#also jj abrams can go fuck himself i hope he never feels satisfied with a movie ever in his life

[fontofmercy-archived2]

TROS spat in the face of every single abused child who was looking to this fairytale for hope. The sequel trilogy wasn’t about a farm boy looking for adventure or even an abused child falling to villainy, it was about three abused children from the different class systems all rising out of trauma and dysfunction. This was our fairytale, our story, and JJ Abrams perverted it into abuse apologist propaganda in a pathetically desperate attempt to appease the most hateful groups of fans who never understood or appreciated the story to begin with (which is why the story had to be butchered in order to appease them).

1.) Rey

Rey’s parents selling her for profit into slavery was portrayed as a good, loving thing. Child trafficking was literally portrayed as excusable, and even loving, in this children’s film. Just let that sink in for a second.

What is the message there? If your parents did something horrible that caused you years of trauma and torment, you should just not lose faith in them because they may have had a good reason (even if you have no evidence of that). Maybe a space wizard who has been dead for decades forced them to traffic you. This scene makes me want to vomit. This is how a children’s fairytale portrayed parents who sell their children into trafficking:

There is no excuse for this. Rey’s parentage was solved. Her identity crisis was over. This wasn’t needed except to force this abuse apologist message. Oh, and of course to feed the sexist fanboys a bit of eugenics to make them stop whining about how a woman could possibly be important and powerful.

TLJ was about Rey discovering her identity and letting go of her unhealthy, irrational dependency on parents who she never knew, who sold her to an abuser and left her to half-starve alone in a desert. TROS decided to give her a new identity crisis out of literally nowhere just so they could erase all that “You are not your parents, even if your parents don’t love you and/or aren’t special, you are still special and still deserving of love. You can find belonging ahead of you.” stuff with dynastic “Actually, your blood family does entirely define your identity and you should always assume they’re right even when all evidence points otherwise, just ignore your own trauma and blame it on a dead space wizard.”

The whole Rey Palpatine thing left a very bad taste in my mouth. Not just because it’s fucking stupid and something Reddit would write, but because Rey was horrible in TROS. She acted like she was possessed by Palpatine, she stabbed Ben (who she cares for and always had compassion for) to kill while he was distracted. She suddenly acted like she didn’t care about anyone around her. She just overall acted unrecognizable from the warm, loving, empathetic woman we saw in TFA and TLJ. The message here is clearly that because she has this “bad blood”, Rey can’t have an identity for herself. The only thing that saves her is taking on the identity of the good guys, she never finds her own. All the traits she’s had up until now don’t matter, who she actually is doesn’t matter. All that matters is what man’s blood runs through her veins. All Rey is is someone’s granddaughter, because if she wasn’t, then she’d really be nobody.

And thus, JJ Abrams decided that “Anyone can be special, even nobodies. Your worth is not defined by your class or your background.” was a stupid message and instead it should be pure eugenic “You’re only special if you have important people blood/name. Your identity is entirely your (male) family, not your own. No silly woman could have power of her own!”

Rey taking on the name of Skywalker is an utterly shallow attempt to fix the fact that they took every bit of Rey’s real identity from her, took half her soul (Ben is her dyad, two that are one), and then left her alone on a desert planet as if to say that her “true self” is the abused child she once was and that she can’t actually escape that. The moral of this fairytale was “You don’t need friends or love, as long as you have a glow stick (material possessions) and a super duper special name that makes you important (which you weren’t before, you were nobody).”

Not to mention that Rey basically named herself after Luke, no one else she knew actually used that name. And Luke didn’t do anything to deserve that, he rejected her at every single opportunity and only did the bare minimum to help her after being berated into it. Han was her surrogate father and the first person to offer her a life outside of Jakku. Leia was her loving mentor and pseudo-mother. Ben was the love of her life who has always been there for her when she needed someone to confide it, someone to see her true self and tell her she wasn’t alone. Luke was nothing but some cranky old guy who made her feel awful about herself and never accepted her (not to mention telling her she was inherently dangerous and also trying to murder her soulmate when he was a child which the real Rey was furious about).

2.) Finn

Finn’s character has not been given much in terms of development. For the most part, he’s been reduced to “Rey’s friend” and then “Finn’s friend”, with a little moment in there where he got to be with Rose and have his own identity but TROS of course decided to reward racist bullies and cut out Rose instead of giving the rest of the fans a satisfying story.

In TROS though, the one thing that Finn actually did that was heroic by himself, his character defining moment of turning from The First Order, was credited to the force and described like it wasn’t a choice at all. Which brings up a lot of questions and, as Han would say, “That’s not how the force works!”. It was so entirely unneeded to take that from Finn, but they gave up all of Rose’s potential screentime to do it.

There’s also the moment when Poe, our alleged hero, so hilariously (i.e callously) compares himself being a criminal to Rey being a scavenger and Finn being a stormtrooper. Completely ignoring the fact that they had no choice in that, as if their trauma doesn’t matter at all. It’s a small moment, but it was very insensitive and highlights how much the writers Did Not Care or even understand their main characters’ experiences.

3.) Ben

I don’t even know where to start with Ben Solo. His ending was the one that broke me as a person, I had so many hysterical sobbing fits over it that my loved ones were actually getting tired of it and it genuinely put me in a really bad place with my depression that I’m only just not getting out of.

Ben Solo’s story in TFA and TLJ was abuse victim’s epic, it was the story of a boy who was tortured and groomed from the time he was in his mother’s womb. A man who never knew a life without abuse. Ben Solo was described as a pure beam of light in his mother’s womb who was ensnared and tainted by a predatory force bigger and stronger than himself that he could not escape.

The feeling of being tainted and corrupted is common in abuse victims, and the fact that TROS told every single abused child out there “Yes, you really are tainted and corrupted. You do deserve to die before experiencing more than a moment of happiness and safety.” is something that I’ve yet to get over. It still infuriates me, it still breaks my heart. Ben’s entire arc up until this point has been about how he is still worthy of love.

And no, this isn’t me woobifying; it’s in the text of the films and the canon novels that Ben worked for his redemption, that he earned it. Ben fought Snoke from the time he was a child, but Ben was only a child and Snoke was too powerful, too relentless in his cruelty for him to withstand. The one and only person in the entire galaxy who had the training and the knowledge to protect Ben was his uncle, who chose to try to murder him in his sleep instead of protecting him. Ben was left with nowhere to turn except to his abuser. And even then, we see him struggle every single day to try and force himself to be this evil person that he never was. Ben was light itself who was convinced he was darkness through abuse and manipulation.

Then, when Ben found the first person who he could feel and connect with through the force, even though Snoke and Luke had abused and betrayed him - Ben still took the chance to reach out to Rey and be vulnerable with her. While interrogating an enemy, he took off his mask and revealed himself (something we only see him to for his father and when Snoke forces him to maliciously). In the middle of a war, under the thumb of the monster who has tortured him since forever, Ben was able hold Rey’s hand and tell her she wasn’t alone. He was still able to be kind. And because of that kindness, that connection, Ben found the courage to finally destroy his abuser and free himself.

Ben freed himself, and he did it out of compassion for and a need to protect Rey, not out of wrath or vengeance. If Ben were truly a creature of wrath, he would have killed Snoke before, but it was only when he had to see and hear and feel his soulmate be tortured by his own abuser that he found that courage. And yes, he did take Snoke’s place at first because that was the only way he knew how to protect himself. In his experience, people without power get hurt and that’s it. But even then, Ben was able to muster yet more strength to shed the armor that was Kylo Ren and stand with Rey unarmored against the very thing that has abused and tortured him since before he was born.

That took so much bravery and love and selflessness for Ben to stand there as himself, ready to fight his abuse and trauma head-on as Ben Solo. For him to admit he was hurt for the first time in the series. For him to crawl up a cliff with a badly broken leg out of love. For him to willingly give his very life force out of pure love. All of these things are incredible for Ben to have been able to do after all he had been through, these are more than deserving of reward. But TROS punished Ben for doing everything right, they proved that abusers always win in the end. Ben was going to survive until the last few edits. Everything we see was literally leading up to him surviving. This was Ben’s redemption, this was supposed to be him fighting for his new beginning and taking his first steps into the happiness and safety he earned, and should have had as a child, not a pointless struggle before succumbing to death:

But TROS told us, told traumatized and neurodivergent children who saw themselves in Ben, that it wasn’t good enough. That love isn’t good enough. That doing the right thing deserves to be punished. That children tainted by violence and abuse and darkness don’t deserve love and healing even when they earn redemption, even when they do everything in their power to do the right thing and be brave. The hopelessness of that is what broke me as a person. That is not what Star Wars is about. Star Wars is about redemption and love and hope; TROS was about cruelty covered up with a thin sheet of materialism and confused, poor storytelling.

[gffa]

THIS IS GOING TO BE A JOURNEY and it may not be what you were looking for, but I hope that it can explain how I came around on TLJ and why I’m sitting where I am, why I’ve made peace with it and even come to like aspects of it.  It’s going to seem pretty negative at first and it’s not going to work for everyone (spoiler alert: I think the supplementary canon is pretty invaluable for turning someone around), but I’ll lay out how I got to a pretty good place with TLJ! Because, looking back on it, I think what I really needed to do wasn’t to sweep aside my negative feelings, but instead to work through them.  This isn’t a post for people who loved TLJ and want a celebratory post about it!  It’s also not a post for people who hated it and want to read criticisms of it (though, both those things are in here!).  It’s a post for those who are struggling with how to figure out how to feel about it and want to like it a little more.  (Or anyone who just wants to rubberneck at this rather long navel-gazing post!  XD) LET ME START WITH THIS:  I fully recognize that my method and my views and my way of coming around on TLJ aren’t going to be for everyone and that’s okay. We all have our different views of the movie and we all have our preferences/lines in the sand drawn at our own personal points.  If you read what I have to say and don’t come out any more convinced than you were before, that’s okay, too! LET ME FOLLOW IT UP WITH THIS:  My feelings for TLJ are complicated, in that there are aspects of it that I really enjoy, but I came around to them in a very roundabout way and that may not work for everyone.  While there are things I really love about the movie now, there are also things that I think are never going to work for me.  In a nutshell:  The Luke & Rey storyline is largely the only one that really works for me.  The Kylo stuff actually hangs together reasonably coherently for me, I’m just not sure what to do with it until IX comes out.

