Bishop Barron on “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”

[Music] well I confess I fell asleep for about 10 minutes most recent Star Wars movie the last Jedi and not just because the movie had kind of wandered down a tiresome subplot but because I think in general the Star Wars movies have kind of lost their way I'm part of the generation that saw the first Star Wars movies when we were kids and what began I think is a pretty thrilling exploration of what I call the philosophy of perennis has devolved today into much more early 20th century ideological Wars now here's what I mean go back to the 70s when the first Star Wars movies came out like everybody else I mean I was thrilled by the special effects and them and all the explosions you know which seemed pretty crude by our standards today but believe me in 1970 whatever that was five or six those were pretty thrilling however even though we might not have been able to articulate it there was something else in those movies that was stirring the soul as well as thrilling the you know imagination and what it was was this great exploration of the hero myth now to understand this we have to realize that George Lucas right the the creator of these first Star Wars movies was very indebted to Joseph Campbell who is a comparative religion expert a kind of Mythology expert taught at Sarah Lawrence College for many years and Campbell spent his whole career exploring what he called the monomyth the one great story that can be found across cultures across time this unfolding of the hero's myth think for example you can find it again everywhere it's usually a young man doesn't have to be but a young man who is taken out of his Cozine da Mosta city and is compelled to go on an adventure think here by the way of like Bilbo and Frodo having to leave the cozy Shire and go on a great adventure so the hero then has to face down all sorts of obstacles both exterior and interior and then typically under the tutelage of a great spiritual teacher or master he develops the skills kind of both physical and spiritual to deal with whatever the crisis is it might be battling nature might be battling an enemy etc and then he carries the day he wins the great battle defends usually his city or country and he himself comes to full spiritual expression another connection here is Carl Jung the great psychologist because Campbell was a student of young and young is the great archetypal psychologist who traced these archetypal moves in the stories of the world a good example here is Yoda in the Star Wars movies sounds a little bit like young doesn't it but a lot of Yoda's lines are right out of Carl Jung's playbook for example I know don't try do as Yoda well that's right out of Young's handbook okay all the vets going on in the in the early Star Wars movies you know think of Luke Skywalker who has to leave the cozy da Mosta city do you remember what were their names uncle Owen and aunt Beru remember and he's living this kind of you know easy life with them he's called out an adventure he then comes under the tutelage of obi-wan Kenobi and Yoda these spiritual masters he has to face down the great obstacles interior and exterior he has to win the day the struggle against Darth Vader etc etc so there you find the hero's myth which is part of what I referred to earlier the philosophy of perennis the perennial philosophy and that's a lot of what we responded to in the early Star Wars movies okay now here's my here's my problem I think certainly elements of this remain in the more up-to-date Star Wars movies I mean I get it elements of it remain but I think this wonderful reflection on the story of the hero has largely been occluded by what I would identify is a lot of early 21st century especially gender politics and gender ideology now I know I've complained about this before but maybe you really see it in the Star movies where the male characters practically without exception our bumbling incompetent morally compromised don't quite know what to do until they get proper female instruction the women characters are almost again without exception brilliant intelligent heroic virtuous etc the typical reaction especially in this movie is is the women characters kind of rolling their eyes and exasperation at these poor you know bumbling men I laughed out loud I must say in this recent movie win ray who's the the feminine great heroine of this movie when she comes to the island were Luke Skywalker a bit so now here's the great hero of the first movies is this deeply compromised figure of course she comes there for your spiritual training but she needs no spiritual training whatsoever no obi-wan no Yoda thank you very much she's in full possession already of all the Jedi skills so it's the all-conquering female figure now is is occluding this great myth of the hero compare it for example now to the way the masculine feminine thing was handled in the early Star Wars movies much more deftly in the early ones you know the the twinning of Luke and Leia well that's a Jungian theme right of the anima anima the masculine and feminine energies that are in each one of us and they exist in a sort of complementary or twinning way well look in the first movies did Luke have to assert himself over and against Leia did lei I have to assert herself and put down Luke no there's a very interesting subtle complementarity between the two of them and then I think very telling Lee the relationship between Leia and Han Solo I this I'm just before my time I'll make the reference to Tracy Hepburn you know so the old movies with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn we had two people man and a woman both very smart very perceptive very strong assertive and in the appropriate way and kinda playing off each other in a humorous teasing way well that's the dynamic you have with Leia and Han which is not won at the expense of the other but really both finding themselves in this in this play I say for my money the earlier Star Wars handled the the gender issues the masculine feminine far more deftly and effectively been this sort of you know us-against-them of women at the expense of men approach because I think the the all-conquering female character I mean I get it I mean given our cultural situation I understand it but I think in the end it's bad for both women and men give me any day the way the older Star Wars movies handle then just one last thought lest anyone think that I'm I'm against female heroes on the contrary take someone like Mother Teresa of Calcutta all five feet a hundred pounds of her going into the worst and most dangerous slum in the entire world giving her life to care of the dying and the poorest of the poor talk about putting up with obstacles both interior and exterior talk about a hero's journey as she leaves the relatively easy Damascus City of her convent behind high walls in Calcutta and goes on a hero's journey and then emerges as the founders of this extraordinarily powerful worldwide movement give me mother Teresa of Calcutta who's not asserting herself over and against the masculine but is is following the hero's journey or Edith Stein one of my great heroes one of the most significant intellectuals of the 20th century student of who Cyril colleague of Heidegger writer of brilliant Tech's who thinks her way into the Catholic faith and then takes on the heroic role of Carmelite sister and then at the climax of her life goes to her death in Auschwitz defending her faith and defending the integrity of her own Jewish people I'll take them any day over the sort of this early 21st century Nietzschean power-struggle us-against-them construe love femininity I love female heroes but we don't have to play the zero-sum game of men against women that's bad for both men and women [Music]

