#Fox is like a mentor to Leia

[notthestarwar]

First though, Leia will visit Fox. Across the galaxy, he is known by many things. They call him vod'alor. They call him the king of the clones, Prince of wanders. To Leia however, he will always just be Fox. [...]

Leia may not have recognised Anakin as anything but a donor, but there was more of him within her than anyone was entirely comfortable admitting. Their upbringings were so incredibly different, both before and after either of them would meet Jedi, that on a surface level, you might not notice it [...]

The conflict within Anakin, the fear it created, went long unnoticed. Left uncorrected, it would convince him to do terrible things. Leia though, she had Fox and Fox, he had noticed.

Fox, who'd met this small girl and seen what she was waring with. He'd seen the horrible potential in her and he'd loved her even more for it. Maybe, had he been anyone else, had he known Anakin better when he was still Anakin, he might have been terrified of what she might be. But Fox hadn't Known Anakin, Fox had only known himself. Fox had long held within him, a terrible fear, that he carried something evil, that he was evil. It had eaten him up inside, the idea that he had inherited this from Jango. But then he'd done the right thing in spite of that fear. So Fox looked at Leia and he didn't see Anakin, he just saw himself. [...]

Sometimes when you look in to the sky, if you get the time right, you can see whole galaxies. Each small light close enough together to look like one whole. A great swathe of light. Most of Fox's brothers, march on, far away. Pinpricks of light. But some of them, are here to remember the rest. That's what matters, at the end of things. That when you are gone, there might be someone to remember your name, your favourite colour.

The vode are a nomadic people. Most people in this galaxy have met at least one brother, in their lifetime. The vode travel and with them, they carry the stories that without them, might not be carried much longer.

They leave their mark on the galaxy with huge stone monuments, one such monument stands tall in the basin of the valley Fox calls home. [...]

[amplifyingtrace]

x;;I see my red door, I must have it painted black; Villain Leia {Dabi Mentor verse}

Villain verse with @pvtrefacere​

First up! Her new Villain outfit, which is her hero costume which has been cut into a jacket and dyed to match Dabi’s navy clothes.

She still has her bo-staff and her original boots have been reused and covered with black material even after dying them black. Wanting to make them stronger to withstand blows to her legs, either by her attacking someone and to withstand falling from high places. (Which they already were but with the added material over them made them a bit stronger)

Has two capture weapons which she has again dyed darker, still also uses her original belt but made it darker and added attachments for the capture weapons to latch onto.

The mask is based off of a fox, It is black with blue accents as Dabi is her mentor and he uses blue fire. The eyes are a gradient of blue green on either eye, she didn’t want anyone to also recognize her right away from her heterochromia. Also to hide when she is using her quirk as her eye glows as her only tell she is using it.

Not too long after the forest training arc and the students moving into the dorms to train even harder for the provincial exam. Leia found herself lacking in getting stronger even though she was working even harder than the rest of the students.

Being scared of being left behind, especially by her childhood friends. Izuku and Katsuki

Had just gotten her support item order in of two capture weapons, but never got to debut them to her classmates / friends.

Would have been practicing on her supermove at this time as well, but not completely mastering it just yet and didn’t have a name for it (Will come up with a name later on once finally perfecting it)

Around this time Dabi would be actively seeking her out to get her to join him. To do so would be through her grandparents, more importantly her grandfather after gaining some more intel on her.

Her grandfather would immediately ‘rat her out ‘ so to speak to save himself (partly his wife but mostly himself) after Dabi goes to threaten him and possibly use him to get Leia to come to him.

Her grandfather would flat out tell Dabi to just take his granddaughter and go as she and her quirk are both useless and would possibly add in a ‘don’t know why you want her but take her, do whatever you want with her she’s your problem now.’

This works way too well for Dabi’s plan and finds Leia not long afterwards to convince her to reject her family as they never cared about her. Adding in that he doing everything for her because otherwise her only use would be for the benefit of other heroes who only want your power for their benefit.

Dabi would use everything up his sleeve and more to manipulate her into finally joining him. (By video evidence of what her grandfather said or making sure she was nearby / there to hear the exchange)

Leia doesn’t realize Dabi is using her / manipulating her all in order to use her like Endeavor did with him, to create a perfect hero to surpass Endeavors successor.

Whenever Dabi pushes her too hard / cruel / snaps at her too harshly. He quickly “apologizes” to gain her trust again, saying "I'm sorry, but it's only because I expect great things from you- You understand right?" Then add in a soft older brother hair ruffle.

Her quirk eventually doesn’t give the same warm and comforting feeling when using it on you. The feeling it gives instead is fear, dread, and over all ill-intent which would stop someone in their tracks. All the while amplifying their quirk.

She can however control who she gives the ill-intent feeling too. So she wouldn’t be giving someone she considers an ally such a feeling, instead it gives them a low tingly feeling throughout their body. Or warm and comforting still depending but not as often.

Leia can also be used to see if someone has a quirk and how strong it is. Also how many quirks someone has too.

She will still use someone’s quirk against them by giving them blow back by the extra power behind it.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

What if Star Wars had tanked?

May 1977, 20th Century Fox distributes a really WEIRD movie.  It’s a science fiction fantasy story about medieval knight samurais in space with laser swords and fighter pilots.  Nobody expected it to be a hit, it seemed to be such a niche movie, one that would garner a small cult following then be swept under the rug by the other summer tent poles like “Smokey and the Bandit” or “The Spy Who Loved Me.”  To everyone’s surprise, it became an instant success, rocketing no name George Lucas from a no-name bush-league indie director into the echelon of A-list Blockbusters.  His idea for a decade spanning six part saga (two sequels, three prequels) was greenlit then and there, and the budget for Star Wars 2, now called Star Wars 5, was double what he was given for the original.  Star Wars 1, nor 4, was given the subtitle “A New Hope” to let audiences know it was just the beginning of a series, and the rest is history.

But in 1977, George Lucas was not as confident in his vision as he would soon become.  He figured, as every producer did, that his film would be a flash in the pan genre piece, something that would play in theaters just long enough to make it’s budget back, then disappear into obscurity.  In 1976, he planned for the worst.

Star Wars, like many other films of the day, was being given a novelization.  Before home media became ubiquitous, the only way people could experience the film was to see it in theaters or buy the book version.  Lucas hired a ghostwriter, Alan Dean Foster, to write the novelization of Star Wars 1, AND to create a tentative Star Wars 2 that could be adapted to the screen if the original film failed to meet his high expectations.  Star Wars 2, titled “Splinter of the Minds Eye,” was written to be as low budget as possible; no big set pieces, and for that matter no big sets.  Every scene had to take place in a set that the studio already owned, and couldn’t include any major space battles because there was no guarantee that the special effects would fit into the budget.  On top of that, it meant that none of the characters played by big name actors would be included; no Harrison Ford, no Alec Guinness.  Splinter was a bare bones story set entirely on what would essentially become Dagobah, and would have taken the franchise in an entirely different direction.  None of the story elements from Lucas’ dream sequel were included, and none of the plot twists either; there is no connection between “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye” and “Empire Strikes Back,” and in fact, once Empire was released, Splinter was relegated to secondary canon because the official sequel had overidden it so the story no longer made sense.

But if Star Wars 1 had flopped, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye would have been made into the official sequel, and the story would have had to pick up where it left off; Lucas didn’t plot out a low budget version of Star Wars 3, so we can only speculate as to what may have happened.

In Splinter, Luke and Leia are going on a diplomatic mission to convince some neutral star systems to join the rebellion.  Their ship crash lands on a backwater swamp planet (called Mimban, a name eventually used for the World War I trench planet in the Disney movie Solo), which is roughly analogous to the Dagobah we saw in Empire.  Stranded on the swamp planet, Luke and Leia find their way to an imperial mining colony, get into a scuffle, and escape with the help of a Jedi witch named Halla.  The titular “splinter of the mind’s eye” is a broken fragment of a magical crystal, because this was the 1970s and crystals were a big thing in fantasy (the splinter was called the kaiburr crystal; this name would later be re-purposed in canon as the crystals used for lightsaber and Death Star laser construction).  The splinter is said to focus the force, allowing the wielder to become more powerful or something; it’s a MacGuffin, the book is vague as to what it actually physically does.  After a confrontation with locals, and a duel with none other than Darth Vader (in which Leia wields a lightsaber and Luke cuts off Vader’s whole arm), Halla takes over the role of Luke’s mentor to train him in the ways of the Force.

At this point in the series, Luke and Leia were never intended to be brother and sister.  It was clearly supposed to be a chivalric romance between a knight errant and his courtly love.  He is the royal bodyguard to the Queen of Alderaan (the entire Royal Family was destroyed in Star Wars 1, so Princess Leia should by all rights have been coronated as Queen Leia).  George Lucas added the twist that they were brother and sister well into production of Empire; in fact, in Empire he shot two scenes of Leia kissing Luke (one was to make Han jealous, the other was near the end, right after she rescued Luke from cloud city; I’m glad they cut the second one, because it undermines the fact that she literally just told Han that she loves him).  Han Solo himself is mentioned in passing, not even by name, just as some pirate Luke used to know who took his reward money from the first movie and went to pay off some debts.  If this movie had been made instead of Empire, there’s no guarantee that a Star Wars 3 would even be greenlit.

But if it had been, here’s what would have happened.

Darth Vader is not Luke’s father in this version; that too was a twist Lucas invented after the series took off.  So, in this version of Star wars 3, which I will call “Revenge of the Jedi,” Luke goes on a quest to slay the evil Emperor.  It’s a fantasy movie, in any other setting the point of the franchise would be to kill the main bad guy; imagine if Lord of the Rings had ended without the heroes destroying the ring and defeating Sauron, that would have made no sense.  In this version of the story, Darth Vader is just the archetypal Black Knight; tying back into the Japanese influence on the series, he is an evil Shogun, appointed by the Emperor to be the military dictator.  There would be more emphasis on fight choreography in this version, drawing influence from the works of Akira Kurosawa.  The word Jedi comes from the word for the Japanese film genre Jidaigeki, meaning ‘period piece,’ featuring samuri and ronin (for western audiences, “Ronin” are nomadic heroes, like Clint Eastwood’s man with no name, or the Road Warrior).

Revenge of the Jedi would end with a climactic fight scene in the Emperor’s palace, with Luke battling his way through the many levels, defeating wave after wave of imperial soldiers and those red guards fans love to care about even though they do literally nothing on screen.  The prequels we got in canon were bogged down with boring politics about trade federations and unions and guilds and alliances, but politics can be interesting if done well (and written by someone who isn’t George Lucas; the original trilogy we got was good DESPITE him, not BECAUSE of him).  Revenge of the Jedi would see Leia building an army, the rebellion becoming an actual superpower in the galaxy; the New Republic wouldn’t just be restored after the Empire was defeated, it would be restored during the war with the express intent of rallying neutral systems behind an actual government body against the Emperor.

Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke’s father, but more importantly he committed genocide against Leia’s people, the survivors of which now live in diaspora.  Sound familiar?  “The Rebellion” isn’t a great name, but “the Alliance” is perfect because it evokes the Allies of World War II and shows that it is a galaxy-wide phenomena, not just a single splinter cell as depicted in the films in our timeline.  Luke wants to avenge his father, but if you’re insistent that the good guy isn’t allowed to kill the bad guy, you could have Vader go out the way he did in “Return of the Jedi,” turning back to the light side and sacrificing his life to kill the Emperor.  Everyone loves a redemption story, but Darth Vader really was a piece of shit and didn’t deserve to just get a free pass into Jedi Ghost Heaven because he decided to stop being evil five minutes before he died.

Maybe in this version of Star Wars 3, Harrison Ford returns for a cameo as a favor to George Lucas.  If so, he dies; Ford wanted Han to die in “Return of the Jedi,” and only agreed to do “The Force Awakens” if they finally killed him off then.  If he returns for “Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Jedi,” he will sacrifice himself for the Alliance, going out as a hero.  After the Emperor is defeated, the threat doesn’t just go away; suddenly there’s a power vacuum, with all the admirals and regional governor’s vying to replace him.  In both pre- and post-Disney Star Wars, the Emperor had a son (Triclops in Legends continuity, and Rey’s dad in Canon), so he would be heir to his father’s throne; perhaps he is propped up as a puppet for the military leaders, or maybe he surrenders to the Alliance and allows his Empire to be balkanized into dozens of independent powers, as with the fall of every great Empire; Rome (East and West), Mongolia, China, Austria-Hungary, Britain, the USSR, the list goes on.

This Star Wars trilogy would not be the enormous franchise we know today, it would still be a very niche series with a cult following.  It would be a step up from the Planet of the Apes series; sure, people have heard of it, and there have been attempts to revive it in the modern day, but it’s not even close to being a tent pole of the modern cultural zeitgeist.  Nobody looks forward to the new Planet of the Apes movie every year, it’s not a multi-billion dollar multi-media enterprise, there’s no dedicated “Planet of the Apes Celebration,” no cartoons, no streaming service shows that everyone geeks out about online, no triple-a video games, nothing.  This version of Star Wars would be just another weird artifact of the 1970s.  Maybe there would be a push to release a sequel, Star Wars 4, in like 2007, but that would be closer to Rambo IV or Superman Returns or Tron Legacy.

There are dedicated fans, but it’s not the biggest movie of the year.

Star Wars (1977)

Star Wars 2: Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (1979)

Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Jedi (1982)

Star Wars: Journal of the Whills (2011, a prequel set during the Clone Wars mentioned in the first movie)

[aaronobrian]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi - First Thoughts

Below are my first reactions to Star Wars The Last Jedi a day after I saw it in theaters. I posted this on Facebook that started a lot of discussion. To be clear I didn't completely hate Star Wars The Last Jedi. But it suffers from poor writing. Below are spoiler heavy points that I think amount to a 3rd grader writing a movie script. - - SPOILERS BELOW - - - - - - - - - - - - 1.) The slow chase scene of the First Order pursuing the Resistance is BORING! We are watching a Star Wars movie here not an episode of Star Trek Voyager. If I was the writer, I would make the Resistance fleet have enough fuel to make multiple jumps to lightspeed. Then have a cat and mouse chase between the Resistance and the First Order. We could have exciting and multiple star systems that the Resistance fleet could hide out. Sort of like the chase between the Millennium Falcon and the Imperial Fleet in Empire Strikes Back. But on a grander scale. We could see the fleet be picked off one by one in more of a dramatic way. We then could see Poe Dameron, Finn and Rose Tico shine better in defending the fleet.

2.) Finn’s character has NO point in this movie. Finn goes off on a wild goose chase because the movie needed something for him to do. (If they used my chase idea, Finn and Rose would be busy fight the First Order.)

In the past the rebellion had existed for generations simply because ships can pop from one place to the next in the blink of an eye. The Last Jedi introduces magical GPS tracking that essentially makes guerrilla-style warfare impossible. It’s the understandable why Finn and Rose fly off to a random planet modeled off of Monaco so they can disable the technology. This is something the movie does repeatedly, creating problems that didn’t exist before just so its characters can pull off blockbuster high jinks in pursuit of their solutions. Sadly, this entire plot is rendered pointless by the end as we learn Leia was retreating to an old Rebel base on the planet Crait. Alas, Fin, Rose and BB8 are caught and almost have their heads cut off by laser axes.

One of the best part of this movie is to see Finn’s character stop running. In the beginning Finn tries to escape the fleet in an escape pod and the end Finn is ready to sacrifice himself to save the Resistance.

3.) Poe Dameron is always wrong and then is rewarded for it. When Leia tells Poe to break off the attack on the First Order Dreadnaught, Poe ignores her. This leads to heavy losses for one victory. Poe is demoted because of this. When Poe is given no plan from Vice-Admiral Holdo (because COs don’t have to explain themselves to their subordinates), he concocts a plan for Finn and Rose to run off and find a codebreaker so as to infiltrate the First Order ship that’s chasing them. Then when his plan is almost ready to go into action, Poe finds out that Holdo is abandoning ship for the planet Crait. What does Poe do? He mutinies. One of the worst thing that can happen in an armies chain of command. But… the movie ends with Poe being rewarded as leader of the Resistance by Leia saying “don’t look at me, follow him”. (To your certain death?)

4.) Captain Phasma turns out to be completely pointless and dies.

5.) I have no problem that Leia might have powers from the Force. But we have never had a clue from her onscreen history. Yet we have the weird angel like (almost Twin Peaks-ish) scene Where her powers of the Force pulls her back from the brink of death. She’s floating in outer space without any protection and freezing her skin off. In this moment it’s done in a cringeworthy sort of way that’s obnoxious and very strange.

6.) Snoke dies in a hurry. In “The Force Awakens” the big bad was Snoke. There was all this speculation on his character - who he is, where did he come from. Fuck it! Kill him we don’t need to know. Like Darth Maul, Snoke seemed like an awesome bad guy. A suitable opponent to Rey and crew. Instead we are left with whiny emo bad guy Kylo Ren. For as fearsome as Snoke seemed to be, despite being able to throw a human being across a huge room with a flick of his finger and read everyone’s thoughts, has apparently lost his peripheral vision and can’t see that a lightsaber sitting right next to him is moving on its own. Dumb and lazy writing.

7.) Porgs and Vultpex (the Crystalline Fox) are almost pointless and they are a marketing ploy by Disney to make stuffed animal toys for children. Cash grab.

