Star Wars Episode IX: Teaser Trailer Review

At the Star Wars Celebration convention, JJ Abrams and his team released the teaser trailer for the next installment of the main Star Wars saga.  The title for episode IX has been revealed to be "The Rise of Skywalker".

So where does that leave me now?

My overall impression after watching the trailer was positive.  I liked the trailer, and it made me want to watch the movie when it came out this Christmas.  Having done this, it did its job as a trailer well.

Episode IX has a difficult task to accomplish.  Overall, it needs to heal the rift between fans, and bring the betrayed disillusioned fans back into the fold.  To accomplish this, it needs to simply tell a good action adventure story involving the struggle between good and evil, and have the good triumph because of its goodness.

More specifically,

1.  It needs to find a way to honor the original trilogy and the character of Luke Skywalker (Luke is a violent hobo.  Han is a deadbeat who abandoned his son.  The victory of Endor was meaningless.)

2.  It needs to repair some of the more destructive decisions that TLJ made.  (Luke is dead. Snoke is dead.  Rey is a nobody. Kylo is a tempermental child. Po and Fin are pointless failures.)

3.  It needs to restore and fulfill some of the long story arcs laid down by The Force Awakens, ignoring most of what happened in TLJ.  (Luke is not dead.  Rey has an important backstory.  The vision of the lightsaber held essential clues to the past and the future.  Luke has been playing the long game on Achtoo that is finally coming to fruition. Leia is an effective general caught in a difficult situation but she holds the hearts and minds of the resistance and of everyone who yearns for freedom and peace in the Republic.)


Now, in watching the trailer, I find that they have addressed many of those elements.  Not perfectly, but at least seriously.

Scene 1.  Opens with Rey in the desert.  Is it Jakku, or Tatooine?  Simple but new attire, but with a lightsaber hilt prominent at her side.

Here, we see that Rey is back, she is confirmed as our main hero and that she is a Jedi.  Something has changed and she is no longer the uncertain Force user she has been previously.  She wears the saber, rather than carrying it.  It is ready to be used.

But which saber is it?  The last lightsaber she had seemed to be torn apart in the force-grip struggle with Kylo Ren. This one looks like it is the same hilt repaired.  Notice, the silver and black longitudinal striping.

So, Rey has taken Luke's broken saber and put it back together, just as, presumably, she has taken the broken Jedi Order, using the sacred texts she rescued from the Jedi Temple on Achtoo, and put it back together.  Rey appears here with a restored saber and a restored Jedi training.

I think this is a subtle acknowledgment of a concern among the fans.  Rey has done the work necessary to restore the saber and make it work properly.  We all saw that it was broken, we knew that Rey took the pieces, and that this restoration must have taken careful study and detailed reconstruction.  What we're saying is that this work is a representation of the work that she needed to do to advance her Jedi training.  It is a representation that things have changed over the year since we last saw her.

Rey is breathing hard, in this scene.  It's another reference to the past.  This is hard work.  She is listening, feeling with the force, she can tell that something's coming.  She calms her breathing.

"We've passed on all we know," Luke says in a voiceover.

Again, the obvious reference to training.  The knowledge has been passed on to her, it is accomplished.  Luke has done this, but he says "we", suggesting that others were included in her training as well.  Whatever happens next, one argument for the Mary Sue is gone.

"The thousand generations live in you, now."  Luke's voice continues.

The thousand generations is a direct reference to Obi-wan Kenobi's speech to Luke on Tatooine, "For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the old Republic."  We've done two things here:  first, we've given respect and a proper call-back to A New Hope and the Original Trilogy, tying this movie back in.  This is a continuation of that arc.  Second, we've remembered the important elements of that first film, Good vs Evil and the medieval mystic knights that were the Jedi.

It's also a reversal of the claims of TLJ.  The Jedi Order hasn't been destroyed; it continues in Rey.

The scene moves and shows us three things:  The newly drawn saber, a blaster pistol strapped to her side, and the blob of light which will resolve itself into a pursuing craft, as the camera pulls it into focus.

The saber she has drawn prompts the question, "will she ignite it?  It was broken last time we saw it?
But next, our eye is drawn to the pistol.  Why would a Jedi wield a pistol, something that Kenobi and many other Jedi and Sith both disdain?  But this is the same one that Han gave her on the Millenium Falcon. It's not identical, though Rey may have made some modifications to the barrel

These elements of her history are being pulled together to form who she is now.  And it is further pointing out that she is a new kind of force user.

