The Rise of Skywalker

Warning: total spoilers for TROS, and also for Steven Universe.

Coming into The Rise of Skywalker today, I didn’t know what to expect. Despite my best efforts to remain unspoiled ahead of time, my internet goblin lifestyle – and the outrage of people who don’t use fucking spoiler tags – got the better of me. As such, I went in knowing exactly two things: one, that Kylo Ren dies at the end; and two, that for every person I’d seen on social media who was big mad about either this or the film in general, there was another who’d loved it wholeheartedly.

For the purposes of contextal recap, I reviewed both prior instalments when they first came out: I really loved The Force Awakens, but had issues with The Last Jedi. Since then, I’ve happily rewatched TFA more than once, but have yet to complete a full rewatch of TLJ – not because I haven’t had the time or the opportunity, but because each time I’ve tried to sit through it (and there have been multiple attempts), the early butchering of Poe Dameron’s character and the subsequent idiot plotting leaves me with gritted teeth. (Also, and this is a minor irritant in comparison, but every time there’s a closeup on Rey in TLJ, I cannot get over how jarringly overdone Daisy Ridley’s makeup is. I’ve never seen it mentioned anywhere else, so possibly it’s just a me thing, but even so, it grates.)

From what I’ve seen online since TROS came out, there is a large – but by no means universal – overlap between its loudest detractors and those who loved TLJ. Otherwise, the bulk of the criticism I’ve glimpsed boils down to three things: an excess of nostalgia, a perceived disrespect of Rian Johnson’s work, and a dislike of how Kylo Ren was treated. Having now seen the film, I disagree with all three of these takes. In fact, I’m prepared to say that TROS is my favourite instalment in the new trilogy – an opinion shared by both my husband and our six-year-old son. This latter opinion is, to me, the crucial one: multiple times on the way into our screening, my son was excitedly proclaiming his love for Kylo Ren and the hope that his “team” would win (he likes to play as Kylo in games of Battlefront with his dad). Both my husband and I were therefore braced for tears and disappointment at the finale; we’d even lined up a plan of action for if he was heartbroken.

But instead, he came out exhilarated. “I love it,” he proclaimed, “because Kylo Ren came to the good side!”

As an adult consumer of entertainment that is often meant primarily for or written in consideration of children, it’s sometimes easy to ignore the importance of their perspective – and therefore of their status as a desired, intended audience – on the end product. To take a small critical detour, consider the show Steven Universe, which I also watch with my son. I’ve seen a great deal of adult discourse trashing the later seasons because Steven reconciles with the Diamonds rather than killing them for their crimes, as though this was ever going to happen in a show aimed at young children; as though it is a failing not to prioritise the adult complexities of empire, revolution and colonialism over the more child-oriented themes of personal growth and love.

Adult eyes look at the Diamonds and protest that they’re war criminals, imperial tyrants who, in the real world, wouldn’t deserve a second chance, forgetting that a dash of unreality is the actual goddamn point. If we wanted to play by real world rules, the constant alien attacks and countless Gem relics on Earth would have long since prompted actual human governments to get involved, thus making it rather difficult for a single half-Gem tween and his adoptive family to run the show on intergalactic relations in the first place. We allow such behavioural exemptions in stories for kids because, quite simply, there’d be little scope for children to play such a powerful, autonomous role in those narratives otherwise. The heart of Steven Universe is a navigation of family, love, communication and queerness: the imperial elements aren’t the main narrative arc, but are rather used both as a metaphor for and in parallel with the idea of dysfunctional families. It’s a testament to how skilfully the show has been made, that adult viewers can find in it so much with which to engage so deeply, but they are still not the primary audience, and it is solipsism to fault the show for acknowledging this.

Returning to Star Wars and The Rise of Skywalker, therefore, I’m inclined to lend more weight to my six-year-old’s happiness at the ending – and to the audible delight of multiple other small children in our cinema when the credits rolled – than I am to the outrage of adults about the fate of Kylo Ren. To be clear: I’m not saying adults aren’t allowed to have their own opinions about the film. That would be an especially egregious form of hypocrisy, as I, an adult, am currently writing a review of it. Nor am I saying that Star Wars is aimed primarily at children: unlike Steven Universe, which is first and foremost a children’s show, the modern Star Wars movies are aimed at a general audience of kids and adults alike, with specific pieces of tie-in media being aimed more narrowly at specific age groups. What I’m saying is that, in my opinion, it matters that a little boy who loves Kylo Ren – a boy who is so often sensitive to the fates of his favourite characters, who cries when they suffer or die on screen, and who went in wanting Kylo to be victorious – came out happy with how his character was treated.

Here’s the thing: I don’t understand the complaint that TROS is too nostalgia-heavy, because what the fuck else are adult fans watching Star Wars for in 2019, if not to indulge the fantasy that “nostalgia” is the correct way to describe your feelings about a globally ubiquitous franchise that’s been producing tie-in novels, kids’ books, comics, animated specials, cartoon shows, live action TV series, toys, LEGOs, collectables, RPGs, MMOs, MMORPGs, board games, tabletop games, branded merchandise and eight major full-length, live-action feature films (plus a smatter of other movies) at an exponential rate of increase since 1977? The expanded Star Wars universe is a sandbox, not because it contains infinite narrative possibilities, but because it contains near-infinite ways to do the same things over and over again with slightly different variables and in a range of narrative flavours. And there’s nothing wrong with that!

