The Force Does Not Belong to the Jedi: How to Interpret Star Wars After “The Last Jedi”
By: Jedd Cole
Tags: Star Wars, Film, Politics, The Last Jedi, Analysis

Time for the Jedi To End

The stroke which prompts renewed interpretation for me is Luke Skywalker’s reflections in “The Last Jedi.” The proclamation, “It’s time for the Jedi to end,” caught my attention in the teaser trailer right away, because it sounded so radical. The Jedi are essential to the whole fictional universe, right?

The film pivots around several encounters between Rey and Luke. After a number of denials, Luke reluctantly agrees to train her, conditionally:

“I will teach you the ways of the Jedi… and why they need to end.”

In the first lesson, Rey is meditating on a ledge, getting in touch with the plants, the bones in the earth, the porgs (so cute!), the crashing waves:

Luke: What do you see? Rey: The island. Life. Death and decay, that feeds new life. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence. Luke: And between it all? Rey: Balance. And energy. A force. Luke: And inside you? Rey: The same force.

It’s a powerful moment, similar to others we’ve rehearsed before in Jedi training scenes from past films, but here with more philosophical and emotional intensity. We reach out with our feelings along with Rey, and can almost feel that same Force. Luke concludes:

“And this is the lesson. That Force does not belong to the Jedi. To say that if the Jedi die, the light dies, is vanity. Can you feel that?”

We don’t get Rey’s answer directly, only her realization (after being tempted by the island’s dark side energy) that Luke, unlike the life and earth she felt before, has closed himself off from the Force: “But I didn’t see you. Nothing from you.” This becomes important later on.

Luke’s argument, that the Force does not “belong” to anyone, least of all the Jedi, is compelling to me, and makes sense to say. We see Yoda’s teachings from “Empire Strikes Back” in this realization:

My ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.

This mystical account of the Force is a far cry from the minimal account offered by Obi-Wan Kenobi in “A New Hope,” that the Force is “an energy field.” Obi-Wan’s account is reminiscent of the scientistic one we get from Qui-Gon Jinn in “The Phantom Menace”:

Midi-chlorians are a microcopic life form that reside within all living cells. … Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to you, telling you the will of the Force.

Qui-Gon’s deflationary, science-y account is accepted by his peers on the Jedi council, earlier in the film. They show the same incredulous amazement at the report of Anakin’s raw power, measured with a blood sample in a handheld device. This kind of quantified, ultra-rational paradigm is precisely what we see Luke break with in “The Last Jedi,” and having seen this break, we can recognize the same departure in the exiled hermit, Yoda, and to a lesser extent with Obi-Wan in episodes IV through VI.

Which brings us to Luke’s second lesson:

“Lesson Two. Now that they’re extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified. But if you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy, hubris. … I failed [with Ben Solo]. Because I was Luke Skywalker. Jedi master. A legend.”

Rey vehemently denies this interpretation at first, but we, like Luke at this point, are familiar with the story of that failure from having seen the story of Anakin Skywalker and the Jedi Order in the prequels. We have only to take an honest look.

The Jedi Ideology

The domestication, quantification and instrumentalization of the Force typified by Qui-Gon’s midi-chlorian story is just what we would expect to see from the Jedi Order of the prequels: a powerful elite institution tied to the galaxy’s largest political system, the Galactic Republic. The order gets drawn into a war secretly planned by the Republic’s own leader as part of a vast manipulation to seize power. For some Jedi, notably Yoda, the de facto militarization of the Jedi Order is to be resisted until the last possible moment. But really, the Jedi were already the muscle for the Republic’s imperialistic machinations.

We don’t even need to dig that deep when we look at the prequel stories to see that the Jedi are pretty conceited, elitist, and prone to look down on their semi-colonial subjects as they do the Republic’s dirty work.

Credit: Lucasfilm

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan have no qualms about talking down to and using Jar Jar Binks, a member of Naboo’s indigenous community, to get what they want (cf. “The ability to speak does not make you intelligent.”). Later, the Jedi treat the Gungan leader, Boss Nass, with similar conceitedness and self-importance, even perhaps using the Force to subtly manipulate him.