"But this is your fight." Luke concludes.  Fade to a card that reads "Every Generations Has A Legend"   This is the same message that appeared in a trailer for The Phantom Menace.  So we're referencing the prequel trilogy here as well.

In a spinning location shot we move to the side and hear the characteristic sounds of a Twin Ion Engine, as a TIE style ship moves briefly into view, trailing a billowing cloud of sand.  This is clearly an enemy, and a reference to the Imperial enemies of old.

Rey is galvanized to action and ignites her saber.  Not only does it work but it is blue, just as it was when it belonged to Luke.  Rey is poised for action

Jump to a pair of gloved hands, holding the controls.  Not sure who this is, but we've characteristically seen Kylo Ren wearing black gloves similar but not identical to this.  Of course it's perfectly reasonable for Kylo to pick up a new pair of gloves, or it could be someone else.  The controls are not identical to Kylo's old TIE fighter, these being D grips while the old one was a joystic with a thumb stick.  So, it could be Kylo with some new gear, or someone else entirely.

Rey begins running away from the ship and at the last minute hurls herself into the air, leaping over it.

 We get a good look at the TIE Interceptor-style ship, with the red paint reminiscent of the First Order.  This is not identical to the Silencer that was identified earlier as Kylo Ren's personal ship, but I tend to think it is the same.

We never see where she lands as we fade to the next card.   "This Christmas"

Leia's Theme plays in the background as a ship traverses a rocky landscape toward the lights of a city built on three distinct levels.

Jump to Kylo running through a red-tinted woods, his lightsaber ignited as he body slams an opponent to the ground.

A First Order stormtrooper accompanies Kylo's assault.

A mysterious pair of hairy hands, not human but not entirely Wookie appears to be repairing Kylo's broken mask/helmet that he smashed in TLJ.  This appears to be another signal that JJ Abrams is repairing things that RJ broke in the previous installment.

IN the next scene Poe, with a blaster, and Fin, with Rey's staff appear in the rocky desert.  This is something I've been waiting for, something that should have happened in TLJ but was broken: Fin and Poe together on a mission, both appearing competant and getting the job done.

BB-8 and Dio-9 as the cute robot trope is passed along in the next film.

Jump to Chewie in the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon with an unidentified figure in the second seat.   In the reverse shot, that person is revealed to be Lando Calrissian, apparently having a great time as the Falcon jumps to hyperspace.

Card: "The Saga Comes to an End"

Jump to another desert scene as a sand skiff, reminiscent to those on Tatooine at the start of Return of the Jedi.  This further suggests that the film is set on Tatooine, rather than Jakuu.

The sand skiff is pursued by what appear to be Troopers on speeder bikes and eventually jet packs  as it thread's its way through explosions. In the next shot, the occupants of the skiff are revealed to be Fin, Poe, and Threepio, unexpectedly.   Again, this is further promise that Fin and Poe will be getting their adventure time together.

In a very blurry fly-by, a ship crosses the sun and appears to fly in front of the command tower of an imperial star destroyer, and down the length of its upper deck. One of its engines is on fire and trailing smoke and flame.

Fade to a pair of hands, (Leia's?) holding one of the medals awarded to Luke, Han, and Chewie at the end of New Hope.  Jump to Leia embracing Rey tightly as a single tear rolls down Rey's face.  A tear for whom, exactly?

Luke's voice over, "We'll always be with you."

We finally see the entire team assembled:  Chewie, BB8, DIO, Rey, Poe, Fin.  and they are off to complete some mission.  Yes! This is what we've been waiting for the entire trilogy.  We've been introduced to these characters, seen them work independently, and now it's time to bring them together.

In the reverse shot we see a windy shoreline and the remains of something immense out in the water.  The outline is reminiscent of the projector dish of one of the Death Stars that housed its super weapon.  Rey is carrying something in her right hand.

Luke: "No one's ever really gone."

Fade to black as we hear Emperor Palpetine cackle in the background.

The black changes to the title card, revealing the true title of the film for the first time:  The Rise of Skywalker.  and then, December.

Pre-Trailer Summary: Episode IX

At the Star Wars Celebration convention, JJ Abrams and his team released the teaser trailer for the next installment of the main Star Wars saga.  The title for episode IX has been revealed to be "The Rise of Skywalker".

So, where was I before the trailer?  My relationship with Star Wars was troubled.  I thrive on new beginnings and the potential for greatness.  I grew up watching the Original Trilogy in theaters.  In 1977 I was seven years old and I went to see it with my uncle and cousins.  I've seen all of the Star Wars movies in the theater ever since.

