Guest Blog: Deconstructing Kylo: The Last Jedi and Post-Modern Storytelling

I still can't get a handle on The Last Jedi, but I can at least say that I liked it just as much as I didn't like it, which is to say, a lot. I liked how funny it was. I did not like how goofy it was. I liked the praetorian guard. I did not like the Fathiers. I loved everything about Luke Skywalker. Luke's line, "To say that the Force is a power that the Jedi have is hubris." was great. "How very Protestant Reformation of you," I thought to myself. "'Priesthood of all true believers' indeed." I hated all that postmodern, deconstructing crap. Here's a drinking game for you: take a shot every time a character breaks the fourth wall or makes some meta-comment about the series in The Last Jedi. You'll be thoroughly trashed by the end of the movie. Luke calling the lightsaber a "laser sword" didn't really bother me. When Snoke tells Kylo Ren to "take that ridiculous thing off" I thought, Oh, Snoke reads YouTube comments. When Kylo Ren says, "Let the past die; kill it if you have to." I thought, Yeah, please do. No particular moment bothered me so much as the attitude of the film as a whole. These moments are a constant wink, wink, nudge, nudge from the filmmakers that took me out of the film. When you do a meta-commentary of a story within the series that you are a pat of, you break the audience's suspension of disbelief. I've heard counterarguments like, "Watchmen is a deconstruction of the superhero genre, and that's considered the greatest graphic novel ever written." But Watchmen works because it's not a commentary of itself. Watchmen does not take place in the DC universe. Watchmen is not Batman and Superman philosophizing over morality and sexuality and how weird it is to put on a colorful costume and punch criminals. Watchmen is a mirror universe—like the opposite of a fitting room mirror that only reflects back all of your flaws. Mel Brooks's Spaceballs is a classic satire of the Star Wars films—and satire is a form of meta commentary—but I don't need Spaceballs to be absorbed into the Star Wars universe. I want the Star Wars universe to be genuine. This is a guest post by Mark-Anthony Lewis. You can read more of what he has to say about stuff and nonsense at irregardlessmagazine.com.