
Millennials Strike Back: An Esoteric Reading of the Last Jedi - jlos
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/01/millennials-strike-back-an-esoteric-reading-of-the-last-jedi
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yters
There is definitely some sort of messaging going on in the Last Jedi. SPOILER
Why else spend half the movie on a pointless and ultimately destructive
sidequest? The rebelliousness of the rebellion shoots itself in the foot. The
thief seems to have the most insightful line in the move, that the war is
essentially a machine making money for the arms trade. I guess the point is
meant to be, if Jedi are really trying to bring harmony to the force, their
good vs. evil fight is not very effective.

~~~
hndamien
This moral theme would be a fantastic way to wrap it up.

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mratzloff
Assuming this is at all serious (which I doubt), it would be a rather cynical,
facile, and insipid reading of both _The Last Jedi_ and history itself. The
most egregious point (of the many to choose from that I could dissect) is the
following:

> But she has absorbed the rebels’ self-serving narrative, and it prevents her
> from realizing that the Skywalkers and the Rebellion—or Resistance, or
> whatever they are calling themselves now—have no answers.

The answer is "not fascism." The Empire and First Order are fascist regimes.
Fighting fascism _is_ the answer. There is no perfect system. But systems that
support the systematic oppression of all people via threat of violence are
evil.

~~~
yters
The empires are just attempting to establish peace throughout the universe.
The rebels, on the other hand, appear to want chronic instability and
violence, getting entire civilizations obliterated due to their dislike for
authority figures.

~~~
goatlover
Maybe the authority figures don't need to respond by obliterating entire
civilizations?

I think it's enough that a guy like Snopes or Palpatine wanted to control the
galaxy to rebel against that.

~~~
JBlue42
>Snopes

A rebellion against fact-checking? The movie is now even more relevant ;-)

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HoppedUpMenace
Seems like something that should be in r/theempiredidnothingwrong.

I went into this movie full on ignoring the metaphorical connections to the
real world and let it exist in my mind as just an entertaining movie and story
and to my surprise, it blew me away (although obviously far from perfect).

Its interesting to see people pick this movie apart, as if the originals had
perfect acting, no flaws, and were the epitome of originality (were you
expecting your life to change after watching this?)

Personally, I think Luke's change in demeanor was perfect, which not so
ironically, he is pretty far from. Luke is human, which he conveys very well
and is probably what upsets people the most because he doesn't reach this
state of perfection upon which he has mastered the force, his feelings (he's
not Leonard Nimoy), and has total control of self (again, not a Leonard
Nimoy).

Could it be possibly that people are still holding onto the idea fed to those
of us born in the 80's and onward that every one of us is "special", that our
dreams will come true if we just believe in ourselves and never give up? These
may be the people that do not care for the more realistic approach to Luke
Skywalker, as opposed to the "one who will bring balance to the force."

~~~
mlloyd
I just didn't think the movie was as 'fun' as the previous movies. I think the
Disney movies are good movies, I felt like the Lucas movies were fun movies.
All the rest of it is secondary to that for me.

~~~
Goladus
I think the prequels tried to tell a good story. Apart from a few glaring
mistakes(like the idea that Anakin built C-3PO) the story and plot ideas were
good enough. But scene to scene, it was poorly executed, with stilted dialog,
bad direction (which often shows up as bad acting and unlikable characters),
and uneven pacing. There's legitimate character development. The problem is,
execution of those character arcs are clumsy or forced and lack the dramatic
impact they should have. Certain plotlines are tedious, but you could make an
argument that better editing could have fixed those flaws.

I think the Disney movies don't even try to tell a good story. The plots
barely make sense and frequently violate established rules and conventions for
no apparent reason. Apart from perhaps Kylo Ren, the new characters are static
and uninteresting. Rey is likeable but has no growth. Finn is likable but
isn't believable as an ex-stormtrooper. The relationship between The First
Order and the Resistance/Rebellion is muddled and confusing at best. Where the
prequels dwelt too much on tedious political details, the sequels go the other
direction fail to establish a compelling galactic context for the war. As for
Rogue One, I enjoyed that in the way I enjoy a dumb, mindless action movie.
The characters were bland and uninteresting and the plot was just barely good
enough to keep me interested.

