So it’s probably (past) time for me to talk about Star Wars: The Last Jedi.<\/i><\/p>\n
We went and watched it right before Christmas, and the last two weeks have been … diverting from anything approaching normal social media interaction. Now I’m ready for something more spoilerful.<\/p>\n
SPOILERS BELOW!<\/p>\n
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I liked The Last Jedi.<\/i> I have not gone to rewatch it (see above “last two weeks”), but I look forwad to do doing so some time. I have read a fair amount about it, mostly in terms of things that people like, and things that people didn’t like.<\/p>\n
I loved the wonder of it all. I loved the highlighted acts of heroism. I loved the subversion of expectations. I enjoyed the thoroughly unexpected reversals of fortune to both the disastrous and the successul. I dearly love that things right now are extremely fraught for the Resistance, beyond the point of catastrophe, and I have no idea where they are going to go with it.<\/p>\n
Poe is a hothead who keeps doing cowboy hothead things that sometimes succeed, sometimes fail, but get lots of people killed in doing so — and he gets called on it (if never nearly hard enough), and has to learn<\/i> from it. Finn is a fundamentally a coward, driven by fear; he’s not just a conscientious objector from the First Order, but a man defined by terror of the world around him, and then terror of being caught out in it.<\/p>\n
Rey wants so damned much to be a hero and she manages to succeed in ways that may be making things worse. The revelations about her past were a welcome breath of fresh air in the Dynastic Destiny bits that Star Wars has gathered about itself, and a welcome subversion of both fan expectations and her own. Kylo is a talented teenager who has decided to let the (admittedly high level of) angst in his life drive his actions; his scenes with Rey are delightful in how they ultimately turn out. Rey and Kylo are Luke and Vader, only this is a Vader with feet of clay but who actually does get around to striking down his master, and this is a redeeming Jedi acolyte who discovers that standing by the person she’s sure she can fix doesn’t mean everyone lives happily ever after.<\/p>\n
Luke, meanwhile, is an emotional wreck, and I give huge shoutouts to Mark Hammill for what he did in this role in this movie; Hammill’s work in the whole first trilogy was not all that great; his growth as an actor is noteworthy, and the role he’s been give here is exquisite, overcoming his own fears and insecurities (in a way Kylo has not to finally become the hero. I mean, Luke is seen<\/i> as the hero in the IV, V, and VI, but he succeeds mainly through others — he lets Ben and the Force destroy the Death Star in IV, he ends up an amputee, a failed suicide, and child of the biggest monster the galaxy in V, and he only “wins” in VI by the Emperor nearly killing him. But here, finally, in VIII, he finds clarity and grace and stands up to his failures and reaches out to people and succeeds.<\/p>\n
It is impossible for me to consider Leia’s role in this film without the impact of having known of Carrie Fisher’s death. Because of that, I expected Leia to die over, and over, and over again. That she didn’t<\/i> made Leia’s role even better, and while this was meant to be the “Luke” episode of this trilogy, she managed to make it partly hers as well. She will be missed.<\/p>\n
Rose Tico is awesome. Like Rey, like Finn, she’s not some magical creature of destiny, born of ancient lineages to fulfil regal prophecies. She’s an ordinary working stiff, caught up in something much bigger than herself, and trying to make her way through it. I was so worried she was going to be fridged, and so glad that she was not.<\/p>\n
I loved the characters. I reveled in their flaws. I loved how they overcame those flaws to do mighty things.<\/p>\n
But speaking of flaws …<\/p>\n
There are significant ones in TLJ, no question, almost all of them related to plot and the story. What I like is that they ultimately make little difference.<\/p>\n
Yes, the goofy Resistance Bombers at the beginning of the film are just plain goofy, no matter how much fandom tries to ‘splain the goofiness away (a pastime I cannot in all good conscience criticize). But it doesn’t matter, because it’s not about this video game mechanic about that video game mechanic, but about sacrifice and Rose’s sister and Poe’s failure and how much trouble we’re all in now, guys.<\/p>\n
Ditto for some of the other set pieces: the Long Pursuit (albeit audacious in its conscious lack of real action over so much time), the Battering Ram, the Use of Hyperdrive as a Weapon — all of these are just rock-headed stupid in how they are constructed, but it makes little difference because the purpose<\/i> they play in the plot overwhelms how<\/i> they do it — again, working stuff around the characters, their flaws, their heroism, and why they fight, and the tragedy and the triumph and the stuff that blends the two.<\/p>\n
Granted, this is Star Wars<\/i> we are talking about. Plot goofiness is almost as much a part of the franchise as the Skywalker\/Solo dynasty. Only in the past is was more about priming action-adventure; here it serves that role, but also gives us character development,<\/i> which goes a long way to redeeming. The Charge of the Light Brigade against the Battering Ram was idiotic (if beautiful) but the opportunity it gave us to further Finn’s character arc, and Rose’s (and, heck, Poe and Leia and Luke’s) was golden.<\/p>\n
TLJ is a mediocre story (great moments, interesting ideas, ludicrous illogic) with spectacular effects and really strong characters who do interesting things and who are run through the wringer to end up in worse shape than when they started. I’m perfectly happy with that.<\/p>\n
Now, a few articles (via +<\/span>Bill Garrett<\/a><\/span>, who posting about it the last day or two actually got me to get around to this post):<\/p>\n And, finally, the notes I wrote immediately after watching the movie (with some [thoughts]<\/i> after a few weeks of mulling):<\/p>\n—-<\/del><\/p>\n\n
—-<\/del><\/p>\n\n
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