The Last Jedi

[nialla42]

I forgot to mention I saw this during the first week of release, thanks to my early time off from work before Christmas. I'm sort of in a surprised/not surprised state over the reactions to it, but I have to say I get a bit twitchy when think pieces are blaming people who saw the original movies in the theater because TLJ isn't like the originals.

Comments

[betacandy]

I haven't seen it and I don't plan to. I fell out of love with it when the prequels came along, and now with Carrie Fisher being gone, it's all just somehow become sad to me.

But I really enjoy your analysis here. I've been reading about it because I did once really love these characters. And it almost sounds like this movie makes a course correction or two I could feel good about. But like you say, Abrams may come along and put it all back the way it was, so I just don't want to get sucked in again, LOL.

[nialla42]

I've pretty much wiped the prequels out of my memory. I honestly can't remember much beyond the first one, so it's interesting to see people discuss the new trilogy with regards to the prequels. They'll talk about certain plot points and characters that I don't even remember

[betacandy]

I've read some very positive reviews from the feminist and anti-racist crowd. One made the point that all the guys in this one, even Luke, screw things up through giving into toxic masculinity urges, while the women have shit under control. I really dig it, but I still don't want to see it play out because... it's hard to put into words, but since the #MeToo moment, I've been having a sort of slow epiphany. It's something to do with realizing my standards for men have always been set too low, and mine are much higher than most women's. I'm learning that even the good ones might grab your butt during a photo shoot, and even the ones who would never touch you without permission... might slink off in a bitter funk and leave the galaxy to fend for itself because the feelz

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Vader, in human terms, could not be redeemed by one act of decency. That's a nice Catholic sort of idea
Even in Catholicism, while he could be redeemed, he'd need a loooooooot of purgatory to work off all the evil!

Also, midichlorians. Shudder.
Indeed!

[betacandy]

And yet we see him hanging out with all the much better behaved Jedi ghosts by the end of the movie. :)

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Well, if I stick with Catholic theology, in contemporary understandings, purgatory does not have time as we do. So Anakin/Vader could have done a great deal of purification and still made it to the happy Jedi reunion.

I'm not sure just how far I want to push a Catholic interpretation of SW, but so far, so good!

[betacandy]

You can fanwank it, but what we see in the movie is simply Anakin doing one good thing, and boom, somehow that apparently made up for all the evil he did. And the reason that bugs me is that it goes along with a lot of very wrong, unhealthy ideas our culture has about redemption and forgiveness. I've known abused family members who were told by clergy not to get away from the abuser before someone gets killed, but to pray for their abuser and trust Jesus. So it's a real sore point with me.

It's interesting that now the generation that first saw SW as kids are making a lot of movies and TV in which redemption and forgiveness are NOT that easy, and both bad and good people are more complex. Over the years, I've gravitated to those types of stories.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

I'm sorry. I was just playing around with fictional things. I have to imagine Vader repaid in some way for it not to just ruin the ending for me.

In real life, clergy who know about abuse and don't help the victims to get away from the abuser but say to pray and trust Jesus instead are culpable. It's awful that it happened to your family.

I believe in forgiveness, but I also believe that redemption must be earned. I'm glad Kylo Ren didn't just suddenly get saved, and I hope the next movie will continue that way.

[betacandy]

Don't apologize. I'm just explaining why that doesn't work for me, and therefore the ending WAS ruined for me a long time ago. I like hearing and discussing different perspectives than my own

[nialla42]

I was amazed at how much was literally burning it down, as well as the characters themselves saying to do it. Luke wanting the Jedi to end was implied to be more about realizing their ways weren't working and were actually making things worse. Even Kylo Ren has this to say: "The Empire, your parents, the Resistance, the Sith, the Jedi... let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That's the only way to become what you are meant to be

[betacandy]

I loved the EU. I remember Zahn had an order of monks who used the Force as a sort of spectrum rather than a binary light and dark thing. I always wanted to see more of that

[nialla42]

I saw Zahn at a con back in the early days of the EU. From what I recall, they had a committee to work out a series of tied-in stories for ~dozen books. I think it got a little out of control the longer it went on, simply due to the weight of its own canon. The bones were good, but the body got a little too much

[betacandy]

God, I love Mara Jade. Don't get me started

[nialla42]

Even if they did put in a Mara Jade-esque character now, it will never be close to what they had in the books. Such a missed opportunity to have had her as part of the Jedi Academy that Luke was trying to start, and perhaps having her be a survivor

[betacandy]

The addiction model still falls short for me because addiction doesn't make you into a monster. I know, I know, it could be made to work anyway, but it just doesn't do anything for me. Especially not in a 2 hour film. That's a topic that would need a novel's worth of thought and development

[nialla42]

I can see a neo-Nazi take on Ben/Kylo Ren, and I think the films are pushing that angle in a sense, but it often comes off more as he's a weaksauce emo version of Vader.

At least in Vader's case we had some inkling before the prequels that he'd been "good" at some point, and the prequels detailed his rise and fall as a Jedi, then his rise and fall as a Sith. TFA seemed to imply that Snoke did something to Ben, TLJ seemed to continue that thread with a side order of Luke failing him one time, but I'm not sure we'll ever get a true story of what happened with him.

Though I'm starting to think that's the point. There seem to be quite a lot of questions about events from both movies that end up with "There's a book/comic that answers that question." It was one thing to expand existing canon with the EU, but I don't like the idea that they're potentially leaving things out of the scripts so they can put it into extended universe stuff. The EU began when the series was all but dead; working with a live one is very, very different.