#and i was a fierce defender of Rey when TFA came out because i knew i was just looking at Luke But Girl

[nitewrighter]

I feel like I'm a feminist enough person to piss the right people off, but I think what really bugs me about Disney hashtag feminist writing is the weird smug marketability of it without actually taking risks. Like okay yeah you're taking a risk by giving Phoebe Waller-Bridge such a major role in as beloved a franchise as Indiana Jones, except not really because you're just capitalizing on Fleabag as a cult success and because Fleabag is a cult success that makes it easy for Disney to handwave away the major drop in appeal because anyone who doesn't like Waller-Bridge's presence in this movie is uncool and unfeminist and not with it. Like you can't say, "She's smug and annoying" because you know you'll immediately be met with, "OH sO a MAN cAn bE sMUg buT a WOMAN caN'T!?11"

[dyadsaber]

Part 6 of A New Reylo Reads TFA: In Which a Dyad In the Force Has One of the Neatest Looking Lightsaber Battles I’ve Ever Seen and I Finally Get to the End of This Novelization

Previous parts in my dyadsaber text posts tag. 

I came out of the theater the first time LOVING the Rey and Finn vs Kylo in the snow as Starkiller Base falls apart around them scene.  Unless I’m completely forgetting something, we’d never seen a red vs blue lightsaber fight in SNOW before, and I thought it was GORGEOUS. (I know Luke uses his on Hoth, but the Wampa doesn’t have one too, so it doesn’t count.) I just watched the whole sequence again on youtube, you know, for research reasons, and I still love it just as much as I did the first time. (Maybe more?) 

Anyway… here’s my rundown of that scene from the novel: 

First of all, I HAVE QUESTIONS about which side of the Force Rey is drawing on here. TLJ kind of touches on the fact that Rey doesn’t have the “OMG the dark side is ALWAYS EVIL” indoctrination that kids at the Jedi temple (and Luke) would have gotten, and the number of times she’s described as drawing on anger and fury here made sit up and pay attention.

When Rey’s about to shoot Kylo and he freezes her with the Force, we get this: 

“She strained against him, HER ANGER GIVING HER STRENGTH. But she couldn’t fire. He was struggling also, against her newly discovered ability” 

Sure, she’s not able to break free, but he’s been using the Dark Side for a touch longer than she has. Not saying she is for sure, here, but I think it’s one possible reading supported by the text. (Hi I teach English just in case I haven’t said that yet). Personally, I think she was. I also think BOTH of the “sides of the Force” are both amoral and necessary, and drawing on the Dark Side out of anger and desperation isn’t always a sure path to Sith-dom.  

Finn igniting Anakin’s lightsaber is still a moment that makes me love him… he’s ready to defend his knocked-against-a-tree friend with WHATEVER HE HAS, even if it’s a weapon he’s never used before and doesn’t quite understand, and that is sweet and good and loyal, and it endeared Finn to me A LOT.  I remember that when Finn turned it on and stood there in that blue glow in the theater, we ALL gasped.  I don’t remember if it had been in promo material or not, but seeing it on the big screen was… An Experience.

ANYWAY, after Finn does the awesome thing he does, Kylo has a line I’m really glad they cut. After the “That weapon is mine” exchange, we get…

Drawing himself up, a towering figure in the snow, Ren did not even bother to gesture. “I’m going to kill you for it.” 

I mean… he almost DOES (kill Finn, that is) but announcing it is a little too MWAHAHAHA villain for my taste, and I’m glad they let him speak with actions rather than words here in the film. 

So… one of the fun things about all of a sudden caring a WHOLE lot more about Kylo Ren is that I’ve gotten to fully appreciate how incredibly good Adam Driver is at the physicality of this character.  (And by that I mean “I’ve watched a lot of behind the scenes clips and stared at gifs a lot.) It’s just FUN to watch him fight, so this description from Finn’s PoV made me smile. 

The longer the contest continued, the stronger Ren seemed to become. It was as if he was enjoying the challenge. Feeding upon it.

Upon reflection, I know exactly why I love this. It reminded me SO HARD of Jaime Lannister, another pretty terrible (and just plain pretty) fictional character I would get in fights defending. I just like secretly morally conflicted dudes who swing swords, know how good they are, and are kind of assholes about it, ok? 

Give me ALL of the confident, arrogant, Kylo Ren fights.  (Fic recs always welcome. Like I said, I’m new here.) 

This next bit made me wonder about how the “fighting over an object with the Force” thing works. Because this is the FIRST time we see the dyad both try to summon that lightsaber at the same time: 

Ren extended an arm toward the device lying in the snow. It twitched and then began to vibrate as the Force called to it.

But… it doesn’t explode. And this made me wonder, “Why NOT? What was different?” 

Here’s what I’ve got. 

Maybe it went to Rey because she started trying to call it first. So even if he had more experience and wouldn’t have had to try as hard as she (probably) did since it was her first time, the Force… recognized her prior claim? Also I think what happens in TLJ is that the two of them “reach” for the lightsaber at the exact same moment, and so there IS no prior claim, and so they have to duke it out with raw strength, which goes about how you’d expect when they’re equals.  

That still doesn’t explain what happens with the ship in the desert in TRoS though…  Rey definitely reached for it first.  But also, unlike a lightsaber, the ship had ENGINES that were trying to work against her. That might be an explanation.  I wonder exactly what Kylo was trying to do there, anyway… help it break atmosphere like it was trying to do anyway, I’ve always assumed.  So if I’m right, that would make the scene make more sense, and it would mean the rules are: (I’m sure I’m proved wrong a million times in media I haven’t seen yet, but here we go)

A stationary object will usually go to the first Force user who calls it. 

