"It's time for the Jedi...to end."
"Star Wars" episode 8 has had people guessing and debating
ever since they announced the title, “the Last Jedi.”
Everyone wanted to know “who” the Last Jedi would be -- is it Luke Skywalker?
Is it Rey?
But the real question isn't "who" -- it's "if."
If anyone here is the last Jedi, and if there is going be a last Jedi ever.
Spoilers for Episode 8 coming from here on out, so tune out if you haven't seen it.
By the end of the movie, the answer we get to this question of "if there will ever be
a last Jedi,"
is of course a resounding no.
Before the release, we got a big clue when people noticed that foreign translations of
the title were plurals.
So there was always going to be more than one Jedi in the picture.
But director Rian Johnson also confirmed before the release that the most surface meaning
of the title is,
when the story begins, Luke is the last Jedi remaining in the "Star Wars" universe.
That's why Rey has to seek him out to train her,
and Luke has to decide whether he wants to train another Jedi,
or whether he wants to let what he knows die with him.
So in this title there is the seed of the central question of the movie --
how do we carry on the past?
And how much do we want to preserve our history?
At its core, all of "Star Wars" is about cycles of life and death, balance between the old
and the new.
Darth Vader as the Dark Father trying to vanquish his own son
represented the old not wanting to die and be replaced by the young.
Now Vader’s grandson Ben Solo, known as Kylo Ren, wants to be next Vader.
But thematically he’s an inversion of Vader.
Because Vader wanted to stop the future from happening.
Whereas Kylo is young, he is the future, but he’s trying to reject the past.
"Let the past die.
Kill it."
Like all "Star Wars," "The Last Jedi" reminds us that we have to let the old die when it's
time.
So now we have to watch even Luke Skywalker pass away, disappearing into the Force as
Yoda once did.
Both Rey and Leia understand that Luke’s peaceful passing isn't a sad thing.
During her training, when Rey reaches out with her feelings to understand the Force,
she sees death and decay feeding the growth of new life.
But Kylo takes the idea of letting the old die to an aggressive extreme.
"Kill it."
Kylo’s aggressive approach toward murdering the past reveals that he’s not letting it
die at all.
He’s holding onto rage and bitterness towards the past.
We don’t get a good explanation for why he has so many issues with his parents and
his childhood.
"For Kylo Ren to be such a bad guy, it means really
that Han Solo and Princess Leia had to have been terrible parents, I mean like --"
"I agree."
[Laughter]
But "The Last Jedi" does reveal one major way that Ben Solo felt betrayed by the older
generation.
Luke briefly thought about killing Ben after witnessing how much darkness was present in
his nephew during training.
Luke drew his lightsaber on his apprentice, an unthinkable act of aggression for a Jedi,
who vows to only use the Force for knowledge and defense.
We can see in Kylo's vicious anger toward Luke that he hasn't forgiven his uncle for
failing him.
Kylo speaks of a new world free of the old orders,
without the Jedi and the Sith, without the Rebellion and the Empire.
And sure, maybe there's something appealing sounding about getting away from this simplistic
world of two,
the constant back and forth between overt duality like good and evil.
But Kylo is way too angry, much full of emotion about the past,
to really be imagining building some kind of peaceful future.
Rey sees through his rhetoric to understand that he really just wants to destroy his enemies.
He wants his half to dominate the other,
whereas she gets by now that the Force is Balance.
Just as there has to be balance in the Force between all things including the dark and
the light,
there must be a strong relationship between the past and the future.
The young have to understand how to respect and learn from their elders,
while also getting ready to let them go when it’s their time.
"You must learn the ways of the Force if you're to come with me to Alderaan."
Even if Kylo’s got ulterior motives, his words about escaping the constant pull between
the Jedi and Sith,
are also very much where Luke’s mind is at when we catch up with him.
Luke is damaged by his own past, grappling with his guilt for failing his nephew.
And a lot of the film is about Luke’s considering whether the Jedi traditions should die.
Maybe they’ve done more harm than good and he does want to be the last Jedi.
But Luke decides to help train Rey after R2D2 reminds him of hisoriginal inspiration,
"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.
You're my only hope."
and Yoda’s spirit shows up to tell Luke that he's forgotten Yoda's advice.
"Pass on what you have learned."
The old master gleefully helps Luke burn up the old Jedi texts,
but Yoda is adamant that the wisdom and philosophy of the Jedi must be passed on through Rey.
When Kylo fights with Luke’s projection, he vows that he's going to destroy Luke and
Rey.
He thinks he can wipe out the Last Jedi, whoever that is.
But Luke confidently rejects Kylo’s words.
He now understands that there will always be another Jedi.
"Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father."
A key moment in the film parallels the iconic reveal of "The Empire Strikes Back" --
one of the most famous moments in film history.
"I am your father."
So fittingly, "The Last Jedi" builds up the question everybody wants to know the answer
to --
"Who are Rey’s parents?"
But the big moment we get is when Kylo and Rey both say that her parents were so-called
“nobodies,”
We don’t know if what we've heard is true, or if Kylo’s manipulating her,
but the moment is a deliberate reversal of Luke finding out he was the son of the most
evil but special man alive.
Emotionally, here we’re being told that it doesn’t matter who Rey’s parents are.
She’s a Jedi because of what’s within her --
and that’s also the symbolism of the sequence when she goes into the underground cave
and sees a long line of versions of herself in the mirrors.
She asks to see who her parents are, but instead she only sees herself.
So Rey’s power and her place in this story isn’t about being born into greatness.
It’s about seeing and trusting in something inside her.
Something that, in some form, is within all of us, no matter where we come from.
With these choices, "The Last Jedi" is maybe trying to correct a subtle form of elitism
that’s been a part of "Star Wars" at times --
the idea that Luke and Leia, and Anakin and Kylo Ren,
were born special because of that Skywalker blood.
But "The Last Jedi" says you don't have to come from a dynasty to have power within you.
So we shouldn’t just be looking out for those special people born into Jedi privilege.
There’s a whole universe out there of people who can be moved by the Force within them,
and moved by moments when hope and wisdom are passed on to them by others they meet.
The closing scene affirms all of this --
We see the poor slave-boy who helped Finn and Rose earlier listening to stories of Luke
Skywalker.
We discover that the boy is Force-sensitive, and he’s looking up at the sky,
dreaming of his future just as Luke used to,
as Yoda scolded him for and does again scold him for in this movie.
"All his life has he looked away to the future, to the horizon.
Never his mind on where he was."
So this little boy is the symbol of the promise that there’s always going to be another
Jedi to come --
just like the image of the never-ending Reys in the mirror.
And always, the new Jedi has been touched by the past in some way --
this little boy was moved by his encounter with a resistance fighter --
and now he wears a ring with the symbol of the rebellion.
So the hope passed on to him by Rose will now inspire him to keep fighting,
and to use his connection with the Force for good.
Like "The Force Awakens," "The Last Jedi" explores how legends are made.
The legend of Luke Skywalker inspired Rey, and now a new legend of the fight we saw
between Kylo and Luke inspires this young boy --
just as this movie's story of hope overcoming evil might reach any number of young souls
in the cinema.
And that’s why there’s never will never be a last Jedi --
there will always be a new hope.
And the wisdom of the past will be passed on in our stories, to help the next Jedi.
"May the Force be with you."
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