No/Yes? Anyone can build an argument that recontextualizes a movie for you and makes you appreciate it on a deeper/different level - or deflate it completely. But if that argument isn’t actually supported by the text itself - insert your favourite Prometheus readings here - it’ll all just evaporate like hot air.
Relatedly: Moviebob did a two-part series on The Last Jedi/The Force Awakens as a meta narative about Star Wars/Love letter to Star Wars fans:
And yeah, I think it works as a reading, and he’s really on point with how Luke is of a piece with the franchise and its mythic antecedents, but I’m not a super fan of it for the reasons he alludes to at the end of the second part. While The Force Awakens only works as late capitalism jerking itself off, The Last Jedi actually functtions as a human scale story of people dealing with failure. (In addition to late capitalism jerking itself off.)
People failing? What a totally new concept in Star Wars or the hero’s journey in general…
All those “readings” really don’t provide anything of value. It’s not enough to just have some message or theme, the execution is just as important.
That’s where the prequels failed and where TLJ (and TFA) also fall short. TLJ has the additional problem of fighting against the mythical roots of Star Wars and pretending to be something else while at the same time still wanting to be that thing.
Nope, sorry, you’re not allowed to have such an opinion so quantifiably wrong. You must be mocked, with oodles of scorn and derision poured out upon your head.
On a serious note, there’s such a drop after Empire it is inconceivable to me how anyone could possibly rank any of the other movies as superior in any way to the first two. Makes me wonder if that person saw the original film at the theater as a kid (because it was utterly transformative to my 12yo mind).
The Last Jedi tbh seemed to try to be some kind of millennial meta-commentary and rejection of nostalgia and retro-ism, buried in a film founded on nostalgia. Almost like millennials are conflicted with their love of all things retro while at the same time struggling with their desire to burn it all down.
We need The Force, but not all those stupid books! says the Instagram generation. These are our stories now, won’t the old generation STFU and go away?! seems like the subtext of the whole film.
Since I wasn’t born yet, no I didn’t see it in theater. It wasn’t high on my list as a toddler either. I did see it as a kid later though, and a teen, and as an adult. You know that moment in Marvel Civil War where the kid talks about that really, really old movie… well I am not as young as he is but yes, it’s very old.
I was a year old when the original came out in theaters.
I did watch the Special Edition re-releases in the theater though, when they all came out to theaters during the late 90s. Even though I don’t like the original Star Wars all that much, I do love the trash compactor scene. That’s the one bright spot in that movie. It’s just really well done, and still holds up today.
Yeah, see, that scene doesn’t exist for someone like me who is referring to a version of the original that didn’t even have chapter 4 on that scrawling text.
That reminds me of the third Matrix movie (Revolutions), which I was personally disappointed with for many reasons. A friend of mine said, “No look! There are a bunch of references to the Wizard of Oz! See, he follows the yellow pathway to the machines, and there’s this giant face like the Wizard…” and all these different things in the movie. But my response was still, “So?” References or themes aren’t valuable just by being there; they should actually be saying something.
That’s how I felt about The Last Jedi: A lot of people are saying how it’s about failure…but what is it saying about failure? That a lot of people make terrible decisions and have to deal with the consequences? I’m not sure what the overarching message is, besides, “A lot of bad things happen. The end.” It felt like Rian Johnson was trying to out-Empire Empire by making it a darker story, but without having enough successes or victories to lighten things up.
That failure ultimately doesn’t matter that much because it only takes a Millenium (Millennial?) Falcon’s worth of resistance personnel to kick off the true resistance? So really, as long as you don’t fail to the point that you don’t even have that it’s all good. Or something.
Well except marking something as number 4 instead of number 3 is not rejection. I mean seriously, you can love something and love something else more. That does not mean you are actually rejecting or even hating that first one.
