Star Wars: The Last Jedi – an in-depth discussion

Now that my spoiler free review is out of the way and I’ve seen the movie twice, it’s time to talk more specifically about certain elements of The Last Jedi. Like the in-depth discussion of The Force Awakens I wrote around this time two years ago, the purpose of this post is not to repeat every point I made in my last article. Rather, this is intended to serve as a companion piece to my spoiler free review, so if there are any plot points or characters that aren’t touched upon in the ensuing paragraphs, it’s more than likely because I said as much as I felt was necessary about them in the preceding post.
Oh, and in case it isn’t already obvious, this article will contain major spoilers for the entirety of Episode VIII, so if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want it ruined, then I recommend you read my aforementioned spoiler free review instead and return to peruse this post after you’ve experienced the film for yourself.

Right then, let’s start by examining the aspect of Episode VIII about which I was simultaneously most excited and most concerned beforehand – the legendary Luke Skywalker himself. Other than Han’s death, by far the most disheartening thing about The Force Awakens was Luke’s lack of participation in the plot, so I, like many other Star Wars aficionados the world over, spent the last two years counting down the days until it was time for the franchise’s first protagonist to step into the spotlight again.
However, what was just as bad – if not worse – as Luke being benched in Episode VII was the fact that the story suggested he fled following his nephew’s fall to the dark side, leaving the galaxy to deal with the consequences of his mess while he cowered away on some ancient Jedi island in the middle of nowhere. So, while I couldn’t wait to welcome Luke back into the fold, I had no idea how anyone could possibly come up with an explanation for his absence that didn’t harm his character.
Thank the Force though, Rian Johnson managed to do just that by revealing that in a fleeting moment of weakness, Luke considered ending Ben Solo’s life due to the abhorrence of what he saw when he looked into his nephew’s mind. Suddenly, this painted Luke’s decision to exile himself in an extremely sympathetic and understandable light for me.
While we don’t actually know what Ben’s reasons were for turning to the dark side, it seems that unlike the grandfather whose misdeeds have become his ill-advised inspiration, Luke saw no hope for redemption within Kylo Ren and, even though many have come to idealise Luke in real life the way the denizens of the Star Wars galaxy did in-universe, he is still only human and like all of us, prone to making mistakes.
The fact that Luke is flawed is a big part of what made him relatable as a protagonist in the first place, and was a major component of his character arc in The Empire Strikes Back – not to mention the fact that Yoda re-emphasizes his proclivity for impulsiveness in this very movie. So, taking into account Luke’s humanity, his previous experiences with the Sith and how hard he fought to put an end to their tyranny, and whatever horrors he saw in Ben Solo’s mind, I think he can be forgiven for exhibiting a single moment of weakness that was born out of an impulse to stop a serious threat before it began.
But what’s really important about all of the above is the light it sheds on his reasons for running away. Yes, he did still leave others to deal with Kylo Ren. But, what makes sense to me is that Luke was so ashamed by contemplating killing his nephew even for an instant and with the greater good of the galaxy being the impetus for such a dark thought, he could neither bring himself to actually pursue and stop Ren nor, more importantly, look Han or Leia in the eye due to his own perceived failure. And that is the Luke Skywalker I know and love from the original trilogy. He isn’t a coward. He isn’t uncaring. Quite the contrary.
He cares so much and is so pure of heart and ethical at his core that he doesn’t believe himself worthy or capable of being the brother, friend or hero that Leia, Han, Rey or anyone else in the galaxy believes him to be all because of one brief bad thought. It’s hard to imagine an individual being more humble or sympathetic than that. Real heroes aren’t perfect, real heroes save and inspire without any desire for adoration or respect and, above all else, real heroes don’t view themselves as being heroic and that, in turn, is what makes them so estimable. Granted, I would have preferred had the new trilogy not started by establishing Luke had vanished and created a need to explain where and why he’d gone in the first place, but given the potential corner Rian Johnson had been backed into by JJ Abrams, I don’t think the former director could have come up with a much better explanation for Luke’s absence.
Likewise, I was extremely satisfied with the way in which Luke’s arc played out once we learned what happened between him and Ben Solo before The Force Awakens, which is ironic considering I asserted going into the cinema on December 14^th that if I returned home that night having witnessed Luke Skywalker die, I’d be despondent! Never in a million years would I have thought that not only would I be okay with Luke’s death, but I’d also believe that it was for the best.