The original movie was something completely different from all the other science fiction of the time, unlike Star Trek, which was older and clunkier to me.  Lost in Space and Space 1999 were cartoon-like in my eyes (like Little House on the prairie set in space) and Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers, which I watched in their entirety, were fun to my childhood self, but they lacked both depth and realism; they were hyper stylized worlds, actually contained on about 3 sets, and represented noting that I felt I could fit into.  

When I saw Star Wars for the first time, it immediately connected with me, and that connection only grew over the following years.  When Phantom Menace came out, not only did I see the very first screening of the midnight showing, waiting all day in line, but I attended the first Trilogy marathon's that preceded it.

I enjoyed the Phantom Menace, and still do, though I thought that Jar Jar was overdone.  As Attack of the Clones and the Revenge of the Sith were released, I found them increasingly boring.  The decline and fall of Anakin was essentially uninteresting to me and the romance of Anakin and Padme was awkward.  But fundamentally, the second and third of the prequel trilogies were basically tragedies with a downward trajectory, the decline of the Jedi, the decline of the Republic, the fall of the Chosen One, the decline of Ben Kenobi and Yoda and Mace Windu, the decline of peace and justice in the galaxy.  I'm not just talking about low points in the trilogy, but the entire arc of the prequels was downward into tragedy.  And rather than feeling bad, feeling the loss of it, I just felt increasingly indifferent.

The more insidious problem with the prequel trilogy was how it abandoned the essential story elements of the originals, the mystic knighthood, the mysterious power pervading the world, the struggle between good and evil, all set in an environment of a high-tech science fiction action adventure.   Instead, the prequels were about procedural processes in the Senate and trade negotiations and the political manipulations of the Emperor

When I saw The Force Awakens, I was pleased to see that they had returned to what I considered the older style of storytelling.  Yes, many things were derivative of the A New Hope, but Abrams went out of his way to craft elements connecting his movie back to the Original Trilogy.  There were some major missteps, such as the role and fate of Han Solo, but I felt a promise of greater things to come, that I had not felt since...

The Last Jedi was an abomination.  Not only was every directorial and narrative decision wrong, but each was a betrayal not only of the spirit of the Original Series but also of the Abrams movie that preceded it.  Every question that Abrams raised, Johnson answered in the wrong way, seemingly out of spite.  My best approach to TLJ is to simply ignore that it ever existed.  Nothing happened in that film that advanced the plot of the trilogy in any way... to the point that the Sequel Trilogy no longer has any actual plot arc. Many of the characters took steps backward in their developmental arcs, retracing old ground and becoming less heroic in the process, which, no doubt, was Rian's intention.

I was obvious to me that whole segments of the film, including Canto Bight and Captain Phasma, were meaningless and could disappear without changing anything, but as I looked more closely at each scene and each element, I began to realize that none of them advanced the overall narrative from where we left it at the end of The Force Awakens. 

At the end of TFA, the Resistance had defeated Starkiller Base, but the location of their own hidden base was revealed and they have to flee from The First Order.  Rey is seeking out training in the ways of the Force.  She has found Luke. Poe is a skilled but reckless pilot who is maturing as a leader of the Resistance.  Fin is a troubled soldier who recoils from the horror of battle but willing to risk his own life for the sake of a greater cause.

At the end of TLJ, the location of their base is revealed and Resistance has to flee from The First Order.  Rey is seeking out training in the ways of the Force.  She has found the Sacred Texts. Poe is a skilled but reckless pilot who is maturing as a leader of the Resistance.  Fin is a troubled soldier who recoils from the horror of battle but willing to risk his own life for the sake of a greater cause.

Fin

.When first conceived, Fin was one of the most intriguing characters of the new Star Wars trilogy.  In many ways the concept of Fin as a reformed Stormtrooper was entirely new.  We've already seen prodigy Jedi in the form of Anakin and Ahsoka Tano, and hotshot pilots were numerous in A New Hope, not least of which was Luke, himself.  And we'd seen the clone troopers in the Clone Wars.

But Fin gave us a new perspective on the SW universe.  He broke through the impersonal facade with which the Empire cloaks itself.  The most impenetrable of all are the entirely armor-clad stormtroopers, where we never see a human face.  As a character, Fin takes off the helmet and reveals, not a clone, but a unique person with fears and moral principles and failings.  Someone struggling with what is right, and with the moral agency to choose not to participate in the mass slaughter of innocents.

