Why Star Wars: The Last Jedi set me up for Disappointment in The Rise of Skywalker

“And also my New Hopes”

I haven’t played any Star Wars games recently, even though I hear that Jedi: Fallen Order is pretty good.  Mostly it’s because my computer is just a toaster with internet connection, but it’s also because, until recently, the Star Wars video games haven’t been very good.  And, if you ask me, this applies to the newest movies, too.  Beyond the original trilogy, it’s kind of a crapshoot as to the quality of the movies and the franchise at large.  Sith Lord Jar-Jar Binks infiltrated his way into the prequels.  The Lego Star Wars games are good.  The old Battlefront games are good, too.  The new ones are not.  A few of the animated series are pretty solid, I hear.  The Christmas record is not, but it has Bon Jovi.  And the newest movies are just meh, since Force Awakens was just A New Hope. At least it had a more diverse cast and better image quality.  But Last Jedi?  Don’t even get me started, because it is, in my opinion, the most disappointing Star Wars movie, even with the prequels. At least the prequels tried something new.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked it when it first came out back in 2017.  It was colorful, it was fun, the acting was great and the special effects were top notch.  Adam Driver still manages to be the most interesting Star Wars antagonist, even though he only has one expression.  And the more I think about it, the more I realize that’s why I hate Episode 8.  Not because of Adam Driver, but because there’s so much interesting possibility in that movie that doesn’t get used.  At the end, it just became another rehashing of other stories that have already happened.  It became another “Chosen One” film with every trope and plot point that I could have expected, which Star Wars already did in the first three movies.  It was nothing new, even though it had the seeds for new ideas there, and my fear is that Episode 9 will be nothing new, either.  But I have some reserved hopes.

Let’s go back real quick.  If you haven’t seen the first three Star Wars, you should.  Or at least read the Wikipedia summaries.  But basically, thirty years after the end of Episode 6 and immediately after the end of Episode 7, Episode 8: The Last Jedi follows Rey, the new Luke Skywalker, as she learns about the force from the old, actual Luke Skywalker.  It simultaneously follows the fleeing Resistance ship as it’s chased down by the space Nazis of the First Order.  There’s a part where Poe and Finn sneak onto the First Order ship and try to save the Resistance, and there’s the cool battle on Crait at the end, but other than that, there isn’t much that I couldn’t see in any other space opera, or any other Star Wars movie, for that matter.  It was very much just relying on the fact that it is Star Wars to succeed, if you ask me.  But there was so much potential.  Just a few points:

There’s a really interesting part of the movie where hot-shot-pilot/Han-Solo-copy Poe leads a mutiny against the commander of the Resistance because he thinks she’s weak and/or traitorous for trying to save her people and evacuate the Resistance ship.  Poe ends up being shot by Carrie Fisher since he’s making a bad move, and then the Resistance evacuates to salt planet Crait.  That’s actually pretty interesting and original.  Exploring a schism within the Resistance while tensions are high and no one knows what the right move is?  Showing a divide within the good guys that could create some actual drama and high-risk stakes?  Questioning who’s the best to lead a group of ragtag survivors, and at what cost you’re willing to pursue victory?  That’s good storytelling.  I wanted more of that.  But instead it all kind of fizzles out into a typical good versus evil space battle at the end, and nothing Poe or the Resistance leader did ended up mattering because some one-shot character named DJ ratted them out to Snoke.

And speaking of Snoke, who is he?  He’s supposed to be a new Palpatine, I guess, but he gets eviscerated halfway through the movie by Kylo Ren, and then never gets mentioned again.  He did nothing in episode 7, and did nothing in episode 8 besides sit there and yell at Adam Driver.  He had no purpose whatsoever, and no development beyond another Big Bad Guy.  But there could have been so much cool stuff there.  He could have been Jar-Jar Binks.  He could have been Darth Plagueis, a theory the Jedi won’t tell you.  Hell, he could have just been himself, because there’s actually a whole extended universe backstory for him that gets precisely zero mention in the main movies, and it is fascinating.  I’d watch a whole movie just about Snoke.  But now he’s dead and replaced with the actual Palpatine 2.0, so there goes all that.

Once Snoke’s dead, Kyle Ren takes over as Supreme Leader of the First Order, which I guess is at least following the Rule of Two.  But then he asks Rey to join him as leader of the First Order, and I think that’s the moment in the movie where it could have gone from mediocre and cliche to fantastic and unexpected.  That moment, that singular moment where Kylo Ren asks Rey to join him, could have gone so many different ways than it did, and it could have been awesome.  In reality, Rey just tells Kylo to fuck off and goes back to the Resistance, and it’s just like when Darth Vader told Luke he was his father and asked Luke to join him.  It works once as a moment of tension.  But twice, it’s just overdone.  Except I think it could have gone so different if Disney had been willing to take a chance.

