Hey Wisecrack, Jared here, and I promise I’m
not here to beat a dead tauntaun. As I’m sure everyone knows, The Last Jedi
pissed off a lot of fans. At Wisecrack, we’ve surfaced the usual rants:
Luke Skywalker is suddenly a green milk-chugging coward. Snoke gets Darth Maul-ed before we know anything
about him. Holdo’s plan doesn’t make any sense, the
Canto Bight section is boring, Rey’s parents were a red herring, Marvel humor for days
— "Hi, I'm holding for General Hugs?” “This is Hux.” — and of course, Leia
Poppins. But we’re not gonna spend 15 minutes fanboy
raging. Instead, we’re going to discuss how Rian
Johnson tried to revolutionize Star Wars, but didn’t. So what went wrong? Well to answer that we’ll need a little
help from a guy who, in a roundabout way, is responsible for making Stars Wars Star
Wars. Nope, not that guy. This guy. Welcome to this Wisecrack Edition on the Last
Jedi: What Went Wrong? And Spoiler alert, even though I already spoiled
pretty much everything. Now, before we jump in, if you’ll allow
me to get a little meta on you. The relationship between Kylo Ren and Darth
Vader can be interpreted as a commentary on the relationship new Star Wars has with the
original Star Wars. “That you will never be as strong as Darth
Vader." In The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren is burdened
by the task of living up to the legend of his grandfather, just as the new series has
the seemingly impossible pressure of living up to the legacy of the original trilogy. Just as Kylo Ren mimics Darth Vader by dressing
like like him and using a voice modulator, even though there’s nothing wrong with his
voice, — “Look how old you’ve become.” — so, too, does The Force Awakens mimic
A New Hope. As many critics have noticed, it’s almost
beat per beat the same movie. This might seem like a stretch, but the dynamic
between Snoke and Kylo in opening of The Last Jedi furthers this meta reading, as Snoke
tells Kylo to take off the stupid mask — “Take that ridiculous thing off.” — and that
he shouldn’t even bother anymore. “Alas, you're no Vader. You're just a child.” And then? Ren breaks the mask. They might as well go and throw Luke’s lightsaber
off a cliff. Oh wait… Johnson is telegraphing to his audience that
this will no longer be a rehash of the original trilogy. The film will be a radical subversion of the
Star Wars formula. For the new Star Wars to live, the old Star
Wars must die. "Let the past die. Kill it if you have to." With the Last Jedi, Rian Johnson isn’t interested
in recycling Old Star Wars. He’s interested in progress. Not only progressing the franchise itself,
but the landscape of a certain galaxy far, far away. In order to progress the franchise, Johnson
abrasively undermines the tropes and traditions that characterized the previous films. Whereas Luke Skywalker was the son of noble
blood, “Oh, Luke!" Rey’s parents are just degenerate winos. "They were nobody." “They were filthy junk traders. Sold you off for drinking money." Our heroes are now janitors and mechanics
instead of politicians and princesses. Luke is no longer the idealistic hero, he’s
a failed nephew murder/slovenian philosopher. Yoda goes from symbol of Jedi piety to would-be
book burner, and the Jedi order kinda sucks. “Lesson two. Now that they’re extinct, The Jedi are romanticized. Deified. But if you strip away the myth and look at
their deeds… The legacy of the jedi is failure. Hypocrisy. Hubris.” “That’s not true” “At the height of
their powers they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the empire and wipe them out. It was a jedi master who was responsible for
the training and creation of Darth Vader.” So you might be asking: Why sh*t on everything
that defines the previous films? Well, cuz turns out, the events of the previous
films didn’t really lead to any progress. After the collapse of the Empire a nearly
identical Nazi-inspired fascistic order has risen. So, clearly something is wrong in the galaxy
if this keeps happening. So, what’s to blame for this re-emergence
of evil? Well, Johnson seems to suggest it’s our
inadequate conception of good and evil. But wait! Stark divisions between good and evil are
what the entire Star Wars mythology has been built around. It’s the Dark SIDE not the Dark “nuance.” "Only a master of evil, Darth." And here’s where the movie almost gets really
smart. As many of you may know, George Lucas crafted
the original trilogy point for point around a book called “The Hero with a Thousand
Faces.” Written by Joseph Campbell, the book sets
forth a kind of universal story structure from which myths, stories and literature all
borrow - which is why the structure is called “the monomyth.” But, instead simply recycling Campbell’s
Monomyth as seen in the original trilogy, Johnson uses it to complicate our relationship
to the dark side. You see, Campbell’s monomyth is based on
the work of psychologist Carl Jung, who wrote about ideas like the collective unconscious
