But the entire film hangs on Luke Skywalker. Famously JJ Abrams was convinced to take on The Force Awakens by the question: “who is Luke Skywalker”. He also famously punted on that question by turning The Force Awakens into a literal quest for “where is Luke Skywalker”. But for all the flak The Force Awakens has taken over the last two years, its very structure is critical to the narrative success of The Last Jedi. The Force Awakens is the myth, replicated, restored, perpetuated. The Last Jedi is the response, the reality, the answer to why it mattered in the first place.

There’s been a significant amount of discussion as to whether The Last Jedi is Rian Johnson’s way of saying he didn’t like the The Force Awakens. I would argue it’s his way of saying how important that myth was. In The Force Awakens Rey says of Luke Skywalker “I thought he was a myth”. When she arrives on Ach-To she’s expecting to meet the mythical figure who destroyed the Death Star, defeated Darth Vader, and restored the Jedi. But what she finds is much different. Critically, Rey doesn’t start with asking Luke to train her in the ways of the Force. She simply tells him the galaxy is in danger, and asks him to come back.

But of course, as in every other storyline in the film, the reality of the myth is much more complicated. The crucial sequence in which Luke goes about his daily routine illustrates that this is not a myth, it’s a man at his most base, spending much of his day just attaining the necessary resources to stay alive. Everyday he actively chooses to reject the call ^4.

Luke’s ultimate realization in the excellent Yoda scene is twofold, and again represents the central conflict of the film. On a personal level, he learns that his failure was to believe too much in his own myth. That he failed to impress the reality of the Jedi in Ben Solo, and instead he — for lack of a better term — bought into his own hype. In reality Luke was saved at the Death Star by Han, defeated by Vader in Empire, and on the verge of being killed by the Emperor before Vader saved him. His greatest accomplishment was throwing down his weapon and refusing to fight at all. But by the time Luke decides to create a new Jedi Order he is the myth, he was, as he says “Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master”. The perception of him had become the lightsaber wielding warrior, more reminiscent of the Luke-Skywalker-fighting-the Darth-of-the-week of the old Expanded Universe than the Luke we got to know in the original trilogy. By buying into this myth, Luke believed he could bring back the Jedi Order. But, like his masters before him, he cared so much about the myth of the sacred texts, the Jedi rules, and creating a new galactic organization, that he failed to see the reality of what was happening on a personal level with his nephew.

The second realization however, is that despite whatever the reality of the Jedi’s institutional failures — and his personal ones — the galaxy (and us) needs the Jedi to inspire. That the myth of the Jedi, of Luke Skywalker, of the entire Star Wars saga, of storytelling, still matters. That’s why he projects himself across space (not unlike the way films are projected on a wall). He can’t actually “step out with a laser sword and take on the first order himself”. At least not in any way that would actually make a tangible difference. But if the galaxy believed he did, if the Resistance survived to spread the story, it could be the spark that lights the fire.

This is why the film’s final coda, completely unlike anything else in a previous Star Wars film, is the fulfillment just not of the themes of The Last Jedi, but of the entire saga. The reality is that across the world, people are oppressed, living difficult lives, or trapped in situations they long to escape. But just as Anakin, Luke, and Rey were inspired by the myth of the Jedi when they looked into the sky and dreamed of freedom, we can be inspired by our myths to reach for something more. I was that kid holding the broom. You were that kid with the Luke Skywalker action figure. Or a Harry Potter wand. Or trick or treating as Wonder Woman. Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi is the best film of the year, and the best film in the Star Wars story, because it asks us to contemplate why — and if — in a world with nuclear weapons and rising authoritarianism and changing climates, do these stories matter? And it resoundingly answers that yes, myth matters, simply because it can be enough to inspire us. It was enough for that kid holding the broom. It was enough on a towering screen in 1977. It was enough on the beaches of Dunkirk and the skies over London. It was enough for that young girl out to the movies with her family. Godspeed rebels.