The Last Jedi as Commentary on Itself

Luke:    I'm ending all of this: the tree, the texts, the Jedi. I'm going to burn it all down.

Yoda:    Ah, Skywalker, missed you have I.

Luke:    So it is time for the Jedi Order to end.

Yoda:    Time it is for you to look past a pile of old books, hmm?

Luke:    The sacred Jedi texts?

Yoda:    Oh, read them, have you? Page-turners they were not. Yes, yes, yes, wisdom they held, but that library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess.

The Last Jedi (2017)

All right, I'm going to say it: The Last Jedi is my favourite Star Wars film.¹

 

Crikey, just look at how awesome this Last Jedi fanart is! Thanks to the talented HugoVRB at newgrounds.com.

By that I don't mean that I believe it’s objectively the best one, only that it was the one I enjoyed the most when I saw it, but I gather that that’s still something of a controversial opinion to hold. And I gather also - forgive me for the impending sweeping generalisation - that a primary reason why that’s something of a controversial opinion to hold, is that an awful lot of die-hard fans felt that The Last Jedi was simply too dissimilar to its predecessors. It did too many unexpected things. It didn’t feel like a ‘proper’ Star Wars film. “This is not going to go the way you think,” promised Luke in the trailer, and that promise was certainly kept.²

Well, it's actually exactly that characteristic that’s also a primary reason why I like it so much, but it was only recently that it occurred to me quite how that followed. Here’s what I think: it's possible to read (or ‘watch’?) The Last Jedi as commenting on its own nonconformity within the Star Wars canon. The film itself kind of anticipates fans’ negative reaction to that nonconformity, confronts them, and articulates its defence of what it does. I think it does this primarily through the portrayals of Rey, Luke, and Kylo Ren: each of them can be read as illustrating a particular possible fan mindset or reaction.

First off, consider Rey. Rey’s quite a lot like me: she’s a new fan, with little to no background in the Star Wars fandom. For her, things basically began with The Force Awakens, and though she’s familiar enough with the stories that came before to not be totally clueless about what’s going on now, her knowledge of the finer points of lore is shaky at best. Ask her for a definition of the Force, and she’ll come out with something like, “It’s a power that Jedi have that lets them control people and make things float.” Still, she loves the story, she does, and she’s thrilled that she can now be there and involved, as she wasn’t before, while new chapters are unfolding.

Next, consider Luke. Luke’s old guard: he grew up with the original trilogy and, in a way, those films made him. He knows the canon better than anybody: to him, it’s close enough to sacred, and he devotes himself to knowing and preserving it just as it is. This is the kind of guy who can recite every line of dialogue, name every minor character, and outline the pros and cons of a dozen possible solutions to any plot hole you think you might have found - and he’s the kind of guy who makes liking Star Wars intimidating. He is witheringly condescending about Rey’s admittedly poor attempt to describe the Force, for example: “Impressive. Every word in that sentence was wrong.” He loves the story, but specifically he loves the canon that already exists, and doesn’t see room for any new and different manifestations of the Star Wars story. The analogy breaks apart slightly in that this kind of fan probably does want new films to come out, whereas Luke doesn’t want any new Jedi to be trained, but functionally, the result is the same: the only new film the Luke-type fan will be happy with is one that deliberately panders to his fondness for the originals - one that’s hopelessly derivative and crammed full of obscure references - which would sentence the kind of love of Star Wars he had, where the story was his as it happened, to die with his generation.

