Channel72

I know that Vader’s evil Mordor castle is a product of the 1970s, but since it never actually appeared in the OT, I guess I never really liked it. I don’t like things that make Vader closer to being Dracula or something. Vader to me is more of an efficient, dystopian villain, who spends his time in sterile, technological conference rooms and control centers. He has no interest in or time for melodramatic things like evil fortresses surrounded by lava. That sort of chthonic or infernal imagery is way too on the nose and thematically inconsistent with Vader’s story. Vader lives in an efficient, sterile world of starship technology and life support systems.

^ I mean, even after a horse dies from excessive blunt-force trauma, then decomposes into the soil, then fossilizes underneath layers of sedimentary rocks after millions of years, you can still dig it up, bring it to the lab, use rabio-carbon dating to see when it died, and then beat it some more.

NFBisms said:

“Politics” do not [necessarily, or often] work via the same mechanics as a fable’s moral or lesson. These aren’t ‘messages’ at the end of an after school special or Saturday Morning Cartoon episode.

They are manifest in all work, as a reflection of the author’s perspectives, the context in which work is created. It can be as simple as the Empire dissolving the Senate being portrayed as bad, or as thematic as Leia being portrayed counter to conservative femininity. There are things you wouldn’t write, and things you likely would, if you were to write your own story. That is politics.

Lucas can go back outside of his initial intentions and verbalize what precisely might have inspired him. It’s no different than Spielberg realizing how his parents inadvertently inspired how the aliens communicate in Close Encounters. But instead of making The Fabelmans, Lucas makes the prequels.

Having political inspiration inherent to oneself doesn’t even have to interplay with intention. I absolutely believe Lucas intended to just make a fun, swashbuckling space opera. I absolutely believe Lucas was more influenced by Flash Gordon than he was Vietnam. But the context from which the story arose from him is worth talking about, especially for himself to analyze. There are aesthetics and what a story is (its genre form, its intention), and then there are the values a story inherently has.

Right, I’m mostly reacting to the (implied) idea that Lucas began writing Star Wars (either the OT or the Prequels) with some clear, historical/political allegory in mind, in the way that, say, George Orwell did while writing Animal Farm. I think it was more like, Lucas was thinking “I want to write this cool story with space ships and lasers and wizards and fairy-tale endings, and I sure love those old WW2 movies and serial adventures where they fight Nazis. But I also think my cool film-school friends are on to something with this anti-war and revolutionary stuff that’s going on now. I feel like I have something to say about all this, so I’ll sprinkle in some thematic fragments here and there.”

I mean, these perceived allegorical dimensions of Star Wars always seemed way more “tacked on” to me, and much less organically emergent from the story itself, than other comparable sci-fi like Dune or Star Trek.

It’s similar to how Lucas is now strongly associated with Joseph Campbell, even though the “hero’s journey” stuff sort of just naturally seeped into Star Wars via cultural osmosis, rather than Lucas actually reading Campbell and methodically setting out to write a story constrained by specific Campbellian parameters.

Anyway, for a clear example of Star Wars with (mostly obvious and intentional) political messaging done correctly, see Andor.

Superweapon VII said:

I’ve set out to try again at a comprehensive reading of the Bible. I tried once before, reading straight through cover-to-cover, but tapped out before finishing Exodus. This time I’m using a different approach. I’ve started with the New Testament; instead of going by canonical order, I’m following Marcus Borg’s chronological order. Once I’ve finished the NT, I’ll go back to the Hebrew Bible and read it according to the Jewish canon (Torah, Nev’im, and Ketuvim). Then I’ll finish with the deuterocanonical books, including those canon to the Slavonic and Ethopian Orthodox churches. I’ll mostly be reading from my New Oxford Annotated Bible based on the NRSV, but for books like Jubilees and Enoch, I’ll have to look elsewhere.

Eventually, I plan on tackling the Nag Hammadi library (the so-called Gnostic Gospels) and other Judeo-Christian pseudepigrapha.

I read the New Oxford Annotated Bible - it’s definitely the best study Bible out there in my opinion. Also, you probably already know about this, but I’ve found Peter Kirby’s earlychristianwritings.com to be a very convenient resource for all the fun apocryphal and pseudepigraphical stuff.

