Why I Love Star Wars: Through the Lens of The Last Jedi

Hey folks, it’s been a minute. I intend to give a more complete update very soon, but since it’s May the 4th, I figure I’d do something special.

The cinematography in this movie is absolutely gorgeous and that's all that needs to be said.

I’ve talked a decent amount both in this blog and in real life about how much I enjoy Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and I figure on a day like this, meant to celebrate Star Wars as a whole, I might as well talk about why. I’ve talked about general themes and ideas, but I don’t think I’ve ever given a full statement here. I want to do that on today of all days because The Last Jedi, to me, is emblematic of everything that Star Wars ought to stand for. It contains the best of all of the Original movies and even the best of the Prequels. It’s a movie that not only takes the franchise to new depths through its storytelling and character work but also becomes a meta-commentary that studies the franchise itself. It asks ‘what does Star Wars mean?’ and ends with one of the most concise statements of the franchise’s beliefs. I’ve seen a lot of hostile takes about The Last Jedi and its director, Rian Johnson. Not everyone who disliked The Last Jedi absolutely hated it, and I want to acknowledge that, but a very vocal part of the fanbase has seemed to dedicate all their energy to tearing it down. One of their most baffling claims is that The Last Jedi and Rian Johnson “hate Star Wars.” The Last Jedi doesn’t read to me like a manifesto from someone who despises the franchise – it reads to me like a love letter. More than any other Star Wars movie or piece of canon out there, it synthesizes the franchise into 150 minutes of pure love for this franchise. I don’t quite want to make the argument that it’s the best Star Wars movie, but it’s certainly become my favourite. Let me tell you why.

I don't talk about Rey in this article nearly as much as I expected to but I love Rey as a character so that might be another article.

For me, part of the beauty of The Last Jedi is that it’s all about characters. The movie functions in three concentric rings of plot, each with one of our main characters as its focus, and each growing wider in scope and higher in scale. Each of the primary characters in this movie represents a worldview, a certain perspective, and so all three of these circles feature a conversation about the world of Star Wars as a whole and The Last Jedi in particular. At its highest, there’s Rey, Luke, and Kylo Ren arguing about what the future of the Force looks like, with the fate of the universe in the balance. A step down, Poe Dameron, Admiral Amelyn Holdo, and General Leia Organa discuss what the nature of heroism and leadership functionally looks like; would we rather have empty heroics or live to fight another day? And at the bottom, at the fundamental heartbeat of this movie, is Finn, Rey, and DJ. That Canto Bight plot that everyone discounts as ‘wasted time’ is the blood of this movie, it’s the part that says “you can’t just go on your own, and look out for your friends. You need to believe in something. And you need to fight for it.” In a way, the entire movie focuses on that message.

This opening is honestly so much fun.

See, through this movie, each of our core cast members – Rey, Poe, and Finn – learn not only something about themselves but also something intrinsic about the world around them. About the world we have been following since 1977. A New Hope was a movie about, well, hope. It was about pushing yourself to the end of the line to do good in the world, even if you were some nobody farmboy with nothing to your name. The Last Jedi dives right into the essence of that. Rey, the nobody who comes from nowhere, rises up and makes a name for herself, continuing on the Jedi Order and all the hope that brings with it. She learns that she doesn’t need to be ‘Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master,’ or anything of the like, she can be who she is and still make a difference. Poe, the try-hard flyboy with a flair for the dramatic, learns that it’s not all about him and that, in the words of Ben Kenobi back in the first movie, “there are other ways to fight.” He drops the empty heroics that have gotten people killed, and learns to be a genuine leader. Finn, who has spent his life running from the First Order and helping the one or two people he actually cares about, has to stop and pick a side. He has to pick a side because apathy is as good as evil, and it perpetuates the machine of war. Even more, picking a side isn’t just fighting what you hate – that lands you in the seat of Poe at the start of this movie, trading lives like chess. No, it’s about what you have. It’s about protecting people and giving them hope.

Everything in this sequence is peak Star Wars. It's my favourite stuff in the whole franchise.

