The Last Jedi

My thoughts on Star Wars The Last Jedi come from a very deep, personal place. I would appreciate not being called a hater, curmudgeon, etc. for expressing them. Spoilers ahead.

When I was 12 years old, Luke Skywalker was a hero to me. Star Wars was my favorite movie of all time. It still was until this past Friday. Luke came from the death of his family to follow Ben Kenobi on an adventure to find answers about his father and to become a Jedi Knight. He never strayed from the path of light, nor gave in to the cynicism of Han Solo. He believed in the Princess and the rebellion. He blew up the Death Star because that youthful optimism had even persuaded snarky Solo to return to the fray where he never wanted to be.

I wrote my own Star Wars adventures built around Luke and his X-Wing, travelling from place to place with Artoo, playing with a die-cast toy much like the one Luke had of his Skyhopper, to spark the imagination. When Splinter of the Mind’s Eye was released the following year as a stealth sequel, written just in case the studio wouldn’t give George Lucas the budget he required, Luke was the hero again with Leia and the droids at his side. There was no sign of Han Solo.

When I was 15, Luke trained to be a Jedi. Though he acted like a spoiled child at first, it was out of a sense of duty to his friends that he left his training early to go to their rescue, giving up everything he had worked so hard to attain and paying the price.

When I was 18, Luke rescued Han Solo, Leia, and Chewbacca from the clutches of Jabba the Hutt and returned to his master, only to find out that he knew everything he needed to know to become a Jedi and that he only needed to face Vader again to become one. At the end of the film and my childhood, Luke had redeemed his father, was at last a Jedi Knight, and the story possibilities were limitless.


I’m 53 now. I waited 35 years to see Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight. Just a few years ago, JJ Abrams spent an entire chapter of the saga with the characters desperately looking for Luke Skywalker. The dramatic ending where Rey offers him Luke his original lightsaber, the Jedi weapon that once belonged to his father…became a setup for a sight gag. In this film, Luke casually tosses the lightsaber over his shoulder and walks away. My reaction: What the actual f---?

I didn’t wait 35 years to see Luke Skywalker become a whiny hermit waiting to die on an effing island, turning his back on his sister, the cause she believed in, and the Force. I didn’t wait 35 years to see Luke Skywalker, hero of the rebellion, actually consider murdering his own nephew while he slept. I don’t know who Rian Johnson thinks Luke Skywalker was, but I sure as hell didn’t recognize him. Luke fought hard and risked everything to redeem Vader, but thought about murdering Ben Solo in his sleep? What? Pretty sure that’s not in the Jedi code.

I’ll say this: Mark Hamill played the heck out of that role. I’ve said this before: Mark Hamill is 10 times the actor Harrison Ford is. Harrison Ford is a movie star. He plays Harrison Ford in every movie he’s in. But Mark Hamill is an actor. It was a great performance. I just wish he’d been playing my Luke Skywalker instead of whoever that was on the screen.

Mark Hamill recently told someone on-camera that he wished that in that climactic scene at the end of The Force Awakens, that the lightsaber that Kylo Ren was trying to summon to his hand had flown right by him and into Luke’s hand instead of Rey’s. Can you imagine the cheers that would have gone up in the crowd when they realized that Han’s death had created a stir in the Force that both Luke and Leia had felt and that Luke had left his exile to come to her aid? The roar would have been deafening. THAT’S how you make a Star Wars movie. You give Luke his moment. You give people like me Luke’s moment. You don’t make him project himself across the galaxy using some heretofore unheard of Jedi power that a thousand generations of Jedi never exhibited and then have him die for no reason.

I know the idea was to pass the baton to the new generation of characters.  But I only got to see Luke receive it when I was a kid and then pass it off 35 years later without ever running with it. And that was a race I would have loved to have seen, even briefly.

I don't need to nitpick this movie. I can (trust me, I have more to say) but the only important point to me is that Luke Skywalker should have been more to this trilogy than a burned out whiny failure who finishes as a cheesy hologram who really died alone on a rock halfway across the galaxy. He deserved better and so do we.