It's an interesting reading Coombs, but not one I really agree with.
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Anakin was born into slavery for instance. Luke was a farmer who had no idea who he was or what role he had in the story until Vader lopped off his hand. They're repeating this pattern with Rey precisely by pointing out that her parents were nobodies; run of the mill scrap dealers who sold her off for drinking money. Ironically she's more like a Skywalker through this reveal than Kylo Ren ever was.
Likewise, to me, Poe's fights with Holdo and Leia, and the mutiny they culminated in, didn't come off as a clash of wills between royalty and common foot soldiers. I think there's a feministic core to the main storyline that overrides any other reading of it. Poe was clearly in the wrong both times; he was cast as a hot-headed bloke who refused to respect the chain of command because he couldn't fathom that two women knew better than him what had to be done. He led them to a Pyrrhic victory in the beginning that they then spent the rest of the film paying for. The heroism in the film, as far as the rebels are concerned, is not about him taking out ten battle cannons on his own, but a quiet and understated moment from Holdo who, without spitting funny oneliners or running around and waving a gun like a toddler in Han Solo's old clothes, makes a sacrifice for the greater good.
If there was one big takeaway for me, this was it. Men keep playing with their laserswords and little gun ships while the women who built the federation and the rebellion (twice) keep paying the price. This is also why, in the end, Kylo Ren learns absolutely nothing from history: it's not because he's part Skywalker but because he's yet another bloke with too high an opinion of himself. Rey and Leia live to fight another day while Luke dies and Emo Williams is confirmed as the new villain of the saga: a pathetic, sad little figure with a smashed toy helmet, who in his own arrogance expects a woman to follow him blindly into the dark side instead of listening to what she has to say. He thinks she will be grateful when he tells her that she's unimportant trash, only to then reassure her that he does not consider her as such. It's male abusive psychology at its worst, and predictably, Rey doesn't fall for it. Luke's entire identity crisis is grounded in the same male self-mythologising and the realisation of how destructive it can be.
The film asks a few valid questions about gendered Star Wars conventions. Why is Luke so absorbed by his own myth while Leia, despite royal titles and being immortalised by history, is not? Why does the dark side so easily corrupt all these blokes but seemingly not the women? Why is Snoke so obsessed with Luke Skywalker when there's another force-powered figure leading the very rebellion, here, in the present?
I saw dismantled gender politics in The Last Jedi, not a rewriting of the conditions of Star Wars itself. The film is still mostly a talentless copy of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi; one that slightly alters or subverts key scenes, sure, but still leaves enough of them in there to make you recognise the original version. Snoke's speech to Rey at one point is, frame by frame, identical to the Emperor taunting Luke to strike at him. The scene where Rey falls into the butthole of Luke's planet and finds herself in the hall of mirrors (which is a nice Citizen Kane reference and all, even if it's boringly obvious, like most of Rian Johnson's cinematic homages) is basically a rehash of when Luke faces his biggest fears by battling himself-as-Vader on Dagobah.
The Last Jedi is indistinguishable from The Force Awakens in this sense. It's still a Star Wars film and it's still very much obsessed with its own mythology, as opposed to being a groundbreaking work that moves away from the past. And it sets up yet another Return of the Jedi with an empire to overthrow, a rising jedi hope, and a villain to redeem before he inevitably dies; probably by falling on his sword or some similar bullshit. Luke gives you the synopsis before he disappears in a cloud of logic.
All in all, I can't say I enjoyed much about this film. I think there were some aspects that had real merit, particularly the way it attempts to reframe Star Wars from a rescue-the-princess story to a female-led tale of rebellion that, against the backdrop of #Metoo and its preview version that surrounded the election last year, makes it surprisingly relevant.
But, again, the mere existence of the film itself manages to negate most of these points. This is still a retelling of the original trilogy, only by a weaker storyteller and with worse characters. And in the end we're left with something that feels completely artless; not because it attempts something new, but precisely because it doesn't. The Last Jedi is The Cursed Child of Star Wars films.
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