This post has spoilers for The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi
The discourse on the recent Star Wars movies has been intense, to say the least. A grim choir of bizarrely obsessed and often vicious trolls ensures a steady stream of unpleasantness. In this heady atmosphere of toxicity, I’d been reluctant to write a piece on the franchise, and my views on it. But it has been cheering to see that great journalism is happening amidst the awfulness. This piece isn’t great journalism, but it is my attempt to set out in some order my feelings on Star Wars, and the recent entries in the film series.
Return of the Jedi was one of the first films I remember watching. I was born in 1982, but the first time I saw Jedi it was one Christmas at primary school, watching the video in the canteen with the entirety of my small school. I don’t remember much from it, except the Ewoks. I remember the Ewoks. Which is why despite the absurdity of it all, and the very ‘Jim Henson-esque’ feel of much of the film, I can never really be too mad at those little fuzzballs. This is perhaps one of the most common refrains I hear in response to the rabid claim that ‘Rian Johnson ruined Star Wars’ – that actually the franchise has been doing a pretty consistent job of ruining itself since it began.
As The Rise of Skywalker release date approaches, and I start to anticipate the finale, I’m still really not sure how I feel about the recent releases. They’ve been a cultural juggernaut. Part of the backlash against them seems to have been borne out of this very fact, the anger from a small cohort of fans who resent the newly won fans of a franchise with expanded appeal.
After watching The Last Jedi, I had the sense that there were two separate but related entities – the trappings of Star Wars, on the one hand, and Star Wars on the other. The trappings of Star Wars are the easy reference points – the Millennium Falcon, R2-D2 and C-3PO, Vader’s iconic uniform, the lightsabers. These are (no offence to R2 and 3PO who are clearly in both camps) the set decoration. They are recognisable and obvious tells that we are in the Star Wars universe. They were Star Wars iconography that a lot of the public beyond the fanbase were somewhat familiar with. The trappings of Star Wars are not only universal language, they are also heavily merchandisable. They sell toys, lots of toys, and they have for decades. They’re important, of course, in a sense. They are creations of the Star Wars universe and are deeply embedded in the why and wherefore of that universe. Vader’s helmet looks cool, but it’s also breathing apparatus for a deeply scarred man.
On the other hand, Star Wars itself was the trappings+. It included all this delicious set decoration plus everything else. Star Wars itself was the story and the characters – it was the journey. In the recent movies, I occasionally felt the trappings of Star Wars had been prioritised.
For instance, in The Force Awakens, JJ Abrams keeps the Millennium Falcon, but kills Han Solo. In The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson kills Luke Skywalker. The sequel movies shed original cast members at an alarming rate. The side-lining and death of these characters left narrative space for the new heroes, our new trio, Rey, Finn and Poe. Of course, part of this is about appealing to a younger demographic who didn’t want to see a sequel trilogy focus overly much on the original (and much older) cast of characters. In a way, these characters had become something else, something outside of the main Star Wars story. They hadn’t become part of the trappings of Star Wars, they’d veered more into becoming the detritus of the franchise.
This seems to jar with the arguments that Abrams’ The Force Awakens was pure fan fiction. Which… yes and no. It followed the story beats of A New Hope, but it’s hardly fan fiction if Luke Skywalker was entirely missing from the film. There was, as a counter to this loss, the new character of BB-8. A new piece of merchandise. You thought R2 was cute in the 1970s? Well just you wait to see what we can do with a droid that is even smaller, and even cuter (all true… BB-8 is ridiculously cute).
The manner in which cameos are strewn throughout the new films also seems to speak to greater importance of ‘cultural caché’, than story-telling. The fact of Daniel Craig’s voice in The Force Awakens is bizarre… a strange ironic joke that certainly takes me temporarily out of the drama.
It is also the case (and this argument has been levelled by many others) that the central trio of the sequels only meet for the first time at the end of the second movie (if we don’t count the novelization of The Force Awakens… which, really, we shouldn’t). Yes, the original cast were frequently separated throughout the films, but we see them meet and bond in the first film. Their friendship is central to the story and it’s a large part of why we care about them. This seems like an almost accidental oversight in the structuring of the three films and the placing and timings of character interactions.
There is also the issue of Luke’s characterization in The Last Jedi (which for E, of this parish, is a bewildering and hugely disappointing turn). As we know, Luke more than contemplates killing his nephew Ben, he gets up early, puts on his best killing robes, and goes so far as to brandish a lightsaber over the sleeping child. Some commentators have invoked the anger Luke feels in the climactic scenes of Jedi, but this is also the same Luke who also resisted the Emperor, who believed that there was still good in his father, the man who had helped obliterate a planet and killed millions.
These opinions, in the current fug of online hate, seem to position me as one of the crazy haters. But I am absolutely not. I loved The Force Awakens, I love aspects of The Last Jedi while agreeing with some of the criticisms. It suffered badly from lack of momentum, literally in the sense of a stalled cruiser carrying the squabbling resistance. Finn and Rose’s jaunt to Canto Bight was boring and largely pointless (I loathed the character of DJ played by del Toro, and the whole thing plom bloom made no sense*). Poe’s characterization rendered him an absolute idiot, a ‘trigger happy fly-boy’ as Holdo brands him. And she was hardly wrong. This is surely not the Poe Dameron who Leia trusts implicitly. The sad and lonely death of Admiral Ackbar…
But then… there’s the majestic Rey/Kylo Ren fight scenes and what leads up to it in Snoke’s throne room. Leia’s use of the force to save herself, actually that whole attack sequence as we watch Kylo Ren consider and then decide against pulling the trigger on his mother. The Luke and Yoda scene, which kills me, but feels so thoroughly honest to the spirit of Star Wars. The fight between Luke and Kylo Ren on Crait and seeing Luke’s mastery of the force.
Overall though, despite all this grumbling, as a Star Wars fan I do feel lucky to have such renewed interest in these stories (and I’m particularly excited about the new season of The Clone Wars, when Disney+ finally gets to Ireland). With the bombardment of new canon content under the ownership of Disney, the Star Wars comics especially have been a true joy. With writers like Kieron Gillen, Jason Aaron and Charles Soule, and stellar art from the likes of John Cassaday and Salvador Larroca, there has been an embarrassment of riches of stories told with the original cast. The ‘Star Wars’ main title, and ‘Darth Vader’ title, in particular have been spectacularly good, concentrating mostly on filling in the time between the destruction of the first death star and the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. For anyone missing Luke, Leia and Han, these can go a long way towards scratching that itch. The Chuck Wendig ‘Aftermath’ series of novels as well are just a fantastic read, with straight up allusions to the current film offerings and a really interesting take on the post-ROTJ universe.
In the final analysis then, these are movies of mass appeal, and the continuation of the saga with, for example, a focus on much older original characters, does not really scream mass appeal. The films have been corporate committee creations, for better or worse. I have enjoyed, been perplexed, and right now I can feel the excitement rising for the looming release of The Rise of Skywalker this week.
And whether I love it, hate it, or something in between, I’ll always have the originals. After all, for anyone who really hates the new movies, they can consider them expensive elseworlds fan fiction and just tell themselves they’re not the stories Lucas imagined.
* But then, nor did the rescue of Han Solo in Return of the Jedi, the plan for which still baffles me.
A Room With No View 