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We Need to Talk About Luke

[warning: spoliers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi below]

There's something we're not getting right about Luke Skywalker. We've all been thinking a lot about him lately, due to his grand cinematic reappearance in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. This film unsurprisingly seized our collective imaginations over this holiday season, as Star Wars has for the past forty years and will continue to as long as Disney makes good movies (fingers crossed).

You can't address Luke's role in the film without at first approaching The Last Jedi as a whole. It was surprisingly divisive, and the fan backlash has been relatively sharp and vehement. On the other side, there's already been a lot of film criticism written about this movie that states in better terms that I could about why I dug it so much: it's incredibly inclusive, the casting is remarkably diverse, and the film is woke AF.

I know the structure of The Last Jedi didn't sit well with people. That wasn't the case for me. I liked the movie on first viewing and loved it on second. All the beats worked for me, even the overly didactic ones! I like that the franchise is moving towards a direction of dealing with more ambiguously moral issues. The Star Wars movies have had a tumultuous adolescence (yup... those prequels) and are now finally growing up and coming into their own as modern and sustainable myth.

And then there's a major focus: Luke. Many friends of mine hated Luke's arc in this movie. HATED. I'm pretty fascinated by the strong reactions to his portrayal in this film. Some argue that there's no way Luke would have lived in isolation for so long after his fall from grace (uh... shades of Obi-Wan and Yoda, hello?). And there were those that could not stand that pesky Luke force-projection.

I think these readings of Luke are somewhat valid, but I think that these friends are making the same mistakes that most of the characters are making in the movie as well. Although Luke was always meant to be the hero that would bring the Jedi back and restore order to the galaxy, in reality, his journey was fraught with as much failure and hardship as successes.

Much like his nephew Kylo Ren, Luke is constantly caught between the dark and light sides. The main difference between them is that young Luke leans towards the light, while Kylo Ren leans towards the dark. However, I think they very intentionally mirror each other, maybe even more so than Luke and his father.

Luke is always putting in a lot of work to not fall to the Dark Side. He's sometimes quite successful and heroic, and sometimes... not as much as we remember. Darth Vader tries to turn him during their confrontation on Bespin, in what's arguably the best scene in the entire series, and Emperor Palpatine comes even closer to succeeding in Return of the Jedi, and probably would have, without the third-act surprise redemption of Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker, saving his son from the Darkside and redeeming himself in the process.

I'd argue that Luke and Leia go through the most emotional pain in the original trilogy. Leia witnesses the destruction of her adopted homeworld learns she has a twin brother and father, who she then loses. How does she cope? The new trilogy teaches us that she moves on, starts a family and becomes a leader in the galactic senate and later a general in the resistance. Although her marriage to Han falls apart (probably more his fault than hers, I mean, really), the rest of her newfound roles sit well on her.

Luke has to carry the trauma of losing his aunt and uncle, his new mentor Obi-Wan, learning that the worst dick in the galaxy is his father, losing another mentor, Yoda, and then losing his father after they finally have a nice moment together! How does Luke cope? He tries to become a leader like his sister, by training a new slew of Jedi. But his own inner-conflict and nagging self-doubt lead to a deadly incident with his nephew.

Luke triggers much of the conflict of the new trilogy because, like in the original trilogy, he does not trust his intuition or his own ability to lean towards the light and loving side of the Force. Luke is terribly conflicted. He always has been. It's what makes his hero's journey so compelling and what has made him a more complex and vibrant cinematic hero than we often give him credit for.

And that's just it: Luke Skywalker is first-and-foremost a legendary cinema hero. The Last Jedi meta-textually deals with this fact so, so well, and I think it's the part that's been missing from the discussion around the film. As viewers, we have always wanted Luke to succeed. We cheer his victories but his struggles and losses are equally painful. In the world of Star Wars, Luke is ultimately unable to be the Jedi hero that his friends and proteges need him to be: Luke's always been more heroic in theory than in practice.

That is why, in Luke's final moments as a character (well, at least one who's alive... I wouldn't be surprised if future films trot out Mark Hamil to play a force ghost) we finally get to see the Luke Skywalker we've always wanted to see. When he appears in the cave that the Rebels are hiding out in, he's drastically altered from his earlier appearances on the island. His beard is trimmed close to his face, his hair less gray, and he's wearing the battle garb of the Jedi. He's cool and collected with his old friends like Leia and C3PO and then he steps out to do battle with Kylo Ren, having given the Rebels time to escape.