The Finn & Rose stuff has a lot of potential that I like, but it fails to follow through on that potential.  As @thewillowbends has noted many times (and she’s very right about this, imo) HOW do you have a storyline about what war does to people by the rich and powerful to the oppressed, HOW do you have a storyline that contains child slaves in it, AND NOT CONNECT IT TO FINN’S STORY AS A CHILD SOLDIER IN THE FIRST ORDER? The Poe & Holdo stuff has potential and hangs together well on a thematic level, as the three stories are about cementing characters into their roles and making sure they are committed to being on these paths, as well as the movie has the theme running through it of defying expectations (yet this still locks them into giving those expectations just as much importance, because that’s the framework you’re still working it) and that it’s about men being called out by women, that this is how the Poe and Holdo thing defies what we expect.  Yes, I can agree with all of that!  I can agree that Holdo doesn’t owe him an explanation, women don’t owe men shit, in that sense!  It works on a thematic level, but then I look at it from a character level and it just absolutely falls apart for me.  W H Y did Holdo not sense the mutiny brewing under her nose, W H Y not just tell us a good reason for not saying anything about their plan?  There’s no in universe answer that has satisfied me on that yet. AND THEN THE ONE THING THE MOVIE MAY NEVER BE ABLE TO FIX:  Rian Johnson makes no bones about how this was a movie about defying expectations, that Rey’s story in the cave was about the hardest thing for her to hear, it was a movie about Luke Skywalker not being what we thought we wanted from the story.  And I can eventually come around on the Luke part of that story, because rewatching the OT has actually helped me a lot to see where much of his characterization has been stemming from!  But we’ll get to that later.  Right now, what this movie can probably never fix is that, yeah, okay, you’re defying expectations, that’s the story you wanted to tell and maybe there’s something to that whole thing.  But it also means that I’m never going to get Mark Hamill as a badass Jedi Master in all his glory, not for more than about two minutes. Instead, I’m going to be left with the feeling of how bitterness ate at him for at least those six years, how he died for this, and it’s never going to reach the epic heights of what the old Legends EU set up for him.  Whether it’s a better story or not, that depends on what each of us gets out of it, but my heart wanted Luke Skywalker being badass the whole way through a movie and getting to see him in a lightsaber fight that actually put his incredible skills to use, to see that strength in the Force on display in movies that could do the special effects justice.  I’m never going to get that with Mark Hamill and I’m never going to be satisfied on some level for it.  All the good (if you think they’re good) reasons in the world are never going to be able to fill that in for me. AND THE BIGGER PROBLEM WITH THE OVERALL SEQUELS:  I had to come home and Google what the fuck the First Order even was after TFA.  I have no idea what the state of the galaxy is like during TLJ and boy did the movie work to make sure it didn’t feel connected to anything that came before on a worldbuilding level.  Sure, you have Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa and the Millennium Falcon and lightsabers!  But that’s about it.  There were no recognizable alien races.  There are almost no recognizable planets.  There is a very, very obvious lack of knowing the backstory and I don’t know if IX can stick the landing of what is very obviously a WIP.  George Lucas managed it, that the prequels evolved as he wrote them/worked on them, but I think one of his strengths is that he’s really good at building a bigger world like that.  Can a George Lucas-less film trilogy stick the landing without him?  I’m willing to work with them, but I’m not sure JJ Abrams (a guy known for the Alias ending and that LOST was his baby as well, even if he wasn’t as involved as later, and the Star Trek movies) is the guy who can achieve that. WHERE THIS ENDS US UP AT:  Okay, so those are my big criticisms with the movie.  For me, it helps to understand where my dissatisfaction is coming from, that pinning it down and laying it out in clearly expressed words so that I completely and totally grok my problems with the movie, that lets me move on to, well, okay, what do I like, what potential good stuff is here. This is a pretty high up view of my problems with TLJ, of course, I’m skimming over a lot of the more detail-oriented problems (like how Holdo’s kamikaze hyperspace attack basically breaks Star Wars, because WHY HAS NO ONE DONE THAT BEFORE?, THERE IS NO REASON THAT ANYONE HAS COME UP WITH THAT SATISFIES THAT QUESTION FOR ME, but that’s not really a TLJ problem, that’s a “this was always there, just that no one really thought about it and assumed it wasn’t possible” problem), as I want to keep this post under 3k words, but that lays out the framework.  Okay, so where did I go from here? SOME WAYS I STARTED TO COME AROUND A BIT: → I started getting into the supplementary material.  I watched the Battlefront II game like a movie and, oh, hey, they’re doing the work of connecting the Empire to the First Order!  And, whoa, that was the single best Luke Skywalker story post-ROTJ that we’ve gotten yet!  I read Legends of Luke Skywalker and that gave me a lot of Luke feelings, which eased up my feeling stung about how the majority of the screentime he got was him mired in depression and blaming the Jedi for the problems. → I started reading interviews with Rian Johnson.  Now, this is a mixed bag at times, but there are some things that he explicitly explains that really worked for me, such as:  “[Luke]’s taken the weight of the world on his shoulders, taken himself out of the equation, so that the Jedi can die out, so that light can rise from a worthier source. So, in his own way, similar to Kylo, he’s trying to disconnect, he’s trying to throw away the past, he’s saying 'Let’s kill religion.  It’s the thing that’s messing us up, thing thing right here, let’s kill it.’ And the truth is, it’s a personal failure.  It’s not religion[’s fault], it’s his own human nature that’s betrayed him.” This puts A LOT into context       → It highlights that Luke was in a really bad place mentally and I’m here for characters who are speaking out of being in bad mental/emotional places!       → It highlights that Luke’s words about how it was time for the Jedi to end, how they were responsible for the creation of Vader and the rise of the Empire, how they were fucked up, how they weren’t needed in the galaxy, were all explicitly set up to be knocked down!  He literally goes out to face down the entire First Order with his laser sword!  Rian Johnson explicitly states what happened was a personal failing, not the religion/Jedi’s failing!       → It took me a long time and a lot of going back over Luke’s scenes from the OT to really connect them to how they were being continued on with TLJ and focusing on him as coming from a bad mental health place made me ready to hear that. → I read the novelizations, which are largely pretty standard retellings, but they do contain a lot of the characters’ thoughts and confirmation of some details that bugged me.  Like, it’s confirmed that Rey’s abilities with the lightsaber are based on the Force bond that Snoke gave her to Kylo, that she’s using his memories as a way to fight. This also allowed me to take a better look at Rose Tico’s character and give better context to Finn.  There’s a scene in one of them (I can’t remember if it’s the adult or jr novelization?) where it’s pretty clear that Finn wasn’t a failure at being a Stormtrooper, but that he was mopping decks because they couldn’t squash the compassion and goodness out of him, to do the jobs they were tasking him with.  He had really high scores in the rankings, but he just couldn’t follow through on the bad shit, so he was being punished.  That kind of thought being given to Finn, even if only for a moment, really helped me! Rose also gets more exploration and her reactions as coming from a place of grief are much easier for me to see.  Her anger at Finn’s desertion attempt because Paige gave her life for it, her latching onto him because she has this empty place in her because of Paige’s death, her readiness to FIGHT EVERYTHING IN HER WAY, were all really charming to me! → During this, I’m also reading the supplementary material to get me more emotionally invested in the characters.  Both the Phasma and Cobalt Squadron books really charmed the hell out of me and they helped fill in the world for me! WHERE I STAND AT THAT POINT: Well, I still have issues with TLJ, but it’s starting to make more sense to me.  I still think some things are bullshit about it or just leave me feeling entirely cold, I think a lot of the backlash against the criticism for the movie ignores that there are a lot of people with really good points, instead of it being just assholes who are angry that women and people of color are getting all up in their Star Wars.  (Don’t get me wrong, that’s a very real problem with Star Wars fans, but it’s not all of the TLJ criticism.) But I guess I’m warming up to it. And I realized that I needed to drop a certain mindset from the movie:  It is not revolutionary or breaking new ground or a big, shocking thing. The movie does kind of pride itself on defying expectations, but that still means it’s just as married to using those expectations as a framework for the story.  For example:  Rian Johnson talked about how the cave scene was about telling Rey the hardest thing she could hear, rather than what would be the satisfying answer or whatever.  Okay, but that still uses the question of, “What would the audience find satisfying?” as the foundation of how that scene was written, rather than something that would feel organic to the character’s actual development and the world around her.  (In fairness, the whole “defies expectations” thing is more about reviewers and defenders on YouTube than it’s something directly from RJ himself, so I’m not putting this on him as much as I am on the fandom-in-general.) So I dropped the whole idea that TLJ was revolutionary or different or breaking new ground. “Let the past die.  Kill it if you have to.” KYLO REN IS NOT RIGHT ABOUT THIS.  And Rian Johnson explicitly says so.  He says that you shouldn’t be stuck in the past, but that you build on it and move forward.  And, when I looked at TLJ in that light, I suddenly liked it a lot more. FOR EXAMPLE:  That cave scene.  You know why it works for me?  I explain more fully here, but basically it really works (even RJ’s comment about what would be the hardest thing for her to hear works with this) as the time honored Jedi tradition of going into a cave full of the Force and facing your greatest fears that linger inside yourself. Luke did it on Dagobah.  The Jedi younglings all did it on Ilum.  Ezra did it in the Jedi Temple on Lothal.  And now Rey does it on Ahch-To. If that scene wasn’t about revealing some external truth, but instead some internal truth about what she was carrying around with her?  HELL YEAH I’M HERE FOR THAT, THAT’S WHAT A JEDI NEEDS TO DO TO BECOME A JEDI. And if I could turn around on that aspect, maybe there were other things I could turn around on, too? WHICH BRINGS US TO THE LUKE SKYWALKER QUESTION:  A big crux of a lot of people’s dislike of TLJ is OMG LUKE SKYWALKER WOULD NEVER.  And that was absolutely how I felt for a long time! But now I’m kind of wondering:  Am I sure about that? Because I’ve been doing some meta about Luke Skywalker and I’ve been finding it to fit with the things the character has always struggled with.  As much as we want Luke Skywalker to be a pure cinnamon roll who is nothing but sweetness and light, that’s not actually who he is.  (And let me be clear that this is not a criticism leveled at Luke or even a “oh, you can only like him if he’s ~flawed~, otherwise you’re not seeing the ~truth~”, but instead aimed at showing why Luke Skywalker is incredible as a person and as a character, as I see him!) It’s easy to remember that Luke threw away his lightsaber and refused to fight, that he said, “I am a Jedi.  Like my father before me.”  But you know what came right before that?  Sidious taunting him with how he feels the hate and anger flowing through Luke, as he threatens his friends down on Endor.  We see it, too:

