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In Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, we see the individual conscience and objects of moral judgement come in to play into the production and reaction towards the film.

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The individual conscience of a film director should represent the moral principles practiced in their lifetime which breaks through onto their work. Since the earliest moments in The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson's professional career, he has always advocated for complete authenticity, high quality, and controversial work to be his objective. Linked below is a clip from a 2003 interview...irnoincally 14 years later he created a film that did just what he wished for.

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Rian Johnson talking in 2003 about his desire to make films that half the audience will hate. Mission accomplished. https://t.co/CGlErYUPDw

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Rian Johnson talking in 2003 about his desire to make films that half the audience will hate. Mission accomplished. https://t.co/CGlErYUPDw

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Rian Johnson talking in 2003 about his desire to make films that half the audience will hate. Mission accomplished. pic.twitter.com/CGlErYUPDw
— Dataracer (@Dataracer117) May 15, 2018

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Rian Johnson talking in 2003 about his desire to make films that half the audience will hate. Mission accomplished. https://t.co/CGlErYUPDw

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Rian Johnson talking in 2003 about his desire to make films that half the audience will hate. Mission accomplished. https://t.co/CGlErYUPDw

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Rian Johnson talking in 2003 about his desire to make films that half the audience will hate. Mission accomplished. https://t.co/CGlErYUPDw

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Many fans speculate that this iconic Kylo Ren quote is a direct metaphor of what Johnson essentially did to the Star Wars Universe in this film. Even though Ren was refering to killing his father, others asssume that this was included in the script to represent a new Star Wars era branching away from Geroge Lucas's orginal story.

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"Let the past die. Kill it, if you had to. That's the only way to become what you meant to be."

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"With every movie, they were pushing it forward," Johnson said of George Lucas and his creative team -- which is what he wanted to live up to himself.

Rey's backstory, Snoke's fate, and Luke Skywalker's own story-arc were all plot points that elicited a polarized reaction from fans after " Star Wars: The Last Jedi" premiered in 2017.

Now, writer-director Rian Johnson has a response: He took the risks in order to pay homage to George Lucas' original trilogy - it's all about moving the story forward.

Johnson discussed the film on an episode of the podcast " Creative Processing with Joseph Gordon-Levitt " released this week.

"I think the instant you start thinking in terms of how do you not step outside of the bounds of what the original movies did, you're not thinking the way the people who made the original movies did," he said. "With every movie, they were pushing it forward, with every movie they were stepping outside those bounds and pushing the characters into new, emotionally honest, but surprising places.

"That's why those movies are great. That's why they're alive. If they had been looking at something that came before it and saying, 'Oh, we better not do this because that is outside of this or that,' it would've been different."

In one particular case, the backlash against Johnson's decisions turned hateful. Vietnamese-American,Kelly Marie Tran, who plays Rose Tico, deleted all her Instagram posts in the midst of racist harassment. Tran was the first woman of color to play a leading role in a Star Wars movie, and she wrote about her experience in a New York Times op-ed.

Meantime, a Change.org petition signed by nearly 117,000 demanded Disney "strike Star Wars Episode VIII from the official canon." Disney did not.

Some of the new developments introduced in "The Last Jedi" will be explored in the final installment of the Skywalker saga, "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker," which is due out in December.

J.J. Abrams, who helmed "The Force Awakens" is back directing the saga's ninth film. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Chris Terrio, who won an Oscar for his "Argo" script.

Detractors were likely disappointed when Disney announced Johnson would create a new, post-Skywalker trilogy of films in the "Star Wars" universe.

Johnson's directorial debut came in 2005 with "Brick," a neo-noir in a high school setting starring Gordon-Levitt.

He also helmed the Season 5 episode of "Breaking Bad," "Ozymandias," which has topped several lists of the a ll-time greatest TV episodes.

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Rian Johnson on 'Last Jedi' Backlash: I Honored the Original Trilogy By Subverting It

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"With every movie, they were pushing it forward," Johnson said of George Lucas and his creative team -- which is what he wanted to live up to himself. Rey's backstory, Snoke's fate, and Luke Skywalker's own story-arc were all plot points that elicited a polarized reaction from fans after " Star Wars: The Last Jedi" premiered in 2017.

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Does family mean only bloodline? Can family be a choice, or is it acceptence? In this Universe, family could be defined as the "collective adventure of our charcaters". In the Youtube video linked below, HelloGreedo explains how there is so much more to Rey's backstory than simply bloodline. Rey is a unique character that has no family except for the people she has surrounded herself with and struggled and loved alongside, which makes their bond stronger than any lineage. "Your ultimate destiny is not the circumstance of your birth".

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Rey is a nobody, and I like it | STAR WARS TALK

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"Star Wars: The Last Jedi" moved the narrative of our new heroes Rey, Finn, and Poe forward with several major lessons - all mostly learned through failures. The biggest of these is centered around Rey and her desire to find a place in the story of the rebellion. She turns to Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren for answers, and is handed a brutal reality about her past.

Once Rey's parentage (and therefore place in the world) is revealed, fans can be forgiven for thinking it's not really the final answer. But I believe "The Last Jedi" delivers the truth about Rey's legacy. And not only is it likely the truth, but it's the best possible answer writer and director Rian Johnson could have given us.

How "The Last Jedi" reveals Rey's parentage

After confronting the dark side of the Force in that trippy cave on Ahch-To, and then fighting alongside Kylo Ren in the epic throne room scene, fans were were given an answer to Rey's parentage.

Kylo Ren tells Rey her parents were nobodies. Rey admits this fact herself during their emotional conversation.

"Do you know the truth about your parents?" Kylo asks. "Or have you always known? You've just hidden it away."

When Rey doesn't immediately reply, Kylo gets more aggressive.

"Say it," he demands.

"They were nobody," Rey says while on the verge of tears.

"They were filthy junk traders," Kylo elaborates. "Sold you off for drinking money. They're dead in a pauper's grave in the Jakku desert. You come from nothing. You're nothing. But not to me."

The choice to reveal this truth (and yes I think it's the truth but more on that in a moment) in this precise and cruel way is important to its impact on Rey.

Kylo tells Rey about her parents as part of his attempt to manipulate her into taking a place by his side. He wants her to focus on the despair she may feel about coming from a legacy of nobodies and being cast aside by her parents. Kylo believes they can rule together - but only if Rey thinks she is insignificant to the world first.

Rey is a much more compelling hero if she truly comes from nothing

"Star Wars" has never been apolitical, and "The Last Jedi" didn't premiere in a vacuum. This movie came at the tail of a year marked with a surge of progressive political activity, protesting, and cultural movements.

Again, Johnson was conceptualizing Rey's journey before we knew what kind of year 2017 would be, but it's timing seems serendipitous. "The Last Jedi" is teaching a new generation of "Star Wars" fans about the realities of believing in a fight against a larger power. We come away from the movie understanding how the combined voices of "nobodies" in the world can effect change.

The new trio of heroes - Rey, Finn, and Poe - are on a complex journey of self-discovery and coming into their own as leaders of the rebellion. Finn's subplot in "The Last Jedi" serves to finally bring him to a point where he's acting out of true altruism for the cause (instead of simply wanting to save or help Rey).

Rey, the unwanted child of two drunks from Jakku, is now the biggest hope for the Resistance. She's an independent scavenger who spent her life obsessed with tales of heroic acts against the Empire. She has wound up creating her own important place in the universe instead of having a role she inherited from her family.

The Rey we met at the start of "The Force Awakens" eating a meager dinner while wearing an old rebel pilot helmet is mirrored in the young "Broom Kid" shown at the end of "The Last Jedi." The ways of the Force belong to them just as much as it did to the Luke Skywalkers of the past.

The future of the Resistance doesn't lie in legendary heroes - it only lives in the nobodies of the galaxy who dare to believe they can grow to be something more.

To take away Rey's new origin story and hand us a new tale of Skywalker or Kenobi bloodlines would rob the new generation of "Star Wars" fans from the real meaning of this trilogy. "The Last Jedi" was all about failures and growth and hope being found in unexpected places.

"We are the spark that will light the fire that will bring the First Order down," Poe says in "The Last Jedi."

Rey is a much more powerful hero if she is just another young child who was Force sensitive and found it in herself to rise above her circumstances and enter the fray. She started her journey by simply wanting to help the heroes she had heard about and along the way discovered that it would be up to her - not Luke Skywalker - to try and preserve the light in the world.

To dismiss Johnson's decision about Rey's parentage as a misdirection would mean casting aside the message of this new "Star Wars" trilogy. Our importance isn't dictated by where we come from, but by our willingness and daring to fight for the good in the world.

Director Rian Johnson's reasoning for his choice is incredible

The brilliance of Johnson's idea to make Rey's parents unimportant characters in the history of "Star Wars" lore lies in the fact that most fans didn't see it coming.

