstory intertwining the two of them, but it was personal, not a matter of cosmic importance.

Nothing is really a “true Messiah” because the Messiah is from Judaism, and (except for Messianic Jews) believe that the Messiah hasn’t come yet. The actual Messiah according to Christianity was of course Jesus Christ, who was a perfect being and the only possible person who could save humanity from sin and death. Jesus specifically rejected the people who wanted him to be like the conquering hero Messiah we have in fiction. He repeatedly told everyone to repent and get their own lives in order, and didn’t fulfill their fantasies of overthrowing the Romans or making himself king in a mortal sense.

There aren’t any messiahs, chosen ones, etc. in fiction who are anything close to that. It’s just a phrase people throw around like destiny or prophecy. The concept has a very specific real world context that often gets tossed out the window.

I mean, I think most people would interpret the word “Messiah” simply to refer generically to the idea of a “Chosen One” who is prophesied to appear at some designated time and play a pivotal role in overthrowing an oppressor. The Jewish concept in the OT (Old Testament, not Original Trilogy 😉) is the origin of the idea, yes, and is also a straightforward implementation of the concept, even though mainstream Judaism teaches the Messiah’s coming is a future event. The concept obviously morphed over the years, going from a prophesied savior from the Romans in the first century modeled after the O.G. King David (with various historical claimants appearing in the first century and failing badly) to various Rabbinical reinterpretations over the years.

The Christian Messiah is a Rian Johnson style “twist” on the original Jewish Messiah concept. Paul of Tarsus was like: “Oh, you thought your Messiah would come and overthrow the Romans with his laser sword? Try again, idiots. Instead, your Messiah will appear briefly and provide free healthcare to a few random people, deliver some cool parables and magic tricks, then get arrested and killed, but then rise from the grave, thus recontextualizing all Old Testament Messianic prophecy as part of an eschatological continuum beginning with Original Sin and culminating in a “second coming” event, where the Messiah will return upgraded with new super-powers and kick lots of ass, rather than a boring Maccabee-style Jewish Warrior King who implausibly defeats Tiberius Caesar. Expectations subverted.”

Most people would think that because they don’t actually know what they’re talking about. It isn’t “the origin of the idea”, it’s the idea.

If you are a Christian, it isn’t a twist on the concept. It’s the original concept that the Jews didn’t understand because they weren’t really paying attention to the prophecies.

NFBisms said:

Rian just had this silly Zoroastrian-inspired idea of darkness rising to balance out the light, and vice-versa, perhaps the result of a corrupted interpretation of Lucas’ vague nonsense about balance in the Prequels. It sounds like some ad hoc idea Rian invented to justify Luke giving up on the Jedi.

This take on the Force is rejected by the movie. It’s a [popular] expectation (gray Jedi, anyone?), in the same vein as EU Luke, that is disposed of to reinforce the Original Trilogy. This where it gets so messy in reception, because Rian’s engagement with Star Wars, like everyone’s, is personal and varied and doesn’t fit into a box.

He doesn’t do an idealized, super Luke because like me he saw that Luke literally didn’t beat the Emperor with his powers, he bet on his dad and his friends. The type of guy who literally did take himself out of a picture so that he wouldn’t endanger the mission on Endor. That’s the interpretation. You don’t have to agree with it or how it was done, but it emphasizes Luke for who he was, not as a trained Jedi, but a son. A farmboy in over his head, just a guy, like you or me. That’s why he resonated [to Rian, to me].

That doesn’t mean he was a “lie”, and it all has so so very little to do with the prequels, or the Jedi as an institution or even an idea. This is a trilogy bereft of any of that kind of worldbuilding or connection - we all know it - but all of a sudden that has valence in this particular critique? No, it’s a personal character arc: Luke embracing his flaws and the triumph he is capable of even with them. It’s more analogous to impostor syndrome than it is about history.

