I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens the day it came out in December 2015. I’d been waiting decades for this movie. Yes, we had the prequels, but like all bad memories I repressed the hell out of those. The Force Awakens was the movie Gen X fans needed to restore our faith.
I sat in the theater with my husband and our 9-year-old son and felt a chill when the opening crawl came on the screen. The first time the Millennium Falcon came into view, I jumped to my feet and whooped (me and everybody else in the theater). Then I returned to my seat and looked down at my son who was looking up at the screen with the same look of awe and wonder that I had on my face 40 years before, and I teared up. Han Solo and Chewie, Princess Leia, C3PO and Artoo…all my friends back on the screen. And in the last 10 seconds when Luke Skywalker come on the screen? Well, those wordless, haunting 10 seconds put me right back in my 5-year-old head. I lost myself in Star Wars back then and for many, many years afterward. I learned from it, I took from it, and I grew from it.
Fast forward 2 years and I’m back in the theater with my husband and son for the opening night showing of The Last Jedi. Just over 2 hours later, my husband and I sat stunned just staring ahead blankly. We looked at each other, back to screen, then back at each other. Wait, what just happened?
Let me just say this: If seeing The Force Awakens was like going home again, seeing The Last Jedi was like coming home from college and finding out that your parents had moved and hadn’t left a forwarding address.
Did Luke just die? I mouthed to my husband. Did they just kill off LUKE SKYWALKER? No. Nope. Na-uh. And then a quick run through all of the ways the movie was just wrong: They killed off Snoke? Ok, that was a nod to Kylo’s grandpa killing the emperor to save his son, but still…shouldn’t we have found out a little more about him before he was just sent off fairly unceremoniously like that?
Not a mention of Han’s death at his son’s hands in the last movie? He doesn’t get a proper send-off?? Not a tear (or a damn word) from his best bud Luke when he finds out? What fresh hell is this??
What really happened at the Jedi temple between Luke and Ben (Kylo)? Is Luke being made out to be a liar, or do they just have different perspectives? We need more detail!
What the hell was with the whole space float thing when Leia got sucked into space? That was just unsettling.
And the worst letdown ever? What do mean Rey’s parents were just low-life junk traders who abandoned her? She’s not Kylo’s twin? She’s not a Skywalker (or a Kenobi or a Solo or something)?? How is that possible? Snoke said he used the Force to connect Rey and Kylo. But the connection was still there after Snoke was taken out by the wily Kylo. How is the Force that strong with her?
I loved the political commentary implied by the scene at Canto Bight.
But Luke never left Ahch-to? His reunion with Leia and the whole battle with Kylo was Force jump?? no. No. NO!
Also, I get that the green thala-siren milk Luke drinks is perhaps a nod to the blue Bantha milk of his childhood on Tatooine, but did we really have to watch him milk an alien? Jesus. Don’t they pasteurize on Ahch-To?
Yoda nonchalantly torches the tree with the ancient Jedi texts? What? Yoda would never do that! Yes, I know Rey knows what she needs to know (and I figured out after a subsequent viewing that the texts were actually saved), and perhaps the texts were a little stale, but destroy them after being protected for centuries by those judgmental fish-nuns? What are they going to do with their time now? You just took away their purpose! And, by the way? Burning those sacred texts is like a Christian finding the stone tablets with the 10 commandments and casting them off with a shrug. “Meh. We know what they say. We don’t need to preserve them.”
My son, confused as to why I was so distraught, kept asking what was wrong. “Nothing, sweetie,” I assured him. “It’s just this is not your Mamma’s Star Wars.”
Why, I lamented, was Luke an embittered shell of himself?? Where is our Luke?
Oh. My. God. Rian Johnson! You. Broke. Star. Wars!
I went home and stewed in my confusion and grief for the lost magic of my childhood. I stayed up all night trying to analyze just what in the name of Midi-Chlorians I had just witnessed.
The Force Awakens was what we as Star Wars fans had waited for…for almost 40 years! I know people had some problems with the movie. It was too close to A New Hope for a lot of people, and I get that. But after the ever-so-painful prequels we had to endure (I’m looking at you, Jar Jar Binks!), The Force Awakens brought us Gen Xers back to our childhoods in glorious fashion.
And then Rian Johnson ruined my life.
OK, that may be a little extreme. To be fair I have finally come to a place after reading many reviews and re-watching the movie many times, that I can say I owe Rian Johnson an apology. He didn’t ruin my life… or the Star Wars universe. I mean, he ruined that particular night for me for sure, but I’ve come to accept The Last Jedi for what it is…maybe even embracing it. A little.
Perhaps Johnson’s movie is the one that needed to be made. We OGs got our turn with The Force Awakens. I think Rian Johnson’s vision opened up the saga for the next generation to make it their own, and as a fan I can be thankful for that. It’s time to pass the lightsaber to a new generation of Jedi wannabes and build from the ground up. OK, young Padawans. Take it from here. Just don’t screw it up.
See you at Episode IX.
Rise Against ALS! 