Why The Last Jedi is a Game Changer (or at least why it was so unsettling)

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 2017)

After watching the 8th installment of the Star Wars story, The Last Jedi, I wasn't quite sure how to respond. I just knew I needed to process it. Thankfully, I watched the film with my friend C.P. (If there's anything particularly insightful in this post it's probably because of his contribution)
The film wasn't bad (like episodes 1 - 3). But, it wasn't immediately awesome (like episode 5) either. It was a mixture of something else that I couldn't quite name. Of course as most 2nd films in trilogies go, it occupies a place of tension of here and not yet...maybe stretching us farther than we were comfortable with. One thing for certain, if episode 7 was too much like what came before, episode 8 went in the opposite direction in most every way.
If these turns were deliberate it could be a sort of genius. If it was accidental it's an interesting commentary nonetheless. I will move forward, giving the benefit of the doubt, assuming the former, especially as it is in keeping with Rian Johnson's previous work. Here are some reasons why The Last Jedi is a game changer for the Star Wars stories:
1. It Makes Fun of What Was Venerated:
The film started off with some humor I was caught off guard by (thankfully not the annoying Jar Jar Binks stuff though). It was as if my sense of the usual seriousness and veneration of certain situations and characters in this series was being messed with.
2. There Are No Fool Proof Plans:
Then it seemed no one's plans seemed to be working. Characters associated with the Resistance, in particular, would come up with plans and they would fail or be frustrated at what seemed like every turn. In most films, Star Wars stories not excluded, the brilliant impossible plan would somehow just work out and save the day. Not in this film. There are always costs. It is truer to how real life conflicts play themselves out.
3. There Are No Gratifying Reveals:
Then there was the hope of some earth shattering reveal in this film that episode 7 seemed to prime us for. But if a certain dark character is to be believed, the answer turns out to be an inglorious one. Again, bringing us back to the ground.
4. The Moral Center Is No Longer Where We Would Expect:
But most significantly, The Last Jedi, changes the game in that the very moral center of the story is brought into question. The Star Wars series is known for the clarity of its moral vision. Good and evil have always been clearly delineated. The Jedi and the Resistance stand for the good. The Dark Side and the Empire stand for evil. Granted, Rogue One started the confusion-of-moral-purpose ball rolling but The Last Jedi has broken it open.
On the one hand, The First Order represents the evil of killing all who resist.
Yet, on the other hand, The Jedi and the Resistance are revealed to not be quite as righteous in all their ranks as we may have believed. Both have gotten their hands dirty. Both are complicit in continuing the cycle of violence and war even as it uses the marginalized, each for their own ends. The approach of killing all who oppress, whatever it may cost, may be using the same logic as The Dark Side.
Given this world, how then should we live?
A. Live for yourself (This is the view of the aptly named "code-breaker" who reveals that the Resistance has also dipped into the dirty war machine. Then again, we never find out if this is the code breaker they were originally looking for in the first place).
B. Burn it all down (This is the view of Kylo Ren, consumed with his own pain).
C. Choose the way of life (This view, what I believe to be the moral heart of the film, comes, surprisingly, not from the center, but from the margins. Maybe this is a commentary on our current political climate. Maybe this has been the way all along for no one expected the savior to come as a child in poverty. As one friend put it, we must ask ourselves not only about what we want to tear down but about what we want to build. It is the women, the diminutive one, and the grunt workers at the bottom that are the wise ones in this film. It is Rose, the engineer in the Resistance that no one sees in belly of the war machine, that speaks one of the most profound lines of the film: "That's how we're going to win. Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.").

I can understand why some may not like these shifts in The Last Jedi. And maybe there was too much going on to easily follow, but there is no denying this film is taking us in a direction that the Star Wars story hasn't dared to go before. I give this film a 7 out of 10: Definitely worth mentioning and talking about but the thematic muddiness keeps it from being a great film.