My impassioned praise of the most controversial Star Wars film, plus a little-known Disney gem with an 8-word title.
Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi (2017; Disney+)
As Rey tries to learn the Force from a reluctant Skywalker, our favorite rebels hatch a plan to evade Empire detection—and their own commanders. I’ve never seen a Star Wars movie that evoked such strong opinions on both sides. If you say you like the classic trilogy, people approve. If you’re nostalgic for the prequels, people accept it—I’m a bit nostalgic for The Phantom Menace myself. But the sequel trilogy doesn’t gel. Episodes VII and IX are classic nostalgia, but Episode VIII feels… different. It has a different director and writer. I’m one of the people who really like Episode VIII, because to me, it combines the best of the old with the best of the new.
First off, it is rich with references to the original trilogy. Darth Vader’s grandson piloting a ship doing a 360, Luke’s X-wing underwater, the big bad Snoke making Rey look out the window at her defeated friends’ ships—there are countless nods to all three originals. Most of all, it hearkens back to Episode V, with the rebels facing AT-AT walkers and a new Yoda (Luke) training our new Luke (Rey). It is full of nostalgia, but best of all, it doesn’t just end there. It’s something new, too.
A lot of people didn’t like the new things. I’ll admit that they could have written a slightly more cooperative, affable Luke. But for me, the film is an amazing dance of themes that enrich the Star Wars heritage as only art can. These themes are…
(Dead) Heroes. The original trilogy has a problem with suicide missions. Episode VI in particular features a moment that makes me cringe. A rebel fighter crashes into the big bad ship, and the bad ship explodes, and all the rebels cheer. Admiral Ackbar looks particularly relieved. Star Wars VIII brings us back to the human center that I pointed out in Episode IV: it matters when a fighter dies. So also, The Last Jedi opens with a “successful” mission but Leia looking at the casualty count and asking, “At what cost?” Everyone matters here, even those red shirts who work in the “lower decks.” As I said, the first two Star Wars films emphasized that, but then it kind of got lost. Until now.
Leaders. It’s not a stretch to imagine that the “rebels” have a problem with authority. So when Poe, Finn, and Rose hatch a plan to go behind their new admiral’s back, it’s tempting to say, “Yeah! Stick it to the man!” Or in this case, the woman (Laura Dern!?). This is the problem with a “rebel” identity. “It is a period of civil war,” indeed! This is why even Luke doesn’t feel like being a leader anymore—leaders are flawed. But this movie shows that “rebellion” isn’t the only right instinct. At some point, we need to accept the authority of our elders. Sometimes they actually do know better. But they, too, have to do so with enough humility to teach their failures as well as their legend. Servant leadership. Because leadership is sacrifice.
Helping, not Hurting. “It was worth it, though. To tear up that town, make ‘em hurt,” says Finn. Then Rose takes the harness off the human-motion-capture animal they rode to freedom, sets it free and says, “Now it’s worth it.” Hurting isn’t worth it. Saving is. This is the only Star Wars movie I can think of that shows why the Rebels are the heroes. They fight for the oppressed, the poor, the abused—and they don’t fight like the Empire fights. The Empire will blow up an unarmed medical frigate. It’s interesting how Phasma tells her Storm Troopers to “make this hurt” when they are about to kill Finn and Rose—the same words Finn thought he was celebrating earlier. This movie dares to make absolutely sure that we stop fighting hate with hate. This movie shows us the danger of forgetting this and becoming “Angels fighting in the key of demon,” to quote something I recently read. There is an eerie parallel in that opening scene, as the bad General yells and then Poe yells. It’s a duality that runs through the entire film, where one character resembles another—but here, the “good guy” looks like the “bad guy,” because he hasn’t learned yet that it’s not really about fighting. But the movie has a lot of grace for our heroes’ failures, too—which happens to be the same point, again, expressed in the very form of the story. From the very first line, this movie shows that the way of the light is saving people, not destroying evil.
It’s shocking, because this means that blowing up the bad machines isn’t always the answer—even though we’ve been doing that since Episode IV. But once again, I believe this is directly in line with the ethos of Episode VI, when Luke chooses not to give in to hate and kill his father. The ultimate moral of this film is shocking because it’s so optimistic: hope rises again like the sun, and good really can triumph over evil.
It’s optimistic without being simple. Rey is good, Luke is good, but they only get there by accepting their own fallibility. They have to accept their own dark side. This may sound out of place in a Star Wars universe of cookie-cutter good and evil. I think this is the heart of why people don’t like this film: Adam Driver isn’t wearing a shirt, because this movie is about showing earthy characters who exist in three-dimensions. But this is actually the point of Star Wars, from the start: the moral of the original trilogy is accepting the darkness within to stop being controlled by it, as this video masterfully shows. This is the point in Episode V when Yoda tells Luke not to take his light saber into the dark place, but he does anyway. Fighting the darkness is the darkness inside you. Accepting your past failures and the evil in your bloodline—that’s the true way to stop repeating the past and build a future of hope.
I have more to say, but I’m putting that at the end of this post for those of you who want to read even more about why I think this movie fits Star Wars better than any other movie since the originals. May the Force be with you, always.
For sensitive viewers: Several fight scenes with light sabers. A character is cut in two. A child is pushed down and animals are whipped. A couple of moderate swear words.