Yeah, I mean, whenever someone talks about Star Wars being “WW2 in space”, it’s generally accompanied by clips of X-Wings banking like a WW2 fighter plane, or gunners manning a huge laser canon and firing out the window into space like on a WW2 battleship, etc. The “WW2 in space” thing mostly refers to aesthetic/stylistic choices manifested in the groundbreaking visual effects. The story itself is more closely analogous to an asymmetric conflict between insurgents and an oppressive technocratic dictatorship. But perhaps it has more in common with a fantasy where an evil Kingdom is defeated by an unlikely hero than anything rooted in real world politics.

I remember, at least anecdotally, people used to draw parallels with the American revolution, drawing on superficial things like the Imperials all having British accents. (It’s likely the Imperials all have British accents because it was convenient to find British extras at Elstree Studios in the UK where a lot of Star Wars 1977 was filmed.) But I find it very unlikely George Lucas had that in mind. He obviously felt some affinity with the 1960s/1970s counter-culture and the anti-war movement at the time. This probably influenced some things in Star Wars in some minor way, but I think most of it was influenced simply by pulp-sci-fi tropes and Flash Gordon, which often featured evil tyrannical Empires as the bad guys.

Honestly, most of the “political messaging” in Star Wars, (if it even exists), always feels tacked on as an afterthought by Lucas as an attempt to elevate the material. Tying in the Bush Administration and the War on Terror with Palpatine’s story in the Prequels always seemed like a really desperate stretch, not because it wasn’t at least partially a valid analogy necessarily, but because I just don’t really believe George Lucas when he claims to have thought much about these things while writing the script.

I do feel something like a nostalgic reaction when I hear Yub Nub, but I have to admit that Victory Celebration is better. It’s celebratory, but somewhat bittersweet, befitting the victory over the Empire while contemplating the tragedy of Vader (which was probably more poignant when his backstory was less defined). But I still hate the Special Edition CGI montage of planets celebrating.

People often assume that critics of the AoTC love story performances want Anakin to be all suave like Han Solo, and deliver polished, teen-heartthrob romance dialogue. But nobody really wants that. We’re fine with Anakin being slightly awkward. Luke was awkward and whiny and acted stupid as well. That’s fine. What we really want is for Anakin to not come off so much like a creepy asshole. At one point Anakin actually channels Malcolm McDowell from Clockwork Orange as he Kubrick-stares at Padme while grinning, prompting her to say she feels uncomfortable. Anakin can be really clunky and awkward, but he shouldn’t be creepy and grating to the point that I am physically compelled to want to skip all those romance scenes.

The worst thing is that nothing happens in AOTC that really explains why Padme even likes this guy. I guess she feels bad about his mom or something, but you’d think any sympathy she had would dissipate after finding out he committed mass murder.

NFBisms said:

You don’t have to presume I have a viewpoint about the Force that’s any different from yours, it makes it really hard to take any discussion in a new direction. I agree with you. Now take it from there! I appreciate how fair you’ve been to ‘both’ sides of the divide on this while having your own POV, but it often feels like I’m being lumped in with some other nebulous TLJ defender archetype.

But the Sequels show us that Rey kind of just “downloads the Force” after her “mind-meld” with Kylo Ren.

There is absolutely no evidence in the movie itself that this is what happens.

Well, I thought the “Force download” was the official explanation. But regardless, something happened during Kylo’s mind probe that triggered something in Rey, regardless of whether we call it a “Force download” or just a new awareness of latent powers. After Rey escapes using a mind-trick, Kylo says “She’s just beginning to test her powers. The longer it takes to find her, the more dangerous she becomes.” Since Kylo wasn’t afraid of Rey earlier, it’s clear the mind probe somehow prompted Rey to “[begin to] test her powers”, making Kylo fear that Rey will rapidly acquire new Force abilities in a matter of mere minutes or hours, based on the urgency of this dialogue. Whether we call this a “Force download” or just a prompting that made Rey aware of latent abilities, it’s still functionally a spontaneous learning of new skills that causes Kylo to suddenly believe that Rey will soon become very powerful/dangerous.