The original trilogy had a good well-focused story, a good plot, a simple but
sufficiently compelling political context, likable characters that experienced
legitimate growth and character arcs. It had exceptional editing, great pacing
--albeit slower than any blockbuster you'd see today-- and amazing sound
design and music. There are some flaws, and some internal inconsistencies. But
it's easy to argue that the major ones, such as Vader being revealed as Luke's
father, enhance the story more than detract from it. It makes Obi-Wan's
character seem less virtuous, for example-- but he's a fairly minor character
and a minor flaw isn't a problem anyway, it makes him seem more human.

The original Lucas trilogy wasn't perfect, but it's far superior to either the
prequels or the Disney sequels.

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pupppet
Disney didn't pay a few billion for the Star Wars property to just end the
war. The resistance/rebels will be fighting forever.

~~~
Will_Parker
Nobody is going to buy tickets to "Star Peace".

~~~
vermilingua
I can't speak for everyone, but I would _definitely_ have bought tickets to
Star Peace. Especially over "Star Wars: even more cgi edition".

~~~
grawprog
I can see it now. Two hours of Luke, Leia and Han just hanging out talking
about how awesome things are without the empire, maybe make fun of C3PO a bit
have a few drinks then just cruise around checking out how chill all the
planets are now.

~~~
goatlover
I'm sure they could still manage to get into some side adventures.

~~~
grawprog
Don't misunderstand. That would be a way better movie than the last two even
without side adventures. They're two of the very few movies in my life I've
fallen asleep in the middle of. I don't do that often.

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theli0nheart
I'll assume spoilers are fair game here, since this article is pretty much a
spoiler in its entirety.

The authors take many liberties in interpretation to fit their viewpoint. For
instance, Luke didn't "hallucinate" Yoda's presence on Ahch-To, unless you
think his previous force ghosts (as in ROTJ) were hallucinations, as well.
Perhaps Rian did mean for Yoda's force ghost in this scene to be a
hallucination, but I don't think he did. The authors just twisted this scene
to fit their interpretation, which is disappointing.

UPDATE: The piece is satire
[https://twitter.com/smcohoe/status/951474247104307200](https://twitter.com/smcohoe/status/951474247104307200)

~~~
trevelyan
Yes, it's a silly interpretation. Especially inconsistent since if Yoda is
Luke's hallucination as the article asserts, then Luke himself is "killing the
past" in the same way that Kylo Ren does, and treating the film as a
Millennial attack on the Baby Boomers is rather short-sighted when they are
both doing the same thing.

As far as I can see, the only thing approaching a coherent theme in TLJ is the
question of how one can move forward if encumbered by the past (Finn and Rey
also have these issues). This offers perhaps 1% of the thematic and political
subtly of the Lucas trilogies. But even this seems a challenge for the script
to grapple with coherently -- surely Yoda (presented as a figure of wisdom)
should not be using lightning and fire (Sith tools) to destroy embodied
wisdom. And if we are to view Luke as doing the right thing then surely the
only logical conclusion of this way of thinking is that Kylo Ren is on the
right track.

Ironic that Poe Dameron (who destroys most of the Rebellion) is seen
negatively when all he was doing was clearing the way for victory by getting
rid of all those ships (human lives)!

~~~
theli0nheart
Note what Yoda says before he destroys the tree: "There's nothing in those
books she does not already possess."

And then remember the final scene on the Falcon, where you can clearly see
that the books are safely with Rey. She must have taken them before she left,
and Yoda knows this.

In that period of time, though, the audience (and Luke) is left to believe
that Yoda truly did choose to destroy ancient Jedi artifacts. Which really
makes one wonder what the heck is going on—and leaves you to question which
side is good, and which is bad? It really blurs the lines between Light and
Dark, and crescendos at the throne room scene where Snoke is murdered to when
Kylo asks Rey to join him. You almost _want_ her to say yes to his offer!
Unlike ESB, the offer isn't just theoretical. Snoke _was_ just overthrown.

In my opinion, the whole sequence was masterfully done.