The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968; to rent on YouTube and other places)
The eleven members of the musically inclined Bower Family move to Dakota territory in 1888 and find themselves singing in the middle of a polarized political climate. It is refreshing to see a movie about politics that puts politics on the back burner. When the family father (Buddy Ebsen) is asked to sing at the Democratic National Committee even though his politics are different, he accepts because, “Music is above all that.” (It’s especially fitting because Buddy Ebsen was liberal and got famous playing a really conservative Beverly Hillbilly. He just described his career.) Like Star Wars VIII, this is a movie where it’s not about beating the bad guys. Hate cannot drive out hate. But love and song—these will bring springtime wherever they shine.
This movie has several memorable scenes. It’s hard to know who to root for when Grandpa (the great old actor Walter Brennan) substitutes for the grade-school teacher and gets his class riled up in favor of a Confederate hero. All but one student, that is—and that student becomes exactly the kind of hero Grandpa is singing about. Who’s right? Both sides. And the scene, like so many in this film, is driven by a song from the Sherman Brothers who, as I have said before, wrote some of the catchiest and richest music in Disney history.
This is a sweet love story. It’s a romantic comedy, and it has another kind of love, too: that good old-fashioned love for America that Walt’s Disney always treasured. In the commentary, Lesley Ann Warren observed that she was raised with family-friendly, traditional morals, so after this movie she had a hard time finding roles! This is a time capsule of the past, just before Hollywood lost its old-fashioned optimism. It’s the last film Walt is credited with presenting. In 1968 and 2026 alike, it has the power to breathe some hope into a period of civil war.
For sensitive viewers: I honestly don’t remember because I haven’t seen this for years. I’m pretty sure it’s squeaky-clean!!!
More about Star Wars and why The Last Jedi is actually great
Okay, so on this run through Star Wars, I noticed something that I think explains why all the prequels and sequels are so hard to love. Rewatching Return of the Jedi, my favorite scene was when C3PO tells the Ewoks the story of the first two films. Even though he’s speaking Ewokese, we recognize the scenes he’s describing, and then the Ewoks decide to adopt our heroes into their tribe. It’s touching because that’s the power of story—seeing these stories has made many of us “adopt” these characters into our families as well. However, it’s also a bad sign for any Star Wars sequels. Star Wars is doomed to be meta. After the stellar success of the first films, Star Wars is doomed to talk about itself, to reference itself, to try to repeat its own success by telling the same story over and over again. What, Disney acquired Star Wars and is making a new sequel trilogy? “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
This is why I don’t love Episode VII: The Force Awakens. It is chock-full of nostalgia, and that’s fine, and it is artful in its own way—but that’s all. It follows the Episode IV story beat by story beat, like Mary Poppins Returns does for Mary Poppins. We now have new characters in the old characters’ roles: Rey is Luke, BB8 is R2-D2, and there’s a new Death Star to destroy. Strangely, however, the old characters are still wandering around too: Han Solo, Leia, R2-D2, Chewbacca. I can accept new characters in old roles, but not when the old roles are still being filled. Does Han really make a good Obi-Wan? He does still make a great Han, even at 73. But then, why is there another Death Star? The way that the past and present coexist in that movie, for me, is like trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Then came Episode VIII, and it opened with two hard Nos. Ben takes off his Darth mask and destroys it. Luke throws his old lightsaber behind him. It’s as if these characters are saying, ENOUGH with the old nostalgia already! Now, these characters have new roles—Leia isn’t just there to hug and kiss people?!—and there’s a new sort of lesson to learn.
Just as importantly, this kind of new doesn’t cancel out the old. Kylo Ren and Luke throwing the old things out at the beginning is a sign that they are both wrong. Simply rebelling against the old is too simple. Eventually, Yoda-Luke will lose his crusty cynicism. (Like this Luke, Yoda really wasn’t as huggable as you remember. Besides, how would you feel if they just kept making Death Stars after you destroyed two of them—and they still never gave you somebody to love??) The movie is going to come back around to the classic optimism of the series, but to do so, it will work through all the reasons we might give up hope. There are plenty of reasons to lose our trust in authority. But this movie dares to suggest that we can be healthier rebels by accepting our elders’ limitations, and our own limitations. We need to accept the gentle, comic patheticness of tradition, because sometimes it really is just about lifting rocks. We need to respect the wisdom of our elders and, at the same time, our elders need to learn to let us outgrow them.
Because if we pay enough attention to Episode VI, we discover that Luke was right to try to save Vader and Yoda and Ben were wrong. Luke grew beyond his teachers. In the same way, we shouldn’t hate this movie for growing beyond its source material—for not just being a remake, but being a sequel.
The constant nods to Episode V are telling us that this new story is written out of LOVE for the old series, not in rebellion against it. It’s loving the old and also growing further at the same time. Letting go to let the next generation thrive is what Star Wars is all about. Remember what Obi-Wan did in Episode IV?
Maybe the movie is a failure, but as Yoda says, the greatest teacher, failure is. If the movie is hard to accept because it’s new, it might just be reminding us to be open to the new. The Force is for all of us, not just for the old heroes or an Empire lording it over us or a chosen race (with Mitachlorine blood levels). Just say no to Jedi racism (and sexism). That ending shot: that’s the whole point, right? It’s for the kid in all of us. Star Wars always was.