And there's Luke in his final cinematic face-off: face-to-face with his fallen apprentice, dark vs light, old vs young. Same as it ever was, but not really, because Luke is not even physically there. By projecting himself to appear on Crait, he has become to the Star Wars universe what he's always been to us: a flickering, heroic illusion that gives us identifiable feelings of aspiration and hope. This is the ultimate version of Luke Skywalker: finally removed of his doubt and flaws to be the hero that we've always wanted and desperately needed him to be. We get one glorious fight sequence with Luke in his ultimate form, but this illusion is unsustainable.

Then, watching the sunset, as his character is iconically known to do, Luke becomes one with the Force. But it's not the last we see of Luke in the film. In the movie's stunning coda, Luke's ultimate fate is revealed: he has become a story within the narrative of the Star Wars movies, just like he is within our greater popular culture. The slave kids in the movie are playing with a homemade Luke action figure, so similar to the way my generation spent our childhoods, and they are telling his story. Luke's always been better in the vivid imaginations of kids than he's even been onscreen. The Last Jedi acknowledges that fact brilliantly. That is Luke's narrative moving forward: a myth, a legend, a story, a new hope. For generations of Rebels in the Star Wars galaxy, and for generations of moviegoers in ours, to come.

#star wars #luke skywalker #film criticism #mark hamill #star wars: the last jedi #rian johnston

On the set of Looper! My brain wanders through explanations as to what scene this is as well as what the eff will happen! September 29 everybody, September 29!!

- Grant Rawlins, talkaboutmovies

#looper #set photo's #joseph gordon levitt looper #jgl #rian johnston #director #on set #poster #looper poster #equipment #talkaboutmovies #grant rawlins #youtubes

Brick (2005)

Note: This post was originally published on the vox.com iteration of this blog. It was posted in 2006.

Leave Those Kids Alone

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking through a video store (you remember those right?) and I picked up previously viewed copy of Kiss Kiss, Bang! Bang!. I watched it for the first time about two weeks ago. While it wasn’t bad ( it was actually pretty good, in its Shane Black-ish sort of way) I kept feeling like I didn’t really get what all the fuss was about.

You see, Kiss, Kiss comes up in conversations all the time in my world. All conversational roads seem to lead to this movie. And that’s cool with me. I can see why it's so well loved. I think for a lot of people it’s kinda Lethal Weapon meets The Big Lebowski...or something. While it has noir-ish elements it's really just a black comedy with some action sequences. Overall great movie; but it's a little overrated.

The thing is, it makes me really wonder why Kiss, Kiss develops a cult following not seen since Boondock Saints; while something like Brick wallows in bargain bins and the bottom of Netflix queues all across movieland.

Brick has all of the elements of a great cult movie. Weird performances, young first time director, genre blending, energetic camera moves. It’s got conic performances, clever writing and a bitchin’ ending.

Yet for whatever reason I have to walk people through the movie. It’s a real tough sell. Mostly because on paper the concepts of the movie sound incredibly stupid. The idea of kids in high school acting out a film noir bring to mind images of Bugsy Malone.

In fact the first 10-15 minutes are the toughest to get through. They feel like the beginning of a movie that Rushmore’s Max Fischer would make. The style of the film is so overwhelming that you wonder if you’ll be able to get through the whole thing. But somewhere along the line director Rian Johnson manages to create a perfect blend of homage, reinvention and flat out ballsy filmmaking.

A lot of what makes Brick so magical is its brilliant ensemble cast. Rarely do you see independent films that manage to handle large groups of people with such elegance and evenhanded precision. It's one of those movies where you really appreciate what an actor does. Anyone can pretend to be a noir-ish detective from the 40's, but it takes real talent and style to make that evocative and emotional.

Something should also be said about the visual style of Brick. While it does a have a steady stream of dolly moves and slow zooms; noir staples. It seems really obvious that Johnson loves the idea of punctuating onscreen drama with abstract sound; a technique that Martin Scorsese and David Lynch have brought to artistic prominence.

Even still, every once in a while the camera does something so wacky and herky jerky that you can’t help but wonder what the motivation was. Most times you feel that there might be an idea behind it all. The kind of wacky, experimental ideas that can define a filmmakers style (see Tarantino's "camera in the trunk" shot for a great example). Having said that, I feel that Johnson is a really intelligent filmmaker with visual ideas that verge into abstract filmmaking. Which is an amazing and beautiful thing.

Ultimately, I can't recommend this movie enough. It's meshing of high school politics and with noir elements just makes me smile. I've seen it 3 times and really admire its love of structure. Whether it's the narrative structure of 40's film noir or the structure high school politics, I'm impressed every time.

#brick #rian johnston #joseph gordon-levitt #quentin tarantino #david lynch #kiss kiss bang bang #2005