Johnson wrote "The Last Jedi" while "The Force Awakens" was in production, so his choice wasn't an intentional response to all the fan theories that emerged after the first chapter in this trilogy. But it feels like it could be, which is an incredible coincidence.

At a time when fan theories or set leaks are dominating a large section of pop culture conversations, Johnson's ability to produce an answer both unexpected and perfect is thrilling.

And his explanation for how he arrived at the decision makes the reveal even more poetic than you might realize. Johnson revealed at a Q&A how he came to the choice, as Entertainment Weekly reported.

"I was thinking, what's the most powerful answer to that question?" Johnson said. "Meaning, 'What's the hardest thing that Rey could hear?' That's what you're after with challenging your characters."

The Rey reveal works as an inverted version of the iconic Vader and Luke scene in "Empire Strikes Back."

"I think back to the 'I am your father' moment with Vader and Luke, and the reason I think that lands is not because it's a surprise or a twist but because it's the hardest thing Luke and thus the audience could hear at that moment," Johnson said. "It turns someone into a bad guy that you just hate and want to kill into suddenly, 'Oh my God, this is a part of our protagonist. We have to start thinking of this person in more complex terms."

"In ['The Last Jedi'] it's kind of the opposite," Johnson said. "The easiest thing for Rey and the audience to hear is, 'Oh yeah, you're so-and-so's daughter.' That would be wish fulfillment and instantly hand her a place in this story on a silver platter."

While the Vader reveal helped create a redemption arc between Luke and a former one-dimensional baddie, the Rey reveal is like an adrenaline shot to the heart of the message in "The Last Jedi." The future of a rebellion or resistance or political movement doesn't lie only with elite mythical families - the heart (or spark) of it comes from the everyday people willing to fight for something they believe in.

Johnson saw Rey's storyline in "The Force Awakens" and knew both she and "Star Wars" fans were hoping she had a bigger destiny than being a scavenger on Jakku.

"The hardest thing for her is to hear she's not going to get that easy answer. Not only that, but Kylo is going to use the fact that you don't get that answer to try and weaken you so you have to lean on him," Johnson said. "You're going to have to find the strength to stand on your own two feet and define yourself in this story."

But Rey's parentage is not an ironclad part of the "Star Wars" canon yet

In the same Q&A, Johnson said that he was given the opportunity to take Rey's parentage in whichever direction he could reasonably argue. "The Force Awakens" director J.J. Abrams had laid some groundwork with Rey's pull to Luke's lightsaber and the mysterious Force-vision that followed.

But Disney still left Johnson room to work in his own ideas into "The Last Jedi." Now, Abrams will pick up the mantle again for the next movie. And since Disney reportedly left Rey's origin as unestablished, technically Abrams could change the answer given.

"I can't speak to what they're going to do," Johnson said of Abrams and his co-writer Chris Terrio.

For Johnson's part, he says Kylo believes it's the truth.

"I don't think he's purely playing chess," Johnson said. "I think that's what [Kylo] saw when they touched fingers and that's what he believes. And when he tells her that in that moment, she believes it."

We'll have to wait until Episode IX to see where Abrams decides to take Rey's journey next, but in the meantime we're grateful for the incredible launchpad Johnson has in place for our hero.

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Why 'The Last Jedi' reveal about Rey is the perfect rebuttal to everyone's fan theories

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"Star Wars: The Last Jedi" moved the narrative of our new heroes Rey, Finn, and Poe forward with several major lessons - all mostly learned through failures. The biggest of these is centered around Rey and her desire to find a place in the story of the rebellion.

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Although many fans found disinterest in Reys lack of heritage, many reviewers still beleived that this was the most character defining moment in all of Star Wars history. After years of powerful Jedi familys, we finally get to see a force-user come from nothing. Rey was just a scavenger on Jakku that wielded one of the most powerful forces in the galaxy. A Screen Rant article written by Rhys McGinley expresses why Rey's family background was so perfect, as well as why they should not have reversed this decision in The Rise of Skywalker.

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The debate of Rey's parentage/lineage raged on for years in the fandom. The main hero of the sequel trilogy had a phenomenal arc throughout the said trilogy and a lot of it boiled down to her journey to find her place in the universe and come to terms with who she is while she trains in the Force and discovers herself.

RELATED: Star Wars Episode IX: 5 Reasons Why The Answer To Rey's Bloodline Makes Sense (& 5 Why It Doesn't)

This journey came to an end in The Rise Of Skywalker where it was revealed that she was a Palpatine. The only issue is that The Last Jedi answered the question which was posed by The Force Awakens first, citing Rey's parents as being no-one. So, knowing this, here are 5 reasons we love that Rey is a Palpatine and 5 reasons why it is better than Disney/Lucasfilm should have kept her like no one.

10 LOVE IT - IT LEADS TO REY OVERCOMING FEAR & CHOOSING HER PATH

Luke Skywalker came to Rey in The Rise Of Skywalker and told her that "Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi. Your destiny." From there Rey goes on to destroy Palpatine and choose her path.

Given the circumstances, it would have been better had Rey taken the name Palpatine, owned who she is and changed the meaning. But, by choosing her path and choosing Skywalker it allows Rey to break free of any assumptions around her, of any confines and glass ceilings she would find herself under. Even if the scene played off a bit cheesy.

9 NOBODY - IT IS A BRILLIANT TWIST

The age we live in has given way for theories and speculation oozing out of the Star Wars fandom over the past half a decade. From the identity of Snoke to the fates of our heroes, there has been a tonne of debate, not least of all surrounding Rey's parentage.

There were theories that she was a Skywalker, Kenobi, or a Solo, people correctly theorized she was a Palpatine, while others said she was a product of the Force. What not a lot of people thought about was the twist Rian Johnson presented, that she was no one, she was Rey. Shocking and brilliant in terms of a twist, and great for the reasons detailed in this list.

8 LOVE IT - ITS DEVASTATING

This is the reason J. J. Abrahms give for his choice to have Rey be of Palpatine descent, and in all honestly, we see where he is coming from with it.

RELATED: Star Wars: 10 Amazing Fan Theories About The New Trilogy We're Sad Were Debunked

Abrahms claims that the reveal in The Last Jedi is not as devastating as coming from the worst possible place. He says that being haunted by your true identity and having to overcome that with the message of there are things stronger than blood is a better journey for our hero.

7 LOVE IT - A BEAUTIFUL MESSAGE

The only issue with that is the message is not well put into action, whereas the message that Johnson is conveying is beautiful. The message is not put forward well in The Rise Of Skywalker because there is no time and the Rey Palpatine reveal feels more like a retcon than a furthering of her arc, despite its moments.

Rey being a no one gives the idea that anyone can achieve anything and it does not matter where you come from or who your parents are, even if they are junk traders who sell you on for drinking money. Abrahms may say that is not devastating enough because it is better if your bloodline sucks than if they are not anyone but the fact is Rey still overcame immense odds and that her bloodline at that point sounded pretty sucky just help to make nobody as the better option for her parentage.

6 LOVE IT - EXPLAINS HER POWER

Not everyone cares about this, some people have not even given a thought to it. But, the fact is Rey is more naturally powerful than most Jedi we encounter throughout the series of films has been a hot topic of conversation since The Force Awakens.

The fact Rey is a Palpatine does offer some explanation as to her power. Even though it appears her father was not powerful, the lineage itself offers an insight into the deep power Rey possesses. Rey being nobody offers no explanation into her immense talent and connection with the Force, the true reveal does.

5 NOBODY - FITS REY'S ARC BETTER

One of the great things The Last Jedi did was further along Rey's arc based on her parents being nobody, an idea which is built on in The Force Awakens. Rey keeps looking for parental figures, in Han, then Luke, and Leia.

RELATED: Star Wars: 10 Ways A Lack Of Clear Plan Was The Biggest Problem Of The Sequel Trilogy

On top of that, the combination of the two movies show Rey as being in complete denial of her family, rather than being in the complete unknown. While Rey may not know exactly who they are, Kylo tells her and she is not surprised, in fact, Kylo even says Rey knows deep down. Ultimately, it leads to better conflict within herself as she comes to terms with it all, as well as just being a better fit for her story.

4 LOVE IT - CREATES CONNECTIVITY

The sequel trilogy had the job of tying up not only itself but the entire Skywalker saga. This would involve an all-encompassing story, as well as having connections between all three trilogies.

The sequel trilogy did not achieve this specific feat brilliantly, but Rey's lineage does connect her to both previous trilogies. Palpatine has been a constant in Star Wars since The Empire Strikes Back and having him alone in the film connects it to the wider story and brings Rey into that fold as well.

3 NOBODY - TIES UP NICELY

The answer to Rey's parentage A) being nobody and B) being revealed in The Last Jedi was a genius move. It was something that had been festering for enough time for one and a half movies, Johnson executed it at the perfect time. It allows for that specific rumor strand to be done in the knowledge of her parents being nobody.

