Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Daring, subversive, and surprisingly self-reflective, The Last Jedi is an ambitious and melancholic game-changer, setting the franchise on the course of a new era.

Predictably, The Last Jedi is scorched by its very passionate and opinionated fanbase. Polarity, the cost of changing the direction of a beloved franchise, is almost unavoidable. In the age of social media, the battle lines between fans and critics, nostalgia and change, acclaim and blame, are instantaneously drawn.

Perhaps the takeaway message is that it’s how you choose to face failures that count. The Last Jedi forces us, along with the heroes and villains, to confront the detrimental side of hero worship, the burden of legacy and how one moment of poor judgment can trigger a plethora of terrible consequences. All these failures and mistakes seem to serve no sense of purpose other than putting the heroes in an even more dire situation.

In the grand scheme of things, whether Johnson’s risks will find their place in the Star Wars lore remains to be seen. To be quite honest, I’m still having a hard time wrestling with all these new information to truly make up my own mind. After a little more than a week, the labyrinthine feelings of grief, anger, denial, confusion are still clashing with one another in my mind.

Saying goodbye is tough, letting go is a difficult lesson to learn. Whether it’s losing a loved one or facing disappointment, it’s all a part of the growing pains. Star Wars is not perfect, its heroes are not perfect, this film is not perfect but that’s okay. And while it seems that there is nothing more comforting than the homely embrace of nostalgia, accepting the present is just as important as accepting the past. Our heroes are growing and so must we.

And rest assured, no one is ever truly gone.

(Originally posted on 23 Dec 2017 @projectunwrapped)