The Last Jedi is a lot of things. It’s a war movie, a heist movie, a political allegory, a morality tale, and more. In other words, it’s a Star Wars movie. We’ve already had a number of great articles discussing the film from various angles, but this article is focused on something highlighted in the first face-to-face interaction in the movie between General Leia Organa and Poe Dameron, wherein she comes face to face with her best pilot and surrogate son after he’s just come back from a mission… and slaps him across the face. Let’s look at The Last Jedi as a deconstruction of the traditional ideals of heroism.
One Hell of a Pilot
The character of Poe Dameron was little more than an archetype in The Force Awakens: an ace pilot who is jovial and friendly among his allies, and managed to maintain his banter even while fiery and intense during combat. We see him interact with Lor San Tekka, Kylo Ren and Finn within the opening ten minutes or so, showing us both the humor and warmth, and the focused intensity, that are cornerstones to his character. We also see the reckless determination that seems to inform his every move. Poe jumps right in with Finn without hesitation, then immediately takes the reins from him upon their escape so he can continue his mission. He is the epitome of an old-fashioned film hero, and might well have stepped out of a film serial from the 1930s.
The opening combat set piece in The Last Jedi continues that characterization, showing off his incredible skill as a pilot and his determination to earn a victory at any cost. Poe has gone a long way in his career on skill alone, and that’s given him a certain mentality toward his missions, namely that victory in combat outweighs all else. Even as we see him arguing over the comm with General Leia, he sticks with the plan, seeing only the enemy in front of him that he needs to destroy, and draws the pilots of Cobalt Squadron along with him. His efforts lead to the destruction of an enemy dreadnought, but once Poe gets back to the command cruiser, we see that the results are not at all what he expected. Read More
To say Ken Liu’s The Legends of Luke Skywalker has been keenly awaited would be an understatement. Since the great reboot that followed Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm, there have been exceedingly few stories of what Luke has been doing after the fall of the Empire. There was Shattered Empire, but that was only one issue out of four and that was more or less it. For some the book has been a disappointment for its lack of actual ‘here’s what Luke really did next’ material. Instead, the book is of a far more playful and trickster nature, built around stories being told of Skywalker. Are they all true? That’s up to the reader, but there are hints that sometimes tip the deck one way or another. Expecting a book coming out ahead of The Last Jedi to have much in the way of revelations is expecting the impossible, the pattern was set by The Force Awakens. If there are major ‘this really happened’ stories, they will be next year, not now. Nor was the book ever deceptive about its premise in its marketing either.
