Star Wars 8: Backlash over The Last Jedi’s twists misses the point – here’s why (SPOILERS)

Warning: spoilers for The Last Jedi lie ahead, so read no further if you’ve yet to see the film.

Two years after JJ Abrams introduced us to a new raft of characters in 2015’s The Force Awakens, we finally have answers to some of the big questions the die-hard fans have been asking ever since.

Who are Rey’s parents? And what is the truth behind Supreme Leader Snoke?

Both questions were addressed so nonchalantly in the new film that it’s almost as if Rian Johnson was deliberately trolling us: after all that second-guessing, Rey’s parents were absolute unknowns who, according to Kylo Ren, were “nobodies” who probably dumped her on Jakku in exchange for money.

And Snoke? His identity is irrelevant. In one of the film’s most surprising moments, he was killed off without fanfare before we’d even seen him leave his blood-red chamber – and in the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi forty years ago, it was as if a thousand Reddit theorists cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. Or something.

These twists and turns not only disproved an array of theories (“Rey is a Kenobi!” “Snoke is Mace Windu!” “REY IS SNOKE’S DESCENDANT!”) but were treated so casually that it’s almost like they shouldn’t have been big talking points to begin with.

And the interesting thing is, both Daisy Ridley (Rey) and Johnson had been saying this all along. Ridley admitted in one of many interviews on the subject (in this case to Rolling Stone): “For me this whole thing is not necessarily about where any of us come from. It’s about where we’re going.”

On the notion that she was surprised at all the chat about Rey’s parentage, given that she felt the answer was obvious in Episode 7, she added: “After the [Force Awakens] premiere, I was with my agent, my lawyers, my hairdresser who is also my really good friend, and my publicist. And they were all saying stuff [about Rey’s parents] and I was like, ‘Wait, what?’

“I was so confused, because again, as someone who already knew the answer, I was so confused by their questions.”

And Rian Johnson told Entertainment Weekly about Snoke: “Similar to Rey’s parentage, Snoke is here to serve a function in the story. And a story is not a Wikipedia page.”

Even if those explanations weren’t warning enough, and fans did deserve big blockbuster reveals – why can’t Johnson turn everything on its head? Was a major criticism of The Force Awakens not that it played things mostly by the book? Is this kind of shake-up not exactly what was wanted?

Still, though, despite acclaim from critics, a handful of fans have already bemoaned the direction the new film takes – and, fair enough, it’s certainly not without its flaws. The fact that Snoke’s First Order spent most of the film waiting for the Resistance to run out of petrol was hardly the most explosive storyline of all time; and Rey’s dialogues with Kylo Ren – her “Force Skypes”, as this writer’s brother called them – were never going to please everyone.

You could also argue that Snoke’s demise scuppered his potential: he’s not going to be the big, sinister presence that Palpatine turned out to be, after all. In fact he just sat around in his fabulous gold robe behaving like someone’s creepy grandad. But what he did provide was a vital stepping stone in Kylo Ren’s plot. The Adam Driver emovillain has been well-established as a conflicted baddie with an unstable grip on his emotions, and it looked for a while as though Rey might have been able to bring him back.

But in the end? No chance. Kylo has instead gone Full Evil; annihilating his leader, trying to incinerate Luke Skywalker and vowing to kill off every single last member of the Resistance – including his mother. He’s now in a fascinating place in the run-up to Episode IX, totally different to Anakin in the prequels and, er, Anakin again in the main trilogy. Snoke was a red herring: he’s not the big villain we need to keep an eye on. It was Kylo all along – which is much more interesting.

As for Rey, there were genuine fears that she’d be tempted over to the Dark Side, but in hindsight that was always going to be an obvious path, given that it was trodden (with different outcomes) in both previous trilogies. Plus it was never going to be a decision Disney would sign-off on, given that Ridley is the big, much-needed female role model of the new saga (now in good company with Kelly Marie Tran’s excellent Rose).

Admittedly she didn’t get up to a great deal of exciting business in Episode 8, aside from hanging out with Luke and trying in vain to tempt Kylo back to the light. But if there’s one thing the ending – and Luke’s final words – indicated, it’s that she’s ready to bust some serious balls in Episode 9.

The Last Jedi is not the crowd-pleaser that The Force Awakens was. But it’s bold, fresh, and – perhaps inevitably, as a result – a little divisive. We have, as regular readers will know, been all over the theories in recent months; soaking up every last point of speculation and excitedly considering the viability of each possible storyline we’ve seen. And there have been a lot.

But if viewed with a clear mind, remaining open to whatever journey Johnson and LucasFilm want to take us on, The Last Jedi is one hell of an exhilarating ride. We just have to separate it from the complicated webs of expectation we might have tangled ourselves in in the run-up.

Epsode 8 is not perfect, of course, but it’s a movie that lives up not only to Luke Skywalker’s notorious “this is not going to go the way you think”, but Kylo Ren’s chilling order to “let the past die.” This is Star Wars for a new era, and it’s going to be a very unpredictable ride.

We didn’t get the surprises we were expecting – but isn’t that the whole point of surprises?

Star Wars 8: The Last Jedi is out now.