while these themes are prominent throughout TLJ, the movie also muddles these messages a bit, which can easily be mistaken for intentional nuance. These messages are muddled in four primary ways:
Message 3 is also conveyed by the famous line from Kylo Ren “Let the past die”. But since Kylo is a villain, this dialogue is presumably not meant to be taken as a teachable moment for the audience.
Message 2 and 3 are conveyed by Yoda, but Yoda himself comes from the failed past, so why should we even listen to him?
Simple, because it shows Yoda learned from those failures, it’s a reminder of something we see in ESB’s portrayal of Yoda compared to his portrayal in the prequels. If you don’t consume any expanded material, you could say Yoda was always thinking in this manner and that he only had a lightsaber in AOTC for the sake of self-defense and if you did engage in it? Those stories make it abundantly clear that Yoda eventually came to see all the flaws of the old order and thus went out of his way to not make the same mistakes, an idea you could infer even on your own since… well it’s been so long that surely Yoda had to have learned something.
Yoda says the Jedi texts are mostly useless to Rey, yet Rey takes them with her anyway.
Yoda also mentions two positive things (strength and mastery) as things that should be passed down by elders
the overall message is pretty clear: “knowledge/ideas passed down by elders is useful mostly so we can learn to avoid past failures, but there is little the past can teach us as we move forward, so we must look inward to ourselves.” In my opinion, this is a harmful, insidious message that, when taken to its logical endpoint, results in solipsism and narcissism.
Instead, Star Wars should portray the learning process as a give and take between elder and younger generation, with the elder conveying most of the knowledge, but the younger offering a unique perspective that forces elders to reconsider long-held beliefs. The OT did this perfectly, with Luke learning from Kenobi and Yoda, but also proving them wrong by redeeming Vader.
Finally, it’s true that Rey herself also fails badly in TLJ. This is what the “Mary Sue” crowd doesn’t acknowledge. Rey gets her ass kicked by Snoke, she has to be saved by Kylo, and then she fails to bring Kylo back to the light. Now, Luke definitely fails more often (let’s get real here), but this is actually not even relevant. The important point is that Rey’s strength and power come almost exclusively from looking inward to herself and tapping into her inner strength, not by learning from an elder mentor who bestows knowledge from the past. This is an extension of what happens in TFA, where Rey’s Force powers spontaneously manifest with no prior training. It’s also why Rey sees an endless reflection of herself during her vision in the underground cave. TLJ ends triumphantly with Rey lifting tons of boulders - a feat that nobody taught her to do (apart from some meta-joke about lifting rocks). Rather, it was only her own inner strength that enabled her to do it.
Thing is? That’s pretty in-line with the Force. When Yoda was telling Luke to lift up the X-Wing, he expressed doubt which led to Yoda explaining basically that the ability to use the Force comes down to patience and mostly accepting this new form of thinking. It’s about inner strength and accepting a whole new thought process. Strength and mastery in this is not about exercising some Force muscle or whatever, it’s about letting go and allowing this energy to guide you. Rey learned she needed to believe in herself but she also learned facts about how those stories she loved were about real people and that the wars clearly took tolls on them, that the Jedi aren’t 100% squeaky clean arbiters of peace and also learned some hard truths. Luke told her things aren’t just gonna go the way she thinks they will because they happened once before… and he’s proven right. Not to mention there is a back and forth, Luke’s cynicism is framed as being wrong but understandable with Rey taking every opportunity to counter it. The two do learn from one another and ultimately end up with the movie’s message that those who are too shackled to the past are often doomed to repeat it and that ultimately, failure is as much a part of the process of growth as any other element.
I really don’t see this supposed “anti learning from elders” message.