The Subversive Pop-mythology of The Last Jedi

Don’t worry. My goal is not to prove that The Last Jedi is a good film or that it is a bad film. That is an internet melee I would rather avoid. Here I hope to do something else; I hope to show that simultaneous to its function as a blockbuster movie (good or bad), The Last Jedi is something further. It is an addition to a larger work of pop-mythology, and one with clear intentions toward reframing and altering the meaning of previous entries of its canon. The exact nature of those intentions and its effective success are what I will examine in this article. Broadly, I will show that The Last Jedi uses narrative to discard or reframe inherited toxic ideology in favor of more dynamic, existential, and egalitarian ideas more able to describe the lived reality of modern audiences.

None of this is to say The Last Jedi should not be critiqued on the merits of its filmmaking and narrative techniques; its position in a beloved series does not prevent it from being a poorly made film (as the prequel trilogy illustrated all too clearly). Pop-mythology is at its best when it is also good, but it need not necessarily be good. What matters is the amount of discourse it generates, its relationship to a wider mythology, and its relationship to the lived reality of audiences. The 1977 release of A New Hope was groundbreaking, but it was not a Good Film (in fact, it was very nearly a Bad Film). A complete understanding of any film will, of course, require an understanding of its technical artistry in addition to the extent to which it participates in a larger cultural dialogue, but for now we will be focusing on the latter.

We should briefly examine what constitutes a pop-mythology, and its function to audiences and societies. I define a pop-mythology as a work of extraordinary narrative scope whose dramatic themes both describe and shape the lived experiences of audiences. A pop-mythology may have many, even contradictory themes: the original Star Wars trilogy might be understood as a commentary on generational renewal or as a warning against the seductive ease of fascist hate. Or it might be understood as both simultaneously, and much more besides. Two of the largest non-Star Wars pop-mythologies are the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and Game of Thrones. Both are immense when taken in their entireties—as of this writing the runtime of the core MCU films clocks in at 1.5 days, and Game of Thrones comes in at 2 days and 15 hours. The Star Wars films run for about 20 hours, though that number is growing year by year.

Each of these pop-mythologies can be said to have a distinct world-view, as espoused by characters or narrators, or as interpreted through the events portrayed. Game of Thrones is a cynical meditation on the nature of power and authority. The MCU begins as an exhortation to personal responsibility that borders on vigilantism, before course-correcting to examinations of wider social responsibility and social order. But the sheer scope of each of these projects assures us that they are so much more. Game of Thrones explores the nature of loyalty and oaths, the place of women in society, and the dangers of religious fanaticism. The MCU meanders variously through ideas of democracy, authoritarianism, and fascism. But just as important to audiences are the more subtle and often toxic ideas about social relations being reproduced and reinforced within each work. Game of Thrones has a deeply problematic relationship to rape and sexual assault, and the first seventeen(!) movies of the MCU have a concerning pattern of under- and misrepresentation of women and people of color.

In terms of their status as pop-mythologies, it is instructive to see how later entries into either canon attempt to correct for (but occasionally reinforce) the mistakes of the past. To understand how The Last Jedi critiques and interacts with its inherited ideologies, we must examine the tenets of Star Wars philosophy so far.

The original trilogy of films, A New Hope (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983), form a sort of core document from which we understand the philosophy of the Jedi. And love it or hate it, under George Lucas’s guidance, the philosophy of Star Wars was synonymous with the philosophy of the Jedi. This unity between the philosophy of the films and the philosophy of the Jedi is important, because it is the point at which The Last Jedi will later deconstruct and reassemble core principles of its own pop-mythos.

Lucas’s vision of the Jedi order had much to recommend it: the Jedi were an order of warrior monks, ostensibly devoted to peace and knowledge, who confronted the forces of evil with an unflappable calm. In the case of Obi-wan Kenobi, they even sought ultimate victory through non-violent resistance. Contrasted with masculine action heroes who reveled in rage and violence, the Jedi seemed downright urbane. However, hidden within the nebulous stoic philosophy of the original trilogy, and made explicitly clear in the prequel trilogy, were deeply harmful ideas of emotional alienation as a form of noble masculinity. Especially for boys (it is implied), honest expressions of grief, sadness, and fear lead to wickedness and the Dark Side of the Force.

Concurrent with these themes is a fetishization of lineage. Luke Skywalker isn’t just a farmboy from nowhere, he’s the son of one of the most powerful force-users ever known. This is a trope by no means invented by Star Wars, describing a sort of magical lottery in which the protagonist’s mundane existence belies a much grander destiny, due to a secret birthright. Glibly, the story goes: “It may not seem like it, but he Actually Matters (because of his parents).” In the Star Wars original trilogy, the result is a story of struggle between individualistic youth and their authoritarian elders, a story that would appeal to a young Generation X, and more personally to a New Hollywood director like George Lucas.

