There are so many articles criticizing the new Star Wars films. So many. But they’re all written by a bunch of nerds with a Coruscant Jedi library of knowledge, capable of dissecting the movies frame-by-frame to pick out minuscule details that I, a very cool person, would have never even have thought to question.
Some of the articles have merit. Some don’t. But none have mentioned the things I think are worthy of criticism, so here’s another one for the pile.
Luke Skywalker can’t read.
Luke Farmboy Skywalker, a simple young man with impeccable fashion sense living on Tatooine, was uneducated. Like, American-public-school-level uneducated.
Luke Sweatercape Skywalker got excited at the prospect of going to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters. Do you know what power converters are? They are the batteries in a spaceship. Luke “Noooooooooooooooooo” Skywalker got excited about going into town to pick up Duracells.
So why was my childhood crush wasted in The Last Jedi, stuck on some fish planet guarding a bunch of books?
I could completely understand Luke Sister-Kisser Skywalker saying “to heck with it” and disappearing into the vast abyss of space to escape from the endless bickering. He just tore down one far-reaching fascist regime for another to take its place? Another that looks incredibly similar to the first administration, with the same totalitarian values, stock characters of English villains dressed like space Nazis, and a nefarious pale leader wearing robes and pointing ominously in a manner indistinguishable from the OG emperor? I’m not saying it’s right, but I could understand the decision to leave. It makes sense for his character and mirrors old Ben Kenobi in the first trilogy, after he got done slicing n’ dicing his buddy Anakin.
But why was he given such a useless plot device? He abandoned everyone and everything he stood for to “guard the sacred texts?” He left the people who needed him to protect a bunch of rotten old books and hang out on an island inhabited by characters that represented the most judgmental parts of Catholicism fused with sushi?
He can’t read. We all know he can’t read.
This is the point when some nerd might point out any culture advanced enough to have spaceships equipped for interplanetary travel would have a European-level educational system.
Shut up, nerd!
Luke Midichlorian Skywalker grew up 1) poor on 2) Tatooine.
Tatooine had human slaves.
His own father and grandmother were evidence of this. The entire population of Tatooine looked at the unmatched capabilities of robotics and said, “eh.” They saw C-3PO, with his six million forms of communication, and weren’t interested. They preferred a human version – a sweaty, weak version working through intermediate Spanish on Duolingo that needed to nap multiple times a day.
Does this seem like a planet that holds education in high regard?
For the purposes of this article, I watched the despecialized edition (in a cool way) and at no point in this trilogy is Cool Hand Luke picking up Infinite Jest. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru weren’t keeping him from applying to the Imperial Academy out of fear he was too much like his father, they just knew there was going to be a reading comprehension exam to apply and were worried he was going to embarrass himself.
He definitely can’t read.
Luke Whack-a-Wampa Skywalker did not know what was in the sacred texts when he took them to the Island of Blue Thala-Sirens. He could have accidentally taken the Jedi library’s collection of Dilbert cartoons and guarded them obsessively for the past twenty years without understanding he had been protecting what is essentially toilet paper.
The worst part is he acts offended when the sacred texts catch fire. He’s not Indiana Jones in Nazi Germany – to him, it should just look like extra kindling! His aunt and uncle were turned into literal human shish kabobs by Imperial storm troopers, but no, no, it’s the books he gets upset over.
The new movies are fun. The cast is flawless – they are funny and charming and all look like they’re modeling different sections of an Anthropologie catalog. But the new films took the original characters, the characters I grew up with and loved and pretended to be, and sidelined them.
The only worthy criticism of the final trilogy should be the horrific misuse of the characters we all know and love. Han Solo is dead, Chewbacca is just… there, and “General Organa” must have not worked well with test audiences since Carrie Fisher had to go by “General Leia” (which sounds like the moniker for a kindergarten aide at military school).
And what they did to Luke was unforgivable. Luke Skywalker was uncomplicated; he was a good man. If someone was in trouble, he would try to help. If there was a problem, he would try to fix it. He looked at Darth Vader, who was blowing up planets and force-choking people all over the place, and saw potential for improvement.
It is a useless and insulting plot device to shove a good man off to the side and rationalize it by declaring he wasn’t sidelined, he was just guarding a Jedi book collection that has never been mentioned before and will likely never be mentioned again. The Jedi archives are the midichlorians for this new generation. For the purposes of this article, I also watched the prequels (again, in a cool way) and noticed the archives were digitized. Nobody in this galaxy was using paper products, except for those backwater hill people on Tatooine.
Luke Skywalker is the opposite of me. He is a nerd; I am very cool. He accepts everyone, while I am very critical. That’s why I have no problem pointing out the stupidity of this wasted plotline – it’s not like he’ll ever be able to read it.