He is SO ANGRY here, even at this late in the game.  He’s spent years working on himself and controlling those feelings and he STILL struggles with it, even knowing that there’s good in his father. Sidious’ taunt wouldn’t rile Luke up if there was nothing in him that was there to rile up. And it’s present all along the way, Luke’s struggle with fear and anger.  He’s angry after ANH when all the slaves on Cymoon 1 are killed, blaming himself for Vader killing them.  He has fear and doubt swirling around in him, because the cave on Dagobah isn’t showing us an external threat, but an internal one.  All that he faces there is what he brought with him.  He runs off from Dagobah before he’s ready to face Vader, who says he can feel the fear Luke is at least learning to control--but it’s clearly still there.  And when Luke cannot deny the connection to Vader, when he has to yield some part of himself to the truth that Darth Vader is is father, he wants to die.  Mark Hamill talks about how Luke let go from Cloud City, “like committing suicide”. Luke is an incredible, phenomenal person, but a big part of that is because of the struggles he faces to overcome his anger and fear, that he does it--not that he never felt them in the first place. And the Jedi very much make the point that this is a lifelong journey to keep facing all the dark side stuff inside you.  They make this point in the prequels, they make this point in Rebels, they make this point in TLJ even. So, the idea that he would ignite his saber in a moment of weakness (because, let’s be honest, Ben Solo is not innocent at that point--if someone is willing to MURDER ALL THE OTHER STUDENTS because his uncle realized the darkness in him--and that is how it’s phrased in the novelization--then THAT PERSON IS A DANGER and Luke’s reacting to something that’s there) and then regret it so deeply that he withdraws from everyone for the next six years?  That he would be borderline suicidal while on Ahch-To because the dark things inside him were eating him alive? Yeah, for me that’s a continuation of everything that’s been established about Luke in previous stories. We remember Luke’s insistence that Vader had still had good in him, that he didn’t want to fight him, that he didn’t want to leave him behind on the Death Star.  But it’s easy to forget that Luke also did have moments of anger and violence against Vader, after he taunts Luke and threatens Leia, reading Luke’s thoughts about her.  (God, there was a twitter thread that I’m sure I reblogged that talked about this issue specifically, Luke’s aggression towards Vader in ROTJ, but I cannot find it again.) He believed there was good in his father, but it was still a struggle to put down his weapon. That’s exactly what happened with Ben as well--he knew there was still good in him, but he felt that darkness roiling in Ben so strongly that it was still a struggle to put down his weapon. (Also, this was six years pre-TLJ, so Ben was in his early-to-mid-twenties or so, not a teenager!) And then Luke, who struggles not to take on responsibility for others’ actions, retreats because he goes to a bad mental place, as the dark things that have always been in him (that are in all of us) get the better of him. AFTER ALL OF THAT: All of this may just solidify that you (or anyone else reading this!) are never going to like TLJ and that’s okay!  It’s not going to work for everyone, it’s not going to jive with everyone, some people are going to read those scenes differently.  Also okay!  There’s no hard feelings on my part if someone reads all of this and goes, “That’s not how I saw it.” And I’ll give the caveat that this process took me months, honestly I’m still sorting through my feelings.  I don’t think this is going to suddenly make anyone go OH SHIT YOU’RE RIGHT.  But maybe it might help nudge a few people towards recontextualizing everything in their head--which is the process that I went through and the only way I could go from “WTF WAS THAT?” to “Yeah, okay, that makes sense to me.” Plus, you know, hey, not everyone is going to want to read a bunch of supplementary material to feel better about the movie and there’s a very valid point about how you shouldn’t have to.  I ENTIRELY AGREE ABOUT THIS, btw!  But, at the same time, those supplementary materials exist and I’ve been consuming them and they’ve started drawing connections in ways that really help me. The novelizations and the comics have given extra bits of insight that made it clear they are thinking about the worldbuilding in the wider franchise.  The books and comics set in Canto Bight’s casino have specifically made an effort to include established aliens.  The Star Wars: Battlefront II game’s story has gone to worlds that are familiar (LEIA ON NABOO, bestill my heart, the arcade mode in the Naboo palace where you can have Vader or Leia or Luke wander by the stained glass windows with Padme’s image on them!  MY HEARTTTTTT) and great characterization.  The Propaganda and Aftermath books are doing a lot to start bridging the gap of what happened between VI and VII, helping me see that, yes, they are building this world up and the First Order being the Empire 2.0 actually WORKS for me. I put more things into context of how, for example, it’s only been six years (give or take) since Luke retreated--he spend the other ~25 years doing WHO KNOWS WHAT.  At least some of that time was spent traveling the galaxy in Legends of Luke Skywalker.  Mark Hamill got to voice Luke in a Forces of Destiny short that made me feel better about his connection to the role!  Rewatching the OT and listening to Mark talk about Luke helped me see TLJ as an extension of what was already there. OKAY, HERE’S SOME STUFF I STRAIGHT UP JUST LOVED: A lot of fandom really hates that it wasn’t Anakin showing up to talk to Luke, but it made perfect sense to me that it was Yoda.  In universe, Yoda is the one that Luke spent the most time with, they spent months together on Dagobah and developed a very strong bond.  As much as we love Luke and Anakin’s story, Yoda was actually incredible important to Luke in-story.  AND BOY DID I HAVE FEELINGS about Yoda showing up and smacking Luke in the face literally and metaphorically, that he was like GET BACK IN THE GAME, TRASH FIRE, and “Ahhh, Skywalker, I have missed you.” LUKE SKYPEWALKER.  Oh, my god, Luke Force Skyped himself to death, that is an Extra As Fuck way to go out as ANYTHING, I hope the Force Ghost gang are all proud of him. That fight on Crait was pretty fucking gorgeous.  I wish we’d gotten a longer fight but oh MAN everything we did get was incredible.  Luke sliding under Kylo’s blade in slo-mo was F A N T A S T I C. Also crystal foxes!  I LOVE THEM.  The porgs were really cute but GIMME THOSE CRYSTAL FOXES.  Crait as a planet in general was beautiful. Leia, practically in a coma, so all her thoughts were shoved out of her head and she was acting on instinct, using the Force like that?  HELL YEAH I 100% BELIEVE ANAKIN SKYWALKER’S BIO-DAUGHTER WAS CAPABLE OF BEING THAT EXTRA. Luke blowing up the hut when he exploded in on Rey and Kylo’s Force Skype call, that is an underrated moment of FORCE USING BADASSERY. Luke on Ahch-To, staring out at the binary suns, so far away from where he started and yet all things circle back around in their own way.  His body disappearing, his robe fluttering to the stone floor.  HI THANKS I’M CRYING especially when the novelization hinted that there was a voice waiting to welcome him to the other side. I legit got misty-eyed at Luke and Leia’s reunion.  I wish I could have had an entire movie of them working together, I wanted to see more of Mark and Carrie’s chemistry, but I am going to cling to the hope that, just like Obi-Wan and Anakin, they’ll be together in the Force one day. IN THE END: This is how I came to like at least big parts of this movie.  But I needed to work through those feelings, rather than sweep them aside, so that’s what this post was aimed at, showing how I did that (if in a very generalized, bird’s eye view kind of way). So much of it ultimately revolves around my growing understanding of Luke Skywalker’s character, why I disagree that he’s a pure cinnamon roll too good for this world, but instead that his incredible strength of character and inherent goodness are about overcoming the dark side, not about never being tempted in the first place or making mistakes.  And I see that Luke in the man who found peace and purpose in the end of TLJ, who took a long, hard look at himself and dragged himself back up again, because that’s what good people do. I’ll always wish we could have gotten Mark Hamill to play Luke during the high points of his life, to see that in a Saga movie on the big screen.  But if this is Luke Skywalker’s end, then I understand how he got there and that the ultimate lesson of his life was: The dark side is a part of all of us, it’s in the fear inside of our hearts and minds that we must constantly face.  It can knock us down sometimes, it can make us doubt ourselves and retreat because we think the world will be better without us. But we get up again, we take a look at ourselves, and we re-choose the light all over again.  The world works better when you’re on the side of good and you have a choice about that.  And sometimes it’s going to be a struggle to choose it, but Luke Skywalker showed me that, even when I fall down into a dark hole in my own mind, I can still get up and find peace and purpose in my path going forward.

[thebastardofgloucester]

Okay, so. Thoughts on the mess that was Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi.

- I can see why a lot of people had a big problem with Poe’s arc – mostly that it started him from such an obnoxious place that wasn’t entirely in keeping with his portrayal in Before the Awakening or the comics (honestly I think his character in TFA is sufficiently thin that it wasn’t really out of the realm of possibility). There’s also the component of the Angry Latino Man racist trope with his aggression towards Holdo and Leia. Leia slapping him was unnecessary. Leia stunning him so he flew back into a wall(?!) was really unnecessary, and combined with brutalization of the other characters of color was a Problem.

- But nonetheless I loved where it ended up. I did love Poe learning the brutal lessons of command, putting him in a place to be Leia’s successor as the leader of the Resistance. He is a hotshot pilot. Going from that to general, with all the need for long-term thinking that requires, is not an easy leap. So while I understand where people who hate it are coming from, I think that Poe’s journey to becoming Leia’s heir to the role of leader is the most compelling part of the film.

- God Luke was a mess. His grumpy old man act was funny but it hurt so much to see Luke, the beating heart of the OT, reduced to a bitter version of Obi-Wan, minus the hope of believing in the future. TFA and TLJ utterly broke Luke in a way that was just…too much. And god, he would never draw a weapon on his fucking nephew, no matter how scared he was. He might aggressively confront Ben, trying to get him to give Snoke up, go after the source, but killing his nephew out of fear? What? W H A T ?

- that said, that was the most meaty material Mark Hamill has ever been given and he fucking killed it, so props to him.

- What was Rey even doing through most of this movie. All the clarity and dynamism of her character was just sucked away and outside of some moments on Ahch-To she was either a prop in Kyle Ben’s narrative or a walking deus ex machina. She technically becomes the Last Jedi and turns her back on Ron but like…we didn’t see any of that? Does she even want to be a Jedi?

