Bill Moyers, in what I remember as an interview with George Lucas on the Mythology of Star Wars, pointed out that part of what made George Lucas' modern myth great was that it "resolved our moral ambiguities". The good guys were the good guys, and the bad guys were the bad guys.
One cannot help but to wonder, therefore: is The Last Jedi demoralizing? To be honest: I found J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens to be sort of laughable and inauthentic, and I was all ready disappointed by the death of the hitherto immortal Han Solo. (Though apparently this was the way that Harrison Ford had wanted his character to go in Return of the Jedi.) But then my sister told me about how the recent films were modeled after the sort of story arc that "worked" for the original trilogy. And though she had not seen the originals, I could not help but to believe her. I remembered Mother watching Episode IV for the first time last year, and how for long thereafter she would recount her boredom at watching C3PO and R2-D2 walking through miles of desert for hours. So I must have wondered if perhaps I would have had the same experience watching Star Wars for the first time had I been around in the nineteen-eighties, save for my tendency to compare the recent movies to the originals.
This generous sentiment lingers to mitigate my feelings of existential angst and social anomie as I sit down (effectively, BREAKING down) to vent my aches and pains about The Last Jedi. At least it is endearing to be able to tell my sister about The Empire Strikes Back and how it, too, was what Dante from Clerks called a "downer ending", reflecting on my own feelings upon first seeing it and wondering what moviegoers would have felt upon discovery of Darth Vader being Luke's Dark Father.
What disappointed me this time around, and what I found demoralizing, was that the film seemed intent upon dissolving and deconstructing the Heroic Individual. This is a pardonable offense if it is interpreted to mirror the existential angst that Luke Skywalker felt in discovering that his Father was one of the most ruthless dictators in the entire Galaxy. However, taken by itself it feels tragic. The process begins with an older Luke who has turned away from the ways of the Jedi, predictably, after having realized that his own good intent could produce disastrous consequences. The heroine of the series consoles him, insisting that the failure was not Luke's own but rather that of his pupil, Kylo Ren. By asserting the Power of Intent, Rey asserts likewise the fact that we cannot control the CONSEQUENCES of our actions, and as such is the case we are not responsible for them. But by then it is too late: she has all ready been tricked by Kylo Ren's master, the diabolical Sith Lord Snoke. When she finally catches up to Kylo, intent on converting him to the Good Side of the Force, and in so doing bringing to life what appears to be the dying legacy of Luke, the jaded cynic who has turned on the ideal of heroism and honour, (as have an alarming number of contemporary viewers) she is relieved to find that Kylo is willing to betray his own Dark Master. But Kylo's fundamental ethos has not changed since when Rey communicated with him telepathically under Snoke's secret supervision. Kylo remains an aggressor to Rey, who refuses to join him as Empress of the Galaxy. The tragedy of Anakin and Padme is repeated, but in place of a classic tragedy is a post-modern deconstruction of the Internal Battle of Good and Evil. The first two Star Wars trilogies dealt primarily with this INTERNAL, RELIGIOUS conflict betwixt what is described in Judeo-Christian religion as the Yetzer Hatov and the Yetzer Hara: The Godly Impulse and the Wayward Impulse. The audience cheers for Kylo Ren when he seems to have turned against Snoke's predictions, using his Master's trust against him. But this seemingly beneficent treachery, an homage to Vader's betrayal of Palpatine in Return of the Jedi, only portends a new boss more grievous than the old boss. Kylo proceeds to betray the trust of the one person that he cares about: Rey. Rey stakes everything that she believes in in one last Hope outside of herself: that Kylo Ren can win an Internal Victory that will then serve the purposes of her Political Party. But when Kylo reveals that he was simply trying to attain a state of Absolute Independence and Power, this Hope is crushed, and Rey is left up to her own devices again.