8.) Kylo Ren still is a whiny bitch. Isn’t Star War supposed to be epic? Why is the bad guy an emo kid that hates his dad and looking for a daddy? Darth Vader gave no fucks. The ending scene in Rogue One depicts this. But Kylo Ren is no Vader. He is a fainting baby of a bad guy. That punches his bedroom walls when he feels bad. When Kylo “turns” it prompts a truly fantastic fight scene where both Rey and Kylo are fighting side by side and working together to defeat their foes. It looks and feels so perfect, but that goes out the window the moment the fighting stops and Kylo reveals that he’s really just as much of an angsty kid as he’s always been. Couldn’t we have seen Ren evolve in this movie? Nah - Instead of fearsome we are given pathetic.

9.) Luke Skywalker is a hermit that wants out of this universe. I have no problem that Luke is shakened by his experience with Kylo Ren (Ben Solo). I have no problem that Luke wants to hang up his lightsaber. But Luke knows that Kylo killed his good buddy Han, that his sister is in deadly trouble and the universe is about be handed to the bad guys. And he still won’t spring into action??? When Rey asks Luke to train her, she receives a 3 minute crash course in the Force. Then Luke gives up when Rey is interested in a Dark Side seaweed hole. Well duh, yes - because NO ONE HAS TRAINED HER. (Dumb Ass!)

We do have a great scene when Force projection Luke faces off with the First Order and Kylo Ren. It was super fun and worth watching. But then Luke dies… So I guess Luke gets his wish.

10.) Rey is still untrained. Rey has no mentor. Maybe in episode 9 she’ll get a trainer. But I guess the untrained Rey can just magically control her powers and not be easily led to the Dark Side. But considering that Kylo Ren is such a weak bad guy, I guess she will prevail.

[darkspellmaster]

Not sure what to make of this, but could Rian be hinting at a bigger role for Poe in Episode IX?

WARNING HUGE AMOUNT OF SPOILERS READ BELOW THE CUT AT YOUR OWN RISK! 

I AM GIVING YOU A CHANCE TO BACK OUT NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED ABOUT SOME MAJOR ASPECTS OF THE LAST JEDI IN REGARD TO POE’S ROLE IN THE MOVIE AND ALSO REYS. THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING....

Okay now that that’s clear...

So I’ve notice that this hasn’t been talked about at all, and it’s something that I think needs to be discussed. During The Last Jedi, we get to know about a very important item that Leia has on her. Rey, as we know, has left in search of Luke. However she took with her a device that can be used as an item to track the Rebels. Leia wears the duplicate on her wrist, and mentions to Finn, when he asks about it, that it’s a device to lead Rey back to them. Her candle in the window so to speak. (Actual words I can’t recall at this second but that’s the gist of it.) This is a very important item as it shows there is life signs on the ship. Thus Rey knows where to find them and can locate them with the Falcon. 

This is a hugely important item, one that, plays a vital role in the story later. However, it becomes a very interesting thing not too long after Leia is knocked out. She drops the tracker and Finn takes it, with plans to get away from the ship and keep Rey safe from the FO as they are going after them through Hyperspace. You would think that Finn would keep this on him, but...in a twist, he does something rather interesting. While working on a plan with Poe and Rose he gives Poe the tracker. 

Keep in mind he tells Poe to keep it safe, and I think he mentions that it is something that will bring Rey back to them, so I believe Poe at least has an idea of what it is. Now suddenly Poe is holding two lives in his hands, in a way. Leia’s and Rey’s. And the interesting thing is, he keeps it on him. I think he actually wears it too.  Now the thing about Poe is that his story is telling something that is mirroring Rey’s and oddly Ben’s as well. Poe is having to deal with Vice Admiral Holdo, who, if you watched Twelve O’clock high and  you have an idea of Commander Savage is you should have a good idea of Holdo’s no nonsense character. Poe is rash in this movie, costing them a number of members of the rebellion, numbers they need. Leia tries to drill this into his head, but, like Ben Solo, he makes various bad choices that lead him into a fight with Holdo. His distaste of Holdo’s more strict regulations, things that are keeping a number of the crews safe, shows and the two seem to have it out. This leads to Poe going behind Holdo’s back with Finn and Rose to shut down the tracking system, and nearly ends up getting his friend killed in the process. 

At the same time we see Rey dealing with two things. An authority figure in Luke that she has a hard time understanding, and a force bond with Ben Solo, who is all sorts of conflicted at this point. It’s interesting to note here that Rey and Poe seem to be making decisions based, not fully understanding everything before them. They think they know what’s best, but it ends up screwing them over in the end. For Rey it’s trusting Ben, and for Poe it’s not trusting Holdo. 

It’s near the end that both realize their mistakes and learn from them, and this is where things get very interesting to me. Rey, as per the trailers, is being harmed by Snoke, but the shot that it cuts to is not an upset Ben or Finn, but rather Poe. Poe had been Stunned by Leia after his little mutinay and was out cold. He suddenly wakes up as if feeling Rey’s pain, to run and see the world breaking around him. 

Now one thing that I have to point out is that Poe grew up around a Force Tree. During the comics and even the novel of Poe’s story, we learned that Luke had asked his mother Shara Bey for a favor, which was to go with him to get two force Tree saplings. The first he planted at his temple, the second he gave to Shara who put it on their house on Yarvin 4. This becomes important to the fact that Poe grew up around a high level of Force senstivity and seems to display a lower bit of it. Having that explains some of the piloting skills he has, as well as the way he was able to sense out the foxes escape route. 

This bit of that info also plays into another scene but not between Rey and Poe but between Luke and Leia earlier. In it, Luke calls out to his sister in the force, and wakes her up. This is going to seem odd but, what if the same thing is happening with Rey and Poe only in a different way? 

Humor me here for a second. Ben and Rey have a force bond now, created when Ben was going at Rey’s mind for info about Luke thanks to Snoke. Snoke claims he created that, but the force is a strange and fickled thing. So could it be that when Snoke is torturing Rey, to get info from her about Luke, he managed to some how create a lighter bond between Poe and Rey? 

There’s also the fact that Poe is being shown as the man that Ben could have been, and Leia treats him as a son. Poe lost his mother at an early age and Leia has been acting as a mother figure as well as a mentor to him for a long while now. He cares for her deeply, like she is is own mom. So there’s this weird dynamic going on here. Ben and Poe are mirrors of one another, and, I think that the reason why we’re seeing more on Poe now is because now Rey can see him. 

Let me explain, Finn at this point is worried not just about Rey but about Rose as well, and Rey is watching that with a bit of sadness as she probably is wondering what to do now. Poe is also sort of in the same spot. He’s lost several of his team and must figure out their next move with Leia. So both are in the same place and matured enough to move forward. 

Add to that, their meeting. Well new meeting. The very fact that Rey knows who Poe is, and Poe is “I know” clearly shows that he knows that everyone he loves cares about her and he can see why. He’s amazed at her, and has every reason to be, she saved them when they needed it. 

So my best guess is that Poe is going to be used as a mirror for Ben to be pulled back to the light, and more then likely we’ll see Rey and him spend more time together as Finn will be busy with Rose. 

[aion-rsa]

Star Wars: Leigh Brackett and The Empire Strikes Back You Never Saw

https://ift.tt/3wmIs4K

The Empire Strikes Back is a masterpiece of blockbuster cinema and the standard by which we measure all other big-screen space adventures. But before it became the magnum opus of the original Star Wars trilogy, the spark that would become The Empire Strikes Back floated in the nothingness of space, waiting for its big bang. 

When Star Wars premiered in May 1977, the saga’s sequel could have gone either the low-budget or blockbuster route. Although we got the latter, there was already a plan in case the film wasn’t a huge hit. George Lucas hired Alan Dean Foster, who ghost-wrote the novelization of the first film, to write a relatively subdued sequel. That story eventually became the first Expanded Universe novel in the franchise’s history, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, which sees Luke and Leia crash on a jungle planet and face off with Darth Vader in a race against time to find a mysterious gem called the Kaiburr crystal. 

But since Star Wars was such a huge success, Lucas had a much bigger problem on his hands. He now had to follow his beloved blockbuster with an even better sequel. While planning part two, Lucas was also busy building his very own empire—Lucasfilm—while continuing to foster innovation at Industrial Light & Magic. And as J.W. Rinzler’s The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back points out, Lucas planned to finance his sequel out of his own pocket in order to keep 20th Century Fox from tinkering with the film. As a result, he decided to step away from writing and directing the second Star Wars movie.

Leigh Brackett, Rogue Leader

Lucas turned to space opera legend Leigh Brackett to pen the script, which was later revised by Lawrence Kasdan and Lucas himself. These days, most fans are familiar with Kasdan’s contributions to Star Wars, but it’s possible that you haven’t heard of Empire’s first scribe at all. Brackett, who Lucas first met through a friend during his search for a screenwriter, was vital to the creative process of Empire, especially in its pivotal early days.

Perhaps Brackett isn’t a household name in Star Wars circles today because she died of cancer in March 1978, only weeks after she had turned in the very first draft of the script. But long before she took the gig in 1977, Brackett was well known in the science fiction community for her pulpy space operas and planetary romance novels and short stories. Brackett also mentored a young Ray Bradbury and traveled in the same circles as Robert A. Heinlein. She was a sci-fi giant.

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

But sci-fi was far from her only claim to fame. By 1977, Brackett had written 10 films, including The Big Sleep, which she co-wrote with Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Faulkner and veteran screenwriter Jules Furthman, as well as classics like Rio Bravo, El Dorado, and The Long Goodbye. 

Lucas and Brackett met several times in late 1977 to hash out an outline for “Star Wars II.” Together, they figured out the skeleton of the film’s plot, which remained pretty much intact in later drafts, although there were some differences, according to Rinzler’s book. For one thing, Darth Vader wasn’t Luke’s father in the outline.

The Yoda character didn’t receive his iconic name until later drafts of the script. In the earliest outlines, Yoda was named “Buffy,” which was short for “Bunden Debannen.” Lucas writes in the outline, “Buffy very old—three or four thousand years. Kiber crystal in sword? Buffy shows Luke? Buffy the guardian. ‘Feel not think.’” Close enough.

From this outline, Brackett set to work on The Empire Strikes Back.

The Ice Planet

A scanned version of the draft, which is simply titled “Star Wars Sequel,” includes plenty of (semi-legible) handwritten notes and crossed out lines. It’s unclear whether these are Brackett’s notes to herself after meeting with Lucas, or if Lucas himself scribbled on the pages, but it’s fascinating to read the notes along with the typed words on the page. Here is the key to the creative process that would eventually result in one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time.

Brackett’s draft introduces all of the big moments we’d eventually see on screen. We still get a version of the Battle of Hoth, the wise words of an old Jedi Master, the excitement of zooming through a deadly asteroid field, a love triangle, a majestic city in the clouds, unexpected betrayals, and the climactic duel between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. 

The rough draft begins, not with a shot of deep space, but a fade-in on an ice planet, which isn’t named in this draft. Luke and Han are riding their “snow lizards” around the planet’s surface, looking for lifeforms that might endanger their Rebel base, which Brackett describes as an “ice castle.” The writer’s love of space fantasy comes through in her descriptions, which set the tone of the script as a more classic piece of science fiction. Even something as simple as the “ice formations” that catch Luke’s attention while scouting with Han benefit from dazzling detail. 

“Dimly there appears through the veils [of snow] a formation of rocks,” Brackett writes, “or perhaps ice of exceptional beauty, catching points of fire from the sun.” It’s clear she understands the Star Wars universe, even in its relatively early days, as she instills that sense of wonder for the universe and its exotic locations.

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But in other places her script more closely resembles the burnished chrome of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials. Barely in sight is the rusty, lived-in universe that Lucas had established in 1977.

And there are hints of high fantasy, too. The ice monster, which is not yet called a “Wampa,” that Luke encounters on the planet’s surface can “vanish in a burst of vapor,” more magical wraith than hulking beast. This isn’t the one-off adversary from the film, either, but just one of a horde of ice monsters that later attack the Rebel ice castle. 

The ice planet segment actually makes up a large chunk of the movie, and you can tell that Brackett loves writing the chaos inside the Rebel base, which is first invaded by monsters and then attacked by the Empire—who bring “tank-type crawlers” to the party, undoubtedly the predecessors of the AT-ATs. And she has fun portraying the Rebellion as a group of bumbling idiots, too. Even though “1,026 systems” have joined their cause since their victory at Yavin, the Rebels in this draft are ill-prepared for war, many frozen to death by burst water pipes inside the base. Their attempt to repel an exceptionally organized attack by the ice monsters is perhaps best accompanied by “The Benny Hill Theme.”

The ice castle scenes also establish one of the major pitfalls of Brackett’s draft: the love triangle between Luke, Han, and Leia, which is about as subtle as a Vader Force choke. Brackett embraces traditional romance tropes in her approach, as a much more damsel-like Leia falls into the hero’s arms on multiple occasions for a make-out session. Leia becomes the object of male affection and not much else, while Han and Luke are the rough-around-the-edges and baby-faced beefcakes vying for her love. It was the later revisions that introduced a lot of the nuance to Han and Leia’s budding relationship.

Castle Vader

Meanwhile, the sinister Darth Vader needs Leia in order to lure Luke to Orbital City, this draft’s version of Cloud City. Interestingly enough, for a movie eventually called The Empire Strikes Back, the Empire is scarcely in the first two acts of this draft. The villains don’t appear on screen until 20 pages in, and not in a fleet of Star Destroyers in pursuit of the Rebel base as we see in the finished film. Instead, we first meet the titular bad guys in “the administrative center” of the Empire, the planet Ton Muund. There, Vader waits in his castle.

Brackett writes, “Ton Muund should have an odd sort of day; perhaps a blue star.” The planet doesn’t appear often in the script, but Ton Muund is as richly realized as the rest of the settings Brackett describes. Ton Muund was also likely a precursor to the Imperial homeworld of Coruscant. Rinzler also points out in his book that Lucas considered putting a “city planet” in the movie and a “water planet” with an underwater city, locations we’d later see in the prequels.

Vader’s basic motivation is established in this draft: he must find Luke. It’s interesting how Brackett plays up Luke and Vader’s connection. While they aren’t father and son in this draft (that came in Lucas’ revision of Brackett’s script), Luke and Vader do have a unique relationship through the Force. Here, Vader is written more like a dark wizard who can attack Luke with the Dark Side from across the galaxy. There are several instances in the script where Vader manages to get into Luke’s head with the Force. We see this as early as the escape from the ice planet, when Luke is knocked unconscious by Vader while piloting past the Imperial ships. 

A lot of Vader’s later depth is missing here, as he simply seeks revenge on Luke for his humiliation at Yavin. By the end of the script, though, Vader senses that Luke could be a powerful asset for the Dark Side, and he tries to turn him during their climactic duel in the depths of Orbital City. Yet, without the famous reveal, this confrontation feels a lot less exciting.

Luke’s Training and Minch

One of the crucial sections of The Empire Strikes Back is Luke’s Jedi training on Dagobah, under the tutelage of Master Yoda. Much of this storyline was nailed down in Brackett’s script. Things play out pretty much as they do on screen: Luke crash lands on the “bog planet” and meets a little “frog-like” old man named Minch, whom he doesn’t immediately recognize as a powerful Jedi Master. Minch takes Luke as his student, despite his reservations, in order to prepare the young hero for his fight against the Dark Side. 

This storyline also features one of the script’s most controversial scenes: after Minch teaches Luke how to summon Ben’s Force ghost (Obi-Wan can’t appear unless summoned through the Force), his old mentor shows up… and brings Luke’s father with him! Only identified as “Master Skywalker” rather than Anakin, Luke’s dad expresses how proud he is of his son. He also reveals that Luke has a twin sister, although it’s not Leia, but someone named Nellith who’s never mentioned again in the script (a possible thread left over for the third movie). The scene ends with Minch, Ben, and the elder Skywalker “knighting” Luke with their lightsabers, effectively awarding him the title of Jedi, although he must face one final test in order to be a true member of the Order: defeat Vader. 

That fight takes place on “Hoth,” which movie fans will recognize as Bespin. Like in the film, this is where Luke, Han, and Leia will eventually be reunited.

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City in the Clouds

Han, who is less mercenary and more proper Rebel soldier in this draft, isn’t trying to get back to Jabba to pay off a debt. In fact, there aren’t any bounty hunters in this movie at all. You can thank Lucas and Kasdan for the addition of Boba Fett in later drafts.

Before the attack on the ice planet, Leia instructs Han to go on a mission to convince his stepfather Ovan Marekal, leader of “the Transport Guild,” to join the Rebellion. Brackett imagines Marekal as “the most powerful man in the galaxy next to the Emperor,” so he’s probably a good guy to have on your side. But as in the film, you never see that mission play out, since Han is busy running from the Empire and romancing Leia. 

The final act on Hoth contains the script’s best moments, and it’s where Brackett’s classic sci-fi style really shines through, as the Falcon lands on the planet’s surface way below its blanket of clouds. Brackett gives us a green landscape of ruined cities, where “noble-looking” natives with “white skin and hair,” known as “Cloud People,” ride on flying “mantas.” Han hopes that they can all hide out with his pal Lando Kadar (same Lando, different last name) until their troubles with the Empire blow over. Lando had established a trader’s outpost on Hoth’s surface when last Han saw him but has since built a huge Orbital City in the clouds above. 