In what way is it rejected by the movie? Both Luke and Snoke tell you explicitly that’s what’s going on, and there’s a big yin yang symbol at the Jedi temple. One of the only scenes Rey has where Luke is actually teaching something is when she’s meditating and sensing all the opposites on the island: hot/cold, life/death, etc. and light side/dark side is one of those, then “balance.” You can infer that the evil mirror cave is on the island because the Jedi there wanted balance or it came to exist because the temple was there.

You’re describing exactly why Luke is the ideal and why people like him. He already overcame himself and conquered temptation. This reverses that development. It would be satisfying to see that inner growth manifest as outward physical power, sure, because that would be cool. But at the very least by basic storytelling logic he should be the wise mentor figure here who has something to teach the next generation. You’re going to say that he was. He was not. By the text of what actually happens in the movie, he was an unnecessary waste of time and effort and the big lesson he learns at the end was that he already blew his chance to teach about “failure”.

It has everything to do with the prequels. Everything Luke says is because he “watched the prequels” as it were.

Channel72 said:

Vladius said:

Channel72 said:

NFBisms said:

Yeah, I see that too, I just think it’s symptomatic of an unwieldy/messy script more than it is intentional malice or whatever for the series. That’s ridiculous to me, it’s at worst a guy who has different ideas [than you or someone else] about how this all works and who these characters are.

The most charitable interpretation I can come up with is Rian Johnson was going for something along the lines of a “Wizard of Oz” type message, where it turns out the Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion had all the brains or courage they needed all along, and just needed to believe in themselves to access it. Something like that. That is sort of compatible with what happens with Rey’s journey of self-discovery, where she sort of self-learns the Force. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a message like that, but it’s not a fit for Star Wars and what was established before, where the Force requires a mentor to learn and is already part of a pre-packaged, venerated mythology.

As for “intentional malice” - I’m not really sure what that would even mean in this case. I don’t believe that like, Rian Johnson sat down one day and started angrily writing the script, saying things like “I’ll show those stupid Star Wars fans… they want to see Luke do they? Oh I’ll give them Luke… I’ll give them Luke all right!!! Bwahaahaahaaa!!!1!!! *starts choking on iced latte*”

I think Rian Johnson just wanted to take Star Wars in a new direction he thought would be interesting, while avoiding accusations of just retreading Empire Strikes Back and working within the story parameters that carried over from Force Awakens, and he ended up writing a very misguided script. At the very least, I found it heartbreaking watching the Mark Hamill interviews about this.

I would compare it to the attitude from this iconic interaction between Blizzard and WoW fans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wrw3c2NjeE

“You think that having a cool Jedi with a lightsaber in your movie would be good, but it wouldn’t. You think that’s what you want, but it isn’t.” That’s basically what Luke tells Rey at the beginning and it sets the tone for the whole thing. Every part of it is like that, even down to a visual gag where you think you’re looking at a cool space ship and it’s really a clothes iron or something. The “subverting expectations” meme. It even starts subverting itself within individual scenes, to the point where it kills off original ideas, like what if Rey actually joined Kylo.

Oh, you think you know what a good movie is? I’ll show you what a good movie is. You like this character? Well, maybe I’ll show you what the “realistic” version of that character is. It’s more like that attitude.

My conjecture is that Rian’s thought process was something like this: “So the audience is all psyched up to see Luke for the first time in like 40 years. Okay, so what are they most expecting to see? They’re probably expecting Luke to come in like Superman, kick some ass, and save the day. So I think it would be really cool if he did the exact opposite. Kind of like how, in Empire Strikes Back, your entire notion of who Vader is gets turned upside down. I want to do something similar with audience expectations for Luke.”