There’s a scene about halfway through Episode 8 where Rey goes to see some weird emotion vortex at the bottom of the island she and Luke train on.  It’s supposed to tell her who her parents are or something like that, and Luke keeps telling her not to go near it, but it doesn’t really matter in the end because it makes jack-shit of a difference.  When Rey goes to the spooky pool, she learns nothing new and instead just sees some vague hallucinations that say that maybe she has a dark side after all, like any real human.  Big surprise there.  It provides no character development whatsoever and has zero bearing on the rest of the movie.  But it could have made so much of a difference, because it could have affected that moment that Kylo Ren asks Rey to join him.

Rey could have said yes, for starters.  Rey could have joined her maybe brother/lover/cousin/fellow force-user at the head of the First Order, and the rest of the movie (and the next one!) could have been the Resistance and the audience recovering from the shock of Rey’s betrayal and eventually finding a way to overcome against all odds.  It could have set up for a scene at the end where Finn could have killed Rey or something.  That would  have been so good for the series because not only would it have been fresh and new and different, it would have given us a chance to see another side of Rey develop, and would have let John Boyega take center stage for the Resistance.  That would have been so cool.  Maybe Rey could even have convinced Kylo Ren to use the First Order for good, and make peace in the galaxy once and for all.

On the flip-side, if Snoke had lived, Kylo Ren could have accepted Rey’s offer of redemption and joined the Resistance, and we could have had a genuinely moving redemption arc.  We could have watched Kylo Ren as he gets over the guilt of killing his father and moves past the ostracization he’d feel in the Resistance.  We could see him finally develop and see the light as he battles against the Order that he once ran.  It would have been way more emotionally satisfying of a redemption story compared to the “redemption” that Darth Vader has at the end of Episode 6.  The guy repents, sure, but he still committed genocide.  Bad guys should have to work for their cathartic character redemption.

Or, alternatively, we could have had both of these things.  Rey could have taken over the First Order, while Kylo Ren realizes his mistakes and switches sides.  In what could have been the largest twist in Star Wars history after the whole “I am your father” reveal, our protagonist could have suddenly become our antagonist, and vice-versa.  It would have left the audience as frazzled as the characters would have felt in that situation, and it would have been glorious.  We could have had the world’s largest media franchise taking some risks and trying new things to advance their world in a meaningful way.  But instead we got exactly what everyone expected, and it means nothing to anyone.

All hope is not lost, though.  Based on the trailers for Episode 9, the series could still go in new directions.  There’s some scenes that seem to suggest that Rey might have some real character development, and even a scene that might be Kylo Ren and Rey working together, for better or for worse.  There’s repeated mention throughout the series, and throughout the trailers, of this weird kinship that Kylo Ren and Rey have, but so far it hasn’t really been explored at all beyond the fact that they both can use the Force.  Maybe Episode 9 will change that, and we can actually get some development out of both of them.  Or maybe we’ll see more of Finn and Poe and Rose, and maybe Palpatine can do something interesting for once.

I have no doubts that I’ll go to the theaters and see Episode 9.  I’ll probably enjoy it.  It’ll be another blockbuster movie with explosions and gigantic musical scores and huge set pieces.  It’ll be fun, it’ll be cool to watch, and it’ll make billions of dollars.  But I just hope beyond hope that it’ll do something different with the typical Star Wars story.  Because what I expect to happen, based off of the previous track record, is this; Rey will have some soul-searching, she and Kylo Ren will fight, there’ll be a heroic moment where Finn and Poe step up and lead the Resistance to victory, Palpatine will show up and have some monologue about the dark side, Kylo Ren will make a grand sacrifice at the end, the galaxy will be saved, and everyone will be happy.  Just like every other space opera, ever.

After the absolute plot-based disappointment that I found Episode 8 to be, I feel pretty confident that Episode 9 will be no different.  There will be no big thematic risks taken, no big surprises, no big changes of any kind.  It’ll be bland and generic and it’ll follow the standard procedures that were semi-pioneered by that very same franchise over forty years ago, and I’ll have to look elsewhere for unique storytelling.

But maybe not.  Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, and Episode 9 will do something different, do something that Episode 8 couldn’t do.  Maybe they’ll realize that there was so much missed potential there, and they’ll try and add in some spice to the new movie.  Maybe things will change this time, and it won’t be more science fiction tropes.  God, I hope that’s how it’ll be.  I guess only time will tell.  But I don’t think the force is strong with this one.