Credit: Lucasfilm

(One need simply contrast this encounter with Padme Amidala’s encounter with the Boss later in the film to see the stark difference.)

In episode II, Obi-Wan and Anakin continue the trend of conceited self-importance. As the assassin’s minions creep toward Padme’s sleeping form, we hear Anakin and Obi-Wan nonchalantly arguing about her in the other room:

Obi-Wan: And don’t forget, she’s a politician, and they’re not to be trusted. Anakin: She’s not like the other senators, Master. Obi-Wan: It is my experience that senators focus only on pleasing those who fund their campaigns. And they’re in no means scared of forgetting the niceties of democracy in order to get those funds. Anakin: Not another lecture… at least not on the economics of politics.

Obi-Wan’s tone is abstract, bland, annoyingly condescending (as he is in much of the film)— the tone taken by those who choose to be ignorant of how the status quo benefits them. After all, Obi-Wan is certainly no revolutionary. None of the Jedi are. They are staunchly conservative on the whole.

The Jedi of the prequels comprise a bureaucratic, elitist institution with deadly political power and a grand sense of their own necessity, authority and political wisdom: a misguided sense which Palpatine easily manipulates for his own ends, resulting in the Jedi’s destruction.

This myopia is summed up really clearly in multiple moments in the prequels, but nowhere so clearly as whenever Yoda or someone else frowns in frustration at a dilemma, bemoaning the fact that “the dark side clouds everything.” It’s not the dark side of the Force; it’s the Jedi’s own unwillingness to think differently of themselves, an attitude which extends even to the order’s librarians:

Jocasta Nu: I hate to say it, but it looks like the system you’re searching for doesn’t exist. Obi-Wan: That’s impossible… perhaps the archives are incomplete. Jocasta Nu: If an item does not appear in our records… it does not exist.

Consider how this ideology plays out:

The Jedi repeatedly use their control of the Force to control the “weak-minded” against their will. (Forcing (literally) a drug dealer to “rethink his life” is pretty demeaning, not to mention violent, taking away someone’s free will for your own ends.)

The Jedi work without any external accountability, left to their own decisions about policy, ethics and influence.

The Jedi insist on their own authority, excluding those they perceive to be “outside.” While they seem to use a quantifiable metric for determining Force sensitivity, they have no trouble initially denying the nine-year-old Anakin’s request to train, as Yoda declares, “Our own counsel we will take on who is ready!” while Mace Windu explains, “He is too old.” If a nine-year-old is too old, then we can assume children are taken at very young ages into the Jedi Academy, raising serious ethical questions that the Jedi would no doubt dismiss on its “own counsel.”

The Jedi acclimate incredibly quickly to becoming military leaders fighting wars in the back (and front) yards of hundreds of worlds as the Clone Wars commence, probably because they were already using deadly force in the capacity of unregulated warrior-enforcers, as in the opening of “The Phantom Menace.” As Nute Gunray and Daultray Dofine realize that the Jedi have been sent here to “force a settlement” between them and Naboo, which they are blockading, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon leave us no room to doubt that their intentions are to threaten them on the Republic’s behalf:

Obi-Wan: How do you think the trade viceroy will deal with

the chancellor’s demands? Qui-Gon: These Federation types are cowards. The negotiations will be

short.

Cut to:

(see: “negotiations with a lightsaber”) Credit: Lucasfilm

If you need more evidence that the Jedi are used to behaving violently and with confidence in their superiority to others (particularly non-human others, as it seems to me), just take a look at Chris Weixelman and Oliver Chips’ article on the topic.

As “Revenge of the Sith” (the final film of the prequel trilogy) shows, Palpatine’s coup, his seizure of the state through “emergency powers,” is almost a logical extension of what the Republic always was, at least as we came to meet it in “The Phantom Menace”: a galactic empire. It’s just that the Jedi have served the Republic only insofar as doing so maintains their own dominance as an institution (as we realize when Anakin tells Windu that Palpatine is the Sith lord; rather than worrying about the threat this poses for the pseudo-democracy of the Republic, Windu says that they must “act quickly if the Jedi Order is to survive”). Once Palpatine has an army of clones programmed for absolute loyalty, the Jedi are no longer politically necessary, besides Palpatine’s other, more evil and less pragmatic concerns for their demise.

