The Last Jedi - stepping out from the shadows cast by the world's biggest franchise?

This post contains MASSIVE SPOILERS for The Last Jedi. Don't read past this picture of the movie poster unless you have seen the film or don't care about spoilers.

Still here, OK, then.

A review in one sentence: Well, that repeatedly went in a different direction than I expected.

Here are six things that struck me about the film.

1) Rey is a nobody, and wow, was that dark!
After The Force Awakens, there were lots of discussions about Rey's provenance. Was she related to the Skywalkers? How would she link in with the rest of the known universe? That tends to be the (much mocked) trope in Star Wars films.

But, no, she is a nobody from nowhere. And how bleak is this - her alcoholic parents sold her for drinking money to the junk dealer Unku Plutt. It's interesting that in The Force Awakens, Finn talks about being taken as a child and indoctrinated into the First Order as a child soldier. My mum commented on that at this time. But this is as bad a situation in terms of mistreating children.

Abandonment and child slavery? The Galaxy Far Far Away (GFFA) is a messed up place. But, equally, this is refreshingly different for a Star Wars character.

2) They killed off the 'big bad' in the second act
I don't really care about Supreme Leader Snoke. I thought he was annoying and a ridiculous baddie, really. Like so many evil characters he seemed to prefer to send his minions to do his bidding for him rather than sort things out himself. So I wasn't too upset when he got sliced and diced by Kylo Ren.

I was surprised though, that it happened when it did. Normally it's the sort of thing saved for a third act showdown, but no, Snoke just got offed and then afterwards we had an epic fight scene, with Rey and Ren fighting back to back against Snoke's elite guards.

3) War profiteering is the real evil in the galaxy
Whoah, Star Wars just got relevant. I really wasn't expecting this theme to ever come up. Star Wars has always been about light versus dark, good versus evil, heroes and villains. But first with Rogue One, and now with this film, the GFFA is starting to become more nuanced. There are grey areas.

The scene in Canto Bight is quite stunning in its own way. Finn sees the glitz and is mesmerised by it. Rose sees through the glitz to the brutality that shapes the entertainment for the wealthy gamblers. Fascism always creates an elite and it is easy to be bedazzled by it. In the first Star Wars film, it was a grubby smuggler's township that was a hive of scum and villainy. In the Last Jedi, the scum have floated to the top by making money off the suffering of others. That's an astonishing message condemning the military industrial complex for a mainstream film to be putting out there.

4) The scoundrel stays a scoundrel 
Star Wars has always been about redemptive arcs. Han Solo in A New Hope, Lando in Empire Strikes Back, and, of course, Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi. Arguably the prequels lacked this redemptive theme, which is one reason why they fail to connect emotionally. In The Force Awakens, we see Finn going through his own redemption as he turns his back on the First Order, and that's perhaps one of the reasons it felt like the films were back on track in Episode VII.

So when Finn and Rose meet a thief and hacker in a prison cell, and promise him paid work, we all know how this will turn out. The criminal will have a change of heart and join the rebellion because it's the right thing to do.

Except he doesn't. There is no redemptive story arc for him. He sells out Finn and Rose, and the fleeing remnant of the Resistance to save his own skin. He kind of apologises for it, but doesn't seem very sincere. He doesn't fly back in to save the day like Han Solo. He takes the money and he walks away.

5) The hotshot pilot is a bit of a dick
Poe is a poor leader. He is willing to sacrifice the lives of people around him to achieve an aim. He is reprimanded and demoted by Leia. He doesn't trust the decisions of the leadership and tries to take over the ship instead, trusting in his own gut instincts to fight, rather than to protect the people he should be trying to protect. He inadvertently alerts the code slicer that Finn and Rose have recruited to Admiral Holdo's plan, which gives the slicer a bargaining chip to use when captured. When he cuts a deal the First Order destroy at least 12 unarmed transport ships full of Resistance crew and soldiers as they flee towards Crait. (And, yes, I counted them as they got blown up.) All those people died because of him.

The message here if that it's not enough to be heroic. People die as a result.

Luke Skywalker, of course, was a hotshot pilot. Jumping into a vacant X-Wing seat he totalled the Death Star. In this film, he is also shown to be a failure as a leader. His hubris in establishing a new Jedi Temple facilitated Ben Solo's growth as a Force user, and then his panic at Ben's seduction by the dark side cemented Ben's transformation into Kylo Ren. One of the most interesting parallels in this film is between Poe and Luke - both are legendary heroes, but prideful. Both are hotshot pilots and they end up getting the people around them killed.

6) A background person becomes more than background
Rose isn't anyone special. A tech working "behind pipes all day". She doesn't get whisked into top-ranking briefing rooms or given super top secret missions. She is stunned to be talking to a real life Resistance hero when she first meets Finn.