and “archetypes,” universal “primordial” images ingrained deep in our psyche. Those archetypes, for Campbell, inform the
kind of characters that keep popping up in stories across continents and cultures. So, let’s talk about one of those archetypes:
the shadow, and how The Last Jedi tries to radically redefine our relationship to it. For Jung, the shadow is the primal or animal
part of our unconscious that tends to get repressed - the “dark side.” See where we’re going with this? In the monomyth, this dark side usually gets
embodied by a character who represents the shortcomings, fears, and anxieties of our
protagonist. Gollum is Frodo’s shadow, a stark reminder
of what he could become. But, if you really want “Shadows 101”
- look no further than Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker. Darth Vader was once a powerful Jedi who succumbed
to the Dark Side. For Luke, Darth Vader serves as a constant
reminder of what he could become if he does not conquer his fear and master his passions. So, confronting Darth Vader is more than just
a physical confrontation, it’s an emotional and psychological one - it’s why Luke spares
Darth Vader’s life. If he were to strike him down in anger, then
he’s lost the battle with his inner demons. But whereas the old Star Wars wants you to
conquer your inner demons, the new Star Wars has other ideas. In all the films, we're meant to believe that
balance in the force is desirable for the good of the galaxy. "You refer to the prophecy of the one who
will bring balance to the force. You believe it's this boy?" However, The Last Jedi suggests that the force
is something that inherently promotes balance. When the darkness rises, the force amplifies
the light to balance it out. "Darkness rises and light to meet it. I warned my young apprentice that as he grew
stronger, his equal in the light would rise." If we're to believe Snoke, here, wouldn't
that mean the inverse is true? That any powerful Jedi order would be met
by an equally powerful dark side? If so, we have no choice but to read Luke's
criticism of the Jedi order as one that blames them, in part, for the cyclical rise and fall
of these fascist empires. While it's kind of ambiguous, this logical
conclusion seems to be hinted at by Luke. “And this is the lesson. That force does not belong to the jedi. To say that if the jedi die, the light dies,
is vanity. Can you feel that?” With Episode 8, the dark side is no longer
something to be conquered by the valiant Jedi at the behest of the light side, because that
will make the force "overcorrect" to achieve balance, leading to more amplfiications of
evil. According to Jungian analyst, Robert A. Johnson
— NOT To be confused with RIAN Johnson. — we shouldn’t think of our “dark sides”
as something to merely conquer and expunge. Johnson says this act of repression causes
us to “accumulate the darkness” which creates an “ego split.” According to his reading of Jung, when you
suppress the darkness, you’re forced to find a scapegoat, project all your own ugliness
on to them, leading to a never-ending fight. This is quite literally done in the very way
the original Star Wars is written - with Luke’s inner demons projected onto an evil space
wizard. Instead of maintaining this classic distinction
between good and bad, both within our characters and in the general plot, Rian Johnson tries
to complicate it at every step of the way. As we see, conquering evil with good hasn’t
done much for the galaxy. The empire is basically back with a sexy new
rebranding, and Snoke is basically Palapatine 2.0. In Earlier Star Wars the good/bad distinction
is literally black and white, and thus The Force Awakens brings us right back to where
we started. So to progress the franchise, Rian Johnson
tweaks the basic Jung-ish formula. If Jung suggested that we must reconcile our
dark side with the rest of our personality, does the galaxy need to reconcile its dark
side with the larger order of things? "Balance. Powerful light, powerful darkness." Consider Benicio del Toro’s character DJ. Rather than upholding the traditional distinction
between purely good Rebels and purely evil oppressors, he explores how even the good
guys can get caught up with the darker elements of the universe. As the Galaxy’s very own Blackwater mercenary,
the cynical DJ sees through the false divisions of “good” and evil.” "At least you’re stealing from the bad guys
and helping the good." “Good guys? Bad guys? Made up words. Let’s see who formerly owned this gorgeous
hunk. Ah, this guy was an arms dealer. Made his bank selling weapons to the bad guys. Oh… and the good.” This marks the most morally ambiguous moment
in any Star Wars film when he not only suggests that divisions between good and evil are insincere
and unhelpful, but complicates our understanding of the rebellion as a infallible good. Robert Johnson sees our traditional understanding
of the light and dark sides as straight up dangerous: he says that our inability to reconcile
with our shadow, and therefore our eventual scapegoating onto others, will inevitably
