A Defense of The Last Jedi

hello everyone today we're going to be talking about Star Wars that's right a new Star Wars movie was recently released which I being a big nerd on the internet find very exciting that movie being of course episode 8 the last Jedi okay I know that movie came out a few months ago now but I make videos rather slowly I don't know if you've noticed and I wanted to have time to think about it and to get the blu-ray and watch all the behind-the-scenes features and so on I can't just fire off a video in a couple of hours like some people can Star Wars the last Jedi is a sjw nightmare the last Jedi is social engineering masquerading as a movie how Disney ruined Star Wars with the last Jedi the last Jedi the worst Star Wars movie ever made ryan johnson destroyed Star Wars last Jedi is horrifying gender was the last snowflake now it seems star wars just can't be a fun sci-fi movie series anymore since its popular and gets clicks it therefore has to be turned into a battleground in the culture war whatever that's supposed to be now watching these videos and listening to critiques I have come up with a list of the most common arguments made against the last Jedi before I get started here I should say obviously there's going to be spoilers for the last Jedi in this video so if you haven't watched it I would go and do so right now so then the list of complaints number one ray is a Mary Sue and this is kind of a holdover from the force awakens Ray is too powerful and does things she shouldn't be able to do and number two Snoke remains a mystery we don't know who Snoke is or where he came from number three the subplot with Finn Andros was ultimately pointless they traveled to a planet and back to find a way to do a thing and they fail and nothing comes of it number four the rebels had a bad plan if hold oh and Poe Dameron had just sat down and had a chat with each other about their respective plans they probably would have escaped a lot easier number five the moon he handled Luke Skywalker wrongly and this is probably the most incorrect one on here I can't wait to talk about this one number six the twist would raise parents was disappointing it wasn't it was great number seven there was too much diversity in the movie you know there should only be white people in the far-off galaxy filled with all different types of alien creatures I guess number eight the movie was anti man because sometimes women are in charge and tell them what to do as opposed I didn't really understand this one and finally the movie was needlessly political it introduced politics into an otherwise apolitical series and yes trust me I actually heard people actually say that you know the series where the Emperor sends his stormtroopers to destroy the rebellion is being needlessly politicized Star Wars a series about wars between different political ideologies was a political until they put a woman with purple hair in it I suppose that's what politics means so anyway I'll be responding to all of these points as well as explaining why I personally happen to like the movie a whole bunch I'll say here though it's okay to like or dislike any movie I'm gonna be talking about a lot of bigoted and obviously flawed criticism of the movie but that doesn't mean there can't be legitimate criticisms as well and I'm just mentioning this here so nobody thinks I'm calling them a bigots for not enjoying the last Jedi even if you disagree with me here I hope there's something valuable you can take from my little discussion of it so let me just lay my cards on the table at the start here I loved the last Jedi I thought it was the best Star Wars movie since Empire Strikes Back which is fitting really since this new series is almost a soft reboot of the original trilogy the last Jedi takes the place of the Empire Strikes Back within the free movie arc it's the dark middle chapter where the heroes will get their asses kicked and there's obviously a lot of surface similarities between the movies you know they follow a similar structure it opens with a costly battle where the rebels are just buying time to the protagonist goes off to train with a reclusive and reluctant master who isn't the hero they were expecting they have a spooky experience and a magic cave the protagonists allies travel to a new place in the story where they meet a character who double-crosses them the young hero abandons their training early to rush off to save their friends and they learn a shocking twist truth about their parents you know you get it the movies are similar however the last Jedi avoids falling into the trap of just being a straight remake of Empire Rian Johnson made this movie with a real understanding for what made Empire great in my opinion but he also had a good sense for what he needed to change for example let's think about that twist in the original trilogy Luke learns that Vader is his father what a surprise you know we're all familiar with that now a worst movie than the last Jedi would have simply emulated this twist and had Rey be the daughter or granddaughter maybe of some other already known character who was important to the law except that wouldn't be very good would it it wouldn't really be a twist if it was just copying another twist that we already knew about my personal bet was that they were gonna make Rey descended from an evil character maybe Palpatine somehow you know something like that which would have been rubbish and who knows you know maybe they'll still ruin it