Worldwasting: Ragnarok and The Last Jedi

April 22, 2018 / Rick Ellrod / 5 Comments

Recently, as the DVD releases became available, I re-watched Thor: Ragnarok (Thor 3) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Star Wars VIII, “TLJ”). I enjoyed both movies very much. But each takes a direction that leads to some reflections on the fine art of worldbuilding.

Making the World

F&SF writers talk a lot about “worldbuilding”: constructing a whole background for your story, an imaginary world. Other kinds of fiction also do some of this. A romance or a Western or a mainstream novel may take place in a fictional town, let the characters eat at an imaginary restaurant, have a marketing maven write slogans for a nonexistent product. But fantasy and science fiction require the author to invent much more and take less for granted.

Worldbuilding is a fascinating exercise that can become an engrossing end in itself. We can spend hours on developing languages or family trees or maps. Tolkien (of course!) famously referred to this process as “sub-creation,” analogous to the creative power of God. (On Wikipedia, “sub-creation” redirects right back to the main page on worldbuilding.) There’s even a Worldbuilding Magazine and a Reddit subsite for “sharing your worlds and discussing the many aspects of creating new universes.”

But the primary purpose of worldbuilding in fiction is to provide a background for the story—one with enough depth and verisimilitude to aid the reader’s “willing suspension of disbelief.” The fictional world is most of all a resource for the story.

. . . And Unmaking It

But a resource can also become a constraint. Every decision you make for a world limits what you can do later. If I’ve placed a mountain range here, I can’t put a flat desert in the same place. If my main character’s father is a heroic pilot, he can’t also be the threatening villain. (Er, or maybe he can—with enough feverish “retconning” to patch the gap.)

The more the world accretes additional detail over a series of books or movies, the more it may become a confining “Procrustean bed” to which later stories must be fitted. The problem reaches its height in comic book series, where the same characters’ adventures may run for decades, at the hands of many different writers and artists. The characters’ backstories and the background details eventually are almost bound to become a “continuity snarl,” with so many contradictory elements that no one can figure out what’s going on any more. The authors or producers can be driven to “reboot” their world—start over from scratch—as a desperate way to clear up the mess.

Even if things doesn’t reach this pass, however, a writer may want to get rid of some pre-existing elements. Maybe they’ve just gotten boring: who wants to see the same character angst and relationship issues recur over four hundred episodes? Maybe an old bit of worldbuilding or character history would get in the way of an appealing new development. Maybe the writer just wants to emphasize how big and menacing a new threat is by having it destroy something that seemed like a fixture of the universe—or simply shock the reader by defying those status quo expectations.

Alongside the draw of building out an ever more fine-grained world, then, there’s a corresponding temptation to tear things up and make radical changes. In search of greater drama, let’s go all the way!

Such dramatic reversals can be productive. Sometimes the status quo has become boring and needs to be upended. But it’s a dangerous enterprise. The built world is our resource. The reader’s or viewer’s attachment to characters, enjoyment of well-established locales, and appreciation for long-running history provides a good deal of the continuing interest for the audience. We risk throwing that away, piece by piece, if we throw away large chunks of the world-background unwisely.

There’s a problem known as spending your capital, or “eating your seed corn.” If you have to use up the resources necessary for the next step or the next generation – consuming the seed you need to plant for next year’s harvest – the needs of the moment may imperil the chances for longer-range development. The worldbuilding “resource” represents the capital the writer has on hand to engage readers and develop the story. It has to be invested wisely.

We’re finally ready to look at the two movies I mentioned—and, unavoidably, to warn—

Thor: Ragnarok

First, a qualification. Both of these movies are middle pieces: we don’t know how the stories end. (Ragnarok’s “sequel” is Avengers: Infinity War—and we’ll find out how that develops later this week. For TLJ, we’ll have to wait for December 2019.) So we can’t yet fully evaluate what the authors are doing. But both spend their worldbuilding capital rather freely.

Ragnarok’s villain is Hela, queen of the underworld. She’s powerful. How powerful is she? The first thing she does upon entering Asgard is to kill Fandral and Volstagg, two of the beloved “Warriors Three” that comic-book readers have been following since 1965 and movie viewers since the original Thor. (The third warrior, Hogun, meets his end a few scenes later.)

