Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Teaser Trailer)

It's finally here!!! Our first sneak peek at the new Star Wars Epidoe VIII trailer, The Last Jedi. Check out the new trailer starring Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Mark Hamill!

The Morality of Star Wars & The Chinese Market

"When Lucasfilm does their rewrites, they're not sending their best..."

* SPECULATIVE SPOILER WARNING: CONTAINS HEAVY SPECULATION ABOUT POTENTIALLY MAJOR PLOT POINTS OF UPCOMING STAR WARS FILMS*

The newly announced title to Star Wars: Episode 8, The Last Jedi, is bad-ass but quickly my band's excited groupchat turned gloomy when we realized that Lucasfilm is doubling down on rubbing our face in how not far the story has come since Episode VI.

Firstly, let's discuss the over-all "thing" Disney is doing with their new canon story since acquiring Lucasfilm. The new story is actually the story of the entire Star Wars Galaxy or GFFA (Galaxy Far Far Away). As Rogue One showed us, they are not just continuing post-ROTJ-era stories, they are bouncing all over the timeline to add new adventures and characters. This is dope; I've enjoyed the new films and comic books they are adding to the canon.

I've noticed a distinct trend that at first I thought was really awesome. Notice that none of the new Force user characters, except Luke, in Force Awakens are "Jedi". Rey is a trainee-to-be, Finn doesn't seem to be a Force-user, Kylo Ren is no longer a Jedi and Lucasfilm insists "Sith" died with Sheev Palpatine in Episode VI. Rogue One gives us Chirrut Imwe who is a Force-user from a different religion than the Jedi, with different skills and practices. Rebels focuses on Ezra and Kanann, padawans that are not quite Jedi Knights as well as Ahsoka Tano, now no longer part of the Jedi order, and countless other Force-users that don't fit into the Jedi or Sith category.

Peep this inscription from the beginning of the novelization of The Force Awakens:

 "First comes the day

Then comes the night.

After the darkness

Shines through the light.

The difference, they say,

Is only made right

By the resolving of grey

Through refined Jedi sight."

―Journal of the Whills, 7:477

Barring an incredibly unforeseen turn of events, Luke and Rey will be the ones doing the resolving of grey through refined Jedi sight in the current saga trilogy. Meaning they will be rejecting both the selfish evil of Sith like Palpatine and Vader as well as the rigid out-of-touchness of the prequel-era Jedi Order. 

Add all that to the introduction of Saw Gerrera's Rogue One cell as "too extreme for the Rebel Alliance", Disney's whitewashing of the Empire's racism and sexism (Bodhi Rook and Captain Phasma wouldn't have been in Lucas' space-Nazi version of the Empire) and you see Disney's Star Wars is interestingly trying to expand the definition of and make more ambiguous the morality of the GFFA and Force-based religion in the Star Wars universe. This is interesting but I worry that this is an excuse to keep Jedi scarce and pander to expanding global markets as opposed to making the best art that the company could be making. 

Episode 7 depicts neither Luke's new Jedi order nor the restoration of the Republic. It also depicts a resurgent Empire now in the form of the First Order. In other words, it seems all the victories Han, Luke and Leia won in the original trilogy were for naught. In Episode VI, Yoda says "Pass on what you have learned."

For decades, fans were led to believe that Luke would help proliferate a new Jedi order and now it seems he will have but one apprentice trained in the ways of the Jedi Knights by the time he is dead which the title The Last Jedi implies he will be by the end of Episode 8. Star Wars titles always have two or three meanings. When the film begins, Luke will be the only trained Jedi in the Galaxy and by the end of the film it will be Rey when Luke likely passes from physical life. 

I understand the desire to have fewer as opposed to more highly powerful wizard-warriors in your fantasy films- it lowers the stakes when so many of the "good guys" are nigh-omnipotent - but it just makes a guy wonder what has been accomplished by the Rebel victories of the original trilogy when the status quo is exactly the same in the subsequent trilogy. The prequels had their flaws but at least the premise was different than that of Episodes 4 through 6. When one watches the story in Episode order, the story progresses until Episode VII makes it clear that the gains made in Episodes 4 through 6 were largely lost.