- look…I have been on the Rey Skywalker train forever. I am not happy with her being from unremarkable origins (assuming Kyle is telling the truth, and given that he is a manipulative abusive asshole he may not be) in part because it actually feeds the unfair idea that she’s somehow unrealistic (whatever that means in a space wizards franchise) or a Mary Sue character. She shows a level of skill, instinct, and power that has previously only been manifested by…Anakin Skywalker. That needs an explanation. Either she’s a Skywalker, or a vessel or champion of the Light Side of the Force, or some other shit, but there does need to be a reason. Luke and Anakin have a reason – they are Skywalkers, one Space Jesus and the other the son of Space Jesus.

- I have no idea what motivated Rey for so much of the film. Her quasi-Bespin going to Kyle thing was a fucking mess and required a lot of idiot balling. Rey is smarter than that. Rey saw Kyle murder his father – she would not just trust him enough to go alone. Basically Rian either did not get Rey as JJ Abrams made her or he didn’t care. Either one is utter bullshit. Some cool action sequences mean nothing without the character dynamics to back them up.

- God, Finn…Rian took the problematic aspects of Finn’s comic relief role from TFA and just…ran with them. I didn’t object to him trying to run off to find Rey – he has no real attachment to the Resistance. But his whole mission is just…pointless. There’s no follow up on his being a Stormtrooper who overcame his programming. We get some interesting stuff with Rose about his being a legend when he’s not comfortable in that role, and I kind of liked the way his self-sacrificing behavior was called out by Rose so he knew that besides Rey people actually cared about him, but…there were so many missed opportunities, and so many unnecessary injuries and physical jokes.

- I love Rose. I do. I don’t know that there was really a place for her in this story. Her ‘eat the rich’ working class background was cool, she’s a huge sweetheart, Kelly Marie Tran gave a great performance. Her romance with Finn was a rushed mess. A crush I can believe, fine. Love after like two days max? No. They didn’t earn that. Honestly if you are going to introduce your first significant woc you have to find more to do with her. It was nice that (unlike Leia and Luke) she got a chance to grieve her losses

- Kyle Ben’s eventually becoming the irredeemable supreme leader actually works pretty well, but how it got there…on the other hand…Kyle shows his true colors when he turns on Snoke…in order to take his place in the finest traditions of the Sith. He’s the full-fledged villain for episode IX. As it should be.

- What the fuck was Snoke. Why did the film bring him and Rey and Kylo together in an awkward and forced series of developments and then just cut him in half. We have no idea where he came from, his relationship to the Empire, his goals, his plan with Kyle and Rey and Luke…it’s just an enormous blank and we’ll never get an answer because Rian got bored and just decided to off him. It’s not like I care about him as a character, obviously. His death hardly upset me other than the fact that it was pretty bad writing.

- why the everliving fuck did we have to have YODA show up, basically to give a non-chalannt mea culpa and say ‘actually the Jedi were kind of shit.’ Like ANAKIN? Why the fuck would you not use the person the Order failed the most. Also Yoda looked fucking terrible I have no idea why they used a puppet AND CGI.

- On the plus side, Leia did a truly spectacular Force Thing (though that was some cheap shit by Rian spacing her like that). Then she was unconscious. She never got to mourn Han at all. She passed the torch to Poe, but I can’t help but be disappointed when so much was promised. Also…no one came to her aid? I know that in Bloodline her parentage being revealed ruins her reputation and strips her of her influence…but no one? What the fuck?

- DJ was just a useless character. Maybe they’ll be a payoff in episode ix, but he serves no purpose but to set up an inconsequential betrayal, unless you count Phasma dying (also a cheapening of her character as laid out in her novel) as a tremendously important moment. All the damage was done by Holto’s sacrifice. Finn and Rose and BB-8 were pretty incidental.

- the Porgs were stupid space puffins and despite myself I’m kind of fond of the stupid things. The crystal foxes were much cooler, of course.

- R2D2 and C3PO were props in this film. Chewbacca too.

- Luke…weirdly his facing his fears and sacrificing himself was one of the best parts of the mostly-okay third act? I liked the new, less flashy but still impressive Force power of projection, and he got some chance to say goodbye to Leia at least, and he got to lay down the law to Kyle Ron. But…he died alone. That’s not fucking okay. That’s a betrayal of Luke, the heart of the original trilogy. It’s just…wrong. And it’s sad and heartbreaking but not really in a satisfying way. And he never really passes the torch to Rey – he sacrifices himself to fix his fuck-up with Kyle. He deserved more than that. All the Skywalkers did.

- the space battles were pretty great, the whole tracking thing and the slow race was very Battlestar-y, even if the mechanics of the plot were a bit questionable.

- I need to read Leia Princess of Alderaan to get the backstory on Holdo. Her character was interesting (though we could have used more backstory or elaboration on how she became so respected a military leader) and her relationship with Leia was tantalising but there just wasn’t enough. Her heroic sacrifice was fucking awesome though. If she had to go out she picked a good way to do it.

- Billie Lourd got a character and lines and that was pretty great.

- Okay, minor nitpick that actually REALLY BOTHERED ME. Among the casualties in the opening battle appeared to be Temmin ‘Snap’ Wexley, one of the protagonists of the Aftermath books, and the son of the delightful Norra Wexley. Like, first, Mister Bones would fucking swim through space and stab Kyle Ben with his vibroknives because he is Norra’s motherly love incarnate in a psychotic droid. And second, Norra deserved better. She’s probably dead now and that is bullshit in itself.

- Or it might have been another bearded guy, in which case like Jessica Pava his absence bothered me. Like…where did these people go?

- blowing up the bridge to kill Ackbar et al was just cheap bullshit honestly

- the war profiteering and moral ambiguity was not elaborated enough to justify its inclusion, honestly. I’m not averse to that sort of moral ambiguity but you have to earn it to stick it into a Star Wars film. They didn’t. And again, DJ was just useless.

So, yeah, to review – this is not a movie I was ever going to like. I got almost nothing I wanted out of it, it fucked over the Skywalkers royally in a way that left me feeling bitter and betrayed, it misused or wasted Finn and Rose, Rey’s character was inconsistent at best with little to no on-screen development. The opening was strong. The second act was an epic dumpster fire, particularly everything with Kyle and Rey and Snoke and everything that led there. The third more or less pulled the majority of story threads out and left them in an interesting place for JJ Abrams in episode ix to maybe do some interesting things, but the path it took to get there had…problems.

Rian doesn’t love Star Wars like I love Star Wars, and he really doesn’t like the Skywalkers. I guess that’s what some people wanted – for an end to the Skywalker-centric narrative. Personally I think that is utterly missing the point of literally everything about this series, but whatever, people will disagree.

The writing was overall clumsy to outright bad, with bursts of inspired storytelling but mostly buried under Kyle apologism.

Corvus fairly points out that The Empire Strikes Back is not nearly as good as movie as it is without the events of Return of the Jedi, so to an extent it’s hard to fairly judge the film when you don’t know where it is in the overarching story. But equally this film had so many opportunities to develop the characters and build the world and it just. Did not.

As for a rating, it depends when you ask me. I’d rate it somewhere between a 5 and 6/10. Maybe a 4 in some aspects. It’s not Attack of the Clones bad, but it’s worse than Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, A New Hope, ESB…I mean, I liked Rogue One more. Frankly Revenge of the Sith was more emotionally satisfying, especially in the context of the Clone Wars series. I’m never really sure where to rate The Phantom Menace. This might be better. I’m not entirely sure, and that’s pretty damning,

I’m just…so disappointed and frustrated and have basically decided to treat the new canon post RotJ as more of alternate universe than anything else. Which is kind of sad, honestly.

tldr; Anakin Skywalker Did Not Die For This Shit

[roughand]

The Last Jedi

Things I enjoyed

Rey

I liked Rey a lot in this movie. I thought Daisy Ridley gave a strong performance, and she really made me feel her frustration and exasperation. I liked the nuance she brought to her scenes with Ben, and I liked what a good no-bullshit foil she was for Luke. I don’t have a lot to say because I liked pretty much everything she did, even when she was stuck in a less-than-good scene.

Rey’s Parentage

I didn’t mind that Rey’s parents were nobodies. It’s kind of nice, because for the last 20 years Star Wars as a franchise has been obsessed with the Skywalkers, to the point that they’ve become this narrative trump-card, and in any conflict it’s only a matter of time before one of them turns up and performs some heroic feat using the Force. I don’t love the fact that Rey is both super powerful AND innately skilled (as it robs her journey of some much needed conflict), but I do at least like the fact that she’s not a Skywalker, and can hopefully explore her own path.

Ben Solo

Adam Driver is excellent in the role, and brings a lot of menace and tension to the scene whenever he’s on screen. I don’t love the narrative decision to make him the Big Bad for the next movie, but at the very least he’s doing good things with the material they are giving him. I liked his conflict, I liked his interactions with Rey, and I liked his insane lack of control toward the end. He’s a very finely-crafted character.

Ben’s reason for turning to the Dark Side

I thought this moment, where Luke senses the growing darkness and Snoke’s corruption in Ben and briefly turns his lightsaber on, was perfect. It was such a raw moment that fit into what we knew about both characters. Luke is rash and impulsive, he always has been. Ben Solo is clearly hurting from wounds and rejections we don’t fully understand yet, but we can see the emotional scars. It makes sense for Luke to peer over the precipice but ultimately back down from killing Ben, just like it makes sense for Ben to feel a powerful sense of betrayal, and to carry that rage and hatred for a very long time. This was excellent characterization, and one of the few moments where I felt the movie (or really, the new trilogy) had strong and good ideas about what happened to Luke/Leia/Han post-ROTJ.

Ben & Rey

I liked the weird Force-connection that let them interact with each other, even if it was ultimately revealed to have been one of Snoke’s ploys. But the two are the most talented actors in the production, so giving them a chance to play off each other is a good idea. Plus, this introduced an aspect of the Force that, while new, didn’t feel too out of line with what we’d already known.

The destruction of the Dreadnought above D’Qar

This fight had the benefit of being at the start of the movie, which meant you couldn’t be sure how any of it would play out. We don’t know if Poe will get shot down and captured, or crash on some strange planet, or be sent hurtling into space. Maybe the attack will succeed, maybe it will fail horribly, maybe there will be heavy losses on both sides. It’s all possible, and made for exciting action.