in the next movie for now though the last Jedi emulates Empire's twists while having it still actually be a surprise which is great though I should add before people accused me of praising it simply for being unexpected it actually makes a lot of sense for the characters when Luke heads off to fight Vader in Empire he is very certain of himself he's certain Vader is a bad guy he knows Vader tortured his friends he knows Vader killed his father so killing Vader would be an unambiguously good thing Luke learning that Vader's his father isn't just a surprise for the sake of it it takes his character from a very certain place to a very uncertain and complicated place it makes his story more interesting now Rey finding out that she was a solo Skywalker or a Kenobi or whoever else and that would have had the opposite effect Rey is unsure of herself and doesn't know who she is so just handing care and identity like I don't know Luke Skywalker's daughter or something like that that would have made her story less interesting she'd be defined by her relation to that character instead of having to be her own person Luke didn't want Vader to be his father but Ray does want Luke to be hers and since this is the dark middle chapter you know neither of them get what they want everyone was expecting the parent revealed to be finding out who Rey is related to when the last Jedi correctly identifies that the actual interesting thing to see is the protagonist hearing something that they really don't want to you know seen from that perspective both twists fulfill the same purpose in the narrative so Bravo to the last Jedi I think they nailed it they're really I like to twist a whole lot and I don't think it was a disappointment at all well look I answered one before we rarely got going I'm getting ahead of myself a bit here now the thing about a lot of the complaints about the last Jedi I mentioned earlier is that they also apply equally to the original trilogy for instance you can think that Rey is a Mary Sue if you like you can say ray is unrealistically overpowered if that's your opinion but what you can't say is that Ray is unrealistically overpowered for a Star Wars character and I won't dwell on this because I did touch on it in another video but why can Luke fly a spaceship in a space battle he's a farmer you know why can he out fight trained military pilots and the answer is he just can because he's the protagonist you know why can Princess Leia I'll fight stormtroopers and how can a 100 pound woman choke out a one-ton monster you know she can just do that why can Anakin fly a podracer when we're told no other human ever can do it how can he fly a spaceship and how could he use the Force with absolutely no training because he just can I mean he literally just can he magic prophecy child I mean is this the realism that used to exist with regards to star wars characters and now does not hmm another criticism of the last Jedi that could be equally applied to the original trilogy is the argument that finn and roses subplot is pointless to the overall story now i'd argue that it isn't at all but let's take this arguments at face value here finn and rose come up with a plan to disable the tracking device the first order are using to follow the rebel ships but they have to travel to canto bytes in order to meet someone who could hack the ship's defenses to get them inside just before they're able to disable the tracker however they get captured and fail their mission now then does that mean that their story was pointless and I'd bring up parallels to Empire Strikes Back again here in that movie the crew of the Millennium Falcon flee the battle on Hoth trying to escape the Empire they fly through the asteroid field there's the whole bit inside the big asteroid they do a neat little trick to ditch the Star Destroyers they head to Cloud City and then they get betrayed and captured by the Empire anyway you know they spend the whole movie running away from the Empire only to wind up being caught by the Empire does that mean that their story was pointless likewise Luke heads off to seek training with Yoda or he ends up abandoning its had tried to save his friends and rushes off to fight Vader and losers you know does that mean that his story was pointless if you think about it the only actual material differences in the Star Wars well between the beginning and end of Empire Strikes Back are that Luke loses his hand and Han Solo gets captured nothing else really happens the heroes fail in both Empire and the last Jedi that is the point the last Jedi even has a scene where it just outright states this when it shows Yoda teaching Luke about learning from failure or how about the scene when Finn and Rosa like it was worth it just to tear up that evil casino and then they both look directly into the camera and say in unison it's the journey that matters not the destination okay they don't say that but they may as well do the characters and their experiences are what's important not searching around for plot holes to nitpick and this goes doubly so for minor continuity errors like that gods lightsaber dagger thing that vanishes from his hand midway through a move I mean we've all seen this right do you remember this what do you think of this oh sorry my bad that was a force kick wasn't it well excuse me anyway speaking of plot holes here let's talk about Poe Dameron an admiral hold oh now this was something I actually didn't particularly like when I watched the movie