The Last Jedi is a Portal to a New Force
SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM BY NOW (WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?!?)
By: Eryn Amodeo
Follow @amodeo_eryn
The Jedi Legacy is recognized by fans far and wide, and with re-awakening of the Dark Side in the latest Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the galaxy needs all the help it can get.
For someone brand new to the Star Wars movies, The Last Jedi felt surprisingly comprehensive – a relatively small bite to swallow. Fast-past in speed, the narrative keeps the audience on the edge of their seats for most of the two and a half hours of thrilling, science-fiction adventure!
A total of eight films (and counting) in the Star Wars saga, anyone and everyone can find something to love about this latest epic adventure – both die-hard ‘Lucasfilm’ fans and first-time viewers alike.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi builds off the previous seven Star Wars films in a way that keeps even beginners engaged and intrigued in watching the excitement unfold.
In other words, The Last Jedi film comes across as semi-cumulative, as if seeing the first seven movies is not mandatory in order to keep up with the action.
Although Disney now obtains control over the Lucasfilm franchise, the potent and deep-seeded grain that defines the Star Wars culture remains ever-present in the latest film.
Without getting into the politics of the Lucasfilm take-over by Disney, it’s fair to say that much of the original fan-base is worked-up over this controversial buy-out…
There’s been dispute and fan-based fears that the Lucasfilm name and reputation is undergoing a reconstruction by their wealthier and more-powerful Disney counterpart.
Lucasfilms however, has become a generationally cherished household name, for over forty years in the making, and remains exactly that…not to mention the hint towards alleged futures chapters in the ongoing legacy which are yet to come. In an over 44 billion buy-out, Disney chief executive Bob Iger intends to keep the Lucasfilm legacy strong for generations-to-come.
“We’re just starting to talk about what happens in ‘Star Wars’ after ‘IX’,” Iger said. “We have a creative team actually thinking about what could be another decade and a half of Star Wars stories,” he recently told the Los Angeles Times.
As the galaxy is in grave danger, the iconic Star Wars classics such a Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, and Chewbacca come together in order to use the force and defeat the dark-side, once again. These old-time classic hero’s are met with the fresh-faced Rey, Finn, and Poe who combine their Jedi powers in an attempt to defeat the cunningly crowned first-order supreme-leader Kylo Ren.
One of the major themes throughout Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the ultimate imparting of wisdom from one generation of Jedi to the next.
The archetypal message behind the film is that neither the original Jedi, nor millennial Jedi, have the power to overthrow the evil-empire on their own accord.
Because it takes a power much stronger than any-one Jedi possesses to defeat the dark side, it must be a combination of old and new, a community feat, or group effort.
It becomes apparent as the film progresses, that the old and new generations of Jedi must work together to combine their knowledge and wisdom with strength and skill.
Although Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker obtain the previous experience and have acquired much wisdom as seasoned, senior Jedi’s, it’s up to Rey, Finn, and Poe to combine their Jedi strengths.
Their challenge remains: to anchor and combine enough stamina to put the wisdom and guidance of previous Jedi into practice in order to defeat the dark-workings of the evil-empire.
The movie’s overarching theme being to unite the forces of generations of Jedi, both old and new in hopes of bridging the gap between cultured experience, and expertise and raw skill, and strength.
Rey, one of the film’s protagonists, suffers with an internal conflict that revolves around discovering who her parents really were, and what role she is meant to play in the dark-side/light-side dynamic.
She seeks the help and wisdom of Jedi “Master Skywalker” and is only rendered confused in her quest for answers. The Jedi plight thickens when Rey realises that the solution for her life’s-purpose comes from within – arguably the most cinematically pivotal scene of the entire film.
Furthermore, Jedi Rey realises that she has always possessed the strength to destroy the evil-empire when she senses an inherit connection between herself and dark supreme-leader Ren.
Could this mysterious connection indicate that Kylo Ren is her biological twin brother?
(Yes, this is your newest fan theory courtesy of The Caravan)
“Let the past die, kill it if you have to, that’s the only way to become who you were meant to be,” Ren says.
Serendipitously, it is in their likeness more than their differences that Rey finds herself cultivating the strength to resist Ren and the temptation of the dark-side – ultimately preserving all that is good and light in the galaxy for future generations of Jedi over aeons to come …