Finally, consider Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren’s a bit different in that he doesn’t stand for the fan reaction such as what the fans think they’re reacting against. He’s a foil, a representative of what some might accuse The Last Jedi of doing, namely showing no proper regard for its heritage in the form of the previous films. “The Empire, your parents, the Resistance, the Sith, the Jedi,” he says. “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you are meant to be.” In portraying this attitude as an unambiguously Bad Thing, The Last Jedi declares that that’s not what it’s trying to do itself. Its subverting certain conventions of how one would expect a Star Wars film to go is not to be interpreted as a tearing down of what Star Wars fundamentally is. At the same time, though, there’s an acknowledgement that it’s probably time to put some of the clichés to bed. The brilliantly dramatic moment when Kylo Ren killed Snoke instead of Rey is symbolic of this:³ it’s exactly the sort of unexpected happening that so characterised the film, but you know, haven’t we had rather enough of slimy-looking supreme villains sitting robed on thrones and ordering their subordinates about in an archaically grand and condescending fashion? That particular death was laudable not just morally within the world of the story, but also from an external storywriting point of view. Kylo Ren’s subsequent desire to send everything else from the first Star Wars films the same way as Snoke, though – “It’s time to let old things die: Snoke, Skywalker, the Sith, the Jedi, the rebels” – is abhorrent, again, not just morally within the world of the story, but also from an external storywriting point of view: those are the foundations on which the thing was built and it can’t be severed from them. What The Last Jedi is advocating here, then, is discernment; it’s advocating keeping what’s good and shedding what isn’t. That’s the attitude it takes to its predecessors, and it’s also, therefore, the attitude it permits its audience to take towards it. One ought not to feel obliged to like every single aspect of the film: pointing out bits you think ought to be got rid of is allowed, or commendable, even, because if the fans were to just unconditionally endorse every directorial decision, there’d be nothing to hold the filmmakers to account, and stop them churning out an endless procession of increasingly awful episodes. Equally, there’s no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater: just because a few aspects of The Last Jedi may have annoyed you, that’s no reason to condemn the whole thing to the scrapheap.

So that’s what we learn about how to handle canon from Kylo Ren. What we learn from Luke, meanwhile, is the importance of being willing to accept the new and different. The crucial thing is not that the sacred texts should be preserved - inert, untouched, and never reapplied or reinterpreted - but that the essence of what they’re about should continue to live and thrive.⁴ That’s why it doesn’t matter that they get comprehensively frazzled to a crisp late on in the film, as per my opening quotation: not because their contents isn’t valuable, but because the way its value takes effect is by being employed by people like Rey to fight evil in the real world. Luke isn’t killing the past, the way Kylo Ren wanted to; he’s only killing relics of it, and what really matters is thus set free to live on. Star Wars won’t stay dynamic and brilliant if it only ever tells the exact same story over and over again. And yes, with new blood and new ideas comes the risk of making some pretty hefty mistakes, but it’s that or let the thing die out altogether, so it seems fair to say the risk is worth it.

Finally, from Rey, we learn the value of learning and appreciating preexisting lore as well as focussing on present developments, and that participation in all these aspects of Star Wars culture is open to anyone. Rey’s lack of relevant background is no obstacle to her playing a vital role in the story, but she has to be trained before she can play that role to the fullest extent. Likewise, new fans like myself will get more out of the films that we’re watching as they come out, if we take the trouble to properly familiarise ourselves with the lore that’s already been written. The Last Jedi knows that what it’s doing is weird and unexpected, but it doesn’t do that in order to kill the past: it does it to put the same old heart into a new tale, and so allow a new generation of fans to have the same joy of owning the story that their predecessors did with the originals. That’s a massive gift to a newbie like me, a massive reassurance that Star Wars has room for the new: room for future episodes that don't overrely on previous ones, and room for fans without a background in the fandom. It's an encouragement that the previous canon is something I can meaningfully engage with - I'm not doomed to never really get it just because I wasn’t there the first time around - but at the same time, it's OK that my heart's really in the new stuff, the now stuff.

And so, I suggest, The Last Jedi kind of functions as a commentary on itself. It recognises its own nonconformity, and it makes its apology: look, it says, I’m not trying to burn down everything that went before - I condemn any attempt to do that - and in fact I have massive respect for the preexisting canon and I think we should learn and appreciate it, but equally, it’s no good being so set on preserving it exactly as it is that we lock newcomers out of properly engaging with the story and end up producing stuff that’s simply boring - whatever the cinematic equivalent of ‘not a page-turner’ is. You’ve got to strike the balance, you know? After all, this is Star Wars we’re talking about: balance is kind of a pretty big deal.