The problem with the fetishization of lineage is that beyond the immediate pleasures of escapism, fantasies of secret origin will inevitably ring hollow for audiences who must accept mundanity in their everyday lives. Most of us are not harboring secret powers or titles. Our parents were not Jedi. More insidiously, the fetishization of lineage implies that those not born to force-sensitive nobility have no business challenging the great and powerful. The Extended Universe of novels and comics exacerbated this problem, making the Skywalker saga an (ever more) intergenerational affair, with all the appeal of tabloid stories detailing the lives of the Royal Family. The fetishization of lineage is a pillar of the pop-mythology of Star Wars that The Last Jedi will explicitly rebuke.

But first we must discuss The Force Awakens. Released in 2015 and directed by J.J. Abrams, it is an enjoyable but very safe film. The level of narrative conservatism on display might have been well advised, considering the previous attempt at a Star Wars trilogy was the abysmal prequel trilogy, and the rabidity of fans was well known. In terms of the tenets and strictures of the Star Wars pop-mythology, The Force Awakens aims to play squarely by the rules, adding or subtracting nothing. Indeed, it treats A New Hope as a formula, and reproduces its plot points beat for beat. It’s largely a feat of casting that this doesn’t become insipid. But even despite its clear reluctance to do so, The Force Awakens necessarily changes the way its source material is understood.

Return of the Jedi ends with the rebels triumphant, the emperor dead, and a hard-fought peace finally settling in while ewoks roast and devour the remains of fallen Stormtroopers. In this idyllic space it is possible to imagine Luke, Leia, and Han rebuilding a democratic civilization amid the ruins of a fallen fascist empire, perhaps occasionally struggling with the colorful characters of the galaxy far, far away. And indeed, this was the fertile soil of the Extended Universe novels, for better and worse. But after Disney acquired the rights to Star Wars, it was necessary to de-canon-ify the Extended Universe material in order to produce saleable movies that featured a much older Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, and Mark Hamill. And so Abrams imagined a future in which the Skywalkers and the Solos failed to rebuild, and a new fascist empire, eerily similar to the first, arose to once again threaten the forces of good.

Whether or not this was timid storytelling is beside the point. The Force Awakens was destined to be not just a film, but an entry into a culturally important pop-mythology. Its attempts to change nothing, changed everything. Rather than seeing the original trilogy as a singular march toward progress, the final overcoming of space fascism, we were forced to see empire and war as a cyclical process, a tragedy to be repeated with fresh faces and never abolished. Perhaps this is apt, as in the real world the forces of empire and war remain undiminished, and a pop-mythology must foremost be able to describe the reality of its audience.

Unfortunately, The Force Awakens fails to challenge any of the negative ideas it inherited from previous films, either the supposed danger of male emotionality or the fetishization of lineage. This must lead us to wonder: if the rise of evil is inevitable, and our struggle against it always defined by a lost, stoic savior of noble birth, why struggle at all? If the means and outcome are identical and perpetually reproduced, why romanticize as adventure what is apparently the Sisyphean tragedy of civilization? Abrams’ treatment of the material falls prey to a kind of cultural immobility. So apprehensive is he of altering the pop-mythology that he dooms himself to recreating its least valuable aspects. There may have been some overall cultural utility to narratives about secret noble lineage and hidden destiny in 1977. It certainly seemed to resonate with audiences at the time. But 40 years have passed, and that rhetoric can no longer fulfill the primary function of pop-mythology—it’s no longer capable of describing the lived reality of its audience.

So this is the milieu into which The Last Jedi appears. To understand how writer and director Rian Johnson approached the looming spectre of the Star Wars pop-mythology, it is instructive to consider what he did not do. Given the ending of The Force Awakens, it does not take a great leap of imagination to imagine a sequel in which Luke Skywalker takes Rey as his Padawan and trains her in the emotionally stunted way of the force, all the while hinting that she is his own daughter, or perhaps Kylo’s twin, or perhaps Obi-Wan’s secret granddaughter. Meanwhile Leia battles the first order, and Finn and Poe finally act on the simmering sexual tension between them. It would be a safe movie, like The Force Awakens, adhering to the well-worn rules of the bildungsroman. This would preserve the trajectory of The Force Awakens and cement the trilogy as a chapter in the cyclical, never-victorious struggle against galactic tyranny.

Instead, Johnson recognizes the weaknesses of the Star Wars pop-mythology and attempts deconstruct and reconstruct it in ways ultimately more meaningful to modern audiences. He is in some places more successful than in others.

The Last Jedi is divided neatly into two plots, the Rey/Kylo/Luke plot (RKL plot) and the Finn/Rose/Poe plot (FRP plot). Both plots attempt to subvert and redefine expectations of the mythology, although the RKL plot is by far the more adroit. It is in the RKL plot that Rian Johnson takes square aim at the fetishization of lineage.

