I know I still haven't reviewed "The Last Jedi". I will, but I want to see it once more before I do.
That said, if you saw my BINGO card, you'll be able to determine that I didn't get a BINGO. I wasn't SUPER far off in terms of the overall tone and themes of the film, but I was pretty far off in terms of exactly how that would be pulled off and, by and large, the film REALLY went in directions I didn't expect.
I wasn't alone in that.
However, one thing that's dominated a lot of discussions regarding "The Last Jedi" is the backlash. A LOT of people are not just lukewarm on the film, but they outright HATE it, with people spamming RottenTomatoes and Metacritic with 1-star reviews deliberately to carpet-bomb the audience rating.
Is the movie actually that bad? Of course not. But you don't give a movie a 1-star review for being a bad movie. You give it a 1-star review because it offended you and you want to hurt it back.
Now, a lot of these offended audience members are probably just usual angry "Star Wars" fanboys that hate anything that isn't the original trilogy. However, having had a lot of discussions online with people who genuinely believe the movie is bad (or at least flawed), there are two main criticisms that I see the most.
The first is in regard to the Poe/Holdo subplot that essentially created a misunderstanding that led to a different subplot regarding Finn and Rose.
I personally LIKE these subplots, and I think some reasons for disliking them are unfounded, but I get it. Conflict based on lack of communication can be frustrating and feel somewhat hackneyed, so I can totally understand that criticism. I'll probably go deeper into it during my proper review, but by-and-large, if the Canto Bight subplot completely killed the pacing of the movie for you and just dragged, I can get that killing your enthusiasm about the film. Maybe not enough to go full 1-star review on it, but I can at least get knocking off a few points for that.
There is another criticism, however, and THAT one is a lot less understandable and probably responsible for most of the loudest whining.
Basically, a whole lot of people are upset that Rey doesn't have familiar or important parents.
Now... thinking about this outside of the context of "Star Wars", this doesn't make a lot of sense. Why should something like that matter? Most movies don't have reveals like that, so why get upset that this one doesn't either?
I've been thinking about that a lot lately and I've heard a lot of theories regarding why people are reacting so badly to that, ranging from generational divides to simple sexist incapability of accepting that a woman could have power that doesn't indirectly come from a man.
However! I actually have a different idea. I'm not saying I think it's more valid, but it's an idea I at least wanted to express as a possibility.
To understand it, let's go back in time a bit. It's the 70's. "Star Wars" just came out. Everyone fell head over heels in love with it. It was basically the "Harry Potter" of the time. A boy living with godparents finds out he has a secret power and leaves home to understand it and save the universe. And for a few years, "Star Wars" (and to a much lesser extent, the holiday special) was all the "Star Wars" there was.
And in that context, the "Star Wars" people knew at the time was almost adorably simple. Luke was the young farm boy who found out he was special, was sent on a vengeance quest for his dead father, and set out to save the galaxy from the simply evil Darth Vader. You really couldn't have had a more clear-cut good-and-evil story.
And that's how people took it! Nobody really expected anything deeper beneath the surface. When people heard a sequel was coming out, they naturally expected more of the same.
What they got was something different.
Now, in hindsight, especially for people in my generation, or even some members of Generation X, it's hard to understand the mindset of people going into "Empire Strikes Back" because we all grew up in a world where everybody already knew that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father. It was kind of the original spoiler. I myself went in knowing that just because it's a part of the cultural zeitgeist as the archetypal rug-pull.
But at the time? Nobody saw it coming. And I mean NOBODY. George Lucas only told a very small handful of people. When they filmed the scene, the person standing in for Vader's voice said, "Obi-Wan killed your father" specifically to keep the true reveal a secret. Only George, a couple producers, Mark Hamill, and James Earl Jones knew the truth leading up to the premiere.
And the movie really leans into that reveal. Yoda seeming to have been disappointed with Luke's father for some reason, Luke confronting Vader in the cave only to find that behind his mask is... himself! Luke went into his true confrontation knowing who he was, just as the audience did, and left it shaken, unsure of what the future held for him, and the audience was still right there with him.
One of the things that struck me the most in the days following the premiere of "The Last Jedi" was how often I heard people theorize that Kylo Ren was lying to Rey about her parents to manipulate her.