Hela wipes them out without breathing hard. Does that prove her sufficiently badass? Sure. Is it a fitting end for such long-standing heroes? It seems rather abrupt—not even time for memorable last words.

More important, the summary termination deprives the series of those three characters for later stories. That’s a loss. If any young ladies were swooning over the dashing Fandral, they will swoon no more. We won’t see Thor’s three battle buddies at the climactic engagement of the Infinity War. Of course, given the enormous number of major characters Marvel already has to accommodate somehow in Infinity War, maybe reducing the count by three is seen as an advantage. But the Marvel Cinematic Universe has lost some potential energy.

Thor’s iconic hammer Mjolnir is featured prominently in the opening scenes of Ragnarok—so it can be caught and shattered by Hela when Thor first meets her. While Thor (as Odin dryly points out) is not defined by his hammer, it’s his characteristic weapon, and we’ve been shown many times that no one else can even lift it. Again, Hela’s casual treatment of Mjolnir is startling enough to establish her threat level. But it’s hard to picture Thor going through the remaining battles of the Cineverse arc without his trusty hammer.

By the end of the movie, Asgard itself is destroyed, and the surviving Asgardians are setting out to find a new home. While the moment is certainly moving, the universe is a little poorer for the absence of the classic afterworld so brilliantly realized in Thor’s scene design.

Most strikingly, Ragnarok essentially drops the romantic element that’s played a significant part in the story so far. It appears Thor has simply broken up with Jane Foster (or vice versa)—an ignoble offstage end to what we were to regard as a serious love affair.

Now, those of us who remember the original comics might be content enough to have Jane replaced by Sif, who, after all, was Thor’s wife in the mythology—and whose interest in Thor was specifically established in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series. But Sif is also absent, and we don’t even hear an explanation. It’s possible these two characters were cleared away to make room for a potential romance with the new character Valkyrie (Brunnhilde). But we don’t really see any sparks fly or bonds form for Thor and Brunnhilde in Ragnarok.

The MCU has backstory to burn, and it’s still quite possible that these will turn out to be resources well spent to build dramatic potential for the overall Avengers plot arc. One hopes so; a world is a terrible thing to waste.

The Last Jedi

The Force Awakens knocked out one of the pillars of the Star Wars universe by “expending” Han Solo. That was surprising, but not alarming. These original-trilogy characters have lived full lives (if not entirely satisfactory ones). We expect them to give way to the new generation of main characters. It wasn’t startling to see another New Hope stalwart bite the dust in Episode VIII. But TLJ goes considerably further than that.

It seems pretty clear that Luke has shuffled off this mortal coil at the end of TLJ: he’s preformed the Jedi-master trick of evaporating out of his clothing, like Obi-wan and Yoda before him. We can expect to see him again as a Force ghost, but not to do anything except offer sage advice. (On the other hand, the ghostly Yoda seems to have called down lightning to burn up the old tree—a more direct intervention than we’ve seen a departed Jedi accomplish before.)

In addition, we won’t see Leia in Episode IX; the character is still alive at the end of TLJ, but is sadly now subject to what TV Tropes has called “Actor Existence Failure.” That eliminates all three central characters from the first Star Wars picture.

We have the new characters to carry us forward. But in several ways TLJ weakens their potential plot energy as well. The most important issue, of course, is Rey and her parentage.

Rey’s origin probably excited more speculation than any other topic between Episodes VII and VIII. The solution presented in TLJ is brilliant, in its way: Rey’s parents are nobodies, uncaring drifters who sold her to a junk dealer for drinking money. Director Rian Johnson’s solution succeeded in surprising us, since it avoided all the plausible speculations fans had offered over the preceding two years. More important, this revelation strikes at the heart of Rey’s stubborn, anchoring belief that her parents would return for her someday. It would be a major character issue to see how she deals with the blow—if we get a chance to see it; she was in the middle of a major battle at the time and there was very limited opportunity to see how she was taking the news.

We should pause to consider whether Kylo Ren was telling Rey the truth, or presenting a lie designed to play on what he’d just called her weakness. She says she recognizes the truth of his statement at some level herself (reminiscent of Luke’s reaction to Vader in Episode V). But in her state of confusion, that may not be decisive.

