The Last Jedi

The closest thing I ever had to a religion was Star Wars. I'm not proud of that. Maybe I needed something to devote myself to but religions didn't interest me. In any case, it wasn't healthy. I still remember treating a gold-coloured boxed set of the classic trilogy on VHS like they were the dead sea scrolls. When my sister and I got into a fight and the case for it was slightly warped, I freaked out. Screaming, crying, like someone shot my dog.


Sorry about that, Laura.


I'm not saying it's wrong to love these movies, or like them. I'm saying I took it too far. It became a gross obsession. Which is why you're about to read perhaps the most controversial thing I've ever said:

I'm glad that the prequels are so terrible.



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I'm grateful that they shattered my naive view of Star Wars as being perfect. I certainly didn't appreciate it at the time, but there's always some internal resistance when leaving a cult. Except it was a cult I made for myself. A cage I wrapped myself in because I thought it gave me meaning. I needed something to drag me kicking and screaming out of a blind reverence for those magic space movies.


I think this is what The Last Jedi did for a lot of people. That's why they resent it. But unlike the prequels, it did so in a way that doesn't betray what made people like Star Wars in the first place. They just want it to. They need to cling to the idea that they understand Star Wars better than you. They need to feel like they're more of a fan than anyone else. They need Rian Johnson to be the bad guy who dented their gold box-set case.


It refuses to just be entertainment, or to "leave its' politics at the door". It is a necessary and long-overdue shift in priorities, a re-evaluation of how we use the things and the people that are important to us. It shows how we dehumanize others when we try to deify them. Zealots sprout from ground too-valued.


Star Wars is THE film franchise, the biggest arrow in Disney's quiver in the wealthiest capitalist society on Earth. It is such an enormous investment that I could never expect much honesty or courage from it. Film-making is risk-management, and it's hard to imagine anything this big, with this much money riding on it daring to alienate even the slimiest of fanboys. They tend to wield their toys like weapons if you even suggest that they're not the heroes of the story.


So for Star Wars to look its' worst audience in the eyes and say: "You are the bad guys" is the ballsiest thing I've ever seen at the movies. We all thought we were the good guys. We all thought we were the plucky rebellion, and not the fascist empire. We all thought we would be the "good Germans", and not the ones who were complicit in the rise of Hitler.


Luke Skywalker showed us that anyone can fuck up, even the people you idolize. Even the strongest people fail and fall into despair. That is the most important thing any movie could have done for the world in this stage of human history. That is not something to be ashamed of. That is not a failure of storytelling. That is REAL. That is so much more important than just pandering to power fantasies.


The Last Jedi has something to say about itself, about you and me, and about the world we live in. Things matter to people, but people should matter more. And if you'd prefer Star Wars was nothing more than a cheap toy, then to paraphrase XKCD: "You never loved it. You just liked checking out its' ass when it walked by."


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~A.H.