Okay, I can buy that. If I understand correctly, then your take on the film’s message is the first that I can buy into. I can’t say I love it, but at least I can get my head around it.
So, (correct me if this isn’t what you meant) Yoda knew Luke wanted to be freed from the past and so made it seem as if he was burning the old books; Yoda also knew that Rey needed a solid foundation to build from and so ensured that he didn’t burn the tree until she had removed the books. Right? That hadn’t occurred to me (and honestly I’m not convinced the film is actually saying it), but I can get behind it.
As for your point of ‘some people relate to Luke and others relate to Rey’ well I think that’s true, however I love both characters. At least, my favourite character in the saga is Luke, but I absolutely loved Rey in Force Awakens. I could not wait to see where her character would go next. One of the reasons I was so frustrated with Last Jedi is I felt too much time was given to this film’s secondary characters (Luke, Rose, Poe, Holdo) so that Rey didn’t have enough screen time and actually went nowhere.
And you’re right about one other thing, Rian Johnson does also borrow many elements from Return of the Jedi. In fact, I now think of the new trilogy as: Episode VII is roughly analogous to Episode IV; and Episode VIII is a compression of Episodes V and VI. That’s fine, but I really wanted the trilogy to strike out on its own after the comfort blanket of Force Awakens.
In terms of the rehashing, there’s the obvious stuff like the ‘Walkers vs rebel speeders with ground troops in trenches on a snow/salt planet’ scene from Empire, and the ‘protagonist being taken in handcuffs in an elevator to the villain’s master, surrounded by red-guards on a ship/space-station, while the young Jedi tries to bring the villain over to the light side (and vice verse). The master shows the young Jedi the rebel fleet being destroyed through a window, before the villain kills his master and our young Jedi escapes’ scene from Return of the Jedi. (Not to mention ‘Millennium Falcon flying through an impossibly narrow fissure with Tie-Fighters in pursuit, scored to that piece of music’.) But these are only the tip of the iceberg.
For me it’s a big problem that a fairly detailed plot summary of Empire also describes Last Jedi, and for this reason I pretty much knew what was going to happen next all the way through the film. It didn’t bother me as much when Force Awakens did it, but everyone is honest about that film being a retread, plot-wise at least.
The film opens with Star Destroyers appearing in orbit and attacking the rebel base. The rebels flee through space, desperately trying to get away, with Star Destroyers hot on their heels. [One of our heroes is in a watery medical pod due to his injuries.] Meanwhile, our young Jedi hero trains with a reluctant Jedi master on a primitive, mysterious world. At first they fail in their lessons, before venturing into a dark-side cave (“a domain of evil it is”) where they have an enigmatic vision. Before their training is complete they have another (misleading) vision of the future, and, ignoring the words of the Jedi master they rush away, convinced they’ll be able to save someone. Across the galaxy, our other heroes are having an adventure in a futuristic, utopian city, which conceals a dark secret. There they meet a shady and duplicitious character who appears to help them, before betraying them… etc etc etc
Again, I didn’t hate Last Jedi, and on second viewing it grew on me as a reasonably solid, visually interesting — if derivative and haphazard — instalment, but all the rave reviews and talk of it being more ‘original’ and ‘complex’ than any previous Star Wars movie leaves me absolutely baffled.