Star Wars is where we go for bounty hunters and space lasers, chosen ones and eldritch MacGuffins, space opera and kitsch panoply, weird galactic politics and battles between the forces of good and evil. Some of its stories, like Rogue One and The Mandalorian, fall at the “grittier,” more adult end of the available spectrum, while others, like the 2008 animated Clone Wars film and the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, are decidedly less serious. Does this mean we’re wrong to have expectations and preferences about new instalments in the franchise, including greater diversity? Of course not! But of all the complaints to level at a Star Wars movie, too much nostalgia feels a bit like accusing the ocean of being too wet. Of course it’s nostalgic; or at the very least familiar: what else did you come here for? Do you also demand breathless originality from Marvel movies? Come on, now. Nobody eats at McDonald’s because they expect a gourmet burger, even if the franchise is going through one of those phases where they advertise options that pass as gourmet only in comparison to the regular menu. No: we go because it’s the satisfying trash we love to hate to love, and even though we can feel our arteries hardening with every slurp of thickshake, that’s what we signed up for.

With that in mind, let’s have a detailed plot summary, because I can’t do a proper analysis without one. So:

The Rise of Skywalker begins with Kylo Ren investigating the apparent return of Emperor Palpatine, who he sees as a threat to his power. Palpatine is indeed back, ensconced on the creepy, hidden Sith planet of Exogol, where he’s spent decades building a secret fleet of planet-killing ships with his minions, called the Final Order. To receive this fleet, Kylo needs to do only one thing: destroy Rey, and through her the Jedi Order. Details of this fleet are soon passed to the Resistance – specifically, to Finn and Poe – by an unknown spy inside the First Order. As they race through space to bring the details to General Leia, Rey struggles with her training, plagued by visions of her past while trying to contact the spirits of dead Jedi masters.

In order to combat both Kylo Ren and Palpatine, the Resistance needs to get to Exogol – and to do this, they need an ancient Sith relic that can show them the coordinates. Using Luke’s notes as a starting point, Rey, Finn and Poe – along with Chewie, R2D2, C3P0 and BB8 – set out in the Millennium Falcon to begin their search where Luke’s left off. What follows is an encounter with Lando Calrissian, who helps get them pointed in the right direction, which kicks off an exciting string of MacGuffin chases: to start the search for the Sith relic, they need to find a downed ship; and in the ship, they find a Sith dagger with a clue to the relic’s location. Luckily, C3P0 can read the Sith glyphs on the dagger; unluckily, he is forbidden by his programming from translating them because Evil Language Of Evil. Before they can get off-planet, however, Chewie is captured and (so they wrongly think) killed when Kylo pushes Rey into accidentally using force lightning to down a transport ship. He also steals the Sith dagger,  so that the only record of the relic’s location is now stuck in C3P0’s memories, while the Falcon is taken on board his ship.

Not wanting Chewie’s perceived death to be in vain, the trio decides their only option is to find an illegal droid-hacker to access C3P0’s memories. Still pursued by the First Order, this takes them to Zorii, an old spice-running friend of Poe’s who helps them after some fun, fighty banter. Her droid-hacker associate then reveals that accessing the Sith translation will wipe C3P0’s memory, but the stakes are high enough that he, rather touchingly – on the back of several scenes where he’s played his usual comic relief role –  agrees to this, a neat callback to his previous, unwilling mindwipe at the end of Revenge of the Sith.

With C3P0 wiped and Kylo’s ship now overheard, Rey realises that Chewie is still alive and being held prisoner. The trio hurry aboard to rescue him, and while Finn and Poe grab the wookie, Rey backtracks to reclaim the dagger. As she takes it, she and Kylo have a tense confrontation through their force-bond, where Kylo reveals that he knows the secret of Rey’s heritage and promises her that she’ll take his hand when next he holds it out to her. Elsewhere on the ship, Finn and the others are captured and taken for execution – but are saved by, of all people, General Hux, who reveals himself to be the Resistance spy in the First Order. His motives, very plausibly, have nothing to do with altruism: he’s just sick of Kylo Ren, who constantly thwarts and berates him, and wants to see him defeated. (However, even though Finn wounds Hux at his request to aid the pretence that he was overpowered during their escape, General Pryde immediately kills him after seeing through the lie.)

Reunited with Rey, the heroes escape on the Falcon and fly to the coordinates C3P0 provided, where the wreck of the Death Star lies in the Endor system. Here, after crash-landing the damaged Falcon, they encounter a group of former Stormtroopers, led by a woman called Jannah, who all, like Finn, defected from the First Order rather than kill innocents. Her group pledges to help them reach the Death Star ruins, which lie amidst a turbulent sea, but Rey – increasingly troubled by visions of herself falling to the dark side – takes a skimmer and goes alone to reclaim the Sith relic from Palpatine’s vault. Finn hurries to help her while Poe repairs their ship, but arrives too late to prevent her epic showdown with Kylo Ren, who goads her into a fight by first revealing her ancestry – she is Palpatine’s granddaughter, heir to Sith blood – and then crushing the relic she came all this way to find.

