Episode 69 - Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017) (with Helen O'Hara)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017).
The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!
Following our take on Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015), the next instalment in the new Star Wars trilogy gets the Fantasy/Animation treatment for Episode 69, as Chris and Alex (and the Force) battle through Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017) to talk about its gender politics, questions of fandom and the film’s narrative of resistance, rebellion and struggle for power. Joining them for this celebration of contemporary Hollywood science-fiction is film critic and journalist Helen O’Hara, editor-at-large of Empire film magazine, and author of the book The Ultimate Superhero Movie Guide (2020) and the recent Women vs. Hollywood: The Fall And Rise Of Women In Film (2021). Listen as they discuss the ambivalent reception of Rian Johnson’s film, elements of its critical backlash, and how reviewers saw its vexed relationship to the Star Wars legacy; fan communities, gatekeeping and gender; the case of Kelly Marie Tran and the changing face of popular franchise cinema; how the film navigates themes of energy, force and balance ably supported by digital VFX and more ‘grounded’ effects technologies to create ‘lived in’ environments; sci-fi worldbuilding and the ‘incompleteness’ of fictional realms; Carrie Fisher as star, and the power of aging bodies that move through time (and space); and the central contradictions of Kylo Ren that enables The Last Jedi to question what it means to turn your back on genealogy.
Suggested Readings
Harrison, Rebecca. 2019. “Gender, Race, and Representation in the Star Wars franchise: An Introduction.” Media Education Journal 65, no. 2: 16-19.
Harrison, Rebecca. 2020. The Empire Strikes Back - BFI Film Classic. Bloomsbury: London.
Koushik, Kailash, and Abigail Reed 2018. “Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast, and Disney’s Commodification of Feminism: A Political Economic Analysis.” Social Sciences 7: 1-28.
O’Hara, Helen. 2020. The Ultimate Superhero Movie Guide: The Definitive Handbook for Comic Book Film Fans. London: Carlton Books.
O’Hara, Helen. 2021. Women Vs Hollywood: The Fall And Rise Of Women In Film. London: Robinson.
Walton, Kendall. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.