This past weekend, Disney and Lucasfilm released The Last Jedi into theaters in the United States. As of this post, the audience reception is so poor that it's now the worst-regarded film in the history of the franchise. Meanwhile, the critics proclaim its brilliance and the marketing campaign continues to push the film's presence into every last little corner of American life. This disconnect cannot be ignored, and it's time to get into what's going on here.
George Lucas deliberately melded mythology with the popular fiction he enjoyed as a youth to create a fun science fiction adventure film, but by using mythological structure he also create a new popular mythology that took of two generational cohorts in dire need of one that heretofore would've been a meld of Christianity and the civic pseudo-religion of the Enlightenment West. That cohort took the mythology and ran with it, in large part because George used fundamental truth in his mythology.
Lots of folks in and out of Hollywood think they get mythology. They don't. The few who do, however, are dangerous because they understand how film and television work in particular, and how media in general work, so they comprehend what media can do to shape mythology- and with it, the culture of a nation.
As I said this past week at my main blog: Mythology is the narrative that a nation tells itself to itself about itself and the world it dwells within. It is the heart of religion, and therefore inherently religious, because religion cannot fulfill its lawful function within a nation without it.
Why the mythology talk? Because of the power of the medium being discussed.
As I said the other day on Twitter: Nothing in film or television is accidental. If you see it in frame and on film, then they want you to see and hear exactly was was there. They signed off on it, all of it, so what you see is all on them. The only difference is who is most to blame.
Everything you saw in The Last Jedi got signed off on by Lucasfilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy. The main films are that important to Lucasfilm and Disney's strategy that such high-level oversight and control is going to be imposed, and therefore responsibility falls ultimate to their feet. Yes, they want to push merchandise and other tie-ins to maximize profits and all that, but that's not the top priority for Mouse Wars.
The top priority is to take control of the culture. The reason is to spread Social Justice meme-diseases. The tell is in how the Mouse Wars films--all of them to date--have undermined the Lucas mythology at every turn, replacing the Superversive mood and tone with degenerate, subversive frauds. The degradation of the Original Trilogy's story, the accomplishments of the heroes, and the violation of the established mythos regarding The Force follows a pattern, an old one, that many people notice but may not recognize as such.
Anciently, when a conqueror completes a conquest one of the things done to cement control and establish dominance is to change the mythology of the conquered nation. Their heroes get degraded, their deeds defiled, and the conqueror's heroes supersede them in all ways- often with ease. To the generation surviving the conquest, this is insult added to injury, but left unchecked the generations that follow will accept this degenerate mythology as normal- and if the conqueror is wise, they leave an out for the subjects to go all the way and buy into their control. It's the mythological equivalent of killing a man, taking his wife for oneself, and slaughtering his children by her before seeding your own to both remove loose ends and make her accept the conquest as inescapable.
What did we see with The Last Jedi in particular? Not only was just this thing done to the existing heroes and tales, but to we--the audience--by degrading and violating our expectations of how our own mythology works. The incompetence in telling the story AT ALL is also a deliberate violent act of conquest.
It's large-scale, long-term gaslighting, and the Thralls of Empire do it because it's worked before- and unchecked will work again. The SJWs know it, and the tell is in the media reaction to the negative reception of this film; lots and lots of shaming and guilt-by-association going on right now, all of it as fraudulent as the rest of the Fake Journalists doing Fake News every day.
And we are NOT without recourse. Walk away from the Mouse. Do not pay for anything Mouse Wars. Do not give attention to anything Mouse Wars- not the films, not the TV shows, not the books, not the games, NOTHING AT ALL. They hate you. Stop funding them.
Instead, remember the mythology that is true and pass that on to your descendants. A nation's soul is in its mythology, so as long as that endures so shall the nation because it shall find the will to endure the worst long enough to come out the other side and thrive once more. If you can't be the hero that gets songs sung about them at gatherings great and small, then be the singer that spreads that lore at those gatherings; sometimes, you can be both- do that if you can. The enemy knows the importance of Narrative Warfare. You must too, if you want your culture and nation to survive. The Hero's Journey is the ONLY Journey.
