I wasn’t too crazy about the movie the first time I saw it, but I loved it the second time. Why I flipped after reflecting on disappointment.
Warning: spoilers ahead.
“It was like a roller coaster ride: there were about five truly exhilarating moments, but it took some tedious climbing to get to them, and while I had a great time during the ride, I felt a little lousy afterwards, with slight pangs of regret.” – My initial review of Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi
I have a sizable collection of Star Wars toys dating back to 1978, when my mother bought me my first Kenner action figure – a Stormtrooper, which I still have in my garage. I’ve never thrown away any of my toys, and I continued collecting well into the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. (I stopped once I had a girlfriend. #nerdlife)
Because of the sheer volume of Star Wars merchandise lying around my house, garage, and office cubicle, I have gained a reputation as a diehard fanboy, but I’m not as fanatic about the movies as I appear to be.
I’m just a hoarder who likes toys.
For me, Star Wars is more about nostalgia than anything else.
The first film was released when I was six years old. I remember being captivated by scenes of Jawas capturing stray droids, Stormtroopers mounted atop giant lizards, aliens schmoozing at a bar, and spaceships blasting each other out of the sky.
I had no clue what the story was about. Rebels? Secret plans? None of that mattered when I was six.
I watched the original trilogy again as an adult, and to my surprise, began to question why I had been so fond of these movies to begin with. They weren’t as good as I remembered them to be.
And that was the problem. My childhood memories tainted the experience.
The magic of Star Wars was the way it had sparked my imagination. My friends and I dreamed up countless new adventures for our action figures and playsets. We took what we knew from the original trilogy and built up the Star Wars universe in our minds – my mind, my own universe.
There’s no way any of the movies released after the original trilogy could ever live up to my expectations.
I. It’s all about expectations.
When the prequels came out, I was taken aback at how different the films were from the original trilogy. Then, when The Force Awakens (TFA) was released, I was disappointed that it was too much like the original film. TFA even made me appreciate the prequels for at least trying to do something new.
Fickle human being. Never satisfied because expectations.
I sensed very little hype or buzz leading up to the opening of The Last Jedi, so I had very few expectations of the film other than to find out who Rey’s parents are, see Luke Skywalker as a grizzled old Jedi master, and learn who Snoke is.
I only held these expectations because TFA had set us up for them.
Man, was I disappointed by the payoff.
Instead of being Kylo Ren’s long-lost twin sister – the daughter of Han Solo and Leia – Rey turned out to be “nobody.”
Instead of being a wizened old space samurai master coolly dispatching foes with his laser blade, Luke was a broken old man, disillusioned with the Jedi, who cut himself off from the Force and spent his days milking giant beach cows.
Instead of revealing Snoke’s identity, The Last Jedi kills him off halfway through the new trilogy (although I did love how this scene played out).
I was let down, almost to the point of anger, feeling like the fans had been toyed with.
But then, as I thought about the choices the director made, I began to sway away from my sense of disappointment.
In the past films, it was almost a joke that everyone was related or connected. Sure, Vader being Luke’s dad was an awesome twist, but even as a kid, I thought that Leia being Luke’s sister was a stretch – one that made me feel all weird and awkward.
Then came the prequels: lil’ Anakin had a playground tussle with tyke Greedo and built C-3PO out of craft supplies from Hobby Lobby (check out the googly eyes), Yoda and Chewbacca were frat brothers or something, and fifth-grade Boba Fett stink-eyed Obi-Wan Kenobi when he crashed the Fetts’ IKEA-ish apartment.
Who isn’t connected in this universe? Mad Magazine even joked way back in 1981 that a future episode would reveal that “Princess Leia may be the daughter of Obi-Wan Kenobi from his first marriage to a sister of Boba Fett’s great-grandmother.”
It was almost expected that Rey would be related to someone else, so I came to appreciate that she wasn’t.
It was unexpected. Fans were disappointed.
But nothing was more disappointing than Luke Skywalker’s turn of character.
The last time we saw Luke, he was a black-clad Jedi knight who had just defeated Jabba the Hutt’s entire gang, survived an encounter with the Emperor, led Darth Vader to redemption, and calmly commandeered an imperial shuttle to escape from an exploding Death Star.
