#Darna talks SW

[lehdenlaulu]

I'm watching this YouTuber react to The Force Awakens and it makes me so sad because it's so good and it so clearly sets up a very specific plotline.

And then. *sigh*

Ah well, I guess I can keep pretending that it's the last canon Star Wars.

[lehdenlaulu]

I’m also fairly sure the kissy bits were added in the reshoots after some executive pressure, shall we say. That’s not JJ’s style at all. JJ’s body of work proves he's infinitely more capable and feminist writer than Rian Johnson will ever be even if he takes his head out of his ass and realizes he’s not actually a genius.

Also, JJ should never write again because... he didn’t give Kylo a happy ending? Great logic there. That r*ylo kool-aid is potent, it seems.

Game of Thrones writers were like “let’s have this woman be killed by her lover as they kiss” and Star Wars writers were like “let’s have this woman be saved and kissed by her abuser” and this is why men need to literally never write again

[lehdenlaulu]

Okay, arrays are aligned. Time to finish this, I suppose.

"Greezy does it, baby!" Bless.

Well done, baby, victory smooch well deserved. ❤️

So, Tanalorr. How do I get the feeling we somehow haven't seen the last of that one bitch.

You will win that battle, Cal. You will.

Oh, that is such a lovely song. 🥺 I hope someone will cover it.

Guess we really have seen the last of that bitch. Huh.

Fine, Bode, be completely unreasonable.

I don't want to embrace the darkness, there's quite enough of that going on already. 😫

Well. I guess you two are parents now.

The Force Theme? That's cheating. 😭

You're the best Jedi anyone could ever hope to be, Cal. If anyone can do it it's you. Your new padawan/daughter will be fine. 🩵

Okay. Quick verdict: Fallen Order was, unfortunately, absolutely a better story/game than this. To be fair it was a really tough act to follow, story-wise, but frankly, this one often left me wondering if I'd missed some overarching theme, or a scene that would tie it all together, or something. So it ended up feeling like a bunch of ideas hastily thrown together with a ribbon tied on top.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still sniffling here, so it absolutely still got to me emotionally and I love these characters to bits. But the plot was not this game's strongest point, and I don't think the base-building and open-world elements really helped. I enjoyed them, but they did not really serve the story or even tie into it that much. For example, I feel like those meditation chambers should have offered some extra insight into the story instead of rewarding you with stat bonuses etc. and finding Santari Khri's lightsaber should have felt meaningful. But since her story just felt like random background lore, it didn't. Even Dagan Gera and his whole thing with Rayvis ended up feeling like a completely unnecessary side plot, which I guess might have even been the point, but... odd decision, if so. You know?

I mean, maybe I'd feel a little differently if I'd had the chance to play the game more consistently and focus on the story instead of running around finding seeds or whatnot when I occasionally had a spare moment to play.

Ah well. These games are still 100% the best Disney Star Wars has to offer, alongside Rogue One and maybe Andor. And I hope we might get more, though it's difficult to imagine where it might go from here.

[lehdenlaulu]

I'm still trying to figure out how I should feel about Jedi: Survivor because my brain is doing the thing it always does: analyze things until they make sense (and it kept me up half the last night, yay) and once again it's not really possible when it comes to the plot because...

Well, not only does the game basically try to be three different games at once (a challenging Souls-like, an open-world base-building RPG, and a narrative-driven action-adventure respectively, with the latter kind of drawing the shortest straw) but it's also pretty much three or four different half-formed and haphazardly connected plots in a trench coat that doesn't really withstand closer scrutiny.

And while it's once again perhaps unfair to compare it to Fallen Order, and I know enough about both game dev/industry and Disney Lucasfilm to form a pretty good guess on how and why this happened, it's just... disappointing.

And right now I'm trying to process that feeling and reconcile it from dislike. Because it's not that and I don't want it to turn into that. *sigh*

[lehdenlaulu]

This is exactly the conclusion I've arrived at. It's also very apparent in hindsight how uncomfortable the actors were with the direction the story took (and the direction in general, as it were.)

How did this happen I can't even guess.

Looking back it kind of seems the creators of TLJ knew it was garbage because they kept doing interviews where they would lie about what was going to be in the movie (e.g. answers regarding Snoke). It was like they were determined to sell this movie no matter what. I just think that, if they thought they made a good movie, they’d be a lot more confident regarding it’s release. 

[lehdenlaulu]

Sometimes it's rewarding to guess where the story is going from foreshadowing etc.

But the second Bode mentioned his kid on Coruscant I went "Right, you're going to betray us and end up dead and leave that kid for us to raise, right?"

And it did not feel rewarding. If this had been a nonlinear 'choice and consequence' type of game you could have at least felt like you had a chance to alter the outcome. And if this had been a movie it might have felt less frustrating since with a movie you're more of a passive spectator. But since this was something in between... yeah. *sigh*

[lehdenlaulu]

Hah, Colin Trevorrow is (perhaps unintentionally) stirring the pot by saying Gareth Edwards established the visual aesthetic of Andor alongside R1 and Godzilla.

Which he did, by virtue of Andor being essentially a spinoff of R1, and although IMHO Andor's visuals can't hold a candle to R1, visual continuity is important and an effort was obviously made to maintain the aesthetic.

But now the Gilroy fanboys are in a tizzy, repeating the bullshit about R1 being all but solely Gilroy's achievement. Which... ugh.

Go see The Creator, and then compare R1 to it and Andor. Just bloody sayin'.

[lehdenlaulu]

Guess we’re not getting any news about the Jedi: Fallen Order sequel today?

Or Andor, for that matter.

Oh well. *sigh*

ETA: Never mind me I’m a forgetful doofus.

[lehdenlaulu]

There are plenty of sad bits in Jedi: Fallen Order, but one of the saddest has to be the confirmation that Starkiller Base used to be Ilum. 😭

[lehdenlaulu]

And Ahsoka is getting her own show too

But we guessed that, right?

[lehdenlaulu]

AAAAAAAAHH

The Andor sizzle reel made me so happy

And flashed me right back into the R1 sizzle reel

Only I kept expecting to see Gareth

But Diego is producing! Whoo!

[lehdenlaulu]

I just realized that Daisy Ridley and Mark Hamill are also both left-handed. I mean, Luke and Rey are not (which on the other hand makes Daisy and Mark badass af), but... You know? *sigh*

[lehdenlaulu]

Rangers of the New Republic, huh...

Pathfinders?? KES???

[lehdenlaulu]

Damn, I really wish The Force Awakens had had sequels. That shit was good.

[lehdenlaulu]

I’m actually, genuinely sorry for the stormpilot fans who got their hopes crushed, but...

1) This is not JJ’s fault. Disney won’t risk the Chinese and Russian markets, the capitalist cowards that they are. So don’t go after JJ. He did his best to let you down gently.

2) If anyone starts hating on Rey or Rose or Jannah (or Daisy or Kelly or Naomi) for this... You’re a misogynistic douchecanoe, end of story.

3) Representation is super important, but nothing can stop you from still shipping it, still writing fic and meta and headcanons etc. Go wild. 

[lehdenlaulu]

Just to get it out of my system and move on:

REY DESERVED BETTER. DAISY DESERVED BETTER. LUKE DESERVED BETTER. MARK DESERVED BETTER. FINN DESERVED BETTER. JOHN DESERVED BETTER. LEIA DESERVED BETTER. CARRIE DESERVED BETTER. POE DESERVED BETTER. OSCAR DESERVED BETTER.