I think this is probably the first time a committed member of the movement actually steps out of the shadows into the role of hero. If you look at almost every other rebel character, they start out as established leaders (Leia, Poe), or start their story outside the Rebellion but become heroes through great feats of daring do (Luke, Han, Lando, Finn, Rey). Rose is unique - not new to the Rebellion; not a noteworthy person.

Of course, the film still just trashes numerous Resistance troops, from the crews of the doomed bomber squadron at the start of the film, through to the trenches full of troopers outside the mine in Crait. The resistance is whittled down to just a dozen or so survivors huddled in the Millennium Falcon, their only serviceable ship. The death toll in this film is massive.

To sum up
In conclusion, then is seems the directorial team took to heart Kylo Ren's advice to Rey: "Let go of the past. Destroy it if you have to. So you can become the person you were meant to be." They certainly trashed the past. The Jedi failed. Luke Skywalker went from being a legendary hero to a devastated hermit, haunted by what he had unleashed in Kylo Ren, and cut off from the Force. The script literally left you thinking that everything about the Jedi had been left to burn.

The film has garnered some praise and some hate. My feeling is that the directors made a lot of brave choices to take the film in several different directions, upsetting several established tropes from the series so far. It is incredibly hard to imagine a Star Wars film that is revolutionary. Rogue One tried but to me, was a huge disappointment in that regard.

And just to round this post off, here is my round up of random opinions. Feel free to disagree.

Best character: I do still really like Rey.

Best hairstyle: Vice-Admiral Holdo, by several parsecs.

Most annoying character: I'll give this to Poe. He's a tool for most of the film.

Most under-used character: Captain Phasma. Although, yet again, the pre-release merchandise led us to believe some new characters would play more of a role than they ended up doing. The First Order black rolly ball droid had about 30 seconds of screen time, and yet is a pop vinyl figure. (It's no Morroff or Pau from Rogue One, though.)

Funniest bit: Probably Poe winding up General Hux right at the start. Although Rey 'reaching out' to feel the force in Luke's first lesson was very funny too.

Best line: Finn's "Rebel scum!" response to Captain Phasma. Finn also had a great line when the TIE Fighters all peeled off to chase the Falcon: "Oh, yeah, they hate that ship!"

Most jarring line: "Page-turners, they were not." It was very funny but the phrase 'page-turners' didn't seem very Star Wars-y. (But then they were actually books, which is interesting given the idea that people in the Star Wars universe are functionally illiterate.)

Most quotable bit of Star Wars wisdom: Rose, saying "We don't win by fighting what we hate. We win by saving what we love."

Biggest surprise: Ghost Yoda turning up.

Daftest bit: Leia force-guiding herself through the vacuum of space.

Biggest disappointment: They killed off Admiral Ackbar! I was genuinely gutted by this. He was one of my favourite characters as a kid, and probably my favourite of the original Star Wars figures that I had. And he dies ignominiously along with the entire bridge crew, which is pretty much an off-screen death.

Weirdest plot turn: Pretty much everything with the casino at Canto Bight, including the escape on the racing animals.

Thing I'm most relieved to report: The porgs were stupid, but bearable in small doses. And they were in very small doses.


Some more Star Wars posts:
How Rogue One almost killed off my love of Star Wars
What I liked about The Force Awakens
What Return of the Jedi means to me

What leaders might really be for - the lesson of Sir Philip Dilley

I don't normally comment on current events, but the resignation of Sir Philip Dilley, the Chair of the Environment Agency who was on holiday in Barbados while half the country flooded out over Christmas, has prompted a thought around leadership.

Sir Philip has said in his statement that when he took the three-day-a-week position (that carries a six figure salary) he didn't realise he was going to need to be on call all the time. He has a point. The Environment Agency has a CEO and numerous directors (who are also presumably on substantial salaries) and quite what we would expect a sixty year-old to personally do in the face of such dreadful floods is unclear. The flak he got in the press for daring to take a holiday abroad with his family was unfair and I can see why he would be annoyed enough to quit. Who needs the hassle, when you've got a knighthood and presumably a decent pension from a career at the top in engineering?

But what Sir Philip illustrates is a tendency of public sector leadership that I've noticed in the part of the public sector where I work, namely healthcare. True, the Environment Agency is a little bit different to a large healthcare organisation, but the function he seems to be playing here is similar to what happens to many healthcare CEOs.

I've just completed an MSc module on the psychology of leadership, which has meant I've had to do some reading around the subject from a more scientific viewpoint rather than the usual 'inspirational' material that I normally think of when 'leadership' as a subject is mentioned. I was particularly interested in the idea that leaders emerge in a complex system and this often leads to conflict with leaders who are appointed to positions and given authority.

