At its core, the The Last Jedi is a film learning to move on from the past, and accepting that you can’t go back to the way things were. It’s not even particularly subtle about it. It’s not even subtext, the message is literally stated by at least two different characters in the film.
Heck, every plot twist and subversion of Star Wars tropes is done with the intent of sticking to this central message. The mystery of Rey’s parents is solved in the most anticlimactic manner possible. Snoke is killed before the trilogy even ends. Finn’s heroic rescue mission is given major focus, only for it to end in a failure that forces a change in tactics. All of this might seem dissatisfying, but it’s actually there for a reason. These plot points are set up in a way such that they appear similar to plot threads in the original trilogy. A mystery of the main character’s lineage, a powerful wielder of the Dark Side who commands a massive empire, a rescue mission against seemingly impossible odds. And in the end, they’re subverted, and they’re subverted specifically for the purpose of emphasizing that you can’t always cling to the past, that the Galaxy Far Away of today is not the same as it was forty years ago.
And keeping in line with this central theme? The primary villains, the First Order, are intentionally structured in-universe to evoke the Galactic Empire, which had been defeated decades ago. They want to re-create the past as they imagined it to exist, and are willing to commit any number of atrocities to do so. The villains are explicitly built around nostalgia for an idealized Old Days that disregards a history of brutal oppression, and that’s a part of what makes their fascist dogma so frighteningly close to actual fascists today.
Even putting aside the political commentary, on an even deeper level it’s a commentary on Star Wars as a cultural institution in itself. Star Wars as an icon of pop culture is one that is built on nostalgia, on the fond memories of the original trilogy that skyrocketed it to worldwide popularity in the first place. But at the same time, that nostalgia has also been hugely limiting, as anything new that comes out of it has to live within the shadow of its own legacy. The Prequel Trilogy has far and away suffered the most for this, as even if they weren’t bad films on their own merits, they couldn’t have been the films people wanted them to be. Both LucasFilm and fans of Star Wars built Episode I up as something that could fully recapture the magic of seeing Star Wars in theaters for the first time. But no matter how good Episode I was or could have been, it couldn’t have recreated that experience, because there is nothing in the world that could.
Rian Johnson recognized the problem, and chose to address it in a unique way: by writing a film that’s fundamentally about learning to accept that things aren’t going to be the same as they were, while simultaneously creating something new in the same spirit. Just as Yoda burned down the last of the ancient Jedi texts so that a new generation can build something better, The Last Jedi itself discards the old series conventions, while simultaneously building a movie that retains the central Star Wars spirit of finding hope against seemingly impossible odds.
The Last Jedi tells us that nostalgia is overrated. That’s why it’s such a brilliant film.
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