In The Force Awakens, the question of Rey’s parentage was presented in such a way as to engender years of fan debates about who her parents could possibly be. Theories abounded, mostly centered on which force-sensitive Person of Note could be her mother or father. This was because the expectation was so heavily ingrained by the original trilogy, which The Force Awakens had been at such pains to mimic. Abrams was not subtle about raising the genealogical question and presenting it as an ongoing mystery to be solved, though I very much doubt he anticipated the answer that would be given in The Last Jedi.

No one is more consumed with the question of her parentage, with the meaning of her lineage, than Rey herself. At one point the intensity of the question drives her to go spelunking in a cave attuned to the dark side. In another scene she pleads with Luke, “I need someone to show me my place in all this.” Like many Star Wars fans, Rey yearns for an external validation of her existence, some booming voice to tell her why she “Actually Matters.” For her, this is inextricably tied to her parents, and the trauma of being abandoned as a child. She needs this trauma to be more than cruel circumstance; she needs it to be somehow the foundational reason for her powers. But when she asks the cave-mirror to show her parents, she sees only a reflection of herself, and Luke tells her elsewhere, “This is not going to go the way you think.”

Rian Johnson applies Occam’s Razor like a scalpel: the simplest explanation for why a child would be sold into slavery on a backwater desert planet is not because Rey is secretly Moses in the Bulrushes, but because her parents were crummy people of no historical note whatsoever. This explodes the notions inherited from the original trilogy—if Rey is to be the lynchpin in the victory of the forces of good over evil, then it will neither be because of the supposed power of her lineage or in spite of it. The question of her bloodline is simply irrelevant. Much as it is, it should be noted, with the vast majority of audiences. By subverting expectations and reconstructing the narrative in this way, The Last Jedi begins to satisfy its mission of describing the lived reality of its audience. Had it not done so, it still might have succeeded as an enjoyably escapist film, but Star Wars would have slowly plodded on a course to less cultural relevance, not more.

And so the fetishization of lineage is shown to be without meaning. The prospect of meaninglessness is frightening and disorienting; a universe without an objective framework for meaning, without clear rules for what is Good and Evil, is difficult to accept. Enter Kylo Ren, existential philosopher, and the one who helps Rey admit the truth about her parents. He tells her, “They were filthy junk traders. Sold you off for drinking money. They’re dead in a pauper’s grave in the Jakku desert. You come from nothing. You’re nothing. But not to me.” For Kylo, Rey’s existential problem is no problem at all. The past has no hold on her, so both she and Kylo are now free to create their own meaning, a sort of cosmic self-justification free from the foibles and interests of history. Unfortunately, Kylo’s existential freedom does not include empathy, democracy, or a mutual respect for life.

Kylo Ren has spent years oscillating between denouncing his famous parents and worshipping his infamous grandfather. Now he sees the possibility of radical freedom in denouncing the past itself: “The Empire, your parents, the Resistance, the Sith, the Jedi… let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you are meant to be.” Rey’s ultimate path seems more nuanced, with an emphasis on respecting the past, but not being beholden to it either.

Given the political climate in which The Last Jedi was filmed and released, these ideas are inherently of more value than retreading narratives about royal-blooded saviors. Particularly in the way it implies the necessity of new solutions to confront the apparently cyclical evils of the past, The Last Jedi alters the pop-mythology of Star Wars to rebuke ideas of cultural immobility, examining the way failed solutions are reproduced to confront identical problems, to predictable results. Like Rey, and to some extent even like Kylo, our modern problems are going to require modern solutions that may not reproduce familiar conditions. The future is scary precisely because it is unknown, but in its unknown qualities lie the opportunity for positive change.

Less obvious is the way The Last Jedi subverts the primacy of Jedi philosophy. As I noted earlier, in the original trilogy and in the prequel trilogy, the philosophy of Star Wars was inseparable from the philosophy of the Jedi themselves. While there were positive aspects to this philosophy, there were also dysfunctional elements, such as the Jedi proscription of the expression of any emotion, but particularly emotions like grief, sadness, and fear. The origins of this philosophy might be rooted in George Lucas’s passing understanding of Eastern mysticism or stoic thought, but in practice it is a thinly veiled invective against the expression of male emotionality. Jedi who express grief, familial attachment, and sadness are in danger of going to the dark side, which usually entails being manipulated by a more powerful man. Rian Johnson’s solution to this is to separate the philosophy of the films from the philosophy of the Jedi.

On hearing Rey’s first fitful glimpse of the force in its totality, Luke says, “That force doesn’t belong to the Jedi. To say if the Jedi die, the light dies is vanity. Can you see that?” Up until now, it has seemed like the force was a power only available to the Jedi and their arch-nemeses the Sith. Some characters in media outside the films have disputed this, but now Luke has cracked the matter wide open. The force no more belongs to the Jedi than swimming belongs to the YMCA. In his second lesson to Rey he attempts to demystify the Jedi, whom Rey (and many Star Wars fans) have romanticized into something other than a violent, authoritarian religious order. The true legacy of the Jedi, Luke says, is hubris, hypocrisy, and failure.

