(this post was inspired in part by Dutch’s displeasure with Snoke’s
demise and the lack of context in the MMOM
discussion of The Last Jedi)
Fans are right to be irked about Snoke’s treatment because it
is a symptom of the larger problem with The Last Jedi, which is that it renders
much of the previous episodes meaningless. And it does so quite intentionally,
reacting to the nostalgia of The Force Awakens, without ever coming to terms with
the gravity of the film’s tragedies and the lack of hope and meaning in this version
of the galaxy.
The audience of the TLJ is treated to one slow-moving
failure of the Resistance after another and at the end is left wondering what
the point of any of this is. What is the net effect of the Rebellion,
Resistance, and the destruction of the Death Stars and Starkiller Base? Zilch,
except that a lot more people (planets full!) are dead than if the Rebellion
never existed.
From the opening scene, it is apparent that destroying
Starkiller Base, while portrayed in TFA as a critical strike against the First
Order, worthy of celebration, has been only a minor annoyance to the First
Order. The First Order has assembled a formidable fleet and located the
Resistance’s base in roughly the time it took Rey to hand a light saber to
Luke.
So was it worth it to lose lives in the attack on Starkiller
(and perhaps reveal the location of the Resistance in doing so)? The First
Order no longer has a planet-destroying weapon, which is good, but it sure
looks like they don’t need one anymore. TLJ doesn’t dwell on this question, but
we do get a phone prank and some scrappy hi-jinks along the way as we watch
most of the good guys die.
This is a bleak universe, where there is no such thing as a
meaningful victory or sacrifice, just points of light struggling valiantly to
hold back the darkness before the light is inevitably extinguished. Why should
I care, in retrospect, about the Return of the Jedi when the defeat of the
Empire only gives way to a weak republic that will last 20 years? And when it
falls, it’s not just going to be a coup in the government, it’s going to be due
to the destruction of several planets with billions of citizens on them.
This is why an Episode 6.5 would have been useful or
interesting. Thematically, it could help give meaning to the Republic and to
the Rebellion that created it. There may have been some very good times. There
may have been some important lessons to be learned, political and otherwise. 20
or so years of freedom and peace and joy and prosperity may be worth fighting
for. But is it worth the cost of billions and billions of lives, if the bad
guys are inevitably going to end up in power anyways?
And narratively, an Episode 6.5 might have helped explain
why Snoke or the First Order is an anomaly and not an inevitable result of the
flow of history in the galaxy. It is against this backdrop that the quick
disposal of Snoke becomes more frustrating. In a vacuum, we don’t really need
any more backstory or participation for Snoke than we did for Palpatine in
Episodes IV-VI.
But Rian Johnson is effectively telling us that all the victories
of the past didn’t really accomplish anything. Did you spend any time thinking
about Snoke? Too bad, he’s meaningless, too, just like Rebel and Resistance victories
in the past. Snoke becomes just another data point showing it's a waste of time trying to understand the physics and politics of the
galaxy.
This is not just fanboys whining about not catering to their
theories; it’s a director so intent on striking out in new directions that he manages
to lose both a narratively coherent universe (that may be more of a failure of
the Lucas story group)[1]
and the larger themes of hope and freedom and meaning and purpose. Those themes
are present, but the film doesn’t stop to consider them in light of the death
happening all around them.
The surviving characters may still have hope, but we are
given no reason to believe this hope has any foundation. At one point Rey says
she wants to find her place in all this; what does Leia think about her place
in all of this at the end of TLJ? Her place has been to give hope to a whole
bunch of people, and that hope has led to pretty much all of them being dead.[2]
Now, there are good questions that could be asked: When it
is better to die in a futile but noble fight instead of living under the yoke
of tyranny? What really motivates individuals to do the right thing? What is our
responsibility in the face of overwhelming evil? What is worth fighting for,
really? How evil must evil be before you will risk billions of lives fighting
against it? But TLJ isn’t interested in asking those questions. Instead we get porgs
and a cheesy line about saving the things they love instead of fighting the
things they hate.
That line would have been more believable if we had any idea
of what the ideals of the Resistance are. All we really know is that they hate
the First Order, which is capable of killing lots of people, enables arms
profiteering, and permits child slavery and cruelty to animals, though it is
not clear why the latter two are the fault of the First Order and not the Republic.
There are a lot of things to like about the TLJ. Finn’s
character has a satisfying plot arc. I love Luke’s isolation and regrets and the different
perspectives from Luke and Kylo on what happened at his academy. And despite what I've written above, hooray for re-establishing that Star Wars should be more about characters than blowing things up. Everything
with Rey and Kylo is great.
But man, what a bleak film, masked a bit by moments of levity. JJ Abrams will have
his work cut out to convince me that the inevitable Resistance victory in
Episode IX will do any lasting good. But those crystal
foxes are neat.
[1]
Not just mysteries about what happened to the Republic, new Force powers, how
long it takes to learn to use the Force, or space bombers, but also and especially
the Holdo
maneuver.
[2] One benefit, I suppose, of
this nihilistic outlook is that it makes it easier to believe that Leia and
Holdo could so quickly forgive Poe (that rapscallion!) for his mutinous actions
that led to the deaths of a large percentage of the surviving Resistance, since
they were all going to die anyway.