The Jedi Order, defined by extra-legal colonial thuggery and political arrogance as much as they are by poise and equanimity, present a view of the Force as an instrument, an object of knowledge, rather than infinite relationality itself. This is an ideology of violence and power, the ideology of the colonizer, the gatekeeper, and the despot.

Even still, because its basis is the living Force, it is haunted by something radically different.

“You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned”

So what happens next? Yoda and Obi-Wan, among the last (if not the very last) survivors of the new Emperor’s purge, go into exile. When next we see them, things have changed. Holding out for Luke to mature (and…not…Leia?…I guess?), Obi-Wan begins training the young descendant of Anakin to be a Jedi in the hope that he will one day be able to face Darth Vader and end the Emperor’s rule.

But Yoda, already the wisest of the old Jedi Order, has changed by the time we get to “Empire Strikes Back,” and presents a significant challenge. At 900 years old, Yoda undertakes Luke’s training by saying, “You must unlearn what you have learned.” There is a subtext here of a conflict between Obi-Wan and Yoda. Obi-Wan’s vision is still myopic, limited by an old image of what the Jedi are supposed to be: knights, bound to the loose code of something like aloof chivalric nobility. But Yoda’s teachings are in conflict with that image.

Throughout the film, Yoda inveighs against the recklessness and arrogance that the old Jedi exemplified in their mastery of the Force as an instrument. This extends, obviously, to the use of the Force for making war on others. Whereas the old Jedi Order might have paid lip service to the idea that the Force should only be used for defense, when Yoda says, “A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack,” there is an urgency to the statement that recalls the Jedi’s violent history.

“So certain are you,” Yoda says to Luke’s despair as his X-wing sinks into the swamp. Here is where we receive Yoda’s mystical account of the living, creative Force: a web of relations between life and death, light and dark, which denies rationalization and ownership. Luke sees only the quantitative difference between rocks and spaceships, but Yoda sees the Force that binds them to himself and to all things. When Yoda lifts the ship out of the water, Luke is amazed: “I can’t… I can’t believe it,” he says, and we can see here the same attitude that defines the old Jedi, one of self-certainty, of Cartesian incredulity. And Yoda responds, speaking to Luke and also, as it were, to the past, his own past: “That is why you fail.”

Overall, Luke’s growing power seems to go to his head in similar ways to the ideology of the old Jedi Order. Consider Luke entering Jabba’s palace in “Return of the Jedi,” nonchalantly Force-choking two guards, mind-controlling Bib Fortuna, and then threatening Jabba to his face (“I warn you not to underestimate my powers”). On the skiff above the sarlacc pit, Luke proclaims, in the voice of his institutional predecessors, “This is your last chance, Jabba: Free us, or die.”

Jedi business, nothing to see here.

But throughout the remainder of the film, as Luke and the others fall victim to the Emperor’s traps and provocations, Luke begins to realize that he is actually inviting violence upon his friends through his cocksure sense of importance and superiority.

In a movement not often discussed, we come to the climax of the story, which involves Luke struggling against the temptation toward violence. He gives himself up willingly in the hopes of convincing Darth Vader, his father, to turn from the dark side of the Force. Later, he gives in to the dark side’s violent expression when forced to watch his friends losing the battle against the Death Star in orbit. But Luke’s victory comes later— in a moment “The Last Jedi” will reprise to countless fanboys’ chagrin — when he tosses aside his lightsaber, declaring victory over jealousy, anger and the recurring cycle of violence that results in expressions of possessiveness: “You’ve failed, your highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” Luke has no idea yet that this comparison is wholly inaccurate. Anakin Skywalker, as a Jedi per se, never accomplished (nor felt the need to accomplish) the act of defiant nonviolent resistance that Luke achieves in this moment of apotheosis. Even in his redemption, Anakin-Vader ultimately commits what amounts to an act of vengeance on Emperor Palpatine: violence to save someone he values, the same motivation for his original turn to the dark side.