in the cinema you know here comes the new boss I thought with the suspenseful music and she's gonna be incompetent and arrogant and our plucky heroes will have to go behind her back to save the day I've seen this a thousand times before I fought but then the movie takes it in an unexpected direction it turns out that whole doge does actually have a plan to save everyone and she just didn't tell poe dameron because he's a big jackass who keeps getting people killed I personally appreciated this whole plot thread much more when I watched the movie through a second time I actually liked a lot of the movie more on the rewatch so if you're someone who didn't like it too much first time around I'd recommend giving it another go so hold I was there to teach Poe a lesson about what it means to be a leader and the movie ends with Poe retreating from a battle to fight another day and Princess Leia says follow him you know Poe's got a character arc in all that that's the point of that whole threat the question remains however why didn't Poe just talk to hold though and explain what he was going to do or why didn't hold though just let Poe in on the plan and the answer is because Poe wasn't that person then at that point in the story he had something about him that needed to change and over the course of the story he did change of course the resistance had poor communication and screwed up and got a bunch of people killed but that doesn't mean that's a bad thing narrative wise and also I'd say if a poorly organized plan on behalf of the protagonists is enough to turn you off a Star Wars movie have you ever seen Return of the Jedi so let's very briefly talk about the plots of rescue Han Solo so at the end of Empire we have Lando and Chewbacca heading off to save Han Solo Luke Leia and the droids are chilling out on a spaceship while Luke gets a new robot hand right Return of the Jedi opens with the droids heading to Jabba's palace where c-3po sees Lando Calrissian and Chewbacca never returned from this awful place then the droids find themselves handed over to Jabba as a shell of Luke's goodwill and we also see that Lando has been employed as a god and next up Leia arrives in disguise with Chewbacca as a prisoner and hands him over now of course this makes no sense since Chewbacca was supposed to have never returned from this place and the last time we saw the droids they were with Leia so how would Chewbacca have made his way back to lair and come up with this fake prison a bit without encountering c-3po I don't know I don't even know the point of this part of the plan given that all it does is get lair inside to let Han out when Lando was already in there and he could have done it himself anyway Leia gets caught by Jabbar and Coe who were all hiding behind the curtain the middle of the night which is hilarious so the situation before the heroes attempted to do anything here was that Jabba the Hutt had Han Solo prisoner and that's all and now though he has Han prisoner but also Chewbacca Leia c-3po and r2d2 and then finally Luke just turns up and mind controls his way inside now there's a lot of problems with this first off if Luke's plan was to use his Jedi mind trick to make Jabba hand Han over why not just do that to begin with you know if he expected that to work they could have skipped the steps with the droids and Leia and Chewie you know that all would have been pointless if Luke just waltz in and mind-control everyone to do whatever he wanted next up when Luke finds out he can't mind-control Jabba he tries to shoot him in the face which is amazing Luke's plan B is to just explode Jabba's head in front of his whole entourage which is gutsy if nothing else and you might be wondering why Luke doesn't just use his lightsaber here and that's because it's currently inside r2d2 and why did Luke do that considering you could just use his powers to walk through the front door with absolutely no problem you know he could have just brought it him with him those no needs to smuggle it in I could go on here but you get the picture you know you can pick at the plot holes of the original trilogy in the exact same way as people are doing with the new ones and that can be fun you know I get it but you can't use those plot holes to claim Star Wars is ruined or destroyed by Disney or Ryan Johnson or feminism or whatever else and because the original trilogy was exactly the same speaking of let's talk about mr. Snoke here specifically the criticism that we don't find out who he is or where he came from now to people asking for that I'd say to be careful what you wish for and let me explain the Snoke criticism ties into a criticism I have of the new series which is a consequence of it being kind of a soft reboot and the distinction between the resistance and the Republic is poorly communicated when holder was introduced in the last Jedi she sees the downtrodden and oppressed know the resistance symbol and put their hope in it but why you know who were the downtrodden and oppressed because the Republic's been in charge for like decades now hasn't it you know it only got destroyed maybe like weeks ago at the start of the last Jedi or has the first dog have been around being menacing like the whole time since the fall of the Empire you know to necessitate a resistance continuing to exist the answer to this question and the Snoke question is that there's just a portion of the Star Wars story that hasn't been told yet so allow me to give you my fan theory hmm so