A stationary object will go to the Force user who is “stronger” in the moment if they call it at the same time, (and in the absence of a clear winner, explode?).

A moving object that whose direction the Force user is trying to change will be more resistant and tends to negate #1. 

The confidence/willpower of a Force user (and size of an object only insofar as that affect confidence) is a variable that probably throws a wrench in all three of these. 

Dyads facing off probably screw with the normal course of things, too.

Thank you for coming to this episode of “I need my media to make sense and spend way too much time trying to make it do so.” 

And then… Kylo Ren sees Rey….

“It is you,” Ren murmured. His words unsettled her: Not for the first time, he seemed to know more about her than she did about herself.

He doesn’t say this in the movie. He doesn’t say anything when he sees her, I don’t think.  But when I read this… my heart stopped a little. 

This isn’t what you say to the random girl you met in the woods and who you think has the map to Uncle Luke, even if she is Force Sensitive as Hell.  

This is what you say to a girl you suddenly realize you’ve seen in that place between asleep and awake for most of your life, a girl that you’ve always been subconsciously aware of. This is what you say because you’re beginning to understand that the scavenger you brought on board and this girl you’re just now remembering clearly for the fist time are THE SAME PERSON and she is VERY connected to you.  

What I’m saying is… Ben has been aware of Rey for YEARS without realizing it, and this line FITS THAT THEORY. 

And then they fight. And it gets REALLY interesting. 

Expecting weakness, he encountered only strength. Her skill with the device was raw at best, but it was backed by a fury that was as new to his experience as it was unexpected.

Example #2 of Rey’s maybe-Dark-Side-Use.  The paragraph leading up to this talks about her being “consumed with rage,” and I can hear every (ok, almost every) Jedi master in history talking about how letting anger fuel your use of the Force is a no-no, so I don’t think I’m grasping at straws here. Poor Kylo. He didn’t stand a chance. Angry, “possibly using the Dark side without knowing it” Rey is unexpected and kinda hot, OK???

Flipping away from the Starkilling Snow Fight for a moment, there’s a line of Snoke’s that he does NOT get to say in the movie when he tells Hux to abandon ship and come to him with Kylo Ren. 

He added grimly, “It appears that he may have been right about the girl.”

I. Have. Questions. Did Snoke not BELIEVE Kylo when he flat out said she was a REALLY STRONG untrained Force User? Did he not know who Rey was (Palpatine’s granddaughter)? What does this tell us about Snoke’s independence from Palpatine? (Something I’m still not clear on.) The easiest answer is, “You’re thinking about this too much, Dyadsaber.  No one at DLF knew that Palpatine was going to come back yet when TFA was written, so no one worried about it.” 

BUT I NEED IT TO MAKE SENSE. SO, I’ve decided that Snoke didn’t understand how much of a pawn he was. He probably thought he was Palpatine’s heir or disciple or whatever Grandpa Palps convinced him he was.  Anyway, this would mean that Palpatine could give him a lot of autonomy and agency, especially when it came to corrupting Ben, while still keeping a close eye on Snoke through the Force so he could intervene when he had to. If anything in official material contradicts me, I’d love to know. 

And now for a bit that made me scream a Shakespeare line at my kindle. At one point, the narrator observes,  

What she lacked in mass, she made up for in ferocity.

This is basically a less poetic "Though she be but little, she is fierce," AND I LOVE IT. Someone who’s crafty needs to cross stitch this under Rey’s silhouette or something. 

More lines they probably cut for time, but are really telling.  When he’s got her backed up to that cliff: 

Ren held his lightsaber, poised to strike. “I could kill you right now. But there is another way.” Breathing hard, Rey looked up in disgust at the man looming above her. “You’re a monster.”

Again with the threatening to kill people.  Jeez, Kylo. WE KNOW. Seriously, though, I love this. It’s so HIM that he wants her to know he had the advantage and chose not to press it. It says a lot about how he wants to present himself and his intentions to her. As he does in the throne room later, he wants her to give her a choice, and for her to CHOOSE him. 

Also, I can feel TLJ Rey’s MURDEROUS SNAKE energy radiating off of that “you’re a monster” line. 

And instead of being DETERRED by her insult, he comes back with THIS… 

“No. You need a teacher.” He was beseeching and insistent all at once. “I can show you the ways of the Force!”

“Yeah, I know you just called me a monster, but wanna be my student instead?” The arrogance and presumption of this bit of novel-Kylo is SO VERY HIM. Also, “Beseeching but insistent” is so on brand for him when it comes to her.

And the last thing I marked from the fight was THIS bombshell that doesn’t quite come across as obviously (if at all) on screen. Rey has him on the ground, face bleeding, and…

Kill him, a voice inside her head said. It was amorphous, unidentifiable, raw. Pure vengeful emotion. So easy, she told herself. So quick. She recoiled from it. From the dark side.

I mean, if you read between the lines, Rey’s been drawing on the Dark Side without realizing it for a while now. It’s understandable.  She’s seething with pain and anger and a desire to avenge Han, but there’s a difference between using that anger to defend herself or try to just GET AWAY from Kylo, which one could argue is mostly what she’s been doing, and killing him when he’s bleeding on the ground.   