In The Force Awakens, Fin had an entire arc of his own, more so than most of the other characters.    Fin went from chafing under the oppressive structure of the First Order to balking at the evil acts he was ordered to perform, to forming a brief alliance with Poe, to actively helping Rey.  He could have simply abandoned her the moment he heard the tell tale sounds of the tie bombers, but instead chose to warn her and aid her in fleeing, even to the point where she didn't need him anymore.  In many ways he needed to be helping someone.

So the brief opening scene shows us this entire character arc of Fin's but we also become aware of conflicts within himself.  Like Rey, Fin is looking for a place to belong.  Ripped from his parents as an infant, he has grown up within the First Order as the only family he has ever known.  Captain Phasma was in some sense the parent who raised him, and Fin was rebelling against her autocratic teaching  as well.  But in leaving the First Order, now Fin has no place in the Universe.  His interaction with the Resistance initially is more one of convenience than of any inner conviction.  At the same time, he doesn't want to continue to live a lie. And he wants to escape from the continuous violence that the First Order represents.

When he reaches Maz's smuggler's refuge on Takodano, he has gotten himself into a difficult situation on many levels.  He 's a fugitive from the First Order.  He's misrepresented himself to Rey as being associated with the Resistance, He wants to avoid conflict and the Resistance seems to be the center of the conflict.  Fin is the lonely ronin who has left his wicked master and now walks the earth in search of peace.  Only, he cannot find it

Instead, he is drawn back into the conflict, drawn by circumstances, by a plea from his friends, by his own sense of loyalty.

The Way Forward

Last time, I talked about what wouldn't work.  Here's a look at what might be a better start.

Basically, this is going to come down to the things that were promised in The Force Awakens.

1.  Luke isn't dead. 

Probably the biggest mistake that this second trilogy made was the way that it treated the legacy characters of Luke, Han, and Leia.  Rather than giving them a noble role as the returning heroes that all the fans loved, they were each made fallen heroes:  failed generals, failed parents, failed crusaders... Too much nihilism was packed into Rian's attempt to make a french art house film.

The final dagger in the side was when drunken hobo Luke was killed off by vanishing into the Force after his astral projection to save Leia.  Rather than a triumphant sacrifice, it was the last gasp of a has-been, using up the pitiful remainder of his strength; the once-proud warrior now enfeebled with age, with disillusionment, all his beliefs betrayed, all his dreams shattered.

Except that wasn't what Luke's character was all about, and he certainly wasn't old or feeble or used up.  Luke should be in the prime of his life, as a Jedi.  To take that away from fans was unkind, to say the least.  I personally think it was a betrayal of the trust that George placed in Lucasfilm

What really happened:
 Luke was successful in his mission to Achto, and did actually attain some enlightenment there.  His power in the Force is greatly magnified and he has mastered moving in and out of the Force at will.  What we saw was Luke shrugging off his self-imposed exile at the Jedi Temple, now firmly resolved to enter the conflict with the first order.  He had attained a deeper understanding of the Force, but with it, had harbored some doubts about his place in the struggle.  Was it really his place to wield the force in this conflict..  The calling from Leia, and his subsequent conversation as a Force projection with Kylo convinced him that it was right for him to act, and that Kylo needed to be stopped, and that this task was his responsibility.

That is the story that we want to hear about Luke.

2.  Rey's parents aren't drunken junker nobodies.  Rey is connected to the Skywalker or Kenobi lineage.

One of the greatest accomplishments of JJ Abrams in the first movie was the establishment of Rey's character and the narrative arcs for her to follow.   Rather than completing these arcs, Rian decided to cut them off, sending Rey's character spinning without foundation.  The most symbolic of these was in intentionally subverting the most interesting things that Adams established about her in Force Awakens:  the lightsaber Force vision and the way she felt drawn to Luke.  

Rian ruined all that by destroying the significance of each of those moments.  Through Kylo, by having him minimize the significance of the lightsaber vision, and through Luke, by having Luke toss the lightsaber over his shoulder in a comic, buffoonish way.

 Rey's character lacked a traditional "earned" backstory, where, like Luke and Anakin, she learned to wield the Force.  Instead, it looked like Rey was just unreasonably proficient with the Force, diminishing any struggle or challenge she had to face.

What Really Happened:
Anakin and Luke's stories were enriched by surmounting the challenge of learning to use the Force.  This will be important for Rey as well, but her story was enriched by the unique circumstances of the Force calling to her.  Far more than simple historic scenes were conveyed to Rey through her initial encounter with the lightsaber at Maz Kenata's temple.  Yes, it gave her visions, but I think it also conveyed to her some rudimentary understanding of the Force.

