The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds.
On the subject of Return of the Jedi, he writes, “Interestingly, the advent of sexuality in the Star Wars universe (with the revelation of Carrie Fisher’s navel) is coupled with a resurgence of infantile imagery (with the swarms of teddy-bear Ewoks).” Perhaps naked Chewie finally broke him.
His take on the blockbuster behemoth Episode VII: The Force Awakens is far more reductive. To be fair, the film hits the same beats as A New Hope to ostensibly inundate a new generation into the series: A young adult with a mysterious past is whisked off a desert plane to assist a rebel force in decimating a floating sphere capable of decimating a planet. However, as Jones writes, “As with other installments, this is less a movie than an exercise in massaging a juvenile-minded audience that wants the experience to be new and familiar at the same time.”
Luke lacks his mentors’ patience and inner peace; he abandons the lesson when he decides that Rey is too quickly drawn to the darkness brewing beneath the island. But when Luke confronts Kylo later, he announces that he is not, in fact, the last Jedi. (“There is another,” Yoda whispered to the spirit of Obi-Wan in The Empire Strikes Back.) Luke may not have mentored Rey as well as Obi-Wan and Yoda mentored him, but perhaps, as The Last Jedi suggests, Rey already has everything she needs.