NFBisms said:
It’s way more of a stretch than what I laid out as the mechanics of TFA, where Rey has “seen” Star Wars™. There is absolutely a physical aspect and real training involved in mastering the Force - I would never ever dispute this - but Rey has basically gotten the workout class via her idolization of the story. Through what’s already the fable-istic nature of the Force’s mechanics, and learning about Luke, she’s basically gotten the number of reps and sets of exercises she should do, alongside the philosophy quotes that would help her keep routine. Not to mention she’s an athletic scavenger jumping massive gaps and climbing ropes among dangerous wreckage, fending for herself to begin with. Farmboy Luke is raised by a loving family (attachments), doing chores, dusting crops, flying for leisure. He’s apolitical - ambitious to leave but not for meaning or purpose - not like Rey who already looks up to heroes.

Well, the Sequels definitely have a “meta”-dimension baked into them, with the main characters having border-line fourth-wall breaking knowledge about our beloved OT heroes. This border-line fourth wall breaking is one of the only consistent motifs across all 3 Sequel films. In TFA, Rey idolizes the OT heroes. In TLJ, Luke asks (the audience) if he’s really expected to whip out his laser sword and be a hero, and Rey for some reason expects her parents to be famous people. And of course, in Rise of Skywalker, Chewie finally gets a medal, and Yogurt teaches Lone Starr to use the Schwartz. OMG I love Star Warz so hard!!! 🙄

Anyway, I never interpreted the meta-story angle as having explanatory power with regard to Rey’s spontaneous Force abilities. I always assumed the meta-stuff was just J.J. Abrams failing to control himself while writing the script as a Star Wars fan. Regardless, I’m not sure why merely idolizing these legendary characters through cultural osmosis would be sufficient to actually learn how to be a Jedi, any more than idolizing Bruce Lee and watching all his movies would be sufficient to become even a mediocre martial artist. But maybe J.J. Abrams thinks it should be sufficient.

My take is that the writers of Force Awakens basically wrote themselves into a corner. Rey meets Han Solo (not Luke), who takes on the role of the “wise mentor”. Han is a natural match for Rey’s technical savvy and junkyard knowledge, but of course the decision to go with Han leaves Rey with nobody to teach her about the Force. But this is a Star Wars movie and the main character has to learn to use the Force before the movie ends. Due to other story-telling decisions, Luke is unavailable until the very last scene. So how will Rey learn to use the Force? I imagine that J.J. Abrams and friends brainstormed quite a bit over this issue - maybe that’s what Maz Kanata was originally created for. But at some point Abrams gave up and decided to just smother his script in more “vague mystery sauce” like he always does. Perhaps Rey’s spontaneous “awakening” was originally supposed to suggest a deeper mystery about Rey’s origins - a mystery that was immediately abandoned once Rian Johnson took over. Who knows? Regardless, Kylo’s mind probe somehow causes Rey to spontaneously become capable of Jedi mind tricks and other Force powers - things she was apparently not capable of doing before the mind probe.

Also, while this is neither here nor there, I find it interesting that Rey’s climactic action scene in The Force Awakens involves a lightsaber battle rather than a space battle. Generally in the first film of a Star Wars trilogy the main character isn’t yet experienced enough for lightsaber combat, but has enough natural piloting talent to help blow up an enemy space station. Rey’s piloting skills are well established, but she never gets to use them in a climactic space battle. This is a strange writing decision, necessitating the fast-tracking of Rey’s Force abilities so she can plausibly stand a chance against Kylo in a climactic lightsaber duel. This wouldn’t be necessary if Abrams allowed Rey to follow in the footsteps of Luke and Anakin, making her mark as a fighter-pilot during the ending battle. I mean, TFA is already an overly-derivative ANH clone, yet when the story actually calls for some poetic symmetry, Abrams suddenly goes off in another direction. Perhaps he thought that Rey blowing up Starkiller Base would just cross the line, becoming way too much of an obvious ANH clone. I mean even J.J. Abrams has limits. Thus, he ended up further writing himself into more corners.

NFBisms said:
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.