I also detect some meta-joky snarkiness in Rian’s script, perhaps taking a few light-hearted jabs at the audience for expecting such a cliche outcome for Luke. Of course, I’ll happily admit I would have preferred the cliche version of Luke that just straightforwardly kicks ass. But there has to be some conflict, obviously. Having Luke off soul searching after his Jedi school gets destroyed is a decent premise for a nice character arc. But Rian Johnson just took it WAY too far by making Luke nihilistic to the point of literally being suicidal, writing off the Jedi Order completely, and moping around waiting to die while his sister and best friends are in serious trouble. But to give Rian some credit, he actually does have Luke show up and kick ass at the end - just not in the way we would have expected. The “astral projection” thing could actually be a clever twist under different circumstances.

Also, the logic Luke uses to justify giving up on the Jedi order doesn’t really make sense in context. The Jedi failed to stop a coup one time back in like 20 BBY or something, therefore the entire Jedi Order is eternally condemned and the millennia of peace they presumably helped uphold doesn’t count for some reason. Rian just had this silly Zoroastrian-inspired idea of darkness rising to balance out the light, and vice-versa, perhaps the result of a corrupted interpretation of Lucas’ vague nonsense about balance in the Prequels. It sounds like some ad hoc idea Rian invented to justify Luke giving up on the Jedi.

That’s what I mean. He sees what people want and expect, and does the opposite because he thinks that makes it deeper or more intelligent or more long-lasting. Which is not necessarily true and in this case it clearly wasn’t.

NFBisms said:

Vladius said:
But if you critically examine that at all, it’s deeply cynical about what heroism is, and about the value of tradition or culture. Again, the Jedi and Luke are a noble lie.

*uncritically examine, take at face value

wow good one

Darth Tremor said:

Much of EU at the time before The Prequels, which kept our fandom thriving till those films dawned, depicted the Jedi more in line with The Original Trilogy. Rather than monks, Knights and Samurai with mystic powers. The concept of Jedi Knight was a focal point, especially in the games named Jedi Knight with Kyle Katarn who was not a conventional Jedi, he even tapped into the dark side and had Pontentium view of the Force, that there is no light or dark side until you choose to use the powers for good or bad, that the dark side is not the corrupter, it is corrupted using the Force, an intriguing view to say the least, though not at all Luke Skywalker’s philsophy, especially after The Throne Room with the Emperor and later Dark Empire when he falls.

What was nice is the Jedi had divergent philsophies or sects, but they were One. There were core principles or dogmas, but denominations were allowed, including The Altisian Jedi who married and trained more than one apprentice. This made the Expanded Universe strong in my humble opinion, you could find a Jedi sect that fit your personality more, and then the dark times came… The Prequels. Now I love the Prequels, but what they did to the Jedi and the Sith was tragic. To the Jedi they made them more akin to Franciscan and Buddhist Monks who happen to have laser swords, and caught up in bueracacy of the Republic. When Ben told Luke about Jedi Knights, the sense you got was they were warriors that served the Republic in times of need, not intrinsically connected and playing politics as much as the Senators. Then with the Sith not having been around in ages, and the Rule of Two, GL limited in that time period how many Sith antagonists there could be and when Sith could appear. In the OT and EU none of these restrictions existed for the Jedi and Sith, and its a shame that Disney is not stuck because of these GL ‘gifts’, unable to really make great new Sith Lords anywhere before The Prequels, during them, and at least up to ROTJ.

Another thing is the Kenobi tells Luke in ROTJ, “Your feelings serve you well, they do you credit, but they could be used to serve the Emperor.” That line is so crucial, the “There is No Emotion,” clause of the later Jedi Code was not present, the issue was controlling your feelings, that they can serve you or they can be manipulated by someone like The Dark Lord of the Sith. I hate GL changed that to emotion is bad, and you should purge all attachments. It was attachment that Luke used to save his Father.

The Potentium is incorrect. Kyle Katarn uses dark side powers mainly because it’s fun for a video game. This also goes for other games. However Luke does choke the gamorreans at the beginning of ROTJ so there is some basis for thinking the Force works that way.

