Yesterday afternoon I finally saw The Last Jedi. Y’all. Y’all.
Spoilers for Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi below the Read More.
I’m just going to focus on the things that really hit me. Many people have done/will do a beat-by-beat breakdown of the film, so I’m not going to retread that path.
Women and People of Colour
I was so, so stoked to see so many women and POCs in the film: at the consoles, in the X-wings, in the bombers, on the ground. That was so great. SO. FREAKING. GREAT.
Rey
Rey being just relentless in her attempt to convince Luke to help, to train her, to tell her the truth was great. I also liked the fact that she cut her losses when Kylo Ren went all “join me, rule at my side”. Because seriously, f*ck that guy.
I really, really adore Rey, I just wish we got more. I guess they’re playing sort of close to the vest with her backstory, but I wish they’d give us some more details. She’s no less developed as a character than, say, Luke was at the same point in the original trilogy, but I just…want more. I love her. Give me more please.
I did notice that some of what was said about Rey’s history contradicted what we saw in the flashback in The Force Awakens: Kylo Ren specifically said that her parents “sold [Rey] for drinking money” and were corpses in the Jakku desert. However, in the TFA flashback, we see a young Rey calling after a specific ship, heavily implying her parents left Jakku. It doesn’t mean she wasn’t sold for drinking money, but it does cast Kylo Ren’s words into doubt (if they weren’t already there). I don’t necessarily believe she is the child of someone “important”, like Luke and Leia and Jyn Erso…I just think that we may not have heard the last of Rey’s parentage.
Rose Tico
Oh man, I really loved Rose! I liked that they acknowledged her devastation at losing her sister, I liked that she was carrying on despite the death of her sister, I liked that being starstruck didn’t stop her from stabbing Finn for trying to leave the Resistance. I loved that she was an integral part of the plan to disable the First Order tracker, and that she was practical enough to give her pendant to DJ the Slicer, and that the pendant was returned to her.
I didn’t like that she went from starstruck to angry at Finn to Resistance colleagues…to suddenly in love with him? Like…what? It had only been about 18-24 hours since they first met, if the fuel limit on the Resistance cruiser was accurate. I’ve had some quick crushes in my time, but that stretched my suspension of disbelief a little too far. I get the uneasy feeling they’re setting up a Rose-Finn-Rey love seesaw,* which…please, dear gods, no.
* The traditional term is love triangle, but if the dynamic is less “A wants to be with B and C; B wants to be with C and A; C wants to be with A and B” and more “A is teetering between the affections of B and C”, it’s not a triangle: it’s a seesaw.
General Leia Organa
I was so, so sad when Carrie Fisher died…the world lost an awesome woman, and a role model to so many people was suddenly gone. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen with her appearance in The Last Jedi. I was absolutely certain that Leia was going to die in space, and that was how General Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan, was going to leave the Star Wars saga. And then she BAMFed her way through space like a Jedi Master and got back to the ship and lived to fight another day. Talk about a fake-out, holy wow.
I really miss her. Carrie Fisher, Leia Organa, General and Princess. I adored her in the original Star Wars films, and I grew to love her anew as a 20-something navigating this world with mental illness. She inspired me. <3
Finn
I’m not going to lie: I’ve read a lot of The Force Awakens fic, a lot of which is now considered AU as it supposes that Finn got to spend some time with the Resistance outside of Imminent Crisis Mode. I got very used to the characterisation of Finn in those fics, where once he woke up, he threw himself into helping the Resistance. As such, his characterisation in The Last Jedi confused me…it seemed like a big step backward for Finn.
Having considered it, and having read read a few reviews, I now think it was a pretty consistent characterisation. I think Finn has had one slow, steady development arc over The Forces Awakens and The Last Jedi, rather than two separate development arcs, one in each film.
In The Force Awakens, I feel like Finn imprinted on the first people he met who seemed to care about his well-being: first Poe, and then Rey after Poe apparently died. Finn paid lip service to the Resistance, as it was his best chance of getting off Jakku, and then Finn and Rey went through a pretty intense bonding process.
On Takodana, though, Finn was still set on finding somewhere far away from the First Order to live in peace. It wasn’t until Rey was taken by Kylo Ren that he threw his lot in with Resistance. He probably wasn’t looking any further in the future beyond saving Rey from Starkiller Base. And then he was badly wounded confronting Kylo Ren with Rey, and last we saw safe but unconscious in the Resistance base on D’Qar.
The Last Jedi begins with the evacuation of D’Qar, and Finn wakes up shortly after that, during the Resistance fleet’s hyperspace jump. He finds Poe, but learns that Rey is gone, and can only find her way back to them using the beacons held by her and General Organa. Upon discovering the First Order has tracked them through hyperspace, and that General Organa is gravely wounded, he scoops up the beacon and attempts to leave the Resistance, to find his somewhere far away and to bring Rey somewhere safe when she returned.
The events of The Last Jedi are Finn’s journey from “wanting to be somewhere far away, preferably with Rey” to “willing to be a part of the Resistance cause because it’s the right thing, and to be with the people he cares about”. He tried to leave, but decided to stay when he realised there was something he could do. He was delighted at the glamour of Canto Bight, but that delight was sobered by Rose’s explanation of the reality of Canto Bight (wealth from war profiteering). He went back into the heart of the First Order, and managed to escape with Rose and BB-8; he tried to atone for leaving by flying into the heart of a miniature Death Star gun. He brought Rose back to the base, then followed Poe to Rey.
I think Finn’s journey is the most optimistic, realistic, and human journey in the films. He’s not static like Kylo Ren, he’s not cocksure like Poe Dameron, he’s not a spark-to-a-bonfire like Rey. Finn is very human, and I love it.
Luke Skywalker
Luke was just as extra as ever, the melodramatic son of a Sith. I was not disappointed in the drama of him. Padme and Anakin must be so proud.
I can understand avoiding action as a way to minimise pain and atone for mistakes or flaws in yourself; I’ve recently realised that I’ve been doing it for a while, so it hit kinda close to home.
I knew ahead of time that Luke was going to die/become one with the Force…perils of reading one’s Tumblr feed and following people who apparently have a relaxed view on spoiler tags. However, the exact way it happened was not spoiled, and so holy wow, I was delighted.
Kylo Ren
Kylo Ren is simultaneously the least intimidating villain and the scariest villain. He’s pretty much the freaking Platonic ideal of toxic male entitlement and privilege and bigoted bullsh!t, and I could name at least fifty guys that I know from school or university or work just like him. He’s too freaking relatable.
Over on Twitter, Matt Colville said he thought Kylo Ren was the only three-dimensional character in all of the Star Wars films. (link) I don’t necessarily think that’s the case…I think Kylo Ren is the most detailed of the new characters, for sure: we know his parents and family history, we’ve seen some of his formative experiences, and we know a lot about how he thinks and how he sees the world. I also think his type of character is one we’ve been seeing an awful lot of in 2017, so it resonates quite a bit. Like I said, too. Freaking. Relatable.
Alien animals, new planets, sci-fi tech
I love animals. I love science fiction. I love it when science fiction creates new alien animals. I loved the fathiers (hyena horses!), I loved the vulptices (crystal foxes!), I loved the porgs (lemming puffins!). I want like three or four of each.
I love creating new worlds. It’s why I made a homebrew world for the first D&D campaign I ever DMed. The new planets in this film were so cool. I want to see more of them. I want a map of the galaxy, so I can chart them.
I just…really want a lightsaber and an X-wing, OK? Is that too much to ask? Or maybe a fixed-up V-4X-D ski speeder. I don’t need to go high off the ground.
Future of the Resistance
I liked that the film ended with a message of continuing to resist. The whole film seemed particularly relevant given the political climate of the last two years, and the ending was perfect in that respect.
I do wish the little kid with the Resistance ring (and the Force sensitivity?) at the end had been POC and/or a girl instead of a white boy. We’ve had a few instances of “a child notices someone or something no one else sees”,* with the child implied to be special for noticing the someone/thing and/or the next generation to defend/fight/whatever.* It would be nice, though, to acknowledge that girls and children of colour (and especially girls of colour) are also a part of the next generation willing to carry on the good fight, and more often than not are the ones carrying the burden of that fight.
* The boy in The Winter Soldier, the boy in Amazing Spider-Man 2, the boy in Iron Man 2 and Harley in Iron Man 3, and so on.
In sum:
I really enjoyed The Last Jedi. I can’t wait to see it again. I think there are a couple of things I missed the first time, as excited as I was, so it’ll be good to focus on different parts of the film and see it from a different perspective (perhaps literally…anyone else sit in different seats on subsequent viewings of films?).
