The Last Jedi Betrays the Original Trilogy and its Heroes

Through sheer storytelling laziness, it tells us that nothing that came before mattered.

The Last Jedi is the most disappointing Star Wars movie since Attack of the Clones. I don't believe I'm overstating that. It's a movie that, through its plot developments and characterization, makes the whole of the Star Wars saga less interesting and less compelling.

Its plotting undermined the characters. What was accomplished by Luke, Leia, and Han in the Original Trilogy? In light of The Last Jedi, they basically failed. The ending of Return of the Jedi is moot. We don't know why it's moot. We don't know why the Rebellion's victory turned out to be, well, nothing at all. Episode VIII doesn't bother to tell us, because it just doesn't care.

Instead, The Last Jedi says, "Return of the Jedi never happened. Our characters failed. The Empire still lives, somehow, though we've changed the names. Everything's as dire as it was after Empire Strikes Back, without explanation, and without earning it. We simply couldn't come up with a new story, so we inexplicably reset the universe to repeat the same story we've already done, with a handful of new characters."

Why did the Rebellion fail?

Why did any of the Original Trilogy matter?

That the Rebellion failed could be an interesting story. That our characters ultimately failed could be an interesting story. But Episodes VII and VIII don't concern themselves with that. They just want to have another Empire and another Rebellion, because that's as ambitious as they want to be. And in doing so, without telling the story of how we got there, they've sapped the Original Trilogy of its meaning, and made the fight our heroes fought through three movies pointless.

Luke's a loser. Han's a loser. Leia's a loser. There's your characterization. But, hey, we got some porgs, Luke can make a hologram across planets, and Snoke's is a generic bad guy in a bathrobe.

Let's talk about Snoke. Here's a guy who somehow built a war machine that toppled the New Republic, and built it out of at best a fragment of a bit of ships remaining from the Empire, which could be a great story and a great villain. But The Last Jedi doesn't care about that. Snoke's just, well, a plot point.

One might object that Episodes VII and VIII neededn't answer all such questions. Except that these questions are central to what these movies are about. They're the why that gives purpose to what we're seeing, and that give purpose to the sacrifices the characters make.

For instance, they play up the conflict in Kylo Ren. Great. That's important, and very Star Wars. But then they reduce his fall to Luke saying, "Snoke got to him," and then a single scene of Luke trying to kill him. But not knowing anything about Snoke, we have no appreciation for what it means that Snoke got to him, or why Ren turned from Han and Leia's son to someone who would murder both. He's just bad because --- handwave --- some random dude made him bad?

In other words, our characters lack motivations for their actions, and so the actions are without much emotional weight.

The Force Awakens skirted this, because it was setup. We assumed we'd then learn why they were doing the things they were doing. The Last Jedi said, "Nope, we're not going to bother with that."

That's why this movie was nothing like Empire, even though so many of the inexplicably glowing reviews want you to think it is. Empire was about building characters. It was about the "I am your father" realization that gave Vader so much more weight, and made everything matter in a much deeper way. That drove the characterization, making it all richer.

The Last Jedi just had characters fight. It had Luke be sad because he screwed up, somehow, but we don't know how, because we don't know who or what Snoke was and why he was so powerful. It had Leia lead a dwindling Resistance, but we don't know why she's doing that, because we don't know why it matters what the First Order's up to, because the universe is suddenly reset to a pre-Return of the Jedi order so there's something to do? We're just told the Resistance is the last line of defense, and so it matters, but we're not shown that. The movie is all tell, not show.

The Last Jedi fakes its "emotional" weight because it has characters we love pop up, and it has characters we love in danger or dying. But why they're doing any of that is just ignored.

It's a remarkably lazy movie, and arguably the worst of the whole saga. The Prequels were bad, yes, but they left the Original Trilogy intact. The Last Jedibetrays the legacy of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. It cheapens the most inspiring rebellion in film history, and turns its heroes into failures. For shame.

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