RELATED: Star Wars: 10 Hilariously Bad Fan Theories About The New Trilogy We Are Glad Were Debunked

While the rumors would persist that perhaps this would be a lie, it would be a backseat focus allowing the scrutiny to fall on another topic. Out with that though, it ties up well, her parents being nobody is a twist yes, but makes sense and so allows you to move on from it. This means The Rise Of Skywalker did not need to focus a subplot on it, rather just confirm that indeed they are nobody, which would allow for more time to be given to other stories and overall create a better, more cohesive story.

2 LOVE IT - IT WILL LEAD TO MORE INTERESTING CANON MATERIAL

Rey being nobody ties up that story, which is great. However, what the Palpatine reveals does, for the more hardcore fans who care, is create an avenue for a slew of fascinating canon stories explaining it all.

Palpatine's children/Rey's parents, fans need to know about them. The same goes for Ochi. On top of that, there is a lot of explaining to do regarding Palpatine himself, regarding his return, survival, creation of the Final Order, and a plethora of other unanswered questions which Lucasfilm and Disney can now answer in various canon media.

1 NOBODY - A MUCH BETTER EXECUTION

Overall, what all this adds up to is that the reveal we are given by Rian Johnson is far superior in terms of its execution than that presented by J. J. Debating the quality of the movies is fine but it seems clear who gave the better answer to the Rey parent question.

Rey being nobody had a beautiful, festering build-up leading to what was a sensical, smart and overall beautiful reveal which led to great character moments and confrontation and needed nothing more than a confirmation to be tied up completely. The Palpatine reveals leaves so many unanswered questions, a lot of it does not make sense, and in all honesty, felt massively shoehorned.

NEXT: Star War: The Rise Of Skywalker: 5 Reasons Why Kylo Ren Earned His Redemption (& 5 Why He Didn't)

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Rise Of Skywalker: 5 Reasons We Loved Where Rey Came From (& 5 They Should Have Kept Her As Nobody)

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The debate of Rey's parentage/lineage raged on for years in the fandom. The main hero of the sequel trilogy had a phenomenal arc throughout the said trilogy and a lot of it boiled down to her journey to find her place in the universe and come to terms with who she is while she trains in the Force and discovers herself.

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During Finn and Rose's adventure they came across a young stable boy who helped them escpape. Rose gave the boy her Rebel ring and he was inspired by their heroism. In the very final scene of the film, that same boy is seen (look closely or you might miss it) grabbing his broom using the force and looking inspirationally into the night sky standing like a Jedi holding his saber. This is considered one of the most hope instilling scenes in the Star Wars Universe that sets the stage for the future generation of Jedi.

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The Last Jedi Ending Scene (Broom Boy) 1080p

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Toward the end of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, one of our heroes stares out toward a vast, bleached-out vista that's peppered with low-slung space-junk (I wouldn't dare say which character it is, or even what planet we're on; such info would rankle most Force-fans, and we all know a death mark's not an easy thing to live with). It's a shot that could have been lifted directly from the original Star Wars trilogy, and thus one of the few moments of pure franchise-fealty in writer-director Rian Johnson's otherwise rebellious new film, which is the springiest, most assured entry in years-and a movie that drops a proton torpedo into our beloved galaxy far, far away. In Last Jedi, old allegiances are frayed, family bonds are lightsaber'd in half, and even an ex-farmboy like Luke Skywalker must contend with a deep, depressive existential crisis. It's the gazillion-dollared, 152-minute equivalent to setting fire to all of your childhood Star Wars toys in the backyard, and getting high off the fumes that follow.

The Last Jedi begins not long after the events of 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens, director J.J. Abrams' sleek if occasionally slavish regional production of 1977's A New Hope, and a movie that united orphaned desert-scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley) and ex-stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) against Kylo Ren, the millennial foul-kin bad-guy sired by Han and Leia (and played, with brooding-beefcake woundedness, by Adam Driver). But unlike some of the previous Star Wars films, which often allowed years to pass between installments, The Last Jedi doesn't have time for downtime, plunging immediately into a deep-space skirmish between General Leia's Resistance fighters and the evil First Order (commandeered by Domhnall Gleeson's sneering, delightfully peeve-faced General Hux). By now, we all know what a good Star Wars fight looks like: Soaring TIEs, roaring laser-blasts, and lots of aerial acrobatics. Those are all present here, of course, but so is a wordless face-off between Kylo Ren and Leia, as well as a daring, ticking-clock on-board mission that Johnson mounts with Ackbar-rattling tension-the first indicators that Last Jedi is more interested in reinventing the thrills of Star Wars than it is merely re-reawakening them.

Last Jedi then hyperdrives to the lush Jedi temple where, at the end of Force Awakens, we saw Rey approach Luke (Mark Hamill) with his old lightsaber-a moment that ended with the strange old hermit giving her the silent treatment. As it turns out, Luke's failure to properly train his nephew-thus giving rise to Kylo Ren-has prompted him to essentially tune out the Force, and to turn against his once-idealistic, hubristic former Jedi self. So he lives mostly solo, aided by a team of cranky-alien carekeepers, and drinking green milk provided by local space-anteater-thingees (he's also surrounded by porgs, small island-dwelling bird-critters that are one part Furby, one part gag-gift slipper).

The original trilogy made good use of Hamill's kewpie-cute, oft-twerpy boyishness, but Last Jedi finds him shaggy and feral-he looks like he just walked out of the inner sleeve of Led Zeppelin IV-and weary from decades of high-casualty family battles. Yet there are flashes of sarcasm to Old Man Luke, who's played by Hamill not as a sad, elder sage, but as a I'm-getting-too-old-for-this-Sith crank and occasional trickster (he gets one of the movie's biggest laughs before uttering a single line). The Star Wars movies have never been especially funny, at least not intentionally so, but Last Jedi has a surprising lightness at times, and never more so when Luke and Rey are locked in some intra-generational squabble.

In The Last Jedi, almost everyone is trying to shut down or eradicate some part of their past, and you get the sense that Rian Johnson was (politely) attempting to do the same thing with Star Wars itself, jettisoning the series' long-running penchant for quasi-mystical mumbo-jumbo, and pushing the films toward a more intelligently designed version of faith.

As the jaded Jedi and his unwanted guest begin an uncomfortable, at times combative, training session, the dwindling members of the Resistance are huddled under the command of Leia, who's trying to keep her small fleet intact-a task that's occasionally undermined by the hot-dog maneuvering of Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac). Carrie Fisher passed away shortly after completing her Last Jedi scenes, and it's heartbreaking to see how much more at-ease she is here than she was in Force Awakens, as fully in command of her character as Leia is in command of her team. And while Leia gets in a few good lines, as always, Fisher's best moments are the ones in which her face holds the screen in silence, her regal warmth a force of its own.

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'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Is a Near-Perfect Reinvention of the Franchise

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Toward the end of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, one of our heroes stares out toward a vast, bleached-out vista that's peppered with low-slung space-junk (I wouldn't dare say which character it is, or even what planet we're on; such info would rankle most Force-fans, and we all know a death mark's not an easy thing to live with).

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J. J. Abrams (left) Rian Johnson (right)

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Unfortunately, it was quite clear to audeince and critics that Johnson's The Last Jedi plot line did not allign with J. J. Abrams story. Both the directors had conflicting character arcs, themes, as well as many directoral differences that led the triology in all sorts of directions leaving many questions unanswered.

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The following contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. If you haven't yet seen it, it would be best if you just moved along and came back once you have.

There's really no other way to say it: this Star Wars trilogy has been really weird. The Force Awakens started us off by reminding us what we loved about the Original Trilogy, largely by borrowing basically the entire plot. The Last Jedi dove deeply into the characters, both new and old, in ways that no Star Wars movie before ever had. And now The Rise of Skywalker tries to bring an entire franchise to a triumphant conclusion.

It's... it's a lot. The Rise of Skywalker especially feels like 10 pounds of movie in a five pound bag, it's just overflowing with plot. And the thing is that a lot of that is because the movie seems to be going out of its way to address concerns that a lot of people had about The Last Jedi. Entire plotlines created in Episode VIII are ignored in Episode IX, requiring the new movie to start entire ideas from scratch.

From the beginning ,we were told that with each episode, the writers and directors were given a free hand in creating whatever Star Wars movie they wanted. At the same time, we've been told there was a plan in place. Based on what we've now seen, it's somewhat difficult to believe that. It seems quite clear from these moments that the two directors of the three Sequel Trilogy episodes, J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson, were frequently not on the same page.

Rey's Reveal

This is, of course, the big one. When we meet Rey for the first time in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, she's a girl with a mysterious past. She's waiting for her parents to come back to her, but she's been waiting for a long time. When the Skywalker lightsaber calls Rey, we get this feeling that her history is important. The Force Awakens launched a thousand fan theories.

And then in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, we got what we thought was our answer, Contrary to basically every theory out there that pegged Rey as a descendant of some powerful Jedi family, she was nobody. Rian Johnson's film tells us Rey is simply the daughter of junk traders who needed beer money. She's not the special person she thought she was, though she's no less powerful. It was an unsatisfying answer for many, but it was an answer nonetheless.