the original trilogy comes out it's a nice little story about space liberalism beating space fascism you know the bad guys are obvious they lose orders restored whoa hey but then the prequels come out and they complicate things you know they show space fascism emerging from space liberalism and the Jedi who we've been told are great actually really suck and that's one of my favorite parts of the last year I actually when Luke just lays into the Jedi for allowing Palpatine to take over the prequels show the antagonistic force arising from within society and using the apparatus and rhetoric of that society to impose tyranny now whether they did that well or not is up for debate and a braver person than me can attempt to answer that question but competency aside that is what the prequels showed so we have a cycle liberal democracy gives way to fascism which is in turn defeated so what's happened with this most recent trilogy is that chronologically we've skipped the step there's a missing trilogy of Star Wars movies between Episode six and seven what they'd show if they existed was Snoke rising to power reorganizing the remnants of the Empire into the first order building Starkiller base we'd see Luke training the new generation of Jedi and failing at Ben Kenobi falling to the dark side etc now all that story is implied but we just haven't seen it directly as far as the last Jedi's concerned it doesn't really matter who Snoke is he's like the emperor in the original trilogy Snoke is just some evil guy who exists to be overcome I mean you do know what you're asking for when you say you want snoke's backstory filled out don't you you're asking for another prequel trilogy because that's what the prequels showed they were Palpatine's rise to power do you want to see that again you know you want the prequels part two the pre sequels I guess maybe Jar Jar could come back as well if Snoke not being explained is a mistake it's one that belongs to the force awakens for choosing to tell the story it did you can't really blame the last Jedi for inheriting a problem from a previous movie and I think they handled it the best way they could they actually did something interesting with Snoke by having surprisingly just get caught all the way in half which ruled and now he's out the way in the actual interesting villain is in charge and I'm honestly looking forward to the next movie to see where they go with that now then let's briefly talk about a few of the sadder reasons people don't like the new Star Wars movies sjw's and feminists have ruined the movies by putting too much diversity and anti male bias in them I unfortunately saw quite a lot about and I'll deal with this rather briefly I'll read to you a section of a fairly standard representative review of the last Jedi from one of these people hmm the evil empire is run entirely by white human men all the way up to the evil white emperor they are opposed by a mix of whites blacks Asians Latinos and of course all the other species the whole galaxy united against the white male oppressors anti whiteness it's not just for Homo sapiens anymore can the message be any clearer now then I apologize I have deceived you there by using images what I just read is not a review of the new movie that's a review of the original trilogy posted in 2009 on the neo-nazi website Stormfront there are racists who will write off the original trilogy as being too diverse now what's my point with that well in short for these people any amount of diversity is too much diversity it's not like they saw a Lando or mace windu walk onto the screen and they were like oh how refreshing you know that's the appropriate amounts of racial diversity to be in a movie no they hate all of it and as for the anti male bias thing yeah when has a Star Wars movie ever had a female character boss men around or a new invention not previously before seen in the series the people in Star Wars aren't even humans as we know them really they're space aliens from a different galaxy you know who cares what color or gender they are well me a little bit I mean I like dive see I think it's good had more diverse movies please and at the expense of quality also a diversity is more important than quality I'm just trolling at this point obviously but also in addition to me just being trolling it is true so I think the last point which I haven't addressed so far is how the movie handled the character of Luke Skywalker which I happen to think was fantastic but there was some disagreements on that point most notably from Mark Hamill himself some people didn't like how Luke appeared to have given up and went off to live in obscurity and some people didn't like that Luke dies at the end of the movie so let's talk about this for a bit at Star Wars has had a Jedi problem for a while now and when we first hear of the Jedi through the words of obi-wan they're the guardians of peace and justice throughout the galaxy but the two Jedi Luke meets in the original trilogy lied to him in order to manipulate him into killing his own father so there's a disconnect there straightaway between the legend and the reality and then when we consider the prequels at the Jedi aren't heroes in those you know they're like a weird political call to kidnap children you know a good points of comparison here is when Finn and Rose see slavery at the kanto bite racetrack they're appalled by it but when obi-wan and qui-gon see slavery on Tatooine they're like not all that bothered really you know