Joseph Gordon Levitt defends 'The Last Jedi' with lengthy letter

Hollywood actor Joseph Gordon Levitt has defended the latest entrant in the epic 'Star Wars' franchise, 'The Last Jedi', in a 2000-word essay after the movie proved hugely divisive among fans.

In a post written on website Medium, the 36-year-old actor insisted that his secret cameo in the movie was not a reason for him to defend the flick, reports The Independent.

Instead, the 'Looper' star offers a comprehensive reasoning for the depiction of Luke Skywalker, after he was portrayed as a grizzled hermit who is determined to abandon his Jedi past.

In his eyes, it is through Luke that the movie tells the story of "one of the most universal truths of human experience - getting older".

He wrote, "We all get older, and those of us who are lucky enough to survive our youth all face the joys, the terrors, the puzzles, the pitfalls, the surprises, and the inevitabilities that come along with doing so. Re-meeting our beloved protagonist decades after we last saw him, only to learn that the passing years have changed some of his most fundamental qualities, I'll admit, it's almost hard to see".

He also opened up on how Luke's "flaws" were responsible for ultimately creating a "gratuitous spectacle".

"A flawed main character is one of the main distinctions between a story with substance and a gratuitous spectacle. It's often through a character overcoming their flaws that a movie can really say something", he noted.

To him, this is a story about the importance of "not losing faith -faith in the outside world, faith in your allies as well as your enemies, in the future as well as the past, in the next generation that will take your place, and, yes, faith in your own damn self".

Despite becoming one of the highest-grossing films of all time, the movie was recently pulled from cinemas in China after failing to capture the imagination of audiences.