Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson shared what he believes is the “worst sin” in Star Wars.
Speaking to Polygon as part of the press tour for his latest film, Wake Up Dead Man, Johnson first admitted that he was hoping for The Last Jedi film to be incendiary saying, “I was hoping for that — I wasn’t afraid of it per se.”
He explained, “Having grown up a Star Wars fan, I know that thing where something challenges it, and I know the recoil against that. I know how there can be infighting in the world of Star Wars.”
“But I also know that the worst sin is to handle it with kid gloves,” Johnson declared. “The worst sin is to be afraid of doing anything that shakes it up. Because every Star Wars movie going back to Empire and onward shook the box and rattled fans, and got them angry, and got them fighting, and got them talking about it. And then for a lot of them, got them loving it and coming around on it eventually.”
This is utterly ridiculous and is a total deflection of what Johnson actually did, which was utterly shatter the Secondary World of Star Wars. He broke the spell and injected disbelief into the story wit his characterization of Luke Skywalker and Yoda, the way he changed the Force, and even how he radically altered how space battles are conducted not to mention turning serious moments into prank calls such as Poe Dameron’s communication to General Hux at the beginning of the film.
J.R.R. Tolkien explained how this worked in his essay On Fairy Stories:
What really happens is that the storymaker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.
Nevertheless, Johnson then compared Star Wars fandom to Christians and Christianity, “The same thing goes for religion, for me. People who are raised outside of faith sometimes think it’s this touchy thing that you have to handle with kid gloves. I grew up very Christian. It was a very personal thing for me. I’m not a believer anymore. I’m no longer a Christian. But when I was… You’re constantly rattling the box for yourself. You’re constantly being offended by things. But then it’s not like that just shuts off [the real world and how it challenges your beliefs].”
“It’s just like being a Star Wars fan and seeing a twist where you’re like, ‘Oh God, that doesn’t make me feel great, because that’s not what I expected,” he explained. “As a Christian, the world is constantly throwing that at you. It’s just your daily life. Assimilating that is how you grow. That’s part of the purpose of both [fandom and religion] — it’s only alive when it’s interacting with the world.”
It’s quite galling to hear Johnson claim that you just need to accept The Last Jedi because after all “assimilating that is how you grow.”
This is simply not true and is contrary to Christian teaching. One does not assimilate to the world in order to grow in faith and the virtues. One does the opposite and detaches oneself from the world and aligns oneself with Christ. Matthew 23:36-38 states:
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.”
Additionally, in John 15:18-21, Christ instructs:
“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.”
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It's very easy to "challenge" someone's understanding of something by saying, "Your understanding of this thing is all wrong." That's not intellectual; it's the classic video game griefing of a 10-year-old.
An intellectual challenge retains whatever is true in someone's understanding and offers a correction or second way of looking at one part of their understanding to move them to a deeper level of true understanding or insight. The revelation in ESB that Vader was Luke's father deepened our understanding of both characters. The "revelation" in TLJ that Luke was a pathetic loser did not add depth to his character--it took depth away.
(Griefing in video games is when a person intentionally destroys something that someone else is doing or has built up in the past in order to derive sadistic enjoyment from that person's reaction of sadness and grief over their loss. Griefing is one of the purest forms of evil.)
These people always claim they were “fans” of Star Wars but then they shit all over the universe. So I call BS on their fandom.