Anyway, it's quite possible that making morality and religion more ambiguous in the GFFA will pay off in a really awesome way but part of me wonders if it's just a way to appeal to the growing potential global (especially the 1 billion plus person Chinese market) customer base. Star Wars has lots of Christian iconography - fatherless boy who turns out to be prophesied Chosen One -and governments like China's censor certain kinds of religious and paranormal content - ghosts  and more. The term "Jedi' has Japanese roots ("jidaigeki"), so the cultural animosity some Chinese have for Japan further explains why Lucasfilm would want to start creating non-Jedi Force-user religions. The reason this is more of a factor now than say the 70s or 80s is that more Chinese than ever have made their way into the working and middle class since those decades, so a country with a population that dwarfs ours' populace suddenly has untold millions and billions in disposable income for an entertainment budget as discussed in this article from the same year in which Disney bought Lucasfilm.

There's also story reasons-  it's easier to manage a few highly powered warrior-wizards in your story about ragtag rebels than many of them if your intention is to make the adventure challenging for your protagonists - for Lucasfilm's decision to roll back progress made by the New Republic but for me to believe that 5 years from now I'll need to see more pay-off to this editorial take on Star Wars' morality than ticket sales.

To be clear and reiterate - I don't have an issue with making Star Wars' morality more ambiguous. In fact, I find it exciting. I will just be supremely disappointed if there's no further artistic pay-off to it. My grandest hopes: the inscription pasted above implies that Ahsoka is a past hint, a pre-echo to a reformed modified new "Grey" Jedi order with Luke and Rey, one that allows attachments (unlike the rigid old Jedi order) but disallows the darkside (unlike the Sith Order). Given how much of a big deal Lucas' prequel films make about the prequel era Jedi order having a diminished connection with the Force and how out of balance everything was, I feel like this has to be paid off.  So I'm hoping that that is more what this version of GFFA morality is about, and not just getting 1.3 billion new customers.

*   image by Alex "Ppaaccee" Reynoso

Tristan "Tanjint Wiggy" Acker is a staff writer for JooseBoxx, youth hip-hop writing instructor with CHORDS Enrichment Youth program (chordseyp.org) and member of the Inland Empire nerdcore hip-hop group the West Coast Avengers. Catch more of their work at westcoastavengers.com, follow Tristan on Twitter @Tanjint or e-mail him at tristanacker@gmail.com.

Watching Rogue One / Episode IV back-to-back in one weekend and the Future of the A Star Wars Story films

                 *STRAIGHT UP SPOILERS AFTER THE FIRST TWO PARAGRAPHS, FAM*

Rogue One is one of the least flawed Star Wars films and will probably ultimately be assessed as one of the best films set in the GFFA (Galaxy Far Far Away) thus far. It doesn’t overtake Empire or even Jedi or A New Hope for me but it was probably a little better than Force Awakens. Episode 8 can retroactively strengthen (or weaken) Episode 7 so it’s not even a fair comparison.

The soundtrack was a tasteful blend of Star Wars style new stuff and careful reprises of the original theme. My girlfriend said the beginning was less exciting without the conventional horn fanfare text scroll combo and I’m inclined to agree. I fully understand it’s not one of the “episodes” but I still think they should have worked a version in somehow.

Rogue One actually delivers on the edgy twist-on-the-familiar film Suicide Squad advertised itself to be. None of its core and new characters surviving, its story actually depicts a suicide mission- more akin to a war film than a comic book one, and that’s no shade. I’m more into comic books than war films but this was still a bold angle to follow through on. In recent weeks as Vulture and other entertainment journalism outlets reported on Tony Gilroy’s extensive rewrites and reshoots, I was getting to be certain Disney was ordering the edge be taken off the film but whatever compromise was hashed out the final product balanced being a fun Star Wars movie with being a war movie separate in ways from the core Episodic Star Wars series.