If one is a Star Wars fan, whether this condemnation of the Jedi causes dismay or excitement depends on one’s relationship to hierarchy and institutional authority. Regardless, the audience is required to view the Jedi order no longer as an infallible or ideal tradition, but as a flawed and troubled institution whose rigidity led in large part to its destruction. Taken in this light, its supposedly egalitarian but clearly gendered notions of emotional alienation need not be the subject of endless apologism, but can be interpreted for what they are: dysfunctional, harmful strictures whose logical endpoint is a sort of systematic sociopathy. The Last Jedi opens up the possibility that the Jedi may have occasionally been very wrong.

This is a major pivot for the pop-mythology of Star Wars. By formally separating the philosophy of the films from the philosophy of the Jedi, The Last Jedi is able to portray Rey as a powerful figure capable of experiencing attachment, anguish, anger, and the entire gamut of human emotion without succumbing the dark side of the force. That the expression of healthy human emotions should not be considered a dangerous hindrance is an important message for both young boys and girls. And so through these narrative and rhetorical shifts, the pop-mythology of Star Wars is able to describe healthy social interactions in a way it was not before.

So far, all of this work has been accomplished in the Rey/Kylo/Luke plot. What of the Finn/Rose/Poe plot? It too attempts to reframe basic notions of the Star Wars mythology, but its targets are more subtle, and the execution distinctly lacking.

The FRP plot takes aim at the notion that victory is measured in the amount of damage inflicted upon one’s enemy, as opposed to the number of allied lives preserved. This is without doubt a more obscure topic than what’s covered in the RKL plot, and it’s not a trope particular to Star Wars. It is, nonetheless, a perfectly valid notion to challenge, considering that any number of doomsday weapons have been exploded, with imperial dead numbering in the millions. And yet such massive “victories” never manage to achieve lasting peace.

In the opening scene, Flight Commander Poe Dameron leads an assault on a First Order Deadnought, incurring heavy losses but destroying his target. Leia reprimands and demotes him, asking at what cost this pyrrhic victory was had. It’s a strong beginning to the argument. Unfortunately, the waters become muddied with a subplot involving a dreadfully miscast Laura Dern as Admiral Holdo. There is apparently some point being attempted in which Poe’s recklessness is to be contrasted with Holdo’s quiet competence, but as the film reliably frames Poe as a rational actor responding to circumstances, he fails to come off as reckless and Holdo fails to come off as competent. Leia tries to frame the matter in a later scene by saying, “She was more interested in protecting the light than being a hero.” It rings a bit hollow though, since Holdo’s inability to communicate inspired a multi-racial, multi-gender, multi-species mutiny among seasoned officers probably not inclined to do so under a competent CO.

Later in the film, Rose crashes her light craft into Finn’s, preventing him from completing a kamikaze run down the barrel of a giant gun, despite what a great name for an album that would be. Finn is upset, but she says, “I saved you, dummy. That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate; saving what we love.” Moments later Poe checks his impulse to run to Luke Skywalker’s aid, realizing there is a chance to save what few survivors remain of the Resistance.

This idea, that defending is more important than attacking, that construction is more important than destruction, would have dovetailed nicely with other points in the film about the necessity of new forms of resistance, and the imperative of all people to participate in resistance regardless of birth and station. However, derailed as it is by the poorly executed Holdo plot and a regrettable sequence involving a herd of racing moose, the FRP plotline fails to contribute meaningfully to the pop-mythology of Star Wars.

The merits of The Last Jedi as a film will be debated for decades to come, and possibly longer. The same could be said of any Star Wars film, and it is precisely this visibility, this position as a cultural touchstone that makes for a dynamic pop-mythology. Considering its centrality to American pop-culture, the ability for future Star Wars films to meaningfully describe the lived reality of their audiences is paramount. Unfortunately, Star Wars was losing that ability, both as culture drifted away from harmful notions of gender and privilege that were acceptable in the 1970s, and as filmmaker J.J. Abrams uncritically reproduced those notions in The Force Awakens.

The Last Jedi attempts to correct for some of the harmful ideologies inherited from previous films and restructure elements of the mythology to be better able to represent the needs of modern audiences. At most points it succeeds in this goal admirably. The Finn/Rose/Poe plot may not have hit its every mark, but its value as entertainment means at least it did not detract from the important and fascinating rhetorical feats being accomplished elsewhere in the film. Make no mistake: Luke Skywalker might not be the last Jedi, but he was the last Jedi as we knew them. And I think that is very interesting indeed.