~~~
trevelyan
Hey Lionheart. Just to be clear -- I don't think TLJ is devoid of meaning. The
film clearly wants to say that anyone can be a hero and that what matters is
not being trapped by the past (protect what you love, learn from your mistakes
and move on). There is nothing wrong with this message.

It doesn't bother me if people like TLJ, although I personally don't think the
film makes much sense. If Yoda deceives Luke that saves TLJ from having Yoda
actually mirror Kylo Ren, but it doesn't explain the fire and lightning (Sith
tools associated with hell imagery) nor does it resolve the underlying problem
since deception is also Dark Side behaviour....

There are a few other areas where the film contradicts itself, but this is an
obvious one: if we take the film seriously we must surely ask ourselves why
Yoda is acting like a Sith Lord? I didn't see any attempt to answer that
puzzle in the film and while we may get the solution in film #3, as far as I
can tell TLJ just accepts that whatever Yoda does is good (because he is Yoda)
and whatever Kylo Ren does is bad (because he is the villain). The filmmakers
have bought into the loose symbolic framework of the saga, but they don't seem
to understand it and/or act consistently within it. To the extent there is a
message, it comes out because the good guys tell us exactly what it is and we
aren't supposed to think too critically about it.

~~~
theli0nheart
> _If Yoda deceives Luke that saves TLJ from having Yoda actually mirror Kylo
> Ren, but it doesn 't explain the fire and lightning (Sith tools associated
> with hell imagery) nor does it resolve the underlying problem since
> deception is also Dark Side behaviour...._

It comes down to intent. Fire, lightning, and destruction aren't relegated to
the Dark Side of the Force. Jedis have always had their share of destruction
and murder. They were a literal army during the time of the Old Republic. Obi-
Wan and Qui-Gon's behavior in the first scenes of TPM show this firsthand.
They were sent to the Trade Federation to intimidate—not a very noble thing to
do on the surface, but it was in the greater good.

There have been innumerable essays and analyses understanding how the two
sides differ, but the one that's always stuck with me is that the Jedi are at
their core more of a guiding force, whereas the Sith are a controlling force.

Everything the Sith do is for their own greater good, whereas the Jedi will do
things (even kill, or destroy) _if_ it leads to the greater good of others.

And, in this case, the destruction of the temple leads Luke to understand that
old books aren't what are important. No one died when that tree was destroyed.
And it may very well have been what pushed Luke to self-sacrifice and save the
remnants of the Resistance. That seems like a very "Jedi" thing to do (IMO).

~~~
trevelyan
> It comes down to intent

There is nothing in the film that communicates this. It may be that we are
supposed to view the film this way, but the film itself is not sophisticated
in communicating this message. Meanwhile, there are many characters who are
clearly well-intentioned (Poe and Finn) whose actions seem to be explicitly
criticized.

Lucas was a far more sophisticated filmmaker. In his prequels the Jedi are
deeply flawed, and the audience is supposed to notice that they abandon their
commitment to peace ("I can protect you, but I cannot fight a war for you") to
the point that they die (literally and allegorically) marching into war.
Likewise, Luke's effort to rescue his friends in Empire is well-intentioned,
but nearly destroys him because he chooses violence as his tool (similar to
Anakin's efforts to rescue Padme through violence). It is not accidental that
the temptation that Vader offers Luke is the same temptation Palpatine offers
Anakin: the use of violence for the sake of good ("join me, and bring peace
and order to the galaxy") -- a trap in both films.

------
jdpedrie
From the bottom of the article, since people are wondering whether this is
serious:

> The views expressed in this article are not endorsed by and do not in any
> way represent the opinions of their employers or Leo Strauss. They should
> also not be taken to express the views of the authors.

