Star Wars: The Last Jedi with spoilers + update

Probably everyone around my age grew up with Star Wars as a major touchstone of entertainment, of fascination, of creative inspiration.  The original trilogy is so freaking good.  

Around the mid 90s I read a couple of the Expanded Universe novels and didn't really take to their slavish repetition of things we already knew about the SW universe.  Constantly characters would repeat lines that were featured in the films, as if they were toys with limited programmed phrases that you just pushed a button to get them speak.  Also, as every genre fan knows, books and comics etc. don't really count as canon, only what's in the movies.

Of course, as is well documented, the prequels are garbage with few redeeming values.  

The Clone Wars and Rebels cartoons were pretty cheap and while they likely had some good stories, if you're not on board with Yoda jumping around with a lightsaber, it's a moot point.

I really liked the Force Awakens, but as so many have pointed out, it's a retelling of the original Star Wars, and Kylo Ren was a fairly wimpy antagonist.  I liked the new characters though, each having some kind of arc and noticeable personality traits, which is more than you can say for the prequels.   Rogue One truly was, in every sense, slavish to the point of being a cardboard cutout version of Star Wars.

What I'm getting at is Star Wars is something I've loved most of my life but been disappointed and frustrated with as well.  Either 

A. the story is too centered around the core cast and doesn't allow for change and growth or new kinds of stories beyond what's established in the original trilogy

or 

B. it's too focused on the minutia of how the universe works and apocrypha

... which is why I'm so pleased that The Last Jedi comes in and wipes the table clean.  So many expectations are subverted, from Luke's fate to Leia's non-fate and superpowers to Snoke getting prematurely axed to Benecio Del Toro's DJ not suddenly becoming a good guy because that's what usually happens.  

You don't have to be a member of the Skywalker family to know/ use/ believe in the Force.

Out of thousands of Resistance members, we end up with like 16 left on one ship.  

I love all the new space animals and various nods on how bad it is to eat or mistreat them, and how they can have wisdom that gets you out of a jam when you're stuck in a salt cave.  Or will share blue milk from their teat if you treat 'em nice.    

I love all the new characters and really enjoyed Poe and Finn's respective arcs. Those characters just lit up the screen.  

But mostly I loved how the style has evolved from repeating old tropes; this movie had Yoda literally burning the past down, Kylo Ren literally representing the concept of destroying the past.  It's weirder and funnier and more artsy and more wildly violent than all the other Star Wars movies.

In a larger sense, and how it relates to me creatively, is the key holders of Star Wars knows it has to change to survive, similar to how U2 had to reinvent themselves with Achtung Baby- when creative people reach a stage where they are like "we've grown this tree and now we gotta chop it down."

Every year I strategize about what direction to take things I make, things I don't want to pursue anymore:

in 2014 I was able to travel a lot and do unique travel work, 

in 2015 I tried shooting almost all nudes for content and went hardcore into instant film and video production 

in 2016 I started doing more multimedia shorts like "Innocence of Seduction" and "Inframundo" and zines and music videos, had a year off of model shoot related stuff; stopped doing art walks

in 2017 I tried being a business in a fashion studio and quit teaching workshops in person.  

Anyways, a great new U2 album and a great new Star Wars film is a great way to burn off a lot of the barnacles that have been building up, ready to start 2018 fresh!