The latest Star Wars rumours are WILD (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, July 06, 2020, 11:13 (1390 days ago) @ Cody Miller

I think they understand the heart and spirit if the franchise far better than Kennedy, RJ, or JJ ever did.

Rian Johnson understood the spirit of star wars better than just about anybody man. At least in my opinion.

I think that’s a tough argument to sell based on how TLJ handles character growth so atrociously. I’m not a hater of TLJ... there’s a lot I love about that movie. But the character development is handled terribly. At its core, SW is a hero’s journey, and TLJ fails to deliver on that front in any way, IMO.

Did we watch the same movie? Every character had a very clear arc of growth that made sense both logically and thematically. The movie was messy, but at the end of the day the character growth was completely nailed. And if you think Luke's story in Last Jedi was incompatible with the heroes journey… I just don't know what to say.

Luke’s part of the story only makes sense if we ignore who Luke Skywalker is in the original trilogy. If he were a new character invented for this movie, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Mathew Stover nails post-RotJ Luke better than anyone in his novel “Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor”. (Tiny spoilers incoming). At the end of the novel, after Luke stops the antagonist without fighting him, the antagonist says “I knew the Jedi of old, and you are greater than any of them. Unlike them, you do not fear the dark.” That is not the Luke of TLJ. I’m all in for a story than shows the original hero continuing to grow or overcome his existing weaknesses. But TLJ didn’t do that. It invented a whole new character and called it Luke Skywalker.

Similar problem with Poe. His character in TLJ just isn’t the character that was introduced in TFA. He was already one of the most competent, capable, and trusted leaders of the resistance. RJ changed him into a hot-headed firebrand for the purposes of his plot. Finn just repeats his arch from the first film. He’s already shown that he was willing to dedicate himself and even sacrifice himself for the greater good of need be. Rey’s arch is horrible from any perspective. She starts the movie already knowing better than anyone else, and that’s her position by the end as well. She develops her skills a bit with Luke, but that’s all. There’s a reason JJ felt the need to show Rey training with Leia early in TRoS, even though she should have been well past all that by that point in the series. It’s because RJ totally skipped that part of her story. Similar issue with Kylo. He decides that he knows enough. In his own words, “forget the past... kill it if you have to”. That line is a great line to come from the villain in a Star Wars film, because it’s so anti-Star Wars. But Kylo isn’t exactly a villain, and the film itself seems to embody that message, rather than counter it.

Basically, I think TLJ is a great movie if I watch it as a stand-alone film. But as soon as I try to fit it into the larger Star Wars story, it becomes a train wreck. And I think that’s on purpose. RJ has basically said that he wanted to tell a story that flips a lot of expectations on their heads. The problem with subverting expectations are all costs is that sometimes expectations exist because we have an idea of who these characters are: RJ’s story is one where the heroes and villains of the past are discarded or tossed aside, with the exception of Leia and Holdo, while Holdo specifically displays very poor leadership while preaching about leadership. Still, at least that part of the plot shows the older generation trying to teach a lesson of real significance to the younger generation. Most of the film is about the youth deciding that they’re already better than their elders, and dismissing them (I didn’t even get into Rose lecturing Finn on how to be a hero, even though he’s already shown he has what it takes multiple times, including the very act he was about to commit before she interrupted him and told him that they need to win by protecting what they love, which is literally the exact thing he was about to do... ugh). It’s actually quite anti-Star Wars.