I tend to have multiple perspectives about something at once, sometimes to the detriment of taking action.
With TFA, I had a perspective that loved the sheer STAR WARS tone and atmosphere which I felt it came close to nailing. The way the movie was made, written, shot and all else demonstrated a close effort toward that end.
My other perspective was that it was aping STAR WARS without much substance.
Ultimately, these two perspectives aren’t far off, are they? I can easily reconcile them and give the movie a strong like.
With this movie, though, the two perspectives are a bit farther apart.
TLJ is a bold departure from STAR WARS, and TFA for that matter, in terms of filmmaking, story, and atmosphere. It adds story meat and we explore the mythology that undergirds the franchise. Things are turned on their heads and we get an unpredictable story that is very much not a retread, unless only retreading things in order to trick you with a subversion.
The other side of my reactions is to say that the movie seems to wantonly shake up the lore and characters in ways deeply incongruent with the message of the saga as Lucas completed it. Rey tries to take after Luke’s loving beckon to his father’s inner goodness and brings about his redemption in a bold, powerful move that I have always admired. I do not mind that Rey fails in her effort. What I do mind is that Luke and Leia forsake this idea. For shame. The Last Jedi is, if anything, too unconventional and different from what came before.
I agree with Mark Hamill in this rough reworking of his quote: “I fundamentally disagree with what you’ve done with Luke’s character. But my job is to like it.”
This movie is harder for me to embrace than TFA, for certain. And that conflict, even just by being there, is discouraging. I appreciate that it had substance with which to interact and have emotional reactions to (even like this), but I dislike the strong incongruity with the story of what came before.
Luke was about to murder a yet-innocent child because he sensed the potential bad things he might do. He had his gun drawn and cocked. That’s profoundly different from the man who confronted Vader on the second Death Star.
Leia giving up hope with her son, essentially saying, “Yeah, go ahead and kill him,” is profoundly different from Leia in the very last movie.
This themeatic element from ROTJ, which I find myself advocating for and is my greatest takeaway from the Star Wars story writ large, was punched in the stomach and kicked in the head repeatedly until suffering traumatic brain injury and entering a coma.
Will it wake up? Find out in Episode IX: Epilogue.