And then, we jump to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and get the double swerve. No, just kidding before; actually, Rey totally is a member of a powerful Force-using family. She's actually the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine. It certainly feels like J.J. Abrams had a plan for Rey, and Rian Johnson never got the memo.

The Skywalker Lightsaber's Fixed

The heroes have been through a lot in the new trilogy of Star Wars films, but it's not just the characters that have seen a long journey. The Skywalker lightsaber, which re-entered the Skywalker Saga in Star Wars: The Force Awakens has also seen a lot of action. Maz Kanata had apparently been keeping it safe for some period of time, before handing it over to Finn, and then it subsequently transferring to Rey.

But Kylo Ren wants the lightsaber too. As the descendant of Anakin Skywalker, he believes it's his birthright, and tries to take it from Rey. At the end of the Star Wars: The Last Jedi, following a brief alliance of convenience, the pair fight over the lightsaber and end up having a Force tug-o-war that gets so out of control that the lightsaber actually breaks in two.

And then, in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Rey has... simply put it back together again. So then what was the point of it breaking apart? It feels like this time it was Rian Johnson who might have had an idea for how this part of the story would go, which was then undone by Abrams who simply had no interest in going down that path.

Kylo Ren Fixes The Mask He Destroyed

Similar to the Skywalker lightsaber, another item that gets completely trashed in The Last Jedi and then fixed like it's no big deal in The Rise of Skywalker is Kylo Ren's mask. He trashes it after Snoke makes fun of him for being a Darth Vader wannabe, and Ren throws a fit and smashes it. At least in the case of the lightsaber Rey wasn't trying to destroy it before she put it back together.

And then, in The Rise of Skywalker, he decides he really likes his mask after all and he puts it back together. Sure, he's killed the guy who was making fun of him, so maybe it's not too surprising that he goes back to it. But considering where Kylo Ren ends up by the end of Skywalker, this regression back to the Force Awakens version of himself feels very deliberate.

Kylo Ren could have built himself an all new mask, even one that looked identical, but that's not what he does. This is the specific undoing of the thing that happened in the previous movie. J.J> Abrams really likes this mask.

Rose Stays Behind

In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, we met a brand new character. Rose Tico was a mechanic with the Resistance who lost her sister in a bombing run on the First Order fleet. In Rian Johnson's film, she joins Finn on a mission to find a hacker capable of breaking into the First Order's systems so that the Resistance fleet can escape without being tracked.

Along the way, she shows Finn what the rest of the galaxy looks like. He sees for the first time what the Resistance is actually fighting for, leading him to finally embrace his role as "rebel scum." There's also the beginning of a potential romance between the two as Rose kisses Finn at the end of the movie.

And then, in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Rose is... nowhere. She stays behind with the rest of the Resistance while Rey, Finn and Poe go on the major mission. Rose is just another member of the Resistance here. Are Rose and Finn an item now? Or are things difficult between them because he doesn't feel that way? It's not addressed at all. It feels like J.J. Abrams just didn't know what to do with this new character.

Luke's Sacrifice

We may never really know what J.J. Abrams was thinking when he wrote Star Wars: The Force Awakens and he left Luke Skywalker alone living as a hermit on a distant planet. There are numerous possibilities, but ultimately it was Rian Johnson who got to be the one to create the reason behind this particular J.J. Abrams mystery box.

In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, we learn that Luke has exhiled himself to wait for his own death, and to let the Jedi die with him. He thinks the galaxy is better off without Luke Skywalker, but Rey helps him to see that isn't true. Luke then returns, in a form, to face down Kylo Ren and in doing so gives hope back to the galaxy. In the finale of the film, we see small children telling the story of Luke Skywalker to each other and, one assumes, inspiring them.

And when Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker begins, all of that appears to have faded away. The galaxy is again (still?) without hope, and we have to wait through the entire movie before, once again, we're shown that there are those in the galaxy willing to help. These last minutes of The Last Jedi are, it seems, simply forgotten about in the new film.

There are things to love about all the movies in the new Star Wars trilogy, I don't think any of the films are truly bad, but one has to wonder how much better they could have been if everybody involved in them had been moving in the same direction. It really feels like that wasn't the case.

Let us know what you thought of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in the comments below, and be sure to read CinemaBlend's review of the movie.

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5 Star Wars Moments That Prove J.J. Abrams And Rian Johnson Were Not On The Same Page

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The following contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. If you haven't yet seen it, it would be best if you just moved along and came back once you have. There's really no other way to say it: this Star Wars trilogy has been really weird.

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Abrams The Force Awakens plot was to be a starting point to launch Johnson's new story. Yet, Abrams editors claim that Johnson completely dismissed what Abrams originated and took the story in a different direction that was intended claiming to 'undo' the Universe that Abrams worked so hard to create, resulting in many difficulties for The Rise of Skywalker.

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J.J. Abrams' longtime editors say the director was in a tough position with "The Rise of Skywalker" after what Johnson did to the story in "The Last Jedi."

The outrage over Rian Johnson's "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" just won't go away. On a recent episode of the "Light the Fuse" podcast (via CinemaBlend), J.J. Abrams' longtime editor Mary Jo Markey shared her belief that "The Last Jedi" made conscious storytelling decisions that undid the narrative setups made in " Star Wars: The Force Awakens," which Abrams directed and Markey co-edited with frequent collaborator Maryann Brandon. Abrams returned to direct last year's "The Rise of Skywalker," which Markey defended against claims it retcons Johnson's "Last Jedi." Markey did not edit "Rise of Skywalker," but her career with Abrams also includes "Mission: Impossible III," "Star Trek," and "Star Trek Into Darkness." Markey was Oscar nominated for her work on "The Force Awakens."

"I couldn't agree more," Markey said when the conversation turned to Johnson's "Last Jedi" script "undoing" Abrams' "Force Awakens" story. "It's very strange to have the second film so consciously undo the storytelling of the first one. I'm sorry that's what it felt like. I don't even feel that's true about the third film. It took where the second film ended and just tried to tell a story. I didn't feel like it was consciously trying to undo - it just didn't feel that way to me."

Markey was joined on the "Light the Fuse" podcast by her "Force Awakens" co-editor Maryann Brandon. When Brandon tried to say she enjoyed some parts of "The Last Jedi," Markey chimed in to say her collaborator wasn't telling the truth. Brandon added about "Last Jedi," "It's a completely different take on the Star Wars saga. To Ryan's credit, he stuck to what he wanted to do. He wanted to deconstruct the saga and open it up to go a different direction. That is the film he made. I know it's controversial. Isn't that kind of good in a way? You bring in new elements. That's why I say I feel very much in hindsight that the trilogy, the last part of the trilogy, needed one vision."

"It's really polarizing," Brandon continued. "It was hard I think for J.J. and the co-writer to decide what to do [after] with it. It's like if someone wrote the middle of your novel. Now how do you get the end of the novel?"

Abrams' "Rise of Skywalker" was mostly panned by critics when it opened last Christmas. The alleged tension between Abrams and Johnson's "Star Wars" entries has been a talking point for fans for years now, but Abrams was adamant during his "Skywalker" press tour that he wasn't trying to end the Skywalker saga by negating "The Last Jedi." As the director told the Associated Press, "The story we're telling, the story that we started to conceive when we did 'The Force Awakens' was allowed to continue. Episode VIII didn't really derail anything that we were thinking about."

"The Rise of Skywalker" is now available to watch via digital, VOD, and home video. Visit the "Light the Fuse" podcast to hear more from "Force Awakens" editors Markey and Brandon.

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J.J. Abrams' Editor Still Feels Very Strongly About 'Last Jedi' Consciously Undoing 'Star Wars'

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J.J. Abrams' longtime editors say the director was in a tough position with "The Rise of Skywalker" after what Johnson did to the story in "The Last Jedi." The outrage over Rian Johnson's "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" just won't go away. On a recent episode of the "Light the Fuse" podcast (via CinemaBlend), J.J.

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The most despised Star Wars scene of all time...the Canto Bight segment where Rose and Finn go on a journey to retreive the Master Codebreaker. Fans claimed the adventure to be irrelevnt, flashy, and boring, while others recognized the scene for its deeper meaning that revealed the hushed politics in the war on the galaxy. Below is a link from Reddit, a webiste of anonymous users, not renowned critics and journalist. Our reviewer, BassWizard420, is a stunning representation of what a regular movie goer is able to accomplish when they look beyond just the screen of a film.

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People have widely maligned the entirety of Finn and Rose's mission to Canto Bight as useless, time-padding filler that has no impact upon The Last Jedi ("TLJ"), and exists solely to give Finn something-to-do.

I disagree. Canto Bight is not the side-quest-fetch-mission that many have accused it of being, but rather the sequence is essential to a core theme of TLJ, indispensable to the plot of the film, a vehicle for the arcs of three characters, and a successful exercise in world-building that introduces a third party into the war for galactic conquest.