Those people may not be aware, but the EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED after "The Empire Strikes Back". People refused to believe the truth and thought that the evil Vader was just lying to get Luke to turn. Even James Earl Jones himself thought that was the case. There was so much disagreement, in fact, that it's partially the reason Luke asks Yoda to spell it out for him in "Return of the Jedi". The audience needed it spelled out for them, too.
Now here's the thing. Human beings inherently try to predict perceived patterns. When something surprises us, we try to retroactively find signs that we missed so that we won't be surprised again. It's kind of why we have the saying, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." In other words, there's no shame in being surprised ONCE, but there IS shame in not learning and adapting from your mistakes.
So when "The Force Awakens" came out and was being directed by the "Mystery Box" man himself, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, expected that there was some secret behind Rey's backstory, which was only shown in glimpses.
Now, if you remove the expectation of being surprised, there's actually surprisingly little reason to believe there was much mystery there. We don't see Rey's parents themselves, but we see them leaving her behind, and Maz tells her that whoever they are, they aren't coming back. Textually, the movie is pretty clear, or at least AS clear as the the original "Star Wars" (now "A New Hope" to avoid confusion) was about Luke's origins. I mean, we never SAW Anakin Skywalker, but that didn't mean we suspected there was some big hidden secret about his true identity. In a pre-"Empire" world, nobody had any reason to be suspicious.
We don't live in that world anymore.
And immediately following "The Force Awakens", basically J.J. Abrams and Daisy Ridley seemed confused about all the Rey parentage speculation to the point where their comments on the subject simply fueled more speculation. But if you read the way they talk about the character, whether or not they had clear ideas about who Rey's parents were in concrete terms, it is pretty clear they didn't approach her character as a child of an established character. They wanted her to be her own thing.
But people weren't buying it. They were CONVINCED that this was just another trick. They were foolish enough to believe Luke was just a normal farm boy with a pretty cool father and some special mojo that was rare, but not THAT unique. That's why I compared him to Harry Potter, who got a leg up from his dead parents, but more or less forged his own identity from that. That's pretty much what Luke was until that was ripped away from him by finding out his supposedly dead hero father was actually a very-much-alive villain. "Fool me once..."
So of COURSE people expected Rey to secretly be a Skywalker or a Kenobi or even a Palpatine. They expected her character trajectory to be influenced by the gravity of a different character in the universe, just like Luke was. They thought they saw all of the signs and so they thought they had the broad prediction right (that Rey was secretly related to SOMEONE) but disagreed about the details. It seemed like a foregone conclusion. Of COURSE Rey would have some kind of parent reveal. This is "Star Wars"!
But here's the thing I think those people aren't realizing.
In the "Star Wars" galaxy, the stories of the original trilogy were also just as prevalent. I mean, no, they didn't have movies, but in "The Force Awakens", it's clear that Rey heard stories about Luke, Leia, Han, and the Jedi. One of the first private moments we see of her is her looking out on the horizon, putting on an old rebel pilot's helmet. And when she found out that she had the power of the Jedi, she drew the same knee-jerk conclusions we did. Maybe what she thought she knew about her parents was wrong, just like it was with Luke and Vader (which only recently became public knowledge in the "Star Wars" galaxy). Why do you think she wanted to find Luke so badly? And there were a lot of circumstantial reasons to suspect that. Maybe she didn't just get abandoned. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding. Maybe it was all for a reason, and finding out that reason would not just make all of her suffering worthwhile, it would show her what her own destiny was.
By now, you ought to be understanding the problem of revealing Rey's parents to be someone important.
It's not a surprise.
Not for me, not for you, not even for Rey.
I mean, sure, the answer could have been surprising by being something like "Your parents are Lando and Leia!" but only the details are surprising in cases like that, and they don't change the deeper meaning. The idea that she might be related to someone important is the part that matters.
Unlike Luke who thought he knew who he was, where he came from, and what he would become, Rey had none of those things. She lived her life waiting for parents who would never return, so she never became anything. She never really knew her parents, or if she did, she forgot who they were, so she effectively had no past. And without a present or a past, how can you chart a future?