------
Animats
I know it's satirical, but the authors have a point. Everyone in the movie in
a position of authority has no clue about tactics or strategy or a plan that's
likely to work.

(In 20th century history, WWI was the war of the clueless generals, while in
WWII, both sides had relatively competent leadership.)

------
plopz
My biggest problem with the movie was using the hyperdrive as a weapon. Why
couldn't that have been used on the first, second or third deathstar?

~~~
teraflop
I'll steal a comment from elsewhere [1] that gives a perfectly reasonable
justification for this.

> A few hypothetical reasons why light speed attacks are not common despite
> being so effective:

> \- A capital ship's particle shields can usually tank smaller objects, like
> fighters, traveling at relativistic speeds. Only very large objects can
> attain enough kinetic energy to punch through the shields. However...

> \- ...the size and complexity of the engines required to accelerate an
> object to light speed increase geometrically with mass. Outfitting a dense
> asteroid with a hyperdrive system would make for a hideously expensive one-
> shot missile; it's almost always more practical to invest your year's worth
> of Mon Cala's GDP in a ship, which has broader sustained applications.

> \- The calculations for hyperspace jumps to or from gravity wells are
> incredibly fraught. Because of latency issues and certain limitations of
> droid cognition, an extremely skilled pilot must be physically onboard to
> perform the jump; no one wants to waste a pilot like that on a suicide run
> unless there's no other option.

> \- Even a skilled pilot is going to find targeting an individual ship very
> difficult because extreme velocity and distances turns small errors into big
> misses. The timing is also crucial; in the Star Wars universe, ships enter a
> hyperspatial dimension shortly after hitting light speed. If Holdo had
> accelerated too quickly, she would have passed "through" the Supremacy
> without hitting it; too slowly, and she wouldn't have accumulated enough
> energy to overwhelm its shields.

> Holdo only succeeded because a bunch of factors aligned: she was a good
> pilot, her target was very close and very wide, she had no nearby allies in
> the blast radius, she and her ship were expendable, and the math broke her
> way.

[1]: [https://fanfare.metafilter.com/10441/Star-Wars-The-Last-
Jedi...](https://fanfare.metafilter.com/10441/Star-Wars-The-Last-Jedi#167147)

~~~
voxl
I only think the last reason is actually reasonable. You can argue that all
the other small ships that they sacrificed could have also turned tail and
gave it a go, even if it was difficult.

However, the blast radius part wouldn't make as much sense, because the escape
pods were likely fairly close, just at some orthogonal vector.

However, this is all besides the point. The real problem is that the
hyperdrive weapon was never motivated and it introduces plot holes in past
movies.

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caio1982
"Note that in none of the eight movies so far is the intensive and painful
Jedi training regimen followed through. Not a single real Jedi is produced."

Well... they've got a point... we see many already produced, but none during
the films' times IIRC.

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loteck
There is some overfitting happening here but generally speaking I agree with
the analysis. People I interact with from my own generation and younger can
see that our established institutions may have failed to secure the near
future for existing and arriving generations, and they are permanently
shunning those institutions wherever possible.

You can see this in IT as well where we have myriad foundational problems at
the levels of W3C, ICANN, MITRE, NIST and other standards/governing bodies.
Cynicism spreads about whether they are sincere about delivering their core
missions; meanwhile a "move fast and break things"/disruption culture thrives.

~~~
JKCalhoun
Yeah, simple answer: we need heroes and villains for a story.

But I think there is some cultural "zeitgeist" reflected in the more
optimistic original Star Wars and the cynicism of the current reboot.

I find it refreshingly actually. When the original Star Wars came along it
seemed to shut down the cynicism of Sci Fi that had dominated up to that point
(Soylent Green, West World, Logan's Run, Rollerball, etc.).

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dre85
I actually enjoyed this interpretation. In a way it kind of made me less
disappointed that I watched that entire crappy-ass movie.

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bmj
Please note: I think this piece is satiric. Please see the end note:

 _Caleb Cohoe is associate professor of philosophy at Metropolitan State
University of Denver. Samantha Cohoe is a Latin teacher, writer of young adult
fiction, and frequent contributor to twitter.com. The views expressed in this
article are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of
their employers or Leo Strauss. They should also not be taken to express the
views of the authors._

~~~
yters
According to Leo Strauss' esoteric doctrine, satire is one of the best ways to
communicate truth through the disillusioning power of the comic, such as
Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium.