Lando is still a sweet talker, but infinitely more lonely. Here, Lando is one of the last of a long-forgotten batch of clones left over from the Clone Wars. Lando reveals his backstory to Han’s friends in an emotional monologue: “It didn’t seem strange to us to see our own faces endlessly repeated in the streets of our cities. It gave us a sense of oneness, of belonging. Now, when every face is new and different, I feel truly alone.” 

Lando has been taken in by the leader of the Cloud People, Chief Bahiri, who considers him a son. Goodwill for Lando doesn’t last long, though, since he still betrays Han in order to protect his interests on Orbital City, getting Bahiri killed in the process.

While Han and friends are taken captive like in the film, there’s no torture scene, and no one is frozen in carbonite. In fact, there isn’t much tension in their captivity at all, since it’s more like house arrest. Brackett doesn’t quite provide a dramatic escape scene either, although there is a part where Han has to blow open a set of hangar doors with the Falcon’s thrusters. Things don’t pick up during Luke and Vader’s epic confrontation, either. Lando’s betrayal is Brackett’s big twist and the script lacks the epic climax of the final product. 

Brackett’s draft ends on the Rebel planet Besspin Kaalieda, “an extremely beautiful planet [that] revolves jewl-like [sic] in space.” There, Luke and Leia bid farewell to Han and Chewie, as the Falcon sets off on its mission to parts unknown in order to find Marekal in the third film. As if he were in Camelot at the end of a great adventure, Luke salutes the retreating ship with his lightsaber, the blade pointed towards the stars.

The Cliffhanger

It’s impossible to know how Empire would’ve changed had Brackett been able to work on a second draft. Perhaps more of her pulpy sensibility would have shone through on screen. But when she brought Lucas the draft in early 1978, he was underwhelmed.

“Writing has never been something I have enjoyed, and so, ultimately, on the second film I hired Leigh Brackett. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out; she turned in the first draft, and then she passed away,” Lucas said in Laurent Bouzereau’s Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays. “I didn’t like the first script, but I gave Leigh credit because I liked her a lot. She was sick at the time she wrote the script, and she really tried her best. During the story conferences I had with Leigh, my thoughts weren’t fully formed and I felt that her script went in a completely different direction.”

But Brackett’s attempt is no failure. In 124 pages, the writer gives us grand adventure, exotic planets, and colorful characters. It’s The Empire Strikes Back, from a certain point of view. 

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Notes

While researching this article, I took extensive notes on the differences between “Star Wars Sequel” and what would eventually become The Empire Strikes Back. I’m including this list below to give you a full picture of the “Star Wars Sequel” that might have been:

– Tauntaun is just called a “snow lizard.” Hoth is just known as “ice planet.”

– Ice formation catches Luke’s attention, not probe droid “meteor.”

– Weird 3PO exposition about the state of the Empire post-Battle of Yavin. 

– Han mentions “God” in the rough draft. It would have been the only potential mention of God in the saga. The draft also mentions sharks!

– Ice planet is “the fourth planet of this detached system at the edge of the Granida Cluster.” A much larger chunk of the rough draft (40 pages, which equal 40 minutes of screen time) takes place on this planet than in the final film. 

– Scene involving holo-map that shows clear war front of Galactic Civil War. Empire in red and Rebels in green. 1,026 systems have joined the Rebellion. 

– Han Solo has a stepfather named Ovan Marekal. Leia wants Han to convince Ovan Marekal, “most powerful man in the galaxy next to the Emperor,” to join the Rebellion. Marekal is the leader of the Transport Guild. Interestingly enough, Han is an actual member of the Rebellion in this draft, as opposed to the more “mercenary” role in The Empire Strikes Back. Han agrees to go on the mission. 

– Han, Leia, and Luke’s love triangle is WAY more overt in the rough draft. Several love scenes between the three of them.

– Luke doesn’t wake up upside down in “ice monster” cave. He hears Ben’s voice, which tells him to “Remember the Force,” as he faces the monster. No mention of the word “Wampa” in entire draft. These ice monsters can “vanish in a burst of vapor.”

– Han and Leia go searching for Luke on snow lizards and find him almost immediately on-screen. Ben does not appear as a Force ghost at all to tell Luke to go to Dagobah.

– “Commander Willard” worries ice monsters pose a threat to Rebel base. His fears are realized later when these ice monsters attack the Rebel base, which is described as an “ice castle.” 

– Luke tells his friends he saw Ben. It’s an interesting moment since he never admits to seeing ghosts in The Empire Strikes Back. 

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– Luke, Han, and Leia accidently discover a mysterious crystal that resembles “a memory cell” in lightsaber hilt. Fun fact here also: Brackett switches between “saber” and “sabre” throughout the script. At one point, she also calls the weapon a “lightsword.”

– The “memory cell” holds coordinates to “perhaps place where my father was trained.” Not sure how Luke comes to this conclusion. This will eventually lead him to the “bog planet” that becomes Dagobah in the final script. 

– Ben talks (but doesn’t physically appear) to Luke again in the sick bay and puts Luke in an odd Force trance. 

– A planet called Ton Muund is introduced as “the administrative center of the Empire.” The Empire doesn’t actually enter the draft until 20 pages in. Brackett writes a beautiful description of the planet: “Ton Muund should have an odd sort of day; perhaps a blue star.”

– Darth Vader is never on the Star Destroyer Executor in the draft. Instead, we see him scheming in “Vader’s Private Quarters” or “Vader’s Castle” on Ton Muund. Vader finds the Rebel base by interrogating a trader, instead of through the probe droid from The Empire Strikes Back. You’ll notice that this version of Vader doesn’t Force choke anyone in the entire story, and that’s just unacceptable.

– Darth Vader is considered a Jedi. No mention of the Sith. 

– Script mistakenly says that Luke sent Darth Vader spinning out of control during Battle of Yavin’s climactic scene, instead of Han. 

– Death Star is also mistakenly called “Death World” at one point. 

– Darth Vader and “Master Skywalker,” who is Luke’s father in the rough draft, are two separate characters. 

– Luke “feels” the Empire approaching the Rebel base, instead of Han and Chewie discovering the probe droid. Imperials attack the base while the Rebels are also repelling the ice monsters. The monsters have broken overhead water pipes that instantly freeze many Rebels.

– Luke is separated from the others by a wall of ice from said broken overhead pipes. Luke leaves in Leia’s ship with R2. Han, Leia, Chewie, and a frozen C-3PO leave on Falcon. Same setup as The Empire Strikes Back. 

– Brackett introduces a Rebel character named “Sedge,” who is Leia’s personal pilot. Unclear if Sedge is actually Wedge Antilles. Sedge dies before he can take off.

– Darth Vader tries to contact Luke through the Force during the ice planet escape, knocking Luke unconscious in Leia’s ship. R2 manages to use the lightsaber crystal with coordinates to send the ship to hyperspace.

– There’s no asteroid field section above ice planet. Instead, the asteroid field scenes come when the Millennium Falcon arrive at a Rebel rendezvous that’s actually an Imperial ambush. Han is able to maneuver Falcon through asteroids, shaking the Imperials off their tail, and he hides the ship in an asteroid cave. No Exogorth in asteroid…

– Han and Leia make out A LOT while waiting in the asteroid cave. In several instances, Chewbacca and Threepio watch and comment on the love scenes. It’s kind of disturbing…Also, Chewie is jealous of Han and Leia’s newfound love.

– Luke arrives on bog planet. No mention of “Dagobah.”

– Yoda is named “Minch” in the rough draft and described as “frog-like.” As in ESB, Luke doesn’t recognize Minch as a Jedi Master. It’s only after Ben’s Force ghost appears that Luke respects Minch, who takes Luke as his student. 

– “By the Force, I call you!” Minch yells to summon Ben’s Force ghost. They duel. It’s described as “fencing.” Ben’s ghost has to be called through the Force, he can’t just appear.

– During early scenes between Minch and Luke, you can see why a lot of the dialogue in this draft was not kept by the final film. Such painful lines include, “There was precious little wood on Tatooine to chop.”

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– Minch explains the Dark Side to Luke: “It’s the dark side of you.” It’s the inherent evil that all beings are born with. Minch says Darth Vader was the first Dark Jedi in a long time. 

– After an undisclosed amount of time in training, Luke summons Ben’s Force ghost, who also brings Luke’s father along. Master Skywalker reveals that Luke has a twin sister named Nellith. Skywalker, Ben, and Minch award Luke his knighthood. 

– It is revealed that Darth Vader can attack Luke with the Dark Side of the Force from across the galaxy. Luke and Darth Vader have some kind of “Force fight” that stands in for the Dagobah cave scene from The Empire Strikes Back.

– Luke senses that Leia is on Hoth and that Darth Vader is waiting for him. Minch tells Luke he must face Vader in person as a “final test.” Very different from Yoda’s advice in the film. 

– Darth Vader only appears about three times in the first 70 pages of the rough draft.

– Darth Vader refers to Emperor Palpatine as “Your Imperial Highness/Majesty.”

– Lando Calrissian is “Lando Kadar” in rough draft. His family were refugees from the Clone Wars. It is later revealed that Lando is in fact “a clone of the Ashardi family.” He gives a beautiful monologue about being a clone: “It didn’t seem strange to us to see our own faces endlessly repeated in the streets of our cities. It gave us a sense of oneness, of belonging. Now, when every face is new and different, I feel truly alone.”

– Brackett describes Lando as “handsome, like Rudolph Valentino.” Valentino was an Italian-American actor from the 20s. He was considered a sex symbol at the time and was nicknamed “The Latin Lover.”

– Lando became “respectable” on “Hoth,” which is what Bespin is called in the rough draft. Han explains the word “Hoth” means “cloud.” Hoth is a planet covered in clouds with a green landscape of ruined cities. Lando built a big trading outpost on planet’s surface. There’s no mention that Lando once owned the Millennium Falcon in this draft.

– Han et al are attacked by Hoth natives known as the White Bird Clan of the Cloud People. They are noble-looking warriors, with white hair and skin, and they ride giant manta-rays in the sky. The clan is led by a character named Chief Bahiri.

– Cloud City exists in the rough draft and is referred to as “Orbital City.”

– Leia uses a fake identity on Orbital City. She calls herself “Ethania Eredith,” a smuggler’s daughter who escaped her planet with Han Solo after her father died. 

– Threepio still gets blown up on Orbital City. Lando still ambushes the heroes in the dining hall, where Darth Vader is waiting. The heroes are not taken prisoner, but they aren’t allowed to leave Orbital City. Vader plans to use them to lure Luke to Hoth.

– Han is never frozen in carbonite and there are NO bounty hunters on his tail in the entire draft.

– Bahiri helps Luke get into Orbital City via flying manta-ray. You can really see Brackett’s planetary romance/space fantasy roots coming through in this scene. 

– Stormtroopers kill Bahiri and the rest of the Cloud People. 

– Han, Leia, Lando, Chewie, R2, and Threepio escape Orbital City on the Falcon. 

– Luke faces Darth Vader in “Vader’s Apartment” in Orbital City. Luke uses the Dark Side to fight Vader. No “I am your father” moment, obviously. Luke falls over railing into the Orbital City core but manages to escape in the Falcon, much like in ESB. in this draft, Luke gets to keep his hand.

– The heroes arrive on Besspin Kaalieda, “an extremely beautiful planet [that] revolves jewl-like [sic] in space.”

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– Han heads out on mission to find Ovan Marekal. Luke salutes the Falcon with his lightsaber. Roll credits. 

The post Star Wars: Leigh Brackett and The Empire Strikes Back You Never Saw appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[kyluxtrashpit]

Okay so now for the real post. I was prepared to write this whole big thing about the kylux fandom and why I’m staying despite some things and such but honestly the movie was pretty good? As some of you know, I was fucking TERRIFIED I’d have to leave the ship (also shoutout to those who helped calm me down; you know who you are <3). I have some quibbles, which I’ll get into below, but overall it was pleasantly surprising. FYI this post of full of spoilers and please remember I spoiled myself on a good amount of it before going in. I’m also very happy I did

And also… this was all 100% in line with the headcanons I already had for kylux? I’ve seen a lot of people freaking out and jumping ship and saying we need to completely reimagine the characters, which, sure, if you want to, go nuts, but idk I didn’t personally get anything like that? Snoke pitting them against each other, because you know if he talked shit about Hux to Kylo, he’s definitely doing it the other way around too. And yes, Kylo does attack Hux, but Hux was also about to kill him before he woke up, even if Kylo doesn’t know that, so we’re in exactly the same place as before. I could talk a lot about why their characterizations are exactly in line with the way I saw and wrote them before and why Kylo taking on the mantle of Supreme Leader does not mean Hux is inferior to him in practice in any way, shape, or form, but this post is way too fucking long already so I’ll save it for another day

Instead, here’s a list of Thoughts in no particular order:

Kylo was fucking PHENOMENAL. This. This is what I wanted. My boy being unstable as fuck and making terrible split-second impulse decisions and getting himself in way over his head. He’s going to regret taking the throne in like 3 days. Guaranteed. He’s made the biggest mistake of his life and he doesn’t even know it yet because he has no idea what he actually wants, just saw an opportunity and went ‘oh shit… the throne is empty… wait. I know how to sit?? I could sit on it??? YES THIS IS A GREAT IDEA I’M THE NEW LEADER FUCK YES’. I fucking love my disaster boy. I love him so much I can’t even articulate it

Also like… Rey shows him one small moment of kindness and he’s immediately like ‘someone was nice to me??? okay cool this is all it took to convince me to kill my abusive mentor for the last better part of a decade who’s been in my head for almost my entire life just because of that’ and like… that is both the most Kylo thing I’ve ever seen and the biggest mood I’ve ever had. This is why we always wrote Hux capable of manipulating him and why Snoke was able to manipulate him; Kylo aches for positive attention from literally anyone

“I want every gun we have to fire on that man” JFC HONEY NO. But on a more serious note, the second the mask comes off, all of his control is gone. He’s trying so hard to assert his dominance and power over everyone he encounters because he thinks that will make him feel better, that it’s what he wants, but he’s so fucking out of control and out of his depth that it just utterly falls flat, just like in tfa after the mask came off. He can Force choke and throw people all he wants, literally no one is fooled. He has no idea what he’s doing and it’s staggeringly obvious

I also really liked seeing baby Ben, even for just like 10 seconds

Literally the only Kylo thing I did not like were his pants. Like goddamn boy, that waist is way too high. No wonder your temper is so finicky. I’d be angry too if I was wearing uncomfortable, excessively high-waisted pants all the time

I, too, did not like the dumb humour with Hux (see: the entire opening bit. Like literally all of it; Poe should not have been able to pull that off and Hux is not that stupid) but I also still see the Hux I’ve come to love in there. The snark, pulling a gun without hesitation on Kylo for the double tap but being smart enough to hide it when he wakes up, the entire command shuttle bit (except the Force throw – that was unnecessary), and especially that glare of absolute rage and hatred at Kylo once he turns away inside the base on Crait. I’m okay with tired disaster Hux and you can tell he’s already planning a coup. The army seems to still be under his control anyway; he just needs to wait until Kylo finishes digging his own grave and then give him that extra push into it

That said, I’m really glad we got to see Hux bitch slap someone, even if I wish it hadn’t been Finn

Rose was the other highlight of the movie right up until the kiss with Finn. I loved their interactions but the unnecessary heterosexuality was just… no. And then the bit at the end that definitely looked towards a love triangle? *loud gagging noises* no, fuck that shit. Literally everything else with her was absolutely amazing though, especially the Canto Bight stuff

Finn felt… off somehow? I can’t explain why, but he just felt like a weaker character here. Finn was really compelling in tfa and I really wanted more with him and to learn more about him, but I feel like he didn’t do much? The fight with Phasma was a little underwhelming (also she deserved to go out more impressively than that) and most of the other stuff was someone else instigating and him just going along. He seemed… too passive, maybe? I can’t put my finger on what was off, but I didn’t like it and I’m a little let down there. I also really wanted him to be Force-sensitive and really felt he was built up to be. How else was he the only person to ever break FO conditioning?