They also did a good job with minor characters like Rose’s sister, and giving them small stories to engage the audience without putting the protagonists in any serious danger. They did well to flesh out these supporting characters, because their deaths were more impactful, and their struggles more tense.

In comparison, look at the fight on Crait. As visually appealing as parts of it were, the outcome was a foregone conclusion--Luke had to sacrifice himself in a grand way to (1) bring hope back to the galaxy, (2) help the Rebels escape, and (3) inspire Rey. The only people left in that bunker were the main cast and a handful of extras. It was pretty clear that everyone had to make it out alive, and that Luke/Rey would be the ones to do it. That meta-knowledge robbed the sequence of a lot of the dramatic weight it should have had.

The destruction of Snoke’s ship

This was right up there with the Star Destroyer crashing into the Super Star Destroyer in ROTJ. In fact, it was probably better. There was a lot of very visceral visuals throughout, and the silence of the initial explosion was perfect.

BB-H8

He didn’t overstay his welcome, and even though it was preposterous to think that the First Order troops wouldn’t notice BB-8’s disguise, I liked that they had him noticed by one of his own kind. Given that the weird droids are always a fixation for Star Wars, this felt very much true to the universe.

The fight with Snoke’s guards

I enjoyed this because it was a good lightsaber fight-scene that didn’t go all CG like the prequels, but still had more finesse and interesting fight choreography than all the fights in the originals. Plus, seeing Ben and Rey fight together (as opposed to against each other), and help each other out occasionally, was a nice subversion of expectations.

The Kylo Ren/General Hux rivalry

As I’ll mention below, the humor was often something I didn’t enjoy about the movie, but the Kylo/Hux rivalry always felt very entertaining. It never got too cartoonish, but consistently reminded us that Hux is more than just a putz and that there’s no love lost between the two characters. It was effective at what it set out to do, and entertaining in the process.

The spaceship-that-was-actually-an-iron

This was a great cut late in the movie, reminiscent of the bit in Raiders of the Lost arc where the scary villain has the girl tied up and captive and he starts unpacking what looks like some sort of sadistic torture device...only for it to actually be a coathanger for his heavy leather coat. This is the kind of humor that fits a bit better with the tone, and fleshes out the world in ways that feel realistic.

Things I was unimpressed by

Much of the humour

Including:

Luke flicking the invisible lint off his shoulder after the AT-AT barrage

Luke milking the alien

Luke tickling Rey with the leaf

Poe taunting Hux about his mom

Finn wandering around in the suit leaking water (felt very “JJ Abrams Star Trek Kirk wandering around with the swelling disease)

I’m not averse to comedy (see my list of things I enjoyed for several comedic moments that worked), but a lot of this felt like it was from a different movie. Luke has never been a jokester, he’s always been almost painfully earnest. MARK HAMILL, on the other hand, is a funny weird guy with a huge personality...but that’s not Luke. I’m happy for Hamill and Fisher to get roles that are more in line with their real-world personalities, but at the same time Hamill’s performance especially didn’t read as the Luke we knew.

The rest of the comedy, particularly from Poe/Finn, but also from Chewbacca and the Porgs, just feels like it’s targeted to the child audience consuming this. It’s cheesy and doesn’t feel fresh, nor does it vibe with the rest of the film.

The stupid Jedi Tree and the stupid Jedi Texts

Ugh, so like, I don’t enjoy the way the sequels (TFA & TLJ) have handled the idea of Jedi in a post-ROTJ world. My biggest issue here is that the Force isn’t going away. It’s still there, and people will still be born who can control it. The little slave-boy Force-pulling his broom is evidence of that. So this idea that “Luke is the last jedi and everyone’s forgotten about the Jedi (again) and they might disappear for good” is just preposterous. The Force is like magic in Harry Potter. Lots of people are born with the ability to use it, and they’re gonna cause a lot of problems (and draw a lot of attention to themselves) unless someone helps them to learn to use it safely. So I just find it hard to buy that the Jedi are constantly at risk of dying out and being completely forgotten (again) despite the fact that people all over the fucking galaxy are clearly being born with Force abilities.

Then there’s just this whole idea that Luke would somehow become so slavishly devoted to the IDEA of the Jedi that he’d squirrel himself and the last remaining Jedi texts away on some planet. I mean, the most obvious thing here is that if Luke thought the Jedi were so dangerous and that they shouldn’t continue to exist, then he should have just killed himself and burned the books years ago. Keeping them in that silly tree (when you have a perfectly good mountain temple complex which no doubt offers better protection from the elements) was just a needlessly contrived set-up for Yoda to burn it down later.

Captain Phasma

Man, Captain Phasma seemed like she’d be such a cool character before TFA--Brienne of Tarth as a badass unique chrome stormtrooper! But now after two movie’s she’s done ZERO interesting things, and instead has had her ass handed to her embarrassingly by Finn twice now. And not even in a “wow that was satisfying to see David beat Goliath with ingenuity and skill” but rather in a “wow, is Phasma THAT useless that she can’t fight off this spaz?” Phasma became more of a punchline than anything when she showed up on screen because there’s zero threat to the character. She’s never done anything exciting or dastardly or shocking or intimidating. She just looks menacing because her armor is shiny and everyone else’s is matte.

The Dark Side cave on Ahch-To

I understand the point of this scene--Rey is who matters, not her parentage. It’s her own self she should be worried about, and exploring, and which poses the most potential for greatness or terrible things. But ultimately it felt very out of place in the film because it lacked the overt connections to Rey’s wider arc that Luke’s same experience in the Dark Side cave on Dagobah had. Luke goes into the cave and we, the audience, know that Vader is his antagonist, and that Luke is deeply afraid of him. Having Vader in the cave was fantastic, because it makes us question what’s real--is Vader here or is Luke fighting his own fears? And then to have Luke defeat Vader, and remove the mask to find his own face (shades of The Prisoner) was excellent foreshadowing for the eventual reveal that Vader was Luke’s father, and that perhaps what Luke should fear most is himself. They packed a lot of narrative heft into Luke’s cave sequence. Rey’s, in contrast, didn’t seem to advance anything we didn’t already know, or have reason to suspect, and there was no subtlety revealed during the rest of the movie, no moment where suddenly Rey’s experience in the cave was cast in a new light. As a result, it just felt ancillary and unnecessary.

The Porgs

The Porgs were cute...and then immediately overused. It’s hard to introduce a character or race, and then make them feel oversaturated so quickly, but TLJ succeeded in that mission. I don’t hate the Porgs, but everytime one appeared on screen it felt like the film was directly interacting with a younger audience, and I was no longer part of that experience.

Luke Skywalker’s character/storyline

Right off the bat, I didn’t buy the backstory that Luke went into seclusion after what happened with Ben. It feels very much like JJ Abrams said “I want my movie to be about everyone looking for Luke!” but then no one since has been able to come up with a plausible reason for Luke to abandon everything the way he did. It’s one thing for me to assume that YOUNG Luke is incredibly short-sighted and rash, but JEDI MASTER Luke should have already learned a lot of the lessons that Yoda taught him in TLJ. I mean, the whole “learning from failure thing” is pretty much what he learned at the end of Empire Strikes Back. It just goes back to that idea that if your plot relies on your characters acting like idiots for it to work, then you need to do some re-writes.

Consider that when Luke visited Dagobah and Yoda acted weird at first, it was because Yoda was testing Luke. Luke came there looking for a great warrior to train him to fight, and Yoda needed to disabuse him of those notions before he could actually start training him. Yoda’s shtick was just that--a false persona intended to see how Luke would react, and to expose his faulty assumptions about what it means to be a Jedi.

But when Rey visits Luke on Ahch-To, he’s a dick to her because he doesn’t WANT to teach her. Again, this just doesn’t seem like Luke’s style. He’s an idealist, he’s someone who sees the good in everyone. It’s why he couldn’t bring himself to kill Ben, so it beggars belief that he would so callously refuse to train Rey. Moreover, it was a huge contrivance (more on that later) that Luke had “withdrawn from the Force” because that’s never really been how that works, but also because that was only a thing so Luke wouldn’t sense the fact that Rey and Ben were in contact. Like, it didn’t make sense for Luke to have not been touching the Force all these years, and it doesn’t make sense that he wouldn’t be able to detect the presence of someone like Ben. But again, the plot wouldn’t have worked unless Luke’s entire character is fundamentally altered so that he’s a crotchety recluse who lacks the Force-awareness even characters like Leia seem to have.

No chance to process the events on Snoke’s ship

There is a total lack of Rey processing what happened on Snoke’s ship in the script. One minute she and Ben are literally tearing apart Luke’s lightsaber after they’ve turned on each other, and seconds earlier they killed a dozen elite First Order Guards after Ben executed Supreme Leader Snoke, who moments before had been torturing Rey. And the next minute Rey’s on the Falcon, with Chewie, shooting at TIE Fighters and seeming totally chill. There was zero time to process the impact of everything that happened to her, and given that the whole reason she went to Snoke’s ship was to save Ben, it beggars belief that she’d be so cavalier after having him reject her so spectacularly.

Holdo

I love Laura Dern, and she did a fine job with the limited material she was given (ugh, that “may the For--” “oh i’m sorry, you go” “no you go!” exchange with Leia was cheeseball to the extreme), but there were three elements of Holdo’s character that didn’t make a lot of sense:

Why not tell people, or at least Poe, that she still had a plan, that the transport ships weren’t just going to fly randomly into space but that she had a destination in mind? Instead, Holdo, who seemed very capable, suddenly seems like she’s ok with letting mutiny foment on her watch because….why? She thinks Poe is a flyboy? It wasn’t good leadership, and she could still have inspired hope without seeming like she was without a plan. How is acting like everyone’s probably going to die an inspiring approach for a leader to take?

Why was Holdo, who is ostensibly a brilliant, seasoned, compassionate general, the ONLY PERSON who can fly the cruiser’s suicide mission? Surely there was a low-level tech or even a droid for god’s sake who could have done it? Her death seemed to exist to ensure there was a “heroic sacrifice” moment for the rebellion, which felt very contrived and not authentic.