On the other hand, there are a few things that don’t fit well with Kylo’s claim. In the Force Awakens (“TFA”) flashback scene, we saw young Rey crying out to a departing spaceship. Would these poor, anonymous drifters have been likely to own a spaceship? And it’s always been a bit mysterious how the young Rey, if she was essentially a slave to Unkar Plutt without any family connections, was somehow allowed to buy herself free (presumably) and attain even the subsistence life of a scavenger in which we first see her. It could turn out that the real truth is yet to be revealed.

But I consider that a long shot at best. Like “I am your father,” the “nobodies” option is simply too good a narrative move to throw away. It subverts the “Chosen One” theme that’s been running in Star Wars since the beginning, bringing us closer to a more Lord of the Rings-like “democratic” trope. That shift in attitude is consistent with several moves in TLJ, including the introduction of Rose, the change in presentation of the Force, and especially the wonderful scene at the very end.

If we do accept Kylo’s description of Rey’s parents, it dissipates a lot of potential interest. There are no hidden connections to be discovered; the mystery is no mystery, but an anticlimax. There are no further plot developments to follow on Rey’s parentage. That highly-charged element of TFA simply seems to have been abandoned—dare I say wasted?

As with Ragnarok, romance also seems to be relegated to a minor role. TFA gave us a fascinating relationship between Rey and Finn that seemed to be developing toward a romance. But they’re separated for most of TLJ, and meanwhile another well-wrought character, Rose Tico, is lined up with Finn. After Rose tells Finn she loves him, we get a final scene in which Rey rather ruefully turns away from seeing Finn tenderly tucking in the near-death Rose (although Finn himself hasn’t made any declaration yet).

If Rey doesn’t fall in love with Finn, who else is there? There’s no sign of any mutual interest with Poe, and if she were going to converge with Kylo (as I’ve occasionally feared), the place for that would have been during their mutual battle on Snoke’s flagship—and no romantic move was made. Like Luke, Rey may be meant for a single life. There’s nothing wrong with that per se—but declining the potential for romance is, again, letting a degree of character interest fade away.

Finally, there’s the Force itself. That’s always been a tricky concept, right back to A New Hope—something worthy of more specific discussion one of these days. But whatever tricks TFA added to the repertoire, TLJ seems to take away.

Does the Force have purposes? Does it act on its own? There are things in the original trilogy (IV-VI) that suggest it might. And in Episode I, we were told that that Force apparently engendered little Anakin Skywalker without even requiring a father.

The title of the series’ revival in Episode VII, The Force Awakens, suggested that Something Big was happening, with its source in the Force itself. But two movies later, I still have no idea what “an awakening in the Force” is supposed to mean.

J.J. Abrams built up the potential for some kind of revelation in TFA. But in TLJ, Johnson seems to dissipate that anticipation entirely. Yoda’s new instruction appears to be that the Force doesn’t act on its own, we simply use it as we will. Frankly, in a way I like that approach better: the notion of the Force moving us around like puppets for its own purposes was a bit creepy. However, our expectation of some revelation about an “awakening” seems to have been scuttled. Again, it’s not that the new plot development is bad; it’s that the worldbuilding set up by previous episodes seems to be ignored or undone by the most recent film.

Conclusion

Good worldbuilding and plot development are like winding up a spring: you’re infusing energy into the system that can later be released to power the narrative. These two recent stories seem to have the opposite effect: they’re blowing off steam, releasing pressure, without fully utilizing that energy to enhance our interest.

Since we have yet to see how either story line comes out, it’s also possible that my comments could be entirely mistaken: the apparent untwisting of plot potential may be twisting up new possibilities that aren’t visible yet. We’ll have to wait and see; that’s the fun of it.

Mind Powers

January 28, 2018January 28, 2018 / Rick Ellrod / 7 Comments

Mental powers are a staple of both science fiction and fantasy—and even quasi-SF genres like paranormal romance. The idea’s like the traditional iceberg: easy to put into a story, but with some major assumptions lurking under the surface.

The Physical and the Non-Physical

In SF, it became fashionable to use the invented term “psionics” to refer to powers of the mind. The term seems to have originated by analogy to “electronics,” giving it a scientific (or pseudo-scientific) cast, and using the Greek letter psi, the first character of psyche, “soul” or “mind.” Sometimes simply “psi” is used, as in “psi powers.” It’s a useful coinage.

There are two broad approaches to psionics. One treats mental power as acting purely on other minds—what we can loosely call nonphysical: for example, telepathy. The other approach allows mental powers to act directly on matter: the most familiar example is telekinesis, moving things by mind power.