Poe was also… not how I imagined? I always saw him as the ‘calm pal’ kinda guy but I guess he’s a little more jumped up than I expected. Not a gripe, per se, but just surprising. They also very much did demote him from main character status, which is kinda sad

Admiral Holdo was a fucking boss and I love her. So was Leia for most of it (expect what was with that space scene?). Fuck yeah powerful older women. I need so much more immediately. However, I also wish Leia had gotten more time and it also saddens me that she’s now lost her entire family. Yes, she has the Resistance, and Poe and Rey and Finn, but she has no one from her past. Literally no one. Leia had already lost so much coming into this trilogy and it’s absolutely tragic that all she did was lose more. Leia deserved better, but with Carrie gone, we know Leia won’t be getting it in 9

DJ WAS FANTASTIC. I did not see that coming. And I hope we never see him again because it would ruin the purpose of his character

I liked most of Rey’s arc. I wasn’t sure about the Force bond (I knew about it beforehand) but it ended up working for me and was actually really cool. I still do not ship r*ylo at all (it’s just not for me, ship what you want), but their interactions are intriguing and I can understand why things played out how they did. Rey wanted help for the rebellion and a teacher. She thought that was Luke, but it wasn’t, and then she thought that was Kylo, but it wasn’t. I think she just needs to realize that maybe it’s up to her to be the one to help the rebellion. She’s figured out most of the Force on her own already; I don’t think she needs a teacher. Although the jealous look towards Finn and Rose was just awful. I’m also very concerned for her arc in 9 because I swear if they make it all about trying to save Kylo, I’d be fucking pissed. She’s her own character. She doesn’t exist to help him

I’m also… not sure I buy Rey being a nobody? It’s either a lie or just bad writing to lead up to it. Because in tfa, it’s always ‘who’s the girl?’, ‘what girl?’, etc. I also always got the feeling that Kylo knew who she was, somehow? And why did the Skywalker family lightsaber choose her over Kylo? Why does she have the same amount of power as Kylo if there’s no relation whatsoever? How are her parents buried on Jakku if she saw a ship flying away? I just feel like it was built up to lead elsewhere and then it didn’t. Then again, it is possible Kylo is lying or only thinks he knows, but idk. It’s not that I hate the idea of her being a nobody, but the execution of it was tremendously clumsy

As for Luke… I don’t know. Luke has never been the kind of person to attack first. He is a gentle flower. The entire point of him is his idealism, his hope, his kindness. Even if it was in a moment of instinct, of fear, I don’t think he’d pull a lightsaber first on anyone, especially a family member, no matter how much Dark was in him. Luke saw the Light in Darth Vader, of all people. That it was stressed to be an accident and for Luke to realize he’d fucked up big helped, but I still don’t know if I buy it. I understand bringing flaws to Luke, but I don’t think these were the right flaws to bring. I… don’t know. I haven’t decided how I feel about this yet. And also his death was just odd? What killed him? Was the implication that Force-projecting that far is too hard? Idk, it was really strange and I didn’t get it. I need to think on how I feel about it. Also ‘see you around, kid’ was a pretty dumb last line. Even though I’m pretty sure it was more a promise/threat than anything else. He’s going to be haunting the shit out of everyone

I really liked the crystal foxes. I want 10 of them immediately. However, I have no strong feelings one way or the other on the porgs

THE FUCKING IRON. Jfc I was like ‘omfg that ship looks like an iron, that’s so ridiculous’ AND THEN IT WASN’T A SHIP, IT WAS JUST AN IRON. It was inordinately funny to me. I lost my shit and my friend gave me a dubious look

I wish we’d seen the KOR and I really, really hope we do in 9. Come on, JJ, I believe in you. Let me see the rest of the disaster children in action

Yoda’s cameo was kinda dumb and unnecessary. I know that was supposed to be the moment that changed Luke’s mind but… ehhh. I could’ve done without

The bit at the end with the random kid was also stupid and I wish they’d cut it

Now the biggest thing is… where the fuck are they going with 9? The Resistance is 10 people in the Falcon, the Order is being run by a guy who has absolutely no fucking clue what he’s doing and a second in command that is ready to murder the shit out of him the second he gets the chance. Leia probably won’t be there, so the OT trio is gone. This movie was also weird because it was like… the span of a day and a half? At most? It’s a really strange timeline to go with imo and it’s going to make 9 hard. I’m scared Rey will become an accessory to Kylo’s story (which is most likely going to end up as an even more ham-fisted redemption arc than it would’ve been if it had started in 8). Like no one is in a powerful place. If there were 2 more movies coming, I think it would work, but with only 1? Ehhhh, idk. I have faith in JJ but in some ways he’s been written into a corner, I think. We’ll have to see, I guess

[avani008]

TLJ Reaction Post

Short version: meh.

Longer version: behind the cut for length, disorganized rambling, general grumpiness, and spoilers. I haven’t really looked at anyone else’s reaction posts yet, so I’m sure my opinions could very well be diametrically opposed to everyone else’s, in which case....oops?

*I have mixed feelings about Poe’s actions in the first scene: one would think he’d have learned to be more pragmatic over the years, but that said, a plot arc (with Leia!) about learning to make hard choices as a leader is exactly the sort of character arc that I usually love....except when it comes at the cost of an idiot plot (see below.) But! At least Poe didn’t get stuck with a ridiculous romantic subplot and has an excellent chance of making it through the last film alive. He probably got the best deal of all three new leads, TBH.

* I also like Rose, quite a lot! I like her being idealistic and clever and determined, and she plays off Finn well. Which made me SO disappointed that her overall role is third leg of a LOVE TRIANGLE, of all things. (Star Wars doesn’t even do love triangles! At least not when two of the people involved aren’t awkwardly related to each other. And I hate how fandom will inevitably feel the need to pit her against Rey :( )

*That said, clearly Rose’s sister had to die horribly, because heaven forbid we have more than one POC female character featured. I liked her in her brief appearance, though.

* Holdo! I have mixed feelings overall. Morally dubious, smart, and ultimately tragic female leaders are some of my favorite character tropes (Everyone in Baahubali fandom is SHOCKED to hear this, I’m sure.) and also I loved Leia having a friend/alternative shipping option during the time she and Han were estranged. But: there was absolutely no reason for her to be so antagonistic to Poe, and his sudden dislike to her before he’s even met her doesn’t do him any favors either. We’re supposed to guess that the reason she doesn’t reveal her plan is because of a possible spy, which....um, how did the first order get the tracking coordinates in the first place? Did I miss that? Anyway, even if that is her reasoning, if she’s so close to Leia, surely she knows Poe is her protege and can be trusted. I’m not saying she has to announce her plans over the loudspeaker, but taking him aside to allay his concerns seems perfectly sensible and I can’t understand why she didn’t do that.

* Also Google informs me that Holdo first appears in a tie-in and has been compared to Luna Lovegood. Guys, I can’t imagine a character less like Luna than movie! Holdo; what am I missing?

*Which is as good a time as any to scream about Rey and how much her plot arc suffered the second Ben got involved. I’d happily watch a cut that was all her developing her Jedi powers, cut to the rescue on Crait and her “just moving rocks” scene. But no, instead she gets this long involved subplot with Ben that’s just....For me to believe that Rey has so much invested in his redemption, Ben needed to play the roles Finn and Han played in the first movie: the first people to value her, to help her, to come back for her. Instead Ben killed one of them and hurt the other before her eyes (yes, I screamed internally when he gave her the “join me” spiel.) Hell, I’d even have taken Han begging her to save Ben as his dying wish; or perhaps the AU where she’s Han and Leia’s adopted daughter taken in after Ben’s fall with all the complicated relationships that entails; but as is, it’s every toxic shipping dynamic that I hate.

*Okay, it’s time for the Ben rant (note: I do call him “Ben,” but that’s because I find I’m most attached and invested to the original trio, and as they all consistently call him “Ben”) Waking up to find your uncle and teacher trying to kill you is clearly traumatic!....But the appropriate response to that is not to turn around and do the same thing to your fellow students, who had nothing to do with this as far as we know. Nor is it to commit genocide knowingly. Nor is it to kill your unarmed father, who is specifically mentioned as not wanting you to be trained as a Jedi to start with, in cold blood. Also, even if we want to blame it on Snoke....Ben keeps on going even after Snoke’s death. At this point, he is beyond redemption for me; and Leia, at least, seems to agree.

That said, Luke: “If you cut me down, I’ll stay with you forever!”

Ben: *immediately slashes at him with his lightsaber*

...Methinks Bhalla and Ben probably need the same therapist.

*Leia flying in the vacuum of space was ridiculous. The CGI looked off to me, the science makes no sense, and we’ve never before seen that the Force can do such a thing, any more than we have astral projection (? But then how was Luke able to touch Leia’s hand or transfer the dice from the Falcon?) That said, I’m so glad she survived :)

* I was less happy with Luke’s plotline. First off, my! Luke would never be so pointlessly hostile and rude—I get the sense that his montage of going around the island was supposed to be funny, but no one in my theater laughed at least. But more egregiously, with regards to trying to kill his own nephew: LUKE WOULD NEVER. I just don’t buy it, at all, ever; this is LUKE SKYWALKER, the man who inherited his mother’s heart, the man who refused to kill Darth Vader. To think that he would, even for a second, CONSIDER murdering his sleeping nephew is completely incompatible with my understanding of his character. The scene with Yoda was better, as was the climax, but it’s not enough to overcome everything that had come before.

* Chewbacca and the original droids were sadly underused, most blatantly R2. I liked the one R2 and Luke scene but....how was that Luke had only the one interaction with his beloved droid?

* If he was going to be killed off so abruptly, I’d really have liked an explanation as to who Snoke is, how he found Ben and came into contact with him, what his actual goals are? But I guess that won’t be an option now.

* The porgs and the crystal fox-things were cute!

* Probably an unpopular opinion, but I actually was okay with Rey just being an orphan without connections to the Solo-Skywalkers. I know the story is largely a family saga, but I’m ok with the message being that bloodlines don’t matter (once again, the adopted Rey AU could emphasize this so much more). That said I’m still confused as to why Rey apparently has dreamed of Luke’s island before: this clearly isn’t something all Force sensitive kids do, so why her?

* Also, the pacing seemed a little off to me? I expected that the big Rey/Ben/Snoke duel was the climax and then the film went on for another thirty or so minutes, which seemed rather too much to me.

* Finally, I’ve mentioned this before to some of you, but overall what I find most disappointing about the new trilogy is how cylical everything seems to be. Leia is an overworked politician again, Han an unscrupulous smuggler; and just like Ben Kenobi, Luke is a hermit mourning the failure of his attempt at mentor ship for years. Actually Ben at least had the purpose of watching over Luke; Luke apparently abandoned his sister and the galaxy just to go wallow (LUKE WOULD NEVER!). The galaxy is at war, again, there’s the Sith back again, and whereas RotJ closed on a wealth of possibility for the characters, promising closure from the sadness of the past, the sequels just leave me wondering: “what was the point, then?” I was honestly expecting that watching this movie would make me want to write much more in this fandom, but honestly, the disconnect between how I see the characters and how the creators do is so great that I don’t feel I can do it justice.

That said, that is mostly me venting, mostly because of my own subjective tastes. If you guys enjoyed watching the movie, I’m super happy to hear that! We all need something to cheer us up these days :) I hope that you can all forgive my grumping and overall pettiness, haha.

[blog-bymemo]

What I loved (and didn’t love so much) about Star Wars - The Last Jedi

Maintaining that I have only seen it once, and therefore I may have missed a million little details that could make me laugh (or cringe) more later, here’s my honest review of Star Wars - The Last Jedi. IF YOU PROCEED BEYOND THIS POINT YOU DO IT AT YOUR OWN PERIL FOR IT’S FULL OF SPOILERS.

People were critical of Star Wars - The Force Awakens because it was basically the same story as A new Hope - like, identical. A youth from a forgotten desert planet gets involved in a turn of events that launches her in the galactic struggle between a fascist regime and a pocket of rebels. The youth has to return sensitive documents contained in a droid to the Rebellion, meeting on the way a travelling companion who is also comic relief, and an older mentor who becomes a father figure. In the last act, the father figure is killed by the henchman of the  main villain, leaving the youth with a burning desire to train her superpowers and bring justice to the galaxy.

This is a criticism that nobody (hang on, it’s the internet) - that not many people will be able to move to The Last Jedi. Yes, the movie is filled with allusions. Yes, there are plenty of references and Easter Eggs to make fangirls like me go ‘Awwwwww’, BUT, it is, at its core, its own movie. And, if I may say so, a film with backbone.

Here’s a list of my favourite things from last night’s experience:

1. Yoda trolling Luke because he’s such a baby and setting fire to the ancient Jedi temple like ‘It doesn’t matter what’s written in some old book, we can find those things in ourselves. Being attached to a place, a book, anything, is foolish, for those are only symbols’. 2. The close-up on the iron in the First Order fleet laundrette cause come on. 3. The chiastic rhythm between this one and The Empire Strikes Back: the latter starts on the Frozen Planet of Hoth, the former ends on it. 4. The relationship between Rey and Kylo - yes: he’s a psychotic brat, but they did connect on Galactic Skype and they found a beautiful bond there. Will Kylo stop being such a baby and go back to the Light? He’s his own master now, if he can master his rage. 5. Call me a Feminazi, but I did enjoy finally seeing an equal representation of men and women among all ranks and both parties. Also, something within me cheered when Poe Damer was set down because of his hotheadedness: he’s the sort of person who values heroic actions more than careful planning, and also who doesn’t seem to believe anybody else can do anything or come up with a plan unless he’s involved. In short, he’s immature and overconfident. I did like how the quiet sacrifice of Admiral Purple Hair was shown to be just as heroic and valid whilst she kept a perfectly stately demeanour for the entirety of the movie. 6. Luke tsking and patting the dirt off his jacket like ‘See you later, bitches’. 7. How they made Yoda’s CG so bad (whilst they obviously had the means and expertise to render him much better) to make him more similar to the original films’ puppet. 8. Froggy nuns. 9. The Rebel ship breaking the First Order Admiral ship in two jumping into light speed. Oh my God, how fracking beautiful was that? It honestly looked like a piece of concept art. 10. Jesus Rey and the levitation of rocks. 11. A touch of Marvel humour throughout the movie. 12. Ice foxes and Penguin Hamsters (Pensters? Hamguins?). I want all the toys. 13. Slave child playing Rebel and looking up to the sky. I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Things I did not love and are actually kinda lame:

1. Space Leia floating back to the ship like wuuuuuut? 2. People in the Story Department who couldn’t make up their minds about which ending to choose and so rolled with all three. Seriously guys? When the main Rebel ship is abandoned and there’s been the big Jedi battle and Snoke is dead, and the Rebel survivors are slowly making their way to the planet we’re all ‘Okay, they’re a bit broken, but that’s where we can pick it up next time�� buy NO! Benicio Carlissian has to be a douche. Fine. So, here comes the bigger land battle on the planet, and we all think Finn is gonna sacrifice himself and destroy the cannon and Rey is gonna save the Rebels, but no! Rose appears and Hologram Luke. Alright then, let’s have ANOTHER Jedi fight and some more running away and FINALLY we can call it quit. Seriously, next time just choose one. 3. That half of the movie is basically a big guy slowly running away from a bigger guy, panting and sweating profusely, whilst avoiding his swings. Apart from the fact that they’re ships. In space. But honestly, if you picture two big guys in place of the ships it gets funnier. 4. Rey’s parents being ‘nobody’. Come on, I don’t buy it. She’s definitely a Skywalker somehow, and I bet we’ll find out in the next movie. 5. Phasma’s death: literally nobody cared about that. 6. An embarrassing lack of Chewbacca.

I’m sure I can probably find a million other little things to love as soon as I watch it again - and I’m sure I will since I’m gonna take all my living relatives to watch it again with me in the next few weeks. That’s just how I roll.

[saranel]

The Last Jedi review, sorta

I don’t think I’ve talked enough (if at all) about what a huge Star Wars nerd I am on this blog, mostly because I didn’t love TFA as much as most people seemed to and I just never joined in the renewed fandom frenzy.

TL;DR on my views on TFA: It was fun enough, some interesting new characters, beautiful visuals, but I’d seen that movie before.  It came out in ‘77 and it was much better then.  Homage is one thing, rip off is completely another.  Mostly, I guess I was just disappointed that they didn’t dare to try and move the universe forward a bit, beyond the already trodden path.

Say what you will about the prequels, but I will always, always maintain there’s nothing wrong with them a better script and director couldn’t fix.  George tries, bless him, but he can’t write dialogue worth a damn.  Not even Meryl Streep could’ve made the line “So love has blinded you” any better than Natalie Portman did, and both she and Hayden have proven themselves to be much better actors than they were in Star Wars.  I’m not bothering with Ewan because he was one of the few really great things about the Prequels. 

That having been said, what George can do is weave a decent background story, and the Prequel Trilogy’s story is much, much richer than the OT’s.  Taking off our nostalgia-colored glasses for a moment, let us be honest: the OT was so successful because it did a very simple thing, and did it well, and had a cast with wonderful chemistry. The story itself is nothing to rave about: just your simple Evil Empire vs Plucky Rebels story.  But the Prequels actually got political and much darker than the OT did, they just did it clumsily.  Still, it was something new in the Star Wars universe and George always tried to expand the known worlds by giving us even small glimpses of other cultures and planets.  Don’t forget that Star Wars was never meant to be high-brow Science Fiction a la Philip Dick, but a space adventure.  This doesn’t mean that the story can’t have nuance, but the point of Star Wars was always to be a fairytale exploration of a fictional galaxy.

Compared to that, the new trilogy seemed extremely lacking to me.  And seeing The Last Jedi a few days ago really cemented that.  Never before have I seen so many things happening in one movie while nothing really happens at all.  It makes Attack of the Clones look interesting in comparison, and that’s saying a lot.  ALSO LUKE, WTF HAS THE MOUSE DONE TO MY SPACE SON, THE FUCKING GALL.

So yes, surprise-surprise, TLJ manages to rip off Empire (with a dash of Battlestar Galactica thrown in for good measure) and does so poorly.  It was not a terrible film by any means, but I honestly thought it was no better than Phantom Menace. And Phantom Menace had the Duel of Fates.  So. 

(okay, to be fair, TLJ didn’t have Jar Jar so that’s one point in its favor)

In a nutshell:

(cut for spoilers)

THE GOOD

- Poe.  Poe was good. Moar Poe, there was a serious lack of Poe in TFA and it has been rectified, this was a very good decision. 

- The silent scene.  Y’all know the one.  People in my theater literally gasped in unison.  I was bored outta my skull up until then and as soon as I realized what Holdo was about to do, I sat up, all ‘oshit’ and it was amazing.  Beautifully shot, beautifully clever, and the most badass hero death in the SW universe.  Only comes in second in terms of best scene in the movie because the other one involved a more established and beloved character.