Footnotes

¹ I also wrote about the film shortly after it came out – see ‘Plan B’ under January of this year in the box on the right – but apparently the bit of my subconscious that devises blog posts took a whole year to get this one well-formed enough for it to be successfully pitched to my conscious.

² I.e. this trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0CbN8sfihY.

³ I absolutely love this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyIPvIjVMYo.

⁴ There’s also an analogy here about how to treat the scriptures, as in, don’t just read the word, do what it says: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=james+1&version=ESVUK. Or similarly, think of the scribes and Pharisees, who knew their Law and Prophets inside out, but were neglecting the weighty matters thereof, to the point where they didn’t recognise the very Word of God when he was standing right in front of them.

Plan B

“Hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you see it, you’ll never make it through the night.”

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Confession time: I didn’t see any of the Star Wars films until I was eighteen years old.

 

Check out this absolutely gorgeous stained-glass rendering of A New Hope by the very talented GeneralBloodrain at newgrounds.com.

At that point, a friend of mine, who was exactly as outraged by my sorry ignorance as I anticipate some of you are upon having read that last sentence, took it upon herself to fit me for participation in human civilisation by sitting me down in front of episodes four, five, and six. And I enjoyed them, I did, but there nevertheless remained in me a firm sense that even if I were to watch them twenty times over, even if I were to familiarise myself with every detail of their lore, even if I were to reach a point where I understood even the obscurest meme relating to their content, they could never be truly mine. Other people had grown up with them where I hadn’t, and that didn’t mean I couldn’t be a fan, but it did mean I couldn’t claim a heart-and-soul stake in them, the way I can in Harry Potter and relaunched Doctor Who and Disney and W.I.T.C.H. and so forth. I could never own Star Wars the way other people could.

And then came The Force Awakens, and everything changed.

These new instalments of the franchise – these can be mine now. I can be on tenterhooks viewing them for the first time together with the rest of the world,¹ instead of knowing all the big spoilers before I witness them. I can be part of the conversation as it unfolds, instead of only retrospectively realising the context of oft-repeated references. I haven’t missed the party; I just arrived a little late, and there’s plenty more fun to be had before the end of the night.

On which note, please do go and see The Last Jedi before you read the rest of this post. In fact, the analogy I draw from it is so stunningly obvious anyway that you probably won’t have to bother with the latter, and it’s such a phenomenally good film that I would feel morally compromised if you were to exploit my weekly ramblings to spoil it for yourself. Well. Maybe that’s a bit strong. But still. Off you pop. Go on.

All right, now that we can speak freely, can I kick off by saying, how cool is Vice Admiral Holdo? And I don’t just mean the snazzy purple hair, either. Holdo stepped up to lead in the middle of a gargantuan crisis; devised a very clever plan and stuck to it; was calm and collected and determinedly, steadily hopeful even as the already-desperate situation deteriorated; successfully put down a mutiny; willingly, uncomplainingly chose to sacrifice herself for the sake of saving her comrades; and even right at the end conceived of and executed one more brilliant plan to protect them. (The Resistance cruiser smashing through the First Order’s flagship at lightspeed was definitely one of my favourite moments, against, it has to be said, some stiff competition.)

But of course, I didn’t feel that way about her all the way through the film. I’m usually pretty easily led by ostensible character portrayals, and this was no exception: as Poe grew increasingly suspicious of Holdo’s intentions, so did I. Just like him, I turned my nose up at her weak, unspectacular way of doing things. I didn’t trust her to do what was best for the people for whom she was responsible. I mentally cheered on the mutiny that sought to depose her. I pinned my hopes on Plan B – Finn and Rose’s attempt to disable the First Order’s lightspeed tracker.

I ended up feeling rather sheepish.

But the worst of it was, Plan B didn’t just fail to work: it also punched a serious hole through Plan A. If Finn and Rose hadn’t hired an unscrupulous codebreaker and entered the First Order’s flagship, said unscrupulous codebreaker would have had no opportunity to betray the details of Plan A to the enemy. The First Order would never have scanned for smaller ships, never have shot any of them down, never have followed them to the abandoned base on Crait. Granted, it would have been a shorter and less thrilling film, but, you know, working from within the world of the story, a lot of lives would have been saved. A lot of lives.

