After two years, I think I don't hate The Last Jedi so much as that it just baffles me. How does a movie studio start out by buying Star Wars and get... from there to the idea that to make their franchise grow and embrace a wider audience (something I strongly support), it should destroy its best-known character?
There are many things wrong with TLJ, starting that it's just a boring, depressing movie filled with dark adult themes of cynicism, futility and suicide which are deeply inappropriate for its target audience, children and teens. In tone, it feels like a mashup of Alien (1979) with Borat (2006): an atmosphere of brooding darkness, a universe where anything any character does leads inevitably to horrible failure.... combined with weird absurdist situation 'comedy'. (Borat is one of a short list of movies during which I physically walked out of the theatre and wished I'd done so earlier; TLJ, I stayed in the theatre but walked out of the franchise afterwards.)
I've tried (and posted here) several times to unravel a coherent creative thought process that might have led to creating such a cinematic and brand disaster. I think part of the problem is a fixation on the movie legend of Empire Strikes Back and the idea that the most important part of that movie was its shock reveal, and that such a reveal must be exceeded, and could only be exceeded by making the good and evil sides of the cosmic conflict of Star Wars literally equal. From there maybe followed all of the structure of the film: an attempt to make Kylo look good by morally tearing down all of the protagonists.
And TLJ also follows a path laid out by TFA and by the Prequels, in which the Jedi steadily became turned from heroes to villains or bumbling fools, while the forces of darkness stole the spotlight. I've always been nervous of the Prequels for that reason: they seem to be celebrating the rise of evil, and that seems less and less kid-friendly. But someone just looking at the path of Star Wars, including the Prequels, could decide that this is where it was all inevitably heading: a repudiation of all that Star Wars once stood for.
That might or might not be what happened. It's somewhat plausible to me. A number of major errors in judgement, each understandable in themselves which, then combined with a bunch of technical and script problems leading to major scenes being cut and others reworked late in production, all added up to a released product that was just incomprehensibly bad on multiple levels. The final nail in Star Wars' reputation being the equally incomprehensible massed defense of the film as genius art mounted by what seemed like a unanimous line of film critics... plus the resounding silence of all the dissenting critics, because they feared being smeared as 'supporters of the alt-right' by criticising anything Star Wars in public, at a moment (2016-2017) when it had become the political banner of an existentially distressed Democratic party.
I can understand this, rationally, looking at it piece by piece. Like all failures of complex systems, it was a perfect storm, not just one clear fault but a cluster of them. Each small poor decision together added up to something huge. With an impact that Disney is still feeling... and I fear might also have damaged the progressive political movement in America.
But emotionally, it still doesn't satisfy me. I'm still left with one big question: just why did anyone think that Star Wars needed to tear down its most famous hero? How did that pass the gut check? How come no adult was present to say 'actually, how about no, making Luke a coward and someone who has cursed and renounced his religion, that's going to really damage the entire Star Wars brand'?
That to me is the problem of TLJ. If it were just a bad movie, the damage could be fixed. But by breaking Luke, it's telling a generation that everything Star Wars stood for is now wrong.
It's a valid creative choice to destroy your hero and have the hero repudiate the faith and ideals that made your franchise popular. Sure. You can do that. It's a bold move. But after doing that, how can you sell Star Wars anymore? What do you have left to sell? What legacy can it pass on? Just the awareness that 'everything is fake and it's better not to be a fan'?
Perhaps Star Wars can carry on after this? But it can't for me. I'm actively aware now, in a way that I wasn't before, that Star Wars as a story was only ever an illusion, a trick of the light seen from a certain point of view, that its universe and ideology never did hang together entirely, that the future it describes is lightyears away from plausibility and might in fact be actively harmful.
I still love what I once thought that Star Wars stood for. I just can't see any of that left in the franchise. Or perhaps, in any franchise.
Star Wars, for me, was a unique distillation of a time which is now almost lost: the late 1970s, a period of optimism about the empowering potential of personal computers and expansion of consciousness, against the threat of large political and corporate systems. I'm a lot less optimistic specifically about the potential for liberty in personal computers now; for example Apple, once R2-D2, have seamlessly become the Death Star. I am still interested in spirituality and expansion of consciousness. But those are not products sold in stores, require no tickets to purchase, and have no merchandise and theme parks.
I think Lucasfilm, fearing that their space fairytale mythology was 'too old' and 'not engaging for the kids', somehow fell into a panic reaction and decided that Luke Skywalker represented 'everything that the kids today hate'. But I think they were wrong.
Sure, computers and military warfighters and a loose coalition of commercial rogues are not the way to the future we once thought they were. And I'm happy for the protagonist of new Star Wars to be a woman. I think it's well past time.
But I still don't understand why they destroyed Luke Skywalker (not just 'kill' - destroyed his character)... and thought that Star Wars could endure that.
Star Wars had limits and in trying to go beyond them, it destroyed itself. Something new will appear that takes Star Wars' place... or goes beyond it. But it won't be called Star Wars.
Submitted September 18, 2019 at 09:59AM by natecull https://ift.tt/2O9DXaS
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