While Kylo and Rey fight on the other side of the galaxy, General Leia reaches out to her son through the Force. As with Luke’s actions in The Last Jedi, this massive effort costs her life, but to powerful gain: Kylo hesitates at a crucial moment, so overwhelmed by the contact that he drops his lightsaber, allowing Rey to run him through. Earlier in the film, when trapped in underground tunnels searching for the first downed ship, Rey used the Force to heal a giant snake that was threatening the group, achieved by transferring some of her lifeforce to it. She does the same here to Kylo, showing him mercy at the moment they both sense his mother’s death; a mercy that extends to healing the facial scar she gave him. She tells him that she would’ve accepted Ben’s hand, not Kylo’s, and then – as Finn and Jannah look on – takes his ship and flies off in it. Left alone, Kylo speaks with the memory of his Han Solo, echoing the conversation they had in The Force Awakens right before he killed him; but this time, he flings his lightsabre into the sea instead of repeating the patricide.

Returning to the Resistance base, Finn and Poe find Leia dead and are elevated to co-generals in her stead. Taking Zorii’s earlier advice, Poe sends the newly-arrived Lando to help recruit allies from ordinary people who want to fight back and has R2 restore a backup of C3P0’s memories, while Rey flies to Luke’s old home on the Isle of Porgs. (I know that’s not its real name in canon, but come on. It’s the Isle of Porgs.) There, she burns Kylo’s ship and, newly terrified of her Palpatine heritage, pledges to retreat from the world so as not to be a danger to it, as he did. But when she tries to throw away her lightsaber, Luke’s Force ghost appears and talks her out of it, telling her that he retreated out of fear, and that she has everything she needs to find Exegol: a second Sith beacon, which survives in the wreckage of Kylo’s ship (and which we, the viewers, saw him obtain at the start of the movie), and Luke’s old x-wing, risen from the sea. He also gives her Leia’s lightsaber, which he’d hidden away in life.

And so Rey sets off for Exegol, all while transmitting the coordinates of her journey back to the Resistance, where Finn and Poe promptly set up a plan to attack the Final Order fleet before it can launch. On arrival, Rey finally confronts Palpatine, who reveals not only that Snoke was his creation, but that, if she strikes him down with hate, he will live on in her and the Sith will be reborn. As she falters, Kylo shows up to help her. Palpatine proclaims them a dyad in the Force: a linked pair, the first in generations, and steals the energy of their bond to help himself physically regenerate.

As Rey lies insensate and Palpatine flings Kylo into a nearby fissure, the Resistance arrives and begins a battle with the starships overhead. It’s a deliberate callback to the end of Return of the Jedi, Rey and Kylo facing off with Palpatine in place of Luke and the barely-turned Vader. As Palptine targets the ships overhead with a massive burst of force lightning, Rey finally hears the voices of the Jedi masters she’d been striving to contact at the start of the film. They tell her that, just as Palpatine is the Sith, she is the Jedi, and with this burst of clarity and power, she uses two lightsabers – Luke’s and Leia’s –  to turn his force lightning back on him from a place of calm, annihilating him completely.

Overhead, the battle turns: Lando arrives with reinforcements just as Poe was beginning to despair, giving him time to rescue Finn and Jannah from a nearby enemy ship. But destroying Palpatine has taken all Rey’s strength. As she lies dying, Kylo crawls over to her and copies her Force healing technique to bring her back, effectively returning the lifeforce she used to save him earlier. This act comes at the cost of his own life: Rey calls him Ben, they share a kiss that feels more relieved than romantic, and then he dies, his body vanishing from his clothes as a cut to Leia’s shrouded form shows her likewise vanishing, the pair of them being accepted into the force.

Both the First and Final Orders are destroyed; as per Return of the Jedi, celebration is seen across the galaxy, with all the heroes celebrating together. The film ends with Rey returning to Tatooine, to the long-abandoned Skywalker homestead. There, she buries both Luke and Leia’s lightsabers in the sand. When a passing stranger walks by and asks her name – her full name, not just Rey – she sees the Force ghosts of Luke and Leia standing nearby, and gives her name as Rey Skywalker. Cue the John Williams as she stands against the iconic backdrop of Tatooine’s two suns, and roll credits.

With that out of the way, I’d like to return to the two main criticisms I’ve seen levelled at the film beyond the complaint of excessive nostalgia: firstly, that Rian Johnson’s work is being ignored and disrespected by J.J. Abrams; and secondly, that Kylo Ren’s character is being fundamentally mistreated.