I agree there’s a lot of messiness, but I’m not sure the “light/dark balance” idea is necessarily disposed of entirely. After Kylo kills Snoke, Rey rejects Kylo’s offer and then she resets back to factory default “good Jedi” settings at the end. But this doesn’t necessarily dispose of the general idea that, on a cosmic level, the Force automatically generates equally matched light-side/dark-side Force users, as Snoke claims, to maintain some kind of cosmic balance. The “light/dark balance” thing is also suggested when Luke says “Balance… powerful light, powerful darkness” when referring to the vision cave under the island. Of course, this never amounts to anything more than a half-baked throw-away idea that is of course dropped in the next movie.

NFBisms said:
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].

The idea that Luke has to contend with the somewhat fourth-wall breaking pressure of being “THE legendary Luke Skywalker™”, feeling some degree of impostor syndrome, is admittedly interesting to some extent. But the level of crippling insecurity and nihilism Luke exhibits is probably something he should have struggled with as a younger, less experienced person. After 35 years, I was kind of hoping to see Luke take on more of a classic “wise mentor” role, giving Mark Hamill free reign to riff on the classic “mystical martial arts master” archetype, loosely modeled after Ben Kenobi in Episode 4. But Luke should also be rattled by the recent disaster with Kylo, struggling to regain confidence in his ability as a mentor/teacher. (Some people would argue that’s exactly what we got with TLJ. But I was hoping to have all that stuff without Luke also being a depressed asshole who doesn’t give a shit that a horde of fascist maniacs is rapidly conquering the Galaxy while Luke fucks around with a fishing pole.)

NFBisms said:
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?

Well, that’s the crazy thing. The Sequels have so little world-building and an almost complete lack of any references to the Prequels. So in TLJ when Luke all of a sudden blurts out the words “Darth Sidious”, you almost get whiplash while thinking: “wait… Rian Johnson actually knows about that??” I mean, yeah the world-building in the Sequels is garbage, but in TLJ Luke pretty much explicitly links his newfound rejection of the Jedi Order directly to historical institutional failures, specifically mentioning Palpatine’s coup in Revenge of the Sith.

NFBisms said:
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.

I agree that’s probably the intention. I think we both can agree the implementation is just all over the place thematically.

NFBisms said:

Channel72 said:
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.

For me, it’s consistent to the OT in that Luke’s power was always himself, his love of his friends, what he would see in his father - not his training. I think the path to the Force clearly has many different forks either way, otherwise what even is “the Dark Side”? and what is Luke even doing through ANH into Empire if not imperfectly wielding the Force with little to no training? He doesn’t have mastery of himself or his emotions when he’s doing backflips on Dagobah. In the arc of his “training”, that movie ends with him failing to complete it.

Well, I mean, the Original Trilogy pretty clearly presents the Force as something that must be learned under the tutelage of a mentor. Ben Kenobi spoke of his “pupil(s)”, and he briefly mentored Luke, who was then trained further by Yoda. All attempts by fans to downplay this aspect (in order to bring the OT more in line with the Sequels) exploit the fact that the script for Empire Strikes Back plays very fast and loose with chronology, such that Luke’s time spent on Dagobah can be interpreted as having been relatively brief - perhaps lasting no longer than a few days.

But this is really wishful thinking. Empire Strikes Back at least wants to make us feel like Luke spent quite some time training on Dagobah. If there was no “B Plot” with Han and Leia, we would assume Luke was there for months or years. But the plot mechanics require the “A Plot” and “B Plot” to converge on Bespin in Act III, which has the unfortunate side effect (for anyone who bothers to think about it) of severely truncating Luke’s training. This has vexed fans for decades, leading to all sorts of “grasping at straws”, like invoking Einstein’s General Relativity to increase Luke’s stay on Dagobah. Obviously, Lawrence Kasdan wasn’t thinking about anything like that. Instead, Kasdan used standard “film language” to convey the impression that Luke spent “some unknown but significant amount of time” training with Yoda on Dagobah. Kasdan also used standard “film language” to briskly propel the audience through an action-filled chase through an asteroid field with Han and Leia, happening concurrently with Luke’s training. The chronology is hand-wavy enough to leave room for interpretation, but it’s pretty hard to come up with a non-contrived way for Luke to have spent months or years training on Dagobah. Nonetheless, this is NOT a thematic issue. It is simply a logistical/pacing issue with the script. Clearly, Kasdan wanted the audience to come away with the impression that becoming a Jedi Knight is a significant mental and physical undertaking that requires serious training under an experienced Jedi Master. Yoda’s dialogue makes this pretty explicitly clear, and the Prequels make this undeniably George Lucas’ most likely intent.