The reason Johnson succeeded in swaying me really comes down to the execution of the narrative itself. Unlike Han’s death in The Force Awakens, which is still very much an open wound for me, Luke’s passing was handled in a way that felt like a completion of his character arc rather than an abrupt and tragic end to it. Okay, you can argue that Han’s death furthered Ren’s descent into villainy in Episode VII, but it didn’t feel like a satisfactory finish to Han’s own personal story.
Conversely, Luke, having been made to realise that he still has a purpose to fulfil by both Rey and Yoda, spends all of his remaining energy on holding off Ren and the First Order so that his sister and the Resistance can escape along with Rey, and, presumably, ultimately restore peace and stability to the galaxy. In essence, Luke did what he does best; what he’s always done in this franchise – he inspired hope and optimism at a time when it seemed the dark side had conquered all.
His goal accomplished, his sister and his last apprentice saved, he then chose to transform peacefully into the Force, secure in the knowledge that he had safeguarded the key components necessary to build a brighter future for galactic civilisation. To me, this felt like a very appropriate completion of the character arc that commenced in A New Hope and a fitting way to pass the torch to the next generation of Star Wars heroes. It also helps knowing that Mark Hamill can easily return to impart advice to Rey as a Force ghost in Episode IX! Whereas Han is unfortunately gone forever. Sigh.
Staying on the subject of Luke for just a little bit longer, something else I really liked were his views on the old Jedi Order. Back in 2014, I posted an article entitled “Star Wars Episode VII cast announcement – What I want to see” in which I talked about how despite being the good guys, the Jedi were basically complacent and their flawed code of conduct could be blamed for Anakin’s fall to the dark side. Luke says something similar in The Last Jedi when he tells Rey that in their absence, the Jedi were romanticised, but it was ultimately their arrogance that allowed Darth Sidious to destroy them and institute the Empire right under their noses, and he’s absolutely right. However, the accuracy of his assertion is not why I liked his opinions here. There are two reasons that it pleased me to hear him say what he said about the Jedi.

Firstly, his words both acknowledged and gave a sense of ongoing consequence to the events of the prequels. Luke could easily have said “the Emperor” rather than “Darth Sidious”, but I salute Johnson for choosing to use a title that was introduced in The Phantom Menace. On top of that, the shadow of the Jedi’s fall still looms over the narrative of The Last Jedi, making it seem as if the story that’s being told in the sequel trilogy still has its roots in the events of Episode I and that this new trilogy isn’t a reinvention of the saga, but a proper continuation of it, thereby legitimising the existence of Episodes VII, VIII and IX in a way that The Force Awakens did not.
Secondly then, Luke’s view on the old Jedi Order explains quite believably why he initially feels that it’s time for the Jedi to end. I was as shocked as anyone when I heard Luke speak those words in the film’s first teaser, but when you actually stop and think about it, what did Luke really know about the Jedi in the original trilogy? He wanted to become one because his father was one and all that he was told of their history came from Obi-Wan’s no doubt biased outlook on their Order. Now, I’m not saying that the Jedi weren’t good and compassionate or that Obi-Wan was wrong in wanting Luke to train in the ways of the Force in order to defeat Palpatine and Vader. Just that the Jedi had become stuck in their ways and unintentionally narrow-minded, and they paid the price for it. So once Luke learned more about what precipitated Order 66 and Palpatine’s rise to power, it doesn’t surprise me that he might have begun to question how great the Jedi really were. That, coupled with losing an apprentice to the dark side in a manner similar to how Obi-Wan did, very much justifies Luke’s lack of fate in the Jedi religion, in my opinion.
Interestingly, Luke also seems to lay the blame for Anakin’s fall squarely on Obi-Wan’s shoulders when he tells Rey that a Jedi Master was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader. Ouch! I know Obi-Wan probably blames himself but, just like Rey tells Luke in relation to Kylo Ren, I always felt that Obi-Wan didn’t fail Anakin, Anakin failed Obi-Wan. So that’s one line of dialogue that struck me as strange, especially since Luke knew the truth about Vader during his last onscreen interaction with Obi-Wan and he didn’t seem to hold any ill-will against old Ben. It is of course possible that Luke was focusing on the parallels between Obi-Wan losing Anakin and his losing Ren, and was more angry at himself than Obi-Wan. Then again, maybe Luke and ghost Obi-Wan had a big falling out and that’s why Yoda appears as a spectral guide in The Last Jedi instead!

