Star Wars in the Twenty-First Century

Last week, I finally got around to seeing The Last Jedi.

I’ll admit, I had some trepidation. I’d seen the Rotten Tomatoes debacle, heard about fan reactions. Low expectations were a part of why I took so long to see the film. The spoiler-free reviews I read seemed pretty promising, but that was almost even more discouraging. Was The Last Jedi just going to be another example of why critical opinions need to be taken with a grain of salt?

As it turned out, The Last Jedi reminded me why I tend to take fan reactions with a grain of salt.

To avoid spoilers, it’s only the last week I’m letting myself read commentary and the fan reactions. But after watching the movie and reading the articles that have slowly accumulated in a folder on my desktop, it seems the main justification for the vitriol is that the movie “absolutely ruins 30 years of cinema lore.”

While there is a kernel of truth in this statement, I have to admit, I find this thinking somewhat reductive.

In responding to that particular Tweet and the countless fans who agree with its sentiment, I’ll start by acknowledging that, yes, The Last Jedi disappointed me. It was a disappointment for the little boy who’s still somewhere in there, that continues to drive my fandom. In many ways, The Last Jedi spit in the face of the little boy who watched the originals as long ago as he can remember before getting his own generation of Star Wars.

This newest movie disappointed the part of me that drives my belief that Return of the Jedi is the best of the series. In many ways, The Last Jedi is the sequel to Episode VI we never saw with The Force Awakens.  Like all good sequels, The Last Jedi addresses the legacy of its predecessor. Luke’s bleak monologues cut to the romantic heart of Return of the Jedi’s neat fantasy ending: the comradery, the optimism, the mythologizing. The kid inside who continues to idolize Luke’s hero’s journey felt pretty hurt and even offended by the writers’ cynical manipulation of the mythology.

I get why people dislike this movie.

But I’m no longer just that kid. I’m also an adult who attempts to engage at least somewhat critically with the cultural artifacts I am exposed to.

My adult reaction to any offense taken after seeing The Last Jedi is basically this… the existence of a third Star Wars trilogy in a universe where George Lucas sold his baby to Disney is fucking offensive.

Most of the problems with both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi can be directly tied to the fact that the series should not even exist. Any manipulation of fan-favoured franchise lore isn’t the fault of a single writer or his film. His directing is not the reason Luke seems like an entirely different character in this movie. It would have been inevitable. Luke’s story ended with Return of the Jedi.

Any problems arising with his character can be traced back to the increasing commodification of franchises like Star Wars by entertainment giants (remember, Disney also owns Marvel Entertainment). Rian Johnson seems to understand this, and I wonder if this knowledge played a part in his choice to characterize Luke this way. Is it, perhaps, a statement? At the very least, he’s given an alternative to the predictably Yoda imitator we might have ended up with under a different director.

Whatever people say about the prequel trilogy fit, it directly into the creative vision Lucas created. The first follow up trilogy enhanced the franchises core themes and deepened the universe (providing space to revive a dying expanded universe) while mostly acknowledging the original trilogy as its foundation piece. This new trilogy was unplanned, clearly a product of corporate machinations. Our Twitter friend succinctly summarizes what many of us have been thinking since 2012: “cash cow only and goodbye to all that made #StarWars great.”

I’m almost tempted to say the world did end in 2012, because the world where Star Wars fandom is untainted by the postmodern malaise is no more. Hence, I return to my reaction The Last Jedi: I loved it. It’s up there with the best of the canon, precisely because it understands the place Star Wars is at in the 21^st century.

One of Star Wars’ many values is its reflection of the culture that produces it. The original trilogy reflected Reagan-era anti-communist rhetoric, centered on a hero’s journey to join the collective fight against the evil Empire. Concerned with diversifying the series mythology, the prequel trilogy is perennially well suited for the post-9/11 world, dissecting empires, republics, and religions. In the prequel trilogy, we witness an outdated order being torn down in a manner that seems both reflective and eerily prophetic. The prequel trilogy remains relevant when we look back from sixteen plus years into the War in Afghanistan.

Rian Johnson asks hard questions that have always existed in the Star Wars franchise but have never been tackled in the film’s main line. He exposes some of the problematic thinking promoted by the original Star Wars series, and the way that dogged faith in organizations and religions can exacerbate these problems. Despite Return of the Jedi’s optimistic ending, I’ve always wondered if the Jedi need to return. It was, after all, (as Luke notes at one point in the new film) the overconfident and bureaucratic Jedi order that allowed Darth Sidious to organize the Empire and order the Jedi’s destruction.

Perhaps, The Last Jedi asks, it is time to stop looking for the past for answers. This, of course, brings the film into conversation with contemporary political debates.

The Republic and the Empire both function as analogies for the American state. Though fans debate over how those analogies map onto the real world, look around the world today. Does any other political entity represent the First Order better than the United Sates and the late capitalist west more generally? Specifically, who better represents the First Order’s incompetent and extremist leadership than those politicians currently sitting in the White House?  

It’s no longer enough to joke about “the only other woman in the galaxy” as some form of empty lip service. It’s time to actively dismantle and deconstruct the institutions that reproduce social ills. On the fandom level, that means criticizing franchises like Star Wars and others when they fail to promote socially diverse narratives. It means questioning elements of fandom that are unwilling to compromise their views about the social ramifications that fiction has.

In terms of the franchise’s creative direction, it means little humanization for the villains and even less romanticism in dealing with them. The Last Jedi excellently deconstructs the naiveté of believing in the good inside. In real life, the good guy doesn’t turn, the eleventh hour plan fails, and a petulant man child is in charge of the most dangerous and powerful military in the galaxy. In real life, a villain’s backstory is second to the threat he poses threat. In the real world, actions define a person.

The Last Jedi is the first truly adult Star Wars film not just because it strays heavily into PG territory but because it is aware of itself and the franchise as a set of cultural artifacts with social ramifications. While the child in me will always love the original trilogy the best, The Last Jedi seems to point towards a future where nine films form a unified progressive update to the six-episode saga my heart still considers the core of Star Wars.

Mishandled, though, J.J. Abrams and Episode IX’s creative team risk dismissing some of the thematic depths reached in The Last Jedi. Though The Last Jedi is certainly one of Star Wars’ best moments, this seems largely due to Rian Johnson’s update to George Lucas’s creative vision. Two years on from The Force Awakens, I’m still unsure how I feel about this new trilogy.