Note that distinguishing “physical” from “nonphysical” already involves some pretty big assumptions—but we’ll get to that.

Mind-to-Mind

Quite a few science fiction stories postulate mental powers that have only mental effects, such as talking mind-to-mind.

The “Lens” worn by the “Lensmen” of E.E. Smith’s classic series is essentially a psionic amplifier. It gives the wearer telepathic abilities. This is extremely useful in making contact with unfamiliar species—especially in interstellar law enforcement, with instant communication an essential for “lawmen” that might be pursuing criminals into unknown regions of space. The Lens also serves as a means of identification that cannot be faked, since an individual’s custom-made Lens will kill anyone who touches it if it’s not in contact with the designated wearer.

But Lensmen can’t make things physically happen by mind power alone; they have to use the conventional space-opera gear of ray guns and such. The Lensmen can communicate mentally; they can influence or even take over the mind of another person; they can erase or implant memories. But a Lensman can’t lift objects and throw them around without flexing his muscles in classic action-hero fashion.

There are some odd borderline cases. The main character, Kimball Kinnison, gains a “sense of perception,” allowing him to perceive nearby objects without using the standard five senses. He can “see” through solid objects, for example. That does involve interaction with inanimate matter, of course; but the interaction is all one way—he can’t affect the things he perceives.

Now, a contemporary scientist physicist would find this paradoxical, since it’s fundamental to quantum physics that you can’t perceive an object without interacting with it—bouncing photons off it to see with, for example. But the Lensman stories were planned out in the 1940s, when we were not so acutely aware of quantum-type theories of perception. The anomaly does illustrate the difference between these two theories of knowledge: one in which the knower is the passive recipient of information, and the other in which knowledge is always the product of interaction.

James H. Schmitz’s numerous stories set against the background of the interstellar “Federation of the Hub” use a similar theory of psionics. Telzey Amberdon, one of the main characters, can communicate telepathically with nonhuman creatures such as her massive “pet,” the crest cat TT (who turns to be a formidably intelligent being in his own right). Hub psis like Telzey can influence other minds and can be extremely dangerous—whether in a good cause or a bad. But physical objects aren’t affected.

A similar sort of psionics is assumed in A.E. van Vogt’s classic mutation novel Slan, and in one of my childhood favorites, Star Rangers (The Last Planet), by Andre Norton. For a more well-known example, the movie Independence Day showed the inimical aliens using mind control to speak through a captive human to communicate with other humans. But to properly destroy humanity, they used conventional physical weapons. (Well, “conventional” as science fiction goes; the alien weapons were dismayingly novel for the embattled Earthlings.)

Fantasy, too, can feature purely mental abilities. There are references in The Lord of the Rings to the ability of elves and wizards to speak mind-to-mind. (This was shown more explicitly, as I recall, in the movie versions of The Hobbit.) An analogue might even be found in ghost stories. Ghosts are often portrayed as acting only through influence on human minds, whether through terror or telepathy—as in A Christmas Carol: the various spirits do not act except on Scrooge’s own consciousness.

Sometimes telepathy is imagined as “hearing” only what people verbalize—what’s put into words; for example, in Al Macy’s novels about mind-reading detective Eric Beckman. In other cases, telepathy allows direct access to other people’s feelings and inchoate thoughts, somehow getting behind the speech-forming function. The notion that one can think without words would itself be anathema to many a twentieth-century linguistic philosopher—consider the linguistic relativism or “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” so adroitly used in the movie Arrival. The difference raises basic questions about the relation between speech and thought, and how thinking works.

The divide between mental and physical powers gets further eroded when the story includes telepathic machines. The Psychology Service in Schmitz’s Hub routinely uses mechanical detectors to monitor psis. In Slan, “Porgrave broadcasters” can send “recordings” telepathically. Even aside from the Lens itself, which is a quasi-living physical device, the Lensman series eventually gives us machine-generated mental screens, analogous to the physical force-fields of space-opera lore. If psionics were confined to minds alone, how can machines handle it?