So while it’s technically true that Luke barely even trained at all in the OT, this is more of a structural plot oversight than an intentional thematic element. Indeed, in earlier drafts of Empire Strikes Back, Luke returns to Dagobah at the end to immediately resume training with Yoda.

In contrast, the Sequels show us that Rey sort of just “downloads the Force” after her “mind-meld” with Kylo Ren. She just starts spontaneously developing new Force powers with no guidance from anyone. This is completely different than what happens in the OT, where Luke only starts becoming powerful after training with Yoda. Of course, you can pick this apart by pointing out an instance where Luke spontaneously seems to “self-learn” a new Force power, like when he first uses telekinesis on Hoth in desperation. But isolated incidents like this are clearly supplemental to Luke’s overall journey towards Jedi Knight-hood, which primarily involves training with an experienced Jedi Master. Things like Luke’s devotion to his friends or love for his father are also supplemental traits that help complete his unique journey, but the bulk of his onscreen journey from “farm boy” to Jedi Master happens mostly through mentorship and training. It’s only due to some faulty plot chronology in ESB along with plot constraints in ROTJ that we are forced to conclude that Luke somehow increased his Jedi skills off-screen without Yoda or Ben Kenobi. But this observation doesn’t factor thematically into what the films want to tell us about the Force. ESB pretty unambiguously emphasizes that learning the Force requires a mentor and a serious mental devotion to training.

Rey’s sudden, spontaneous ability to use the Force in Force Awakens was, in fact, such a weird departure from the OT that many fans initially assumed (wrongly) that the movie was hinting that Rey had already been trained by a Jedi Master (perhaps she was even Luke’s daughter), but she had amnesia or whatever, and her spontaneous Force powers were the result of her prior training coming back somehow. Obviously, this idea was abandoned after TLJ came out, solidifying the spontaneous “self-learning” of Force powers as the new, de-facto way the Force works in the Sequels, at least for Rey. (But apparently Kylo still requires training, per Snoke’s dialogue.)

Also, Yoda’s “size matters not” line obviously can’t be taken too literally. Clearly, lifting an X-Wing requires more mental effort (even if it’s just more effort to believe) than lifting a small rock. And if size really doesn’t matter at all, Yoda should just use the Force to fling the Death Star into the nearest black hole and call it a day.

^ Yeah, I mean, those 1930s/1940s actors were trained to enunciate in that style. When Natalie Portman does it in her bland modern American accent it just sounds horrible. She sounds like people I went to school with struggling badly with a school play. (I’m also from Long Island.) I’ve heard that the Prequels are a lot easier on the ears for people who don’t speak English as a first language. But Natalie Portman is a fantastic actress in other films, so clearly she wasn’t receiving any direction here and Lucas obviously saw nothing wrong with her performance or he just didn’t care.

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.”

Moviefan2k4 said:

I’ve heard the prequel bashers repeatedly condemn the love story between Anakin & Padme, but I don’t think they’re looking at it from the right perspective. Just as the tone of the original trilogy was modeled on the serials of the 1950s, Lucas went back even further and chose to model the prequels’ style on stories from the 1930s. So while it is a little cheesy, that’s by deliberate design. And besides that, stop to really think for a moment: what was your first love experience like? Were you confident and strong, sure that you knew exactly how to handle everything, and how it would all turn out? My personal guess is that for 99% of people in the world, their honest answer would be “no”.

That’s one way to look at it, and a common positive spin from those who enjoyed the Prequels. But the obvious snarky response is that this is basically a nicer way of saying “it sucks, but it sucks because of an intentional artistic decision, therefore, it doesn’t suck.”

The OT was modeled after the sci-fi/adventure serials of the 1930/40s (not 1950s necessarily), but it was never quite as cheesy as those black and white serials. Star Wars 1977 made more concessions to sci-fi as a genre than the old 1930s serials ever did, and elevated the material with break-through special effects and a fantastic cast. The Prequels, on the other hand, simply ported some of the dialogue conventions of classical romance as an homage (and as stylistic “sauce” to cover up the bad taste of Lucas’ self-admitted inability to write natural dialogue). So, while the Prequel dialogue was obviously modeled after certain conventions of classic cinema, it’s still grating to watch regardless.

