It wasn’t long after the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi that fans started talking about re-editing the film to conform with their crappy expectations. First came the De-Feminized edit, which touted ‘improvements’ like “Asian chick speaks less,” that Phasma’s defeated after one blow from Finn because “woman are naturally weaker than men” and that we’d see Kylo Ren defeating Snoke’s guards while Rey struggles with a single one.
More recently we’ve had the crowdfunded Remake The Last Jedi campaign, which aimed to raise $300 million to turn out a new version of the movie that would fix its mistakes. Now, I’m proud to announce that someone’s finally stepped up to the plate to deliver a version of The Last Jedi that the fans have been demanding ever since the film hit cinemas back in December.
Said someone is George Rottkamp, who’s done it in stylish cartoon form, which you can check out below:
Honestly, I’m laughing so hard at this that I don’t know where to start. Perhaps the best thing is the way the strip satirizes the bizarre demands of fans for a movie to be precisely what they imagined it to be. This includes Snoke being revealed as not Darth Plagueis (which is, and has always been a seriously dumb name), but his dad, the disturbingly plausible sounding Darth Insanius.
One of my favorite moments in the movie was when we learned that Rey’s parents were nobodies, neatly skewering the limited dynastic expectations that people have of the series. Now, it turns out she’s actually the daughter of Luke Skywalker and *shock* Obi-Wan Kenobi. It’s like poetry – it rhymes! The whole ridiculous situation is summed up with Luke explaining that with these edits, fans never have to grow up or accept change, and that being a fan involves just watching the same old stories regurgitated ad nauseam.
Leaving aside the misogyny that bubbles under a lot of The Last Jedi hate, the ultimate ‘flaw’ in the film is that Rian Johnson dared to critique some of the underlying fundamentals of the franchise. Are the Jedi necessary? What is the morality of a galaxy-spanning war? Can we democratize the Force? Do the circumstances of your birth decide your fate?
Questions like these allowed The Last Jedi to shear away some of the fat that’s been accumulating on Star Wars over the last 30 years, leaving us with an intelligent, thoughtful story that’s set to provide lots more adventures to come in new films that will no doubt delight audiences for decades and reinvigorate the series.
So, if you’re still in the hater camp, perhaps it’s either time to accept that this is what Star Wars is now and embrace modernity, or alternatively accept that these aren’t the films for you anymore and, as an inspiring Disney heroine once put it, let it go. Your call.