I’ve spoken loosely about this sort of mind-on-mind power as “nonphysical”; but that involves a very significant assumption—that the mind is not a physical thing. If the mind were wholly reducible to the brain, there would be no reason in principle why mind powers would only affect matter in the form of other brains. By analogy, microwaves can be used for communications, but also for cooking dinner. On this assumption, mind powers would constitute just another kind of physical force, the analogy often being a different “wavelength” of energy. Second Stage Lensman refers to the “frequency-range of thought” (ch.14), and Smith’s Skylark series presents thought as a “sixth-order wave”—whatever that may be.

Mind Over Matter

We’ve gotten so used to things like telekinesis nowadays that the mind-only abilities discussed above may seem oddly constrained to us.

The original Star Wars film, A New Hope, showed us that the Force could mediate mental communication, even with the dead (“Use the Force, Luke”), and some degree of mind-control or mental influence (“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for”). But it was only in the sequel that we saw that it could also enable telekinesis. I still recall the moment when Luke, ice-cemented to the ceiling in the wampaa’s cave, strains fruitlessly to reach his light-saber—then relaxes and closes his eyes; and I thought with some excitement, so, we’re going to get telekinesis too! By the end of the episode, we’re watching Darth Vader use mental power to throw objects to distract Luke and keep him off-balance. You can even use this matter-moving power to move yourself, or in effect to fly without wings—as we saw in one memorable scene in The Last Jedi.

By now this sort of mind-over-matter is familiar territory. But there are still aspects that aren’t obvious on the surface. For one thing, telekinesis is apparently reactionless. It’s unclear whether it obeys Newton’s laws of motion, under which action requires an equal and opposite reaction. It would have been a great comic scene in Empire when Yoda impressively lifts Luke’s X-wing fighter into the air—and Luke had looked over to see Yoda rapidly sinking into the muck, with the entire weight of the X-wing bearing down on his diminutive form.

The simplest fantasy version of telekinesis is the poltergeist, an immaterial spirit which (rather bafflingly) is capable of throwing around physical objects. Levitation, whether of oneself or of something else, is a commonplace for magicians. In fantasy, however, mental powers tend to bleed over into magical powers, which we don’t think of in quite the same way—although one way of conceiving magic is as a kind of mind over matter.

There are other kinds of (fictional) mental interactions with matter, over and above mere movement. A common trope is the ability to start fires, or “pyrokinesis,” as in Stephen King’s Firestarter. This might be interpreted as a subtle form of telekinesis—since heat consists of motion at the molecular level, maybe a telekinetic could create heat by causing an object’s molecules to move faster. Such an explanation leaves open the question of where the added energy is coming from; but that’s an issue common to any form of telekinesis. There may be a certain nerdy satisfaction in supposing that a physically puny specimen like, er, yours truly could throw things around by sheer power of mind, even though one’s muscles aren’t up to it. But whether things are moving by mind or by muscle, there has to be energy coming from somewhere.

There are other things you can do with matter besides just moving it around. Julian May’s Saga of Pliocene Exile, and related stories, postulate “metapsychic powers” that include “creativity,” allowing metapsychics to change the form of matter and thus materialize or convert physical objects. Other stories imagine psionic abilities to “read” the history of an object or a place.

Teleportation—instantaneous movement from one place to another—represents a kind of in-between. Physical objects are obviously affected, but the physical object in question is typically the practitioner’s own body, and perhaps other objects physically connected (such as clothing—but clothing doesn’t always come along, depending on the story, which can be inconvenient). Does it count if your mind affects only your own body—the one locus where even theories that sharply separate mind and matter have to assume some crossover between the two?

There’s a long tradition of mental powers in comic books too. But given the visual nature of the medium, physically effective mental powers tend to predominate over the purely mental. We do see some of the latter—pure telepathy in Marvel’s Professor Xavier or DC’s Saturn Girl. But much more popular is Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), whose telekinetic powers make for much more striking imagery.

Minds and Bodies

Considering these two approaches to mind powers raises the philosophical question of whether minds affect matter only in and through a person’s body, or can do so independently.

If we exclude direct physical effects from the scope of (fictional) mental powers, this suggests parallel realms, with thought proceeding on one level while physical actions occur on another, linked only through the minds of humans or other intelligent beings. It’s almost a Cartesian approach (that is, a theory similar to that of René Descartes) of mind-body dualism, and sinks roots into the long-standing debates over the “mind-body problem.”

