Yeah, so I’m covering The Last Jedi six months after its release, when even the people who want Rian Johnson tarred and feathered are getting a little bored of talking about it. Sorry, but this is honestly how long it takes me to process things sometimes. When I walked out of the theater with my friends and the inevitable, “so, what’d you think?” question came up, I answered with a series of faux-intellectual analysis so similar to The Onion’s thoughts on the matter that if they’d shown up on the street outside the Grinnell Theater with a lawsuit, I would have settled right then and there.
I went into the movie with high hopes for a very particular kind of Star Wars movie, one where the decades-old sci fi tropes were reimagined in a new light. If we’re going to get another one of these things in theaters from now on into infinity, after all, then we might as well get slight variations on the formula. And if there was anyone who was up to the job, it was director Rian Johnson, who did some great trope-work when he reimagined the style and speech of Dashiell Hammett’s 1930’s criminal underworld within a 2000’s high school in his first movie (and one of my all time favorites) Brick.
For this essay I want to focus just on the sub-plot surrounding Admiral Holdo, one of the most maligned parts of the film. For those who need a refresher (also: spoilers ahead): Holdo is put in charge of the last starship of resistance fighters after Leia is heavily injured. Pursued by the First Order with resources running low, Holdo’s plan is to abandon ship and send escape pods to a nearby planet. Poe Dameron, a resistance pilot and something like the fourth-tier protagonist of this movie, thinks it’s cowardly move that will doom the whole resistance to be picked off one-by-one.
We don’t really see any reason to doubt him, which is the main complaint that most people bring up when nit-picking this movie, since Holdo could easily have explained how the plan would work. Anyway, Poe and fellow rebels Finn and Rose form a rebellion against the rebellion to pursue a daring escape that ends up killing almost everyone, whereas Holdo’s plan would’ve worked out without a hitch if the double-rebels had just followed orders.
I’m as disappointed as anyone that the answer to “Why didn’t Holdo tell them what she’d do?” ends up being essentially “Don’t think about it,” since in every other respect this is a smartly crafted element of the film that rewards careful examination.
Like I said before, I was looking forward to seeing how Rian Johnson played with genre tropes, and in this sub-plot he didn’t disappoint. There’s this character-type I’ve noticed floating around that writers use whenever they need a secondary conflict without complicating the plot too much. It’s a non-villian, usually a member of the government or some other authority figure, who presents an obstacle to the heroes not out of malicious intent, but because they’re too incompetent or cowardly to trust the heroes’ skill and genius. The best example I can think of is the EPA guy in Ghostbusters or Cornelius Fudge in Harry Potter (though he gets a more complex characterization as the series goes on). The audience is usually signaled to hate this person before they’re even properly introduced, with some sinister line of text or a shift in the musical score. This trope suggests that you can legitimately judge a person based on your gut feeling, a dangerous idea in itself. When the conflict between this weak-willed or stupid person and the heroes start, the story paints conflict between people, even people who have the same goal, as a simple question of who knows their stuff and who doesn’t. This approach actively discourages compromise and, since everyone is the hero of their own story, encourages going out on your own despite what everyone else says.
This character-type bugs me because, in stories of fights between good and evil, any interesting character dynamics or moral insights have to come from the people in the middle. I’ve always been drawn to the people in the middle: when I was a kid I adored Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender and combed the Bible looking for redemption-arcs for Ponticus Pilot and Judas (which I assume are two allusions of equal literary merit). So all of these simply drawn characters feels like a missed opportunity.
That’s what’s so great about Holdo. She’s introduced with every hint that she’s one of these wimps and idiots we’re taught to expect in fiction, especially genre fiction with clear-cut heroes and villains. We have every reason to believe that she’ll doom them all unless this trio of plucky rebels saves the day. But she ends up saving the day on her own, first with her genius plan and next with her self-sacrifice. If she’d been another Neville Chamberlain-type, Poe would’ve stayed the same cocky firebrand as before, but instead he grows as a character through the experience and guilt.
I heard that Holdo’s role was originally supposed to be filled by Admiral Ackbar, and that they only changed it when they realized that someone named Ackbar committing suicide by smashing a flying machine into a base filled with people might hit some raw nerves. I don’t doubt that, but I also suspect that the 2016 election played a role in that decision, specifically in the choice to use a female character. Too many people (myself among them to some extent, back when Bernie was in the running) voted against Hillary Clinton, not because of any well-informed research on her policy, but because she struck them as corrupt, weak, dumb, or cold. Faint knowledge of various scandals reinforced these notions among many. Stories color how we see the world, and I think this trope informed how many people saw the election. Trump was loud, confident, and unapologetic. That’s a trait you see in most cinematic villains, sure, but most heroes too, and that’s never how you’d describe the weak sap in the middle of the two.
I’m not suggesting that better movies or books are going to permanently our political woes. Only informed discussion and smart voting can do that. But we’re always going understand our politics through stories. Maybe introducing a strong-willed, competent woman who people don’t trust at first but ultimately saves everyone isn’t a bad trope to add to the mix.
Well, that’s that. Hope it’s better than my past coverage of the franchise!
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