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

Views: 101,990

Rating: 4.8234468 out of 5

Keywords: Star Wars, The Last Jedi, Reviews, movie, Jordan Peterson

Id: Cql5JYKeTjU

Length: 9min 26sec (566 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 25 2018

Reddit Comments

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[u/Tsegen]

Somehow got a bunch of recommendations of Bishop Barron because I watched his video on Christopher Hitchens. Apparently Catholic priests do movie reviews now.

The quote comes 5 minutes in. But the earlier bits are basically setting it up, talking about how Rey's journey basically violates not only the previous hero's journey within Star Wars (i.e. Luke's) but the Campbellian Monomyth it was based on.

It's not a novel opinion, but it's pretty hilarious to me that I can find this opinion -which is supposedly the province of millennial manbabies online- echoed by someone who simply doesn't fall into that demographic. Always interesting to see "normies" have the same opinion despite coming nowhere near the online battles. Apparently people from all walks of life can see the problem with Rey's progression. Some just get battered down for it when they speak up.

I wonder how many older people who saw the OT felt the same but didn't care enough to get into Twitter wars about it?

[u/sandalrubber]

Hah. The Vatican's newspaper had one of the few movie critics who saw TFA for what it was when it came out.

Emilio Ranzato, author and frequent movie critic for L'Osservatore Romano, wrote Dec. 18 that the first installment of the sequel trilogy was "confusing and vague," but he reserved his harshest criticism for the film's new villains.

In "The Force Awakens," Ranzato wrote, "the counterpart of Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, wears a mask merely to emulate his predecessor, while the character who needs to substitute Emperor Palpatine as the incarnation of supreme evil represents the most serious defect of the film."

Calling the original trilogy's villains "the two most-efficient villains" in American science fiction cinema, Ranzato wrote that in comparison, Kylo Ren and his dark side mentor, Supreme Leader Snoke, failed "most spectacularly" in representing evil.

The use of computer-generated imagery in creating Snoke's appearance, he added, "is the clumsiest and tackiest result you can obtain from computer graphics."

Ranzato also criticized certain elements of the movie that were similar to George Lucas' original trilogy, going so far as to referring "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" as more of a reboot than a sequel.

"Not a classy reboot however, like (Christopher) Nolan's 'Batman,' but an update twisted to suit today's tastes and a public more accustomed to sitting in front of a computer than in a cinema," he wrote.

[...] Abrams' direction, he wrote, "is in fact modeled on the sloppiest current action films derived from the world of video games. The only merit of J.J. Abrams' film is to show, by contrast, how the direction of the previous films was elegant, balanced and above all appropriate."

https://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2015/new-star-wars-villains-not-evil-enough-says-vatican-movie-critic.cfm

I can't find the original article yet, which is frustrating since I remember the critic having harsher words for Nu Vader, lacking gravitas etc.

[u/DadaBigfoot]

Wait, hold up. I'm a Catholic who hasn't followed Barron but have looked at some of his books at a local store. Does he do this on the reg? I have to see this later.

[u/cobrakai11]

So I actually watched this; he does a pretty good job of dissecting some big issues with Rey.

The TLDR is that he says Disney fell into this 21st century trap of thinking that the only way they could make Rey look powerful is to make Luke look weak. He compares it to classic older films where men and women would have playful banter with each other and compliment each other, from Katherine Hepburn - Spencer Tracy to Han Solo and Princess Leia. Those characters made each other better through their interactions, whereas Disney felt they had to put down men in order to make Rey look strong.

In doing so, they robbed her of a hero's journey and it made the movie ridiculous and unbelievable. If there is no struggle, there is no story.

[u/Shounenbat510]

I didn’t know this guy did movie reviews. Apparently everyone, not just people who wanted Luke to go Super Saiyan (/sarcasm), can see the storytelling holes in this dumpster fire.

[u/DoomsdayRabbit]

The Presbyterian Church like enjoys you not.

[u/[deleted]]

Oh boy, catholic church sure know plotholes

[u/SpikeFightwicky]

I see the parallel:

Jesus turns water into wine, Disney turns potential into salt.