#don't have finn be ENAMORED and OOOOOHing at the machines

[swan2swan]

“Is the galaxy worth saving?”

This should have been the question The Last Jedi posed.

The Original Trilogy showed us a group of freedom fighters fighting for good against an unquestionably evil Empire, so there was never any doubt that the galaxy was worth it--at least as far as putting people who made good and righteous decisions was concerned. The only alternative was oblivion in the form of weapons that literally destroyed worlds, and life in terror of a mechanical monster.

The Prequel Trilogy, though, showed that the galaxy more or less chose this fate for itself: our own heroine nominates the future Emperor, the Dark Lord of the Sith, to the position of Chancellor; the comic relief proposes that his army of evil henchmen be created; the heroic Jedi Order begins the war that tears the galaxy apart; and our protagonist is the one who murders children and cements the Empire in its place. They may have all been manipulated by a greater evil, but as they watch in horror while the galaxy embraces wickedness and tyranny, there is no one who rises to help them.

In the Sequel Trilogy, our protagonists are all disconnected from the greater galaxy: Rey is abandoned on a junk world, Finn was raised to be evil from the beginning, and Poe serves a Resistance force that isn’t even recognized as an official faction. It is then revealed that complacency and corruption pierced even our New Republic, and their capital and fleet are annihilated. Any chance of becoming “good” is gone--and even the Jedi are absent from the galaxy.

Thus the question should have arisen: is the galaxy worth saving? What stake does Rey have in a universe where her own parents don’t return for her, leaving her alone and thirsty on a ball of sand and metal? Why should Finn take up arms against a force he knows is unstoppable, or trust people whose flaws have been relentlessly exposed through countless feeds of propaganda? Why should Poe have to respect what the galaxy wants when they didn’t listen to him and his superiors, despite all of the warnings he gave? And finally, why should Luke Skywalker return to a galaxy that continually demanded the help of the Jedi, but did not rise up as one when the Jedi who helped them were massacred? Why should he help a galaxy that rejected him and his teachings when they learned of his heritage? Why should they all fight for a universe that doesn’t want them?

We could see Canto Bight--wealthy and opulent, uncaring even after an entire system vanished. We could see the quaint comfort of Ach-To: the Jedi’s first temple, destroyed not by violence but by the steady weather of time, where a peaceful race lives unbothered by the galaxy’s strife. We could have explored other worlds, questioned whether people should cut deals with the First Order, whether a united galaxy is all that bad, or necessary.

Then, the movie could have explained why you have to care. Why even though the world may not treat you right, you should still treat others with love, because that’s how you win. You preserve those you can, and keep moving to help others. The trilogy could have explored more of what the heroes are fighting for: individuals. People. Peace. This could have been written in the first Jedi Temple: stories of how they saw people suffering, and realized that they could use their powers to heal, to comfort, to communicate...and to resist evil. They could have spoken of schisms, of guidance, of moral dilemmas and unanswerable questions...but always come back to this code of the Jedi: protect the weak. Teach the ignorant. Create hope.

Thus we could see how the first Jedi spoke to the last. We could witness the rebirth of the Jedi in the same way as it began: with a few small nobodies from the outside reaches of space taking their power and using it to fight evil. Not because they think they can put a perfect government in place, or because they think if they bring peace, all wars will end and all troubles will stop. But because they can fix things. No, you can’t just free a bunch of animals from their pens and burn down a casino; it’s a temporary solution. You have to teach people, be patient, make plans. You can’t eliminate all the bad people in the galaxy, and you can’t just create good ones. These could have been the lessons: the first movie shows the threat facing the galaxy, the second one shows them finding the way to fix everything and learning about the problems of the past, and the third film would have them uniting and driving toward their goal.

It would have opened the universe so much more...