Speaking of which, I LOVED that Yoda made an appearance. One of the things I was hoping to see in Episode VIII was an appearance by at least one of Anakin, Obi-Wan and Yoda in ghost form and I’m so glad Johnson wrote it in. While I thought, and still think, it would have been cool to see Anakin and Luke interact without the former being Vader, in terms of Force ghosts, I guess using Yoda makes the most sense for several reasons.
Given that the last time we saw Obi-Wan chronologically, he was played by Alec Guinness, it might have been a bit awkward had Ewan McGregor reprised the role here. And although I’m all for Hayden Christensen coming back as Anakin, maybe Johnson felt it would be a little weird seeing Luke’s father looking thirty years younger than his son. Therefore, what better character to use than one who can be portrayed by a puppet! And it was awesome that they went with a puppet over CGI. Also, from a story-telling perspective, it is fitting that the Jedi who showed up was the one by whom Luke was primarily trained.
Setting aside the fun of seeing Yoda again, his words were even more intriguing upon my second viewing of the film because of how multi-layered a lot of what he says is. There’s a bit of foreshadowing going on when he tells Luke the burden of all masters is that they’re eventually rendered redundant by their students. On top of alluding to Luke’s referring to Rey as his successor during his climactic confrontation with Ren, it also highlights another reason why this movie was the appropriate time for Luke to move on – much as I’d love him to stick around in the physical realm for another film, if Luke were still alive in Episode IX, it would get in the way of Rey’s story, the resolution of which is presumably going to involve defeating Ren and starting some sort of new Jedi Order. Two feats she really needs to accomplish alone for her own character arc to feel complete.
Something else Yoda tells Luke is that before it was destroyed, there was nothing in the library on Ahch-To that Rey doesn’t already possess. This seems like a symbolic statement at first, and it probably was meant that way as well, but the old Jedi Master was also being literal in that it’s revealed in a fleeting shot at the end of the film that Rey had stored the Jedi texts in a compartment on the Falcon. I liked that this showed that Yoda was also having a bit of a laugh at Luke’s expense and basically burning the library for no other reason than to give Luke a kick up the ass so that he’d look past his guilt and realise what needs to be done.

A lot of my favourite moments in The Last Jedi actually involved Luke’s interactions with original trilogy characters, like Yoda. His little reunion with Artoo on the Falcon was incredibly heartwarming and I loved his initial reaction to Chewie when the lovable wookiee broke down his door, as well as his wink to Threepio before he went out to face off with the First Order. Little exchanges such as these really made it feel as if these are the same characters they’ve always been and that they’ve been genuine friends for more than three decades. By far the most moving meeting between Luke and an original character though was his long-awaited reunion with Leia.
The scene that the Skywalker twins shared together was absolutely beautiful. And even though he was talking about Han at the time, when Luke tells Leia no one is  ever really gone, it took a lot of effort not to ball my eyes out given the added meaning his words have now that Carrie Fisher is unfortunately no longer with us. I have to say that it was during this scene that I most missed Han as well. I’m glad that his death seemed to loom over the story throughout, because it damn well should have. But during this scene, I kept thinking how amazing it would have been if Han were present too and said something like, “It’s good to have to you back, kid.” Still though, it was tremendously touching and Hamill and Fisher’s performances in that moment were beyond exceptional.

On the topic of Leia, I know some people have contrasting feelings about this, but I found the scene in which she uses the Force to save herself from dying in space to be utterly brilliant. Williams’s score combined with the thrill of seeing Leia finally use the Force for something beyond sense and communication made it a high point of the proceedings for me. But good god, the preceding scene in which she was blown out into space – my heart stopped in that moment! I genuinely thought that was the end of her. It did occur to me that she’d been shown standing on Crait in the trailers, but scenes appear in trailers that are absent from finished films all the time and considering Carrie passed away, I really thought they’d reworked things to conclude Leia’s story in that moment.
I’m glad they didn’t, though, not because it would have been unforgivable – if anything, it would have been understandable – but because Carrie injected so much excellence into the rest of the movie and we really needed that reunion between Leia and Luke. I don’t envy Abrams and Disney having to handle her departure in Episode IX now. Short of flash-forwarding a few years and saying she died peacefully of natural causes in the opening crawl, they could always go with her ship being destroyed in battle early in the story. Now that Ren seems to have fully embraced his “let the past die” philosophy, it might even be fitting that he destroy her ship, completing the action he wasn’t able to bring himself to undertake in The Last Jedi. Then maybe she could appear for a silent cameo alongside Luke as a Force ghost at the end of the movie, mirroring the appearance of Obi-Wan, Anakin and Yoda during the finale of Return of the Jedi. But whatever they end up doing, I just hope it’s satisfying and delicately handled.

Now, let’s talk Rey. I am so happy that she didn’t turn to the dark side or succeed in redeeming Ben Solo! I’ll elaborate more on that latter point a little later, but in the moments where it seemed as if Ren was convincing her to turn on Luke and see things from his perspective, I was genuinely worried that Johnson was going to ruin her character by making her seem annoyingly naïve. I kept thinking, c’mon, you can’t be stupid enough to believe what Ren is telling you about Luke without asking Luke first and for the love of god, don’t lose sight of the fact that Ren killed Han in cold blood!
While The Force Awakens was about Rey discovering her powers, The Last Jedi was about her discovering who she is as an individual and what her purpose is, and thankfully, even when she thought she could save Ben Solo’s soul, she never lost sight of what’s right and what’s wrong and ended up emerging as an even stronger character as a result.
And Daisy Ridley’s performance throughout was superb once again. The emotion she brought to the table when asking Ren why he killed his father nearly had me in tears too, while her reunion with Finn at the end was fantastically affecting. There were a few smaller moments involving Rey that I enjoyed as well, such as a short shot of her standing by the Falcon, looking at the rain and smiling. I thought that was a nice little nod to the fact that she comes from a desert planet. I also appreciated the parallel between her telling Luke there’s light in Ren without Luke believing her and Luke being met with the same reaction when he told Obi-Wan there was light in Vader during Return of the Jedi. Interestingly, Luke was right in both instances.
One issue in relation to Rey that’s sure to be hotly debated until Episode IX arrives is whether her parents were really nobodies from Jakku. I have conflicting feelings about this. On one hand, I really would like her to have some sort of connection to an established character after how big a deal Abrams made about the mystery of her origins in The Force Awakens and the fact that the Skywalker lineage may end with Kylo Ren. On the other hand, there is a nice symmetry with Anakin also being the child of someone of no great significance, as well as a sort of fittingness to Luke passing the torch not only to a new protagonist, but also to a new bloodline. Really, the only thing that greatly bothers me is the apparent contradiction of the scene in which a young Rey is seen calling after a ship leaving Jakku in The Force Awakens. Other than that, I’ll probably be content whether Abrams decides to delve deeper into her origins or not. I think Rey has become a strong enough character by herself that what really matters now is how her arc concludes and not so much where she came from.

An individual whose origins I definitely do want to see addressed in Episode IX though is Supreme Leader Snoke. Whatever else we might not know about Palpatine’s enigmatic spiritual successor, there’s no disputing the fact that he is not a young man. Snoke was somewhere when the original movies, and presumably the prequels, were taking place and I want to know what the hell he was up to during the first six episodes and where the hell he came from. It doesn’t even have to a complex explanation. I couldn’t care less that he’s not Darth Plagueis or any one of hundreds of other fan theories doing the rounds.
As a matter of fact, I’m glad he isn’t Plagueis because that would make Palpatine seem inept for failing to kill him. I’d just be content with a throwaway line or two from Ren or ghost Luke stating what the story was with him. Even something as simple as he was the only one of the Empire’s inquisitors to survive the Galactic Civil War and after Luke defeated Vader and Palpatine at Endor, he retreated to the shadows to plot his revenge on the last Jedi and orchestrate a revival of Palpatine’s regime. For anyone unfamiliar with the Rebels TV show, the inquisitors were a group of dark siders employed by Palpatine and Vader after Revenge of the Sith to help hunt down and eliminate stray Jedi and Force users who were a potential threat to Sidious’s reign.
The post-Return of the Jedi expanded universe material has even alluded to the Empire regrouping in the unknown regions after the Battle of Jakku to join up with some unknown power and start the transition into what will eventually become the First Order, so between Rebels and the books, the groundwork has already been laid. It just needs to be capitalised upon. But even though I read pretty much every EU novel upon its publication, I don’t want to be told I have to turn to a book to find out where Snoke came from. His mystery was introduced onscreen, it should be solved onscreen.
That being said, it didn’t bother me that Johnson chose to kill him off here. His death was so surprisingly abrupt that I thought it was hilarious! And hey, at least his praetorian guards got more action than Palpatine’s red ones ever did! In all seriousness though, the action sequence in which Rey and Ren team up to take those guards down was phenomenal. I also enjoyed how Snoke’s death completely subverted expectations and furthered Ren’s arc in exactly the way I wanted.

Ever since The Force Awakens came out, I’ve been saying that I don’t want to see Ben Solo redeemed. Setting aside the fact he killed my favourite fictional character of all time, Han Solo, seeing Kylo Ren turn to the light would be incredibly boring in the wake of Anakin’s arc in Return of the Jedi. Once he cut Snoke in two, I figured Rey had probably misinterpreted his motivations for doing so because there’s another episode to go and no other Force sensitive villains! And I was so pleased then to see him go full on dark side, doing what Vader wanted to do but ultimately never accomplished in usurping his master.
I also like that it seems Ren is now completely numb to anything positive from his past. As I said in my in-depth discussion of The Force Awakens, when Anakin was faced with the choice between embracing the light to save Luke or letting his son die, he decided upon the former option. However, not even his parents’ love could persuade Ben Solo to turn from the dark side and I thought the fact that Johnson explored the conflict within Kylo Ren but ultimately decided to take him in the opposite direction of Vader worked incredibly well and I couldn’t have been more thrilled by the director’s decision. There’s also some nice dramatic irony in Ren being obsessed with living up to Vader’s legend when he’s actually following the path that his grandfather ultimately rejected.

What I am curious about though is where the rest of the knights of Ren are hiding themselves. I’m assuming they’re supposed to be the students Luke said Kylo took from his academy, but this is something else that definitely needs to be touched upon in Episode IX. And another thing I observed in relation to Ren upon my second viewing is that he unwittingly does some foreshadowing of his own in the first act. Upon first connecting to Rey via the Force, he wonders how it happens, saying that Rey couldn’t have done it herself because the exertion would kill her. I thought that was a cool little nod to Luke’s fate later on.
On a related note, Luke’s telling Ren that he has failed him during their climactic confrontation neatly mirrored Obi-Wan telling Anakin the same thing during their clash on Mustafar. And speaking of the former confrontation, I thought it was absolutely exhilarating. I got goose bumps the moment Luke walked out onto the battlefield and Williams’s spectacular score only made it all the more enlivening. I was actually expecting Luke to start taking down walkers with the Force, but in hindsight, I think the way it played out was probably better. Plus, it gave Luke a magnificent hero moment to go out on. I also loved how Luke’s dialogue was intercut with Rey lifting the rocks and saving Leia, Finn, Poe and the others. I found it to be very effective editing.

The battle that preceded all of the above was also astonishing. A particular highlight for me was the tracking sequence of the Falcon taking on TIE fighters both above and below the surface to the same music as the TIE attack following the Falcon’s escape from the Death Star in A New Hope. And I could be wrong, but I’m almost positive Williams sampled the Order 66 score during Finn’s apparent suicide run – another sequence which was remarkably rousing.

There are just a few other small things of which I want to make a quick mention before I wrap this discussion up. One of my favourite fan theories leading up to The Last Jedi was also one of the most trivial, and that was that Chewie was actually eating porgs. I thought it was so outrageous that there was no way it would happen. So when he was shown to be cooking a couple of the birds over an open fire on Ahch-To, I was both surprised and amused. What was especially funny though was that while he was put off from actually eating them by the tearful stares of other porgs, Chewie clearly still killed and cooked some of those birds who presumably looked just as sympathetic as the others in that scene, so it’s actually a little weird that he was suddenly put off his dinner!

Other than that, I’m just going to quickly comment on Maz Kanata, starting by questioning why she was even in this movie? And how exactly does Poe know who she is? Her scene implied they have a past together of which we should be aware. Also, I guess the time still hasn’t come for Maz to explain how she managed to get her hands on Luke’s old lightsabre! Obviously that’s a plot point that Johnson chose to sweep under the rug, but I don’t blame him to be honest. It was one of many stupid things Abrams threw into The Force Awakens and which, if he has any creative integrity, he will address himself in Episode IX. And he can give Lando a role in the trilogy capper while he’s at it because it seems everyone has forgotten Lando existed! Surely when Leia sent out a call for allies, that would have been the perfect time to include him or at least mention his name? It also crossed my mind that Canto Bight seems like a place Lando might hang out. What if he was the hacker Finn and Rose went to recruit? Fair enough, it’s not a skill he was shown to possess in the original trilogy, but my point is, there were ample opportunities to address Lando’s status that were regrettably overlooked.
But anyway, at this point, I think I’ve talked about all of the major things that I wanted to address and couldn’t in my spoiler free review. Lord knows, a million other points will probably pop into my mind after I’ve published this article, but I think it’s long enough as it is! So, I’ll finish by reaffirming that even though I didn’t think it was perfect and it doesn’t hold a candle to the original trilogy, I very much enjoyed the narrative, performances and set pieces of The Last Jedi and thought Johnson did an extremely laudable job of cleaning up and improving upon the story that Abrams told in The Force Awakens. I cross my fingers that the next instalment in the saga can conclude the character arcs of Rey, Finn, Poe, Kylo Ren and Leia in as satisfactory a manner as Episode VIII continued them. May the Force be with us all until we find out on December 20^th, 2019.

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