Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the Death of History

By Christopher Barr │POSTED ON JANUARY 03, 2018

The Last Jedi was a movie that was an interesting addition to the Star Wars saga.  It had marvelous special effects, it had some exciting battle scenes......

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Okay this movie was either so brilliantly done or it was a massive mess that we all want to believe was great because it had Star Wars in its title.  There is a third way of looking at it.  Was the movie just not a good movie, not because it's Star Wars, not because it's a massive budget blockbuster extravaganza, but because the pieces that work so well in a good movie were absent here?

Is The Last Jedi a victim of it's time?  Is it's concepts and discombobulating narrative subject to the fractured times that permeate the closing pages of 'who we are' and 'where we are at' as a people in the privileged first world circa 2017?  Is this just a movie?  Of course it isn't because no movie, no story, no narrative is just a thing in and of itself.  We watch these stories because they mean something to us, they resonate, hopefully.  We learn about how to be good to people and how others have struggled to live through this life.  We certainly learn much of our morality through educational means outside the dark theaters and flat screens of our home entertainment systems, but to suggest that a film has nothing to say, whether a comedy, a drama, a horror film, or in this case a science fiction film, is quite frankly losing the meaning of film, narrative and how we interrupt the world outside the mind.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a fun movie and was a valid addition, while introducing this 40 year old fantasyland to younger people it also paid fan service to the Star Wars fans that actually grow up watching them through 1977 - 1983.  Its weakness' and its strengths oddly coexist in this paradigm of the past and the present simultaneously.  J.J. Abrams had massive mouths to feed and for the most part, he achieved this.  He took a mega-franchise and was awarded the task to restart the heart of a dying star.  The prequels divided the fans where confidence was low and the expectations of a sort of heart transplant seemed dim.  Abrams ignited excitement to this new rebirth, this new window into this galaxy far, far away.

The Force Awakens opened with for the most part, approval by fans of the originals and the prequels alike.  Yes some people bashed it, but that was going to happen.  Why wouldn't they, the movie had some plot issues, it killed off Han Solo (at the request of actor Harrison Ford no less), it played the replay button many times over throughout its running time.  The question is; what did we get in the end?  We got a movie that celebrated Star Wars, probably with a little fan service over-kill, but we still got an entertaining movie on its own right.  

Abrams' job, not only as a fan but as a director, was to introduce this world to a young audience and he did that.  The thing is, he gave a gift to the older audience, him being part of that audience, he gave the location to Luke Skywalker.  The first Star Wars movie from May of 1977 introduced a story of a young man that pulled himself out of the modest farming life only to discover he was part of a dynasty of Jedi that were warriors who fought against an evil Empire.  He was like a boy plucked from the pages of a Horatio Alger's novel, where the poor boy is plummeted, through no fault of his own, into the world of the wealthy and knowledgeable.  

With the three originals and the prequels, family was a main artery throughout the saga.  It was the spine that barely held the prequels together.  This Skywalker mythology was very much a part of The Force Awakens.  Stars Wars is about Skywalker.  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was a successful episode outside of the Skywalker linage that proved to be exciting and worthy of its place in the Star Wars Universe.  Which now brings us back to The Last Jedi.

Yoda: Delicate waters I tread, hhhmmmmm.

What was great about The Last Jedi?  Stowing wants and desires that have been painted on the walls of many of our minds and memories in the Millennium Falcon weathered rusty grey, what happened in this movie?

Star Wars: The Last Jedi was not a good movie.  It has it's moments, it has its twists, contrived yes, but they were technically twists.  Poe Dameron takes out all the exterior laser canons on a massive Star Destroyer and then bombs were dropped onto this Star Destroyer in zero-gravity, nit-picky for sure, but what was interesting just minutes before this attack, General Hux suffered through humiliating conference call issues with Poe. 

Issues with The Last Jedi are littered all over the internet, most of which we all know by now; what's up with running out of fuel, how can Leia come alive and float in space, why are the First Order so tactically stupid, why did Luke not give a shit as he drank milk from whatever that thing was?  

The problem here is The Last Jedi was a victim of its time.  It was a Star Wars movie that was not a Star Wars movie.  It was a movie for kids and teenagers that heard about this galaxy far, far away but they can never ever live there.  The Last Jedi did away with the fantasy that kids in the 80's clung so hard to.  It brought the fantasy home with all the animal rights and the corporate greed and left out the allegorical mythology of the originals.

Yoda: Luke Skywalker is dead he is, hhmmmm, nothing without effort it was.

What did we learn from this episode of Star Wars?  What did we get in the end, that last shot of 'family' on the Millennium Falcon?  What did we really get out of this 8th film outside of a couple of cool action scenes and a couple, very few, dramatic moments?  We all wanted to love this movie but yet we didn't, some of us lied to ourselves, convincing us that it was the greatest of all the Star Wars movies, some didn't like it but didn't know why and some hated it because it wasn't the 'Star Wars' they were expecting.

This all turns around and follows back to the most fundamental question that was mentioned before; is this just a movie?  This movie has been seen by more people than Citizen Kane, Midnight Cowboy, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now combined so yes, this movie means something, for better or for worse.

Worse is the more obvious approach, it's message was to forget the past, "kill it if you have to."  It advocates, like so many movies these days, to 'kill' the past like it is worthless.  The problem with the past, whether you need cuddles or not, is it defines who we are in the present.  To 'kill' the past is to kill the self.  We can learn from the past and correct wrongs and make them rights, but we cannot divorce ourselves from the past know more than a shark can separate itself from water. 

Along with the SJW (Social Justice Warrior) Kylo Ren not getting his way fits and the millennial agenda of receiving without earning, princess warrior Rey did nothing to become a Jedi, the message here is fuck Joseph Campbell, fuck actual sacrifice and everyone gets what they want in their cuddly warm blanket.  Nietzsche as angry as he was when he was alive would fucking die of the all sulking and the I-want-it-my-way movement of the modern human (not gender specific) in the first world.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi, without lying to oneself and getting over the spell that Star Wars holds over us, was not a good movie, but more importantly, the movie didn't have a good message.  With that little 'together' moment at the end doesn't erase the fact that this movie was about the killing of the family and the killing of trust itself.  Sadly in the end this movie was about the kids and the young people watching it.  It's no more a Star Wars movie than comic book movies are for comic book fans.  It has evolved into a monster corporate commercial that is never ending.  It's a circus now, oddly resulting from the first major circus, Star Wars (1977), the (Snoke) snake eating its own tail.  

Sadly here we get Mickey Mouse eating his own tail.  Purple haired suicide bombers and superhero princess Leia and a Rose that never blooms.  

The fight in the red room was cool, ......high note.......?