The following post is a breakdown of these four points.

Canto Bight: 1) thematic focal point, 2) indispensable plot device, 3) character development vehicle, and 4) world-building set piece.
1. Canto Bight is Essential to a Core Theme of TLJ, and of Star Wars generally.
A major theme of TLJ is that love conquers hate. While this has broadly been a Star Wars theme at different points in the Star Wars franchise ("SW"), Canto Bight explores the theme differently. Previously in SW, we saw love compete with hate, such as Han Solo and Leia's romance in the dark times of The Empire Strikes Back ("ESB") or Darth Vader's redemption following Luke's decision not to kill him in Return of the Jedi ("RJ").

ESB explored the theme as love's ability to flourish in the face of adversity, and in RJ, the theme was love's ability to stay the hand of vengeance and redeem the hateful. TJL's 'love over hate' theme is personal (as well as aristotelian), and the theme culminates with Rose telling Finn that the rebels won't win by destroying what they hate, but by saving what they love. This is unique in that, while victory over the First Order is the goal under either viewpoint, the motivation behind that goal, love rather than hate, is the line that separates the rebels from the First Order and gives them moral superiority in this war for the galaxy.

Without the events on Canto Bight, Rose's philosophical justification for saving Finn from his own suicide mission would have been nothing more than a bare assertion. On Canto Bight, we see Rose arrive with the desire to "put her fist" though the entire town. During the escape sequence on fathiers, the space horses, Rose gets the opportunity to do exactly that by causing mayhem and destruction within the casino. After breaking line of sight from the local constabulary and sending the fathier she stole to run free, Finn expresses that, if their trip yielded nothing else, he was glad at least to "make them hurt" on Canto Bight.

Rose, however, found her solace in helping to improve the life of another living creature and not in the destruction she brought down on her enemies. Here, in the wake of her experience on Canto Bight, her character arc begins. Her arc completes on Crait, when she is willing to sacrifice her life to save Finn, someone she loves, from a hate-fueled suicide-run against the First Order (contrast Finn's attempted suicide run with the self-sacrifice made by Holdo and Paige, which were near-serene in their portrayal).

Idealist themes resonate more effectively when contrasted against a hopeless situation.

It is a common criticism that Rose's decision to collide into Finn's speeder was foolish, and realistically could have resulted in the deaths both characters, all with nothing to show of it. This criticism, however, fails to acknowledge Rose's state of mind (desperate), her motivation (save Finn's soul), and the short window of time during which she could act.

With these factors accounted for, Rose's deliberate collision into Finn makes perfect sense: If they were going to die anyway, she would give every effort to save Finn from dying with a hard heart. Rose's collision course with Finn exemplifies the moral good that the rebels stand for, and provides contrast to prior moments of moral ambiguity among the rebels in TLJ (e.g., Rey's bonding with Kylo and affinity for the dark side, Poe's conspiracy and mutiny, etc).

The completion of theme in the speeder scene is only possible because of Canto Bight, and its role in shaping Rose's arc, as hers is the thematic arc of TLJ. This allows us to visualize that a victory over the First Order is meaningless if the rebels allow themselves to become as hateful as their enemies, that the rebels aren't simply showing up to war in casual wear in contrast to the First Order's S.S. suave, but are actually a moral force against evil. None of this would have been possible without the entirety of the Canto Bight sequences, which makes each scene essential.
2. The Canto Bight Mission & Resultant Consequences Are Indispensable to the Plot of TLJ
If there were no mission to Canto Bight, DJ (Benicio Del Toro), would not have overheard Poe telling Finn that the rebels were loading onto escape shuttles, and therefore would not have relayed this information to the First Order. In the absence of the entire Canto Bight sequence and its consequences, the rebels would have lost the battle at the beginning of the film, plowed through space for a while, and then snuck off to Crait.

Without the Canto Bight mission, and the series of mistakes and missteps that result from it, TLJ would have been a movie about how Luke Skywalker did nothing (never force projected from Ahch-To), Rey did nothing (watched Kylo kill Snoke then escape while Kylo unconscious), and the rebels did nothing (hide out on Crait after losing a battle). Instead, TLJ is a story where the heroes are desperate and they do desperate things. Many of those things fail completely and put the characters in positions far worse than they began, i.e. comprise the second act of the three-act story.

To remove Canto Bight, then, would render TLJ without a plot, which is to say that Canto Bight is essential to everything else that happens in the film, including seemingly unrelated plot elements.

TLJ is a story about a retreat from the enemy. Without the drama of things going wrong to raise and alter the stakes, drama provided solely through the Canto Bight mission and its consequences, TLJ would have lacked components requisite of being a story worth telling. While Luke/Rey/Kylo is the focal point and namesake of TLJ, their interactions would not have mattered (and in some instances, would not have happened) if Poe had not sent Finn and Rose to Canto Bight.

Without Canto Bight, there is no logical way to make this amazing series of scenes happen.

(As a side point, the layers of mission failure that occur during and because of the Canto Bight mission are not indispensable from a plot perspective, aside from DJ hearing about the rebel plans, but they do serve to raise the stakes in all future SW harebrained endeavors by plucky heroes. Until TLJ, those sort of plans always worked. In the past, when a SW hero said, "I have a bad feeling about this," the character may as well have told the audience, "Don't worry, this will all work out." I'm happy to see that pattern broken for the first time since ESB.)
3. Canto Bight is an Arc Vehicle for Rose, Finn, and Poe.
Rose's arc was addressed, so here I'll focus on Finn and Poe. Finn's arc ties closely to Rose's. Like Rose, he has anger/hatred to overcome, but he additionally has selfishness and hopelessness to overcome. No longer the would-be-coward he was midway through The Force Awakens ("TFA"), Finn begins TLJ by using the escape shuttle not to run away, but rather to find Rey and save her from what he sees to be a hopeless situation.

Rose initiates Finn's arc by showing him that he's needed by more people than Rey, i.e. he's a hero of the Resistance who inspires hope and selflessness in others and that, by abandoning those ideals personally, he undercuts and subverts the good things he's done and stood for. So, off Finn goes with Rose on a mission to save the rebel cruiser by disabling the First Order's newfangled hyperspace tracker. This fits his motivations of 1) save Rey by saving the rebels, and 2) redeem selfish move from before.

On Canto Bight, Finn gets a taste for violence again and enjoys bringing mayhem to the casino. Keep in mind, the last thing he did in TFA was get his spine sliced by Kylo Ren. He woke up in a hospital room with Kylo Ren breathing right down his neck. Trashing Canto Bight is how Finn gets his groove back, and he's going to need it because...

Finn started TLJ in desperate need of a win. Canto Bight puts him on the scoreboard.

Finn's battle with Phasma is also an essential point on his arc, and it doesn't work without Finn rampaging through Canto Bight. When Finn confronts Phasma for their melee battle, he's primed for a fight because he knows how good smashing bad guys felt on Canto Bight, and the baddy he's facing now isn't just a member of the First Order, she's his former boss-from-hell and bane-of-existence. Sure, he liked pointing a blaster at her on Starkiller Base (with the help of some serious backup), but now he's itching to face her, to fight her, to conquer his personal symbol of the First Order. And he does, as the flames billow behind him, he watches Phasma, the person he hates most in the entire galaxy, fall to her death. This is Finn's smirking vengeance, and it threatens to be the end of his arc.

Finn looking as pissed off as Luke in RJ right before he cut off Vader's hand, and very much on the edge of darkness.

Without Rose, this would have been the end of Finn's arc. With his personal enemy vanquished, on Crait Finn sets off on a suicide mission to do as much damage to the First Order as he possible can. As I've discussed above, without the Canto Bight sequence, Rose never arrives at the point in her arc where she's willing to put her life on the line, essentially, to save Finn's soul. Thanks to what happened on Canto Bight, Finn gets a redemption from hatred.

The guy who can fly out of his own jacket needed a heaping helping of bad luck to develop as a character. And yes, for the record, that's the second time Poe's X-Wing got blown up.

Poe's arc needs Canto Bight because Poe needs to experience devastating failure. At the beginning of the film, he ignores Leia's order to abandon his attack on a Devastator-class ship. This results in, at best, a pyrrhic victory. The casualties incurred by Poe' plan are entirely justified to him, even as Leia, whom he clearly loves and respects, is patiently trying to explain to Poe how fucking stupid he is. When the mounting consequences of his poor decisions put him under the command of Holdo, whom he neither loves nor respects, Poe leads the conspiracy of the Canto Bight mission and even a mutiny against Holdo.

Only after Leia puts his ass down with a stun blast and he wakes up on an escape shuttle does Poe begin to understand that his plan was dumb and that he was wrong to do it. When the escape shuttles start exploding and the majority of escaping rebels die, though he doesn't yet know it, this is Poe's fault as well. Canto Bight meant that, thrice during a single battle, Poe's reckless and unilateral decision-making resulted in tactical defeat. And yet, the rebels still follow him (sure, you can call that stupid, the rebels still followed General Lee after Gettysburg, so...).