The real tragedy for me was Po's power struggle with Leia Organa. Po opens the film with a feat of daring that defies even the authority of his own allies. As Albus Dumbledore said: it takes bravery to stand up to one's enemies, but the mark of true courage is to stand up to one's friends. Po is Chaotic Good, a reminder that what the Resistance is RESISTING is not just some out-group but rather the very Hegemony that they must be careful not to become (a carefulness in principle that can only be attained by carelessness at times in action). Po is the Individual who is living proof that the Resistance is superior to the First Order, not because it says so, but because its Cultural Superiority is established through the provisions it makes for the INDIVIDUAL, who is, after all, the Hero of the Hero's Quest. George Lucas' mentor Joseph Campbell could not stress enough that the Adventure of the Hero was an INDIVIDUAL QUEST, and in dialogue with Bill Moyers Joseph insisted that the ideal was to strike a Balance between Self and Other. This is mirrored in Lucas' notion of restoring Balance to the Force. This is all so why scholars who identify with Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy (one of whom I shall cite here anonymously, though I will point out that she is a woman, and that his character is not exclusively appealing to men as a role model) celebrate the fact that he finds his OWN WAY, independent of the warnings of Master Yoda nor of the temptations of Lord Vader.
Po's victory is a spiritual one. Star Wars was all ways intended to celebrate the Individual Conscience and to affirm the Superiority of the Human Heart to an impersonal system that governs a narrow-minded and mechanical intellect. Every private victory is mirrored in a public success, so the war is only a metaphor for one's own inner struggle for Peace and Balance. So why is it that viewers, my sister included, view Po's decision to disobey orders as a mistake? The consequences do not matter; he did what he HAD TO DO, in his unique position, from his informed point of view, deontologically and logically. His courage was a success in terms of Heart, but not in terms of statistics and probabilities*; its consequence, amidst various casualties that Po regards as not only necessary but noble, is that the First Order is able to track the Resistance Ship through Light Speed, a technological development that encroaches on Po's common sense because it is unprecedented and theoretically impossible. If Leia Organa had retained her heroic instincts, she would have rewarded Po for doing as her brother would have, as Luke had turned off his targeting computer in the first Star Wars film and won the hearts of generations by eye-balling the shot that was the fatal blow to the Death Star.
*"Never tell me the odds!!" quoth famously Han Solo. Thankfully Po still retains some of that spunk in dealing with C3-Po towards the end of the film, suggesting Hope for even (someone like) ME.
Po is not rewarded. He is demoted, and in the wake of a tragic surprise attack by the First Order he is put under the charge of a diplomat, who all so happens to be a woman. This is reflected in her military strategy; unlike Rey, who is a true Individualist in her uncompromising(ly) tomboyish nature, Leia's appointed official reflects every thing that Leia retains: tact at the expense of action and civility instead of courage in the face of Evil. She is the very embodiment of the Libran virtues as opposed to the Arian virtues that both Po and Rey exhibited in the first film of the New Trilogy and for which they are punished in this most recent installment. There is a certain vanity to her dismissal of Po, and whilst it seems endearing, charming, and relatable, it evidences this tragic fact: that Leia Organa, the archetypal fighting heroine, has become a bureaucrat. Even when the woman that she has appointed sacrifices her own life, it feels more like an act of narcissistic martyrdom than an act of relatable and egalitarian heroism*. Po's Bane is a sort of deus ex machina by virtue of which Leia is able to survive (even as her actress, the legendary Carrie Fisher, dies) and yet all that she represents now may be enthroned in vainglorious self-destruction.
*Even my beloved sister, who is all so a Libra, regarded this character whose name escapes me as unimportant. So I guess it's good the character's dead now. And I shall never apologize, on my Authority as the Viewer, for forgetting her name. We forget characters because they suck. Apologizing for that is like reprimanding your fellow diners for not tipping at a restaurant, even when all present are themselves employees who work in food service. It is like saying that servers must stick together instead of celebrating their time off as customers, FOR WHOM the Service exists in the first place.