(Certainly, it's the case that when a person in a leadership position expresses a view in a meeting you will see people slyly look to the person who has emerged as a leader in the group to see what they think. You see this especially with clinicians listening to ideas from executives. They will look and see what Dr X or Nurse Z think about it.)

Healthcare is a complex system, or realistically, several complex systems that intersect and sometimes derail each other. Leaders often compete - for resources if nothing else. Competition is not necessarily to do with ego, just the natural outworking of trying to plan in unplanned systems.

Realistically, you look at some of the massive healthcare organisations out there and you quickly realise that no one person could ever lead such an operation. There is too much unknown and unknowable in the systems - and that's just the systems we know about, let alone the other things pulling strings that we have no real handle on.

So, what is the function of a leader in such a system? Well, on one level, it's to not lead. I have been immensely privileged to meet several healthcare CEOs and pretty much all of them sum up their leadership style as trying to get out of the way of the people who are doing the stuff, and maybe somehow helping to make life easier for them by smoothing down obstacles.

But there's another role for leaders as well. It's to be the person to blame if things go horribly wrong, as Philip Dilley has found out. Removing him does nothing to reverse the devastation of the floods or repair any of the damage, but we have found someone to 'blame'. He has now resigned and someone has paid for the calamity.

The same thing happens in healthcare. Since I started working in the healthcare sector every NHS Wales organisation has had at least one change of CEO. Some have had several.

I deeply respect the CEOs I've met, and have no reason to believe the ones I haven't met aren't just as good. I've known some leaders who have moved on under a cloud. But I think this is nothing to do with their competency or their attitudes. It's just a sad fact that the main role of a CEO is to take the blame if things go wrong and unfortunately the odds seem to be about 50/50 whether something beyond your control will go wrong on your watch. And if it does, it will be hard to stay on.

This might sound incredibly cynical. It's not meant to be. It could well be wrong, but it's just my perspective on leadership, as one of the led.

If you liked this you could read: The missing perspective on leadership

The missing perspective on leadership

I've been interested for a while on writing a book called Leadership by one of the Led. It’s a perspective that doesn't seem to be present in the massive industry that seems to surround leadership as a concept.

Leader Duck Photo: Pedro Ribeiro Simões on Flickr

A while ago I searched for ‘Leadership’ in the Books section of Amazon.com and got back 165,897 results.  So, it seems there is no shortage of information out there. Now admittedly, I didn't look at all 165,897 books. But in the first 20 or so pages, I noticed a couple of trends.

The first is to reveal the secrets of successful leaders. In addition to an opus on ‘Leadership’ written by former Mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, there are books on ‘Dwight Eisenhower's Leadership Lessons’, ‘The Leadership of Muhammad’, ‘The Leadership Secrets of Genghis Khan’, and ‘The Fourfold Leadership of Jesus’.

What do Genghis Khan, Rudolph Giuliani, Dwight Eisenhower, Jesus and Muhammad all have in common? Apparently they had their own unique style of leadership that brought them success – and if you read the books, the subtle promise is that you could have the same sort of impact.

So, one trend is the idea that to be a leader, you have to copy other leaders.

The other trend is to invent a new ‘type’ of leadership, presumably at the suggestion of your publisher to differentiate yourself in the crowded marketplace of leadership books.

So within a few pages of Amazon listings you can learn about Courageous Leadership, Passive Leadership, Primal Leadership, Values-Based Leadership, Tribal Leadership, Fierce Leadership, Effective Leadership, Authentic Leadership, Adaptive Leadership, Liquid Leadership, Brand Leadership, Spiritual Leadership, Quiet Leadership, Resonant Leadership, Relational Leadership, Living Leadership, Servant Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Passionate Leadership, Strategic Leadership, and Turnaround Leadership.

With so many types out there, there must be one to suit just about anyone. The message here seems to be to find the right type for you. (Personally I like the idea of ‘Liquid Leadership’, which in my mind’s eye involves the phrase “Quick! To the bar!”)

And most of those types seem good. You wouldn't want spineless leadership when you can have courageous leadership, or hypocritical instead of authentic, or amoral leadership, or impotent leadership, or dead leadership.

But with all these viewpoints available, it’s fair to ask the question: What could possibly be missing given all that’s been written about leadership?

Well, maybe there is still something else left to say. What about the viewpoint of those who aren't already leaders or trying to become leaders?

It’s as if the ‘led’ have nothing to add to the discussion, even though being one of the led is the vantage point to best assess the success of any leader at the things which are supposed to matter in the world of leadership. It’s easy for leaders to be seen as successful, but hard to know how much of their success is genuinely down to their leadership and how much is down to just plain dumb luck. The led are the people who are most likely to know.

If you have any thoughts on this project I'd really like to hear them.