I also don’t think the prequel Jedi are necessarily about emotion being bad, but it did give a lot of people that impression. “There is no emotion, there is peace” etc. comes from the Tales of the Jedi comics first but it doesn’t literally mean no emotions, it means you keep it under control. As I like to point out, those same Jedi all had lovers and families, so that’s clearly not what it was talking about.

Pretty good overall but as others said it is a bit limited by being a kids show. I thought it was interesting and memorable any time they were doing actual space pirate stuff, and less exciting any time it focused on the kids having character development or the parents trying to save them. Compared to all the other disney+ shows it’s among the best (Mando, Andor) for production design, sets, and effects, which were great.

This is a cop out but at least half of The Clone Wars and Rebels, and virtually every minute of Ahsoka, Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mandalorian season 3, and Acolyte

I don’t think they should mean anything other than looking aesthetically pleasing with the wielder’s costume, or possibly something personal to the character. KOTOR’s Jedi classes are alright too.

philraid said:

Superweapon VII said:

The worst fanfiction is written by the biggest fans. In 1997, I wrote sequels where the Rebels had to fight a Darth Vader imposter – really Luke & Leia’s hitherto unknown younger brother – who commanded four Death Stars. Sometimes these fans grow up to realize how bad their fanfics were. But hacks like Jar Jar Abrams never grow up.

As a kid my vision of an Episode VII was Anakin getting resurrected and living with Luke in a castle where they occasionally fight off stormtroopers, so you’re not the only one with awful ideas, lol.

Granted, both of these probably still would have been better than Rise of Skywalker.

If you had some more characters and a compelling boss for the stormtroopers this could be really good.

Channel72 said:

I hate Messianic prophecies in general, or the very idea of a Messiah, because it encourages the idea that all hope for the future is dependent on one dude, instead of like, the group effort that is required in real life.

Granted, Star Wars doesn’t incorporate a true Messiah into the mythology. Vader is more like a very round-about Messiah who only saves the Universe after he fucks over the entire Universe. So it’s at least a twist on the idea of a Messiah, kind of like Dune. But I still don’t like it, because it shrinks the Universe by elevating one guy to cosmic significance. At one point, Luke was just a random farmboy and Vader was just a cyborg SS officer carrying out the will of his government. There was a backstory intertwining the two of them, but it was personal, not a matter of cosmic importance.

Nothing is really a “true Messiah” because the Messiah is from Judaism, and (except for Messianic Jews) believe that the Messiah hasn’t come yet. The actual Messiah according to Christianity was of course Jesus Christ, who was a perfect being and the only possible person who could save humanity from sin and death. Jesus specifically rejected the people who wanted him to be like the conquering hero Messiah we have in fiction. He repeatedly told everyone to repent and get their own lives in order, and didn’t fulfill their fantasies of overthrowing the Romans or making himself king in a mortal sense.

There aren’t any messiahs, chosen ones, etc. in fiction who are anything close to that. It’s just a phrase people throw around like destiny or prophecy. The concept has a very specific real world context that often gets tossed out the window.

Channel72 said:

NFBisms said:

Yeah, I see that too, I just think it’s symptomatic of an unwieldy/messy script more than it is intentional malice or whatever for the series. That’s ridiculous to me, it’s at worst a guy who has different ideas [than you or someone else] about how this all works and who these characters are.

The most charitable interpretation I can come up with is Rian Johnson was going for something along the lines of a “Wizard of Oz” type message, where it turns out the Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion had all the brains or courage they needed all along, and just needed to believe in themselves to access it. Something like that. That is sort of compatible with what happens with Rey’s journey of self-discovery, where she sort of self-learns the Force. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a message like that, but it’s not a fit for Star Wars and what was established before, where the Force requires a mentor to learn and is already part of a pre-packaged, venerated mythology.