And she doesn’t do it.  TAKE THAT, TLJ LUKE (Note: I love TLJ Luke. I just also love yelling at him).  Rey has a CLASSIC opportunity to make a choice that would send her down a truly Dark Side path - striking down an unarmed enemy in anger - AND SHE DOESN’T DO IT. She RECOILS. (And then Starkiller takes the choice away from both of them by literally crumbling away and leaving a chasm between them.  If I believed the Force was sentient, this would be a moment where it was saying, “You children are not ready to play nice, and I don’t want to kill each other, so you I’m going to separate you.”) 

And that’s that. The next time they see each other, they’re Forcetiming, and I cannot WAIT to read how that goes in the TLJ novel. 

Some last thoughts: 

Because it would have been hilarious, I’m sad we didn’t the fact that Hux...

followed the troopers carrying Ren into the nearby shuttle.

CARRYING. REN. We were robbed of two (four?) poor storm troopers trying to carry gangly, bleeding, passed out Kylo. I am OFFENDED.

Right before Rey leaves for Ahch-to, she and Leia have THIS fascinating exchange…

“I’m proud of what you’re about to do,” she told the girl. 

Rey replied in all seriousness. “But you’re also afraid. In sending me away, you’re—reminded.” 

Leia straightened. “You won’t share the fate of our son.” 

“I know what we’re doing is right. This is how it has to be. This is how it should be.”

I REALLY wish they’d left this in.  I like that it makes explicit that this is the second time Leia has sent a Force user she cares about to Luke, and that choice WEIGHS on her.  (And this shows how much she already cares about Rey, too… MY HEART.) 

The fact that Rey is perceptive enough to PICK UP ON Leia’s concern, and that Leia reassures BOTH OF THEM that what Ben won’t happen to Rey just makes me love both of these characters so much. Also, I think Leia’s worry and Rey’s conviction sets up the conflict Rey has within herself and her own journey with coming to understand balance in TLJ nicely. She’s just… so confident and cheerful in that last line, and I know what’s coming, and it hurts so good. 

And finally, the last line of this book made me laugh out loud. She’s standing in front of Luke, holding out the lightsaber, and....

She wondered what would happen next.

Luke's gonna yeet that lightsaber.  That’s what.

If you read all of these, thank you.  I’d love to know what you think. I never meant for this to get so long, but I’m wordy and newly shippy, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.  Stay tuned for hopefully shorter posts as I dive into Last Jedi in a day or two.

[lj-writes]

Rey is selfish and flawed (and that’s a good thing)

I immensely enjoyed Mara( @jewishcomeradebot)’s recent Rey-centric meta (link with my addition), and the central thing I appreciate about her take on Rey is that she doesn’t posit Rey as this vaguely positive altruistic figure. Rather her read of Rey is fiercely self-interested and focused on her own desire, a rare perspective in fandom. Mara’s posts helped me bring Rey into clear focus as a character for the first time.

I think people’s perception of Rey is distorted in part because we tend to attribute altruism as the primary virtue for women, both real and fictional. This is reflected in the characterizations of the Star Wars heroines as well: Leia and Padmé are defined by their dedication to the well-being of others, or the greater good. They have things they want for themselves, primarily close relationships such as romance, but their primary driving motivations are to save others through armed struggle or politics.

I get that female characters being driven primarily by larger galactical matters rather than romance was and to an extent is still revolutionary. I don’t mean to detract from anyone’s love of characters like Leia and Padmé, and I love them myself. In fact, it is almost impossible not to love them because there is nothing controversial about them and what bad things did come out of their decisions (such as Padmé marrying Anakin post-Sand People massacre) came out of the men in their lives being trash.

That said, I am also dissatisfied by heroine motivations that basically go, “she loves the entire UNIVERSE and wants what’s best for it.” It’s a continuation of the old stereotypes of women being selfless nurturers, just with more politics and guns. While the politics and guns are arguably progressive, these arcs are in stark contrast to those of male protagonists who get to want things for themselves.

Luke is a good case in point. His goal was primarily for himself, to leave Tatooine and to become “a Jedi like my father before me.” He ended up helping the Rebellion and defeating the Empire along the way, but it was his personal goal to claim his heritage and realize himself as a Jedi that his story revolved around. Anakin’s ultimate goal was to keep his loved ones safe, which can be framed altruistically but in the end turned out to be about himself and his trauma, not the people he said he loved. Luke’s goal could also have turned out badly if he had chosen his desire to connect with his father over the desire to be a true Jedi and joined Vader. Anakin’s goal could have turned out well if he had chosen to let go of his need to control Padmé’s fate and overcome Palpatine’s temptation.

Luke and Anakin’s self-interested goals were thus morally neutral and could have gone either way depending on their choices, unlike Leia's and Padmé’s goals which were inherently moral. Framed more precisely, Luke's and Anakin’s goals had conflicts built into them that led to a moral dilemma, such as “do I kill my father or join him?” Leia and Padmé, on the other hand, were never seriously morally conflicted. The boys choose between good and evil, but the girls are all good.

In Jyn from Rogue One we see a female protagonist with a conflicted goal, but with a thumb, no scratch that, a giant boulder on the scale. Jyn wants to stay away from the Empire that destroyed her life, but behind her trauma and cynicism she wants to reconnect with her father and the love she once knew as a child. Well guess what? We’re going to shut down her desire to run away by blackmailing her and taking away her agency. Also her dad was working for the Rebels all along. Saw, her foster dad, also wants her to save the Rebellion. And, with her father gone, it is only through the Rebellion that she will carry on his legacy and find the love and connection she yearns for. Yay for choice!