When I first reviewed The Last Jedi, I disliked the idea that Kylo was being set up as a romantic partner for Rey, but was interested in their being contrasted as dark and light sides of the Force who nonetheless shared a bond. What I didn’t want was for Kylo to be woobified into being forgiven for his (many, murderous, genocidal) crimes, such that his manipulative, terrible treatment of Rey could be retroactively cast as romantic. What I disliked most about TLJ – and this a hill I will die on – is how it mangled Poe’s characterisation, did a gross disservice to Holdo in the process, and ended up with a soggy middle based on a series of idiot plot decisions. As such, I would argue, TROS takes the very strongest aspects of Johnson’s contribution to the trilogy and builds on them while ignoring the weakest. My only complaint is that Rose Tico ends up as a minor background character, but given that TROS gives us two new female characters in Zorii and Jannah – the latter of whom is also a woman of colour – it’s a less egregious failing than I’d feared it would be, and does nothing to walk back how important Rose was in the previous film.

As for Kylo Ren, I’m genuinely baffled by the claim that TROS does him a disservice. His arc throughout the trilogy has been one of a tormented, tortured character – by turns explosive, monstrous, wounded, betrayed and nihilistic – who has nonetheless committed such horrific crimes on such a grand scale that blanket redemption was never on the cards. I reiterate again the difference between Steven Universe, which is intended primarily for young children, and Star Wars, which is meant to appeal to both kids and adults. In SU, the Diamonds are framed foremost as abusive members of a toxic, dysfunctional family, with their hierarchical empire used as both a metaphor and framing device for discussing these themes; in the new Star Wars trilogy, however, this emphasis is reversed, with Kylo Ren, the Sith and the First Order framed foremost as agents of evil and empire, with their familial connections to the heroes used to mirror the tragedy of their actions on a smaller, more intimate scale.

When Vader is redeemed at the end of Return of the Jedi, it comes at the cost of his death and his transition into a Force ghost. That Kylo is given a parallel end feels only fitting, given that the new trilogy has cast him as Vader’s echo. No, we don’t get a funeral scene like Vader did, but why would we? There’s no body left to burn or carry away, and nobody alive but Rey who either could or should plausibly mourn him. His parents and uncle are dead – one by his own hand – and of the main trio, he tortured Poe and saw Finn’s childhood stolen. For me, it was enough that we saw our heroes weep at the finale: their separate griefs and joys didn’t need individual reiteration, because we’d already seen them happen.

If you were anticipating Rey and Kylo getting a happily ever after or had hugely invested in Kylo as a character needing redemption, then I can understand why you’d feel hurt and dissatisfied by the ending of TROS, but at the same time – and I don’t know how else to put this – we’re talking about Star Wars canon here, not fanon. Possibly this might change in the future – and I’d be happy if it did – but right now, there are, if not exactly rules, then very firm conventions that go hand in hand with being a global property owned by the same soulless mega-corporation that makes the Avengers movies, and one of those is that even sympathetic villains don’t get the girl, even if they do get a one-time Kiss of Redemption prior to dying. (Relatedly: I’m right there with Oscar Isaac lamenting the fact that Finn and Poe didn’t end up as a couple, and I was sure as hell eager for it to happen after I first watched TFA, but I’m not angry-shocked-betrayed that it didn’t happen, because I never expected it to. That’s how it goes right now.)

More to the point, and without wanting to make everything about, you know [gestures broadly at 2019] politics, if The Rise of Skywalker had ended with the sad genocidal white dude who’d tried to for the better part of three films to gaslight Rey into turning evil so they could be sexy Sith together getting not only the girl, but a parade and a big shiny future without anyone holding him accountable for, you know, destroying multiple planets, that would not, I feel, be the best of looks, either presently or historically. I’m cool with Rey giving him a kiss in the moment because look, we survived and won and you’re not evil anymore, and also you just brought me back from the dead basically!, but Kylo Ren is very much worse than, say, Zuko from Avatar.

As for the structure and overall plot, I really have no issues. Yes, it’s a bit handwavium as to how Kylo gets back to Exegol and why the Final Order fleet couldn’t just launch itself, but no more egregiously so than anything else in any other Star Wars movie you’d care to name. And in any case, I’m inclined to forgive its failings because of what it gave me that The Last Jedi manifestly didn’t: plenty of scenes between Finn, Poe and Rey that not only got their characterisation right, but which actually made them feel like friends, striking all the right notes between humour, tension and pathos. A great deal of my love of Star Wars is founded on the pithy one-liners and snappy bicker-bantering that overlay genuine affection, and I was happy to have it back.

The tragedy of Carrie Fisher’s death means that Leia’s role in the film was necessarily minimal, but what there is of it is, I think, respectfully done. Small moments like Rey calling her “master” and the addition of her lightsaber feel poignant and meaningful, and beyond that, I love how many women are in the film. Though Maz, Rose and Lieutenant Connix are all background characters, when put together with Leia, Jannah, Zorii and, most importantly, Rey – who gets some spectacularly badass fight scenes and great emotional moments both – it feels like the most female-oriented film of any in the Star Wars universe. Finn and Poe’s relationship with each other and with Rey is shown with care as well as laughter, and in terms of ending on a hopeful note, there’s a brief, yet powerful moment of salience in the final battle, when Lando’s new allies shows up and a First Order stooge says in confusion, “That’s not a navy. It’s just… people.” Maybe it’s just me, but that one line felt more encouraging to me – and more relevant – than Kylo’s redemption ever could.