Poe's arc begins to close as Leia admonishes him about true leadership and heroism while on the escape shuttle to Crait. Poe's arc resolves when he pauses to consider Luke Skywalker's intentions before rushing into battle. Is it a narrow arc? Sure, but without Canto Bight, Poe never learns a damn thing.
4. Canto Bight Expands & Enriches SW
Enough has been said about Broom Kid and the merits of new planets, so I'll leave those points unaddressed.

The real treasure of Canto Bight is its introduction of the military-industrial complex/weapons dealer power aspect within SW. The arms dealers are without accoutability, and many of them seem to be evil slavers. With the rebellion in tatters and the First Order fleet destroyed, the group that holds the most power at the end of TLJ is the patronage of Canto Bight. They're an ideological enemy to the rebellion, but can the rebellion afford to avoid doing business with them? The First Order surely has no problem with the evil aspects of the arms dealers, but what happens when the First Order discovers that many of the dealers are double-dealing? Does Kylo murder them and steal the means of production? Does the First Order have to centralize itself onto a planet or system in order to oversee mining and production, rather than roam the galaxy freely? Either side, rebel or First Order, could find itself the patron or the enemy of the arms dealers. This creates the possibility of the most extravagant fantasy SW has ever trifled with: a powerful and effective Libertarian third party.

Remember kids, Space Tax is theft.

Consider it: Palpatine and Snoke were pragmatic customers of weaponry. Hell, even Darth Vader was down with outsourcing to bounty hunters in ESB. The old guard was evil, sure, but they were also rational and pragmatic. Kylo and Hux are more Hitler-and-Goebbels than Ceasar-and-Anthony. They're ideological purists, liable to make terrible strategic blunders, such as going to war with the arms dealers. But even if that happens, it isn't as though the rebellion will welcome the arms dealers into their ranks. Yes, thanks to Canto Bight's introduction of a third major power in the galaxy, the future of SW has a potential for richer and more diverse interests and alliances among characters. Imagine a future with no galactic power at all, but rather, a series of rival factions! Canto Bight gives SW the potential to achieve the longevity that Disney will certainly attempt to squeeze from it.

So, while Canto Bight surely wasn't the coolest part of TLJ, it was not only completely necessary to absolutely every aspect of the film itself, from the themes to the plot to the characters, Canto Bight also may be the quickening the SW needs to expand its franchise in an interesting and sustainable way. A lot of us have been enjoying these new movies, but as the series goes on, we're going to need a power dynamic that goes beyond Young Heroes vs. The Big Machine.

I submit to you that not only does Canto Bight hold TLJ together and lay the foundations of a fresh future, but further, that in time Canto Bight could become a cornerstone of cannon, a wellspring from which the franchise is rejuvenated.

Here's hoping J.J. Abrams seizes upon these many opportunities in Episode IX.

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People have widely maligned the entirety of Finn and Rose's mission to Canto Bight as useless, time-padding filler that has no impact upon The Last Jedi ("TLJ"), and exists solely to give Finn something-to-do. I disagree.

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IN DEFENSE OF CANTO BIGHT: An Essay from StarWars

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Plenty of things about Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi have been divisive, but few have been as derided as the Canto Bight sequence.

" The whole thing is just a disgracefully bad bit of storytelling."

"... feels pointless and tacked on ..."

" But the Canto Bight stuff is a bit of a drag ..."

"... an unnecessary sequence at the casino city of Canto Bight that goes straight from a political sermon into a plot hole ..."

Was it put there as a merchandising tool, a way to sell space pony plushies and several dozen more figurines? Does it fail to advance the story at all? Does it matter?

No, and no, and yes. Canto Bight is neither a fluffy diversion nor a tacked-on way to find something to do with Rose and Finn. It's absolutely vital to the themes of The Last Jedi, and if you took it out, you'd lose more than just a few lines of dialogue about morality and wealth in the galaxy.

Canto Bight isn't really about the rich people at all. It's about the reality of life under a fascist First Order, and about unsung, unflashy work that needs to be done to fix the galaxy.
Spoilers for The Last Jedi follow.
One of the key themes of The Last Jedi is that we need heroes less than we need hope-and that the old narratives of heroes and heroics aren't necessarily the most useful ones. Luke Skywalker doesn't appear to defeat Kylo Ren, but to give the Resistance a shred of hope at survival. Kylo and Rey both hold out hope that they can change each other. Vice Admiral Holdo doesn't care at all about how her choices look, but how they work-like Luke, she provides the Resistance with a moment of hope.

The little Force-sensitive kid at the end is the symbol of all that hope: a small boy from nowhere, who has nothing, gazing at the skies with determination on his face and a symbol on his finger.

But where did he get that hope?

From Rose and Finn.

Rose and Finn's trip to Canto Bight is a failure from a mission standpoint: they don't get the master codebreaker, but a thief who sells them out at the first sign of trouble. But while they're there, they succeed at something we've not seen anyone else do: they seed a new place, a place full of wealth and privilege, with devotion to the Resistance. And they do it with kindness and hope.

There's hope in Rose's face when she reaches out to that stable boy, Resistance ring in hand. And there's a huge reason it's Rose who does this: she understands. She tells Finn what the First Order did to her mining-colony home, stripping it of resources and then testing it with weapons built with the planet's own materials. She doesn't have to say it outright, but it's clear this is at least part of what led her to the Resistance: mistreatment by those in power.

So when, on a planet of wealthy pleasure-seekers, she sees a small, dirty-faced boy, she recognizes what it means to be that kid. Showing him the ring is a risk, but she knows he probably doesn't have any loyalty to his masters (and not just because she saw said masters being cruel to both fathiers and children). She's acting out of self-preservation, but also out of kindness. Even in a state of panic and danger, there's no yelling, no shouting, no bossing. When she tells the boy they need his help, it's a request, not a demand.

And that help makes a difference-for Rose and Finn, and for the fathiers. If it doesn't solve everything-if Rose and Finn still need a lift offplanet; if the fathiers get rounded up again a few hours later-that's also the point. Not everyone can fix the galaxy single-handed. Really, no one can. The little jobs are vital, too. Imperfect work is still work. And failure, like Yoda says, is a great teacher. Having tried, having made that choice, still matters.

What about Finn, though? At first I thought it weird that his role in this sequence was so small, but then I realized: he's barely socialized. He's barely out of Stormtrooper armor. He's spent his whole life being ordered around by the First Order and its obsession with power through cruelty. It's hugely valuable for him to be the observer, to see how people-both fancy and downtrodden-live in the galaxy, to see what conflict and class divisions have wrought, and to see exactly what it is the Resistance has to contend with.

Other arguments have been made for Canto Bight's inclusion. David Sims at The Atlantic looks at the way the sequence illustrates the broader oppression in the galaxy-it sets up Rose's last line, when she tells Finn they need to save what they love, not fight what they hate. The line is a little clunky, but if you consider it in the context of Canto Bight, it makes more sense: fight for the downtrodden stable kids, not against the bad guys.

Joanna Robinson's great take at Vanity Fair focuses on the powerful representation of having two of the film's characters of color go on a meaningful adventure of their own-and how this is a corner of the galaxy we haven't seen before. "Neither rebels nor imperialists, the Canto Bight residents lend shades of gray to the universe in a way that's explored in every corner of The Last Jedi, " Robinson writes.

In an interview with Syfy Wire, Star Wars concept designer Neal Scanlon said Canto Bight is his favorite creation of the new movie:

I think that's Canto Bight, for two reasons, really. One is because there was no absolutes. And secondly, it's really significant thing to The Last Jedi, that there's a point in the film-and I think you'll probably know what I mean when you see it-that we wave goodbye, a little, to the established past, and start to take those first independent steps. You know, the genre has got to turn, stand on its own two feet.

The genre has to stand on its own two feet-and so does the galaxy. The importance of Canto Bight isn't fully clear until the very last scene of The Last Jedi, in which we return to that stable, and to the children who live there. Word of Luke's actions in the climactic scenes has clearly spread: the kids have a little handmade Luke Skywalker figure, posed in front of their versions of walkers. The story being told is exciting-and, we know, not enough to change the world on its own. You need more than an exciting narrative; you need people, on the ground, doing the work. You need real examples of change created by ordinary people; you need change to look like something possible, not just for a select few. If the mythology of the Jedi was enough to motivate the galaxy to action, it wouldn't be in the position it's in.

But it's a good story, and one many of us have told and retold, sitting on the ground, playing with Star Wars figurines, imagining ourselves princesses and warriors, generals and queens.

How many of us grew up to be those things?