It wasn’t that Poe, Finn, and Rose disagreed with Holdo about the desirable end-goal: both parties were trying to protect the Resistance from being destroyed by the First Order. It was that they looked at the situation in front of them and couldn’t see how what Holdo appeared to be doing (and not doing) stood any chance of achieving that end-goal. They wanted what she wanted, but they didn’t trust her to make it happen, and so they devised their own alternative means of doing so. They didn’t trust that Plan A would work, so they decided to try a Plan B.

Or, to use other terms, they didn’t trust that Isaac would come, so they decided to produce an Ishmael.

When God told Abram that he would have as many descendants as he could see stars in the sky, Abram believed him. He was on board with that, as an end-goal. If God was going to make that happen, brilliant. But then time passed – nearly ten years of it, if I’ve understood the chronology rightly – and it’s easy to see how Abram and Sarai started to think that Plan A wasn’t going to work. God hadn’t indicated any further details as to how he was going to achieve the end-goal – “maintain current course” – and they were surely running out of time. They wanted what God wanted, but they didn’t trust him to make it happen, and so they devised their own alternative means of doing so. Sarai told Abram to sleep with her servant Hagar, and Ishmael was born.²

 

A whole lot of stars. This was taken in Arizona, apparently.

But Sarai and Abram’s Plan B wasn’t going to work, any more than Finn and Rose’s did: Ishmael was a child of flesh not promise, and on that account, though God blessed him, he wouldn’t – couldn’t – fulfil his promises through him.³ After all that, they ended up reverting to Plan A anyway. It turned out, funnily enough, that God did actually know what he was doing, even though Abram and Sarai hadn’t seen as much evidence of that as they would have liked.

Vice Admiral Holdo, as it turned out, knew what she was doing, but Poe hadn’t seen as much evidence of that as he would have liked, so he and his friends devised a Plan B. But more than that, he orchestrated a mutiny. He was on board with his leader’s end-goal, but he didn’t trust her methods to achieve it, so he decided to put himself in charge instead, and run things according to his own methods.

Or, to use other terms, he pulled a Jeroboam. (Yep, double whammy of Biblical analogies today.)

When God told Jeroboam that he and his line would (on condition of obedience) be established as king of the ten northern tribes of Israel, Jeroboam believed him. He was on board with that, as an end-goal. If God was going to make that happen, brilliant. And he duly took over the kingdom. But he didn’t trust that God’s way of doing things would achieve the security of his throne; he worried that if his people went back to Jerusalem, in the now-rival kingdom of Judah, to worship, as God had commanded them,⁴ they would end up transferring their allegiance from him to Judah’s king, Rehoboam. And so he flouted God’s instructions – those which God had told him he must follow in order to achieve the security of his throne – and built sites of worship within his own land.⁵ Golden calves, to be specific, which should ring a rather depressing bell.⁶ He was on board with his leader’s end-goal – that he and his descendants would rule Israel – but he didn’t trust his methods to achieve it, so he decided to put himself in charge instead, and run things according to his own methods. He orchestrated a mutiny against the ruler not just of one spaceship but of the whole wide universe.

The rule of his mutiny, like that of Poe’s, didn’t last very long.⁷ Indeed, Jeroboam’s Plan B – his golden calves – punched a serious hole through Plan A, namely that God would establish his rule. He was on board with God’s end-goal, but what he did to try to achieve it actually dashed any hope of its being achieved, not dissimilarly to how Finn and Rose’s attempt to save the Resistance actually ended up causing the deaths of large numbers of them. Banking on Plan B didn’t just fail to work, as it nothing had happened: it actually did far more harm than good. In Jeroboam’s case, the people of the northern kingdom persisted in his idolatry until they were conquered and exiled by the Assyrians.⁸ Mutinies against leaders who do, as it turns out, know what they’re doing, don’t solve problems so much as cause them.

Still, much as I’m a huge fan of Vice Admiral Holdo, she is, at the end of the day, just another fallible mortal being. As it turned out, she did know what she was doing, but we couldn’t know that for sure the way we can with God. Nothing is beyond his wisdom and foresight, and the righteousness of his decisions is inscrutable: if God has put forward a Plan A, then no Plan B is ever going to be an even slightly decent alternative. On the contrary, it will do far more harm than good.

One variety of Plan B which I think we’re often tempted to bank on in the current cultural climate relates to the issue of how we go about convincing people that following Jesus is a really good idea. We’re on board with God’s end-goal – that the Church with a capital C will increase in number – but we look at the situation in front of us and can’t see how what God appears to be doing (and not doing) stands any chance of achieving that end-goal. Plan A – preach the gospel, no fancy trimmings – doesn’t seem to be doing the job. And so we tone down or dress up the gospel in such fashion as we think might render it more winsome; we obsess over peripheral details of the delivery of the message instead of core components of the substance; we try to bring about God’s promises by means of Ishmaels and golden calves, not trusting his methods but directly contradicting them, and consequently doing far more harm than good.⁹

All the same, the very reason we have to trust God’s Plan A – nothing is beyond his wisdom and foresight and the righteousness of his decisions is inscrutable – is the same reason we can rest in the certainty that all our Plan Bs (or Plans B?) and all our mutinies cannot scupper his ultimate Plan A to make a people for himself. In Holdo’s case, even though her plan was a good one, she, lacking perfect wisdom and righteousness, nevertheless couldn’t prevent the deaths of many of her comrades when factors she hadn’t anticipated came into play. That isn’t a problem God has. The ultimate Plan A stands firm in eternity, just as we were chosen to be holy and blameless before him before the foundation of the world, just as the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world.¹⁰ Indeed, however we may be guilty of miscommunicating the fact, it remains true that, from eternity past, Jesus willingly, uncomplainingly chose to sacrifice himself for the sake of saving us from every atom of our guilt, despite all the Plan Bs and mutinies by which we have made ourselves guilty. Holdo’s sacrifice of herself was one part of her Plan A; Jesus’ of himself is the very heart of God’s ultimate Plan A.

And with a Plan A like that, why would we ever want a Plan B?

Footnotes

¹ I saw The Last Jedi earlier this week in Grantham, taking advantage of the five-quid flat ticket price offered by the Reel cinema there on Tuesdays and Wednesdays: https://reelcinemas.co.uk/grantham/now/. I love the Reel because it’s small and cute and inexpensive and that’s basically everything I want in a cinema.

² See Genesis 15-16 for the details: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+15&version=ESVUK.

³ I’m looking at Genesis 17, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+17&version=ESVUK, and the end of Galatians 4, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=gal+4&version=ESVUK.

⁴ In Deuteronomy 12, to be precise: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+12&version=ESVUK.

⁵ You can find the story in 1 Kings 11-12: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings+11&version=ESVUK.

⁶ Namely this one: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32&version=ESVUK.

⁷ He himself was permitted a twenty-two-year reign, but in recompense for his wrongdoing, his heir Nadab was usurped and his family line annihilated: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings+15&version=ESVUK.

⁸ As the scriptures make explicit: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings+17&version=ESVUK.

⁹ Here’s a truly hilarious Lutheran Satire sketch along similar lines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP8tTXKzObc.

¹⁰ I here allude to Ephesians 1:4 and Revelation 13:8. The clause translated ‘before the foundation of the world’ in the Revelation verse comes at the end of the sentence, so there has been some disagreement about whether to attach it to ‘the Lamb who was slain’ or to ‘whose name has not been written in the book of life’; the ESV plumps explicitly for the latter, but the former seems to me to have a stronger case as far as syntactical arguments go, simply by virtue of proximity. Maybe the ESV committee’s decision was made with reference to the Ephesians verse. Those among you who read Greek might like to take a look for yourselves: https://www.stepbible.org/?q=version=ESV|version=SBLG|reference=Rev.13.8&options=GVUVNH&display=INTERLEAVED. In any case, God’s ultimate Plan A has clearly been a certainty from eternity past.