In The Last Jedi, I expected to see Luke ignite his long-lost lightsaber and jump into action at Rey’s behest, training her in the warrior ways before racing off to battle alongside his twin sister.
Instead, we got milk.
This was not the Luke Skywalker I was expecting, nor was he the hero I had in mind.
As I processed this, it sounded familiar.
Jesus Christ.
That wasn’t an exclamation – I’m talking about Jesus Christ, who did not fit the image of the Messiah that so many people had built up in their minds.
The people wanted a mighty warrior-king who would crush the Romans in battle and establish an everlasting kingdom on earth. What they got instead was the son of a carpenter from a backwater town called Nazareth who taught his followers to be servants and died a criminal’s death at the hands of the Romans.
Not the Messiah they expected.
Not the Messiah they wanted.
Even the disciples who first believed that Jesus was the Messiah were let down after he died on a cross. It wasn’t supposed to end that way. They were so dejected by his death that two of them didn’t even recognize Jesus when he revealed his resurrected self to them on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35).
To this day, people still don’t accept Jesus because He does not fit their expectations of what they think God should be like. “How can a loving God allow suffering?” they ask.
“How can God have a son?” they question.
“How can one God be three persons?” they protest.
Even Christians are not immune from rejecting aspects of Christ that do not fit our own expectations and preferences.
II. God created us in His image, but we all-too-often try to mold God into our own image.
We want a Jesus who loves what we love and hates what we hate.
We want a Jesus who approves our current lifestyles, whatever that might look like financially, morally, or sexually.
We want a Jesus who forgives us of our own sins but punishes those who sin differently than we do.
We quote Bible verses that we agree with while conveniently ignoring the verses that convict us.
In the 19th century, as scholars embarked on a quest to discover the historical Jesus, many likened the quest to looking for Jesus at the bottom of a well, peering inside, and seeing one’s own reflection on the water.
Many of us still do this. Just look at the current state of evangelicalism.
We need to accept Jesus for who He is, as revealed in God’s word, even if this makes us uncomfortable sometimes. He is who He is.
He is “I AM.”
I’m not saying that Luke Skywalker is an allegory for Jesus, although there are parallels in them attaining victory not through physical warfare, but through self-sacrifice.
If anything, the broken Luke Skywalker of The Last Jedi is an allegory for us.
Luke was uniquely gifted to fulfill his destiny, but he derailed himself from it when he allowed failure to define him. He cut himself off from the Force.
Have you ever pushed yourself away from God due to discouragement?
Have you ever felt like you’ve failed in your spiritual life and might as well give up?
I have. We all have. Even the prophet Elijah has (1 Kings 19).
III. When you base your identity on what you do rather than who you are in Christ, you are prone to living in defeat.
When you saw Luke Skywalker moping around his little island, denying who he really is – Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight – did it frustrate you? How might God see us when we deny being who He created us to be?
For those who are in Christ, there is no condemnation (Rom. 8:1). We are new creations (2 Cor. 5:17), a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession (2 Peter 2:9), and God’s handiwork, created to do good works that were prepared in advance (Eph. 2:10).
This is God’s word about who we are. This is our true identity.
What would it look like if you lived up to this each day? A life defined not by our actions, failures, or sins, but by God’s word, truth, and desire for us?
All of us are called to this kind of life, not just clergy or “special” people.
God’s grace, love, and Holy Spirit are available to anyone who places their trust in Jesus, and the gifts of the Spirit are distributed as God determines (1 Cor. 12:11). None of us chooses it.
Anyone can be a Jedi, even nobodies like Rey or the stable boy with the broom.
Once I let go of my expectations for The Last Jedi, I watched the movie for a second time and was able to enjoy it for what it is, not judge it for failing to be what I wanted it to be.
I loved all 2.5 hours of it – even the scenes that I hated at first, like Leia’s goofy witch space flight and the Princess Mononoke-esque animal ride under the Canto Bight moonlight.
As for Snoke’s identity?
Yeah, I’m still a little miffed about that one.
What did you think of The Last Jedi?