The “sense of perception” concept, similarly, functions as if there were two independent metaphysical levels, mental and physical, and this mental sense could allow a person to go “around” the physical senses and inspect an object directly. The philosophical notion of intentionality (not to be confused with the usual sense of “intentional” or deliberate) is adaptable to such non-sensory knowledge. But the trend in both philosophy and physics over the last couple hundred years has been to focus on the physical connection between the knower and the known.

It’s become a standard assumption that we can’t know or do anything without a physical connection. Anything else seems “unscientific.” What’s interesting is that we seem to be willing to accept the now-unpopular postulate of non-physical knowledge and events when we’re dealing with fiction.

Of course, it’s also possible to meld the two back together by taking the position that mental powers really only reflect physical events taking place at a level we can’t yet detect—as with Smith’s “frequency range.” But that isn’t the only way to conceive of the relationship. There is still a certain imaginative appeal, at least, to the notion that mind can act independent of the constraints of the physical body.

I think such stories are helpful. We’re apt to rush to conclude “science has proven” that the mind equals the brain and the brain is just a particularly subtle form of matter. Science has not, in fact, proven any such thing. The physical sciences assume, understandably, that only physics is involved. But they have by no means demonstrated that all observable phenomena can be wholly explained by physics. The arguments on this subject are still live. We should still apply sound standards of evidence, and not leap to conclusions—but that applies in both directions, whether to materialism or to its alternatives.

In other words, there may still be more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our physics, and one of the uses of speculative stories is to help us keep an open mind on these subjects.

The Last Jedi . . . Maybe

February 12, 2017April 18, 2017 / Rick Ellrod / Leave a comment

Boldly Going Where the Story Hasn’t Gone Yet

Debating what may happen in future Star Wars movies has been a favorite spectator sport since 1980, when we all saw The Empire Strikes Back and spent the next three years madly surmising what would happen in the third episode. Was Vader really Luke’s father? (It’s hard to believe in this era, when “I am your father” is a classic meme, but in 1980 it was a viable theory that he was lying.) Who was the “other” of Yoda’s enigmatic remark, “There is another”?

That last question illustrates the danger of too much speculation. By the time Return of the Jedi came out, we’d debated every possibility, from a complete unknown to Han Solo—including the winning choice, Princess Leia (requiescat in pace). The revelation in Episode VI couldn’t help but be an anticlimax. So I’ve been trying not to spend too much time spinning my wheels over the unanswered questions in The Force Awakens. We’ll find out soon enough.

The title of Episode VIII, though, does bring up an interesting point.

Last Now, or Last Forever?

Disney announced the title The Last Jedi for Episode VIII on January 23, 2017. The fan community immediately went to work to ferret out the implications. It was pointed out, for example, that “Jedi” can be either singular or plural. There might be one last Jedi, or two last Jedi, or an entire academy-full of last Jedi. Still, some sort of finality seems to be indicated.

Comments around the Web as of February 12, 2017, suggest there are at least two major possibilities:

(1) The film is about the last Jedi who happens to be left alive at the moment. That’s obviously Luke Skywalker, and Rey could reasonably say, on meeting him, that she’s found the last Jedi. It doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be any more to follow. The Last Jedi might show Luke taking on Rey as an apprentice and making her a new Jedi. If so, the story could well be captioned, from Rey’s point of view, How I Met the Last Jedi and Became the First Recruit in a New Jedi Order. This would simply put us back in the realm of “That boy is our only hope / No, there is another.”

(2) The more interesting, more drastic possibility is that Luke is the last Jedi there will ever be; that Episodes VIII-IX will involve some sort of epoch-making shakeup that will end the Jedi order permanently. That might seem an anticlimax, after taking all that trouble to restore the order in Return of the Jedi. But if it did, what would the future look like?

This possibility raises a question that has long intrigued me: Is the Jedi order as we see it in the prequel series really a good thing?

How Not to Train Your Jedi

We had to wait for the prequels (Episodes I-III) to see how the Jedi order actually worked in its heyday. What emerged was rather surprising. The training program is of particular interest, because how you form the next generation of Jedi shapes what kinds of people they become and how they carry out their somewhat hazy galactic peace-keeping responsibilities.

(I should note that I’m referring only to the movies here and not the vast expanded universe of novels and spinoffs, much of which is no longer canon anyway.)