Thus, the redemption interpretation, when seen in the light of the whole sweep of the Jedi story, in the light of Luke’s retrospection as a hermit, becomes complicated and troubling.

“The Greatest Teacher, Failure Is”

The Luke Skywalker we find in “The Last Jedi” is cynical and bitter, with grief lying underneath it all. He sees himself as an irredeemable failure for Ben Solo’s turn to the dark side under his watch.

Luke rightly interprets this failure as coming from a place of arrogance that he sees now has always belonged to the Jedi ideology: “I failed. Because I was Luke Skywalker. Jedi master. A legend.”

While Rey seems to disregard Luke’s interpretations as unreasonably down on himself and what she sees as unambiguously good, she is right to criticize Luke for his self-pity and cynicism.

The difference between them is that Luke has decided that hope is irresponsible, where Rey is ready to stake her life on the same kind of hope Luke held when he gave himself up to Vader in “Return of the Jedi.”

And here we see a difference between the two hermits — Luke and Yoda — which arises explicitly before long. As a hermit, Yoda grows in hope by gradually releasing himself from commitments of control and the need for certainty. In “Empire Strikes Back,” when Luke recklessly leaves in the middle of training to try to help his friends against Yoda’s wishes, Obi-Wan laments, “That boy was our only hope.” Yoda disagrees: “No, there is another.” We can only assume, as “Return of the Jedi” reveals, that this is a reference to Leia, Luke’s sister. It is only Yoda who sees Leia as having the potential to become a new kind of Jedi.

In contrast, Luke’s hope dissipates after his self-exile because, in blaming himself for Ben’s fall, he still clings to shreds of the old Jedi ideology of control and possession, despite the wisdom he has gained through interpreting the Jedi’s past and the mystical nature of the Force.

This conflict comes to a head in “The Last Jedi” when Rey leaves. In a fit of anger, Luke decides to finally destroy the ancient Jedi texts he has enshrined but, torch in hand, he can’t bring himself to do it. These objects, the last of the Jedi ideological apparatus, have become transcendent objects for Luke, despite his criticisms of the Jedi’s failings: fetish objects to which he ascribes authority and power beyond their materiality.

Yoda’s not having it.

In Luke’s indecision, Yoda, now a ghost, calls down lightning on the shrine to finish the job. Ironically, Luke objects in anger to Yoda performing what he just said he was going to do but couldn’t. (Such is the power of fetish objects, driving us into hypocrisy and alienation from our desires.)

The poignant conversation afterward causes us to look back on the events of the film, of the entire saga, once again:

Credit: Lucasfilm

“Heeded my words not, did you?” Yoda says, concluding:

“Pass on what you have learned.” Strength, mastery. But weakness, folly, failure, also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is.

This last line serves as the theme for the entire film, which essentially follows, from start to finish, a series of near escapes and downright defeats on the part of our many heroes. But the failure is the point. Failure is the juncture at which the characters have the chance to meet the limits of the myths to which they cling, on which they so often depend. Failure is what undermines myth and ideology, both of which keep the characters stuck in the cycle of violence and myopia.

Rey’s failure to encounter her parentage in the mirror cave disrupts her insecurities and brings her closer to Kylo Ren, allowing her to act on her hope for his capacity for good: a chance that Luke is unwilling to take.

Finn’s failure in the elaborate plan to save the Resistance ships on the run from the Fulminatrix (yes, that’s the name of the Supreme Leader’s dreadnought) leads him to encounter the truth about the galaxy’s military industrial complex, and how both the Resistance and the First Order are caught up in the same economic game.

Poe’s failure to think ahead, to put lives above bravado, and to get over his toxic masculinity brings him to a greater awareness of himself and of the value of the lives around him, radically shifting his priorities by the end of the story: from a drive toward death disguised as positivity, to a drive toward life expressed through care.

Luke’s failure with Ben Solo brings him into a deeper and more honest engagement with the hubris of the old Jedi ideology; and his failed relationship with Rey, combined with his failure to separate himself from the Jedi fetish objects, awakens him to what he has repressed for so long, leading him to act on behalf of the dwindling Resistance and to exemplify the way of the Force through nonviolent resistance against those who would dominate and disrupt the unity of life and death, light and dark, subject and other.

