Happy May the 4th and today I’m going to talk about everyone’s favorite Star Wars movie: The Last Jedi. When episode 8 came out, it was incredibly divisive to the point that many fans were ordering and harassing that the film should be taken out of Star Wars canon while others praised for being the best Star Wars movie since Empire Strikes Back. For this more than casual Star Wars fan, it was neither. While I don’t think it’s the worst Star Wars movie ever made, I am most certainly more on the side of not liking the movie. The Last Jedi doesn’t expand the universe or their characters in any meaningful or interesting ways, and all its posturing of “letting the past die” means nothing when subverting entertaining tropes with boring ones. In retrospect, I can see what Ryan Johnson was attempting to do and I somewhat appreciate the idea of it; he wanted to subvert the tropes of Star Wars and pave the way for other creators to tell new kinds of stories with the trilogy. Unfortunately, without expanding the universe or even coming up with the next conflict for the characters to face in the next movie, The Last Jedi only opened the doors for creators to go right back to the typical clichés and tropes of a Star Wars movie. All that being said, I don’t completely hate the movie, and there is one scene that cements it for me:
(I apologize that this had to be the bootleg version.)
While everything else in the Last Jedi disappointed me, the one aspect of the movie I loved was Luke Skywalker’s character arc. The film explores the theme of failure with Luke. After being praised as a great Jedi hero from the original trilogy, Luke lost his nephew to the dark side, and that same nephew killed his students and burned down his Jedi temple. Luke blames this incident on himself, and he isolates himself until old age while his nephew Kylo Ren wreaks havoc across the galaxy. In the same way that fans had high expectations of the sequels because of the original trilogy, everyone had high expectations for Luke to be the MVP of the film and take on the First Order, but Luke has given up. Luke crushes himself underneath the pressure of living up to the “Skywalker legend” and has given up his Jedi studies. Towards the climax of the film, Rey has finally left Luke’s island after being rejected as a student of the force, and Luke decides to burn down the Jedi texts until the ghost of Yoda appears. After burning down the Jedi texts himself, Yoda imbues the lesson of the film which is that failure can be a good thing; we can learn what not to do and make better decisions for next time. Yoda said it best himself “The greatest teacher failure is”.
Now that’s a fairly simple message for anyone to learn and you don’t need to go Star Wars of all things to learn the value of failures, but for a huge nerd like myself to see that even the heroes we admire have failed as well is a little inspiring. This scene especially hit me at a time where I needed to hear this lesson reiterated to myself. Let me set the stage:
As a writer, I’m always self-conscious about whether I’m good enough or if my writing is clever or entertaining enough or even if I’m making sense. Graduating with a Liberal Studies Degree in English and Creative writing was a huge accomplishment for me last year and it cemented in my head that I really could do whatever I set my mind to if I worked hard enough. With such hubris, I thought I was able to be a successful middle school English teacher in my first year. I’ve heard so many teachers tell me that the first year is always rough, but with no teaching experience at all, I was stumbling and falling almost at every turn. Although there was a point where I felt like I could still redeem myself, my boss told me that I wasn’t keeping records or grades correctly and that my students weren’t really learning; thus failing at my job. It was a big blow to my ego, to say the least, and for a while, I felt as if teaching just wasn’t meant for me.
I considered leaving the educational occupation entirely, but my boss wanted to keep me on as an instructional assistant because she still wanted me to learn and grow. While that made me feel better, there was still this part of me that still felt like a failure to my degree and my expectations. Although I don’t visit the Last Jedi often, I always think of this scene when it comes to failure. Luke too felt like a bad teacher and failed a student of his from being a Jedi, but thanks to Yoda he realized that there was something to learn in his failure and that one failure shouldn’t end the dream of inspiring others to do better and have others learn from your mistakes as well. Failing at something you love is a terrible feeling, and it can often lead you to abandon your passions all together but if you take master Yoda’s advice, you’ll learn that learning a passion will come with tons of mistakes but your passion comes wanting to learn from those mistakes to become a better artist, writer, teacher, or Jedi. So while some Star Wars fans hate this movie, I think we can all still appreciate the best scene in it.
May the force be with you.