I think this was possible because first, I do think that the Force calls heroes when it has need of them.  I think it is very clear in the film that Rey was called to the basement area of Maz's temple, called to that specific wooden trunk where the saber was kept.  Neither was it just a coincidence that Rey happened to be on the planet in the company of Han Solo. As Obi Wan said, "In my experience, there's no such thing as coincidence."  Everything that happened to Rey on Takodano was shaped by the Force.

Second, because Rey was participating in the lineage of a major Force user. The Force vision seemed to indicate that Rey's parents were unique in some way, and she herself felt that there was more to the story of her parents, to the extent that Maz had to talk her out of her compulsion to return to Jakuu. 

And, third, because of whose lightsaber she was holding.  This was the lightsaber constructed by Anakin after he lost his first one on Geonosis, the one he wielded throughout the Clone Wars, the one he lost to Obi wan in Revenge of the Sith, who later passed it down to the young Luke Skywalker many years later and who lost it himself when Anakin cut of his hand in Cloud City. The key to this is that this was not merely a random weapon Rey was using but one imbued with the Force of two of the greatest lightside force users of that time period, Clone Wars Anakin and Luke Skywalker.   The result was that Luke's lightsaber spoke to her because it was powerful, in and of itself, and because it had been wielded by one of her lineage, or very close to it.  It spoke specifically to her, in a way that it did not for Fin, for example, or even to Maz.

Far from being an un-earned golden child, an illegitimate mary sue, JJ Abrams surrounded Rey with many layers of justification for her introduction into the Force where she was imbued with knowledge of the Force on a temporary basis through the Lightsaber.

I also think that we will learn that Rey did quite a bit of training on Achto, both by herself and under the tutelage of  Luke.  While we didn't see much of those scenes, I think that the training did happen, just offscreen.

3.  Rey and Kylo's teen romance no longer exists.

This was never a promising line of the story, and it felt awkward and out of place. 

Recovery

In my previous post, I argued that the problem that Lucasfilm faces is not one arising from simply making a bad movie.  Instead, it is the loss of confidence in the leadership that many Star Wars fans have experienced.  And the confidence I am talking about is not in the ability to make a good movie, but in the competence to direct the Star Wars franchise into the future.

Every one of the decisions made has appeared to be a bad one.  The treatment of the existing characters has been discouraging, and the direction of the new characters has lacked focus.

The way forward, then, lies not merely in making good movies again.  One could argue that Solo: A Star Wars Story was a decent film, and though it suffered from the loss of confidence engendered by The Last Jedi, I think its valid to say that it didn't further the erosion.  But it did nothing to repair it, either.  Whenever the subject of Episode 9 is brought up in discussion, it is met with profound ambivalence.  And that's a problem.

Because if no one is going to see Episode 9, that will make this entire trilogy a failure.  And a failed trilogy does not engender any new trilogies.  A trilogy is a huge commitment by a studio, usually one that the studio is not willing to make without a solid franchise to work with.  What Rian Johnson has done is to take a solid franchise and severely weaken its foundation.  In the words of the Star Wars fandom, Rian Johnson has single-handedly killed the Star Wars franchise.  Unless Abrams and others in charge of Episode 9 can come up with a miracle, the great revival of the Star Wars saga that Disney promised will be effectively dead for at least the next 10 years.

So what has to happen to the final installment of this trilogy to bring it to a satisfying conclusion?

Here's a couple things that aren't going to work:  No amount of obscure shout-outs to favorite characters from the extended universe, no number of cameos or callbacks to previous eras will have any long-term effect on the films'   Nostalgic references are rewarding in a film that is otherwise successful, enhancing the experience.  In a failure, they often go unnoticed, or appear cheap

The other thing that isn't going to work is continuing the effort to totally restructure the Star Wars philosophy of heroic adventure.  If Lucasfilm persists in pushing a psychological teen drama, most of the core fans will fall away.

Unfortunately, the solution will require the exodus of Rian Johnson, and that's mostly due to his behavior after the release of TLJ.  If he had just remained behind the scenes, he wouldn't have presented himself as the primary target for everybody's ire.

If he's still out there threatening to direct a future trilogy of his own, something long touted as a promise by Kathleen Kennedy, not only is that trilogy going to be ignored but fans are unlikely to invest in any other Star Wars property while it remains a possibility.For better or worse, Rian has made himself part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

What now, Lucasfilm?

We've talked briefly about what went wrong with the Last Jedi and how that film failed to understand what made Star Wars great, and so they subsequently betrayed that greatness.