What you can grow up to be, if not a crazy old wizard or a wise general, is a person who joins the fight. Who puts in the work, who runs the errands, who takes a moment to do something kind, even if it doesn't necessarily matter to your mission. (Rose taking the saddle off the last fathier makes me tear up, every time.) The Last Jedi dismantles the idea that heroism is the only thing that changes the world, and leaves us with a little kid with hope in his heart-hope that was put there by two people who weren't trying to be heroes, but were just doing their jobs.

Molly Templeton had to watch The Last Jedi twice before she fell in love with it, but she's fully on board now.

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Why Canto Bight is Vital to The Last Jedi

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Plenty of things about Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi have been divisive, but few have been as derided as the Canto Bight sequence. " The whole thing is just a disgracefully bad bit of storytelling." "... feels pointless and tacked on ..." " But the Canto Bight stuff is a bit of a drag ..."

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A divide between movie audiences and critics happens all the time - especially with blockbusters.

Consider the recent case of Justice League, which brought together a bunch of big-name superheroes, to the delight of 79 percent of those who saw it and bothered to register their opinion on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics, however, only liked the film to the tune of a 40 percent score - a 39-point gap. There's also 2016's Suicide Squad, with a 26 percent score from critics and a 61 percent score from audiences, for a 35-point gap.

These gaps are normal. If you've bought a ticket for a movie - as opposed to having seen it at a free critics screening - you're far more likely to have self-selected as a fan already, and thus, you're far more likely to be into the movie. (If you were to make the argument that Rotten Tomatoes is a deeply flawed system at best and actively harmful to the future of criticism at worst, well, I wouldn't stop you.)

So there's a pattern. Critics savage a blockbuster. Audiences feel it's better than its reputation. Rinse and repeat.

It rarely happens in the opposite direction. Critics aren't supposed to like blockbusters more than the general public. We're supposed to be snooty snoots, with our noses turned up in the air at all of this populist garbage, as we head into the theater for the latest from Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul. And even if this sort of divide happens occasionally, it's certainly not supposed to happen with Star Wars.

Except it has. Despite a 93 percent "fresh" critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, The Last Jedi (the latest Star Wars film) has the lowest audience score of any Star Wars movie on Rotten Tomatoes. As of Monday, it's at 56 percent. (Yes, that's lower than any of the prequels.) What the hell is going on here? Beware, though. To explain why, I'll have to engage in some plot spoilers.

Let's start here: Is there actually a backlash to Star Wars: The Last Jedi?

The problem with using any online voting mechanism to gauge opinions on a movie (or anything, really) is such systems are really easy to game. The 56 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and the 4.9 average user score (out of 10) on Metacritic (where critics gave the film an 86 out of 100) are certainly shocking to behold. (There's also an ineffectual online petition you can sign.) But flip over to IMDb and you'll see Last Jedi has a 7.9 user score. That would lag behind critics' scores, but it's not far off the 8.1 IMDb user score for The Force Awakens.

Similarly, all of the evidence we have from actual audience surveys and box office returns suggests The Last Jedi is performing well with audiences. It received a Cinemascore of "A," exactly the same as The Force Awakens and , and its average rating from moviegoers surveyed by Comscore was five out of five stars, which is actually slightly higher than either of the two most recent Star Wars films. (Deadline has more on both surveys and how they're conducted here.)

Finally, the box office opening for The Last Jedi was exactly as you'd expect a blockbuster movie with good word of mouth, going up on Saturday from Friday and slightly overperforming initial estimates for the second-biggest opening weekend of all time (behind only The Force Awakens). The real test will be how it performs in the lucrative Christmas-through-New-Year's-Day week. (It should have a steep drop-off next weekend, because Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday, but no one expects it to utterly collapse.)

Naturally, whenever there's such a massive divide between certain online voting metrics and everything else, it's easy to suspect some sort of brigading of the vote, campaigns from unruly and discontented fans who (for whatever reason) slam the lowest-rating button over and over again - or program a bot to do so for them - in hopes of dragging down the overall score. And at least one Facebook message (from someone who seems disgruntled about Disney consigning much of the old Star Wars expanded universe to non-canonical status) hints that just such a campaign has gone on for the Rotten Tomatoes score in particular.

Yet it's important to understand that even though a lot of the most obvious examples of The Last Jedi backlash are probably - probably - bunk, that doesn't mean there's not a Last Jedi backlash precisely where it counts: among Star Wars fandom.

Star Wars fans are mad about The Last Jedi, but it's impossible and irresponsible to boil down their anger to any one cause

Just to put my cards on the table, I thought The Last Jedi was pretty darn great. I've never been a huge Star Wars fan, but it was the first movie in the franchise that made me feel something other than, "That was neat," and made me realize what it was that fans had always loved about the franchise. After I saw it the Monday before its release, I looked forward to finally feeling like part of the club.

Needless to say, that didn't happen. The fan/critic divide seemed stark, almost right away. (I should probably note here that Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson has a more or less cordial relationship with many critics, since he uses social media in a more open and friendly way than most major filmmakers. I don't really think that colored critics' opinions - I love the movie and have never interacted with the guy - but I also can't pretend it's an impossible notion to think about.)

Almost immediately on Friday morning, after Thursday night preview screenings, The Last Jedi was being dissected by Star Wars fans for its purported failings. And it's important to note here that those "purported failings" are going to differ wildly from person to person.

With a movie as big as this one, which sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 million tickets in the US and Canada alone, the response is always going to be all over the place, and finding one simple answer as to why it's so divisive is impossible. There is undoubtedly somebody out there who's mad at the movie for not having enough porgs, just as there's somebody mad at it for having too many porgs.

But, broadly speaking, the fan criticisms of the movie fall under five broad umbrellas.

Too much progressivism: In the early going of the backlash, this was the easy culprit to point to. The broad strokes of the Last Jedi response sure looked like the broad strokes of Gamergate or the backlash to the all-female Ghostbusters remake. And there are lots and lots of tweets and user reviews and responses that focus on the idea that the film's strongest characters are almost all women, who usually know the right thing to do, while its most evil characters are white men with complexes about being given what they think they deserve.

In particular, as Dave Schilling points out at Birth Movies Death, The Last Jedi is more or less a metaphorical depiction of the baby boomer generation (a generation that featured a lot of white dudes - good and bad - in positions of power) handing off leadership roles to younger generations, particularly millennials, who tend to be more racially diverse and to advocate having more women in positions of power. The series' millennial good guys are a young white woman, a black man, a woman of Asian descent, and a Latino man, while its millennial bad guys are two white dudes.

But saying there's a lot of cultural anxiety around this particular generational handoff is an understatement. And when you consider that Star Wars fandom has long been presided over by white guys, it's natural this would lead to angry policing over what Star Wars is and isn't. And that policing can be ugly and lead to toxic fandoms in which people who aren't white men don't feel comfortable.

But while there's a lot of this going around, and it's tempting to write off the backlash as wholly defined by anti-progressivism, that also wouldn't be accurate. There are plenty of other complaints and criticisms from fans that range from nitpicky to more concerning.

The jokes are too jokey: Of the "nitpicky" complaints, this is the most nitpicky, in that plenty of fans don't like The Last Jedi'ssense of humor. And to be sure, the film has its share of broad jokes, which seem to be written in comic idioms that are slightly more modern than the original trilogy's more vaudevillian style. The movie opens with Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) launching into an elaborate "your mom" routine, and you either go with it or you don't. And there are a lot of jokes. Even if you like 90 percent of them, the 10 percent that don't work are going to stick with you.

In digging through tweets and other comments about this particular strain of criticism, however, I found an intriguing common thread: A lot of people who found Last Jedi too jokey also made subsequent tweets where they compared something in Last Jedi unfavorably to something in the prequel trilogy. And the prequels ... definitely had their problems with humor and self-seriousness, beyond even Jar Jar Binks's antics.

The Star Wars fandom's own generational handoff involves a generation raised primarily on the original trilogy to one raised on that trilogy and the prequels - right as the movies in theaters are revealing themselves asmore indebted to the original three films. It's an interesting theory, at least, and one that may explain many of the other criticisms.

The movie is uninterested in fan theories: Remember the part where I mentioned the guy who's mad at Disney for making the so-called expanded universe non-canonical? On plenty of Star Wars message boards, there's always been a little anger at the new trilogy for not adhering to established expanded universe ideas like Han Solo and Leia being happily married, or Luke Skywalker running a Jedi Academy. Instead, the movie suggests that after Return of the Jedi came a slow devolution into disappointment and ruin. (Hey, just like how the '60s panned out, right, baby boomers?)

The 2015 film was directed by J.J. Abrams, who never met a mystery he couldn't tease. But Johnson immediately quashed many of those mysteries in Last Jedi. Who was Snoke? Who were Rey's parents? Who cares, The Last Jedi ultimately concludes.

Individual plot lines/moments don't make sense: As with all movies of this scope and size, there are seeming plot holes in The Last Jedi if you start to pick it apart. (One that kinda bugs me: How does Benicio Del Toro's character know a very important piece of information late in the film? You can hand-wave this away, but it takes a couple of logic leaps to do so*.) This is especially true of the film's pacing, with Rey's Jedi training seeming to take months, while everything else in the movie takes place over a matter of hours.