- MY SON LUKE KICKING HIS NEPHEW’S ASS LIKE IT AIN’T NO BIG THANG.  In full disagreement over how shit went down between them in the past, but Luke showing Kylo who’s the most goddamn powerful Jedi in the galaxy (which Luke did canonically become in later years btw) was such a rewarding scene.  Also, he was dressed in black.  Like in ROTJ. Because fuck yeah.

- Rey’s parentage.  Most people probably hated that she’s not a Skywalker but I just... kinda loved the suggestion that she was the Force’s answer to Kylo?  It’s happened before with Anakin, so this isn’t exactly new, and Anakin, too, came from ‘nothing.’ I liked it.  She doesn’t have to have illustrious parentage to be important in the series, and as much as I love my Space Drama Queen clan, it’s time the universe moves on from the Kardashians of the galaxy.

- Luke’s death.  I don’t agree with 99% of what went down with Luke in this trilogy, I think it was deeply out of character, but his ending?  That was spot on.  Did I want more out of his storyline? Obviously, but examined in a vacuum, his ending was beautiful to me.  Especially that last scene.  Best scene in the movie from start to end.

- Yoda manipulating the goddamn heavens to rain thunder upon the ancient tree.  Ilu Yoda

- Leia and Holdo discussing Poe.  This was an A+++ short scene. Get it, ladies.

- Snoke is gone, thank the heavens.  Worst-named villain in movie history, I couldn’t stop laughing every time someone said SUPREME LEADER snoke.

- CRYSTAL FOXES OMG

- Luke getting his kicks in that boring-ass island via EXTREME ROD FISHING, lmao the nerd

THE MEH

- So, um... Kylo and Rey?  ....ew? (did they not think Finn and Rey were super cute or)

- So, um... Finn and Rose?  ....ookaaaay? (did they not see Poe biting down on his lip when he saw Finn in his jacket or)

- I don’t really care for ships in this trilogy tbh, whatever.  Guess I’m steering clear from attachment until I know who’s related to whom (THIS IS A DANGEROUS UNIVERSE TO SHIP IN OKAY).  Plus, not really feeling particularly strong toward any couple, just... not Kylo and Rey, ew.

- Rose.  I liked her, but... they hardly gave her anything to do.  That casino storyline was such a mess, made it seem like she was there just to be there.

- Finn’s storyline. Snoozefest.  I like him, but... see above.

- lol wtf happened to Chewie...? He was just... there?

THE BAD

- SPACE-WALKING LEIA.  I’M SORRY, OKAY, I know this scene will be big with many people, and lord knows I wanted to see Space Mom use the Force beyond that Spidey Sense shit, but this was just so dumb. 

- All the ‘humor.’ My god, just... no.  Not every scene needs to be steeped in Whedon-speak, please stahp.  I will admit the first scene got a chuckle out of me, but the rest...

- The ‘plot.’  This was literally an extended car chase scene in space with some Sense8 type shit thrown in. Rey hardly even did any training, ffs.  

- so the force-sensitive member of the trio goes on to be trained by a wise, isolated mentor and finds herself drawn to a place steeped in the dark side and ends up seeing only herself reflected in there, meanwhile the rest of the characters are involved in a chase across the galaxy, running away from the evil empire, and at some point decide to ask for help form a well-known swindler who betrays them and in the end everything seems bleak with just a tiny glimmer of hope. HMMMMMM. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. 

- quite frankly, I’m still in shock Rey finished the film with two fully biological arms

- O hei, look, it’s The Salty planet Hoth.  With pod-racing.

- Really? Rey blushing at shirtless Kylo? Really

- WHERE IS FORCE GHOST ANAKIN TO GO “BINCH I REDEEMED MYSELF IN THE END STOP THIS SHIT, ALSO I DID THIS FIRST AND I DID IT BETTER” TO HIS WANNABE GRANDSON

- The whole damn Casino storyline.  I don’t care if it’s meant to set up something for the last movie (probably not) but it was long, boring, and a clumsily written attempt at a storyline that could’ve been more nuanced and a good addition.

- why did we have to see Luke milk that alien Y

- NOT ONE DECENT LIGHTSABER FIGHT THE FUQ.  

- Leia (and Han in TFA) giving up on her son instead of beating some sense into his ass with a space slipper. Y’ALL KNOW SHE WOULD.  Baaaaad characterization. Space Mom would never.

- Also, fuck whoever decided that Leia, who canonically has the exact same force potential as Luke because they’re twins, never developed her powers beyond Force Sense or whatever.  If you’re not gonna give the woman a lightsaber, at least have her Force Push fools out of her way. 

- Wtf Rey you obliterated that nice alien’s cart and didn’t even apologize they work hard every day you should be ashamed

- why was it meant to be funny when porgs were slapped around wtf

- “what’s that canon?”  “Basically a small death star” kjashKLAFJSHSAJKDFSADFHSAK 

- Kylo. Can he just die, plz, the expanded universe did the Evil Solo son storyline so much better.  Yet another way in which this trilogy is totes an ~*homage*~  No shade on the actor though, he did a great job.  It’s just the violent manchild character I cannot stand.

- So like... we’re never gonna learn what Snoke’s deal was...? Or how he got to Kylo...? ....Okay then.

- This movie was 2 and a half hours long.

[jjoelswatch]

My thoughts on The Last Jedi (SPOILERS, obvs):

I wasn’t overly wowed by the movie, but I enjoyed it a good amount and wouldn’t say I hated it; nothing made me want to like, walk out of the theater in rage or anything. 

I thought some of the better scenes were the two final big battles - partly because the cinematography was on point, but also I just enjoyed them. The brief team up between Rey and Kylo Ren was probably the highlight of the movie for me (like !! it was awesome, you really can’t deny it!); I’m a sucker for hero + villain team ups. Also tbh that whole scene was just good where others felt lacking, from the lead up to Snoke’s death to the actual fight to the fallout of Rey realizing that Kylo Ren is still a piece of shit (I thought her asking him not to do this was a fairly good reflection of the Mustafar scene with Anakin and Padme, idk if that was intentional or not but ! probably was). The fight on the ice planet (can’t remember the name right now, too lazy to open another tab in Google, but I’m calling Hoth Callback 2.0) was visually appealing, the red on striking white (THE CRYSTAL FOXES!! I need one asap), the standoff between Kylo Ren and Luke - very, very nice.

And honestly, I just liked the last half of the movie better than the first (excluding the weird ending on the stable kid, like, I get it, hope and all that, but idc). Poe’s arc felt predictable. Finn’s was alright, but I felt like we spent the most of it back where we were in SW:TFA, with Finn not wanting any part of the fight and trying to flee; I guess I just thought we resolved this conflict last movie.

I felt that the Yoda puppet was stupid. Sorry, but why waste CGI (not great CGI, btw) on the long-eared, Avatar-faced, space horses but use puppet!Yoda?? Also I guess Yoda makes sense for that scene, but we could have gotten the same level of hubris from Anakin Skywalker and like, Hayden Christensen deserves One Good Thing, okay?

Aaaand bear with me. I don’t feel that Luke was OOC. Like, yes in the orig trig he disregarded the norms of the Jedi order (basically telling Yoda to shove it when he implies that going to save his friends is a stupid idea, throwing the lightsaber down when the Emperor tried to get him to get his father). But I also feel like...all of Luke’s mentors were very traditionalist Jedi? like “the dark side must be put to an end for balance to be restored” - and at the end of SW:ROTJ, Luke very adamantly like, denounces the dark side. So as someone who grew older, who had this legendary status placed upon him, when he sensed potential darkness in Ben, he had a moment of weakness which faded quickly and was misinterpreted (but not really) by Ben.

Overall tho re. Luke’s character in this movie, it made me think of how the Jedi order is essentially a religion (Luke even straight up calls it that). I think the main theme of the Jedi order (in all the trilogies tbh) and systems/institutions in this movie is that organizations can become flawed and corrupt. You can have a religion whose foundation revolves on good things, and have people do evil things in its name. War machines don’t discriminate; they feed conflict on all sides. It’s important commentary, and it leaves us where we find Luke in this movie, who exiled himself for his failure, bitter, who now tells Rey that the Jedi were and are and flawed ideology. They allowed their flaws to essentially create Darth Vader and the Empire, Luke’s flaws allowed him to create Kylo Ren. Even aside from the Jedi centric struggles, Poe’s flaws lead to lives being lost, in putting the entire Resistance movement at risk. Rey’s naivety is a flaw and she learns quickly from it. This entire movie is about people learning from their mistakes and moving past them. As much as I didn’t care for puppet!Yoda, his scenes touches on this nicely; basically burn it down, start over.

Things I didn’t like. I can’t deny I’m pretty disappointed that Rey is a nobody. The scene where she was in the weird Jedi water and asked for it to show her her parents, and her reflection showed only herself, I thought it was implying that she was a force incarnation. I would have been okay with that, even though I was secretly (jk, strongly) hoping she would end up being related to Obi-Wan Kenobi. After Kylo Ren tells her she’s no one special, I kept expecting another scene to pop up, either from him or someone else, explaining that he’d lied, that she’s related to so-and-so.

Her lack of important parentage/force incarnation also feels...rather disjointed, from the emphasis placed on Luke and Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber calling to her and her alone. Why have that be such a central focus in SW:TFA if you’re just going to throw away that plot point?

I didn’t like that the force connection between her and Kylo Ren was handwaved as being all Snoke’s doing. Again, why was there such an emphasis on this bond in SW:TFA’s movie and novelization? It feels like a missed opportunity.

Speaking of Snoke - get a load of that snazzy jazz suit! But really, I didn’t really care either way about his death because I wasn’t all that enthralled by him in SW:TFA. Again, I really, really enjoyed his death scene though and the fallout it caused. Predictable, maybe, but still one of the best scenes in the movie.

Luke’s death. Predictable by the title of the movie alone, still sad. But at least he went out in a well-earned manner; I don’t feel like it was wasted or contrived.

I would have been fine if Leia died in the vacuum of space, though I would miss the twins reunion on Hoth Callback 2.0. I wonder how they’ll handle her still being alive in episode 9; I’m assuming the same CGI that resurrected Tarkin and gave us young!Leia in SW:RO.

So overall, I enjoyed it - but for me, it doesn’t beat SW:TFA or SW:ROTS (I will fight you all over that movie). I appreciated the theme of the movie, even though I felt it drag for the first half and some character arcs were not that great. I’ll be giving it a second watch to really solidify my opinion on it.

[beyond-far-horizons]

My thoughts on Last Jedi, the backlash and its relation to the archetypal storytelling of the Star Wars Saga.

I have been trying to gather my thoughts on this film, the reaction and the Sequels in general. My overall reaction, after two viewings, some reflection and looking at both sides, is the same as it was when I first saw it - mixed. But given how much the series means to me and others I think analysing our reactions is important.

Spoilers for Star Wars including TFA and TLJ and the film Labyrinth. This is my opinion - repeat just my opinion and won’t be tagged because I don’t want to get into a fan war or debate. Aggressive attempts to do so will just be blocked so play nice ;) Warning for a long-ass post.

Let’s start with what I liked -

It was fun overall. 

The opening fight with Poe was amazing, fast, funny and emotional.

More Poe was a good thing (mostly) and his dynamic with Leia was great - I loved that they had a headstrong male pilot with Leia as his mentor. I also liked the fan observation that Leia puts up with some of his antics because he’s like the son she should/could have had (no disrespect to Ben/Kylo.) Oscar Issac even notes the maternal relationship and that is super cute. 

Leia - nice to see her more front and centre - a general, a stateswoman, a force-user (yes), a mother, a sister and still looking fabulous. Carrie will be missed so much. I grieve for her, her family and for the story we could have gotten in Ep 9.

That moment between Leia and Kylo - sad face.

Rey, Kylo/Ben and Reylo - very happy they went in this direction. I can understand certain people’s/groups misgivings about this when projecting a RL dynamic on it, however the large section of us that enjoy this dynamic, I believe, do so on an archetypal level - which is primarily what Star Wars is about. The fairy tale, the myth - the Light and Darkness battling it out to transcend the opposites in the end. I loved their connection (even though the cuts were quite modern), I always adore it when the hero/heroine and villain start off hating each other, are opposed to each other and then gradually find parallels and similarities, and since ESB, Star Wars has always been fantastic in finding that Yin Yang and Jungian Shadow concept. The way they show the dangers of the path - that Rey could make the same mistakes as Ben and therefore why she wants to save him, just as Luke did with Anakin. It’s so human. The acting was fantastic, the moments soft and then intense - I loved the ‘Force skypes’ and the Throne Room scene. Indeed that application of the Force was just an extension of Luke and Vader in ESB and in a deleted scene in Jedi too. Also as sad and heartbreaking as it was I’m so glad Rey did reject him and didn’t give into his bullshit. I can sympathise with him but she didn’t compromise herself and that is so important. Like in the film Labyrinth at the end, Rey chooses her own sovereignty and morality despite temptation and it was the right thing to do. Also I feel (without getting too RL and social justice on this) women are often seen as the always loving, forgiving redeemers, the healers, the saviours and the nurturers - a powerful archetype that can sometimes be in play but also can be terribly damaging when constantly applied. No person can forever hold the weight of an archetype and in some cases shouldn’t, no matter how sad it is. Rey did her best but Ben ultimately needs to save himself, to make that choice as Vader did and that can be a hard pill to swallow especially when we see he hasn’t got the critical mass (yet) within himself to do it. 

Rey - in two minds given how TLJ treated plot points from TFA - but I continue to love her spirit and vulnerability as well as her moments of humour. 

The Throne Room confrontation was fricking epic! I loved it and I loved seeing the Battle Couple/Back to Back Badasses/Dark and Light take on the guards.

Rose - not so keen on the plotline but the character was adorable and we need more like her. It was also special for me because for years when I was training to be an actress in London, the friend who let me live with her for minimal rent had a Far East background and looked like Rose and always struggled to get decent parts despite her talent and tenacity. Seeing the hope and inspiration Rose gave to her in her career recently was amazing. 

The planets!!! Ahch-To and Crait just blew me away - oceans and islands - check, crystals, deserts and rock formations - check. Glorious!

Those crystal foxes!

I will always be a Reylo fan but Finn and Rey still have a special place in my heart and that hug at the end was gorgeous. If they get together at the end it’s okay with me as long as I can have some Reylo resolution too. 

Rey and Poe finally meeting. Okay I’m Reylo, I like Finn and Rey…but I always liked the idea of Rey and Poe too - yes I can have my cake and eat it thank you. 

The Supremacy - I may consider joining the Dark Side if I can have that ship!

The Codebreaker - there’s always a place in Star Wars for crafty grey characters and I liked DJ, not 100% keen on where they went with it but I liked him.

Holdo’s sacrifice - amazing  - those shots and that silence - just epic.

The initial idea of Luke as a hermit and the Balance which they sort of went with and then…hmm we’ll talk about that next!

Things I didn’t like or thought could have been handled in another way - 

This is interesting and has taught me a lot about how we project ourselves onto stories and what we do or do not get or expect to get out of a story. As we know this film has caused huge dissension and rather than throw crap at people - I respect they have their opinions - I want to analyst mine and other’s responses and find out why. I’ll note my personal reactions and then the issues that may have contributed to such a division.

Luke’s arc - I can see the de-constructivist allure of having Luke fail and why some people have taken heart from that message but as Mark Hamill has said it just isn’t Luke to me. As for him trying, even in a moment, to kill his nephew and best friend’s son after he was willing to sacrifice himself and everything else for his ideals to show his father - Darth freaking Vader -  a better way, also doesn’t ring true. Then to abandon the Republic/Rebellion for the First Order to take over - nah…If they want me to buy it, they need to give me more than what we got.

Admiral Holdo - ugh. I see what they were trying to do but if you have to withhold plans and make a character hold the Idiot Ball for you to do a plot twist it just doesn’t work. Also the whole feminist message was patronising and I say this as a woman and lifelong feminist. Treating men like idiots isn’t going to make them respect you. Also as others have pointed out, Leia was already a trope-breaking example of this done in a much better way in ANH. People were making the point that Holdo was soft and feminine and that’s why Poe and the menfolk in RL didn’t like her or feel she could have been in the military. I’m all for surprising people and frankly she can wear what she wants even though it was incredibly impractical but as an actress I noticed in her physicality she does not convince as someone of any gender who has been in a military force let alone in command. It does something to the way you stand and behave that she didn’t have and putting examples like her in only undermines the progressive course to me. 

Godspeed? God fricking speed?! We are in a Galaxy far far away! It’s the Force you idiot! Also ugh her and Leia just sounded like they were at a socialites party in the US not Star Wars when they say goodbye. I’m so up for female bonds and unexpected characters and roles but it was handled badly in my opinion - an example of shock value, not well thought out world-building. 

Snoke - WTF? Don’t build him up just to kill him off early! He is the reason all the shit in the Galaxy has happened - the return of the Dark Side, the corruption of Ben Solo, Luke’s Hobo arc - how does he link to the OT or even the Prequels (it’s a saga remember - a family saga, themes etc). To kill him now, without those answers, undermines the whole plot and undermines Kylo Ben as a result. Snoke was the reason he did all those heinous things, Leia says in the book he has been essentially grooming her son since he was in the womb (gross!). The OT draws out the Emperor until ROTJ and the Prequels spend 3 movies giving us insights on his dynamic with Anakin that primes us to understand (despite poor execution at times IMO) Anakin’s fall to the Dark side. We have none of this for Kylo bar a few hints. This lends weight to the accusation he is a pathetic, whiney (angry, privileged, white) boy who turned to the Dark Side cos Mummy and Daddy (our OT heroes) didn’t love him enough. Then we are given a vague flashback that Luke Skywalker of all people wanted to kill him for an instant and yeah…it doesn’t do anyone - Kylo, Snoke, Leia, Han or Luke - a service. Plus the ridiculousness of Kylo and Hux at the end undermines the finale and the hopes for Episode 9. I admit Snoke freaked me the f out - the undertones of the child molester/evil guru were strong and might have been a bit too much for kids but hell a good writer could have found a way to develop it properly without being too full on. 

