Last Jedi Ruins Star Wars' Skywalker Family Legacy

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

Despite its critical and commercial success, Star Wars: The Last Jedi may well be the most polarizing installment of the franchise to date. While writer/director Rian Johnson continues to depict the struggle between good and evil, represented by the Resistance and the First Order, he veers away from the Star Wars of old by subverting one of the saga's core components: the Skywalkers.

First, the filmmaker destroys the family's ambition to rebuild the galaxy through completing Ben Solo's transformation into a new Darth Vader, and then he changes Luke Skywalker from the savior we last saw in Return of the Jedi into a defeated mentor who ran away after his student answered the call of the Dark Side. Let's put it this way: When Mark Hamill takes issue with how Luke became an uncaring fallen Jedi, you know these probably aren't the Skywalkers you're looking for. Johnson may have wanted to break the mold, but all he did was ruin the Skywalker legacy. Let's take a look at why that is.

There's No Evolution

Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Although Kylo Ren was introduced in 2015's The Force Awakens, Johnson had an opportunity to steer away from the character's predictable path. After all, Kylo's inner conflict and his desire for Rey to rule the galaxy alongside him are merely rehashes of Darth Vader envisioning his son Luke at his right hand. Having Kylo assume the role of Supreme Leader paints him as weak, and in the process spits on the choices made by both Luke and Vader to save the galaxy from Emperor Palpatine.

The older Skywalkers tried to ensure their legacy would never be tyranny, and Johnson undercuts that with Kylo's path. That glaring lack of evolution is only magnified by Luke's new arc; he rolls over and leaves the galaxy to be razed by Kylo and Snoke. Hamill himself said Luke would figure out a way to correct his failures, so having him give up, wallow in self-pity and abandon the Resistance is a major step backward.

Kylo, as your typical power-hungry villain, and Luke, as a selfish recluse who's out of ideas, feel one-dimensional and diminish the greatness of the Skywalkers, transforming them from something special into something disappointingly ordinary. That Yoda also had to return to teach Luke one final lesson merely compounds that.

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There's Nothing To Pass Down

With Kylo as Vader 2.0 and Luke abandoning ship, Johnson paints the Skywalker legacy as one of failure, which then raises the question: What do they really have to pass down? What's even more disappointing is that for generations, we've witnessed how strong the family is with the Force, and after years of waiting to see a Skywalker, namely Luke, as a sage, a la Yoda, Qui-Gonn Jinn, Mace Windu or Obi-Wan Kenobi, all we get are a couple self-deprecating speeches. Luke's brief time with Rey doesn't feel like any sort of mentorship, because all he does is offer reminders that the Jedi were arrogant.

We get it, but why dwell on that? Outside of flashbacks to him and Kylo, all Luke does is teach Rey two lessons -- the Force is a life-binding essence, and it's meant for everyone, not Jedi alone -- but we're left wondering what the third one is that he promised. He barely showed her how to harness the light, so given his final showdown with Kylo, we can only assume it's to keep hope.

We have to extrapolate, because we never really see Luke as a teacher. Fans watched Luke grow from a doe-eyed boy into a Jedi Knight, but sadly, there's not much of him as a Jedi Master. It would have been nice to finally see a Skywalker passing down knowledge about defying destiny and reminding us that heroism runs in their blood. Instead, all that's left to tell are stories of destruction and death, shoehorning Anakin, Luke and Kylo into the same sandbox.

There's No Sense of Family

Luke and Leia were close in the original trilogy, but Johnson makes a terrible decision to keep them apart until the end, when Luke's Force projection has a brief, sentimental exchange with his sister. Luke abandoning Leia feels so uncharacteristic; given that he helped push Ben to the Dark Side, Luke running away feels so cowardly and doesn't give the impression he and Leia had any sort of bond. We didn't even see the siblings in flashbacks dealing with their Jedi bloodline and what came after Return of the Jedi, so it's tough to connect with their story and how they handled, or mishandled, Ben's training, especially with Han Solo opposing it.

It doesn't even appear that Luke misses his sister or acknowledges her that much, and vice versa. Luke also didn't show any deep sense of grief when he found out Han died, and apart from R2-D2, he barely interacts with old friends such as C-3PO and Chewbacca. Family is a fundamental part of Star Wars, and while a new one has emerged with Rey, Finn and Poe, etc., Johnson did little justice to the orginal. Everyone feels so disconnected from each other, not just physically, but emotionally.

The Skywalkers aren't ragtag heroes, but rather the elite bloodline of the galaxy, and that deserves special attention. That The Last Jedi doesn't depict Leia attempting to change Kylo back into Ben, even using Force telepathy, more or less sums up how emotionally flat the film's treatment of them is. Instead of continuing the journey that began in 1977, The Last Jedi simply turns the Skywalkers into a bad soap opera in space, with all style and very little substance.

Written and directed by Rian Johnson, Star Wars: The Last Jedi stars Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Daisy Ridley as Rey, John Boyega as Finn, Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron, Andy Serkis as Supreme Leader Snoke, Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux, Gwendoline Christie as Captain Phasma, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, Lupita Nyong’o as Maz Kanata, Benicio Del Toro as ‘DJ’, Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, Laura Dern as Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo, and the late Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa.