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 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.

OMG, this video is AMAZING. It's everything I've been trying to put into words all my life. I missed ANH when it came out, so ESB was the first movie I saw. Based on it, I thought the story was saying the Jedi had some things wrong, and Luke was on the path to figuring out a better way. Because I was expecting that, I saw it in ROTJ too. And, sort of, in the prequels. But all along, ever since ROTJ, I'd had this nagging feeling Lucas did not see it that way. I think some of the EU writers saw it my way, too.

But then came the prequels, and it felt even more clear that Lucas just had a terrible understanding of Buddhism in which enlightened detachment looked exactly like sociopathic detachment. And that's just OMG NO NO NO.

And when TFA came out, and stuff I read sounded like "And the Ben Solo turns to the dark side because it's super tempting and his parents didn't go to all his soccer matches", I had the same reaction. That's the backstory of someone who gets into crime or drug abuse and can totally be rehabbed. Not the backstory of someone like Vader. So I don't hold out much hope for Abrams helming the third in this trilogy.

George Lucas always bothered me. Even when I was 7. I couldn't articulate it then, but I always got the feeling he was just this really shallow dude who had a dangerously confused understanding of psychology and Buddhism. I've noticed that a lot since then - shallow guys with very shallow understandings of deep concepts, playing with them by copying the work of others and doing a poor job of it.

[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.

Disney jettisoned the EU, but not quite. Thrawn is appearing in "Star Wars Rebels" which is an animated series that's set between Episode III and IV. I haven't watched it, but it makes me wonder if they plan to bring any other elements into the movies. They've touched on a few, such as Han and Leia having a son go Dark Side, and Ben was Luke's son's name instead of Leia's. We've missed our chance for Mara Jade, which is a bummer for me, because she could have been a lot of fun onscreen.

It's still unclear why Ben Solo went Dark Side. It's implied in the first film he was manipulated by the mysterious Force user Snoke, very similar to being groomed by a child molester. They use a Rashomon effect to show the original confrontation between Ben and Luke in TLJ, so we still don't know exactly what happened. I'd believe Luke's version over Ben/Kylo's, but I think what's important is each side believes their version, plus there are outside influences like Snoke at work too.

Ultimately, Kylo's been offered multiple chances at redemption and in a couple of cases literally shot them down. I don't want a last minute Light Side conversion and him hanging around as a Force ghost like Anakin at the end of RotJ. He has moments of "weakness" such as sensing Leia from a distance and not firing on her ship, but he definitely plays as petulant teen/young adult instead of a serious villain. He literally has a Force temper tantrum in both movies, with the first one playing it for a bit of a laugh as two stormtroopers came around the corner, heard him having a hissy, then awkwardly backed away before Kylo spotted them. I mean yeah, it's because he could have killed them in a fit of pique, but it played as more of him being a joke even to his own troops.

I haven't watched all the videos on Pop Culture Detective's channel, but he's done some really good ones. He finally gave a name to something that's bothered me in a lot of movies, the "Born Sexy Yesterday" trope, in which "the mind of a naive, yet highly skilled, girl is written into the body of a mature sexualized woman." If you haven't seen that one yet, I recommend it.

[betacandy]

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

I was going by the "Snoke manipulated Ben" version for my assessment. I don't think it sounds like grooming by child molester; I think it sounds like older, charismatic kids/adults seducing younger kids into crime/gangs. Which is totally not irreversible, and also doesn't turn a person into a true monster. It causes them to do monstrous things, but that's different - that's why we know that some kids from gangs can be rehabilitated, but child molesters can't be. It actually feels more to me like they're using an addiction model, which is kind of implied by Yoda saying once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. But that makes Force usage a sort of drug habit that some people can handle responsibly with just the right training? Shrug. Like I said, I've been objecting since 1983. :D

Given Abrams desire to parallel the original trilogy, I have a feeling Ben will get an Anakin redemption. I'd love to be wrong.

I watched a couple more of the Pop Culture Detective's vids. I skipped that one because I've read about the trope before, but I'll check it out.

[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.

Combine the Rashomon effect of Ben's turning point into Kylo Ren with the mysterious Snoke who's killed off without much fanfare in TLJ, and I don't think we'll ever get the real story of what happened. Did Snoke manipulate Ben? Or possibly even Luke too? Luke says he saw darkness like he'd never seen before in Ben, and he went up against Darth Vader and Palpatine, so... did he, or was it something Snoke was doing to lead Luke to a moment of weakness where he was considering killing Ben in order to stop him before he started. That moment was viewed by Ben as his uncle trying to kill him (possibly with Snoke whispering in his mind that Luke feared him because he was too strong), without the second thoughts that stopped him from doing it.

The addiction model could work if you add in how the same drug can affect people differently. I'm a chronic pain patient, but one of the rare ones for whom opioids do squat. It's not a matter of willpower, it's just how it doesn't work with my brain. Perhaps some people can more easily handle using the Force because of how they're wired, while others need training. Though I'm giving TPTB too much credit to think they're actually using that much nuance.

I'm afraid there will be a last minute redemption for Ben as well. Even before we got the back story for Darth Vader, he was shown in the original series to be someone who'd just as soon choke someone to death in order to get another person to talk. He does try to get Luke to his side, literally and figuratively, including overthrowing the Emperor for the two of them to rule the galaxy.

Ben is sort of a Vader-lite, and the movies haven't been shy about making that connection and implying he's rather weaksauce in comparison. He's trying to get Rey on his side for similar reasons -- power to destroy the person controlling him and taking over -- but he doesn't have the same gravitas that Vader did. So if he can kill his own father, give a lot of consideration to killing his mother, and wants to rage kill his uncle, not to mention the non-family related things he's done, what kind of sacrifice could he make to even be considered as redeemed? He's already killed his version of the Emperor... or did he?

[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.

I read an interesting article which said... and I'm not going to put this as well as they did... that Vader is Hitler, and Ben is a neo-Nazi. That is, Vader was dedicated evil and an original, and Ben is just this whiny creep who wants to be a badass. And that in a way, the neo-Nazis are worse than Hitler, because they have the benefit of knowing how destructive Hitler's regime was, and they STILL want to be him. I thought that would be a fascinating way to deal with his character in the end, but I don't trust Abrams with it. I think in the end he would just have to die - let's face it, neo-Nazis are the type to commit suicide by cop, if they go off on a rampage of their own - and I think he's almost less redeemable than Vader. I mean, the Jedi failed Anakin disastrously, so you can kind of see how he ended up as he did (and my biggest qualm with his story is the idea that his last minute turnaround was enough to secure him the SW equivalent of a place in heaven, i.e., Force ghostliness). With Ben, he just doesn't seem to have the childhood traumas it takes to make a Vader.

And that's by Earth/human psychology standards, of course, which need not apply. It's just that I WILL always apply them. I can't help it. I grew up around enough real life Vaders *and* their families that, for me, the pattern of how they develop is shockingly predictable. When I see something that doesn't remotely conform to it in stories, I just lose interest. I'm not saying anyone needs to agree with me on that or react the same way, I'm just saying that's my reaction. I lost interest when the EU went in that direction with Ben.

[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.

[betacandy]

Ugh, if that's what they're doing, that's such a cynical marketing ploy.

For me, "what went wrong with Ben" would be a central question to answer in order to plan the future. Is it just that Jedi teachings have it wrong? Or are Force users just easily corrupted in general? Should we dump Jedi teachings, but not other Force traditions, or is the Force just something nobody should be learning to use? If that's left for a comic, then in my mind, the story would just have a big stupid hole through the middle of it.

[nialla42]

I think they're leaning towards the idea that the Force is neutral, but how people people use it is the problem. The Jedi are a good idea in concept, but after generations of teachings, they're off track from where they began.

Or that just could be one of my multitude of head canons talking.