Canto Bight - Finn and Rose. It was…okay…but again I could see the message loud and clear and there’s a difference between an archetypal mythic theme and hitting someone on the head with identity politics. Also I loved Finn and Poe’s dynamic and Finn and Rey’s dynamic in TFA - I wanted more of that. The plot arc just didn’t interest me or feel woven into the main plot as much as I wanted it to. And that sucks because Finn and Rose were cool and it was groundbreaking for Star Wars to include them in their own arc. Due to the lacklustre scenario I felt Finn wasn’t utilised enough. I felt he was slightly short changed by TFA and TLJ didn’t really shift that for me.

The Crait Plan - why not tell people the plan? To have it suddenly appear like a Deus Ex machina was shoddy esp when the First Order find out immediately anyway.

Leia’s Superman impression. It was a shocker and beautifully filmed. Extra poignant when remembering Carrie’s loss but…it’s not Star Wars! There’s a difference in developing the world-building and the magic system (I know this as a writer) and crapping all over it to introduce something ‘cool’. I have wanted Leia to use the Force since ROTJ. I would have totally been down with her using it here (like Nynaeve in The Wheel of Time) when she finally surrenders to this mystical power she doesn’t understand (and likely associates in her heart with Vader) in the face of her political and military might being crushed. It had the potential to be such a beautiful moment. She could have been in a pod or something and then dragged the exploding pieces back together - that would have been in line with previous Force users - Yoda, Dooku, Vader. But to be exploded into space where the vacuum alone could kill you, lack of air, cold etc etc and then fly like Superman just felt so wrong. Yes you need to suspend your disbelief to watch SF/F but the created world needs internal consistency (look up Tolkien’s On Fairy Tales or Mark Wolfe - Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation or the Laws of Sanderson for confirmation on this.)

Luke’s Force Projection and Death - it was beautiful and shocking (again) but (again) didn’t ring true with Star Wars for me even with the call-backs to the Binary Sunset and Obi-Wan’s cloak. Those just made me sadder. If they wanted to make it more Star Wars, more full circle, then why doesn’t he do a proper Obi Wan - face Kylo and become one with the Force in their duel? Also I just felt there was so much more for him to do, so much more to be shown and frankly as much as I love the Sequel characters, I and most of us are here because of the OT characters. This is and always was Luke’s story. We care about Anakin initially because of his connection to Luke even if he wasn’t really in the Prequels, so to have him go out that way and have so little relevance ultimately to the story of the Sequels just felt wrong. I’m not ready for this to be fully Rey’s story yet as much as I like her and what she brings to it. 

There was no real training arc - Luke didn’t even finish his third lesson to Rey. I would have loved to have seen Luke and Rey training and duelling. This also highlighting the unfortunately implication that Rey is a little bit of a Mary Sue and I hate that. The Force just made her awesome - again not consistent with Star Wars. Anakin and Luke, even after training, get their asses handed to them by Dark sider users. Yes Kylo had handicaps and Snoke does well to highlight them in TLJ but it would have been much better to either have had her train under Luke before and had her memory wiped or be trained now to account for her aptitude. It undermines her positive points as a character and it is irritating now to look back at TFA and see her so good at everything just..because…

A main point many people have pointed out - TLJ doesn’t respect the plot points and setups of TFA. This is worse than not respecting the previous trilogies because it’s bad storytelling and each episode is supposed to reinforce the arc of the others. Sure Lucas made similar mistakes but Abrams, Johnson and Disney had years of reflection and fan reaction to draw upon to make sure that didn’t happen and mostly in the OT Lucas made it work to a point they do make senseas whole. Why aren’t Disney and co making these stories to fit each other? They are a trilogy - a beginning, middle and end, not an opportunity for each director to ‘make their mark’ on Star Wars or ‘bring something different’. That’s like hiring a new director for each LOTR film! Again people can cite upending expectations but this was throwing out substance for the sake of shock value and that never works. The Vader plot-twist worked because it deepened the story, the plot-twists that Snoke and Rey’s force sensitivity and parentage don’t matter cheapened it. For the record I liked her parents being nobodies but we don’t get to see her explore that and JJ drops numerous Chekhov’s Guns about Rey’s background in TFA - Han, Leia and Kylo’s reactions to her, Maz’s talk, her visions, Luke’s reaction - that all now looks stupid. Kylo lets an officer go after his tantrum then force grabs him as soon as he mentions a girl. This and his latter interactions with Rey, esp in the novel, make him look like a desperate virgin that has never been exposed to a human female before. 

Phasma - where art thou?

I could go on but those are the main points.

Now to the deeper issues -

Most of us loved the Original Trilogy and while we want to repeat the magic  - to have the same but different - that story was essential told. It has a poignant, satisfying ending - Luke redeems Vader, the Empire is defeated, the Jedi are reborn, Leia and Han get together. It reached a natural conclusion and that conclusion gave it its power. That is a lesson that many of us and especially the entertainment industry don’t want to learn, hence why they milk franchises and stories until they mean nothing. Just as death gives life meaning so does the ending to a good story. However I have always been intrigued by a Sequel trilogy because it was something Lucas toyed with for a long time. I heard rumours of Leia and Han’s children in a forest scene for years and that was so magical! What happened next?! Lucas was notorious for tinkering with his creations and then saying he planned it that way all along (read Star Wars - A Secret History for confirmation and also an amazing insight into the creative development.) As an aside I think that part of the creative process is that it evolves and it interests me how many directions and stories could be told branching from A New Hope, ESB, Jedi and then even TFA. The stories that different groups wanted to be told and the story we got. However something that lent more weight to the Sequel idea was also Lucas’s inspiration of Flash Gordon, Buck Rodgers and those old sci-fi serials that suggested the story could have gone on for episodes before you arrived in the cinema and continued long after, so I was interested to see if they could make it happen. Perhaps it would have been better done years earlier so the original leads could have had a more active role or set in the future so their legacy would have held longer but this is a family saga so…

Despite their love for Star Wars and its superficial appeal I’m not sure JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson and Disney understand the core of Star Wars and the archetypal themes underpinning it. This is the absolute core of the issues with Sequels (the Prequels) for me - I think it could have worked despite everything else but you need to understand the archetypal motif which is textbook Star Wars. A fantastic book that illustrates this is Star Wars - The Magic of Myth. I think they got bits of it but they didn’t really understand the whole and had other agendas in play that meant the worthwhile messages in Leia/Poe/Holdo, Finn/Rose and Luke/Rey’s storylines were lost, dissonant or just sledge-hammered in without respecting the characters, plot or themes. I was so looking forward to seeing a development in the mythos of the Light/Dark sides of the Force and the Balance - how acknowledging anger, abandonment and desire for power and control aka the Shadow, can help you understand yourself and the human experience but not(like Kylo did) by giving into it. This understanding grants you Balance and Transcendence - a true expression of the Jungian Individuation process and the Taoism way that Star Wars was inspired by. This could have been accomplished even with Luke going off to be a hermit which is counter to his character as Mark Hamill stressed. If you want a new story you need to set up conflict and this would have been a great conflict for a more mature Luke to have - that the Dark Side will always return in some way, so how does one counter it? When we found out in TFA he had gone looking for the first Jedi Temple, then we got the 1st trailer and the hints about the Balance of Light and Dark, I was excited. Luke hadn’t abandoned his sister and friends and the Galaxy! He had a painful setback but was still searching for something more. When they dismissed that in the movie and had him be this despondent bum who had vanished just to find some hole to die in, I was so disappointed. Yeah you could have it (as they did) as part of his character arc, to learn failure, to repeat the cycles/mistakes of his masters and be reminded of his younger self in Rey, but as others have pointed out Yoda and Obi Wan went into exile because they needed to and Luke transcended them at the end of Jedi anyway. So it needs a deeper reason for me than what we got.

The Backlash/Conflict and the questions it raises.

It seems broadly to come into two camps, but there are also many people in the middle across a number of different issues. The main camps boil down to either loving the OT - its themes, characters and relationships within the Skywalker Saga and feeling the Sequels haven’t respected that, and the other is enjoying the new direction of the Sequels and feeling Star Wars is now more modern, more progressive, more inclusive, either as a worthy development of the OT or without caring about previous instalments.

This, as I said at the start, comes down to stories - our stories, internally and in the outside world, and the archetypal stories we cling to across generations. Star Wars was always going to matter because it is one of a kind - a modern myth that called to us on this archetypal level as well as being so pervasive in the physical world through advertising, merchandise and different media that it has literally become a religion to some people and inspired many more.

Given that, the stories I’m hearing from the media and the progressive side is that the Last Jedi is fantastic because it’s breaking boundaries, it’s passing the torch, it’s giving us feminism, inclusivity and life lesson moments that are much needed in the current climate. And in a way stories do need to change and adapt to stay meaningful or, as we see, people change them to fit - create fanfiction, art, create their own worlds, write meta taking the pieces that make sense to them. Many people feel more included in the Star Wars saga and as such a powerful phenomenon I’m glad about that.

However to others, Star Wars already deeply meant something to them and some feel the Sequels, in their urge to move things along or having done so brashly, haven’t respected that legacy. Although there are undoubtedly racist, prejudiced idiots out there using Star Wars as part of their ideology, this goes against everything Star Wars and Lucas was trying to convey. So personally I think a lot of the deeper backlash is because of the Sequels ignoring the archetypal hero journey and themes at the heart of Star Wars - a journey first brought to us by Luke and his companions. Star Wars is not the type of story that lends itself to deconstruction, shock value twists and hopelessness - it’s a hopeful fairy story, that while filled with peril and battles with evil, nevertheless gives us the strength to face the dark symbolically and find the best in ourselves. While it has had its storytelling and world-building issues (especially with the Prequels hence the backlash with them at the time) it does have its own mythos and internal consistency, something I feel the Sequels have ignored time and again,and even undermining the setups in TFA. To call people ‘losers’ stuck on simple nostalgia or ‘man babies’ (as a friend of mine did) for having these objections is unfair. Archetypal stories/myths come from the Collective Unconscious and that moves very slowly in relation to society which is why we read stories from thousands of years ago and they still resonate. That doesn’t mean you have to copy the Hero’s Journey from the OT point for point - there are a galaxy of myths out there and our own minds for exploring how the legacy of the OT can be respected and yet developed, as well as including more women and POC as it needed to.

I will still watch Episode 9 and take the things I liked from it, TFA and TLJ, but to me the OT will always be the true Star Wars. However nothing is in vain and honestly I think this debate can be used by anyone to learn from the power of stories - what works and what doesn’t for them and go on to create their own original narratives as Lucas did all those years ago…I’m also really interested in getting the perspectives of kids seeing the Sequels vs the Prequels and OT as these will be ‘their’ Star Wars and the things we see and love as children always have special significance as they are the first to charge our awakening imaginations.

[gracelingdesolate]

aight star wars thoughts time

it was interesting. i’ll maybe give it that. i enjoyed the beginning and the end was mostly fantastic but the middle was just................... hoo boy.

my first issue with it is definitely the characterization of the chars, particularly luke and rey

listen luke is a lot of things but he is not a murderer. this is the guy who watched vader raze the galaxy, kill his mentor, torture and imprison his friends and chop his hand off, and he still said “there’s good in him”. because of this, it is extremely hard to believe that he would, under any circumstances, have decided that kyle was too far lost to the dark side and thought about killing him enough that he drew his lightsaber on him. that’s just........ not luke. at all.

and rey man that shit was fucked up. i’m really sick of the “woman sacrifices herself to save a man” trope and star wars has a long ass history with being super shitty to its female chars. i was hoping that rey would be treated better but nope. nah. they decide to have her sympathize with kyle and want to “save” him, which ties into their bullshit that luke wanted to kill kyle in the first place. it just should not have happened. kyle is literally the equivalent of an actual white mass shooter and represents literally everything wrong with men. it is so fucked up that for a good moment they were pushing that narrative with him and rey. little girls do not need to see that violent, angry men who treat them horribly could be “redeemed” and little boys do not need to see that if they act like that, then they get what they want. it’s pushing a horrible, abusive narrative and i’m really really sick of it. i’m glad though that they seemed to cut it off in the last half hour. rey walked away from kyle and shut him off and i really hope it stays that way bc damn we don’t need that bullshit.

another problem i have was that finn was more or less completely and absolutely benched. like ?????? he’s literally the male lead and yet his storyline in this movie was completely unnecessary. they could have cut it out and it wouldn’t have changed anything, which is frustrating. you’d think they’d have had him be a little more involved since ya kno. he’s the male lead.

the middle of the movie was basically a mess. we had snoke introduced to us in tfa as this all powerful, mysterious guy, and then he shows up in this one in a red room. the transition didn’t make any sense. and then they just? up and killed him. like it was nothing. like.... i didn’t care about the dude but like? it didn’t make any sense. like obviously he was a red herring for like who the bad guy was but they just really did a horrible job establishing it and it just did not make any sense.

also the powers. both from leia and luke. like, there are a lot of things force users can do. but there is like............... a line. all powers have a set limit and they just kinda hopped right on over the line with this. like, i’m happy as the next person that leia’s alive. i really am, i love her with everything in me. but how she got back to the ship? how she just kinda, force floated her way back? there’s absolutely no precedent for that. it doesn’t make any sense because we have literally heard nothing about this ability ever before. same with luke’s astral projection. there’s no precedent and it doesn’t make any sense. and then he just? up and dies after using it so like. these powers came out of nowhere and with no explanation and we’re just supposed to take them in stride apparently. did not enjoy that

also, the communication issue between poe and the one lady. he asked if she had a plan. she did, but she just????????? decided not to tell him? like there was no reason for her not to say “yeah we’re cloaking some ships and sending them to that planet over there” and she just didn’t. so that was... crappy writing.

also like i guess phasma is dead now? like idk anything about her but i thought there’d be more. she seemed kinda interesting but like whatever i guess.

also yoda’s bitch ass showed up ugly ass bitch i wanted to punt him off the screen

but yeah enough negativity onto the good shit

the scenery and the cinematic shots holy fucking shit sign me the FUCK up i loved them. the scene where the lady launched her ship into hyperspace to fuck kyle’s ship over oh DAMN that was beautiful i definitely died a little expect to see me reblogging it constantly bc it was amazing and stunning and beautiful.

i loved the new creatures! the horse things were awesome and the crystal foxes were great and like the porgs were good comedic relief

luke and leia’s reunion broke my heart bitch god it made me emotional fuck me up.

basically the last half hour was really good because everyone was in character mostly and like. they have it set up so kyle is the bad guy. like he’s not even a puppet anymore (if he was), he’s just straight up The Evil Dude so like that’s that. next movie he’s the villain. i really hope he doesn’t have a redemption arc bc fuck him

but yeah that’s what i thought. i’m probably forgetting things but it’s fine. i’ll have to see it again just to like see it knowing everything.

[jmalkki]

Luke, Ben and the family saga

These two stubborn and confused fools tho.

Flow of random thoughts after The Last Jedi, about it’s reception and personal resonance.

*warning, following touches some spoiler-y topics*

As much as the movie seemed to try to emphasize, that the force and it’s users weren’t limited to just certain chosen family lineages, it also somewhat brought up a feeling that so much of ‘the galaxy’s problems’ could be solved, if the Skywalker family knew how to communicate with one and other <:D

Had someone reached out to young Ben and/or had he had the sense and maturity to respond to any such advances, maybe he wouldn’t ultimately have felt the need to look for acceptance from all the wrong places. Or had Luke been able to talk about his fears of responsibility and of 'the dark side’ to anyone, to Ben himself even (or any of his ghostly Jedi masters?). They were hardly alone with their struggles either of them even before Rey stepped into the picture (’bless her’ for seeing the good in all of the Skywalkers still). Consequently 'the elders’ (aka the original trilogy kids) wouldn’t need to feel such guilt about the whole ensued ordeal, having talked about their shared knowledge and experiences of 'dark and light’ on a personal level, instead of trying to 'school’ their kids into learning about it… then maybe things would finally stop snowballing over and over.

Speaking of which, where the heck were Han and Leia anyway, when their son was making friends with the dark side and Luke off wallowing in his 'failure’? Ben / Kylo wasn’t missing, like his uncle was, after all. How about a call to the First Order, ask if Ben could come to phone to talk XD

It pained me to see anyone refer to a young and confused Ben as “corrupted beyond repair” and their helplessness in the face of it… and Ben’s continued acceptance of all of this as a fact (after all, this was something coming from his ‘all knowing masters’). As his “destiny”. Really drives home the importance of support and effort to try and understand your fellow people. And leading by example (unfortunate that Ben witnessing his mentor Luke at their lowest lead to such fatal misunderstandings). The movie(s) greatly portray how no-one’s born ‘evil’, or even really wants to be (as evident from Ben’s visible, constant struggle and the ensuing turmoil from trying to keep on the dark side against all his true feelings), some just unfortunately end up as ‘victims’ of circumstances, and doubtfully they’re hardly ever alone in it either.

Personally, the hands down most memorable line out of the whole movie was: “That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate - saving what we love.” Not even relating to it’s context in the movie necessarily (tho, that too was an awesome twist!), but as a general notion (maybe substitute “winning” with “survive” tho, for a more mutually agreeable status quo). I thought Luke adhered to this notion as well, coming to save his sister, despite having vowed never to get involved with this whole force thing again. That WAS Luke’s dark side, I feel: giving up on hope and acting like none of this had anything to do with him anymore. And in the end he redeemed himself coming back to his family’s aid. He didn’t fight hating Ben. This was maybe one more of his 'lessons’ to him (since,you can’t build a blockbuster movie franchise on sensible talking?), he’s final attempt at trying to connect with him. Too bad, Ben might not have learned much from it in his angered state, but there’s always hope he would still remember this last encounter with his uncle later on and realize where he went wrong…

…if it wasn’t a story, which requires an 'ultimate evil’. No pressure for the next chapter, JJ ;D Rian did mighty good, and left you in quite a pickle.

Meanwhile, I can’t even get all of my own family to join in on watching this together - the struggle is real :D The second viewing will surely be that much more impactful, knowing that the one person I think would benefit from seeing the film refuses to accept the movie experience as something worthwhile their time. It’s a real shame about personally set ‘genre restrictions’ and presumptions working against a case of wanting to show them “this one thing they really should see”. Not to mention it’s a mighty entertaining space opera and a 'Disney film’ too.

Everyone will surely come out of the movie with completely different opinions and views on the story, characters… the whole production. And isn’t that the beauty of it? Love it, hate it - it’ll have been that much more richer an experience together, with all the various takeaways from it. I myself mostly loved it - there were of course, as always, less sensible aspects in it as well (the execution of the “Mary Poppins -scene” top-most), but it’d be foolish to think a movie is only good if you unquestionably liked it all the way through. Wouldn’t it be boring, if it didn’t provoke any thoughts or offer any deviation from your expectations. I’m in awe, that a single production can even offer enjoyment for people from such widely varying walks of life. Which is why I gladly sit through couple minutes of Luke milking a grotesque beach cow, knowing it’s there to acknowledge the 'fannish’ legacy of the movies’ more mundane aspects, as well as make the scene with the grumpy old man moping about seem that much more fun for the next generation of Star Wars fanatics ;) Lovingly mocking memes have already birthed from it, and that’s what the fandom is all about!

Speaking of which, I’m totally pro Porg - nothing about those cuties bothered me (even the stiff, puppety legs were a nice nostalgia trip to the practical effects creatures of the past - thank goodness for this current renaissance on that field). Merchandising opportunity done right. Can’t personally say the same about the more 'fantastical’ crystal foxes tho, but hey! They served a major purpose as well! And again, younger audience will surely eat those up no problem.

If ever there was a Star Wars movie to see with your family - parents, kids, siblings, what have you - this is it, I feel. But I might be on the biased side here, whom this 'family drama’ or 'self-searching’ side of the film touched personally. Yet, I obviously can’t be alone on this - factoring in the whole saga’s massive, decades spanning fanbase, I’m way late in the game.

Having found the story touching, gives all new purpose to the action or the tropes even. Along with the already awesome score, cinematography, scenery and sound design it creates the movie’s whole pathos, which I’m thankful to finally having been able to grasp. Otherwise it could easily be 'just another dull scifi flick’ (tho as always, awesome looking and masterfully scored none the less). And of course, it’s fine to enjoy the movie as just a 'scifi adventure movie’ too, but if one claims to “not generally enjoy those genres”, it’d be a shame to focus on just those aspects of the film and dismiss the whole thing based on any such generalizations (as is true with anything). Or leave the movie unwatched because of such preconceived notions or any bad reviews.

I myself never quite understood the fascination of the story of Star Wars before either - just appreciated it’s status as a cultural phenomenon, an artistic production on multiple fronts, industry forerunner and a fandom embracing entity. “The hero’s journey” itself always seemed very basic - fell flat in it’s too black and white presentation - and the fantastical settings further must have helped to alienate from the underlying nuances of the story. So, I’m truly glad to finally have this 'fulfillment of appreciation’ for the film series in all of it’s aspects, story included.

It feels fairly odd to speak of any single movie or ‘pop culture creation’ with such deep notions, but that’s exactly what speaks so highly of the movie, I suppose. It resonates to people  - in good and/or in bad. It IS after all a result of such a huge lot of people’s creative dreams and endeavors over decades, and has inspired even further creativity all over, beyond the franchise. Dismissing it as something frivolous or silly, if oneself doesn’t “get it”, would seem mighty self-righteous. I’m grateful such inspirational, universally relatable stories still get made and survive through the commercially run mega industry’s requirements of what a blockbuster ‘should be like’. Indeed, understanding the industry tropes helps both the makers to include them seamlessly into the narrative and for the audience to find amusement in them too.

Still, in the end “it’s just a film” - a notion now thrown around a lot in defense of the movie for not meeting everyone’s high expectations, it seems -, but what a grand tale of understanding, acceptance, support and hope, none the less. Every bit deserving of a 'high culture’ status.

That all said, just finished watching the Force Awakens with my bros in preparation for the Last Jedi. Their first time seeing it, and my first after seeing it in theaters upon the opening couple years ago. It’s a joy to have things like this to share together. Got them excited too, and can’t wait to go see the movie again on the big screen, this time with the family (albeit minus some?).

[redtutel]

Rewatching Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

Red is this movies color...that’s why people get so aggravate about it! It makes so much sense!

I’m glad I’m a nobody, people people get bullied and shamed for their opinions on this movie. People treat their opinions as facts when discussing this movie. I admit I might get aggrieve with my opinions too.

Last time I saw it, I loved it and disagreed with every complaint I read about it online. It might’ve help that I found spoilers, so certain twists didn’t throw me as off gaurd as it did other people Will I feel the same way? And even if I do, how will I rank this film? Time to find out.

I should really watch the commentary someday. I’d love to know what was in Rian Johnson’s head. Until then, this is my own, personal analysis

It’s very unique to have a Star Wars movie take place right after the previous one. Although given the nature of Force Awaken’s cliffhanger, it was necessary.

This movie definitely borrows for Empire Strikes Back, but not to the same extent. I’d argue it’s Empire backwards. The deuteragonist is out of commission and hope is bleak at the beginning, and we end on a siege  in a white planet with walkers. It might be a bit of a stretch, but I’m sticking to that mindset.

I love Poe’s sass. Anyone who says otherwise has no joy. It’s definitely in character (remember “so who talks first?”) And it shows he’s someone cocky who will mock his enemies to their faces. Plus its not like Star Wars hasn’t had humor like this before.

I like how the opening action sequence starts as a typical feel good action, but then casualties occur which are taken very seriously. And Poe gets chewed out for it too. 

Poe stars out the movie as scrappy, and will disobey orders in order to defeat the enemy. And then he ends it wiser, knowing that sometimes, it’s important to retreat and live to fight another day.

Much like Revenge of the Sith, this is a very dialogue and character driven movie, with not much action. And both movies make the action sequences they do have count.

The scene with Rose’s sister is fantastic. Like any good action sequence, it's all about reverals. She has a squad, but they all died and she’s by herself. She has to bomb the ship, but she crashes and falls, and can’t get up. The remotes to high to reach, so she kicks it down. But the remote lands too far away from her. But at the last second she manages to catch it, and scarifies herself to bomb the ship. It’s a fantastic mini showcase of this one of this movie’s biggest motifs: That no matter how bleak things get, there is still hope, and you have to fight in order to reach that hope.

The juxtaposition of the Resistance cheering and Leia sitting down in relief, only to get a look at the casualties is very clever. It shows that victory bought with lives is no true victory.

Snoke can drag Hux though the floor from a large distance. Classic sequel escalation. How clever.

Finn awakens after two years, yay! And his first words are “Rey!” How sweet. He doesn’t even care he’s still naked covered in medical equipment. All he care about is “Where’s Rey?” And for good reason. Last time he saw her, she was knocked out by Kylo Ren.

And we get the resolution of one of the greatest Star Wars cliffhangers of all time. Fans spent two years imagining what Luke would do next What he would say next. And he tosses the Lightsaber aside and walks away, creating a mystery as to how this once noble hero ended up a jaded old man milking disgusting manatee alien things.

Mark Hamill is a fantastic actor, and this is no exeaption. He’s equal parts funny and aggravating as a bitter old man, but there are moments where the classic Luke comes out, like when he sees R2-D2 and Yoda, or when he asks about Han.

I love how creative the creatures are in this movie. The Porgs are the merchandising stand-out sure, but there’s that ugly milk creature, those beasts of burden in Canto Bight and the Ice foxes. They’re all such creative designs.

“Where’s Han?” Oh how heartbreaking. Apparently there was a brief shot of him mourning that got cut, which is a major shame. I feel like the movie did a good enough job without it, but keeping it back in would’ve added so much. Ah, well.

Snoke really is the main villain of this movie. I think he has about as much screentime as the Emperor did in Return of the Jedi. So I’d say he fufilled his role well enough. He has nothing on Palpatine though, and in my eyes he’s the only character who I like less then their inspiration.

Kylo is maskless the whole movie. I feel like this symbolizes how we spend this movie getting to know the real him. The man behind the Vader impersonator. Kylo killed his father thinking it would fully turn him to the dark side, but he’s more regretful then every before.  And Snoke has lost his faith in him. Snoke’s lack of faith in Klyo is a nice way to differenciate him from Paltapinte by the way. 

...Wait, was the feelings of regret one of the reasons he lost the dual to Rey? I think Snoke is implying that. I also like how this is treated as an abnormality in-universe. Rey was unusually strong, and Kylo was unusually weak in that moment, and everybody acknowledges that fact and questions why.

Snoke sees Luke as the First Order’s greatest enemy, and Rey as “just a girl with a lightsaber.”

Luke on the other hand, no longer sees himself as a hero. “You think I came to the most unfindable place in the galaxy for no reason at all.” That is a good point, and something both Rey and the audience didn’t think though. 

Luke takes an interest in Rey after learning she’s force sensitive. Luke may have a hatred of the Jedi, but he still respects the Force.

“Where are you from?” “Nowhere” “Nobody’s from nowhere” “Jakku” “That is pretty much nowhere. Why are you here Rey from nowhere?” I love mentors that mix humor with wisdom. And Luke fills that role very well. Rey’s arc is about self discovery and introspection, and I love how Luke furthers it.

Rey is still a bit afraid of the Force, and doesn’t know what to make of it.

Is Leia reacting to the aftermath of the battle? Or can she see and Luke and Rey’s meeting isn’t going well. Probably both.

The First Order has a way to track the resistance no matter where they go, even at lightspeed. And they don’t have the fuel to make another jump. I think that’s a good new take on Star Wars space chases.

Although Leia wants to show Poe true military wisdom, she still has a soft spot for him, and for rouge tactics. I wonder if there’s any kind of work out there that depicts Leia seeing Poe as a replacement son. At least a fanfic would be nice.

Leia and Kylo sense each other. And although Kylo killed his father, he can’t bring himself to do the same to his mother. Another fantastic scene.

I used the word siege too soon. The Poe plot is one big medieval siege in space. The First Order is on the offensive, but can’t actually destroy the ship, and the Resistance is stuck in the defensive, with the crew having no choice but to stay inside and wait it out until the reach the new base. Again, a very creative concept.

After years and year of waiting, and subtly hinting at it with certain shots, Leia finally, finally, uses the Force. And she does so in a logical way, to push herself though the vacuum of space to safely get to a ship. And we even get her theme playing as she does that. Sure she looks like Mary Poppins, but a couple of months before the movie came out another science fantasy movie did that too, and we all agree Mary Poppins was cool. So I say, “She’s Mary Poppins Ya’ll!” And again, IT’S LEIA USING THE FORCE AFTER YEARS OF THAT DETAIL BEING POINTLESS! AND SHE USES IT TO SAVE HER LIFE! And after the death of Carrie Fisher, we need to savor what few awesome Leia moments we have left.

I love the scene of Chewbaca trying to eat a Porg but not being able to because they’ll looking at him. It’s hilarious.

Luke seeing R2 again is so adorable. And him using the classic Leia recording is such an effective use of nostalgia. Luke is in the same position Obi Wan all those years ago. And that finally convinces him to at least give the mentor thing a try, it not to convince Rey that the Jedi religion isn’t worth it.

Poor Ackbar was killed for the sake of Poe’s character development. Hondo serves her role as a hatable leader very well. She’s a stranger to both the audience and Poe, so we sympathies with Poe’s disobedience. And she’s an aggrieve purple haired woman, which would put any man on the defensive. But alas, she put too many real life men on the defensive, so they have a hard time accepting the fact she was right all along. I personally think it’s very clever to have the naysaying military leader actually be in the right. It’s a good way to teach Poe wisdom.

She said “We are the spark that will light the fire that will restore the Republic” first. I didn’t remember that. That’s so cool!

Once again, Finn is a deserter, albit a regretful one. But he still doesn’t believe the First Order can be stopped, and to be fair, not much happened in the fist movie to convince him otherwise.

Rose is an endearing character. She’s a maintenance person and not a fighter, so she looks up to heros like Finn. Finn doesn’t see himself as a hero, but to Rose, he’s someone who stood up to the first order, and without his information, they would’ve never been able to destroy Star Killer base. So the fact he wasn’t being a hero greatly upsets her, especially since this is a cause her sister died believing in.

Rose’s maintenance person background and Finn’s low ranking Stormtrooper background makes them the perfect team for their plan to stop the tracker. But Poe’s too proud to get Hondo’s input, so it’s a secret plan.

...Why do people call this plan a sidequest? Sure it fails, but it’s still a logical plan (considering the fact they don’t know the real plan). On the subject, why did Hodo not tell them the real plan? Because she doesn’t trust Poe to follow though with it. Was that a mistake? Seeing how she dies, it might have been. Plus knowing Poe, he probably would’ve preferred Finn’s plan anyway. And we the audience actually did know that the plan was to get to a new base and contact help earlier in the movie

I wish Maz had more screentime in this movie. Although given its set-up, there isn’t really a reason for her to do so. I hope she appears more in Rise of Skywalker

I LOVE the Force connection scene. It starts as a simple look at our hero and villain in the morning, cutting back and forth between them. Simple movie magic. But then...they both notice something at the same time...wait, they notice EACHOTHER! They’re seeing the cuts like we’re seeing the cuts, and then it’s cut as if they’re facing each other directly, even though they’ve obviously not, again playing with the medium of film and ah, it’s so awesome and clever!

I didn’t notice until the second time around (this is my third time watching this movie), Luke never gives the third lesson. Although to be fair, Star Wars protagonists have a history of leaving before their lessons are finished. Will Rise of Skywalker provide that third lesson.

I’m too lazy to quantify this, but I think Force Awakens had more jokes per minute. I don’t get why people act like it has Marvel movie comedy.

Out of all the Star Wars movies, this is the one I feel has the best Force lessons. Probably some of the best Force lessons in the series. We start off with way Rey (and the layman) know: It’s a power Jedi have that lets them control people and makes things float. And after little goofiness (which serve a purpose: Don’t physically reach out, emotionally and spiritually reach out), Luke shows how the Force isn’t a power people have, it’s the energy that binds the universe together. And I love how shots of nature from the island are used to depict the Force, and the nature of Life and Death and the Circle of Life and balance and darkness and light. And how the temptation of the Dark Side is showed as a pit, but a pit that has...something that draws you to it, even though you may never escape if you do.

The Force does not belong to the Jedi. The Jedi kind of sucked in the prequels, so Luke’s new philosophy is actually pretty awesome. 

“It offered you somthing you needed, and you didn’t even try and stop yourself” Did Rey use the Dark Side to win the fight? Does the Dark Side provide an attack buff? It make sense. The Dark Side does get all the good force powers, after all.

Both Rey and Ben Solo were naturally very gifted in the Force. And Luke fears Rey could be the next Kylo Ren if he trains her. How rational is that fear....to this day people aren’t sure. Maybe Rise of Skywalker will finally settle things

Oh, that how Finn and Rose made it. Poe convinced a look out to pull a “no signs of organic life,” but on purpose. And the Resistance does like Poe more then they do Hondo.

Ah, Rey’s curious about Finn too. Maybe I do ship it. But Finn and Rose and Rey might have Ben. Well, strong male/female friendships are rare, so the more the merrier.

Kylo wants to be a monster, and although Rey thinks so, seeing him call himself that makes her realize there’s more to him than he lets on.

Canto Bight. Although I agree the set design could use more Star Wars, there’s still a ton of great alien designs, and it is creative to show a “Hive of Scum and Villainy” for the Galaxy’s 1%. And I love how the music reflects that. Plus the rest of the movie has plenty of creativity to spare.

I forgot how long it took get to Canto Bight.

People also find the tone of the scene off putting, but I don’t mind. Probably because I’ve seen quit a bit of Clone Wars, which is found of mixing Star Wars with...whatever genre it feels like. Political Drama, Film Noir, Kaiju movies. This subplot is Star Wars meets heist movie.

The alien putting coins in BB-8 is voiced by Mark Hamill by the way. Once again proving himself to be a great voice actor.

Behind the glim and glammer of the rich, there’s cruelty and oppression. Finn was already aware of what Stormtroopers are capable of, but here he sees firsthand how even a beautiful part of the galaxy is tainted by it, even in a moment of peace. Rose believes in the cause and wants to fight for it, and seeing her determination makes Finn think that maybe he can too.

I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without talking about expectation subversion. I honestly think the movie does it right. Luke being old and bitter creates a mystery which leads to a fantastic character arc, for example. Finn and Rose find the codebreaker, but then they get arrested for parking violations (which yeah, is a bit silly, but so were the Ewoks)

Although Finn’s subplot is a bit weaker, it still provides some good thematic consistency, and provides a very good arc for Finn.

Since Luke is unhelpful, Rey uses the time to train herself in Lightsaber combat. And as always, she’s a fast learner when it comes to weaponry. 

Lesson two is Luke’s video essay on the prequels. And it’s a pretty good one. Luke followed the way of the Jedi and trained Ben from an early age, and like the Jedi he didn’t notice Ben’s fall to the dark side and Snoke’s corrupting influence until it was too late, and that lead to the creation of the next great darkside user.

Despite this, Rey still needs a mentor, and still believes in Luke, although that’s because Luke didn’t tell the whole truth.

The Resistance is loosing sip after ship, and tensions are rising. Why do people not like the Poe subplot? It’s also a great way to bring the stakes back to the Finn subplot, which admittedly got a bit silly

Once again, when things are bleak, Hope arrives in the form of a new master thief, in the form of DJ. Although DJ proves to be a false hope.

I love with mascot droids get to actually fight.

I admit my opinions aren’t entirely my own anymore, as I remember a video essay pointed out that the main trio all have characters pulling them to the light and to the dark this movie. Rey has Luke and Kylo, Finn and Rose and DJ. I don’t remember what they said about Poe, but I’d say he’s pulled to the light by Leia and Hondo, and pulled to the dark by his pride.

Rose and Finn’s interaction with the slave children help show how the Resistance is a spark, rather then just telling us like most Star Wars movies do.

I do wonder why they freed the horses and not the kids. I guess it’s because horses can actually run fast. Plus they need to create chaos to escape. The kids are cheering them on, though, so I guess its fine.

But more importantly, Finn gets a taste of what its like to save rescue something that’s not a close friend, and to tear down an oppressive system. He has his first inspiration to be a true selfless hero hero, rather than just someone trying to protect his friend. And Rose reminds him that the freedom gained in more important than the havok wreaked. It’s not worth it until people are actually saved, no matter how much damage the enemy sustained.

Luke is called to help by his sister, and ones to reach out to her.

Ah Ben Swolo. Equality after Slave Leia. And also a good showcase in how Rey and Kylo can’t control when they force bond, and it can even happen in awkward situations. And its funny.

Rey wishes she had a father like Han, and Ben just threw him away. Meanwhile Kylo remakes how Rey is always looking for her parents, even surrogate parents. I’ve noticed Kylo dodged the question about killing Han

And we get the shocking twist: Luke tired to kill his nephew to prevent the dark side.

“Let the past die, it’s the only way to become who you’re meant to be.” This is not the main theme of the movie, but Kylo is half right. Rey shouldn’t kill the past, but she should let it go, move on from her parents, and embrace the new family she has in the Resistance. Meanwhile Kylo keeps saying he’ll killing the past, but he’s working with people trying to bring it back, and he just gets more and more caught up in it, even after killing his father and trying to distance himself from his Vader aesthetic. 

I love the force case scene. As a kid I was in love with the endless mirror effect, and seeing it messed with, by having Rey’s reflection be out of synch, is such a cool moment. She’s trying to self reflect, but she hasn’t come to terms with herself. It also shows the vastness and confusing okay the Force. She tryes to find her parents, and sees...nothing. They’re truly gone, and all that’s left is herself. Which is her worst fear. She doesn’t want to be alone anymore. She wants a family.

And after Luke’s uncorperation and description, Chewbacca busy trying to contact the resistance, and Finn being far away, the only person she has to share her troubles with is Kylo. 

During all this time Force bonding, the two of them have gotten to know eachother’s struggles and insecurities. They truly sympathize and care about each other now. The are now friends and confidants. And with this newfound relationship, they truly believe that can turn the other to their side. This is one of my favorite Hero/Villain relationships ever. Dare I say, I like it even more the Luke and Darth Vader. Being father is son is fantastic of course, but the fact that Rey and Kylo formed this sort of bound without blood ties makes it also the more fascinating. Sure it was a part of Snoke’s plan, but it the relationship they built because of it was still genuine. 

They’re force bound has gotten so powerful, they can literally touch each other now. Seeing Kylo’s hand in Rey’s hut is such a strange and powerful image. And then Luke sees them together, which is even more shocking. And Luke is afraid Rey’s turn is inevitable.

And now we know the full story. Luke feared the darkness in Ben. And in a brief moment, he saw Kylo the same way he once saw Vader and Palpatine, and drew his blade. He realizes his mistake just as quickly, but it was still too late. Ben saw his master trying to kill him, and his turn to the darkside was complete. And it was all Luke’s fault. History repeated himself, and Luke was too full of shame to do anything about it. Sure he saved Vader’s soul, but he didn’t create Vader like he did Kylo. So it’s not like seeing his Uncle would stir conflict in Ben or anything. 

And Rey has now lost hope in Luke, for failed to even try to do what he did with his father. Although again, given the circumstances, I don’t like Luke can be the one to save Kylo. But neither is Rey. Maybe in the future?

I LOVE Yoda’s scene It’s probably the greatest Yoda moment of all time. Yoda actually agrees with Luke that the Jedi made mistakes, but he’s here to provide the true takeaway. Don’t run from failure, or try to kill the past. Instead, you should learn from the past failure, and with the knowledge, move on with your life. Remember both the glory of the past and the shame, and use them both as you move to the future. And I love how grumpy old Luke is 19 all over again when Yoda shows up. 

DJ provides a very fascinating perspective of the Star Wars universe. History repeats itself, so why bother carry which way the pendulum swings? After all, the people who financially succeeds are the ones you play both sides. He gives Finn the temptation to be apathetic to the fight against good and evil. “Live Free, don’t join.” That’s what Finn wanted at the beginning of the movie

I love Finn is defensive of Rose having to give up her sister’s keepsake. He’s a good person.

“Hope is like the Sun, if you only believe in it when you can see it, you’ll never make it though the night.” Another great message of this movie is the importance of having Faith.

And turns out, Poe actually does hate Hondo’s plan, and since he talked smack, she’s not inclined to listen to him either.

“If you see Finn before I do tell him...” I love their friendship.

And finally, Kylo and Rey meet in the flesh. But as Luke says, things don’t go the way they think.

It’s pretty clever and Finn and Rey spend the climax in the same place, 

And when Poe does tell Hondo the plan, she hates it.

The iron gag is a pretty silly fake out, as well as an homage to the modelwork of the old films.

The evil BB-8 was in a lot of merch. But he’s barely in the movie.

Kylo and Rey are both right about what they’re about to do. But they did it a lot sooner than expected, and didn’t realize that their team up would be short lived.

DJ is a snake, but I love that he gives Rose her trinket back. It shows that he’s not heartless

After do so well, the plan suddenly all falls apart. It’s Reversal, which as fall as I know, is an element of good storytelling. The plan goes awry, and the characters have to deal with what to do now.

Leia is here to set Poe straight. 

After losses should be avoided, Hondo’s sacrifice shows that  sometimes they’re necessary. The import thing is having the discretion to tell.

Maybe Rey’s strong in the Force because the Force needed a champion of Light to combat the rising darkness.

Snoke was behind the mind meld the whole time. His plan is kind of sexist come to think of it. He doesn’t think it’ll work because of human empathy, but because Kylo is a handsome, tortured bad boy. Seems fitting given his appearance and a disgusting old man. Or maybe I’m overthinking it. Anyway, he’s swinging Rey like a ragdoll using the force, showing that she’s not all powerful like the haters think

And unlike most rouges, DJ is selfish ‘till the end. Things are bleaker and bleaker. The plan not only failed, it cost more lives that it would’ve otherwise if Poe had just had faith in his commanders.

I love how Rey trying to get her lightsaber, only for Snoke to just bring it back and humiliate her. 

Snoke’s plan is pretty okay, but he’s not nothing on Palpatine’s chessmasterness, even ignoring the prequels. For one thing, no matter who one Luke vs Vader, Palpatine still wins.

“He ignites to and kills his true enemy.” How very true. I got spoiled that Snoke would die in this movie, and my first thought was “Woah, that’s cool.”

Seeing Kylo and Rey fight side by side is just awesome.

Finn sees DJ’s  desire for self preservation (and in turn his old desire for such), and disgusting, and shows just how much he’s grown.

I think Snoke dying is a good example of subverting expectations. Darth Vader always said “I’m going to overthrow the empire and rule with my family.” But Kylo Ren actually does it. But he still doesn’t turn to the light side. He’s now the man in charge, Kylo Ren, the villain we truly care about is now the main villain (well, until Palpatine pulled a Ganon), and I am excited to see where that goes

Rey’s parents were nobodies who sold her off. Rewatching Force Awakening, that makes perfect sense. It’s a great reveal of “I am your father.” It’s equally as devastating while being something different

Seeing Kylo and Rey fighting over the Skywalker lightsaber and then it breaking is such a cool moment. It shows that the Star Wars legacy is breaking, but the future is all the more exciting for it.

Destroying a ship with a smaller hyperspace ship. Awesome. Why don’t they do it more often? Because no writer thought to. Not to mention suicide bombing is wrong so good guys won’t do it, and it’s expensive so bad guys won’t do that.

Finn vs Phasma is short but a very satisfying moment for Finn. He stood up to his old boss, he’s using the TR-8R weapon, and has one of my favorite Star Wars lines “You were always scum.” “Rebel scum.”

Hux definitely doesn’t approve of Kylo the same way he does of Snoke. The’s bound to be tension in the First Order’s chain of command, and I’m excited to see that unfold.

The climax at the Star Wars Fanbase (Salt) Plant is so fantastic. Hope leaves are constantly rising and falling, but the Heroes maintain faith despite that. The Resistance is corned, and they have no choice but to fight with outdate equipment. The Red and white is so lovely, it’s no wonder it was in the source material.

The Resistance are completely overwhelmed, but the Millennium Falcon is here! With Rey, Chewbacca and a Porg

The canon scene is a great showcase of character development. Poe now has the wisdom to know when the pull back and live to fight another day. And Finn now has the selflessness to try and sacrifice his life for the sack of the Resistance. But at the same time, Finn still needs to know that it’s not all about killing the bad guys no matter the cost. It’s about trying you best to save what you love as well.

Finn and Rose have a good friendship, but the kiss kind of comes out of nowhere. They not exactly Han and Leia, but hey, at least they’re not Anakin and Padme

Hope is diminished. The battle is lost (but thankfully not every life). And there’s not getting rescued. But then out of nowhere, comes the New Hope himself.

I can’t help but hear My Hero Academia music when Luke appears in this scene. He’s is the Galaxy’s Symbol of Peace!

“No one’s every really gone.” I forgot that line was in this movie. It’s so sweet to see Luke and Leia reunited after so long.

Seeing Luke fills the heros with awe, the villains with dread, and Kylo with irrational fury.

Comparing Kylo’s reaction to Han vs Luke, and you can see why Luke can’t be the one to save him.

Luke just brushing it off. Awesome.

Luke holds back the entire First Order without striking even once. A Jedi uses the Force for defence after all.

When back into the cave, Poe noticed that some foxes are getting in or out. When all hope seems lost, have faith and keep looking and sometimes you can find it.

Hope is found with the exist, but its lost when the opening’s too small. But then Rey uses the force and create an exist. She created hope. She has become the Galaxy’s New Hope (or the Awakening of the Force)

“Every word you just said was wrong.” I love that line, and how it took on a brand new meaning.

Finn and Rey’s reunion is so touching. The duo’s back together again after all this time.

“Strike me down in angry and I’ll always be with you, just like your father.” An amazing twist on a classic Star Wars moment. Luke’s death will just make Kylo less and less stable in his conviction to the darkness.

And Luke has committed his final act of heroism, and his final sacrifice. Protecting what he loved instead of fighting what he hated. Making sure that hope and rebellion remained in the galaxy. But astral projection comes at a great cost. And Leia and Rey can sense it.

Ending Luke’s life with the moment that introduced him. With him looking toward twin suns, dreaming about the future. But as a Force Ghost, I doubt this is the end of his story.

Rey and Kylo having one last Force bound moment before going their separate ways. Kylo is the Suprime Leader, and Rey is off to be the galaxy’s New Hope (or Awakening of the Force).

It’s nice for Poe and Rey to finally meet

All that’s left of the Resistance fits on just one ship. The Star Wars ship. Rey has lightsaber parts and the sacred texts. All she needs to be the next force using hero.

Although Luke is dead, his legend lives on, continuing to spread hope throughout the galaxy. And the Force is still very much alive, for there will always be dreamers connected to it. And we get shown proof that the Resistance is a spark.

Overall, I still love this movie. I disagree with every complaint people have about it. And while not every joke lands, it’s far from the first movie to make that mistake. Plus the ones that do land really land. I love the character development and philosophy, and although it’s slower, every action sequence is amazing and entertaining.

[lindburgsreviews]

Star Wars (1977) Movie Review

Star Wars was released forty years ago to this day and was directed by George Lucas and starred Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Alec Guiness. I decided to watch this movie and review it for the reason I mentioned above.  Star Wars is my all time favorite film franchise and to look back and see its impact not just on film but upon culture as a whole is astounding.  Because I’ve seen this movie more times than I can keep track of, I wanted to try watching it as if I had never even heard of the saga before and with as little of my feelings of nostalgia interfering as possible. Also, I’ll be referring to this movie throughout the review just as Star Wars. That’s what it was called in 1977 and that’s what I prefer to call it. Calling it Episode IV: A New Hope and trying to tie in the prequels convolutes matters and is an entirely different conversation for another day.

That being said, Star Wars tells the story of Luke Skywalker. He lives on a remote desert planet and lives a pretty monotonous life. He dreams of adventure and leaving behind his old life to join the rebellion taking place against the evil Galactic Empire. This all changes when he stumbles across two droids (R2-D2 and C-3PO) who are carrying the secret plans to the Empire’s planet-destroying space station, the Death Star. With the help of his Jedi mentor Ben Kenobi, Luke sets off to return the plans to the Rebellion and Princess Leia in order to destroy the Death Star.

By watching Star Wars as if I had never seen it before, I noticed just how well this movie is paced. It’s a very slow build-up; but it is done so in an extremely effective way. George Lucas and the other creative minds knew that these strange and unfamiliar unfamiliar worlds would be hard for the average viewer to connect with. Instead of throwing the audience in to the fire without any understanding of what’s going on, the narrative eases you in to the environment and let’s the viewer get used to what they’re seeing before introducing the main characters and plot. This slow build up eventually pays off when the characters land in the Death Star to rescue Princess Leia, and doesn’t let up until the end. 

 Speaking of characters, this movie is chock full of iconic ones. Luke Skywalker is easy to relate to ��while Ben Kenobi brings a strong dramatic gravity to his scenes. My favorite character by far however, is Harrison Ford as Han Solo. He agrees to transport Luke, Ben, and the droids in his ship which is easily the best vehicle in cinematic history, the Millennium Falcon. What’s great about Han is that he brings a cocky sense of humor to the action and also plays an important part in making the viewer feel comfortable among all the aliens and robots. He has a bit of a dark side, but he’s still a fun character that adds flair to the already entertaining cast of characters. 

I won’t focus too much on Darth Vader even though he is one of the most famous characters from the saga. I realized he doesn’t really peak as a character until The Empire Strikes Back. What I will focus on instead is arguably the most impressive feat of Star Wars, the technical aspects. To see how after forty years just how well the special effects hold up in this movie is amazing. This is decades before CGI effects became common place in film and you can buy all of the space battles and creatures that appear on screen as real thanks to the fantastic work done through miniatures, puppets, matte paintings, and detailed sets. Equally impressive is the score arranged by the master, John Williams. In all the Star Wars movies, the music is almost a character in and of itself. The main theme is probably one of the most recognizable pieces of music ever composed and the other themes are used to help guide you through a gauntlet of emotions. The Star Wars YouTuber HelloGreedo once said he doesn’t think Star Wars would have been such a huge hit if it had the standard techno-style score that so many other science fiction films of the time had. I agree with him, as the score adds an extra level of spectacle and drama.

 Star Wars is also a movie which also has an extremely interesting story of production. Like Jaws and Rocky in years before, making the movie was very difficult. Filming went way over budget, members of the cast and studio heads at 20th Century Fox thought it would be a flop, and technical difficulties plagued the productions. After Lucas screened a cut of it to his friends including fellow director Brian De Palma who called it the worst movie he had ever seen. To learn just how frustrating it must have been to make Star Wars, it goes to show just how dedicated the entire production team was to pulling it off and its incredible to see just how successful this movie went on to become. The dirty environments and rough and tumble characters and story gives it a lovingly gritty feel. I also think this played a key part in the success of the franchise.

In closing, Star Wars is one of the most important movies to ever be made. It’s had a positive impact on so many people’s lives, including my own. I know some people who have never seen it or aren’t interested in the sci-fi fantasy element of the movie. I believe it is actually more accessible than most other series like it if you begin with watching this film and its two original sequels. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend watching them in this way. For those of you who have sen it and share my love of this movie and the others, its a fun and entertaining movie which leaves a lasting impression.

Final Rating on the Lindburg Scale: 10 out of 10