{"id":55109,"date":"2017-12-20T10:49:54","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T10:49:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=55109"},"modified":"2017-12-20T10:49:54","modified_gmt":"2017-12-20T10:49:54","slug":"the-last-jedi-killed-my-childhood-and-thats-exactly-why-its-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/movies\/the-last-jedi-killed-my-childhood-and-thats-exactly-why-its-great.html","title":{"rendered":"The Last Jedi Killed My Childhood, and That’s Exactly Why It’s Great"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Last Jedi Killed My Childhood, and That’s Exactly Why It’s Great<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

The response to The Last Jedi has been divisive to say the least. Some love it because it takes Star Wars in a bold new direction; some hate it for the same reason. While I enjoyed a great deal of the film, it profoundly depressed me, and here\u2019s why: The Last Jedi killed my childhood, but not in the way you think.<\/span><\/p>\n

I understand the issue here. \u201cKilling my childhood\u201d evokes the far more common \u201cruined my childhood,\u201d a petty term that merely means someone hates a modern installment or version of something you loved as a kid. \u201cSo-and-so ruined my childhood!\u201d cannot be said meaningfully; it can only be whined. The Last Jedi ruined neither my childhood nor the Star Wars franchise.<\/span><\/p>\n

So when I say it \u201ckilled my childhood,\u201d I mean it only personally.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was born in 1977, and I grew up with Luke Skywalker. I was one of the multitude of kids who watched the films religiously. I can\u2019t even imagine how many times I\u2019ve seen A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. I loved a lot of movies and cartoons and toys, but it was always Star Wars first and foremost, and Luke Skywalker was my hero. It\u2019s not that I necessarily considered him the best hero in pop culture, it\u2019s that he was The Hero. The other good guys in my pop culture life were just that\u2014other.<\/span><\/p>\n

A regular part of the makeup of hero stories is that there\u2019s a problem\u2014a monster to defeat, an issue to solve, an institution to topple\u2014that the older generation has either allowed to happen or is actively participating in. It requires a young hero, a new generation, to solve the problem that the older generation can\u2019t, or won\u2019t. Older characters can at best act as mentors to the heroes\u2014but they must fail so that the heroes can succeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

For a kid, it\u2019s an intrinsic, powerful story. It makes up the bulk of Western mythology, from the stories of Greek heroes like Perseus, Theseus, Achilles, to the tale of Beowulf. It connects to kids fundamentally. That\u2019s why people have been telling stories about heroes, just like this, for thousands of years. But with few\u2014very few exceptions\u2014these heroes don\u2019t get old. We don\u2019t want to see our heroes turn into mentors, because we don\u2019t want them supplanted. There\u2019s something inherently tragic about aging from a hero to a mentor (or even worse, the hero becoming part of the problem). The message is that no one stays a hero forever. It\u2019s why this part of the story is usually left untold.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this story is effectively told in the Star Wars sequels, just as it had to be told. Once we learned Luke Skywalker, Leia, and Han Solo would appear in the trilogy, we knew there would have to be a problem they couldn\u2019t solve\u2014a conflict beyond their powers that could only be won by Rey, Finn, and Poe. It couldn\u2019t happen any other way. If it had, it sure as hell wouldn\u2019t be Star Wars.<\/span><\/p>\n

When The Force Awakens came out, a movie I loved, I bemoaned this fact. My childhood heroes had won their war against the Empire in the original trilogy, but TFA showed that they didn\u2019t bring peace to the galaxy. The New Republic Leia fought so hard to establish was broken even before it was destroyed. Luke\u2019s attempt to bring back the Jedi ended in such tragedy that he had been living in self-imposed exile for years. Han Solo not only failed to keep his son from the Dark Side, he was murdered because of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I hated learning that their hard-won accomplishments in the original trilogy were for naught, that after the end credits of Return of the Jedi their futures would be filled with disappointment and pain. But when The Force Awakens ended, despite Han Solo\u2019s death, there was still hope. The Resistance survived. The battle against the First Order had just begun. Luke Skywalker had been found.<\/span><\/p>\n

I knew The Last Jedi would be a darker, more tragic movie; second acts invariably are (which is why the rumors that TLJ would be the Empire Strikes Back of the new trilogy were so useless). But The Last Jedi does more than leave the story at a low point. It ends with the galaxy nearly consumed with evil, yet a small hope remains\u2014a flickering candle in overwhelming darkness, to use TLJ\u2019s constant metaphor, that could bring light\u2026 someday. In the future. Presumably Episode IX.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason this small light isn\u2019t extinguished is because Luke Skywalker makes the ultimate sacrifice to keep it burning. He projects himself across the stars to confront Kylo Ren, buying enough time for the tiny remnant of the Resistance to slip away. It\u2019s a noble act. And Luke is successful at keeping that, well, new hope alive. But Luke dies tragically.<\/span><\/p>\n