In The Last Jedi, Poe racked up a collateral body count by putting the mission – or rather, his view of the mission – ahead of individual lives, deaths for which he was never truly held accountable by the narrative and which we never saw him mourn. But in The Rise of Skywalker, Poe gladly risks the mission and his life to save Chewie once they realise he’s still alive – a portrayal much more in keeping with the character we first met in The Force Awakens. If asked to choose, I know which iteration of him I prefer, and if that counts as disrespecting Rian Johnson, then so be it.

While a lot of people currently appear to dislike The Rise of Skywalker, my feeling is that it’s going to end up ageing well, as I suspect that opinions might change once it’s viewed from a less heated distance. Yes, there’s a great deal of MacGuffin chasing, but that’s true of every other film in the trilogy – and in Star Wars generally, for that matter. (And at least in TROS, the logic behind each successive fetch-quest is internally consistent and hangs together with what both the audience and the characters know, as opposed to “we’ve secretly come to the Evil Space Casino to hire a Hacker Guy because our leader won’t talk to us Because Reasons, but security caught us instantly, so now we’re going to trust this one Extremely Sketchy Dude we just met in jail with the future of the Resistance.”)

All in all, the pacing is fast, the visuals are stunning, the main trio kicks ass and it feels like a proper Star Wars movie; which is to say, a Star Wars movie that reminds me of all the things I like about other Star Wars movies – and also, my kid loved it. What else can you ask for?

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Warning: total spoilers for The Last Jedi.

After weeks of frantically speed-scrolling through my various social media feeds when anything that looked like a Star Wars spoiler appeared, I’ve finally managed to get out and see The Last Jedi. Despite my diligence, I didn’t go in completely unspoiled: I knew the general shape of the fan discourse surrounding the characterisation, which means I had some context cues and a smatter of details to work with, but not the major plot points. Now that I’ve seen the movie, however, I’m electing to write my own review before catching up on other people’s opinions, so if I touch on something that’s already been dissected at length without referencing said discussion, that’s why.

In broad-brush strokes, I enjoyed The Last Jedi. Assessing it purely on its own merits, there was a lot it did right: the cinematography, special effects and original creature creation were wonderful, I loved Rose Tico, and there was a pleasing balance of drama, emotion and humour, the requisite scenery-chewing deftly subverted by moments of self-aware comedy, especially in the opening exchange between Hux and Poe Dameron. Mostly, it was solid.

Mostly.

But.

The thing is, no Star Wars film is an island. The Last Jedi is the second film in a trilogy of trilogies, one whose core trio were clearly and intentionally mapped to the heroes of the (original by creation-date, second by internal chronology) series in The Force Awakens: Finn to Han, Rey to Luke and Poe to Leia. This being so, it was easy to mark the other narrative similarities between The Force Awakens and A New Hope – most notably, the parallels between the Death Star and Starkiller Base, both of which were destroyed in the respective finales, but not before their destructive power was unleashed. Which makes comparing The Last Jedi to The Empire Strikes Back not only reasonable, but – I would argue – necessary, if only to determine whether the decision to parallel the new with the old has continued beyond the first film.

The short answer to that is: yes, The Last Jedi is structurally akin to Empire, but not always to useful effect. The long answer, however, is rather more complex.

As a writer, there’s nothing that makes me crave a metaphorical red pen quite like a story where, for whatever reason, I can see the authorial handwave of Because Reasons gumming up the mechanics. If The Last Jedi was an original film, detached from the Star Wars universe, I’d be able to tell you that the problem stems from the poorly-forced sexist clash between Poe and Holdo, and that would be that. But because The Last Jedi has borrowed certain key narrative structures from Empire, there’s a clear template against which to measure its narrative choices, which makes it easier to infer the hows and whys of various changers.

A quick refresher in Star Wars, for those who haven’t watched the original trilogy lately. The Empire Strikes back begins with the Rebel forces being ousted from Hoth in a massive battle. After fleeing the planet, Luke goes to Degobah to train with Master Yoda, while Han and Leia spend some time dealing with a broken Millennium Falcon and the pursuit of Boba Fett, kissing and bickering and generally cementing their chemistry before finally going to track down Han’s old buddy, Lando Calrissian, in Cloud City. Frustrated with Yoda, Luke has a premonition of danger and goes to rescue his friends, as Lando, who’s been strong-armed by Darth Vader, hands Han and Leia over to the Empire. Han is frozen in carbonite after Leia declares her love for him, Luke loses a hand and learns Vader is his father, and the film ends with the pair them, plus Lando, escaping as they resolve to rescue Han.

By comparison, The Last Jedi follows a fairly similar arc. The film opens with the Rebellion being ousted from its base and pursued in a space battle. Rey attempts to persuade Luke to help her, while Poe and Finn are left dealing with a fleet that’s low on fuel as they try to outrun Hux and the First Order. As Leia lies injured, Poe clashes with Holdo over command, which results in him sending Finn and Rose on a secret mission to find a codebreaker who can help sabotage the First Order’s ship. Unable to the codebreaker, Rose and Finn return instead with DJ, a stranger who claims he can help them, but who ends up betraying them to the First Order. Unaware of this, Poe mounts a short-lived mutiny against Holdo. Meanwhile, frustrated with Luke and experiencing an odd connection to Kylo Ren, Rey goes to try and turn him to back to the light, only to find that Snoke was the source of their connection. Kylo kills Snoke and his guards with Rey’s help, reveals the truth about her lost parents, then betrays her in turn. In the final battle, Rose is injured and declares her feelings for Finn, and the film ends with the rebellion united but still fleeing.