So while Jyn has the appearance of a conflicted goal that she wants for herself, the actual story pushes her toward the altruistic choice for the greater good. If anything Jyn has even less choice than Leia and Padmé, who at least chose their paths and did not have to be strong-armed. Leia’s and Padmé’s choices were in the distant background, however, and the stories did not hinge on their moral choices like they did on Luke’s and Anakin’s. As far as the stories are concerned Leia and Padmé doing the right things are simple constants.

In this tradition it’s no wonder that a lot of us have trouble seeing Rey as wanting something for herself and striving for her own goal. The proud but chequered tradition of SW women, to say nothing of the cultural background that casts women as either caring angels or depraved villains, predisposes us to see her as another altruistic, or driven-to-be-altruistic, heroine in Leia’s, Padmé’s, or even Jyn’s mold.

Rey’s actual goals are very different from Leia’s or Padmé’s, however. Much like a younger Luke she dreams of heroism and admires the legends of the galaxy including Luke and Han, but her primary goal was not to reconnect with her heritage by becoming a hero herself. In fact she had no reason to believe, though the fandom may have, she had any kind of heritage or famous parents. If heroism were her primary goal she would have jumped at the chance to leave Jakku and join the Resistance, but instead what does she want to do after she was forced to leave? She wants to go back. She doesn’t want to be special, nor does she believe she is. She just wants her parents back. A special destiny was thrust upon her against her will, not because she sought it out.

The character whose driving motivation is most like Rey’s is Anakin Skywalker, the “Chosen One” who was taken from his mother and spent a lifetime aching from the loss. Anakin may have been a hero, but that was a job he did because he was told to, not because he was driven to it by his own needs and desires. His underlying desire was to love and be loved again, and after being separated from his mother he found that in Padmé. When his own fears and Palpatine’s deception led him to dread losing Padmé, he chose to take Palpatine’s offer of ultimate power to avoid losing his loved ones ever again.

Rey’s goal, then, like Anakin’s, is a) something she wants for herself and b) something that could be moral or immoral depending on her choice. It is not an altruistic and inherently good goal but a self-interested, morally neutral one. This is the Star Wars heroine who is the protagonist of her own story with the agency to match, and not a helplessly good inspiration and role model.

That is not to say her arc was necessarily handled well. The events of TFA take away her ability to return to Jakku by having her knocked out and kidnapped by the bad guy, much like RO did to Jyn’s ability to avoid the Empire-Rebellion conflict by having her jailbroken, knocked out, and kidnapped by the good guys.

Obviously both TFA and RO would have been boring stories if Rey and Jyn were simply allowed to return/disappear, but the stories could have been designed differently so the heroines had opportunities to make actual choices while still engaging with the plot. Rey, like Finn, could have returned to the fight of her own free will. The Rebels could have dangled a potential lead to finding Jyn’s father to lure her in. Creators make choices when they tell stories, and they chose to advance--or fail to advance--these female protagonists’ stories by using tired kidnap plots.

Thankfully Rey did get the chance to make a choice at the climax of TFA, when she chose to take up the lightsaber and fight Kylo Ren instead of using Finn as a distraction to run away and find the Millennium Falcon on her own. Of course the outcome was hardly in doubt; she was clearly an important character with newly emerging Force powers, her kindness toward others was an established trait, and her preexisting bond with Finn had grown nearly unbreakable when he came back for her. No one thought Rey might turn her back and run, and so there was no suspense.

From an in-story perspective, however, it was still a choice and a difficult one for her. Ren is a powerful Force user, one she had just managed to get away from, one who had tortured her, whom she had watched murder his own father and cruelly cut Finn down. Her mysterious Force abilities, which allowed her to push him out of her mind and escape him, were a source of uncertainty and fear. She had vowed to Maz never to touch Luke’s lightsaber again after it gave her traumatic visions.

Most of all, there was her prior drive to go back to Jakku where her parents could find her. She would never have a chance of seeing them again if she were killed or captured here, or if the duel simply took too long and the planet exploded with them on it. Given her history and personal goal, running for it while she could was actually a pretty logical choice.

So why did she stay and fight? Had she given up on her goal to reunite with her parents and belong with people who loved her?

I would say her goal was still constant, the path to reaching it had simply shifted. To borrow from Maz, the belonging Rey sought was not behind her on Jakku, it was ahead, and she had found it in Finn. Finn was the first person in memory to ask her if she was all right, the one she begged to stay with her, the one who came back for her. He was the love and belonging she had sought. He was worth fighting and dying for.

This is another distinction between a self-interested goal and an altruistic one, by the way, and why Rey’s story doesn’t revolve around Finn or Anakin’s around Padmé even if Finn and Padmé, respectively, were key to their goals. Story-wise Rey’s goal isn’t to do whatever it takes to defend Finn. Rather she is doing whatever she can to defend Finn because she is pursuing her own goal through him--to be loved and cherished as she never got to be as a child. Under the right circumstances the person to fulfill her goal could shift, as it shifted from her parents to Finn, and potentially could shift again. And that is a key point of TLJ, as I will discuss below.

So how do we know Rey’s path to her goal shifted from her parents to Finn? Two points: First, after the ground opened up, separating her and Ren, she ran to find Finn but not to escape with him or seek help. She lay down to, for all intents and purposes, die with him. She did not try to find the Falcon, did not try to carry Finn away, did not try to attract the attention of passing vessels while the planet disintegrated around them. She felt for his heartbeat, wept over him, then lay down on his chest sobbing in a way that reminded me of nothing so much as Juliet collapsing on top of Romeo.

The second point is that after she and Finn were rescued and she was free to go back to Jakku if she wished, she instead went to Ahch-To to bring Luke back. And why? She’s helping the Resistance, sure, as she was before, but how does that tie into her established goal?

I think TFA was heavily setting up a deep emotional bond between Luke and Rey, with her literally dreaming about his island, her Force vision when she touched Anakin’s lightsaber, her immediately thinking of Luke when Maz said the belonging she sought lay ahead and not behind, and their incredibly emotional meeting at the end.

However, since TLJ borked all that, I now think Rey was helping the Resistance primarily for Finn much as he helped them for her sake. This way Rey’s departure still ties into her story goal and makes her a protagonist, not a passive plot point that bounces around whereever she’s told to go. This way Rey becomes a self-interested character with potential for moral conflict, and not yet another entirely altruistic, inherently good heroine who does whatever is in the greater good.

Think about it. Finn is injured and needs intensive medical care. He has nowhere else to go, no one else both willing and able to take care of him and protect him. The FO if possible hates him worse than they did before for his role in destroying their superweapon. Yet the Resistance is a target too, and they need Luke. Finn and the Resistance are on the same storm-tossed boat now, and if Rey is to think about any kind of future with Finn she has to save the Resistance first.

If you view TLJ in this frame, this is the movie where Rey has an actual self-interested goal and takes actions that could be morally complex. If we posit that her goal is consistent from the end of TFA and she hasn’t become a completely different person between one movie and the next, she still wants the same thing as she did at the end of TFA: Save the Resistance and protect Finn. She thought Luke was key to that, but he refused.

In her desperation she turned to Kylo Ren because, again, she has a self-interested goal--be with Finn--that could lead to moral or immoral outcomes depending on her choices. She’s not being an all-good and all-altruistic figure whose sole wish is to save Ben’s soul or the universe as we expect of our heroines. Rather she is desperate to achieve her goal and willing to push the moral boundaries in service of it.

I can also answer the criticisms of Rey being out-of-character. Daisy Ridley has said in a cast interview that she played Rey as always thinking of Han on some level, which seems at odds with her playing nice with Han’s murderer. On the other hand, what did Han die trying to do? Redeem his son.

Therefore I read Daisy’s comment to mean that Rey is still grieving Han--it’s only been a few days since she watched him murdered, after all--and wants to believe that he did not die in vain. If she can turn his son, then she can prove that Han was right and his life was not wasted.

But why should that grief take the form of being so solicitous to Kylo Ren, the man who not only killed Han but hurt her and Finn so badly, in addition to numerous other crimes? Isn’t that out of character for Rey, who is so strong and a fighter, who fought back in rage at the end of TFA?

Rey is not primarily a fighter, though. Those are the parts we remember the most vividly, but she is primarily a survivor who adapts to her circumstances. That means employing whatever means necessary to survive, including fighting if the need arises, but also being passive and accommodating if that serves better.

We have in fact watched Rey be passive in the face of numerous wrongs done to her in her interactions with a character who shaped her life: Unkar Plutt. I mean my Reylutt ship manifesto (link) may have been a joke, but her interactions with Plutt do a great deal to foreshadow her interactions with Kylo Ren. Plutt was an abusive authority figure who kept her on starvation rations and systematically exploited her, but she still stayed with him for over a decade in seeming passivity. We see her visibly swallow down her rage when he cut her portions yet again and can only imagine how many times she had to do so over the years. The only time we see her fight back physically was when he used violence first by sending his goons to seize BB-8.

The thing is, much like saying someone can’t be a victim of abuse if they fight back, it’s also inaccurate and hurtful to say the only “right” way to react to abuse is by visibly fighting back, or, worse, that you’re not really a victim unless you’re angry. A lot of victims are forced to stay passive, for the sake of their own physical and psychological safety, in the face of mistreatment because that is oftentimes how abuse works. Rey, especially in her early years, could not have survived as she did if she were always dwelling on how she was being treated and lashing out. She had to take a variety of strategies including passive waiting and patience in the face of injustices, not just fighting back against immediate threats, to survive deprivation and exploitation.

How is this relevant to her scenes with Kylo Ren? When she was actively defending herself with Force and violence he was an immediate threat to her, to the Resistance, and to Finn. In the Force(d) Bond situation, on the other hand, she had no way to get away from him but at the same time he did not know where she was and could not get to her. Raging at him might be satisfying, but was hardly practical especially as he became increasingly useful to her. She had, after all, a lot of practice burying her resentment for the sake of survival and her own goal of reuniting with her family. Once the threat moved from acute to a “merely” persistent thing, a different set of reflexes took over.

Another fact about abuse is that the victim may traumatically bond with their aggressor. It is how people psychologically survives at times, gaining a sense of control in a situtation where they have very little, believing that you can be safe and not be hurt anymore by gaining your tormentor’s approval and love. Subjectively it can feel a lot like love, too, because this is a powerful psychological mechanism for our survival and, in the immediate situation, our subjective mental well-being. It’s one of those things that make the unbearable bearable.

This was another way that Rey’s personal, selfish goal could have led to an immoral or unhealthy outcome: She could have mistaken Kylo’s manipulation and her own traumatic bond to him as the love and belonging she sought, and chosen to stay with him at the end of the movie.