Po redeems himself when he dispossesses his superiors of their treasonous authority. But when Leia comes to save him, it is ostensibly from himself. He is told that there was a Plan at work here of which he had had no knowledge, as though his heroism in the past has not earned him the Right to Know. He is then expected, for the good of his own cause, to sit still and let his superiors work out what needs to be worked out. But then the Plan is faced with imminent failure as the result of a covert operation that Po had set into play without formal permission. Again, the force of Chaotic Good fails from a consequentialist perspective despite all its nobility from a deontological and spiritual perspective. Fin and his new Asian girlfriend fail to locate a code-breaker that could do what Star Wars was all ways meant to do: to sabotage the Enemy from the INSIDE*. Instead, they are broken out of prison by an amoral con artist portrayed by Benicio del Toro, whose amorality is NOT consummated in an act of heroism (as would have been the case with Han Solo) but rather by an act of BETRAYAL more chilling than what Lando did in Episode V.
*It is only in this way that the Metaphor is complete, and prior to seeing the film I would rave over the fact that every preceding Star Wars film used the metaphor of INFILTRATION: Bringing down Power from Within the System. It is in this way too that I have been able to justify my involvement in the evils of Society, including the Internet, with the intent of redeeming it from those same evils. This principle was all so what Campbell's friend Alan Watts, the Zen Scholar, called his philosophy of Judo.
Po is made to look like the TRUE traitor when he is told that the internal condition of "feeling like a hero" is somehow DIFFERENT from doing one's social duty of "protecting the light". And at this point the film ceases to be simple and heartfelt. It becomes complicated and intellectual for all except for those audiences for whom conformity to a social order has become second nature. The Hero is stripped of his Title, and it is not long before we see again (in fact, in the very next scene) the First Order's most laughable bureaucrat, whom Po had mocked directly and had nicknamed "Hugs" at the tstart of the film. At first a classic counterpoint to the Forces of Goodness, Hugs is now a reflection of what they have become. Po has become Hugs, told that his Innermost Feelings do not really matter and that he is only of value insofar as he complies with authority. He is not strangled by Leia, but forced to endure a worse humiliation: demoralization. And so does the conscientious objector in the audience for whom the film ceases to be a metaphorical war representative of the Inner Quest and becomes instead a neo-liberal representation of War in its Actuality. The film becomes propaganda. Its message becomes collective rather than Individual. Instead of saying, as Rey does, that intent is all that matters and the Heart is the only authority in an otherwise SEEMINGLY impersonal Universe that is ACTUALLY Personal and Alive, the film seems to be saying: the Group matters. Militarism matters. We might wonder: if heroes like Po are forced into humiliation all because their plans go awry, what makes us, as the Resistance, better than the First Order? Why even bother to RESIST them in the FIRST place? Our "Order" is no better. What little Po's friends manage to achieve in liberating animals they lose by hurting people. Even Benicio del Toro's amoral character has a point when he says: do not choose a side. He is at least an ABSURD hero, even if he proves a despicable one.
In the absence of a Conscientious Reason to Fight, all that remains is the pressure to be "one of us". And that renders not only the war but the artistic representation of the war Absurd. The audience is told to accept War as a Good to the EXTENT THAT it is neither risky (except when that risk is calculated by the Powers that Be) nor needlessly painful (such as when Po's friend, who nearly succeeds in an act of spontaneous martyrdom that would have made Po's superior's suicide look like a joke, is "saved" by his Asian Lover). It is neo-liberalism. It is a fable by which complacent people can accept the facts of living in a Military State. And it is toxic to the Individual. War is stripped of all Individual Valour that might calm the conscience, but it continues to be rationalized by bureaucratic agendas and internal power struggles that will tear the Good Guys apart from the inside only if Star Wars stays true to the original format that it seems to be aiming to honour.
