10 Star Wars Scenes Everyone Gets Wrong
8. "Kill The Past" Isn't The Last Jedi's Goal
It's fair to say that The Last Jedi broke a good portion of the Star Wars fandom, and though many fans had totally reasoned criticisms of Rian Johnson's divisive sequel, much of the ire stemmed from a patent misinterpretation of the movie's themes.
To many, Kylo Ren's (Adam Driver) memorable one-liner about the past - "Let the past die. Kill it if you have to" - was seen to represent Johnson's own designs on the Star Wars franchise, that he wanted to kill the series' past by subverting audience expectations and then quite literally killing Luke Skywalker at the end.
But first and foremost, it's important to remember that Kylo Ren is a card-carrying villain, so why would any filmmaker let an antagonistic figure become the mouthpiece for the movie's Big Message?
Did Johnson want to ditch the dustier, more unearned sentimentality of prior Star Wars movies and do something different? Absolutely, but if you pay much attention to the film at all, it's very clearly about embracing and learning from the past - Yoda even memorably tells Luke, "The greatest teacher, failure is."