To recap here, the original Star Wars trilogy successfully brought together three storytelling elements:

1.  Moderately hard science fiction, with an expansive empire spanning multiple worlds, star ships to travel between them, and multiple species interacting in a variety of ways.
2. A hero's journey where the protagonist leaves their isolated existence, matures and develops their capabilities within themself and comes to terms with the larger conflict in the galaxy.
3. A fantasy story involving mythical knights wielding a magical Force as champions of order and justice.  

The very weapon of the Jedi Order, the light saber, embodied all three elements: it is a technological marvel involving lasers and focusing crystals, but at the same time a "sword" incorporating the use of the Force, and it is a token of the hero's empowerment

Where Kathleen Kennedy went wrong was by essentially abandoning the second and third elements entirely, in favor of modern feminist drama.  One of the reasons why people have so strong a negative reaction to Rey is that her character does not follow the progress of the hero's journey.  Similarly, the mystical connection that Luke feels to the Force has been abandoned, the mentoring that passes the tradition down from one generation to the next, the feeling that Luke and Obi wan are part of a larger tradition that they can benefit from and contribute to...  Each of these themes has been, not just abandoned but consciously rejected.

So the lightening in a bottle that Lucas was able to capture has been dissipated.  But then Kennedy went ahead with two additional tonal changes that didn't just disappoint fans, but overtly antagonized them.

The Original Cast

The first was the perceived treatment of the original cast:  Luke, Leia, and Han.

Han was transformed from a commanding general of the Rebel assault force to a blundering loser, doddering away on the edge of the galaxy, having lost his ship like someone might lose their car keys.  Moreover, he's a dead beat dad who's left his wife, Leia, in charge of the Rebellion, and his son Ben during his critical formative years to roam the galaxy with his buddy Chewie pulling off dopey cons involving giant bugs.

Overtly, this is disrespectful to a beloved character.  But it also destroys the character of Han as someone who is fiercely loyal, creative and cunning, daring and improvisational. No longer loyal, Han leaves his wife and son to go joyriding with his bro.  No longer creative, Han can't even fill a few simple contracts without running afoul of two separate criminal organizations. Rather than being daring and improvisational, we get the image of a spent force.  Han is not a sharp as he used to be, and not aware of his limitations.  He's a has-been who's fooling himself into thinking he can re-live the glory days of his past.

In fact, this new iteration gives back all the development that Han's character made during the original trilogy.  From an aloof loner, Han developed in the first film into someone who is willing to risk his life for a cause greater than himself, someone who is willing to reveal himself and allow himself to fall in love with Leia; from an irresponsible smuggler who gets involved with and on the wrong side of crime bosses like Jabba, to a leader who is willing to shoulder responsibility and take charge of a key role in the operation against the second Death Star.  This is the Han that we knew at the end of Return of the Jedi.

A similar complaint can be made of the character of Luke Skywalker.  As Mark Hamill has said many times, Luke was a character full of hope, full of optimism, full of idealism, ready to try to change the world and capable of enormous change.  It was his success at the end of A New Hope that revitalized the Rebellion, not just protecting it from the Death Star, but also re-energizing it as a force that could contend with the Empire.  It was his presence at Cloud City that proved that Vader could be faced, even if at that time he wasn't successful.  Yet neither was he entirely defeated.  And finally it was his optimism and faith in his friends that allowed the Rebel assault to be successful, the Emperor to finally be destroyed, and his father to be reclaimed to the light side..

Of course, in The Last Jedi this hopeful character was turned into an anti social, semi-disgusting bum living under a freeway overpass at the edge of town, drinking cheap wine from a sea cow, having abandoned his friends, and his position in the Rebellion.

Antagonism

The final major misstep of the Kennedy reign was that she did seem to be intentionally inserting a feminist agenda into the narrative.  This was typified in TLJ by diminishing all the male characters as impulsive, reckless, violent buffoons, and replacing them, instead, with newly re-imagined female characters.  We've just looked at how the male heroes of the original trilogy were reduced to objects of pity:  Han abandons his family, while the noble Leia continues to hold the Rebel Alliance together, while simultaneously trying to raise their son.  Luke has a nervous breakdown and rejects the Force, and with it any ability to help his friends, while Rey ends up training herself in the Force and single- handedly saves the scattered Rebellion by opening up the back door.

General Hux is a clown, while General Leia is noble and patient.  Kylo Ren is an emo poseur while Rey is thoughtful and diligent.  Poe is Bad while Holdo is good, Fin is bad but Rose is good.  Admiral Akbar dies a meaningless death, but Holdo dies a heroic death.  Holdo's self sacrifice was noble and honorable, while Fin's self sacrifice was selfish and impulsive.  Leia's extraordinary force powers led to her continued presence and growth as a character, but Luke's extraordinary force powers led him to disappear into the force because he had used up all his strength.  At every turn, where comparisons are made between characters, the female character is portrayed in a better light then her male counterpart.