In this Rey closely parallels Anakin, who accepted Palpatine’s offer of power as a substitute for love and so became Palpatine’s servant. Her overriding goal of knowing love and safety once again had transferred once before already, from waiting for her family on Jakku to protecting Finn and reuniting with him. Could it transfer once again, as self-interested rather than selfless goals can, this time to a fundamentally destructive relationship that only had a facade of love and belonging?

I think this was the reason, little as I may like it, that Rey was separated from Finn for most of the movie and why Luke treated her so poorly. If she hadn’t been isolated from Finn, or had been nurtured better by Luke, she would have been much more centered and healthier and there would have been no suspense about the outcome when she reached out to Kylo on board the Supremacy. I would dispute how well it worked, but I think that was the intention. 

Ultimately Rey made the right choice, as we know. The point as far as this essay is concerned, though, is that she COULD have made the wrong choice as Anakin did in the pursuit of her own goal. This makes Rey the first Star Wars heroine in the theatrical releases with a genuine moral choice to make, who is not all-good and all-nurturing and therefore morally unassailable like Leia and Padmé, and who is not strong-armed both by her “friends” and the story to make the right choice as Jyn was.

Like Anakin and Luke before her, Rey is a selfish and flawed character. Her self-interested goals and her own complex psychological profile lead her to genuine moral choices and mistaken judgments. Flawed execution aside, that is a very good thing indeed. To me it’s more progress than any amount of guns and politics.

Rey ultimately failed in her mission, as Luke warned, though she at least managed to return to the Resistance with her conscience and freedom intact and to save it. Now she is faced with the reality that she has to be the Jedi and hero. Luke is gone, Kylo is the Big Bad, and she can’t look to anyone to solve her problems for her.

What’s more, Finn himself, who had asked her to leave with him in the first place, now has a new commitment to the Resistance/Rebellion and possibly a personal and emotional commitment to someone new. As John Boyega who plays Finn has said, the look she gives Finn and Rose says it all.

These developments point to interesting directions to take the character. I hope Episode IX carries Rey’s development forward with better writing and challenges her harder, developing her more and having the story hinge on her moral--or immoral--choices.

[bunny-wan-kenobi]

Bunny Reviews: Star Wars The Last Jedi *SPOILERS*

**spoilers abound!** You’ve been warned…

So I finally saw The Last Jedi today after DAYS of scrolling through my dash and seeing every possible reaction along the spectrum of outright loathing and disgust to adoration and glee. So basically, I went into the film nervous, skeptical, but hopeful. 

To give some background, like many of you reading this, I’ve been watching Star Wars since I was a toddler laughing as my dad acted out scenes as Jabba and the Emperor. My sister and I staged lightsaber battles when we were 8 and my library bag was filled with books from the now “Legends” era. I love Star Wars, I love its characters, and I’ve enjoyed it through its many iterations, including the prequels (I will defend them to death so don’t start), the animated shows (I still remember how awesome those first shorts were), the comics, the EU books, and The Force Awakens. 

Now that we’ve established that, here is my opinion of The Last Jedi in a nutshell: It’s a beautifully shot film with some poignant character moments draped over an uneven plot and some disheartening characterization choices. 

Okay, that’s out of the way *exhales* 

Now let me say this: I get it. There’s a lot of good in this movie, a lot of genuinely evocative material and solid performances to praise here…but I also understand the complaints because this movie does have A LOT of problems. So here’s my (fair as I can be) take:

The Great (like I teared up and it was so GOOD)

- Mark Hamill’s performance. Whatever script he was given, he still shone and gave this role his all–as always. He was wry, anguished, conflicted, and strong, and you believed every single nuance of emotion he imbued this film’s Luke. The gravitas and dedication he brought to this character intensified my already deep love for Luke Skywalker, and nothing can change that. I felt his despair, his bitterness, but there was also fierce pride I felt when he chose to take a stand and defend what he believed to be right, leading to…

- Luke vs. Kylo. Any fight that starts with Luke Skywalker giving you sass is a win in my book, no matter how it ended. I just enjoyed seeing Luke as I know him best: self-assured, unflappable, and utterly human. The fight was well-shot and I have to say I got chills when Luke declared “And I will not be the last Jedi” and then cutting to the shot of Rey being a Force boss. Everything right with this movie can be encompassed in that one sequence about courage, persistence, and hope, which is at the heart of Star Wars. 

- Carrie Fisher. Every scene with her carried more weight knowing she is no longer with us, and her last conversation with Rey especially made me tear up. We do indeed have all we need. Her Leia remains in this film as beloved, strong, and defiant as always, maybe a bit worn and weary, but still every bit a Princess–our Princess, and this film allowed her to captivate us once more. 

- Luke and Leia’s reunion. I wanted MORE of this, so much more, but this quiet scene of a brother grieving with and loving his sister was beautiful. 

- Yoda shows up. Guys I NERDED OUT here, like to have Frank Oz come back and play ROTJ!Yoda was the perfect surprise I needed. And to have him show such understanding and affection for Luke during one of his lowest points felt fitting and was another lovely character moment. 

- Luke’s final scene. Context aside, the way his passing was framed against the double sunset and the Force Theme wrung tears out of me and I couldn’t help it because it’s LUKE and all of my love for this character just streamed out in this moment. 