When he becomes one with the Force, things are infinitely worse at the end of The Last Jedi than they are before A New Hope begins, before Luke starts his journey. Evil rules the galaxy. There are no more than a dozen members left living in the neo-Rebellion\u2014not even enough to fill the Millennium Falcon. His adventures, his sacrifices, his victories in the three movies that dominated my childhood accomplished nothing, meant nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

I turned 40 this year. I\u2019ve had a mild, rather traditional midlife crisis at the realization that I\u2019m likely at the midway point of my life, but my love of the entertainment of my youth\u2014buoyed both by the immensely popular and profitable nostalgia entertainment industry, as well as the fact that my professional career keeps one foot stuck firmly in my childhood\u2014has kept me at least partially in a state of arrested development as I approached middle age. I recognized this, but I saw no downside to remaining young at heart. I still don\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

Watching Luke die, not to achieve something as much as to prevent an unfathomable defeat being total, made me ache with sadness. I hated that he died, essentially, a failure. I hate that the movies I lived and breathed as a kid (and for decades after) meant nothing to the Star Wars galaxy. This past weekend I happened to glance at the original trilogy DVD set on my shelf, and had to look away because I didn\u2019t want to think about Luke Skywalker\u2019s fate. The Last Jedi has made me so upset I don\u2019t want to think about Star Wars at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

I would suspect that those people of my generation who were as obsessed with A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi as I was feel the same\u2014like the Star Wars franchise has been wrested away from them, by taking the focus off the original heroes, by killing Luke off, and by essentially negating the movies I loved so damn much. Those who grew up with the prequels, or who enjoy Star Wars but don\u2019t feel a proprietary ownership over it, probably think I sound like a self-entitled asshole.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is because I am being a self-entitled asshole. Because despite my feelings, The Last Jedi is the best thing that could have possibly happened to the Star Wars franchise.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Last Jedi is a direct, not-even-slightly subtle message to hardcore, original trilogy-obsessed fans like myself that Star Wars is more than those three movies (or the three prequels that served as one long, terrible prologue to them). It completely resets the battle between good and evil, putting good in more dire straits than we\u2019ve ever seen in these films. It introduces several brand new Force powers. It expands the universe in ways no one expected (or in ways purists like me wanted). And it removes the old heroes to fully make way for the new.<\/span><\/p>\n

It proclaims boldly it\u2019s time for a truly new Star Wars saga, for a new generation of kids to fall in love with, just like I did. That Star Wars can be more, should be more, than the original trilogy and its prologues and epilogues. That the franchise belongs to more than just those born in the late \u201870s and early \u201880s. That it\u2019s time for me, like Rey, to let go of the past. It has been that time for awhile now.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is all exactly how it\u2019s supposed to be. The franchise needs to do more than just ape the original trilogy in order to evolve, if not outright continue. I shouldn\u2019t be holding Star Wars hostage. Lucasfilm and Disney shouldn\u2019t be making these movies just for me. They can\u2019t if they expect to continue for the next decade. And god knows I\u2019ll get to experience plenty more of the adventures of Luke, Leia, and Han for decades to come. As long as I and my ilk keep spending money on them, someone will keep churning out ancillary Star Wars products targeted to our nostalgia.<\/span><\/p>\n

My brain knows all this, but my heart is still broken. When the Skywalker saga came to a close, so did, in a very real way, that last remnant of my childhood. Star Wars is so representative of my inner child, of my nerdiness, that when Luke faded away into the Force I truly felt like I had lost someone close to me, and the loss was profound. The fact that The Last Jedi\u2019s incredibly tragic end makes it so uniquely, horrifyingly perfect for 2017 makes it even more powerfully depressing to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Last Jedi was made with other fans in mind\u2014especially the new ones. This isn\u2019t only a good thing, it\u2019s the right thing. If you grew up with the prequels, or your first Star Wars experience was The Force Awakens or TLJ, you almost certainly wouldn\u2019t have latched onto the original trilogy heroes in the way that my generation did. How could you? Why would you? If you were born in 2007, why would you be any more sad about Luke dying than we were when Obi-Wan sacrificed himself in A New Hope? Rey, Finn, and Poe are the heroes now. And whenever Episode X rolls around, maybe in 2021 or so, another new generation of heroes will emerge, for a new generation of kids to be inspired by.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Last Jedi is a good Star Wars movie. It just wasn\u2019t made for me, or the legion of other fans my age. After 40 years of having Star Wars basically tailor-made for us, it was well past time.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Luke Skywalker is still dead. And with him, part of my childhood died, too. I mourn them both.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/io9.gizmodo.com\/the-last-jedi-killed-my-childhood-and-thats-exactly-wh-1821429836<\/span><\/p>\n

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