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.

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.

The Viet Cong analogue is probably more relevant in Return of the Jedi, when the Ewoks fight the Stormtroopers. But even as regards the whole Original Trilogy, the “WW2 in space” analogy can only go so far (and refers mostly to the visuals and special effects), because the Original Trilogy is not about a war between political equals (despite the fact that A New Hope confusingly refers to a “Galactic Civil War” in the opening crawl). Rather, it is about asymmetric war between insurgents and an all-powerful totalitarian regime.

^ I think the fact you looked up the weather in Oklahoma may have sort of crossed the line, and come off as stalker-esque, intrusive behavior. That obviously wasn’t your intention, but it might come off that way, at least to a neutral, outside observer like myself. At the very least, confronting someone with “evidence” that runs contrary to what they’ve already told you will of course come off like an accusation, even if that wasn’t the intention.

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.

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.

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.

snooker said:

The movie at most makes you Think about the implications of Star Wars’s most basic themes (war is bad!!) but at the end states that “getting hope and learning from the past is good and fine actually.” The closest it actually gets to criticizing star wars itself is the note about bloodlines not being the most important thing in the universe.

The movie pretty clearly conveys the message that the past has little to teach us and we need to look inward to ourselves to move forward. The message is somewhat muddled, but it’s in there. And I’m not talking about Kylo Ren’s famous line “let the past die, etc.”. I’m talking about the fact that Rey learns almost nothing from Luke, and then Yoda belittles the “ancient Jedi texts” before burning down the Jedi library while laughing about it, and saying Rey has all she needs by herself.

This message utterly sucks. The message is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Rey brings one of those “ancient Jedi texts” along with her to learn by herself. But this doesn’t really change the overall message much. Why does Rey need to learn by herself with a book when she had access to a real-life Jedi Master?

Vladius said:

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.

The Admiral Jellico comparison is interesting. Star Trek is full of these “no-nonsense” by the book authority figures who meet our awesome, more laid-back crew, so that personality-conflict antics ensue. Although sometimes it happens in reverse, where the TNG crew (usually Riker) is the by-the-book stickler, as in the case with Ensign Ro or Command Shelby. Generally, neither side is proven 100% “correct”, and they both learn from each other in some way.

With Admiral Holdo, the script vindicates her actions through circumstance… I guess. Although, her plan barely makes sense, as it involved escaping to a random nearby planet which presumably would be easily detectable by the First Order. Holdo’s plan doesn’t actually work, because the First Order finds them anyway. But the script vindicates Holdo regardless, at least within the scope of her conflict with Poe, suggesting it wasn’t her fault that the First Order managed to follow the (obvious) escape pods to the surface. (Vader’s crew in A New Hope had no trouble detecting that one escape pod had landed on the surface of Tatooine.)

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.

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.

I think Disney should give M. Night Shyamalan his own Star Wars trilogy. Of course, Shyamalan’s films always need some crazy twist at the end. So maybe the twist could be that Vader is secretly Luke’s father. Nobody would ever predict that one. Also, Luke was actually a Force ghost the whole time, and it turns out Palpatine’s one true weakness is water.

It’s so hard to say which is better or worse. They both suck in very different ways. They both damage Star Wars in very different ways.

But to focus on the positives, the Prequels were at least unique and earnest, and added a ton of new imagery, locations and lore to the Star Wars mythos. But the Sequels had Adam Driver, who delivered a fantastic performance - something that was sorely lacking in the Prequels. The Sequels had isolated moments of great chemistry thanks to the actors, like the beginning of Force Awakens where Finn and Poe escape a Star Destroyer together.

Overall, as an experience - I prefer watching the Prequels. Of course, the cringey acting and CGI vomit is hard to stomach. But the Sequels (especially The Last Jedi) are just really depressing to watch.

When watching the Prequels, at worst I experience a feeling of frustration, because I lament how such a compelling story could be implemented so badly, and I also feel second-hand embarrassment over some of the dialogue and acting. With the Sequels, at worst I experience malaise, disappointment and even sadness over the missed opportunity.