Tarkin’s return was weird but cool. Not sure why they didn’t do the same CGI resurrection with the actor who played Dodonna. Vader shouldn’t use puns but it was a consistent through-line with the corny humor we saw Anakin employ in the prequels. It was also awesome to see Vader’s castle on Mustafar though I wish the film would have just labeled it “Mustafar” the way it did literally every other planet depicted. Mendelsohn served just fine as an aspirational but still ultimately evil Imperial officer.

It seems like what got cut the most in reshoots was the “I, Rebel” stuff, Saw Gerrera, and Vader scenes. There’s just a lot more implied about them in the trailers than is delivered on to say nothing of the decade plus jump between Gerrera’s second appearance in the movie and Jyn’s adulthood. We may never see that stuff but I suspect we will.

What the new Star Wars films are doing with morality is incredible. The exploration of the Rebels' extremist factions as terrorists along with Phasma’s relative prominence in the First Order and the diversity of Imperial staff in this film, Disney is making the Empire less racist and the Rebels less blameless. The two new Disney Star Wars and the Rebels television show have been notably full of Force users that don’t necessarily identify as Jedi: Kylo Ren, Maz Kanata, Snoke, Ahsoka, even Rey and Luke, and now Chirrut. This can’t be a coincidence: Disney for some reason is interested in using Star Wars to explore religion and morality as spectrums and that idea is worth watching as a through line in their larger Star Wars Story.

The way the film leads right into Episode IV is irresistible so a day or two after seeing R1 I popped in A New Hope and it was very enjoyable to see the adventure continue relatively seamlessly. Vader’s costume details being perfect in Rogue One paid off even more so upon watching '77 SW. Watching it now reminds me of X-Men comics about the original 5 once you know Xavier has had other teams that died but as much of a downer as that sounds like, it enriches the heaviness of “war” in the films if that makes sense. You understand more than ever that for so many in the galaxy, these events are high-stakes.

The word is that Rogue One’s opening weekend sales are disappointing compared to Force Awakens. I hope the bean counters at Disney realize that Force Awakens had the benefit of being the first theatrical Star Wars release in 7 years, the first live action Star Wars release in a decade, and was full of established fan favorites whereas Rogue One was the second annual SW release and didn’t have Han and Chewie zipping around in the Falcon in it. Most of the upcoming “A Star Wars Story” films, movies not set as “episodes” in the “main” series, are starring favorites with Han Solo and Lando confirmed and rumors of Obi-Wan, Boba Fett, and Yoda movies. I think we’ll have to see how those films open before  declaring the non-episodic Wars films less worthy of Lucasfilm’s trademark extravagant budgets. Being honest, that’s all that’s at stake here- if Lucasfilm thinks the ‘ASWS’ series is less profitable, those projects will get less budget and maybe even ultimately discontinuation so they can still put out the Episodes every two years with more demand in the public for it.

Don’t let there even be a chance that Yoda movie doesn’t get the budget it needs, get your ass out there and see Rogue One! Kidding; honestly, if they continued the ASWS line but with smaller budgets thus leading to smaller more intimate character-based films that might not be the worst thing in the world.

Still, if you’re even a casual Star Wars fan, don’t sleep – Rogue One is super fun. That said, maybe leave the youngest of kids at home as there is even more death than usual in Star Wars films, the war aspects are a lot more explicit and the tone is often just darker than the “normal” SW films. Enjoy and May the Force etcetera! 

Tristan "Tanjint Wiggy" Acker is a staff writer for JooseBoxx, youth hip-hop writing instructor with CHORDS Enrichment Youth program (chordseyp.org) and member of the Inland Empire nerdcore hip-hop group the West Coast Avengers. Catch more of their work at westcoastavengers.com, follow Tristan on Twitter @Tanjint or e-mail him at tristanacker@gmail.com.