As for “intentional malice” - I’m not really sure what that would even mean in this case. I don’t believe that like, Rian Johnson sat down one day and started angrily writing the script, saying things like “I’ll show those stupid Star Wars fans… they want to see Luke do they? Oh I’ll give them Luke… I’ll give them Luke all right!!! Bwahaahaahaaa!!!1!!! *starts choking on iced latte*”

I think Rian Johnson just wanted to take Star Wars in a new direction he thought would be interesting, while avoiding accusations of just retreading Empire Strikes Back and working within the story parameters that carried over from Force Awakens, and he ended up writing a very misguided script. At the very least, I found it heartbreaking watching the Mark Hamill interviews about this.

I would compare it to the attitude from this iconic interaction between Blizzard and WoW fans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wrw3c2NjeE

“You think that having a cool Jedi with a lightsaber in your movie would be good, but it wouldn’t. You think that’s what you want, but it isn’t.” That’s basically what Luke tells Rey at the beginning and it sets the tone for the whole thing. Every part of it is like that, even down to a visual gag where you think you’re looking at a cool space ship and it’s really a clothes iron or something. The “subverting expectations” meme. It even starts subverting itself within individual scenes, to the point where it kills off original ideas, like what if Rey actually joined Kylo.

Oh, you think you know what a good movie is? I’ll show you what a good movie is. You like this character? Well, maybe I’ll show you what the “realistic” version of that character is. It’s more like that attitude.

Channel72 said:

In my research efforts to reconstruct a history behind the writing of The Last Jedi, I’ve found that Rian Johnson’s portrayal of Luke was a direct result of Rian’s attempt to work within the story parameters he inherited from The Force Awakens. We know that J.J. Abrams wanted Luke to be hiding on some island, mostly because the writers initially didn’t want Luke to steal the stoplight from the new characters. So J.J. Abrams decided Luke would be hiding on some island, but Abrams never really worked out much of the backstory details beyond that, except for the broad idea that Luke was on some pilgrimage to find an ancient Jedi Temple. Presumably, Luke was seeking answers after the disaster that befell his Jedi school, but the whole thing is very half-baked. (J.J. Abrams loves half-baked mystery plots that take place on a remote island.)

When writing TLJ, Rian Johnson tried to make sense of Abrams’ half-baked plot point of Luke hiding on the island. Rian apparently decided that the best way to explain Luke on the island was that Luke didn’t want to be found, and purposely cut himself off from the Force. This idea was pure Rian, as Abrams initially had Luke using the Force at the end of Force Awakens, levitating some boulders while meditating. Rian Johnson asked Abrams to remove that scene so TFA would fall in line with TLJ. Everything else follows from there.

Now, Rian’s idea for Luke sucks. But it’s not like Rian was working off a blank slate. Rian inherited this stupid scenario from J.J. Abrams, with Luke hiding on an island for under-explained reasons. In my opinion, Rian’s idea only makes it worse and isn’t even compatible with Force Awakens, because (A) it doesn’t explain why Luke would have left a map and (B) it doesn’t explain why Luke went to an island with an ancient Jedi Temple if he wanted to be cut off from the Force and die. It’s also hilarious how Luke is wearing these pristine white robes like a venerated Jedi Master in J.J. Abrams’ version, but in TLJ, Luke immediately changes into his less dignified bum clothes after Rey arrives. Luke’s change of wardrobe signals that a new director has arrived on the island.

But whatever, the point is, we can retrace the historical steps that led to The Last Jedi turning out the way it did, and it clearly has little to do with some malicious plan to damage Star Wars, and more to do with horrible story-telling decisions that probably seemed like good ideas to the people involved at the time. That said, Rian Johnson at the very least must have been aware that what he was writing would be very controversial. He probably thought it would be worth the gamble and trusted his instincts, not wanting to repeat the same old Jedi training scenes from the Original Trilogy, and believing his script would be vindicated and praised as bold, innovative and original, and most importantly, unpredictable, with many “twists” that defy pre-conceived audience expectations about a Star Wars sequel, much like Empire Strikes Back.