Why did Holdo wait so long before kamikaze-ing!? I can understand that due to the magic of editing less time may have passed from her perspective than the audience’s (as we are cutting back and forth to simultaneous action elsewhere), but we still watch Holdo sitting there while at LEAST 3-5 rebel transports get destroyed before she decides to ram Snoke’s ship. Like, she KNEW she was going to die on the cruiser, so why not ram Snoke immediately, or at least after he destroyed the first transport? Holdo standing there and looking stricken and helpless while the rebels are getting shot like fish in a barrel felt almost comical. It was so obvious that she had to ram the ship that it was frustrating that the plot forced her to wait so long.

The Knights of Ren

Someone else pointed this out online, but: where are the Knights of Ren? What is that? Why introduce it if it’s never mentioned again? Will these guys ever crop up? How do they fit into Ben Solo’s backstory?

Luke’s other students

Yet again we get a mention that Ben Solo left Luke’s academy with a few students he had turned to his cause (or, presumably, who Snoke had turned to his cause). What happened to them? How come Luke isn’t torn up about them, too?

Things I really disliked

Let’s start with a bunch of little things that really bugged me:

Ackbar dying offscreen

Ackbar is one of the most iconic characters from the original films (at least to fans) and he deserved a bit more than being killed offscreen. He could easily have been one of the many ship captains that Holdo watched go down with their ships via hologram as they were picked off one-by-one. Using him that way would really have upped the stakes as we watched a beloved character from the original film die in a heroic but senseless way.

Luke throwing his father’s lightsaber away

Yeah, this was very out-of-character for Luke. That lightsaber must hold a LOT of significance and memories for him. To see him toss it away so callously just felt like people wanted a funny beat to end the scene on more than they wanted to stay true to the character. It didn’t ruin the movie for me, but it definitely IMMEDIATELY gave me the sense that they didn’t have a good handle on Luke’s character.

The New Republic falling so easily

In The Force Awakens, it is heavily implied that the galaxy is relatively peaceful place and the remnants of the Empire have retreated into obscurity. Admittedly, I’m not as well versed in the SW political structure as I used to be, a quick google search confirms that as recently as 6 years prior to The Force Awakens, there was still a galactic senate looking after things. Given that’s the same New Republic senate that gets destroyed by Starkiller Base in The Force Awakens, it makes you wonder how easy it is to take over a galaxy? Like, right now any kind of large scale continental invasion is prohibitively complicated and costly. Similarly, subjugating literally dozens of worlds is not a cheap, fast, or simple affair. It’s quite time-consuming, and requires extraordinary resources. It seems rather convenient that the Imperial Remnant could build up such a devastating fleet without the New Republic noticing, but also improbable that any Imperial Fleet could immediately establish control over the WHOLE GALAXY (remember, no one answers Leia’s distress call at the end of TLJ) by blowing up ONE planet.

It reminded me of late-period Game of Thrones where characters would just stab each other and “take” that person’s power. GoT spent almost 4 seasons demonstrating that it didn’t work that way--stab the man at the top and you might find yourself with no power and surrounded by enemies--only to do an about face in the last three seasons on that point. TLJ felt like it did the same thing. We’re told the galaxy is huge, and full of different planets and species and people, but then the First Order blows up one planet and everyone falls into line? Way too convenient.

The slave kids on Canto Bight

Is it just me or does the SW franchise seem to present a really happy-go-lucky depiction of child slavery? Anakin and Shmee’s enslavement to Watto was frequently played for laughs, even the bit when Anakin was giggling about the explosive device planted in his and his mother’s brains that would detonate and kill them if they tried to run away. 

Similarly, Rose and Finn stumble upon these slave-kids who are forced to care for alien race horses, and they save the bulk of their sympathy...for the horses? Like, I get it, animals in captivity are sad and we want to free them...but there were literal child slaves there that Rose and Finn did not seem in any way concerned by.

Like, when the one kid presses the button to free the horses all I could think was “Man, he’s probably going to get whipped to death for that! Why don’t Rose and Finn seem to care?” The fact that the movie KEPT RETURNING to them, too, felt a bit odd. These kids are enslaved on a pleasure planet that caters to rich arms dealers, and based on how the casino treats the alien-horses, I can’t imagine they treat their child-slaves much better.

So that just took me out of whatever scene the kids appeared in.

The bad dialogue

There were so many moments were the film was clearly going for some kind of iconic, powerful line (like ESB’s “Do or do not, there is no try.”) but fell miserably short. The ones that spring to mind:

The repetitions of “We are the spark that will light the fire that will burn down the first order.” It got cheesier with each person who said it.

Poor Rose got some of the worst lines:

“I want to smash this lousy beautiful city to pieces”

“Finn, we’ll never win by fighting what we hate, we’ll win by saving what we love…*dies*”

Captain Phasma’s “No! Don’t kill them quickly. Make it painful”made me groan AUDIBLY. It was such movie-speak for “Don’t hurt them! Let them escape!”

Anytime a character discussed hope and whether it was all gone, or how much was left, and who had it, and who didn’t, and oh it’s back, and hey here’s this Force-sensitive slave-kid he’s got hope too now because of his decoder ring

Any of the “yee-haw that’s one hell of a pilot” type lines from Poe or Finn.

Now for some more substantive problems:

Leia’s resurrection and Force-propelled spaceflight

This bothered me on a bunch of levels:

This would have been a good send-off for Leia. She got a lot of good moments in with Poe prior to Ben’s attack, and she really drove home the idea of how important it is for Poe to learn to be a leader. That would have been an excellent time for her death, as it would catalyze those last words to Poe, and make them really mean something. Instead, she comes back and snickers with Holdo at how thick Poe is. It’s not bad, it’s just a missed opportunity that became disappointing.

The movie seemed to care about, but then immediately stop caring about, Ben’s relationship with Leia. As far as Ben knows, Leia dies when that other TIE pilot blows up the bridge, but we never see Ben reacting to either her “death” or her resurrection (which he doubtless should have been able to sense through the Force). Leia sensed Han’s death, so shouldn’t Ben have sensed the massive amount of Force energy Leia must have used?

This was one of several scenes where I found myself asking “What the fuck are the rules anymore?” I’m not trying to be a Force-purist or anything, but as a regular member of a movie audience, a lot of the reveals in the movie felt very out-of-left-field. I get that Jedi are essentially superheroes in space, but it makes “the Force” into a bit of a plot device that can get them out of any situation. It’s further compounded by characters like Leia, and Rey, who have little to no training in the Force but who, when the situation dramatically calls for it, are able to perform tremendous feats of skill and power. If we don’t see them training and struggling with these abilities building up to those moments, then the impact is not only lessened when they occur, but the suspension of disbelief is violated. It just introduces new powers and new abilities with no groundwork or grace, and that makes it hard for audiences to stay in those moments. It then becomes a challenge for them to come up with reasons those characters DON’T continue to use those abilities. On the one hand, I can understand the whole shock/trauma-activated-ability idea, but on the other if you discover you have the ability to withstand the vacuum of space and fly through it, wouldn’t that be an ability you’d want to pursue and become better at?

Overall, though, it felt narratively cheap because we took a character who’s very much been established as NOT skilled in the Force, and had her suddenly pull off something that we hadn’t even imagined Obi-Wan or Yoda at their height could do. I’m not attacking it on scientific grounds, or even trying to say “The Force couldn’t do that!” I’m just saying that from a storytelling perspective it felt deeply unsatisfying and out of place.

Snoke

Snoke in this film was a big letdown. At first, it seemed like they had something interesting planned for him. We got to see him in the flesh early on and he had his own kind of unique menace. They got Andy Serkis to play him so clearly he’s an important part of this story. His origins and motivations are shrouded in mystery and his power level is clearly off-the-charts. It was all setting up our expectations for later reveals, or deepening his motives, or making him even more threatening.

Then he dies halfway through the film and we never learn a single new thing about him. I’m all for zagging when the audience thinks you’re going to zig, but TFA and TLJ invested a sizeable amount of their running times establishing Snoke as this big threat, who was connected to story in ways we didn’t understand yet. I can understand killing him off unexpectedly, but to do it without exploring more of his character, or setting up anyone to take his place is a big letdown.

To be clear, I understand that Ben is going to be the new Big Bad, or at least until the end of the next movie when he comes back to the light and the new Big Bad for the NEXT trilogy shows up, but Ben is not a good replacement as a primary antagonist. I mean, we know he will either be saved, like Vader was, or die heroically helping the rebels. There aren’t a lot of other directions to take him in--having him be uncomplicatedly evil would feel like a betrayal of his character up until now. I also get that Ben is slightly different than previous antagonists because he doesn’t care for the structure and regimentation of the first order, he just wants to rule as he sees fit. It’s just that that’s...kind of boring. Snoke was interesting because he was mysterious, and we couldn’t be sure what his connection to the Force, or the First Order, or to Ben really was. He was unpredictable, which made him an entertaining villain. Ben, meanwhile, is broody and prone to fits of rage. He’s very much still a child in a mask, and while that can make him intimidating to other characters, it’s not enough for a primary antagonist like Star Wars needs.

Finn’s “arc”

I get the sense that the writers really struggled to come up with something for Finn to do in this movie.

Rey’s arc was clearly connected to Luke and Ben, and did not have room for a third major figure in her emotional landscape. They may return to moren Finn/Rey stuff down the line, but this movie was first and foremost concerned with Rey/Luke and Rey/Ben.

The next strongest relationship was probably Leia/Poe. As much as I think Leia should have died off earlier in the movie, I think her arc with Poe was a decent-enough one, and will hopefully pay off in the next film, when he learns to take more of a leadership role in the rebellion. Holdo was there to give Poe an antagonist, and although I didn’t love the obvious and constant reversals of Holdo’s character (she’s good, she’s bad, she’s a coward, she’s a hero!), I thought the story pulled off the task it had set itself. Poe learned the lesson he needed to learn, as seen when he counseled Finn against sacrificing himself for the “battering ram cannon” (dumb name).

It feels like the Rey/Ben storyline was locked in, as was the Leia/Poe/Holdo storyline, but then after those two big plots, Finn had no one in the main cast to bounce off, and no one’s story needed his presence. Rey’s apprenticeship with Luke, subsequent surrender to Snoke, and eventual escape to rejoin the Rebels was completely unaffected by anything Finn did. The Rebel fleet’s attempts to escape the First Order did not need Finn’s help, and indeed reached their true objective in spite of him mucking up the plan. All he was good for on a metanarrative level (by the time his actual plan had gone up in smoke) was goosing the drama by alerting the First Order to the defenseless transport ships, thereby ensuring heavier losses for the rebels.