The crowning mistake, after all the errors of judgement in making the film itself, came afterwards when director Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy responded to the initial confusion and mixed feelings that were a typical response to TLJ with scorn and mocking.  Rian Johnson posed with  mocking signs, "Your Snoke Theory Sucks" and "Happy to Ruin Your Childhood" among others, and posted them to his twitter feed.  When obviously weak plot points were discussed, Rian responded with complete denial of any validity.  The film was the best Star Wars film ever, he crowed.

The result of all of this was something deeply troubling to the fans.  It went deeper that just making one bad movie.  In short, Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy lost the trust of the Fans.  It wasn't merely a few missteps; Johnson's rhetoric convinced the fans that this film wasn't a mistake but a deliberate attempt to destroy, "Kill it if you have to," as Kylo Ren told us. 

It's goal was to rework the entire franchise into something that Star Wars was not.  The fans didn't trust Lucasfilm to make a good Star Wars movie. They didn't trust them to make a Star Wars film at all. As a result, when new Star Wars Stories came out, the fans were rightly ambivalent.

They didn't trust Lucasfilm to do justice to such an important and favorite character as Han Solo.  When looking at the horrible transition that the Kennedy shop had worked on Han Solo and Luke later in life, fans were loathe to see what damage that same shop would do to their origins and back stories.  With the sounds of "Happy to ruin your childhood" ringing in their ears, fans didn't want Kennedy to further mangle their beloved characters.  The result was they began actively disliking the Han Solo feature film and to campaign against any further atrocities. 

The Last Jedi Theory: a way out

It's not the Star Wars theory we love; it's the Star Wars theory we deserve.

The second film of the latest trilogy rejected storytelling in favor of some other kind of experience.  And in doing so, it created apparent narrative inconsistencies that need to be resolved if we want the storyline of the trilogy to make sense in a satisfying way.  That is the challenge, and I present a theory that attempts to meet that challenge.

Luke Skywalker's goal is to spread an awareness of the Force to more people in the galaxy.  That was the purpose of his "Jedi Academy", in an attempt to re-assemble the structure of the former Jedi Temple where Yoda was a teacher.

Luke fears that he has an incomplete understanding of the working of the Force.  Though he has been trained by Yoda, that is his only experience with Jedi teaching and philosophy.  Yoda gave him what he needed to meet the crises of the moment, but as the sole representative of the Jedi philosophy in the galaxy, Luke feels that there is more to learn.

This becomes more apparent to him as he is trying to teach Ben Solo to use the Force.  He fears that a wrong move on his part will lead Ben down the wrong path, and already he can sense a growing frustration and confusion within Ben that he doesn't know how to cure.

He also mistrusts his understanding of the concept of Balance.  He's worried that by being such a powerful Light-side Force user, he was in effect creating a Dark-side force power to match his.  When Vader and the Emperor both died, he remained the single most powerful Force user, and that created an imbalance.  The emergence of Snoke was a signal to him that the force was still imbalanced.

Luke traveled to Achtoo for two reasons.  First, he wanted to remove himself from the Galaxy as a Force presence for the Light.  Whether or not this actually works this way, Luke believed that by retreating to an isolated deserted planet, his influence on the balance of the Force would be diminished, and by doing so he would diminish the dark-side power of Snoke. Second, he was keenly aware of how little he knew about the Jedi philosophy of the Force, and so he made a pilgrimage to Achtoo to complete a deeper study of Force philosophy on the planet where the Jedi began.

Kylo Ren was a force user and a student of Luke's.  However, when Luke was training him, Kylo could sense Luke's ambivalence in raising up another powerful force user.  Luke was also hesitant in imbuing Ben Solo with technical skills without also giving him an understanding of Jedi principles, an understanding that Luke felt that he, himself, lacked.  Ben felt frustrated and held back, in much the same way that Anakin did under Obi-wan's teaching.

As a result of his need to better understand the Jedi philosophy, Luke makes the decision to go on a journey in search of a deeper understanding of the Jedi, and in doing so he temporarily suspends his teaching at his Jedi Academy.  (Ret-con)  When Luke left the school, all was not in flames.  In fact, he left peacefully to begin this journey in search of Achtoo.

