The Last Jedi brings Balance to the Force

BEWARE, SPOILERS THROUGHOUT.

On first watch, I came out of the cinema not really knowing what I’d seen. Luke milking aliens? Poe prank-calling Hux? A boring Finn/ Rose subplot?

Even worse, I came away with the feeling that there wasn’t even anything much to discuss in the movie. I felt like it was far less interested in the mythology and mysteries of the universe than I was.

Then a few things happened.

I listened to this fantastic podcast of a brother and sister sharing their thoughts about it.

And I went to see the film again.

I don’t know exactly what changed. But I came out of that viewing with a totally different perspective of not just what the film is about, but the intent and craft with which it was made.

Here are some of my thoughts and notes:

Balance is everything and everywhere

Light and dark is the most basic way to look at balance in the Force.

It’s about consequences, it’s about how many bombers you lose even if you take down the dreadnaught, it’s about not deciding the future is already written and considering child murder to get ahead of it.

There’s more than one kind of balance

You can think of balance as a conflict between good and evil, where one must overcome the other. Or you can think of it as more adjacent – not about elimination, but about compromise, co-operation and co-existence.

The Force is agnostic to this judgement, as long as it remains in balance.

The opposite of balance is not evil — it is extremism

The Empire hoarding power is just one kind of extremism. A suicide run to save your friends is another. Sacrificing the lives of all your bombers to take down a capital ship is not worth it.

The triggers that lead to the dark side are all about losing control over power — hate, anger, suffering.

The Jedi’s real purpose and lightness is to be caretakers and curators of the balance

Not to create an army of “Force Police.”

When they are not needed, they remove themselves from the equation, like Yoda and Obi-Wan. Eventually, they are able to remove themselves entirely and rejoin the Force itself.

This is the issue with Luke making a school and training a dozen students, instead of letting the Jedi order and doctrine disappear.

By introducing powerful Force users to power, you are creating a dozen potential nuclear bombs.

And that makes the irony even sweeter when his realisation of this directly causes it to come true.

Weakness + weakness does not balance

Rey and Kylo have a relationship that could have become co-dependent, instead of cooperational.

He belittles her, says she is nobody, doesn’t belong in this story, says he can help her and, having broken her down, says he needs her.

But Rey’s refusal here shows her strength vs Ben. She can resist temptation and the easy solution. She has passed the test.

For him, he becomes more extreme, having once more made himself vulnerable and had it thrown in his face.

It’s a film for multiple audiences and multiple viewing

I can see layer after layer of this film threaded together – an elaborate story and thematic lattice.

There’s a viewing of this for the very young, with slapstick, porgs and BB8 hero moments (maybe even a whole BB8 film by itself if you cut his biggest appearances together?)

I feel like there’s one for the old Star Wars fans, with Luke’s talking about the force, his meeting with Leia, and with Yoda.

I feel like there’s one to satisfying someone watching the current story – it’s amazing that Ben and Rey have a through-line in this film that consists of several intense dialogue scenes that connect them tightly throughout the story.

It’s not easy to make an audience care about two characters talking, with no action, over and over again, in a big blockbuster like this.