The Good (it’s solid, thumbs up)

- The female characters. This film is still very much Rey’s story, and I still appreciate the innocence, compassion, and thoughtfulness Daisy brings to this protagonist. And now she is joined by more of Leia, Admiral Holdo (a role that really surprised me–in a good way), aaaand…

- Rose Tico! I love Kelly Marie Tran, and her Rose is adorkable, caring, and endearingly noble. It’s unfair that we haven’t had another Asian lead in Star Wars until her, but I’m glad she’s here now. I like that she does get a bit more narrative heft with her love for her sister and desire to see the oppression of the First Order end. And she’s an animal lover! And frees exploited creatures! She is actually the best. 

- Finn’s arc. I will disagree with some people by saying that he actually has an arc, but I believe he does. In TFA, we meet Finn as a former child soldier escaping from the First Order and trying to just survive. He’s inspired and encouraged by Rey and is determined to stay with her and protect her, and so he helps out the Resistance towards that goal. But he hasn’t actually joined in the Resistance–he still believes their cause is pretty futile because he KNOWS how vast and awful the First Order is. And so in TLJ, he has to process all of that and decide whether he wants to commit to this effort for the long haul. In being exposed to others like him also exploited by the First Order and working with Rose and Poe, he comes into his own and chooses for himself to be part of this, and that’s a big step for him. It could have been executed better, but there was a discernible change by the end of the film, and we see a Finn who is more settled in his decisions and less afraid. He has never been a coward, and now he’s showing more courage in choosing to stand against those who used and harmed him. 

- The opening sequence. It was frenetic, desperate, and moving, similar to the feelings I got during the opening of the new Star Trek film during Kirk’s birth–the same sadness and sacrifice permeates this scene. 

- The cinematography. I have to give this film props for some gorgeously framed shots and good use of color and atmosphere. There were a lot of moments that stayed with me simply because of how they were captured. 

- The acting. Everyone here is dedicating themselves to these characters, and it shows. This is a truly solid cast, and I appreciate them so much. There is a true sense of camaraderie among these characters, and they have good chemistry together. I also have to give a shout-out to the visible diversity evident in the different worlds visited, the Resistance pilots, and even the casino scene. That matters, so keep it front and center. 

- The PORGS. Y’all knew this was coming but how could I NOT mention my precious smol birbs with vacant, souless eyes and pudgy tummies? I just…love them (and we got to see baby Porgs OHMYGERSH) 

The Problems

- This does not feel like a proper sequel to The Force Awakens. There are so many major plot points and themes developed in TFA that are either tossed out or wrapped up messily in TLJ. Rey’s parentage being a significant struggle for her character and alluded to symbolically through her connection to the Skywalker lightsaber and other motifs? Nope, she’s an abandoned nobody (Kylo’s words, not mine) and we should all just leave that question in the past like it doesn’t matter who would make you think that? Snoke being a major villain player behind the scenes? Nope, he’s axed off in the height of anticlimax before we even find out who he is and where he came from (not all of us should need to read EU books to understand a movie plot y’all). Rey and Finn having an immediate connection with romantic dimensions? Nope, let’s throw in a last-minute love triangle! (everyone LOVES those). You can really feel the tension of the writing and directing problems plaguing this sequel trilogy because it’s so apparent in the lack of continuity. It’s like several interpretations of Star Wars got mashed together and this is what happened…

- Luke Skywalker. Oh Luke, what have they done to you? Look, I am not against seeing Luke struggle with failure, despair, even loss. We’ve seen it, and it can certainly be part of a character’s journey. I could even appreciate it in this movie…if it was detached from the larger context and motivations of this character as established by previous canon. In TLJ, I’m supposed to accept that Luke Skywalker, who could not even bring himself to kill his father because of his compassion, would attempt to kill (even on “impulse”) his unarmed nephew because of his dark potential? I’m supposed to believe that Luke, stuck in a depressed and bitter stupor, would exile himself for more than a DECADE and abandon his beloved sister and friends while KNOWING they were suffering? I’m supposed to accept this bitter, Logan-ized version of Luke for two hours and then watch him die without ever truly forming a connection with Rey or reuniting with his loved ones? He dies alone, and I’m not okay with that. Yes, characters change, but it’s not always necessary to make a character suffer and harden to make them interesting. We’ve already seen Luke fail. We’ve already seen him suffer. I didn’t need nor want to see Luke, defined by his compassion and optimism and openness, portrayed as cold and closed off from the world and calloused from pain. As I said, Mark played him beautifully, but he deserved a much better story than this–and I think the fans did too, leading to…

- The overall treatment of the original trio. So TLJ is on one level about accepting failure and making peace with the past while moving forward. But the thing is, the sequel trilogy has so far piled SO MUCH FAILURE onto our original heroes that the original trilogy begins to leave a bitter taste in hindsight. Every single thing these characters we love fought and struggled for is rendered broken and scattered here, and then they die with their aspirations tragically unrealized. Star Wars is predominately a space fantasy opera with hope at its center, but it takes a fatalistic edge when you look at what they did with Luke, Han, and Leia. Not only do we NEVER get to see these characters all reunited, but their sendoff is tragic and more bitter than sweet. Han is separated from Leia and killed by his son. Luke lives alone for years in self-loathing and bitterness, and after his glorious re-entry into the world and knowing another Jedi is out there, he still dies alone. Leia loses her husband, son, brother, the Republic and only really gets to say goodbye to one of them. This is depressing as hell and not the note you want to end on for some of the most iconic characters in cinema. And if this all was meant to service the theme of “failure is part of life,” it did it in the most unwieldy way possible by reaching the suffering threshold that tested the limits of not only these characters, but also fans. It honestly would have been better if these characters were dead from the outset, legacy intact, and the sequel trilogy focused entirely on the new characters. 

