Last Jedi Minute 61: What's the Worst That Could Happen?

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Date

April 26th, 2021

Summary

Guest commentator Marvel-ous Jordan White returns to see the last day of Luke's Jedi school--from a certain point of view!

Guests

Jordan White

Notes

Film

  • Starts off with Luke telling us about his nephew who is filled with Mighty (bombad) Skywalker blood. Ends with the Terminator's hand breaking out of the rock, showing that he did, in fact, survive.
  • The first of three flashbacks in this movie.
    • This is the first non-diegetic flashback in the Saga.

Podcast

  • Movies that have a "end…?" such as Friday the 13th and Carrie.
  • Luke explains what the deal is with Kylo Ren and why he's such a jerk.
    • Comparing this version of a failed Jedi explaining what happened to Ben Kenobi's story about Darth Vader.
    • Kylo Ren is a Darth Vader fanboy who has not yet achieved the same level of evil and destruction as his grandfather.
      • Vader only killed everyone because he was told to, and had nothing else going on in his life.
      • Kylo Ren is angrier, is an active participant in trying to turn to the Dark side; Anakin was almost tricked into it.
    • Accidental reference to DC's "—Year One"s.
      • The more we learn about Kylo Ren's "year one", the less bad he seems. He's not doing nearly as much active murder as he could be. And even when he does, the people he killed are bad people.
      • They made Anakin a child-murderer after the fact, but when Return of the Jedi came out, his redemption was somewhat believable
        • It's harder to believe in Kylo Ren's redemption since he killed Han Solo.
  • Although Jordan is heavily involved in Marvel, he hasn't worked on Star Wars specifically since before this movie came out. However he does strongly believe that they softened Kylo Ren in anticipation of him turning good in Episode IX (spoilers)
    • Compare to Han Solo in Solo. The idea from the original Star Wars is that he was a bad guy and then turned into a good guy, but we learned that he was pretty much always a good guy.
  • Compare Luke's reaction to creating Kylo Ren where he's beating himself up and going into hiding where Obi-Wan is a lot more casual about it.
    • The classic Jedi failed so much bigger and harder than Luke ever did.
      • Yoda and Obi-Wan were probably fine with whatever Luke was going to do because what's the worst that could happen, all the Jedi being killed again? And then that happened.
      • It's not until this movie that Yoda seems to own up to the fact that the Jedi were wrong. After all, Luke did win at the end of Return of the Jedi going against the Jedi precepts of no attachments. You know, too late to actually do anything to help Luke. Referenced: Dr. Manhattan from "Watchmen".
  • We like the line "Han was, well, 'Han' about it", but what does that actually mean? Pete compares this to the differences in zeal in Catholic Italian families between the mother and father of the family.
  • Why does Luke stop wearing the fake skin on his robot hand? Alex's no-prize answer is that he stopped wearing the fake skin after he came to terms with the fact that Darth Vader was a part of him that he couldn't deny anymore. That you can always go down the Dark path the way his father did, and he needs to watch himself.
    • Referenced: who's that droid with the red arm?
    • Luke didn't have the fake skin on his arm in the flashback where he first ignites the green lightsaber on Ben.
    • Or it's to scare all the kids at his Academy straight. To remind them that this stuff is dangerous it's the equivalent of the one-armed man from "Arrested Development".
  • What the line "Han was Han about it" means to different people depending on what their first Star Wars movie was.
  • We agree that this Luke Skywalker is the most Mark Hamill of all of Luke Skywalkers. Recall that Mark Hamill's performance as this version of the character is improved by the fact that he didn't really agree with the direction they took the character.
  • Jordan worked on the novelization for this movie and knew the plot going in.
    • Pete recalls seeing Jordan and Nathan Hamill at Celebration having a sidebar about the movie and not getting to participate.
    • Jordan also got to read the screenplay for Solo, that was the last Star Wars movie that he knew about before it came out and he knew nothing at all about The Rise of Skywalker.
  • Jordan left the franchise prior to the explosion of the vitriol among the Star Wars fan community.
  • Of the many divisive things about this movie, the treatment of Luke is often the greatest dividing line.
    • If the Prequels had come out first and then they waited 20 years to make Episode IV, people might have been outraged at Obi-Wan for sitting in the desert doing nothing (similar to how they are outraged that the character of Luke in The Last Jedi).
  • The "dark secret" of Star Wars is that all the movies are actually dumb. Things that you might not like in the new movies actually came from the old movies and the reason you're not mad about it is because you're used to it.
  • According to the novelization, it has been 6 years since Kylo Ren turned, 6 years since Luke has been in exile. Seems like it should have been longer than that.
    • Surely Luke must have graduated some students before Kylo Ren destroyed the temple. Where are they now? Referenced: the 12 from X-men.
  • Why did Luke wait so long after the fall of the Empire to establish his school? What was he doing during that time?
    • Brief discussion of Charles Soule's Darth Vader comics that take place between Episode III and IV. The last page shows Luke discovering the Jedi knowledge that Jocasta Nu secreted away.
    • The Gregory Brothers' Tosche station song.
  • Referenced: Rashomon and unreliable narrators.
  • The use of flashbacks in this movie breaks a Star Wars rule.
    • What other changes to the language of film will we see in future Star Wars movies?
    • Modern movies suffering from "video-gameitis".
  • When (if ever) will there be an Episode X?
  • Patreon plug.

Meta Minute

  • 40:36 podcast episode length.

Quotes

  • Pete: (as Obi-Wan, on his failure as Anakin's teacher) Oopsy, I created a monster ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. [...] sometimes people are evil, what're you gonna do?
  • Pete: (x2) Whither Grogu.

Links

Audio only
http://www.starwarsminute.com/2021/04/26/last-jedi-minute-61-what's-the-worst-that-could-happen?
Video
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_tnckXSHaVg

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