Enter Luke Skywalker. Jedi Master. Because at the start of this movie, Luke wasn’t who we expected him to be. He was hollow, scarred, washed-out. Drenched in his own guilt for failing the people who depended on him. In honesty, I think we all get there from time-to-time. People put him in the spotlight, and he failed, and he doesn’t want to risk that again. He looks at the history of the Jedi and finds that they failed too. They always have. That was the lesson of the Prequels if ever there was one. Because The Last Jedi is about the entire narrative of this franchise. The Jedi in the Prequels had everything and they still failed. So why would Luke be any better? The weight of his own legacy suffocates him. But after meeting Rey, after confronting his own failures and the failings of all that have come before him, Luke Skywalker learns one final lesson. You can’t define yourself by your past – and you shouldn’t. Mistakes are what we learn and grow from. Good ol’ Master Yoda says it himself – the greatest teacher is failure. But the key is that you learn from the lesson. That’s the problem with Kylo Ren. He doesn’t want to learn from the mistakes of the past, he wants to burn them. Destroy them. People seem to weirdly think that Kylo’s philosophy is the movie’s philosophy, but it’s quite the opposite. Kylo Ren wants to kill the past because he can’t deal with it, he refuses to grow from it, but Luke and Rey both learn from their own mistakes and the mistakes of the Jedi before them.

This shot. Luke towering over the First Order walkers. This shot is everything.

When all other hope is lost, when the Resistance is at death’s door, that’s when he arrives. The old legend steps onto the scene, bearing all the trappings of the hero everyone dreamed of. He’s made recompense with his old self and he’s arrived to do what’s right. Notably, he’s not there to crush the First Order. He’s not even there to defeat Kylo Ren. He’s there to buy time, to protect the Resistance – and he does it without landing a single blow. He does it without even being present because, as we learn, he’s projecting his image across the stars. This is the lifeblood of Star Wars. As Yoda said back in Empire Strikes Back, a true Jedi always uses the Force for defense, never to attack. True to the rest of this movie, Luke doesn’t show up pulling some daring heroics. It would have been very easy for Luke to take down a couple of walkers or something. But that wouldn’t be the way of a Jedi, nor the way of a legend. Luke focuses on saving the Resistance, and he does it without ever landing a blow.

I can’t get behind the idea that Luke Skywalker in this movie is some kind of aberration. I respect people’s rights to their opinions, but the idea that The Last Jedi somehow desecrated Luke seems fundamentally wrong. Luke’s flaws and his successes in this movie are all built out of his character from the Original Trilogy. He was always over-eager to do the right thing, and it almost always got him in trouble. That’s the entire plot of Empire Strikes Back. In Return of the Jedi, we see that he has an inner darkness, liable to become violent if his friends and family are threatened. Yet, we also see him in his shining moment. He throws away his lightsaber and states that he is a Jedi, like his father before him. The Emperor in Return isn’t defeated by a cool sword fight – he’s defeated by the humble passivity of Luke, and the sacrificial love of Luke’s father. Those are the core weapons of Star Wars, and they come at the forefront of The Last Jedi. The Luke of Return is on full display in this movie, all of his flaws and – more importantly – all of his heroic features. At the end of the day, Luke fully accepts the legacy he had rejected and grown afraid of and bears it proudly. The movie concludes with a scene of kids gleefully retelling of that last stand on Crait. The story has elevated into myth, and it ignites hope through the galaxy. At its center – Luke Skywalker. Jedi Master. This is why I don’t understand the idea that this Luke is some fundamental disgrace, that he’s less than the hero everyone grew up with. The movie literally ends with Luke becoming that same legend everyone – including Rey! – wanted to see. The grand conclusion of The Last Jedi is Luke Skywalker growing into the apotheosis of his own myth and igniting hope.