Based on this, it seems clear that The Last Jedi is intended to parallel The Empire Strikes Back, both structurally and thematically. All the same elements are in play, albeit recontextualised by their place in a new story; but where Empire is a tight, sleek film, The Last Jedi is middle-heavy. The major difference between the two is Poe’s tension-and-mutiny arc, which doesn’t map to anything in Empire.

And this is the part where things get prickly. As stated, I really love Rose Tico, not only because she’s a brilliant, engaging character superbly acted by Kelly Marie Tran, but because she represents another crucial foray into diverse representation, both in Star Wars and on the big screen generally. There’s a lot to recommend Vice-Admiral Holdo, too, especially her touching final scene with Leia: I still want to know more about their relationship. I am not for a moment saying that either character – that either woman – doesn’t belong in the film, or in Star Wars, or that their roles were miscast or badly acted or anything like that. But there is, I suspect, a truly maddening reason why they were paired onscreen with Finn and Poe, and that this logic in turn adversely affected both the deeper plot implications and the film’s overall structure.

Given how closely The Last Jedi parallels the main arc of Empire, it’s narratively incongruous that, rather than Finn and Poe heading out to find the codebreaker together, the pair of them are instead split up, decreasing their screen-time while extending the length of the film. But as was firmly established in The Force Awakens, Finn and Poe map to Han and Leia – which is to say, to a canonical straight couple. Even without the phenomenal on-screen chemistry between John Boyega and Oscar Isaac, that parallel is clear in the writing; and in Empire, Han and Leia’s time alone is what catalyses their on-screen romance.

That being so, I find it impossible to believe that Finn and Poe were split up and paired with new female characters for anything other than a clumsy, godawful attempt to No Homo the narrative. Rose and Finn’s scenes are delightful, and their actors, too, have chemistry, but every time we cut back to Poe and Holdo, the story flounders. Everything that happens during Finn’s absence is demonstrably redundant: not only does it fail to move the plot forward, but in trying to justify the time-split, writer/director Rian Johnson has foisted a truly terrible mini-arc on Poe Dameron.

Specifically: after Leia is incapacitated, Holdo is given command of the rebellion. Seeing Holdo for the first time, Poe looks startled and states that she’s not what he was expecting. When Poe, recently demoted by Leia for ignoring orders, asks Holdo what her plan is, Holdo dismisses him as a hot-headed “flyboy” who isn’t what they need right now. Not only doesn’t she tell him where they’re headed, she apparently doesn’t tell anyone else, either. This failure to communicate her plan to her people is, firstly, why Finn feels he has to light out on his own, which is how he meets Rose, and is secondly why, once Finn and Rose come up with a plan to infiltrate the First Order, Poe decides that they can’t risk involving Holdo.

As we eventually learn, Holdo does have a plan – and a good one. There is literally no reason why, given the steadily escalating fear and anxiety of her crew, who are watching their companion ships get picked off one by one, she doesn’t share the full details with the rebellion. Instead, she leaves it to Poe to figure out that she’s refuelling the transport ships to evacuate – and when he panics, pointing out (correctly) that the transports are neither shielded nor armed, she likewise doesn’t elaborate on the fact that they’ll have a cloaking device to shield them and a destination close by, one where they can land and take shelter while the main ship acts as a decoy.

Because of Holdo’s decision to withhold this information, Poe thinks that she’s given up and is leading them blithely to their deaths, and so stages a mutiny – one in which he’s supported by a number of other, equally worried crewmembers. Happily, Leia recovers from her injuries in time to reclaim control, and only then does she let Poe in on Holdo’s plan. Poe suffers no further consequences for his actions, and even when they talk privately, both Holdo and Leia seem more amused by his mutiny than angry at what he’s done, rendering the whole arc moot. Except, of course, for the fact that Finn and Rose, on their mission from Poe, bring DJ into the mix – and DJ, who knows about the cloaking device, betrays this secret to the First Order, who promptly open fire on the transport ships.

Hundreds of rebellion soldiers die because Poe and Holdo so disliked each other on sight that neither one trusted the other with vital information – and for the rest of the film, this is never addressed. But of course, Johnson can’t address it, not even to hang a fucking lampshade on it, because the entire scenario is manufactured as a way to justify Poe’s protagonist-level screentime while Finn is away – which is also why, contextually, their antagonism doesn’t even make sense. The film begins with the premise that the entire rebellion, who’ve just been flushed out of their single remaining base, is on the run together – so why the fuck haven’t Poe and Holdo met before now? Especially as both are shown to have a close, personal relationship with Leia, it rings utterly false that they’d not only be in the dark about one another, but start out instantly on the wrong foot.