The Force Does Not Belong to the Jedi

In the final battle of “The Last Jedi,” a few Resistance fighters rally to the air with battered old ski speeders to try to intercept the First Order’s siege cannon. The battle is another failure, and Poe calls for a retreat.

But Finn steels himself in defiance, resolving to ram the laser and sacrifice himself for the others. At the last second, Rose flies her speeder into Finn’s, crashing them both out of the laser’s path.

In this moment, another failure for Finn, he comes face to face with another form of toxic masculinity that the women of the film wind up working to expose in their masculine counterparts. Committed to the idea that a man’s life is ultimately expendable (a belief no doubt reinforced by his programming in the First Order), he berates the wounded Rose after they crash: “Why would you do that? Huh? I was almost there. Why would you stop me?”

Rose replies, “I saved you, dummy. That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.”

Rose’s response represents yet another ideological break, a shift in point of view that is necessary for real change, lest the cycle of violence and domination begin again.

Rose is central to the film’s demonstration that “the Force does not belong to the Jedi.” Arguably, the non-Force-users — Rose and Admiral Holdo chief among them — are the most successful of the characters in “The Last Jedi.” It is Rose who enlists the child slaves to help her free the fathiers from their stable on Canto Bight and in so doing inspires them with dreams of resistance articulated through tales of the Jedi and, pointedly, through the life of the Force itself within and between them, as the film’s ending scene clearly shows:

Credit: Lucasfilm

Every other numbered film in the Star Wars series ends with a focus on one or more of the main characters, often with per se Jedi included. But “The Last Jedi” ends with an unnamed child we may never see again. It ends with the “nobody,” now seen as “somebody.” Because the Force doesn’t belong to anyone, least of all those with the most power. The Force is communal, diffuse, awaiting its mere recognition by the least as well as the greatest, for all are in a sense “one” by virtue of the Force, which symbolizes the power inherent in solidarity, in sheer relationality, in mutual care.

This dynamic is represented in the spinoff films, the “Star Wars Stories,” “Rogue One” and “Solo.” These films do not involve Jedi per se. They are about those whom the numbered films have taught us to see as “nobodies.”

“Rogue One” follows the Rebel Alliance’s secret agents, drawn together from all walks of life, and their suicide mission to retrieve the Death Star plans for the rebellion. We may not see Jedi, but we are made to interpret the Force at work in these characters nonetheless, in their leaps of fate, their impossible victories, their hope against all odds.

The Force isn’t even mentioned in “Solo,” where we see the start of Han Solo’s career with his friend Chewbacca in a fun sort of midrash. But still, we can interpret the workings of the plot (all of which revolve around the use and abuse of relationships of trust), the games of chance, the defiance of the odds, the impossible escape from the Maw, as enabled by the web of interdependence that is the Force.

One of the greatest moments in the film is L-3’s liberation of the droids on Kessel. Droids — who we are used to seeing as lesser, as instruments, even if lovable ones — are connected with the Force, too.

These films are about the giving of the Force back to the people. The socialization of the Force, if you will.

Conclusion

This story, this reinterpretation, gives me new reasons to enjoy the Star Wars films in chronological story order. In light of the interpretation of “The Last Jedi,” these 10 films are nothing less than the deconstruction of the Jedi ideology, the unfolding of hope in a movement of resistance that ultimately learns it cannot rely on myths and legends alone, but must rediscover the power of solidarity among the oppressed, the embrace of the interdependence of life and death, light and dark.

The symbols in this story can give us something to work with in our own time. We are in desperate need of myth busting. Ideologies of power, domination and capital growth threaten (as they always have) to rip each of us apart from each other, and then from ourselves. We are in need of resistance to the powers that be and their self-justifying narratives.

The Force is just a symbol for what binds each of us together: We all breathe the same breath, we all die into the same dust, and we are all entwined in an empire of lies about what our dreams should be, who belongs and who does not, what we are capable of as a society, and the limits of political possibility. We have nothing to lose but our delusions and everything to gain.

May that Force be with us.