Po and Rey remain the only heroes who are not traitors in some fashion, and they are made to bear the burden of the REAL traitors. Was Po not betrayed when Leia kept her plans secret from him? Was Rey not betrayed by Kylo Ren? Even FIN was about to desert and by so doing to betray the Asian girl, who ends up betraying the ENTIRE RESISTANCE by saving Fin. AND SHE GETS AWAY WITH IT. She might even live to have died a martyr, for she would have died fighting not to destroy what she hates but to save whom she loves. She does not want to pay the price of one for the other, yet she gets the credit in Leia's eyes. Even Luke Skywalker dies nobly FROM A DISTANCE, tricking Kylo Ren into thinking that Luke is pulling an old Obi-Wan Kenobi trick, when Luke really does not have the guts to do so.
All Conscientious Virtue is made to look like vainglory, as though Pride even in Death were the End in and Of Itself and not simply the Reward, by virtue of which one knows that a Just World has been established. In the past, we knew that we would be rewarded by Princess Leia for our valour. She did more as a Love Object and a Damsel in Distress than she could ever do as a Commander. In Power, Leia Organa is corrupted, though subtly enough to stay in power by people who falsely believe themselves to be free. In Love, she is deified. Even as a Warrior Priestess she remains Romantic, fighting alongside Han Solo, the force of Chaotic Good. But now this hard-nosed divorcee rides out the wave of praise that her brother is too DAMNED humble to accept. And he betrays us too, for he turns his own humility into vanity by turning on the Force Itself. He KNOWS that there is more to the Force than either the Jedi or the Sith, and he ADMITS that it is vanity to think otherwise. But he STILL TURNS AWAY FROM THE FORCE, until Rey convinces him to turn back.
The effect is a downer ending: dissonance demanding reconciliation. Snoke is dead, and with him dies the promise of resolution internally. We have only to look to Rey and Po now to save us. But even if the Resistance wins, so what? The only reason that we must not stop here is because we would become savages. Luke and Han were not TRYING to become Heroes. They simply DID, and they were rewarded. Even the conscious pursuit of that reward is worth fighting for. At least one remains loyal, unlike Benicio del Toro et al. My generation of Star Wars geeks learned from Star Wars that good things would come for EVERYONE if we followed our hearts, and that would include ourselves. Han survives to marry Leia. Luke becomes a Jedi. Everyone celebrates and there's a big feast. Balance is restored both Outwardly AND Inwardly. One does not have to TRULY sacrifice one's Self; one lives forever in the Force. And what greater incentive could exist then for a man to risk his illusory Life?
Lucas' vision was a Buddhistic one. But Disney has turned us against our Buddha Nature with this most recent trilogy. It started when we found that Leia and Han had split over their son's treachery. It gets bad when that son KILLS Han Solo, bastardizing the noble fight that Luke had to wage against his OWN Father, whom Kylo reveres but only to serve his own egocentric aims. And now we are totally divorced from the Dharma and thrown into Absurdity where our only Hope is in assimilation with the very Evil that we were trying to eliminate.
The viewer who leaves this film without scruple will not plan ways to save his people. He will simply remain complacent and await the next imperative from whoever motivates him sufficiently. His pride will be in allegiance to a party engaged in a senseless conflict. He will never rise to the grandeur that Luke Skywalker found only in Solitude. Even Luke's Heroic Solitude, which had produced his ability to heal and to redeem his Dark Father, is made into a form of self-righteous hermitage. And worst of all is this: that the complacent viewer will have one more millennial reason to condemn people who seek JUSTICE as scapegoats for his own vainglory. Justice, if it is Total, is also Just to those who administer it. Han knows that; hence his character is not shy at all about accepting and even seeking rewards. But if Justice and Heroism could somehow be watered down and made to look like egoism, and if in place of the Human Heart one had to institute a Social Order, then how swiftly would we FORGET that the Hero fights not JUST for his OWN Justice, but for what is JUST for ALL, and so he fights for US as WELL. And WE DESERVE IT.
