Haarspalter said:
So Star Wars is now a learning-lessons-about-life-meta-documentary which uses a fictional space fantasy fairy tale as a backdrop some old bearded guy invented in the 70s?Meh.
Star Wars should be about escapism, not realism.
Sounds like you didn’t understand the other movies either.
I don’t understand why this is needed. I didn’t like TLJ for a whole host of reasons, but I’m not going to tell you you don’t understand Star Wars for liking what I consider to be a deeply flawed film, that puts a post-modern perspective on a modern myth, by turning the saga into a meta commentary on itself, and has the characters in the mythology question the merits of their own reality. You might just accept that Star Wars is different things to different people. It’s fine that you consider TLJ a great film, and you’ve stated the reasons why, but many others including myself feel the ST and particulary TLJ weakens the overall saga, and its mythology as a whole for the reasons stated above, and the fact that it resets the galaxy to an Empire vs rebels conflict without proper context, or explanation to give us an alternate reality version of the OT, where great effort is taken to push a number of new characters to the foreground at the expense of the old.
To expand on the mythology part of my post, I will use this rather intersting and eloquent pro-TLJ article as a starting point to argue where much of the misunderstanding of TLJ’s critics is rooted in my view:
http://lewtonbus.net/editorials/star-wars-the-last-jedi-and-the-power-of-myth-revisited/
From a more critical perspective these two lines to me are at the heart of what Rian Johnson and his supporters don’t understand about the criticism leveled at The Last Jedi from the perspective of the mythology:
“Through a very simple metaphor, Johnson is reinforcing once again that, yes, Star Wars is kind of phony–that heroes like Luke Skywalker do not exist and will not swoop in and save us at the last minute; that, in this turbulent world, we’re on our own–but Johnson nevertheless believes that all the fakery of Star Wars has real value.”
“Because, in mythology, it does not matter if the stories hold literal truth, if they adhere to a rigid continuity, or even if any of they make a damn lick of sense. Anyone who has read Le Morte D’Artur or The Bible knows that they lack historical credibility, and that their tales are often messy, confused, and riddled with contradictions.”
This may very well be true, but within the confines of Le Morte D’Artur or The Bible these myths are true. It is one thing to doubt historical credibility in relation to the real world, it is another to subvert a mythology from within itself. It’s like the ring of power in LOTR being revealed to have had no real power within a sequel, nothing more than a trinket, only holding a symbolic power. It is a symbol in our real world for sure, but within the confines of Tolkien’s universe its powers are real, and should be to appreciate the story as Tolkien intended. Here’s another example. Within the DC universe Superman can fly. Observing that people can’t fly in the real world is not a good defence for a story, where Lois Lane discovers the strings that keep Superman from falling to the ground. In the DC universe the fact that Superman can fly is a reality, and it doesn’t matter that it cannot be true in our real world.
So, while Star Wars is kind of phony–that heroes like Luke Skywalker do not exist and will not swoop in and save us at the last minute in the real world, up till The Last Jedi, heroes like Luke Skywalker used to exist in the Star Wars universe itself. The legend of Luke Skywalker was real, and tangible in-universe. The Last Jedi changed that by having the mythical characters in the universe itself doubt their own reality to the point that Luke Skywalker is now a legend within a legend. Within the Star Wars universe the legend of Luke Skywalker has value, but is no longer real. Like Luke appearing on Crait, it’s an illusion. Some may like this post-modern take on myths and legends, but many others including myself don’t.