TLDR: J.J. Abrams vomited out a typical low-effort mystery box script that exiled Luke to a remote island for half-baked, under-explained, out-of-Universe reasons, and Rian Johnson just ran with it and added his own personal angle as an auteur, thus turning Luke into the depressed asshole we know and love. It’s not what I would have done if I inherited J.J.'s mess of a story, but then, Disney doesn’t care what I think.

Here’s the thing. There are many creative things you could do with that setup. Like you said, you could say Luke is trying to figure out why his academy got destroyed and how he could change things for the better. Hence why he would go to the first Jedi temple, to learn about something the original Jedi knew that was lost over time. Maybe he was researching a way to beat Snoke and he didn’t want anyone else getting in danger while he was working, but it didn’t pan out. The idea I came up with when I first saw TFA was that Luke was afraid of his own level of power - he was at the point where he had so much mastery over the Force that he was tempted to use it in ways that would lead him to the dark side. (A sliver of this idea sort of gets used where he’s afraid of Rey’s power and he was afraid of the power he gave Kylo Ren, but it’s immediately dropped.)

What Rian CHOSE to do with that setup reveals a lot about his own opinions and worldview, especially given, like you said, it doesn’t make any logical sense either.

Channel72 said:

Vladius said:

The message of Luke appearing in projection form isn’t that “the Jedi are good, actually,” it’s that image is everything. The real Luke doesn’t matter, because the specter of younger, popular Luke is what people like. It’s all about deception and propaganda. The actual Jedi and the actual Luke sucked but they’re a noble lie.

I mean, that’s going a bit too far I think. The movie clearly at least tries to end on a positive note, emphasizing that Luke’s heroic actions on Crate (Krait?) served as inspiration for a potential new generation of Jedi, beginning with ordinary people all over the Galaxy, like the famous “Broom Boy”. Clearly, the ending was supposed to be uplifting and positive, promising that the Jedi would rise again - in some form or another.

I think this ending is stupid. It pretty much killed my interest in the Sequel Trilogy. The whole movie is mostly stupid. But I can at least discern that the director at least wanted the ending to be perceived as hopeful and positive, but also bittersweet, like the ending to Empire Strikes Back.

I guess I’ll amend what I said. It isn’t necessarily consciously trying to be dour and cynical or make the audience feel bad at the end, but it’s clear that that is the worldview that it’s coming from. It’s saying that the Jedi returning is ultimately a good thing, but for symbolic reasons, not because they are competent or that they were actually good in the past. Like I said, nothing Luke said was refuted in any way, and it was confirmed by Yoda. The legacy of the Jedi was failure. And not just prequel-era failure, failure dating back to the original Jedi temple that should be burned down. Yoda implies that Luke screwed up in some nebulous way because he didn’t “pass on what he learned” to his students, which was failure.

The uplifting, positive part is that Rey could start over because she was taught… something… and that the common ordinary people in the rebellion can use the Jedi as a rallying force, like you said. But if you critically examine that at all, it’s deeply cynical about what heroism is, and about the value of tradition or culture. Again, the Jedi and Luke are a noble lie. That’s not necessarily consciously what the intention was, and maybe that’s a mean way to put it for some people here, but that’s the literal text we have to work with, and the writer chose to write it that way.

The “broom boy” is only “famous” on this website of 15-30 people.

Servii said:

NFBisms said:

Yeah, I see that too, I just think it’s symptomatic of an unwieldy/messy script more than it is intentional malice or whatever for the series. That’s ridiculous to me, it’s at worst a guy who has different ideas [than you or someone else] about how this all works and who these characters are.

I agree. TLJ may be very flawed and misguided in a lot of ways, but it’s not malicious or nihilistic or anti-Star Wars. At most, you could call it existentialist, since the movie has the heroes question the basic aspects of Star Wars, only to choose to embrace them in the end, anyway.