As such, the coding around Poe’s surprise at Holdo – that she’s not what he expected – is a lazy misstep. Traditionally, when hotshot male characters say this about a new female commander, it’s a sexist dogwhistle: oh, I didn’t know we’d be getting a woman. But why would Poe Dameron, son of Shara Bey and devotee of General Leia Organa, be surprised by Holdo’s gender? He wouldn’t, is the answer. Flatly, canonically, he wouldn’t. But if there’s some other aspect of Holdo that’s meant to ping as unusual besides her being female, it’s not obvious. It would’ve made far more sense to write the two as having a pre-existing antagonistic relationship for whatever reason: instead, we get Poe cast as an impatient, know-it-all James Bond to Holdo as Judi Dench’s M, who doesn’t have time for his nonsense when they first meet, but who ends up forgiving it anyway.

It’s like Rian Johnson looked at the Poe Dameron of The Force Awakens – a character universally beloved for being vulnerable, funny, charming, honest, loyal and openly affectionate – and decided, Hey, that guy’s an awesome pilot, which means he’s a COOL GUY, and COOL GUYS don’t play by the RULES, man, especially if it means listening to WOMEN – they just A-Team that shit in secret and to HELL with the bodycount! And anyway he’s HOT, so he’s ALWAYS forgiven.

Dear Rian Johnson, if you’re reading this: I like a lot of what you did with this film, but FUCK YOU FOREVER for making Poe Dameron the kind of guy who gets a bunch of his friends killed, then has a mutiny, then indirectly gets even MORE people killed, and never shows any grief about or cognisance of his actions, all because you wanted to avoid fuelling a homoerotic parallel that you openly queerbaited in promo but never intended to fulfil anyway. GIVE US OUR GODDAMN GAYS IN SPACE, YOU COWARD.

Anyway. 

The point being, the entire plot of The Last Jedi suffers because of a single, seemingly homophobic decision – unnecessarily splitting up Poe and Finn to avoid further Han/Leia comparisons – and the knock-on consequences thereof. Which is where I bring out my metaphorical Red Pen of Plot-Fixing and say, here is what should’ve happened. Namely: Poe and Holdo should’ve had a pre-existing antagonistic relationship, but one that didn’t prevent them from sharing information like grown-ups. Rather than Rose being part of the rebellion, she should’ve been the codebreaker they were sent to retrieve on Holdo’s orders (because two plans are better than one, and why not try both gambits?). This voids the need for DJ, who barely appears before disappearing again, so that Rose-as-codebreaker retains her status as an important, well-fleshed character who interacts with both Finn and Poe, and whose introduction works to map her onto Lando Calrissian. If you really must keep DJ because Benicio del Toro and thematic betrayal parallels (more of which shortly), he can be the dubious guy with First Order secrets that Rose has been trying to recruit for the rebellion, which explains why she’s with him on the casino planet in the first place, and how he’s so easily able to cut a deal with Phasma. BOOM! You’ve just saved a solid 20 minutes of redundant screen-time without degrading Poe’s character or undermining Holdo’s for no good reason and without dumb sexism creeping in. You’re welcome. 

(Also. ALSO. Not to take away from how lovely that Finn/Rose kiss was, but let’s just take a moment to peek into the other timeline, the one where Stormpilot gets to go canon the same way Han and Leia did in Empire. Let’s imagine Finn and Poe bickering in the casino, getting all rumpled during the escape while Rose and BB8 exchange Meaningful Looks and scathing droid-beeps about the two of them. Let’s imagine, during that final battle on Krait, that it’s Poe, not Rose, who stays behind to forcibly knock Finn out of that self-sacrificing dive towards the enemy gun; Poe who grabs Finn and kisses him because they should fight for what they love, not against what they hate, before passing out injured, thus completing the parallel of Han going into carbonite after kissing Leia. Let us gaze upon that world, that glorious thematic act of completion, subversion and queer recontextualisation, and then quietly wish a pox on everything in our cruddy Darkest Timeline that conspired to make it unhappen.)

And now, with all that out of the way, let’s address the Rey/Kylo issue.

As I said at the outset of this piece, I tried my best to avoid spoilers before watching the film, but no matter how quickly I scrolled through feeds or closed my tabs, I still knew that a lot of people had come away rejoicing in the idea that Rey and Kylo were being set up romantically, while an equal number had not.

And I just. Look. While I’m not going to stand here and tell people what to ship or on what basis, both generally and at this historical moment in particular, I find myself with an intense personal dislike of narratives, canonical or otherwise, which take it upon themselves to woobify Nazis, neo-Nazis, or the clearly signposted fictional counterparts thereof, into which category Kylo Ren and the whole First Order falls squarely. I don’t care about how sad he feels that he killed his dad: he still fucking killed his dad, and that’s before you account for the fact that he demonstrably doesn’t give a shit about committing genocide. In the immortal words of Brooklyn Nine Nine’s Jake Peralta: cool motive, still murder. Except for how the motive isn’t actually cool at all, because, you know, actual literal genocide.

From my viewing of the film, I honestly can’t tell if Rian Johnson wants us to think of Kylo as a genuinely sympathetic, redeemable figure, or if he’s just trying to improve on the jarring, horrible botch the prequels made of Anakin’s trip to the Dark Side by showing us his complexity without negating his monstrousness. Or, well: let me rephrase that. In terms of the actual script and what takes place, I’d argue that, even if Kylo is given a final shot at redemption in Episode IX, he’s still not being primed as Rey’s love interest. It’s just that the question of how much Johnson wants us to care about Kylo as a person, regardless of anything that happens with Rey, is a different question, for all that the two are easily conflated.