The most common complaint in this regard is that Finn and Rose's journey to the casino planet of Canto Bight is a slow, pointless distraction from the more immediately involving plots involving Rey and Poe, one that gums up the middle of the movie and doesn't amount to anything in terms of the plot. And I can certainly see this, since the Finn/Rose plot nearly lost me the first time I watched the film.

But when you reach the third act, and the thematic impact of this plot clicks into place (as the Atlantic's David Sims has written about here), it becomes more impressive within the whole of the film. Put simply, Johnson's film, on a first watch, seems to have a lot of pieces that don't fit, because he's not planning to make them fit until the film's very end. And that can be taxing to watch.

Ultimately, these sorts of plot holes and storytelling choices are of less interest to critics, who tend to focus more on a film's craft and its themes, than fans, who like to pick apart the nitty-gritty details of a movie. And I'd argue that almost all of the so-called "plot holes" fans have brought up are ultimately explained away within the film, or justified by how they play into the movie's overall storytelling structure. It's rare in this film that a setup doesn't have a payoff and vice versa. But they're not always where you're looking for them, and that can lead to confusion and consternation.
*-Yes, the film includes a quick moment where Del Toro's character - named DJ in the credits, but never identified as such in the film - overhears Poe and Finn talking about their plan. But it's a very quick shot, and we still have to make a few leaps to figure out how he got that information to the First Order.
The characters' journeys aren't what was expected: This is probably the fan critique with the most meat to it. But it's also, ultimately, the one that has the most personal spin on it. Do you think that Rey's journey in the film shows the slow dawning of her realization that she has agency in and of herself and doesn't need it to be given to her (as I do), or do you think it silos her off in the middle of a plot that takes her movie from her?

Do you think that Luke Skywalker is an old man who learns a lesson about aging and wisdom, or a cranky cynic who never would have become what he is? Do you think the movie is optimistic about the future, or unable to compete with the wonders of the past?

Or consider the way that the film seems as if it's largely left behind the central Force Awakens trio of Poe, Finn, and Rey - who are split up into three separate plot lines in Last Jedi - in favor of more focus on Kylo Ren's journey through his own indecision toward something darker and more foreboding, as well as Luke's journey from cynicism back to hope. I don't think this is a terribly accurate read of the film, where all three characters get full, complicated character arcs and are tested in interesting ways, but if you really keyed in on, say, Finn and Rey's interplay in Force Awakens, I get the disappointment.

This philosophical difference of opinion extends to none other than Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker himself. While Hamill has turned into one of the film's biggest boosters, he's made no secret of the fact that he disagreed considerably with Johnson's vision for the character. (For his part, Johnson took Hamill's criticisms to heart and changed certain things about Luke's arc - though we don't know what.)

That push and pull between director and star resulted in one of the best performances in any Star Wars film, but its existence gave lots of fans leeway to question Johnson's intentions, as Vanity Fair's Joanna Robinson has written about astutely.

It's impossible to figure out, too, where any given Star Wars fan will fall along this divide. Consider this Twitter exchange between authors Rainbow Rowell (who loved the film) and Noelle Stevenson (who didn't). It's clear they're both huge Star Wars fans, but it's also clear they were looking for very different things in Last Jedi. One found it, and the other just didn't.

The Last Jedi is Act 2 of a story about letting go of the past and embracing the future. Maybe it was destined to be divisive.

If you look back all the way to 1980, to the earliest reviews and reactions to The Empire Strikes Back, now almost universally acclaimed as the best Star Wars film, you'll find lots and lots of people talking about what a disappointment the film was compared to its predecessor. (Look, here's the New York Times doing just that!) What's more, if you look to reviews of 1983's Return of the Jedi, now largely written off as the weakest of the original trilogy, a lot of them talk about the film as a return to form.

My point is this: Beginnings and endings are (comparatively) easy; middles are hard. And, as Rian Johnson points out in an interview with Vox's own Alissa Wilkinson, The Last Jedi, like Empire before it, is a very middle movie:

Especially when your job is to make a good movie, and making a good movie means drama, and drama means throwing roadblocks in the way of the easy answers and the expectations. That means in some ways you're going to be butting up against your own instincts as to what you as a fan want. You have to defy wish fulfillment in order to tell a good story - especially to tell a good second act of a story, which is what the middle chapter basically is.

The central theme of The Last Jedi isn't good versus evil. It's not figuring out how to be good. It's not even about flirting with temptation (as Empire arguably was).

It is a movie about knowing what's right and doing that, even though everything else in the universe is stacked against you. It is a movie about why you might start a rebellion against a fascistic order, rather than simply going along with the status quo. Part of the movie is about how the worst people in the universe aren't even the First Order, but the rich profiteers who are happy to go along with whoever's in power, so long as they keep making a few bucks.

The theme of The Last Jedi, then, is about being tested, about having everything you value thrown into question and figuring out for yourself the right thing to do. You can't make the world perfectly safe for your metaphorical children. You will fail them, and they will fail you.

And the movie does, occasionally, undercut itself in this regard. To wit: I'm not precisely sure why Holdo's sacrifice is noble but Finn's thwarted sacrifice was considered foolhardy. But even when it can't seem to reconcile its headier ideas with the fact that it's a swashbuckling space adventure, the movie will always save itself at the last minute - as when Rose explains that she saved Finn because you need to save what you love, not destroy what you hate (something Holdo did as well, if you think about it).

To say that a movie espousing these ideals being released at the end of 2017 is timely is, once again, an understatement. But even if it didn't have political resonance with this particular moment in history, The Last Jedi would have resonance with this particular moment in Star Wars history.

The first Star Wars film debuted 40 years ago. The fans who grew up with it not only have kids of their own, but those kids have grown up to have their own ideas of what Star Wars is and what it should be. It's a franchise that is torn between the lefty ideals of George Lucas (who initially envisioned the Rebels as the Viet Cong and the Empire as the United States) and the fact that it became a major capitalist cash cow.

It's a franchise that seems to want to break new ground with this new trilogy, but is also sprinkling in prequels about old, beloved characters amid its new chapters. The Force Awakens was attacked for being too slavish to the old Star Wars movies; The Last Jedi is being attacked for not being slavish enough.

An idea I've seen bandied about a lot online in the wake of the backlash is that Star Wars is for everyone, not just a certain subset of fans who feel a certain way about the projects. Whether you love Rey or Luke best, whether you think Jar Jar Binks is hilarious or not, whether you think Han shot first or not - Star Wars is for you, and for everybody who disagrees with you too.

But if it's going to keep pleasing those who love it most, then it needs to stay preserved in amber (or, if you will, frozen in carbonite), leaving Luke Skywalker as the best boy who ever lived and continuing to tell endless variations on the story of a young kid from a nowhere planet who learns he's part of the biggest saga of them all. But that kind of fetishization of what's come before is the quickest way to kill off a pop culture artifact.

The people we were aren't always the people we become, and that's both a necessary lesson and a bitter disappointment, but you can't become yourself without learning to live alongside that discomfort. And now there's a Star Wars movie about that very dilemma, right when we all might need it most.
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The "backlash" against Star Wars: The Last Jedi, explained

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A divide between movie audiences and critics happens all the time - especially with blockbusters. Consider the recent case of Justice League , which brought together a bunch of big-name superheroes, to the delight of 79 percent of those who saw it and bothered to register their opinion on Rotten Tomatoes.

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Critics overall thoroughly enjoyed The Last Jedi, labeling it a stimulating film with many creative aspects and themes. The film brought in a fresh breath of air into the Universe, showing that Star Wars is not just about the flashy light saber fights and the menacing roar of Tie Fighters. In the video linked below, Blue Bantha Milk Co. talks about how no matter how much the fans say this is a terrible movie, it is still objectively good. The writing, acting, directing, cinemotography, and profits all contribute to The Last Jedi being a successful movie, it is just up to the personal descretion of the viewer wether the film met their ethical values and principles.

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The Last Jedi is GREAT Star Wars and that is our final word

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence.

152 minutes

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi movie review (2017) | Roger Ebert

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Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence. 152 minutes Cast Director Writer (based on characters created by) Writer Director of Photography Cinematographer Editor Composer

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Thank you for reading my Padlet on Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the Media Professional Moral Duties. To end my presentation I included a video of some very angry (immature & childlike) fans who unhappily expressed their reviews on The Last Jedi. Many of them are quite comical, enjoy!

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Star Wars The Last Jedi - RANT COMPILATION !

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Star Wars Fans, Let honor James Earl Jones(The Voice of Darth Vader) by supporting this Long Lost Animated Classic from the 1990s.

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Completion of an eco-adventure for children with Ted Danson, Demi Moore, Michael J. Fox, James Earl Jones, Ice T. & John Candy