My problem is mainly that I think the sequel trilogy era is too shallow and flimsy to stand up to that level of scrutiny or questioning, so I ended up disengaging, and felt no investment in what was going on.

Anyway, we were talking about dialogue.

By the director’s own words, he wanted to create a movie where half of the people who watch it hate it, and he succeeded. There is a clear dislike of Luke Skywalker and the Jedi. There is no refutation of any of the nihilistic stuff he says throughout the movie at all. In fact, Yoda confirms that everything they did was a failure, their sacred traditions are boring, and commences book burning (he let Rey take the books so she could get the tips and tricks and do it herself because she’s better than Luke, but he was deceiving Luke and wanted him to think he was burning the books. The audience is also supposed to think this is a good idea because Yoda is doing it, before the fakeout.)

Saying that if the Jedi die the light dies is vanity, the Jedi at the height of their power got wiped out by Darth Sidious like they deserved it, etc. None of this stuff is questioned. It also canonizes the misguided fan concept that the light and dark sides are yin and yang and will always equalize (“powerful light, powerful darkness” “darkness rises and light to meet it”) which inherently makes the whole setting pointless and hollow.

The message of Luke appearing in projection form isn’t that “the Jedi are good, actually,” it’s that image is everything. The real Luke doesn’t matter, because the specter of younger, popular Luke is what people like. It’s all about deception and propaganda. The actual Jedi and the actual Luke sucked but they’re a noble lie.

Channel72 said:

NFBisms said:

It’s about how the past has everything to teach us. Specifically, failure. It’s not about discarding the past, Yoda talks about growing “beyond” [it]. That’s the quote. Rey is going to make different choices than Luke, and Luke is not going to let those past choices define his identity. Rey is not going to define herself by her past as an unwanted nobody.

Eh… people always say this, and I think “oh yeah… I guess that makes sense.”

Then later I actually rewatch the movie.

And I see Yoda burn down an ancient library probably filled with priceless artifacts and ancient wisdom while giggling (Yoda isn’t supposed to giggle when not in incognito-mode but whatever). And I see that Rey learns almost nothing from Luke, except maybe one thing in a deleted scene and a basic explanation of what the Force is. Rey swings around a lightsaber by herself because Luke can’t be bothered to teach her some moves. When Rey looks in a mirror she sees nothing but an infinitely recursive reflection of herself. Then Rey leaves, having learned almost nothing, but Yoda assures us she has all she needs.

The overall message conveyed is that the past is almost exclusively something we must move beyond from - not learn from, except, I will grant, inasmuch as the past teaches us what not to do (learning from failures). At the end of the movie, Rey triumphantly lifts some boulders using the Force, calling back to an earlier meta-joke about “lifting rocks”. But where did Rey even learn to do this? She didn’t learn this from absorbing any wisdom of the past. Nobody taught her. Presumably, she looked inward and taught herself, I guess. Even in terms of learning strictly from past failures, there is little Rey absorbs from the past failures of the Jedi or Luke that plays out meaningfully plot-wise.

Exactly

NFBisms said:

You make it sound so good!

Yes, I suspect you were squarely in the target audience

I don’t literally mean that he’s a criminal smuggler and he flies a freighter and not an X Wing, I mean that of the three leads he is the most similar in personality. TLJ deliberately places him in the same cocky “never tell me the odds” scenario, with Leia still being the character pushing back against him. Except this time the situation is reversed because it was written that way as a deliberate insult to the kind of people who like Han Solo. (Also this time physically hitting him, shooting him, and having her subordinate humiliate him, then gaslighting him about it.)

Finn has nothing to do at all and is presented as a bumbling buffoon, which is a separate issue.