- The fact that the entire Canto Blight subplot could be excised from the movie and little would change. It gave us more time with Rose and Finn, which was good, but it didn’t further the plot, especially given that it takes up a good 20-30 minutes of screen-time. It felt unnecessary, and I wish it had been better woven into the main plot rather than as a side adventure. 

- With that comes also the issue that the Resistance plot…doesn’t really make much sense. So this handful of ships are just cruising along on fuel and the First Order is just…not destroying them all? Like they HAVE smaller ships to destroy them with…why not just be done with it already? Why are all the Resistance’s plans failures because of simply poor logic? That undermines one of the main themes of the movie because this failure doesn’t hold much weight if we know it’s mostly plot contrivance rather than a genuine character struggle! Like…many of the conflicts in this movie feel engineered by plot need rather than organic. 

- The Rey/Kylo dynamic. This was by far one of the most problematic aspects of the movie for me and the part I found most disturbing. In a year that saw the visible emergence of neo-Nazism and the #MeToo movement, the way the scenes of Kylo and Rey were framed felt downright uncomfortable. Kylo is a space Nazi–let’s just own that. He already contributed to genocide of several planets, believes in the First Order’s cause which has oppressed so many vulnerable peoples, and uses manipulation and torture to reach his ends. And Rey knows that. He tortured her in what must have been only a few days ago in this timeline AND murdered his father and her new father-figure. Not only that, but in THIS movie we see Kylo manipulating her further by calling her a nobody, outlining everything wrong about her, and then coercing her to join him. What kind of messed up BS is that? I’m angry about this because this is not okay. Luke tried to save Vader because he believed love could turn his father’s heart. Though it proved that Vader still had the capacity for good, it didn’t absolve Vader of his previous crimes. Rey barely has any real connection with Kylo and then suddenly in this movie wants to redeem him and put the rest to the side. This is not the same situation because it is framed with a romantic tension in this case as if we are also supposed to feel really bad for Kylo and want him to get together with Rey on Team Good. Do I see Kylo’s complexity? Yesss….but he also made choices that brought him to this place, and the movie made Rey look foolish in light of diminishing the weight of Kylo’s previous atrocities. The Light Side is NOT equal to the Dark when the Dark is defined by its selfishness, corruption, and persecution of others–don’t use the Force to make your “both sides” argument. 

- That’s not how the Force works! Okay, so apparently the Force really DOES give one unnatural abilities because there were many scenes in this film that strained my credulity–think mountain of salt, not the grain. Even my mom (not too big of a Star Wars fan) was like “She [Leia] CANNOT survive in space like that–that seemed unbelievable.” That and Luke’s astro-projection were jarring plot conveniences that did not feel consistent with the logic of the Force that had been established so far and also felt kind of cheap in the way they were used. Using the Force does have limits, but here Force abilities were treated like a crazy AU mod. 

- This film rides on plot conveniences rather than characterization. The story works by stringing set pieces together without giving enough heft to the characters’ development. The side characters and even Rey’s arcs are left strangely underdeveloped alongside these big battles and scenes framed as epic (like Finn’s battle with Phasma), leaving some moments oddly hollow. I honestly can’t say much about what Rey’s arc was…failure? Letting go of the past? Becoming a Jedi? Not enough was explained to chart a significant internal change in her, an issue that plagued other characters like Poe as well, who suddenly was framed as this hot-headed aggressive man in contrast to his buoyant but level-headed presence in TFA. Leading to…

- The treatment of the POC characters. There were a lot of moments that felt sadly tone-deaf for our current time. We didn’t need to see Rose tase Finn for laughs and then see both of them get stopped by white police telling them to put their hands up. We didn’t need to see Poe slapped and shot by white superiors and alluded to as this seductive “bad boy,” fitting neatly into certain Latino tropes. We didn’t need the total erasure of Finn’s backstory and past trauma, which was completely unacknowledged in this film, which spent more time lecturing him about being a coward (again–he’s not). As a woman of color, these moments irk me because it’s been so normalized to treat POC this way, and I don’t like seeing a franchise that boasts about its new progressiveness take advantage of that goodwill by sidelining its few main characters of color. 

The Whole Nutshell

There was much of TLJ that I enjoyed, but by the end, I left the theater in much of the same state that I arrived: confused, conflicted, and yet hopeful. I’ll be honest and say that this was not the sequel to TFA I would’ve liked to see, and it will probably go down as the most mixed bag of Star Wars movies for me. The fact that my father, decades-long Star Wars lover, said this movie “was disappointing and didn’t emotionally connect to him” speaks volumes. This is the only Star Wars movie he has EVER described in that way–he didn’t even say that for Phantom Menace! Again, reactions to TLJ span widely, but even that is telling. 

Considering everything that has been going on behind the scenes, I think TLJ represents a failure to realize a cohesive vision for the next chapter of this space saga, and a failure to understand and honor the characters who built it. There’s a solid movie still in there, and it has its flashes of brilliance and beauty, but its overshadowed by the continuity issues and divisive characterization decisions. It’s better than what I expected, but it’s not one I’m looking forward to re-watching anytime soon. 

Bunny’s Grade: 6/10