Why is this so important? To put it simply, War becomes Hell when it loses Meaning. If there is no Individual Life to save, which is in turn to save all other Individual Lives, then one fights only to participate in fighting. There are no sides, and Benicio del Toro's character is the only one who gets it. It is all determined by the highest bidder. And no one can attain a height greater than a bid. Even if you manage to crawl out and to find in Solitary Meditation that the War is POINTLESS, your voice in attempting to deliver this Truth to the Masses will be lost, over-shouted by the ongoing bidding.
But there is a way out still. And this I hope to see redeemed in the third part.
We must remember that INTENT IS ALL THAT MATTERS.
What sets Darth Vader's betrayal apart from Kylo Ren's betrayal? He did it OUT OF LOVE FOR HIS SON.
Leia lost that Love for Solo that can only be found in looking outwards at a Common Cause*. Perhaps that was why she and Solo had to split in the first place: A Mutually Broken Heart. A loss of Hope in all that they had meant to invest in their wayward son.
Now she only retains that superficial, erotic attraction to the very rogue that she condemns to humiliation. What is lost is the underlying RESPECT for the inalienable, indispensable, and inextricable ROLE that he must play.
*A Cause for which one has to be willing to take RISKS, that one might self-transcend. The contemporary Leia only PRETENDS to honour that Cause. The Fire has gone out, and she does not try to deny it towards the end of the film when she is ready to part with Hope Itself.
When Maria asked me if I liked it, I said that I did, but that I could not say that I had loved it. But before I specified that, I replied, with hesitation, that I had ENJOYED the film, and that I was still thinking about it. To be honest with you in a way I cannot all ways afford to be honest with my sister: I enjoyed the film, BUT I am still thinking about it. And the emphasis falls on "but" in place of "and", rather than "am" in place of "was". Though with equal irony I might point out that even at 4:20 A.M. I am STILL thinking about it, though we saw it starting at 7:30 P.M. of Last Year. Happy New Year's. And May the Force be With You. May the Force be With Us All, that we might not surrender our Individuality and Hearts to the Mass that is (and has all ways been) the Dark Side.
Dm.A.A.
The real tragedy for me was Po's power struggle with Leia Organa. Po opens the film with a feat of daring that defies even the authority of his own allies. As Albus Dumbledore said: it takes bravery to stand up to one's enemies, but the mark of true courage is to stand up to one's friends. Po is Chaotic Good, a reminder that what the Resistance is RESISTING is not just some out-group but rather the very Hegemony that they must be careful not to become (a carefulness in principle that can only be attained by carelessness at times in action). Po is the Individual who is living proof that the Resistance is superior to the First Order, not because it says so, but because its Cultural Superiority is established through the provisions it makes for the INDIVIDUAL, who is, after all, the Hero of the Hero's Quest. George Lucas' mentor Joseph Campbell could not stress enough that the Adventure of the Hero was an INDIVIDUAL QUEST, and in dialogue with Bill Moyers Joseph insisted that the ideal was to strike a Balance between Self and Other. This is mirrored in Lucas' notion of restoring Balance to the Force. This is all so why scholars who identify with Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy (one of whom I shall cite here anonymously, though I will point out that she is a woman, and that his character is not exclusively appealing to men as a role model) celebrate the fact that he finds his OWN WAY, independent of the warnings of Master Yoda nor of the temptations of Lord Vader.
Po's victory is a spiritual one. Star Wars was all ways intended to celebrate the Individual Conscience and to affirm the Superiority of the Human Heart to an impersonal system that governs a narrow-minded and mechanical intellect. Every private victory is mirrored in a public success, so the war is only a metaphor for one's own inner struggle for Peace and Balance. So why is it that viewers, my sister included, view Po's decision to disobey orders as a mistake? The consequences do not matter; he did what he HAD TO DO, in his unique position, from his informed point of view, deontologically and logically. His courage was a success in terms of Heart, but not in terms of statistics and probabilities*; its consequence, amidst various casualties that Po regards as not only necessary but noble, is that the First Order is able to track the Resistance Ship through Light Speed, a technological development that encroaches on Po's common sense because it is unprecedented and theoretically impossible. If Leia Organa had retained her heroic instincts, she would have rewarded Po for doing as her brother would have, as Luke had turned off his targeting computer in the first Star Wars film and won the hearts of generations by eye-balling the shot that was the fatal blow to the Death Star.