Far from some hateful deconstruction of Star Wars, The Last Jedi pours love into the core themes that have made this franchise what it is. The finale on Crait embodies all the things that brought me to Star Wars as a kid, and what encouraged me to cling to the franchise as I grew up. Impossibly grand heroes against stark villainy. The virtue of genuine good, that acts out of love and humility and the need to protect others. These are all huge pillars that The Last Jedi stands upon, and there are so many more. I love The Last Jedi not just because it’s a good, fun movie with relatable characters, but because it – better than any other Star Wars movie – packages and delivers the core themes of the franchise in such an adoring manner.

This movie treats Leia better than anything since Empire Strikes Back and that alone makes it a peak Star Wars movie.

At the same time, The Last Jedi is a meta-commentary on the trajectory of the franchise as a whole. Because while the conversation between Luke, Rey, and Kylo about whether to hold on to the past or let go is relevant to their characters, it’s also relevant to the ongoing DNA of Star Wars. Importantly, this is purely a conversation that The Last Jedi is having with the other movies, not with the fanbase. The Last Jedi was written before the release of The Force Awakens, it’s by no means a response to fan reactions. In a lot of ways, every Star Wars movie after Empire grew obsessed with the symbology and semiotics of the Star Wars franchise. The Last Jedi doesn’t say this is wrong, per se, but it does say that there is more to be seen. It says that our past is a platform for what we can be, not the determining factor of what we are. The Last Jedi is very much a weird movie. Rey’s cave sequence is unlike anything else in the movies. The film has flashbacks and narrative voice-overs, things Star Wars has never seen before. There’s speed ramping and slowed frames. The movie is constantly innovating, even while it’s celebrating the old. What’s more, as the movie progresses, more and more of the symbology is peeled away. Rey loses her iconic hairstyle and clothes. Kylo Ren loses his helmet. Poe loses his cool X-Wing. Luke is dismissive of his lightsaber – and that same lightsaber is later torn in half. This isn’t just mean-spirited deconstruction, but rather an attempt to get past all the surface layers of what we think Star Wars is about to get us to the truth. That moral core, that final battle at Crait. Luke Skywalker igniting hope for everyone. That’s what Star Wars is about, not the cool fights or the lightsabers or the Death Stars.

This shot is also everything.

There are plenty of other reasons I love this movie. I love Rey’s character, I love her road to self-actualization, how she realizes that she has to stop looking for purpose and belonging in the people around her and has to start finding it in herself. I love how Leia gets to actually be relevant for the first (and only) time since Empire, possessing genuine authority and heft in the philosophical conversations of the plot. Poe’s arc doesn’t work without her. I love Del Toro as DJ and everything he says. I love the scene of all the rich people getting their stuff trashed. Possibly more than the battle of Crait, I love the ‘Holdo Maneuver,’ even if I hate the name. Can we talk about that sequence? Everything comes to a head – Rey’s rejection of Kylo and their proceeding stand-off, Finn and Rose’s imminent execution, Poe’s tensions with the leadership, the First Order’s destruction of the Resistance. The intercutting is masterful, practically seamless. But what makes this sequence really stand-out is that hyperspace jump. Not just because it’s visually and audibly stunning, but because that one action resolves each and every one of those plot threads at once. Everything coming to a climax simultaneously is one thing, but to have that climax for every thread comes from one, individual action? How many movies do that? It’s gold.

This article has gone on long enough and could honestly keep going. I wouldn’t say The Last Jedi is the best Star Wars movie, but I think that’s more out of fear of the response than anything else. But I would definitely say it’s my favourite. The Last Jedi is my favourite Star Wars movie because, in short, it is Star Wars. It contains, at a fundamental level, everything that Star Wars ought to represent. And it does it a way that’s punchy, fun, exhilarating. It says that Star Wars is about heroism, genuine heroism, that is born out of love and humility. It says that Star Wars is good, but it can be better if it’s allowed to learn from its past and grow, rather than cling lifelessly to it. And it says the same about each of us.

Show me any other Star Wars movie as pretty as this.

Quite simply, I love The Last Jedi, and I suspect it's going to remain my favourite Star Wars movie for a long time. I just wish more people saw it that way.