Context is King
Full disclosure: I hated The Last Jedi when it came out. I hated it last year. I hated it after I saw
The Rise of Skywalker, which I loved. I won’t go in-depth into my reasoning now, but you can see my thoughts at the time
here,
here, and
here if you want. After re-watching
The Last Jedi in the wake of the context of
The Rise of Skywalker and supplemental materials such as the Kylo Ren comic, some of my former opinions have changed.
Prior to my rewatch, I went back through a lot of the discourse that happened when
The Last Jedi came out. Several points came up over and over again: that it was good the Luke had finally acknowledged that the Jedi were bad and needed to die; that Rey being “nobody” was subversive and to be taken at face value; that Snoke was a new player on the board and unrelated to the former war; and that “Let the past die; kill it if you have to” was a good and noble goal. After rewatching
The Last Jedi, I wondered how so many missed the mark so badly. Every one of these is refuted within the film itself.....
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