So in the absence of an identity of her own, Rey did nothing BUT get pulled around by the gravity of other established characters. Roped into helping Han and Chewie on the Falcon, aiding Leia in the Resistance, and then going to Luke to get him to come back and teach her to be a Jedi like him. She already was defined by everyone else and their past adventures. That was the problem.
Rey WANTED to find out there was a reason for it all. Rey wanted an easy way to chart her own future. If her parents were good, then she would follow in their footsteps. Evil? She would go on a path of redemption like Luke did. Either way, she would finally have a direction given to her.
But to find out that they were just weak, selfish people who had no impact beyond the impact they left on her by abandoning her and stunting her emotional growth as a person? That's... well, that's not helpful. Where does a person go with that?
And that's what made it frustrating for a lot of people, I think. The worst thing that could have happened to Luke was to find out that his simple, predictable backstory was a lie that he used to justify his actions. But the worst thing that could have happened to Rey was to find out that her backstory WAS simple and predictable.
"The Empire Strikes Back" trained "Star Wars" fans (and perhaps movie audiences as a whole) to expect the unexpected.
"The Last Jedi" knew that, and decided that the only way to be truly surprising AND meaningful was to find the answer that provoked the same character reaction out of Luke in "Empire". Rey needed to feel rudderless, confused, and pulled towards the temptation of meaning defined by the one person in the galaxy that claims to truly know them. And the truth about her parents did exactly that.
The truth was, she DID actually stay on Jakku all those years for no reason. She WAS waiting for parents that were never coming back, and it wasn't because they couldn't. It's because they never planned to in the first place. She wasn't strong in the Force because she had Jedi parents (which even I thought would turn out to be the case). It was because the Force doesn't care about parents. The Force chose her for reasons unrelated to anyone but Rey herself, and Rey has to find that within herself, not in others, if she is to become who she is meant to be.
And in contrast, you have Kylo Ren, who fell partially because he found out about his connection to Darth Vader. Unlike Luke, who handled having the truth hidden from him rather well, Ben Solo didn't. He felt lied to and betrayed (or so I'm told, I haven't read "Bloodlines" myself yet). And initially, he let that history guide his future.
In "The Last Jedi", he realizes that abandoning the path of Luke, his parents, and his namesake in pursuit of the path of an even older relative was a mistake. That's why he destroys his mask and spends the movie talking about how the past should die. That's why he killed Han and why he seeks to kill Luke. Unlike Rey, who craves being pulled into the gravity of these other character, Kylo Ren feels as though it defined his entire existence as Ben Solo. He was the son of Leia and Han and the student of Luke, named after Luke's teacher. And even that name itself was fake. He was literally the product of the previous generation, even their mistakes and lies, and it was suffocating for him. He thought Snoke offered him relief, but he finally realized the opposite. Snoke was just another remnant of the past trying to manipulate him for his bloodline. The only person who treated him like his own individual was Rey.
This is one reason why I find the connection between Rey and Kylo Ren so interesting. Kylo Ren essentially had everything Rey wanted. Living parents who gave a damn, a history that explained his position and power, and a path carved out for him. He rejected all of that, and that infuriates and confuses Rey. Meanwhile, Rey has everything Kylo wants. No parents, no history, no defined future, and power that didn't come with lots of emotional Skywalker baggage. She, likewise, rejected or ignored all of that and obsessed over trying to find out how she fit into the family trees and timelines and how she could carry on the legacy that preceded her, and that infuriates and confuses Kylo. They both want the other to accept what they have and then share it with them, and are both equally frustrated when they refuse. Rey wants Kylo to return to being Ben Solo and let her be a part of that. Kylo wants Rey to give up on trying to fit in with the past and just join him in setting a torch to all of that. It pulls them together, but also forces them apart, and it's just... Wow.
The Rey parent reveal is, in my mind, thematically, narratively, and emotionally perfect in the context of "Star Wars".