end in violence, war, and racism. For the Last Jedi, rather than the good guys
and bad guys, there’s a system at play. "It’s all a machine, partner. Live free. Don't join." It becomes the first Star Wars film to explicitly
critique the galaxy’s military economy, and the exploitation and animal rights violations
inherent in it, which even heroes like Princess Leia are party to. "Then shelled us to test their weapons." So, you might be asking at this point: aside
from being too ballsy, What went wrong? Well, the movie goes out of its way to, in
both form and content, tell us that we must kill the past - whether it be the past structure
of Star Wars films, or the moral lens we understood the previous films through. Then this happens: "It’s time to let old
things die. Snoke. Skywalker. The Sith. The Jedi. The rebels. Let it all die. Rey. I want you to join me." Rey is given a chance to end all the dogmatism
of the previous films and yet… she says no. And from this point on, it’s all backpedal
central. "No, no. You're still holding on! Let go!” All the things that we were convinced need
to be killed are reaffirmed. Tearing down the heroic archetypes inherent
in the monomyth? “The temple was burning. He had vanished with a handful of my students
and slaughtered the rest. Leia blamed Snoke, but it was me. I failed. Because I was Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master. A legend.“ The legend of Luke Skywalker lives on, "Luke
Skywalker," inspiring the galaxy once again and this time as an added bonus: it’s a
lie! Yay! Necessity to tear down established orders
that delineate the division between good and evil? "It’s time for the Jedi to die." Nope. “And I will not be the last Jedi.” Desire to distance itself from the established
narrative structure of the original trilogy? Nope. “Strike me down in anger, and I’ll always
be with you.” “If you strike me down, I shall become more
powerful than you can possibly imagine.” Forget the Jedi past? Nope. Save the books. It’s not that movies can’t insert ideas
and then ultimately reject them. But usually the ideological shift happens
as the plot pushes our heroes to reconsider their ideas in interesting and thought-provoking
ways. Instead, Luke decides to reaffirm all the
antiquated ideas because… he loves his sister? I guess? Other reversals are equally perplexing: don’t
be a hero, "She was more interested in preserving the light than she was seeming like a hero,"
until it’s ok to be a hero? And by this point, the film has made a psychologically
sophisticated case for why Rey should team up with Ren: the old way doesn’t work. Jedis are repressed as hell, and we’re stuck
playing a galactic game of Nazi Whack-a-Mole. Fine. We need a radical change. Which is literally what Ren seems to be offering. Despite her faith in Ren’s essential goodness,
and despite Luke’s lesson that the force beyond is good and evil, Rey hesitates. Here’s where Rey and Ren become opposing
stand-ins for the film’s two potential moral codes: Ren is the realist who knows that the
Rebels will try to impose the same moral expectations onto Rey as they did to Luke. Having become well acquainted with his bad
side and his good, and wisely calling out the folly of the false division, Ren is arguably
closer to finding that Jungian balance than most. He seems to be offering to Rey exactly what
Robert Johnson and Jung say a person should strive for: recognition that the ego and shadow
are both part of a person, and what’s more, that one literally cannot exist without the
other. Meanwhile, Rey represents the old moral code
of Star Wars: the temptation to run away with her swole new crush is ultimately overcome
by her desire to be the good Jedi, a morally-pure, infallible hero who definitely isn’t suppressing
a lifetime’s supply of darkness, no siree! So, if you’re going to revolutionize Star
Wars, great! Want to reframe how we think about the central
conflict? Cool! But spending all this time abrasively subverting
everything we love and know about Star Wars just to shrug and revert back to where we
started: less cool. But what do you think, Wisecrack? Is this latest iteration of Star Wars sacrilegious
or a much-needed fresh take on the series? Let us know in the comments.
For those wondering, this video isn’t a nitpick about how x or y ruined Star Wars, but rather about how the movie builds and builds on the theme of leaving the past behind, only to completely to abandon that idea in the final act.
How many of these monday morning quarterback shows are there?
Wasn't the reason Rey refused Kylo's offer that Kylo wanted to rule over the galaxy with her. So Rey should have joined Kylo in establishing a new dictatorship because good and evil have to coexist? Kylo's plan is not balanced, its evil.
Everything rian Johnson should never be allowed to touch movies again
This is why I stopped watching Star Wars stupid s*** like this
I fucking hate this movie.
Not because I didn't enjoy watching it. Because people won't shut the fuck up about it.