So obviously the writers knew that Finn needed to be there at the START of the story (to pick up with him after the last movie), and they knew where they needed him at the END of the story (on Crait, with a bone to pick with the First Order) but they didn’t really know how to get him from point A to B, nor how to ensure that nothing he does in the interim fucks up the rest of the already-established plots.

To fill the gap, they created the new character of Rose for Finn to bounce off of. It makes sense on paper--she’s grounded while he’s hyperactive, she’s sensible while he’s deeply emotional, she’s a low-ranking rebel while he’s one of the heroes--and all of their qualities make them good foils for each other. Indeed, in that first scene where she finds him trying to board the escape pod they find an enjoyable rhythm together pretty quickly, and I liked the dynamic they established.

But then it all goes deeply off the rails because the writers realized they couldn’t let them do anything that mattered. Finn’s plan had to be unsuccessful because the fleet needed to make it to Crait, not jump away. Finn couldn’t run into Rey while on Snoke’s ship because that would jumble the plot too much. So they had to keep Finn at arm’s length from doing anything useful and it showed.

What we got instead was a really problematic (See below) detour to a planet that didn’t ultimately matter, in search of a macguffin that ultimately didn’t matter, all in the service of developing a relationship with Rose, a character who may be dead and who never had any real chemistry with Finn.

I honestly wish they’d thrown out that whole thing and found a different way to incorporate Finn into either Poe or Rey’s story, because clearly they don’t have great ideas when he’s on his own.

Hyperspace tracker subplot

One of the biggest problems I had with the movie was the “First Order tracking the rebels through hyperspace” subplot. Almost EVERY ASPECT of this was a disappointment, and here is why:

Hux’s Plan First off, there’s a moment early on where Kylo walks in on a conversation between Snoke and Hux where Snoke is congratulating Hux on his clever plan, saying something about how a cur’s weakness can be his strength. It seemed to imply that some element of Hux’s personality allowed him insight into hunting the rebels, and he devised a singularly brilliant way to do it. But then ultimately it was just “the First Order are tracking the rebels through hyperspace” and that seems like, I dunno, ANYONE could have devised that plan. There was nothing to the plan that indicated ONLY Hux could have come up with it. He doesn’t seem to possess any kind of advanced scientific or technical knowledge and his strategy (Track them until they run out of fuel) isn’t exactly complex, or subtle. It’s fairly obvious. I kept waiting for a further reveal that Hux had convinced a high-ranking rebel to defect and feed him information, or SOMETHING to explain why Snoke seemed so impressed and satisfied with his plan. But it never came.

Also, how are we to believe that Rose, who is essentially an electrician, would be able to disable a high-level First Order specialized system in such a way that no one notices? It just felt super convenient that this tradesperson that Finn runs into randomly possesses the ability to effectively and secretly disable the ONE thing  the First Order has been using to track the rebels. Remember, Dj the hacker only opened the door to the stupid thing, it was Rose who said she could secretly disable it all on her own.

Compounding all that letdown is the fact that, in the end, “disabling the tracking device” was barely different than “disable the tractor beam on the death star” in ANH. Just like the tractor beam on the Death Star in ANH, in TLJ it’s up to our heroes to infiltrate a massive evil ship and disable this one tiny room that should, when you think about it, be MUCH MORE HEAVILY GUARDED THAN IT WAS. At least in ANH the Death Star tractor beam room was super impressive. In TLJ, the tracker-room was a broom closet with a giant flux capacitor in it, tucked away behind some random panel in a random hallway.

Also, the whole conceit that “there’s only one ship actually tracking us” felt like an easy out, but one that didn’t hold up to scrutiny. If this truly was the last of the rebels, and wiping them out would ensure the total victory of the First Order, then maybe have a tracker on ALL your ships? Even if you’re not worried the Rebels will sneak on board and secretly disable it, you should always have redundancies for critical systems and processes like that. In the case of Ben Solo choosing to fight Luke while the rebels escape, this is an oversight that makes sense. We’ve seen how Ben can be ruthless and clever, but how there are still parts of his personality he can’t control (his need for his master’s approval, his hatred of Luke, etc.). So when he makes the mistake of facing Luke, his shortsightedness makes perfect sense. In comparison, Hux’s failure to properly safeguard this incredibly important tracking device just felt like lazy plotting.

Lastly, I’ll cover this more in a later section, but the fact that this whole entire subplot wound up having zero significance and not actually achieving anything was deeply, deeply frustrating. It’s one thing to do a Bespin-like sequence, where the heroes’ plan goes awry but they still move their arcs forward, or move the plot forward. Like, Luke faces Vader and learns a lot about himself. Leia is ripped apart from Han but finally declares her love for him in the process. Lando betrays them, but then proves to be an ally and helps them escape and joins the cause moving forward. Bespin was an unmitigated disaster in terms of “the protagonists achieving their goals” but narratively it was deeply productive. The entire “disable the tracker” subplot in TLJ only served to deepen Rose’s character who was ultimately wasted in the climax. The rest of the plotline did absolutely NOTHING to change the status quo. It almost seemed like the interaction between Finn and Benicio del Toro (aka DJ) would make Finn into a more Han-like, morally grey character, but then when DJ betrays them it’s clear Finn is a rebel through and through. Ignoring Rose’s character, what impact did the tracker-device plotline have on the larger film? I can’t think of any.

Canto Bight The problems with this part start right away with the very-hard-to-take-seriously scene where Rose and Finn just basically figure out the entire First Order plan and how to stop them in a matter of seconds. Instead of taking this information to ANYONE, like maybe Leia, they instead decide to contact Maz Kanata because Lupita Nyongo signed on for three movies, damnit, so she’s gonna be in them. Maz tells them the ONLY person who can complete their mission is a codebreaker wearing a special lapel pin. NO ONE ELSE can help them, and Maz would know, because characters repeatedly tell us that she’s very wise.

So they sneak off the ship and land on Canto Bight, which looks a lot like Naboo at night, but whatever. The movie wants us to know that Finn is enchanted by this place, while Rose is not, and it takes very little time for her to detail all the problems with it. None of this is conveyed in a particularly elegant or artful way--Finn stares dopily around at everything while Rose just clenches her jaw and spouts truly godawful lines like “I just want to smash this beautiful lousy city to pieces.” We also get a bunch of alien race horses, and it’s all starting to stray into the realm of the prequels.

Ultimately, Finn and Rose find the dude with the lapel pin, but are apprehended by security before they can talk to him. That is the last we see of the actual codebreaker.

After they meet and then part ways with DJ (more on him below, I hated him so much!), they find the alien race horses again and take off on horseback in one of the dumbest sequences in the film, and definitely the most broad. This part especially, the horseback escape through the city and eventual rescue by DJ felt very prequel-esque. The happy-go-lucky slave kids, the overly-CG horses, the slapstick ride through the city, it was all just too lowbrow compared to the rest of the film.

Benicio del Toro aka DJ I have a lot of issues with this character but they all really boil down to one thing: It’s cheap fucking storytelling:

It’s cheap storytelling to have Maz tell the audience “ONLY the codebreaker can get you onto the ship!” but then DJ can also do it.

It’s cheap storytelling to have Finn and Rose get imprisoned in the cell with a DIFFERENT codebreaker who can do exactly what they need.

It’s cheap storytelling to have a character as resourceful as DJ simply hanging out in jail waiting for someone to what? Also get imprisoned and ask for his help? It doesn’t make sense that if he could stroll out of prison at any point in time that he would be there at all.

It’s cheap storytelling for DJ to be able to steal a weapon merchant’s ship so easily, yet he hasn’t already done that and was instead hanging out in jail for no reason.

Not only does all this make many of the scenes in this plot (with Maz, or on Canto Bight looking for the lapel pin) feel pointless, but it also makes the rest of Finn and Rose’s plot (once they’re off Canto Bight and onto Snoke’s ship especially) frustrating because it all seems so convenient.

The best part about DJ is that, for a second, you think he’s going to contribute to Finn’s arc by pushing him towards being a more Han-Solo-at-the-start-of-ANH-style independent operator, by pointing out that both the Rebellion and the First Order are part of a larger military-industrial complex. For a second it seems like Finn might get some real depth and shading, and an interesting perspective that’s vastly different than Rey or Poe’s.

And then the worst part of DJ’s character is that he betrays them to the First Order as he was obviously going to do and this just makes Finn angry at the First Order. DJ leaves as pointlessly and stupidly as he arrived.   

Finn & Rose getting captured This entire sequence was endlessly frustrating. I’ve already detailed my problems with Hux’s plan above, but Finn and Rose’s capture and subsequent escape deserves its own section because it was so bad.

The first problem is that their hangar scene was clearly written to fill dramatic space, not to function as a realistic sequence of events. Finn and Rose are brought to the hangar, surrounded by a legion of stormtroopers. Phasma insists her troops kill them slowly, which is such a painful cliché at this point that there were multiple audible groans from the audience at that point. The stormtroopers slooooowwwwwwllllly lower laser-axes to Finn and Rose’s heads. Then the ship is caught in an explosion, and when we cut back to Rose and Finn, the literal dozens of stormtroopers who had been surrounding them with laser-axes millimetres away from their necks are nowhere to be seen. Phasma is also gone, but then just as quickly the stormtroopers and Phasma come walking back into the hangar like they were never there. It makes no sense!

Then, you’ve got a very implausible fight between numerous armoured stormtroopers (it seems that in the 20+ years since ROTJ their accuracy has not improved) and two blue-collar workers wearing no protective gear. Somehow Finn goes toe-to-toe with Phasma despite the fact that if she lands a single hit on his unarmored form, he’d go down. Not to mention the fact that Phasma HAS A BLASTER which she chooses not to use on Finn. Her ultimate death was silly, earned a bunch of laughs in the theatre, and had zero drama or tension to it. I love Gwendolyn Christie but she played a horribly written, terribly underused character who never got to do a single cool thing, then got herself killed in the silliest way and went down barely landing a single blow on the unarmored janitor she was fighting.

Meanwhile, there were apparently more stormtroopers but they just kinda get forgotten about. Rose hides and fires a few stray shots, but where did the half-dozen troopers flanking Phasma when they re-entered the hangar after the explosion go?