*"Never tell me the odds!!" quoth famously Han Solo. Thankfully Po still retains some of that spunk in dealing with C3-Po towards the end of the film, suggesting Hope for even (someone like) ME.
Po is not rewarded. He is demoted, and in the wake of a tragic surprise attack by the First Order he is put under the charge of a diplomat, who all so happens to be a woman. This is reflected in her military strategy; unlike Rey, who is a true Individualist in her uncompromising(ly) tomboyish nature, Leia's appointed official reflects every thing that Leia retains: tact at the expense of action and civility instead of courage in the face of Evil. She is the very embodiment of the Libran virtues as opposed to the Arian virtues that both Po and Rey exhibited in the first film of the New Trilogy and for which they are punished in this most recent installment. There is a certain vanity to her dismissal of Po, and whilst it seems endearing, charming, and relatable, it evidences this tragic fact: that Leia Organa, the archetypal fighting heroine, has become a bureaucrat. Even when the woman that she has appointed sacrifices her own life, it feels more like an act of narcissistic martyrdom than an act of relatable and egalitarian heroism*. Po's Bane is a sort of deus ex machina by virtue of which Leia is able to survive (even as her actress, the legendary Carrie Fisher, dies) and yet all that she represents now may be enthroned in vainglorious self-destruction.
*Even my beloved sister, who is all so a Libra, regarded this character whose name escapes me as unimportant. So I guess it's good the character's dead now. And I shall never apologize, on my Authority as the Viewer, for forgetting her name. We forget characters because they suck. Apologizing for that is like reprimanding your fellow diners for not tipping at a restaurant, even when all present are themselves employees who work in food service. It is like saying that servers must stick together instead of celebrating their time off as customers, FOR WHOM the Service exists in the first place.
Po redeems himself when he dispossesses his superiors of their treasonous authority. But when Leia comes to save him, it is ostensibly from himself. He is told that there was a Plan at work here of which he had had no knowledge, as though his heroism in the past has not earned him the Right to Know. He is then expected, for the good of his own cause, to sit still and let his superiors work out what needs to be worked out. But then the Plan is faced with imminent failure as the result of a covert operation that Po had set into play without formal permission. Again, the force of Chaotic Good fails from a consequentialist perspective despite all its nobility from a deontological and spiritual perspective. Fin and his new Asian girlfriend fail to locate a code-breaker that could do what Star Wars was all ways meant to do: to sabotage the Enemy from the INSIDE*. Instead, they are broken out of prison by an amoral con artist portrayed by Benicio del Toro, whose amorality is NOT consummated in an act of heroism (as would have been the case with Han Solo) but rather by an act of BETRAYAL more chilling than what Lando did in Episode V.
*It is only in this way that the Metaphor is complete, and prior to seeing the film I would rave over the fact that every preceding Star Wars film used the metaphor of INFILTRATION: Bringing down Power from Within the System. It is in this way too that I have been able to justify my involvement in the evils of Society, including the Internet, with the intent of redeeming it from those same evils. This principle was all so what Campbell's friend Alan Watts, the Zen Scholar, called his philosophy of Judo.