they saved one slave because he's got a high power level or you know then they just leave it's like really weird the Jedi don't act like heroes there's also not much respect for the force in the prequels it's just a practical power that yet I used to get what they want now the last Jedi uses Luke to address this conflict head-on the Jedi have been rubbish they failed to stop Palpatine they acted like gatekeepers to the force and used it selfishly that's all in addition to Luke's own failings like even he the legendary Luke Skywalker could fail and end up creating a monster like he did with kylo Ren ray of course provides the counter that people need legends too leave in and inspire them and I like this little chat with Yoder about failure as well I felt it nicely summarized the theme of the movie without being overly ham-fisted about it the Jedi have been rubbish failures but they could be better but what good is that I hear you cry Luke is dead now and after all once a Jedi dies in the Star Wars universe that means they're gone forever and are never seen again honestly now Luke's death mirrors Obi Wan's obviously in that it is entirely on his own terms and he does it for a good reason anyone that didn't like that Luke died I would ask you to consider the alternatives one is that Luke survives and comes back to lead the resistance and I don't like the idea of that much you know he's too powerful and I feel like he just eclipsed and get in the way of all of the new characters the other way would be to have him actually fight and be physically killed by kylo Ren would that make you happier you know Luke just lying there with his arms and legs cut off and like dying in horrible pain I doubt it you know the movie handled it great in my opinion and Mark Hamill gave a fantastic performance in the movie especially considering that he actually didn't like what they were doing with the character during the production the man's a pro everyone so I think that's it then I finished defending the last Jedi before I go though let me just list off a bunch of smaller moments in the movie I really enjoyed that I didn't get to mention anywhere else I really liked that just before the Dreadnought explodes at the opening in the movie we get a shot of the captain and he does this cool haughty grimace which is just wonderful Luke's whole routine on the island is great obviously I especially like the fishing spear thing that's way too long you know why is the spear so long it's ridiculous I really like the callback to the moss eisely space port line in a new hope when Rose says that canto byth is a terrible place for the worst people in the galaxy and then it cuts to a bunch of rich aliens on a pleasure boat haha that's very clever I love all the little details in the casino infinite raise is a fun mirror of Luke's force cave experience mirror to get it I like the Rashomon style retellings of Luke standing over kylo with his lightsaber I like when hooks considers shooting kylo Ren to finish him off but stops when he comes to this iron is really cool there's like a brilliant little fake-out transition where you think it's a ship landing but it's an iron and there's no reason for them to do that either but they did it anyway and it's really funny regardless of what you thought of layers MARY POPPINS force powers this shot of layer floating in the space battle is awesome and there's a lot of brilliant shots in the movie of course like this one this one this one this one and so on you know you get it and this one as well I mean come on that's fantastic I like that the movie rejects DJ's self-centered philosophy you know his advice to Finn about not choosing aside leads him to end up siding with the first-order in the end I like that the movie takes the force off the Jedi I like that it rejects the importance of bloodlines and power levels and prophesies actually the last Jedi seems designed to annoy the thoughts of people who would obsessively categorize Star Wars facts on Wikipedia or the likes you know now you can use the force without being called Skywalker or Kenobi or whoever else some little kid uses the Force to just pick up a broom in the Apple log because of course he does because screw you the force belongs to everyone for now anyway I'm sure there's already a novel in the works about how he's the secret son of the evil clone of Luke Skywalker and his midi-chlorians are just off the charts take this brief opportunity to enjoy Star Wars everyone is currently very good well I don't know I haven't seen solo yet I'm gonna go next week I've heard conflicting opinions about it so I'm rather interested thanks a lot for watching everyone and thanks especially to my supporters over patreon patreon patreon no matter how I say that someone sends me a message to tell me that I say it wrong still thank you to all my supporters you're all very kind and nice and good would it be too much to call you heroes probably actually so scratch that thanks though I also have a Twitter don't follow it though I have too many followers now and using it as a nightmare probably unfollow me actually if you do also don't get used to the lights of videos the next video is a hellish lecture about racism that goes on forever and everyone's gonna hate it so fair warning

Channel: Shaun

Views: 364,080

Rating: 4.28091 out of 5

Keywords: last jedi, shaun, shaun last jedi, last jedi good

Id: gTJIk5PkTXg

Length: 29min 40sec (1780 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 01 2018