But it also kind of exists to obstinately tell everyone who thought that Rey MUST be related to someone important that not only do they not understand WHY they expect that reveal, but why trying to just replicate the "Empire Strikes Back" moment would have disappointed and effectively meant nothing to Rey. If Rey turned out to be a Kenobi, then her path becomes defined as redeeming the Jedi of old, which Obi-Wan partially represented. At that point, the only way to make her path interesting would be to make her reject that path and join Kylo Ren in rejecting the past. And, you know, there's an argument for how that could be an interesting story where it's essentially Force-users against everyone else, but it just didn't seem to make sense for Rey. Why would the Rey we know, who idolized the rebels of old, be upset to find out that Obi-Wan was her father or grandfather? I mean, it wouldn't have been like anyone was knowingly hiding that from her. Why would they? So the only reaction to a reveal like that that would have made any sense would have been for her to carry on the Jedi legacy.
And... well, what do you do with that? How do you make that interesting? How is that even remotely relatable if every important hero from the "Star Wars" universe is important largely because they had important parents? In that regard, why should anyone do anything but wait for the important people to have important babies that will save everyone? Why shouldn't we all just do what Rey did for most of her life and resist the call to adventure until someone forces us off our asses?
I had a very easy time relating to Rey in "The Force Awakens" and the beginning of "The Last Jedi". What nerdy kid like me didn't dream of secretly being an alien or a mutant or a wizard or (of course) a Jedi? Who wouldn't love to find out that your mundane past is a lie and you're actually an awesome Chosen One with cool powers?
But as I grew older, what made me stop believing that stuff wasn't cynicism or some notion that I needed to "get real". What changed was that I stopped resenting the life I had and believing that I "needed" some kind of special backstory to chart my path for me or to feel empowered. The answers that I needed weren't secrets being kept from me, they were within myself all along. I just had to listen, accept what I already knew, and put in the effort to build the life I wanted for myself.
So when Rey has to go through the same thing, I thought it was perfect. I understood it completely. It felt right.
And, well, I guess I just assumed that was something a lot more people could relate to, too.
But what I'm finding more and more disturbing is that the people of the world are too aggressively looking for secrets that don't exist. The seeming omnipresence of conspiracy theories and the growing number of people who believe them seems to speak to this refusal to accept reality. The inherent mistrust of people whose jobs are to find and speak the truth, the desire to put familiar people in positions of authority, and most of all, the outright rejection of the emerging Millennial identity that is, largely, forged in direct critical examination of the problematic aspects of the generations that came before.
I mean, not to get too political, but I don't think it's a coincidence that a year after three major candidates for President all got their opportunities arguably because of their familiar last names, we have a lot of people getting upset that Rey doesn't have a familiar last name. For some reason, we expect to be led by dynasties.
And here we have "Star Wars", not just one of the most powerful forces of escapism our modern culture has produced, but in some ways, the founder of the dramatic reveal that upends and re-contextualizes everything you thought you knew, telling us that maybe our destiny may not be to the hero. There is no secret reason that explains why Rey's backstory was actually really necessary to keep her hidden or something. Her parents just sucked. Sometimes, parents just suck. And sometimes, people who have terrible parents go on to do amazing, incredible things. Alexander Hamilton, Marilyn Monroe, Steve Jobs, all accomplished great things without (or sometimes in spite of) direction afforded to them from biological parents. And really, how often do we see that kind of story depicted, especially in escapist fantasy?
People love patterns, and more than that, people love to feel that they understand patterns and can predict when they will recur. And when we're wrong about our predictions, it doesn't usually feel good.
In that context, I can understand why people are upset about the Rey reveal. It sought to recreate the FEELING of the "Empire Strikes Back" reveal, and the only way it could do that without undermining Rey as a character was to outright reject the very notion that she NEEDS a big reveal to understand herself. I didn't, most of us don't, and neither does Rey. But the FEELING of the "Empire Strikes Back" reveal was shock, disbelief, and disorientation. And "The Last Jedi" clearly did its job, perhaps too well.
People who thought they were clever for having "deduced" that there was more to Rey than we knew were now being told not only that they weren't clever, but that the movie was already a step ahead of them. Rian Johnson set a trap for them and they all fell headlong into it.
I think what I'm finding out is that most people like to be surprised when they're not expecting a surprise, but when they ARE expecting a surprise, they DON'T like being surprised, usually because that surprise essentially tells them that the pattern they thought they recognized was not only totally wrong, but based in a fundamental misunderstanding of why they thought the pattern existed in the first place. The Darth Vader reveal wasn't just about subverting expectations. It was because it took the expectations of the generation that developed the tropes that George Lucas was paying homage to in the first film, and in a single swift moment, took the once carefree and simple genre defined by "Flash Gordon" and turned it into something more akin to a Greek tragedy. And if you grew up with "Flash Gordon" like Lucas did, I imagine that was pretty hard to digest. If the reveal was just about surprise, it would have been meaningless to my generation. But it wasn't. That's because it wasn't just surprising, it was shocking, and even if you know it's coming, the shock on Luke's face never loses its potency.
Rey turning out to be a Kenobi might have been cool to some people for a while. But in 20 years, who would care? What would it matter in the grand scheme of things? How would a reveal like that define the sequel trilogy the way "Empire" defined the original trilogy? How would it carry weight after you know it? I keep hearing about how the Rey reveal is a "wasted opportunity", but to try and recreate the surface-level recipe of the Vader moment without really understanding the power behind it would have been the true wasted opportunity. But that's not really what these people are angry about. The "wasted opportunity" they're referring to isn't a narrative one, but a personal one. The "opportunity" they wanted seized was validation, vindication, and a continuation of the world as they believed it to be. As they wanted it to be. That's what I believe they're truly upset about. They wanted to turn to their friend and say, "I called it!" Instead, they had the exact same reaction as anyone else: "Wait, REALLY?" And perhaps any moment that puts a die-hard "Star Wars" fan on the same level as someone who's never seen a single "Star Wars" movie is too much of a hit to the ego for some people to accept.
And yes, ego is a part of this. I see fans saying that this reveal goes against the fundamental themes of "Star Wars". To me, that would be like people coming out of "Empire" blasting it for going against the fundamental themes of the pulp sci-fi serials that inspired it. It's not a rejection. It's a natural evolution. If it wasn't going to evolve, why make it? Why have "Star Wars" if we already had "Flash Gordon"? Because "Star Wars" had something new to say, and it resonated.
There are problems with "The Last Jedi". I'll get into them when I eventually write my full review. I do think there's a valid argument to be had regarding the execution of the Canto Bight sequence or the choices regarding Snoke. But Rey turning out to have dead, nobody parents who sold her for booze money was not a problem. I was blown away when I saw it, and I'm still blown away every time I see someone express disbelief in the same way James Earl Jones once did regarding Darth Vader. To me, that in and of itself is proof that this reveal did exactly what it was supposed to do, and I genuinely didn't think that would have been possible. I was sure that whatever the reveal was, it wouldn't hold a candle to the Vader reveal. I was completely wrong.
And if you STILL think it WAS a "wasted opportunity", I'd really like you to give me a better version. Give me a reveal that would have worked better narratively, dramatically, and thematically, and maybe I'll change my mind. I had my own theory that her parents were Jedi who trained under Luke, and even I left the movie feeling my idea would have been less interesting, if only because it would have given Rey a solid reason to reject Kylo Ren beyond just her own moral compass, and it would have given her an easy reason to continue the teachings of the Jedi.
Rey defines herself, and that's a scary thing for anyone to do. But what the old guard "Star Wars" fans are possibly missing is that Rey is not burning down what they thought they knew and loved. That's the path of Kylo Ren, the character that grew up in the shadow of that legacy. But Rey saved the ancient Jedi texts. She intends to carry on the legacy despite being told explicitly not to. Rey will pass on what she has learned. She came to the conclusion that the stories she grew up hearing about Luke, Leia, and Han may not have been exactly what she thought or what other people said, and she may not have had a connection to them as she secretly fantasized, but she decided to find inspiration in it all the same. All on her own, she decided to take up the extinguished torch and reignite it despite having no selfish reason to do so. She is still the hero championing all the ideals that "Star Wars" fans want the hero of the franchise to champion.
She's just stopped waiting for someone to give her a last name, first.
The sequel trilogy has become a clash between a person who wants to burn down the legacy that preceded him and a person seeking to preserve the lives and legacy of people she never knew and owes nothing to. If that's not "Star Wars", I don't know what is.
