I wanted to follow-up on this last Star Wars blog entry with a few video reviews I found this week. I still believe that the people behind The Last Jedi movie did a lot of things intentionally in an attempt to make it underwhelming. You can understand this by seeing dozens of lists people are bringing up about storyline points that could have been done better. It just seemed like everything that was done was counter-intuitive to a Star Wars film, but as I said, done this way intentionally.
David Stewart on Youtube (has his own blog as well) did a series of videos that I think are excellent on this. A lot of what he says is what I was trying to get at with different words in the previous blog entry:
The Rot at the Core of New Star Wars
Nihilism and Post-Modernism in Hollywood
The Last Jedi: A Hate Letter to Star Wars and its Fans (Analysis with SPOILERS)
I am not the biggest fan of nihilism, post-modernism, or deconstructionism. Those three words lead to many problems. The notions of objective anything, be it truth, moral values, or any type of value (scientific values, epistemic values, artistic values!) go out the window. There isn't a TELOS (purpose) to anything. Everything gets reduced to "weird psychology" where truth is not important, but what you are feeling determines reality. Which gets weird because objective reality doesn't exist in this view only what one thinks in one's mind does. Everything is subjective. It is very difficult to be consistent with those ideas. Logically they self-destruct very quickly.
I don't mind if any movie or art piece uses those three big words in its presentation or story. However, they need to show that it is not consistent and the absurdity involved. I do think the this new movie, and possibly the whole new trilogy, is an attempt to deconstruct what a hero means in the Star Wars universe. We shall see with the last film of this new trilogy.
Anti-Trekker gives a lot of the same criticism of the plot points I would. He uses some non-family friendly ways of describing this so if you are sensative to that I'm just letting you know:
Star Wars: the Last Jedi, destroys the Star Wars Mythos (Spoilers)
Again, I think the people who put together the story for this movie probably knew what they were avoiding. They could have used those plot points everyone is showing they "forgot" or left out, but why they didn't do it is the question. For some reason this was intentionally done for this movie. Everyone points out Laura Dern's character (Admiral Holdo) could easily be replaced by Admiral Ackbar or Lando Calrissian. It wasn't a coincidence. How the next movie plays it all out we will find out in two years.
No more Star Wars from me on this blog for the next two years. I have to admit that I think there is a little too much Star Wars click bait out there online. Yeah, I probably am adding to it. I actually do mock the Star Wars merchandising during Halloween, Christmas, and any other time of the year. You know, "When I think of the Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus during Christmas time I always have to include ewoks, R2-D2, Darth Vader, Princess Leia, and a handful of stormtroopers in my nativity scene to make it workout just right."
