It has been almost five years since Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi was released, and the movie has split the Star Wars community. The original last Jedi chose to be a conscientious objector in the conflict instead of being an action hero in the movie. His appearance near the end of the second season of The Mandalorian is said to have led to some fans proclaiming the return.
This moment was another failure of creators to understand George Lucas' original vision for Star Wars. whisperings across the internet are growing louder that The Last Jedi is a pretty good Star Wars movie, after years of Disney Star Wars content piling up. The Last Jedi is more faithful to Lucas' themes than most other Star Wars material in the Disney era. It is the most faithful to the vision of Lucas in the Star Wars canon.
Darth Vader, his father, archnemesis, and the source of much of his pain are not executed in Return of the Jedi. Even though he knows the Emperor will destroy him, the evil Emperor Palpatine Spurred on by him, instead hurls away his lightsaber and proclaims, "I will never join you." The moment at which he fully accepts his moral responsibility is when he chose to end his growth over three movies. He knows that crossing over to the dark side would have dire consequences. He knows who he is now. He is not a killer. Even if humanity is diminished in Vader, human life has value to him. He is willing to sacrifice himself for a cause.
Lucas dramatizes the idea of sacrifice in the original trilogy in the final scene. In A New Hope, Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen are sacrificed to make way forLuke to join the Rebellion. Obi-Wan sacrificed himself to Vader in order to give Vader power. The Empire Strikes Back is about sacrifice. Princess Leia and Han Solo are in danger. Han is almost killed in the carbon freezing chamber when he tries to save Luke in the cold landscape of Hoth. Lando Calrissian left Cloud City to save his friends. The gang goes out of their way to save Han in Return of the Jedi. At the end of the movie, he sacrificed himself to defeat the emperor and save the galaxy.
The sacrifice in ROJ is not the final sacrifice. It's not enough to simply repeat his choice in Empire, even if the stakes are higher, because he has discovered that Leia is. The viewer needs to see a final version of the theme. This takes the form of Vader's ultimate sacrifice to save himself and the universe.
The Jedi who returns in the movie is not the one who was in the first movie, but the one who was in the second movie. It's never clear where he came from if he is the Jedi. Lucas may have been confused by the title Revenge of the Jedi because he was still working out his ideas for the film. The return of Darth Vader from his journey to the dark side was meant to be Vader's revenge against Palpatine, rather than his revenge against the Jedi.
It doesn't matter because Vader acts out of love for his son, and not vengeance, for the Emperor. Return of the Jedi shows that redemption is possible, right up until the end. No matter how bad we have been or how many mistakes we have made, the next choice can still be good. That will always matter.
The idea of sacrifice is what governs The Last Jedi. In the opening sequence, the Resistance fights the First Order and the sister of Rose Tico sacrificed herself to destroy the star destroyer to redeem the bombing mission. The fleet was saved by the sacrifice of Admiral Holdo. Finn tried to destroy the ram canon. In one of the movie's most poignant moments, Rose almost sacrificed herself to save Finn, telling him that instead of fighting what they hate, they should start saving what they love. This sentiment is similar to Vader's final acts.
Fans who complain about the end of the journey in The Last Jedi don't understand what Lucas had in mind for the character initially. It becomes easier to recognize the true nature of the Force when you realize that Lucas intended the end of the original trilogy to be the dark side. He told that story in Revenge of the Sith because he didn't have the nerve to do it. The evidence is there when he almost kills Palpatine, and when he almost kills Vader, and when he almost kills him.
In The Last Jedi, when he tells Rey that she only had her raw strength once before, he could easily be referring to himself and his own raw strength, which almost tilted the entire galaxy to the Dark Side 30 years earlier. It explains why he tried to kill Palpatine and then tried to kill himself.
In Empire, a boy is rash and uncomprehending, and his choice to kill himself rather than join Vader is informed by shock, pain and horror. By Return of the Jedi, an adult has experience and understanding of consequences. He knows what it's like to suffer. He doesn't want others to suffer either.
The Last Jedi has caused a lot of uproar because of his lack of active heroism, his abandoning of the galaxy when it needed him, and his refusal to take up a laser sword against the forces of evil. This is nothing new for him. In Return of the Jedi, he tried peaceful resistance multiple times. He tries to negotiate with Jabba the Hutt for Han instead of leading an all-out military attack on Jabba's palace, which he surely could have destroyed with a couple of X-Wings. He uses the Force to escape being immolated by the Ewoks, rather than overpowering them. He surrendered to the Imperials in the forest without a fight. He tells Vader that he won't fight him after his capture. He throws away his lightsaber in order to understand what it means to be a Jedi.
No one who has paid attention to his story should be surprised when he tosses his lightsaber away and refuses to join the violent action in The Last Jedi. His character was set up like this from the beginning. His greatest triumph is to be able to save the Resistance without sacrificing his life. We have known for a long time that he is willing to sacrifice for the greater good. His actions at the end of The Last Jedi, performing resistance in the face of evil and giving Kylo Ren one last chance to save his own soul, become the ultimate expression of this.
His reverie of dying of the twin suns on Tatooine reminds us that he was not just a Jedi, but a flawed and contradictory person. The final view of the twin suns, bold and glorious, shows that his nostalgia for them never faded despite his pleas to live in the moment. He was still a young man and a dreamer. His greatest sacrifice may have been to lay low for the greater good when he still wanted to skywalk.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