------
djroomba
I hope the authors were being tongue in cheek.

I saw it as the younger generation not learning and repeating the mistakes of
the past.

The first order being like neo-nazis to the empires nazis.

The republic failing and the rise of trade federation again.

Very cyclical and nihilistic.

~~~
bmj
From the end of the article:

 _Caleb Cohoe is associate professor of philosophy at Metropolitan State
University of Denver. Samantha Cohoe is a Latin teacher, writer of young adult
fiction, and frequent contributor to twitter.com. The views expressed in this
article are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of
their employers or Leo Strauss. They should also not be taken to express the
views of the authors._

------
xg15
What irked me in the new trilogy was that not just was the first part a xerox
of the beginning of the first trilogy, there was also _no explanation given at
all_ why had gone so horribly wrong.

We left the scene at the end of episode 4: The empire was defeated, the good
guys had all the power, wisdom and allies on their side, there was a big
victory celebration and everything was abuzz with hopes and plans for the
future.

Then... _things_... happened and suddenly everything is reset to the same bad
old times.

Yet no one even attempts to find out _why_ this happened and where exactly the
old plans and assumptions went wrong (and where they didn't). All that is done
is either stoically holding on to the old plans or frustratedly admitting
"failure".

I guess you could see this as an analogy to today's times as well: Everyone is
panicking that the fascists are back, that inequality is rising, that living
standards are falling and that no one is stopping climate change - but there
seem few discussions about _where_ exactly things went wrong, except that all
it's somehow the baby boomers'/the millennials'/facebook's fault.

------
Florin_Andrei
I do agree with the author that there's a lot of generational shift in the
deeper tangles of meaning buried in the new Star Wars movies. I disagree with
some of his interpretations, however. Here's my view:

[https://florin.myip.org/blog/edit-blog-entry-divisive-
drama-...](https://florin.myip.org/blog/edit-blog-entry-divisive-drama-star-
wars-last-jedi)

TLDR: The story is basically re-told for the current young generation. There's
less "magic", there's more "realism" (mind the quotes). Old mythologies are
ignored. There are vast, sweeping cultural shifts such as the rise of
feminism. And, yes, there's this youthful drive to declare that the past is
dead, long live the future.

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snorkel
I don't think millennials saw TLJ as a metaphor for baby boomer
disillusionment so much as a crushing disappointment that Ewan MacGregor
didn't stride into a cameo as the inexplicable forbearer to Rey.

------
mmusson
Although I suspect the authors were being tongue in cheek, I think there are
spot on with the older generation falling into familiar patterns and the
younger generation rejecting that in their own ways.

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j2kun
What makes it effective satire is it takes legitimate interpretations "The
good guys in this story tend to shoot themselves in the feet and normal people
get killed in the process," and stretches it to ridiculousness to highlight
that point, like "Luke hallucinates Yoda's approval."

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coldtea
How about "token conformity to the cultural norms du jour strikes back"?

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vesak
Interesting! Last Jedi was quite disappointing for me, so I'm glad the authors
here managed to bring some meaning to it.

------
junkscience2017
the movie sucked but at least this satire review was funny

------
hashberry
The original Star Wars was about a son and his father, with redemption,
forgiveness, and self-sacrifice. "I am a Jedi, like my father before me" still
gives me shivers. But now Luke Skywalker says: "It's time for the Jedi to
end." In other words: "it's time for patriarchy to end."

