SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for director Rian Johnson's Star Wars: The Last Jedi, in theaters now.


The Force has always been a source of debate among Star Wars fans. The ambiguous supernatural energy has been explained in different ways throughout the film franchise, but how that power is manipulated by Jedi (and Sith) has also changed over the years. And in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, writer/director Rian Johnson once again reinvents how the Force works.

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In the film, Force wielders can communicate instantaneously across distances, read minds and move objects using telekinesis, of course, but that’s not all. Leia Organa is able to move her body through the vacuum of space. Supreme Leader Snoke claims he was able to manipulate the minds of Rey and Kylo Ren, seeding faulty depictions of the future to coerce the two into compliance. Even a Jedi’s ability to survive after death is upgraded, with a long-dead Yoda calling down a lightning strike after Luke Skywalker is unable to burn the Jedi Order’s sacred texts. That’s to say nothing of Luke’s surprising astral projection in his duel with Kylo.

So, how different are these Force powers compared to those of the previous trilogies? Quite a bit, actually. In fact, The Last Jedi breaks some key rules.

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode IV

In the original Star Wars trilogy, Obi-Wan Kenobi described the Force as “an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us and binds the galaxy together.” The Force sounds all-powerful in that description, but its depiction was fairly mundane. Both Obi-Wan and Luke utilized the Force to influence psychically, using “Jedi mind tricks” to cloud the minds of the weak-willed, rendering them temporarily subservient. Luke frequently used the Force to telekinetically retrieve his lightsaber, and a vision of the future brought him to his friends’ aid when they were betrayed on Cloud City. Darth Vader, of course, was a big fan of the Force-choke move.

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Those abilities are present in The Last Jedi, but they've seemingly been dialed up to 11. Luke is able to dupe Kylo Ren, another powerful Force-wielder, into believing his illusion, giving the remaining members of the Resistance enough time to flee from an abandoned Rebel Alliance base on Crait. That’s quite the feat, considering how Force persuasion in the original trilogy was primarily limited to Stormtroopers and the Gamorrean guards, the assumption being that the similarly skilled Force-sensitive would be able to detect, and deflect, such attempts.

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Perhaps The Last Jedi’s biggest departure from the original trilogy is in its Force ghosts. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi depicted Luke’s reunion with Alec Guinness’ Obi-Wan Kenobi in the form of a Force ghost -- a Jedi whose consciousness manifests after death. The meeting mirrors a similar chat between Luke and Yoda in the The Last Jedi, but in Return of the Jedi Obi-Wan only offers sage wisdom. In The Last Jedi, Yoda calls down a massive lightning bolt. Both Luke’s astral projection and Yoda’s lightning strike are seemingly the result of two powerful Force-wielders using their abilities to their fullest potential, but those moments radically change how we think about Force users and their powers.

For example, it's well-known that a Jedi struck down will become more powerful than the attacker could possibly imagine, but what kind of powers are the departed gifted? Did Yoda draw his power from the Jedi temple on Ahch-To (in the same way he retreated to Dagobah because the planet was a conduit for the Force), or is that simply something his ghost can do? What enabled Luke to project himself across such a vast distance? Was he influencing the minds of everyone present, or actually reassembling reality? And what killed him? Was the strain of the projection too much, or did Kylo somehow strike true? The film offers no concrete answers, which is a major departure from the prequel trilogy, which tried to offer an explanation for everything.

But what about the prequels? Well, there’s one thing missing from The Last Jedi: midi-chlorians. That will be a welcomed omission for many Star Wars fans, who found the explanation of the Force’s origins in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace to be frustratingly demystifying. Regardless, the absence of midi-chlorians is likely calculated; they're still part of canon, but their exclusion from The Last Jedi brings the galaxy-balancing energy back to being a vaguely spiritual mystery.

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That mystery has always played best when the protagonists of Star Wars have had their backs against a wall. The prequel trilogy was all about the lavish history of the Jedi, when the Order was healthy and the Force-sensitive didn’t have to hide their powers for fear of being hunted down. The Jedi had the full power of the Galactic Republic’s technology behind them, so naturally they had examined and quantified the Force to some degree. The original and current trilogies see the galaxy in a dire state – the Jedi are nearly eradicated, and no help coming from the sidelines. In this case, the Force needs to be mysterious and unquantifiable so that its full narrative potential can be realized.

Of course, the biggest Force rule The Last Jedi breaks is our very understanding of the Force. Every Star Wars film up to this point has established the push and pull between light and dark, good and evil. The Last Jedi is the first film to posit that this “balance” is unhealthy, that there’s so much more to it than the unending war between Jedi and Sith. The film seemingly doubles down on that stance, letting Yoda burn away notions about the old Jedi so that a new generation can rise. It’s a passing of the torch (or, in this case, ancient flaming tree) that fundamentally shifts what it means to be a Force-wielder in the Star Wars galaxy.


In theaters now, director Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi stars Daisy Ridley as Rey, John Boyega as Finn, Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron, Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Carrie Fisher as Leia Organa, Andy Serkis as Supreme Leader Snoke, Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux, Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico and Laura Dern as Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo.