The Last Jedi, Three Years Later

 Around Christmas 2017, I watched Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi in theaters, and wasn't quite sure what to think. It's possibly the most divisive entry in the entire Star Wars franchise, not just the sequel trilogy, for a variety of reasons, although some people are viewing it more favorably in light of last year's The Rise of Skywalker. Having watched the movie a second time a few months before seeing Rise of Skywalker in theaters, and having seen it for a third time this Christmas, I will take a look at the movie- both the overarching film and each of the three main characters' storylines- with the benefit of hindsight.

The Film In General

The Last Jedi still has much of what made the franchise great- plenty of exciting action, excellent special effects and a story that takes the heroes and villains across the galaxy(I especially enjoyed Crait, with the red dirt beneath the white salt seeming like blood spilled during the battle). Despite that, it's a departure from the others in many ways, and this isn't always a good thing.

One of the main problems with the film is that it starts off with the Resistance in an impossibly bleak situation and only gets worse from there. No sooner does the introductory text scroll than the Resistance is shown desperately fleeing the base they had been using at the end of The Force Awakens, just as an Imperial fleet they can't possibly hope to defeat arrives in hot pursuit. At the end of the film, their call for help goes unanswered, and they flee Crait less than a day after arriving, with the survivors of the Resistance fitting inside the Millennium Falcon. As such, the massive fleet arriving to fight alongside them at the Battle of Exegol comes off as a case of deus ex machina.

While this film is a parallel to The Empire Strikes Back, the latter film wasn't nearly as hopeless. The Rebels had to flee Yavin IV after the destruction of the Death Star, after an offscreen battle, as well as their base on Hoth early on, but while they're on the run, all is not lost. The film ends with Luke getting a new hand on a medical frigate, which shows us the existence of a Rebel fleet, while Lando and Chewie set out in search of Han. The story ended in the Rebels' defeat, but the main characters survived to fight another day.

Speaking of The Empire Strikes Back, The Last Jedi recycles many story beats from that film and Return of the Jedi, just like The Force Awakens does with A New Hope.

• Early on in the film the Rebels/Resistance flee their current planet, Yavin IV/D'Qar. For bonus points, The Last Jedi also ends this way.
• The main Jedi hero, Luke/Rey, seeks out a reclusive Jedi master, Yoda/Luke, on a deserted planet Dagobah/Aach-To, and said master is unwilling to train the new student.
• The main characters are betrayed by a somewhat shady acquaintance of theirs, Lando/DJ, and captured.
• Luke/Rey willingly surrenders to the Empire/First Order in an effort to redeem Darth Vader/Kylo Ren.
• As Palpatine/Snoke is killing Luke/Rey with the Force, Darth Vader/Kylo Ren kills him. Even better, Kylo Ren also sacrifices himself to revive Rey after she sacrifices herself to defeat Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker.

It's rather surprising that a film that goes out of its way to deconstruct series-wide tropes ends up retracing many of its predecessors' steps. Some of those moves do help with the deconstructive aspect of the story, especially showing that the protagonists' risky plans are unlikely to work and that Kylo Ren is not a carbon copy of his grandfather, but at times, it seems a bit too familiar.

Another problem with the movie is its pacing. After the apparent climax, with Snoke's death, Rey and Kylo's fight, Finn defeating Phasma and Holdo sacrificing herself, there's still almost half an hour of the movie to go, with the Battle of Crait, Luke's showdown with Kylo and the Resistance finally escaping.

That said, another thing I liked about the film was the switches between the different perspectives just before the climax, especially at the moment the Raddus blasts through the Supremacy. Earlier on, it's harder to tell when the different stories take place- for example, whether Rey is meeting with Luke before or after the space battle above D'Qar- but overall, The Last Jedi does a good job of juggling its three stories. I will now look at each one in detail.

Rey's Story

Rey's story picks up where The Force Awakens left off, although you don't see her until about 15 minutes into the movie. Luke wordlessly throwing his father's lightsaber over his shoulder in disgust, which is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his cynicism and disillusionment with the Jedi. In addition to Luke's own experience with Kylo Ren killing the other students or turning them to the Dark Side, he remarks that the Jedi Order was responsible for Anakin's fall to the Dark Side. These feelings are understandable, and unsurprising given that he did not return when the Republic needed him("You think that I came to the most unfindable place in the galaxy for no reason at all?"), but it's a bit depressing to see him like that. In the Expanded Universe, Luke had worked to build a new Jedi Order that would not repeat the old order's mistakes, a concept I felt fit the series better.

The film's take on the Jedi's teachings comes off as Johnson trying to deconstruct the series, or otherwise distance himself from George Lucas and J.J. Abrams' films, which causes this film to seem out of place compared to the others, especially considering that Abrams backpedals in Rise of Skywalker. Other examples include:

• Kylo Ren taking off his black helmet and smashing it to pieces, since Johnson apparently believed that one black-armored Sith Lord was enough for the series. Kylo puts his mask back together in Rise of Skywalker.
• Rey being forced to acknowledge that her parents were "nobody," which will be touched upon more later. Naturally, The Rise of Skywalker's revelation about them throws this out the window.
• Kylo Ren embraces his evil and becomes the main antagonist, wanting to dismantle both the Republic and the First Order. The Rise of Skywalker demoted him from main antagonist and gave him redemption in the same way as his grandfather.
• Incidentally, Abrams backpedals on Luke's aforementioned lightsaber tossing. When she tries to throw her lightsaber away in The Rise of Skywalker, Luke admonishes her, saying, "A Jedi's weapon should be treated with more respect."

As you can see, these inconsistencies tend to happen when you have one director for the middle installment of a trilogy and another for the other two.

Luke's lessons to Rey offer some fascinating observations about the nature of the Force, particularly that it doesn't belong to the Jedi. During this time, she also realizes that she has a Force bond with Kylo Ren, and has tense interactions with him, but comes to sympathize with him and believe that he can b redeemed.

Eventually, the story gets to Kylo Ren's fall to the Dark Side. Luke had taken on the responsibility of training Ben Solo and a dozen other students, but one night, Luke sensed darkness inside Ben, briefly contemplating killing him. Ben then awakened, nearly killed Luke, and either killed or turned his students. Luke ruefully says that this was because he was the same "legend" who redeemed Darth Vader, and while he doesn't quite regret saving his father, he sees Anakin as proof of the Jedi's failings. Again, it's a rather pessimistic take on the Jedi Order, with Luke continuing their legacy of failure rather than redeeming the order. Then again, Luke does seem to come to his senses somewhat; after his fight with Rey, he's about to burn down the reliquary when a lightning bolt does it for him, and Yoda's Force Ghost appears to talk some sense into him.

Rey arrives on the Supremacy, surrenders to Kylo and meets with Snoke, who reveals that he forged the Force Bond between the two of them to lure her into a trap, one of many instances of characters' best intentions only making things worse in this film. Unfortunately for Snoke, Kylo takes him by surprise and kills him with Rey's lightsaber. It's an impressive move, but a rather anticlimactic end for the main antagonist of the first half of the sequel trilogy, especially since we never learn much about who he's supposed to be. It's somewhat rectified in Rise of Skywalker, but that explanation is rather unsatisfactory.

Kylo and Rey kill Snoke's guards in an impressive fight scene, but Rey finds out that Kylo hasn't turned good; he just wants to take control of the First Order and "let old things die." It's a nice twist on the classic villain redemption arc, even if Rise of Skywalker doesn't necessarily bring it to the conclusion one might expect.

Kylo then forces Rey to admit the truth about her parents- "They were nobody." They didn't give her up for her own good; they were worthless lowlifes who sold her for drinking money and died ignobly. Naturally, this also gets retconned in Rise of Skywalker, when we find out that Rey is a Palpatine. Again, it's thematically inconsistent; while one could argue that The Last Jedi's twist about Rey's parents was foreshadowed, Rise of Skywalker's wasn't.

Rey and Kylo then struggle for Luke's lightsaber, which results in the lightsaber's destruction and Kylo being knocked unconscious. Rey escapes, while Kylo seizes control of the First Order.

Rey's character development in this movie ends here, although she plays a crucial role in helping the Resistance escape from Crait on the Millennium Falcon. However, Luke's story ends here, with him using an astral projection to hold off Kylo and buy time for the Resistance to escape. In the end, Luke's sacrifice helps the Resistance live on, and possibly give rise to a new generation of Jedi (as seen by the Force-sensitive slave boy on Canto Bight), but it's still disappointing that he ended up being another failure, especially since the Force-sensitives never become relevant in Rise of Skywalker.

Poe's Story

Poe's story focuses on the Resistance's attempts to escape the First Order. The main controversy is over characters making stupid decisions, not the least of which is Poe himself.

At the very beginning, Poe is able to destroy the guns on the First Order dreadnought, thereby buying the ships time to escape, but insists that they take the opportunity to take out the massive "fleet killer." He succeeds, but his decision results in the loss of most of the fighters and bombers, leaves the fleet in range of the First Order auto-cannons, and gets him demoted to Captain for disobeying orders. The question is whether the victory was worth the sacrifices, since while the First Order lost more military hardware and personnel, they can more easily afford those losses, just like how the destruction of Starkiller Base barely inconvenienced them. There's also the question of whether a soldier is ever justified in defying orders in favor of what they believe is the best course of action, which will come up later. 

Incidentally, I have to wonder if the entire sequence wouldn't have turned out as disastrously for the Resistance if the bombers had been less impractically designed. Not only do the bombers somehow drop bombs downward in space (don't think too hard about how that works) with a bomb bay door that exposes pilots to the vacuum of space when opened, but they're large and slow targets, and shooting the massive bomb bay generally results in a chain reaction that destroys the bomber. One destroyed TIE fighter manages to blow up a bomber just by crashing into it, and its explosion takes down an adjacent bomber. Compare the Rebel Y-Wings, which, while slower than the other fighters, mainly used proton torpedoes, as well as their Imperial counterparts, the TIE Bombers, which use similar bombs.

Back to the story. After the Resistance finishes the jump to hyperspace, Leia slaps and demotes Poe to teach him a lesson that not everything can be solved by jumping in an X-Wing and blowing things up. Considering that his insubordination resulted in the deaths of several pilots and crew, being demoted is rather lenient for the circumstances. At this point, the First Order manages to track the Resistance through lightspeed, and continues on the attack. In an infamously awkward slow chase through space, the Resistance is unable to jump to hyperspace, but is able to keep enough distance from the First Order that the First Order can't simply annihilate them, although they can pick off the stragglers. This is yet another reason why this is one of the worst space battles in the series.

During the First Order's attack, the Raddus' bridge is blown up and Leia is shot out into space, but manages to use the Force to fly through the vacuum back to the door quickly enough to save her own life. As contrived as this all is, it's nice to see some payoff to Leia being Force-sensitive, ever since Return of the Jedi first established this. Unfortunately, with Carrie Fisher's untimely passing a year prior to the release of the film, and Leia's minimal importance to The Rise of Skywalker, this will likely be remembered as a missed opportunity to kill Leia off in a suitably dramatic manner.

Regardless of whether Leia should have died, she's incapacitated for the moment, so command falls to Vice-Admiral Holdo. After Holdo gives a brief inspirational speech, Poe goes up to her to ask for more information, but she dismissively remarks on his recent demotion and dismisses him as a "trigger-happy flyboy." It's a fair point, albeit needlessly insulting, since she isn't obligated to explain herself to a subordinate who's proven that despite being a valuable pilot, he's not much of a team player. Of course, the decision to keep people in the dark about her true plan makes sense if one considers the possibility that there might be a traitor on board. I've heard theories that suggest that Rose is that traitor, which have a surprising amount of evidence in their favor despite ultimately not being confirmed.

It turns out that Holdo's plan is to fuel up the transports, then use them to escape the Raddus, cloaking them to prevent the First Order from realizing their plan. Poe, impulsive as always, considers this an act of cowardice that would doom the Resistance, since the transports are far more fragile than the Raddus. Not confiding in him was a bad move on Holdo's part, but it's doubtful Poe would have approved any more than Holdo approves of Poe's plan with Finn and Rose.

The fact that Holdo's plan doesn't go as she planned is partly due to her failure to communicate it, but also partly because Poe passes the plan along to Finn's group, and DJ leaks it to the First Order. Poe actually seems to see the wisdom behind Holdo's plan in the end, but too late, since his reckless actions and her distrust of him ended up sabotaging the plan, resulting in the loss of several transports. While Holdo's decision to sacrifice herself to ram the Supremacy with the Raddus at lightspeed was probably always part of her plan, it can come off as an act of atonement for her mistakes.

Finn appears to have become more level-headed and sensible as of the Battle of Crait. In a somewhat ironic twist, he's the one who orders Poe not to do a suicide run on the battering ram cannon, using the same phrase, "That's an order!" that Leia used on him in the film's opening battle. Finn doesn't listen, either, and his part will be discussed more in his section.

While I'm more sympathetic to Holdo than some fans are, I can personally see where those fans are coming from given their dislike of the poor decision making practiced in this part of the story, something that extends to Finn's part.

Finn's Story

While Finn's story is closely tied to Poe's, it also takes on a life of its own. It's probably the least popular part of the movie, mainly because it feels like a waste of time (and not just because of the extended Canto Bight sequence).

Finn's story properly begins about 40 minutes into the film. After he tries to jump ship, and a furious Rose nearly turns him in for deserting, they come up with the plan to shut down the hyperspace tracker, and pitch it to Poe. The plan isn't quite as simple as they think, since they need a codebreaker to get onto the Supremacy, and they have to find one on Canto Bight. This leads to the most pointless part of the movie, in which Finn and Rose search a glitzy casino for the codebreaker, get arrested and later unleash wild beasts, both to escape and trash the casino. It wasn't quite as time-consuming as I remembered, and it does serve a purpose in putting Poe and Rose in touch with an untrustworthy codebreaker, whose services they need to reach the Supremacy. Unfortunately for them, the codebreaker is not the one that Maz had hoped to introduce them to, but DJ, a blatantly untrustworthy man they meet in a cell.

In hindsight, DJ's betrayal seems inevitable, since he insists on a down payment and the heroes get noticed soon after boarding the Supremacy. Still, he raises some interesting points about the moral ambiguity of war, especially his observation that one arms dealer sold weapons to both the Empire and the Republic. Unfortunately, he walks out of the story, never to be seen again, after betraying Finn and Rose, neither undergoing redemption nor receiving his comeuppance (unless he died when the Raddus rammed the Supremacy).

Finn and Rose are saved from execution by Holdo's sacrifice, and fight with Phasma and the remaining troopers. Phasma falls to her death after a short fight with Finn; like Snoke, she's a major villain who dies unceremoniously. Her character was expanded upon in a novel, and a deleted scene had Finn turn her troops against her by bringing up how she gave away the codes to Starkiller Base in the previous movie, but she comes off as a wasted character.

During the battle of Crait, Finn tries to ram the cannon that's aimed at the door to the Resistance Base, something that would have cost him his life but possibly bought the Resistance some time, but is thwarted when Rose crashes into him. Both their speeders are totaled, but amazingly enough, neither of them are killed despite Rose's severe injuries. Of course, Rose may as well have died given her almost nonexistent role in Rise of Skywalker, which some believe is the creators kowtowing to backlash against her character. While not all of the story elements and characters in The Last Jedi would have worked well in Rise of Skywalker, it's disappointing to see a character be shunted aside for a reason like this.

Basically, Finn accomplishes nothing, save for perhaps making things worse through his efforts, which is why many people found his part of the story frustrating to watch.

Conclusion

I still have mixed feelings about The Last Jedi after my third viewing of the movie. On the one hand, many of my criticisms still stand, especially its tendency to abruptly discard the previous movie's plot threads. On the other hand, it might have been worth seeing Johnson's vision for The Rise of Skywalker, even if I'm likely biased in favor of viewing it overly optimistically. As such, I'd rank it somewhere in the middle of the series- Episode VI is my favorite, followed by IV, V, III, this one, VII, II, I and IX. I may do a more in-depth ranking someday, but I ended up liking it a bit more than VII in retrospect.

I can't help but wonder if some of the retcons were due to Johnson writing Abrams into a corner. With the Resistance in more dire straits than the Rebel Alliance ever was and no help coming, it's difficult to believably write them making a comeback and defeating the villains. It's also unlikely that many of the plot twists in The Last Jedi were consistent with Abrams' vision, which may explain why he retconned some of them away.

In the end, The Last Jedi is probably the main series Star Wars film that least feels like a Star Wars film. It can be rather bleak and even frustrating to watch, but it can also be a refreshing and deconstructive take on franchise cliches, albeit one that also relies on said cliches. I'll probably always have conflicting feelings about this film- the things that it does well and the things it does badly, the ways it's inconsistent with other films and the missed opportunities it presented- but I respect it for its vision, even if I wonder whether its themes and approach to Star Wars would have worked best in a side story rather than a canonical film entry.