Channel72 said:

The entire Holdo subplot was truly bizarre. Almost every aspect of it is difficult to make any sense of. Holdo withholds information mysteriously, and dialogue and directorial cues suggest to the audience that Holdo is hiding something, or that she might be a spy or perhaps be suspicious of a spy onboard. But then it turns out she was just hiding information for no reason. My take on this weirdness is that Rian Johnson thought this would be another “surprise reveal” or something, playing with audience expectations by subverting conventional story-telling tropes. But it just doesn’t land. It comes off less as some interesting reveal and more like an incoherent script. Nobody really knows what Holdo was thinking or why she decided to withhold information from Poe.

Unfortunately, since this whole issue is also wrapped in typical culture war nonsense, it’s often difficult to discuss online without emotions flaring up. I’ve seen some people argue that Holdo’s actions make sense, because she didn’t know if Poe could be trusted. Except Poe just destroyed Starkiller Base yesterday, so he’s probably the LEAST likely person onboard to be a spy. This fact gets lost on the audience, because The Last Jedi doesn’t really feel like it takes place one day after The Force Awakens. We go from triumphantly celebrating the destruction of Starkiller Base at the end of TFA, and presumably a devastating blow to the First Order in general, to suddenly being thrown into a situation at the beginning of TLJ where the First Order is rapidly conquering the entire Galaxy somehow and the Resistance is on the run.

TFA (along with out-of-Universe promotional material) suggested that the First Order was sort of analogous to “Nazis who had escaped to Argentina and started a little movement”. Thus, our impression is that they are nowhere near the same scale as the Galactic Empire, and they were relying entirely on Starkiller Base to gain any military advantage over the Republic. But then in TLJ, it seems the First Order actually is a much larger organization with military resources at least comparable to the Galactic Empire, and that destroying Starkiller Base was only a minor setback for them. TLJ also seems to confirm that the entire Republic was destroyed in that one attack from Starkiller Base in TFA. But none of this is explained to the audience, so TLJ just comes off as weird and disorienting, making it feel as if a lot of time has elapsed between movies.

I suspect that Rian Johnson just assumed the First Order was supposed to be dominant in TLJ, brushing off the destruction of Starkiller Base like it was nothing, because that’s what happened with the Galactic Empire in Empire Strikes Back, despite the destruction of the Death Star in A New Hope. Except, A New Hope established the Galactic Empire was already the dominant government controlling the Galaxy, whereas The Force Awakens at least suggests (although doesn’t really confirm explicitly) that the First Order is more like some rogue state that doesn’t have anywhere near the manpower of the Galactic Empire.

Yes, the intention is subversion. Everything in the movie is trying to be subversive and question the premise of Star Wars. So the Jedi aren’t good or necessary, Luke hates the Jedi and wants them to end, the good guys are morally questionable because they buy weapons to fight the bad guys (lol), the traitor Lando equivalent doesn’t redeem himself in the end, Finn’s sacrifice attempt is stopped, Rey’s parents are nobodies, etc.

Poe’s entire character is a rebuttal of Han Solo. He’s a masculine, cocky expert pilot who likes to buck the system and do things his own way. The Very Special Lesson he learns is that sometimes you need to listen to authority figures and follow orders and trust the system. You can’t always do things your own way even if it would be cool. In-universe this could have some logic to it because the rebellion is supposed to be a military organization with a chain of command, and in the original trilogy, it was. Hypothetically it would look a lot like the episodes of Star Trek TNG with Admiral Jellico, a by-the-book rules stickler coming into contact with our heroes who tend to play everything fast and loose, and after some conflict they both come away with more respect for each other.

In TLJ it’s an absolute failure because Holdo doesn’t dress, talk, or behave at all like a competent, professional military officer. She’s conniving, snippy, and annoying for no reason, but the script rewards her for it. She’s Leia’s secret best friend, she gets the cool anime fleet destruction scene, and all her actions were vindicated by the plot warping around the stupid casino sidequest. There is no pushback or “yeah maybe she could have been more transparent,” Leia extols what she did as a selfless avoidance of glory-seeking.

Culture war gets brought into it because it’s directly relevant to that decision.