When we meet young Anakin Skywalker at nine years of age in Episode I, he is already considered too old for the normal Jedi training program. This is borne out by the scenes we see of five- or six-year-old “younglings” practicing their Jedi arts. Evidently in the Republic, Force-gifted children were taken away from their families as young as five or six and brought to Coruscant for full-time training. (No wonder Yoda also complained about Luke’s age in Episode V.)

If Anakin’s own experience is any guide, the younglings don’t return to their families, even, say, for summer vacations. They are expected to grow up without normal family interactions, living a sort of monastic existence. This approach might produce an intense concentration on one’s studies, and a sense of fierce fellowship among the Jedi members. But it’s not clear that the resulting Jedi Knights would be especially well-adjusted for dealings with other, normal citizens.

We saw how badly this worked out for Anakin himself. When Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi redeem Anakin from slavery in Episode I, they can’t afford to buy out his mother Shmi as well. But, appallingly, they never go back with more funds to do so; apparently they’re content to leave her enslaved while they concentrate on her Force-enabled son. (This omission itself says something about the mind-set of the Republic and the Jedi in particular.) When Anakin returns in Episode II just in time for his mother to die in his arms, this experience plays a key role in his eventual turn to the Dark Side, with the avowed aim of bringing “order to the galaxy” to prevent such tragedies.

No Valentines for Jedi

The exclusion of Jedi Knights from normal family and community life extends forward in their lives as well. We find out in Episode II that Jedi are not permitted to marry. (No one seems to have considered that this restriction is a fine way to breed Force-sensitivity right out of the participating species.)

While this barrier may have been set up simply to create a story conflict, it also intensifies the separation of the Jedi from ordinary social interactions. The trope of a celibate monastic order certainly has some narrative power. But it may not be an ideal way to establish the primary enforcement and conflict-resolution arm of a galactic society. In a curious way, the Jedi order resembles the army of familyless clones that the Jedi themselves initially create, and later combat.

A Failing Republic

With this issue in mind, the whole plot of Episodes I-III looks less like a simple tale of scheming intrigue by Senator Palpatine and more like a civilizational tragedy. A polity falls most easily to a destabilizing force when it is already rotting from within. Palpatine could not have succeeded so easily, one might argue, if the Republic and the Jedi had not already become decadent or dysfunctional.

In fact, the Jedi leaders in the prequels speak uneasily about some sort of failure or lessening of their communion with the Force, which is never really explained. Is it possible that the Jedi ways of cultivating young pupils had become hidebound and ossified in a way that decreased their powers and made them vulnerable to a sneak attack or “phantom menace” from the Dark Side?

This is all speculation, of course. I don’t know whether any such thing was in Lucas’s mind when Episodes I-VI were made, much less in the current screenwriters’ minds now. But these considerations do suggest that it’s not enough just to restore or return the Republic’s Jedi order. A renascence or renovation of the Light Side organization may be needed as well.

A Post-Jedi Order?

We now know that you don’t have to be a Sith Lord like Vader or Palpatine to serve the Dark Side. We’ve also got Kylo’s Knights of Ren, and Snoke, whatever he is. Maybe it’s also possible to serve the Light Side without being a Jedi Knight.

Based on the above thoughts about Jedi training, I’ve always rather hoped that Luke would rethink the historical Jedi practices (which he hardly knows, anyway) and develop a more humane, more balanced cadre. We now know that he tried to train a new group between Episode VI and VII, but from the movies, at least, we don’t know how he went about it. (I haven’t yet read any of the new-continuity novels.)

We do know that Luke’s new Jedi academy was a failure: it produced Kylo Ren and collapsed after his turn to the Dark Side. Perhaps now, after years of meditating on his mistakes, Luke may be ready to try something different. It could be that the new knights of the light won’t be Jedi at all, but a new kind of Force for good. To my mind, that would be a really interesting development.

These idiosyncratic guesses have a pretty low probability of panning out, to be sure. The subtleties of training programs might not appeal to the Star Wars audience as a key plot device. But they’re fun to think about.

The real entertainment value of SWAGs like these is to see how far off they were when the movie actually comes out. We’ll see in December what “The Last Jedi” really means—and probably have a good laugh about this post.

Follow-up Notes

4/14/2017: Here’s the latest trailer.
4/18/2017: Zak Wojnar at ScreenRant has a good commentary today making some of the same points.

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Last Jedi

Worldwasting: Ragnarok and The Last Jedi