It seems like I dislike this movie for the same reason that many people like it: the underlying message of hopelessness.
Luke is actually a depressed hermit instead of a noble hero. Sacrificing yourself for the greater good is actually not a good thing. It doesn’t matter if the Resistance loses and everyone dies, because some Harry Potter cosplayers will rise to defeat whatever fascist government is in charge at that point. For a franchise all about heroism and the light beating the dark, TLJ sure loves to portray heroism as the wrong choice every time. I used to love this movie because of the subversions, but now that I think about it I realize that the subversions actively harm the thematic structure of the saga.
Not really.
Everything you’ve mentioned is more of a TROS criticism, if anything. TLJ says the opposite about pretty much all of your points. Which is interesting.
Really? In my opinion TROS was binary good-evil to a fault. It seems crafted to be the polar opposite of TLJ’s unsympathetic portrayal of heroism. I wish they took the middle ground. You can have the heroes go through a moral crisis without showing heroic sacrifice as a bad thing.
TLJ does not portray heroic sacrifice as a bad thing. Poe’s mistake in the opening is that his effort to take out the dreadnaught cost them dearly. Had he listened and the ships retreated, they could have jumped out of there. That his effort in the end turned out to be in their best interest after discovery of the tracking is not the point. That he caused the deaths of all those rebels was the point. That was not heroic. His actions in clearing away the canons was heroic, but defying Leia was not. His mutiny was not heroic. He had good intentions but he was not in charge. He lacked good leadership skills to judge when he should act and when he should trust others. His arc in the film is to learn that lesson and put it to use. Finn tries to ignore it in an echo of Poe’s actions in the beginning and Rose stops him. A very heroic move on her part. And Rian had some really good references for heroic actions. He watched 12 O’clock High, which if you haven’t seen it, is full of WWII hero actions. Finn has a different journey - he has to learn to fight for a cause rather than just running away. His sacrifice attempt showed that he was almost there, but he needed to be pulled back from his eagerness to keep fighting when the cause was lost and live to fight another day.
Luke has a hard road in the ST. It was all in the setup and many who complain about TLJ forget that TFA set everything up. Luke was training a new class of Jedi when one student turned and destroyed it all. Why he turned is not material to Luke’s journey. Luke sensed it and probed and got scared. Now, anyone who has seen the OT knows that Luke is quick to react, even if that reaction is not always the right one. So he drew and ignited his saber and then remember what the right course was, but Ben woke up, saw him, and Ben completed his fall and became Kylo Ren. We don’t know how many other students there were or their fate, but when you consider the normal human reaction to such a traumatic event, the path laid out for Luke in TFA that lead to self-isolation, was not going to end up in the type of positive role model that we think of as a Jedi Master. Everyone has good days and bad days. For Luke, that day on the Death Star in ROTJ was a very good day. He stood up to Palpatine (in retrospect throwing down his saber may not have been such a wise or masterly move) and his near death brought Anakin back from the dark side. But to say that a person must hold to lifetime high point is silly. In mythology even more so. Myths are about iconic character types. They are larger than life. Better and worse than reality to pass on a message. Luke dealt with self-doubt, day dreaming of adventure, and several flaws that he was able to overcome. He would have been a great master to learn from until things started to go dark for Ben. Then reality and myth combine in the events we see and Luke falls and falls hard. But not to just any state of mind. He returns to the ANH/TESB failings in a way that was beautifully done. He tacitly agrees to teach Rey a few lessons and botches it. Rey leaves with the Jedi texts, hoping they will be a better teacher. It takes Yoda’s ghost to snap Luke out of his funk and make him realize what being a master truly means. It all flows from the setup. Luke Skywalker has vanished. Why? We find out why and it is a very Luke style mistake on the order of him running off to Bespin before his training was complete. Luke wins in ROTJ, not because he throws his saber down, but because his father can’t let another family member die. I would say throwing his saber down was a mistake both times he did it (ROTJ and TLJ) but for different reasons. So I don’t agree that Luke had changed so drastically in ROTJ that he would never again make the mistakes the ST has him make. I think making mistakes his human and it casts Luke as the unwilling mentor in TLJ. I think it builds on his story and that the ending is the opposite of hopeless. The movie ends with hope restored because of Luke and Rey. They live to fight another day and hope spreads out across the galaxy to give them help when that day comes. TLJ setup the finale of TROS. And the ending of TLJ has Luke make the ultimate heroic sacrifice to save lives. So I think Rian portrayed heroic sacrifice as a good thing, but needless loss of life as a bad thing.