Yes, Rey and Kylo touched hands. They did! And Kylo killed Snoke instead of Rey! This is what we might call a low fucking bar for romantic compatibility, but hey: it’s not like white dudes in cinema are ever really called upon to jump anything higher. More salient in terms of the Star Wars universe is the fact that, after they defeat Snoke’s guards, Kylo’s appeal to Rey to join him and rule the galaxy together is an almost word-for-word callback to the offer Anakin makes Padme in Revenge of the Sith, right before he force-chokes her into unconsciousness, leaves her pregnant ass for dead and turns into Darth Vader. The fact that Anakin and Padme are also sold as a tragic romance prior to this moment is not, I would contend, the salient hook on which to hang the hopes of canon Reylo. Aside from anything else, Rey is mapped to Luke and Kylo, very clearly, to Darth Vader: with clear precedent, Rey’s desire to turn Kylo back from the Dark Side can be heartfelt without being romantic.

(Also, I mean. The connection that Rey and Kylo had was deliberately forged by Snoke to exploit their weaknesses, which is why they each had a vision of converting the other. Though we’re given a hint that the link remains in the final scenes, it ends with Rey shutting the door – both literally and figuratively – in Kylo’s face. I’m hard-pressed to view that as destiny.)

As for Kylo himself, his characterisation reads to me as deliberate, selfish nihilism. Kylo is conflicted over his murder of Han Solo because it impacts him, but at no point does he hesitate to reign down destruction and death on strangers. His desire to turn Rey to the Dark Side is likewise covetous, possessive: she is powerful, and he wants a powerful companion in the Force, but one who, by virtue of being his apprentice, will be subordinate to him – not a judgemental superior, as Snoke was. This is reflected in the way DJ’s betrayal of Rose and Finn is paralleled with Kylo’s decision to first help Rey when it benefits him, and then to turn on her afterwards. Like DJ, Kylo is mercenary in his allegiances, helping whoever helps him in the moment, then discarding them when the relationship is no longer useful.

The death of Snoke itself, however, is rather anticlimactic. He was a looming, distant figure in The Force Awakens, and while there’s an established tradition of Star Wars villains showing up and looking cool without their origins ever being satisfactorily explained at the time, this is vastly more annoying in Snoke’s case. Unlike General Greivous, Darth Maul or Boba Fett, Snoke isn’t just the random antagonist of a single film, plucked from obscurity to thwart the heroes: he’s the reason Ben Solo turned to the Dark Side and become Kylo Ren. Presumably, the hows and whys of Snoke manipulating the young Ben could still come out in Episode IX, but if it never gets addressed onscreen, I’m going to be deeply irritated.

On a more positive note, I enjoyed what the film did with Luke’s arc, for all that it’s not what I’d expected. To me, one of the most fascinating arguments in Star Wars discourse is the question of the Jedi, their morality, and how it all set Anakin up for failure. The Jedi ideology put forth in the prequels is the kind of thing that sounds superficially deep and meaningful, but which looks increasingly toxic the more closely it’s examined. The ban on children, marriage and close relationships outside the Order; the extreme youth of those taken for training combined with a forcible, protracted separation from their families; the idea that fear necessarily leads to anger, and so on. Luke describing the Force to Rey as something that existed beyond the Jedi, an innate aspect of the world, felt both refreshing and intuitively right, even given the necessity of respecting the balance between light and dark. The appearance of force-ghost Yoda felt a little pat, as did his ability to call lightning, but he still had one of my favourite lines in the whole film, delivered in support of Luke’s choice to step away from the Jedi teachings: as masters, we become the thing they surpass.

There were other, smaller niggles throughout than my issues with Poe and the no-homo restructuring of the plot: the handwaving of distances between Luke’s world and the main fight in a story that hinged on fuel supply; the sudden appearance of trenches and tunnels into the caves on Krait when everyone was meant to be trapped inside; the random appearance of an Evil Ball Droid to play momentary nemesis to BB8; the on-the-nose decision to show a random white slave boy, holding a broom he Force-summoned like a lightsaber, at the very end of the film. And as wonderful as it was to see Billie Lourd on screen, the knowledge that Carrie Fisher will be absent from Episode IX – the film that was meant to have been her movie, just as Harrison Ford had the The Force Awakens and Mark Hamill had The Last Jedi – rendered both her presence and her mother’s all the more bittersweet.

 

Ultimately, The Last Jedi is a successful-but-frustrating mess, which is kind of how you know it’s a Star Wars movie. I’ll be forever angry at the carelessness with which Rian Johnson treated Poe Dameron and Vice-Admiral Holdo, but even if I could’ve wished for a different plot structure, I’m always going to stan hard for Rose Tico, who was warm and kind and intelligent and who stole every scene she was in. LESS REN, MORE ROSE – that’s my new motto.

Here’s hoping that Episode IX delivers.