And then, the capper on this shit sequence, is BB-8 taking control of an AT-ST, and rescuing Finn and Rose. It reeked of the worst kind of prequels-level “wouldn’t it be cool if…?” writing. It was silly, and not in a fun way, but in a really dumb and cheesy way. It was reminiscent of Anakin in The Phantom Menance shooting a bunch of droids by accident when he was hiding in the fighter cockpit, or the nonsense factory escape sequence with R2-D2’s hoverjets in Attack of the Clones.

Structural Problems

There were some massive structural problems with the film, on the following levels:

Derivative Storytelling

The movie felt and looked more original than Force Awakens, but when you look closer it’s still cut from much of the same cloth as the original trilogy. Off the top of my head, from ESB alone, there’s: 

Rey trains on a remote planet with a reluctant Luke Luke trains on Dagobah with an initially reluctant Yoda

Rey’s enters a “Dark Side cave” and has a vision Luke enters a “Dark Side cave” and has a vision

Ben asks Rey, “Join me and we can rule the galaxy together” Vader asks Luke to join him so they can rule the galaxy together as father and son

The Resistance flees D’qar in cruisers and transports while being shot at by the First order The Rebels flee Hoth in cruisers and transports while being shot at by the Empire

The First Order assault a Resistance base on the remote, white salt planet of Crait with AT-ATs The Empire assaults a Rebel base on the remote, snowy planet of Hoth with AT-ATs

Because the base is older, Poe and other pilots are forced to fly slower, less maneuverable and powerful ships Because the base is on an ice planet, Luke and the other pilots are forced to fly slower, less maneuverable and powerful ships

Rey loses Anakin’s lightsaber during a confrontation with Kylo Ren Luke loses Anakin’s lightsaber during a confrontation with Vader

Rey must build her own lightsaber, a Jedi rite of passage Luke had to build his own lightsaber, a Jedi rite of passage, on Tatooine before going to Jabba’s palace

Some of those bits weren’t wholly unwelcome, but I’m really ready for Star Wars to move beyond the shadow of what’s come before. I’m ready for a Star Wars where:

The protagonist isn’t a callow youth about to become a Jedi

The main antagonist isn’t a Palpatine-like dictator

The secondary antagonist isn’t a Vader-like enforcer

The villains don’t rule over an Empire-like army

There were elements of this film that hinted at more creative stories that might get told, but too much of it hewed too close to familiar beats and tropes.

Plot Contrivances

This was a huge problem for me. The contrivances pile up really quickly, and take you out of the story fast. Rose and Finn suddenly sussing out the First Order’s secret plan. Rey is just innately powerful and doesn’t need more than a day of light training with Luke to be super powerful. Rey repeatedly tries to gain Luke’s trust, going so far as to tell him she’s being completely honest with him, despite lying from the get-go about her connection to Ben. Luke declaring that he’s been cut off from the Force for the past X years so he can plausibly not be aware of all the things he should be aware of, like Ben being inside Rey’s head. Maz tells Finn there’s only one man who can do the job, but then they randomly meet another. Phasma tells her troops to execute Finn slowly, giving him time to escape.

The sheer point of fact is, at least for me, much of the story the film told was exhausting because it required constant and new suspension of disbelief. We are already suspending our disbelief quite a bit for a story of space wizards, so I do not think it’s too much to ask for the story to flow logically, and sensibly.

Implausible Timeline

Ostensibly, from the point at which Finn and Rose contact Maz, all the action is compressed into roughly 12-16 hours (since there’s still about 2 hrs left on the fuel for the fleet when they start to abandon ship in the transports). However, in that time it feels like Rey spends several nights on Ahch-To with Luke, while Finn and Rose spend less than a single night on Canto Bight (they arrive early evening and depart the planet before dawn). Perhaps the two planets have different day/night cycles and this all works out, but to viewing audiences it seriously distorts our understanding of how much time is elapsing in between scenes. There were moments where it felt like Rey was on Ahch-To for days but then we cut back to Finn/Rose and only an hour or two have passed, and then back to the fleet and it feels like no time has passed. It’s not a death knell, but it’s just one more thing that caused a bunch of whiplash when trying to process all the different threads.

Status Quo Reset

This is perhaps my biggest disappointment with the movie, far beyond anything mentioned above. I was truly dismayed that this new trilogy is still retreading the same ground as the previous ones, and more than that it seems to be setting us as close to square one as possible and slowing down the progress enormously. At this point in the film, the Rebellion is smaller than it’s ever been, and the First Order is (somehow) nominally in charge of the galaxy. We’ve been here before--it was the first three movies. Only now we’re back to an almost pre-ANH configuration, with every indication that the story this time will move even slower and with even more unecessary detail and sideplots. I can already see the slave-kid with the Force abilities being the protagonist of the fourth, or fifth, or ninth Star Wars trilogy, and indeed the realization that these movies will be coming out like clockwork every year robs them of their lustre and appeal. If they were telling unique stories, and showing me things I’d never seen before, I’d be more excited. But instead they telling the same old stories, and taking me to the same places, with the same people (or same types of people) and it fundamentally just doesn’t look like they want to go anywhere new.

A huge part of the former Star Wars Expanded Universe was the idea that there’s a huge chunk of the galaxy (at least half of it!) that was unexplored and dangerous. There were whole societies there unlike anything we’d seen, and threats, too. I’m ready for Star Wars to grow up and stop telling the same story about the plucky Jedi taking on Darth Evil and his army of faceless fascists. I’m ready to see Jedi and Sith threatened by some new menace, or the fascists subjugated by anarchists who create their own problems. I’m just ready for there to be new stories, but when I look ahead at the road the franchise is charting for itself, it’s deeply, and stiflingly, familiar.

[doublesaber]

 fuck-long post, sorry if youre on mobile feel free to scroll through the entire thing

i am really surprised there arent more people tearing apart how well rey held herself together during the praetorian guard fight. like ive been making excuses for how she held off kylo in tfa (cause he had an abdominal wound and finn sliced his arm? i think? + force bullshit) but this really made me go ????? am i missing something how is she taking on these guys. broke the suspension of disbelief for me AND on that note i dont get why people are tearing into leia’s... journey back into the raddus so viciously. yeah it was undoubtedly cheesy but in a heartwarming way. im probably biased since ive been dying to see her actually use the force. also bb8 operating the atst. was. a bit too much too handle. and dj ex machina lmao. this post is getting long so i might as well continue.

poe’s characterisation has already been picked apart better than i can especially as i havent read the comics. he felt like a parody of himself :( and his story centred around miscommunication as a plot device so i was seething. all i really have of note to say about holdo is that her last sequence was astounding imo. paiges scene made me start crying 10 min into the movie and from there on i was just on-and-off the entire film. i loved seeing finn onscreen but all the unnecessary violence towards him was just horrendous and i really hope we get to see hux die painfully in ep9 cause they have devoted way too many seconds to finn getting hurt. once again other people have written about that better than i can esp since im white so i’ll leave it at that. i wasnt bored with his plotline at all, but he undeniably did not get much room to breathe as a character oh and his fight w phasma was a little disappointing due to its brevity. i just remembered an old leak from a reliable source that said he cut her arm off and im upset they got that wrong because that wouldve been so gloriously horrific since his baton wasnt even a sharp-edged weapon. in retrospect maybe that wouldve been too gorey for the pg 13 rating. ‘rebel scum’ was so satisfying though. 

rose is a verified chairman of antifa. all her speeches on canto bight were so heavy handed it was funny but i didnt really mind. as i decided wrt rey... being like that... im gonna pretend she didnt stun finn since it adds nothing aside from making her seem like an ass and the story’s better off without it. seems super unpopular but i dont have that much of an issue w lukes characterisation. when kylo showed rey the vision i was waiting for luke to amend it and show his side of the story and he did! and i dont think that single moment of doubt is the character assassination everyone thinks it to be buuuuuut thats subjective so its really up to the individual. i didnt feel like it was meant to incite sympathy for kylo as much as it was meant to show the toll on luke. i was more bothered by how brusque he was w rey since that’s day-to-day luke. ‘see you around kid’ was another thing i dont understand the hatred of. it’s overbearing uncle luke cheekily promising to force haunt kylo’s ass to the ends of the earth and i love how it tied into emphasising that kylo will never successfully kill the past. but lukes death def seemed to just be there for shock value and its ultimately pointless cause you know he’s gonna be back as a force ghost in 9. 

im so grateful they took kylo in the direction they did cause you know from here on out he’s dying! whether it be due to a schism in the fo, his own hand or someone from the resistance he’s not making it out of the trilogy. 'kylo doubles down on immersing himself in the dark’ was what id always wanted so yeah im good w that.

yodas appearance made me smile but id have rather seen obi-wan because ‘there’s nothing in that tree that rey doesn’t already possess’ or whatever he said to luke referring to the fact that rey actually ransacked the tree and took the books with her is the greatest ‘true from a certain point of view’ obiwan-ism EVER. i didnt even pick up on that until i read it later. 

i just realised i forgot to do a section on rey which sums up that i walked out of there feeling exactly nothing new about rey other than being annoyed at her engaging w kylo like that. and that doesnt really count. 

theres also a whole bunch of plot holes and loose threads that dont get explored  but im sure theyll make a bunch of spin off books to explore those to death and rake in more cash. actually none of those annoy me as much as rey taking on the guards does :/ rian was very fond of not following through with scenes and leaving it up to the audiences imagination (eg luke learning of han’s death offscreen). in case anyone reading this post hasnt noticed i generally care way more about how characters are handled rather than coherent plots so im not gonna nitpick too much. there were definite issue with abrupt shifts in tone but thats the least of this film’s worries. so overall many nice little moments but tlj definitely creates a bunch of questions (i dont envy jj abrams trying to figure out how to bring together a new alliance and defeat the fo in a two hour film) and answers too few (we still dont even know kylos motivation for originally turning aside from ‘snokes influence’ but im willing to concede that ‘sheer pride’ is good enough a motivator for this film), neglects or mischaracterises characters of colour and who was it that said luke and rey are the heart of this movie because that was blatantly untrue i really thought their relationship would be cute :/. im just holding out for a good finn arc in ep 9 at this point all the other minutiae can be filled in later through tie-in novels just give john boyega a chance to shine onscreen. also a gay romance would go a long way to cover up what potential bullshit abrams has to offer. what the fuck did john mean when he said this film def reveals the direction theyre taking finnpoe. im at a loss