(Guest post by Greg Forster)
Start 2018 off right with my review of The Last Jedi over on Hang Together:
Where TFA was about the family, TLJ is about the past. We need the wisdom of the past, but the corruption of the past threatens to destroy us.
Looking forward to hearing what y’all think!
PS Coming soon, Darkest Hour. Go see it while it’s still in theaters, it benefits from the big screen!
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Well said, on many points.
My simpler reason for rooting for Finn to live: I, and many of ‘us,’ get tired of the Black guy dying off in practically Every. Sci. Fi. Movie. If White Supremacists want to kill Black folk, just bomb every movie theatre when ‘Black Panther’ premieres because we’ll all be there knowing he ain’t gonna die (which my very astute fanboy son-like father-concluded after seeing the ‘Infinity War’ trailer).
I understand guys can be stupid, but the ingratiating humiliation of Poe by the commander was that over-the-top feminism that’s everywhere in entertainment today. Of course Leia likes Poe; she married a guy like that.
Maybe it’s the baby-boomer, ‘saw-Episode IV-in-the-theatre-in-1977’ self that feels Star Wars is concluded for me. I have no burning desire to see Episode IX, because Luke’s sacrifice closed the chapter of Star Wars to which I’m most attached, and I’m happy with that.
My biggest critique of Disney’s control of the Franchise is the lack of depth the characters/story arcs could develop without comics and novels. It’s too bad Disney/Abrams didn’t have the balls to mine the rich canon of Star Wars material that grew when there was no guarantee of future movies. For example, the ‘Fate of the Jedi’ series is infinitely more fulfilling than anything we’ll see on screen. We won’t get that with the re-boot, being tied to what arcs the movies will take.
And one more thing: somebody please get rid of all these Toyota commercials milking Star Wars! Toyota, until you start offering droids or hyperspace as options on your vehicles, quit it.
Your point about the black guy always dying is well taken. I will admit to not having thought of that. Still, it would have been an act of real greatness and, from a narrative standpoint, a perfect conclusion of his story arc yet not the one we would have expected. So if they had done it I think it wouldn’t have been so bad. But I’ll admit you have a point.
To my mind, the “I like him,” “I like him too” scene is meant to balance the humiliation; I think they hoped that this, and Leia anointing him as leader as they escaped through the caves, would make the humiliation okay. But it doesn’t work that way.
Indeed it doesn’t work that way. For the past 20+ years Hollywood has worked very hard to portray women as powerful, bold, almost mannish in their heroic roles, while behind the curtains you had Harvey Weinstein. Not only does that smell like the selling of souls, but it makes the black-dressed, #MeToo crowd duplicitous at best, cowardly at worst.