by William Skink

If you haven’t seen The Last Jedi, this will have some spoilers. I saw it last weekend. My oldest loved it, a new generation hooked. I found value in one particular scene.

Before getting to the scene I’d like to take a look at a laughable review from The Intercept proclaiming this iteration of Star Wars has taken a side in the class war. Where the first two batches of films feature princesses, politicians and other elite insiders, The Last Jedi is opening up a space for the proletariat. Yes, the review actually uses that word. Here’s more:

What “The Last Jedi” advises is a radical break from resistance as we know it: abandoning old tactics and loyalties and handing the keys — or at least more of them — over to the grassroots: the mechanics, the child laborers, the Ewoks, and the rebel foot-soldiers. The resistance of the “Star Wars” films has never been particularly visionary, operating as a kind of top-down, underground rebellion looking to reconstitute the New Republic of the prequels. Its biggest heroes have been messiah figures, princesses, and the so-called great men.

The biggest heroes of “The Last Jedi,” by contrast, are the proletariat — working stiffs who’ve gotten the short shrift throughout the franchise. They’re also mostly women, and many are people of color — not unlike the makeup of the American working-class. Rebel Admiral Leia Organa stays true to her roots as a class traitor and longtime consort to rebel scum: staying the course and boosting morale in the darkest of times, while occasionally pulling out some crazy impressive force powers for the greater good. When hotshot resistance pilot Poe Dameron flies off the handle seeking glory, Leia brings him down to earth via a well-placed blaster shot.

Shouldn’t I be elated that Star Wars is taking a side in the class war? Sure, if the suspension of disbelief worked as intended, I could sit joyfully in the movie theater basking in the warm feeling that mechanics and foot soldiers have bigger roles this time in the Star Wars franchise. But that’s just it, Star Wars is a money making beast. Diversifying the color and gender and caste of the cast is good business for the franchise.

I wish I could have just enjoyed the flick, but everything is so politicized these days that nothing escapes it. Even the source of this review–The Intercept–has a direct link to the billionaire class buying up media via Pierre Omidyar. I was reminded of that fact after reading a very interesting post at Moon of Alabama, titled From Snowden to Russia-gate – The CIA And The Media.

But this isn’t about the information wars being waged by tech-spooks and state thugs. It’s about Star Wars and what one can take away from the film.

Before getting to what I got from the film, here’s another excerpt from The Intercept review:

You don’t need an encyclopedic knowledge of a galaxy far, far away to understand that today’s resistance needs fresh blood: new fighters and new strategies, but a new vision as well. Reconstituting the New Republic — the Obama era, in our case — can only stave off the Sith for so long before recreating the same flaws that let the Empire take power the first time around. The Rebellion needs to be reborn nearly wholesale to win anything but pyrrhic victories.

As self-styled #Resistance members are lifting up America’s political dynasties as the best hope to save us from Trump, knocking the Skywalkers’s importance down a peg in the “Star Wars” franchise lands close to home amid calls for “generic” Democratic candidates and liberal pining for the Obama years. All the consultants and name recognition in the world couldn’t win the 2016 election for the Democrats — and in all likelihood probably hurt their cause. If “The Last Jedi” has a political takeaway, it’s for political revolution and a bottom-up transformation of not just who’s in power, but who gets to decide how that revolution happens.

So who gets to decide how that revolution happens?

The scene I consider the most important and insightful part of The Last Jedi takes place after the foot soldier and the mechanic make their get away from the casino planet with the codebreaker. While rifling through the ship the codebreaker brings up a hologram inventory of weapon systems, surmising the ship they have stolen must belong to a weapons manufacturer.

The audience sees a TIE Fighter, a Scout Walker, then…an X-Wing. I wonder why this scene wasn’t mentioned in the review? Maybe highlighting how real power doesn’t pick sides when it comes to fights between Imperialists and rebel scum isn’t in the interest of the billionaire who created The Intercept.

To draw a political parallel, it also wasn’t in the interest of Bernie Sanders supporters to make too big a fuss over the blatant hypocrisy of his support for the trillion dollar disaster known as the F-35:

Sen. Bernie Sanders has railed against big defense corporations at rallies, but he has a more complex history with the military-industrial complex. Most notably, he’s supported a $1.2 trillion stealth fighter that’s considered by many to be one of the bigger boondoggles in Pentagon history.

It’s worth asking again: who gets to decide how our revolution happens?