Due to unfortunate timing of the staff Christmas party, I wasn’t able to make it to the opening night of Star Wars The Last Jedi. While it was a great party, I explained to people there who knew how big a Star Wars fan I am that our bridal party was conflicted on whether to show up to our wedding or go to The Phantom Menace when it first came out. My loving wife has endured going to Star Wars opening nights on or around our anniversary ever since George Lucas went on the quest for more money.
We didn’t make it to the theatre until a week later this time around, so I figure that’s enough time for most people to see it. If you don’t want spoilers, go read something else.
By opening night, having saved myself to that point, I couldn’t wait. I went online to Wikipedia and read the plot. And I hated it.
I read all the spoilers I could find, and I hated, hated, hated it. How could this be Luke Skywalker’s swan song?
Thus, it was with dread that I packed the family into the SUV last night to actually see it.
And at the end, I realized that coming in with such preconceived prejudice, I didn’t hate it as much as I expected I should have. Maybe that’s why so many people are adamant about avoiding spoilers. But I do understand why so many people do hate this movie.
Summing up Luke’s actions can, for the most part, be attributed to the phrase Clint Eastwood made infamous: “Get off my lawn!”
And that’s a really, really hard thing to take for someone whose his childhood hero 3.5 inch action figure, the black one from Return of the Jedi, is still on his desk. I also still have (well, Spencer still has) Luke in his X-wing pilot outfit. I did have him in the original 1977 lightsaber-extending white farm boy outfit, too, but it vanished decades ago without a trace.
How could the hero, the guy who blew up the first Death Star, led the fight against walkers, saved Han Solo from Jabba and confronted the Emperor himself be reduced to “Get off my lawn, er, island” when a whole movie was expended to try to find him? When times are arguably even worse than “Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope?” (Which R2-D2 conveniently played for him?)
I explained to Spencer after the movie that perhaps Luke was just emulating Yoda, when he sought out the diminutive Jedi master on Degobah (which I can still spell). Yoda first lied about who he was, testing Luke to see if he was going to be a serious student. So maybe he just was following that example.
What most people haven’t figured out is that in Empire Strikes Back, the Millennium Falcon likely took at least weeks, and more likely months, to limp from the asteroid field to Bespin, since its faster-than-light hyperdrive system was FUBAR. (They’re wearing the same clothes. Hopefully they had laundry and shower facilities on the Falcon, otherwise they would have been pretty fragrant, especially the Wookie.) So Luke had some real time to actually learn something from Yoda. Not years of training, but at least something.
Rey shows up on Luke’s adopted I’m-going-to-die-here planet (hardest place in the galaxy to find) within hours of the destruction of StarKiller Base and the death of Han Solo. She birddogs him for a few days, watches him milk an alien giraffe’s green milk udder (some things you can’t unsee), and finally, he gives her a couple lessons. That’s it. In a few days, she and Chewbacca bugger off to save the good guys, who are losing, badly.
And Yoda, Mr. You-Must-Complete-Your-Training! himself, shows up to reassure Luke she already knows all she needs to know. Sorry, wunderkind. You are sooooo 1980s.
In the final battle, Luke does show up, seemingly to save the day as everyone hoped he would. But he’s no savior. He doesn’t take down one walker, with the Force or a tow cable. He just fakes out his nephew for a few minutes as a diversion, then dies anyhow. The effort of a Force-projection over lightyears of space did him in. What the heck was that all about?
If you are going to kill off the most heroic figure in the last 40 years of cinematic history, couldn’t you make him, um, do something heroic? Like actually accomplish something? Train Rey? Fight Snoke? Fight Ben Solo? Anything?
Nope. Luke Skywalker is dead, having gone out with a whimper.
Walking out as the credits rolled, I kinda liked it. But on reflection, no, I still hate it. Dammit.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