Po is made to look like the TRUE traitor when he is told that the internal condition of "feeling like a hero" is somehow DIFFERENT from doing one's social duty of "protecting the light". And at this point the film ceases to be simple and heartfelt. It becomes complicated and intellectual for all except for those audiences for whom conformity to a social order has become second nature. The Hero is stripped of his Title, and it is not long before we see again (in fact, in the very next scene) the First Order's most laughable bureaucrat, whom Po had mocked directly and had nicknamed "Hugs" at the tstart of the film. At first a classic counterpoint to the Forces of Goodness, Hugs is now a reflection of what they have become. Po has become Hugs, told that his Innermost Feelings do not really matter and that he is only of value insofar as he complies with authority. He is not strangled by Leia, but forced to endure a worse humiliation: demoralization. And so does the conscientious objector in the audience for whom the film ceases to be a metaphorical war representative of the Inner Quest and becomes instead a neo-liberal representation of War in its Actuality. The film becomes propaganda. Its message becomes collective rather than Individual. Instead of saying, as Rey does, that intent is all that matters and the Heart is the only authority in an otherwise SEEMINGLY impersonal Universe that is ACTUALLY Personal and Alive, the film seems to be saying: the Group matters. Militarism matters. We might wonder: if heroes like Po are forced into humiliation all because their plans go awry, what makes us, as the Resistance, better than the First Order? Why even bother to RESIST them in the FIRST place? Our "Order" is no better. What little Po's friends manage to achieve in liberating animals they lose by hurting people. Even Benicio del Toro's amoral character has a point when he says: do not choose a side. He is at least an ABSURD hero, even if he proves a despicable one.
In the absence of a Conscientious Reason to Fight, all that remains is the pressure to be "one of us". And that renders not only the war but the artistic representation of the war Absurd. The audience is told to accept War as a Good to the EXTENT THAT it is neither risky (except when that risk is calculated by the Powers that Be) nor needlessly painful (such as when Po's friend, who nearly succeeds in an act of spontaneous martyrdom that would have made Po's superior's suicide look like a joke, is "saved" by his Asian Lover). It is neo-liberalism. It is a fable by which complacent people can accept the facts of living in a Military State. And it is toxic to the Individual. War is stripped of all Individual Valour that might calm the conscience, but it continues to be rationalized by bureaucratic agendas and internal power struggles that will tear the Good Guys apart from the inside only if Star Wars stays true to the original format that it seems to be aiming to honour.
Po and Rey remain the only heroes who are not traitors in some fashion, and they are made to bear the burden of the REAL traitors. Was Po not betrayed when Leia kept her plans secret from him? Was Rey not betrayed by Kylo Ren? Even FIN was about to desert and by so doing to betray the Asian girl, who ends up betraying the ENTIRE RESISTANCE by saving Fin. AND SHE GETS AWAY WITH IT. She might even live to have died a martyr, for she would have died fighting not to destroy what she hates but to save whom she loves. She does not want to pay the price of one for the other, yet she gets the credit in Leia's eyes. Even Luke Skywalker dies nobly FROM A DISTANCE, tricking Kylo Ren into thinking that Luke is pulling an old Obi-Wan Kenobi trick, when Luke really does not have the guts to do so.
All Conscientious Virtue is made to look like vainglory, as though Pride even in Death were the End in and Of Itself and not simply the Reward, by virtue of which one knows that a Just World has been established. In the past, we knew that we would be rewarded by Princess Leia for our valour. She did more as a Love Object and a Damsel in Distress than she could ever do as a Commander. In Power, Leia Organa is corrupted, though subtly enough to stay in power by people who falsely believe themselves to be free. In Love, she is deified. Even as a Warrior Priestess she remains Romantic, fighting alongside Han Solo, the force of Chaotic Good. But now this hard-nosed divorcee rides out the wave of praise that her brother is too DAMNED humble to accept. And he betrays us too, for he turns his own humility into vanity by turning on the Force Itself. He KNOWS that there is more to the Force than either the Jedi or the Sith, and he ADMITS that it is vanity to think otherwise. But he STILL TURNS AWAY FROM THE FORCE, until Rey convinces him to turn back.
The effect is a downer ending: dissonance demanding reconciliation. Snoke is dead, and with him dies the promise of resolution internally. We have only to look to Rey and Po now to save us. But even if the Resistance wins, so what? The only reason that we must not stop here is because we would become savages. Luke and Han were not TRYING to become Heroes. They simply DID, and they were rewarded. Even the conscious pursuit of that reward is worth fighting for. At least one remains loyal, unlike Benicio del Toro et al. My generation of Star Wars geeks learned from Star Wars that good things would come for EVERYONE if we followed our hearts, and that would include ourselves. Han survives to marry Leia. Luke becomes a Jedi. Everyone celebrates and there's a big feast. Balance is restored both Outwardly AND Inwardly. One does not have to TRULY sacrifice one's Self; one lives forever in the Force. And what greater incentive could exist then for a man to risk his illusory Life?