It is likely that Ben wanted to accompany him as a true padawan should, and Luke refused, feeling that Ben was not yet ready for such a trip.  To Ben, however, this felt like a betrayal.  Impatient as he was to continue his use of the Force, Ben couldn't just put his life on hold until Luke returned.  After he had gone, Ben's frustration was deepened to the point of rage.  Just as Ben was on the precipice of accessing enormous power, Luke not only halted his training, but also appeared to reject him as his padawan as signaled by his unwillingness to allow Ben to join him on the journey.

Without the maturity or patience to wait for Luke's return, Snoke appeared and offered himself as an alternative teacher of the Force, possibly presenting himself as another of the remaining Jedi and not revealing, initially, his connection to the dark side.  Ben fell under the influence of Snoke, who would be the mentor and teacher that Luke refused to be.

From dialogue in Force Awakens it is likely that Leia realized Snoke's evil connection and advised Ben to stop training with him.  However, Ben took this as a further rejection, from his own mother, this time, a feeling no doubt engineered and manipulated by Snoke himself.  With his newly unleashed dark-side power, Ben tried to take over the school in Luke's absence, creating the order of the Knights of Ren from those who would follow him.

It was at this point that Leia and others in the resistance openly opposed the direction Ben and Snoke were taking and the conflict was brought out into the open. Ben adopted his new name of Kylo, and with his Knights of Ren, destroyed the school, murdering everyone who opposed him.  I believe that it was Snoke who suppressed Ben's memories of what actually happened at the Jedi Academy, and substituted a different version of events where Luke was still present and instigated the conflict.  Contrary to that memory, it was Kylo who destroyed the school, leaving it in flames.

Snoke tried to turn Ben, who was essentially a light-side force user, to the dark side.  What is fascinating about this story is the lengths necessary to complete that transformation.  It is psychological warfare at its most insidious.  It started with changing Ben's name, and estranging him from his parents, rejecting his former teacher.  In order to do that, Snoke implanted images in Ben's mind that weren't true.  The famous moment, when Luke ignited his lightsaber while standing over the sleeping Ben, never happened.  This was a fabrication that Snoke implanted in Ben's mind.  It was this gaslighting technique that Snoke used repeatedly to break Ben's mind from reality.  It is also a fabrication that Ben desperately wants to believe.

Later, Snoke would attempt the same technique on Rey, through Ben.  When speaking about Rey's parents, Ben said that they were nothing and nobody.  Ben firmly believed it at the time, since Snoke has so firmly convinced him of its truth.  However, it was simply an attempt by Snoke to turn Rey to the dark side as well, gaining another apprentice for himself.  As with Ben, the first step is to separate the pupil from their parents, from their family.

When Kylo Ren reaches out to Rey's mind, this was obviously not the first time that he had experienced such communication.  Since Snoke later claims that he facilitated this mental communication, it was likely that Kylo had communicated with Snoke in the same manner.  Everything that Ben said in those conversations was largely influenced by Snoke.  It was clearly an effort to wrest Rey away from Luke and bring her over to his side.  He did that with lies and persuasion and with reaching out a hand to her in her confusion; all techniques that Snoke had used against him.

Importantly, all the things that Kylo showed to Rey were in contradiction to the images that Luke's lightsaber showed her.  The Knights of Ren scene against the Luke's saber scene at the school.  The voice of (her grandfather) Obi-wan (both from Alec Guinness and Ewen McGregor)  against the claims of Kylo about her parentage, (for example, the lightsaber was found in the same box where Obi-wan kept it before presenting it to Luke.)

The call to belonging opposed by Kylo's call to leave it all behind, the appeal to important events in the past (Darth Vader's breathing, the corridors of Cloud City, the voice of Yoda) against the mandate to "let the past die, kill it if you have to." The saber showed Luke embedding the map of his journey in R2D2, vs Kylo telling Rey that Luke was unimportant.

The interesting thing is that Kylo is not fully persuaded of the rightness of his path.  Like Anakin before him, there is still good in him.  He clearly killed Han in an attempt to irrevocably plunge himself to the dark side, a choice no doubt heavily influence by Snoke.  But when he had the same chance with his mother, he refused (and also, I believe, actively used the Force to preserve his mother's life.)

Kylo Ren's journey is toward truth.  This truth has been denied to him first by Luke, who was uncertain and fearful, and then by Snoke, who was manipulative and deceitful.  In the end, I think that Ben will eventually be shown the truth, possibly by Rey.  In the light of this new understanding and in order to balance out his former evil acts, Ben will be moved to make a sacrifice to help the resistance, thereby achieving redemption and completing his arc.