Lucas' vision was a Buddhistic one. But Disney has turned us against our Buddha Nature with this most recent trilogy. It started when we found that Leia and Han had split over their son's treachery. It gets bad when that son KILLS Han Solo, bastardizing the noble fight that Luke had to wage against his OWN Father, whom Kylo reveres but only to serve his own egocentric aims. And now we are totally divorced from the Dharma and thrown into Absurdity where our only Hope is in assimilation with the very Evil that we were trying to eliminate.
The viewer who leaves this film without scruple will not plan ways to save his people. He will simply remain complacent and await the next imperative from whoever motivates him sufficiently. His pride will be in allegiance to a party engaged in a senseless conflict. He will never rise to the grandeur that Luke Skywalker found only in Solitude. Even Luke's Heroic Solitude, which had produced his ability to heal and to redeem his Dark Father, is made into a form of self-righteous hermitage. And worst of all is this: that the complacent viewer will have one more millennial reason to condemn people who seek JUSTICE as scapegoats for his own vainglory. Justice, if it is Total, is also Just to those who administer it. Han knows that; hence his character is not shy at all about accepting and even seeking rewards. But if Justice and Heroism could somehow be watered down and made to look like egoism, and if in place of the Human Heart one had to institute a Social Order, then how swiftly would we FORGET that the Hero fights not JUST for his OWN Justice, but for what is JUST for ALL, and so he fights for US as WELL. And WE DESERVE IT.
Why is this so important? To put it simply, War becomes Hell when it loses Meaning. If there is no Individual Life to save, which is in turn to save all other Individual Lives, then one fights only to participate in fighting. There are no sides, and Benicio del Toro's character is the only one who gets it. It is all determined by the highest bidder. And no one can attain a height greater than a bid. Even if you manage to crawl out and to find in Solitary Meditation that the War is POINTLESS, your voice in attempting to deliver this Truth to the Masses will be lost, over-shouted by the ongoing bidding.
But there is a way out still. And this I hope to see redeemed in the third part.
We must remember that INTENT IS ALL THAT MATTERS.
What sets Darth Vader's betrayal apart from Kylo Ren's betrayal? He did it OUT OF LOVE FOR HIS SON.
Leia lost that Love for Solo that can only be found in looking outwards at a Common Cause*. Perhaps that was why she and Solo had to split in the first place: A Mutually Broken Heart. A loss of Hope in all that they had meant to invest in their wayward son.
Now she only retains that superficial, erotic attraction to the very rogue that she condemns to humiliation. What is lost is the underlying RESPECT for the inalienable, indispensable, and inextricable ROLE that he must play.
*A Cause for which one has to be willing to take RISKS, that one might self-transcend. The contemporary Leia only PRETENDS to honour that Cause. The Fire has gone out, and she does not try to deny it towards the end of the film when she is ready to part with Hope Itself.
When Maria asked me if I liked it, I said that I did, but that I could not say that I had loved it. But before I specified that, I replied, with hesitation, that I had ENJOYED the film, and that I was still thinking about it. To be honest with you in a way I cannot all ways afford to be honest with my sister: I enjoyed the film, BUT I am still thinking about it. And the emphasis falls on "but" in place of "and", rather than "am" in place of "was". Though with equal irony I might point out that even at 4:20 A.M. I am STILL thinking about it, though we saw it starting at 7:30 P.M. of Last Year. Happy New Year's. And May the Force be With You. May the Force be With Us All, that we might not surrender our Individuality and Hearts to the Mass that is (and has all ways been) the Dark Side.
Dm.A.A.
