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david-talks-sw · 2 years ago

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The discrepancy is between Lucas' story and fanon.

Lucas' out-of-universe commentary fully supports the movies, which are fairy tales that emulate 30s matinee serials.

This is not meant to have like 3 levels of subtext like a Christopher Nolan drama thriller. What you see is what you're supposed to take away, it's all intentionally on the nose.

When "Anakin says that attachment is forbidden but love is central to a Jedi", fans at the time thought:

'Hmmm... what's the subtext? Oh, he's just arguing semantics to get laid.'

No. He's stating official Jedi policy.

Most fans at the time argued "Anakin's turn to the Dark Side was too fast", there's gotta be something else afoot.

'Hmmmm... maybe the Jedi were bullying him, by being apathetic and not trusting him, to a point where he couldn't take it anymore and killed them all! This has been building up for a while! That's why he says the Jedi are evil, because deep down he thinks that!'

Wow. No. The point was that:

he's so scared and traumatized and greedy that he'll make a deal with the "Devil". Again, it's a fairy tale. Both Orpheus and Faust don't tarry before doing it, they just do it.

The Jedi's concerns are provenly justified and even then, for all of Episode II they have Anakin's back and are telling Obi-Wan to give Anakin space. It's clearly shown that what they're concerned about is Palpatine, and Anakin being close to him isn't a good thing (again, a concern that is provenly justified).

Palpatine is explicitly telling Anakin lies that the latter then regurgitates. He doesn't actually believe any of it, he's just selfish and using any narrative he can to reach his own ends.

Once the Prequels came out, people felt there was a disconnect between the 'dispassionate, dogmatic' Prequel Jedi and the ones shown in the OT.

'Hmmm... maybe the point is that the old Jedi ways are wrong. After all, Yoda and Ben tell Luke to kill Vader and it's only by disobeying them that he manages to save his father. They even tell him to repress his feelings, but it's love that redeems Vader.'

No. Ben and Yoda never tell Luke to kill his father. They tell him he must face, confront Vader again. He must bury his feelings deep down because otherwise the Emperor can use them against Luke. They're telling Luke to keep a poker face, but if you use the words "poker face" in a fucking space opera then you lose your audience.

Those are just a few of the examples. Another popular-somewhat-jokey one is "Darth Jar Jar", because the Gen X fans and older hated him so much they could either bitch about the character or go:

'Hmmmm... maybe Jar Jar is in The Phantom Menace because he's secretly Darth Plagueis, the puppet-master himself!'

No. He's a funny, foolish character created for comic relief in a movie for children. He's relevant because the theme of the film he's in is all about how everyone needs to contribute to achieve victory, from the Queen, to the Jedi, to the clumsy Gungan.

Bottom line:

The situation of the Prequels is more complex, but the morality remains the same. It's still good vs evil, it's still a fairy tale, its target audience is still children, first and foremost.

You can try to divine some deeper meaning to it all (as if it wasn't deep enough 🙄) if you want, but at least be honest by acknowledging it's a kids movie and you're just extrapolating.

You can say "death of the author" if you want, but at least be consistent and acknowledge that your read isn't the intended one.

I don’t agree with you at all. And further nothing Lucas says outside of the movies he made means anything. Anakin was forbidden from being with his mom, of having a relationship with Padmé and Obi-Wan reminds him that he has made a commitment to the Jedi order that is not easily broken. Anakin cannot answer ‘yes’ when he’s asked if he’s allowed to love for crying out loud. He says he can’t be with the people he loves either. That’s Lucas’s story, not the BTS nonsense.

Luckily, I don't need you to agree with me at all.

But let me address something I see all the time on Tumblr, and what is manifesting itself in your message.

I didn't need George Lucas to say anything "outside of the movies he made" to get his messages and lessons he wanted to tell. The reason I have a vast collection of quotes from him is because it's good to find absolute, 100% reassurance from George Lucas himself that yes, this is what was intended, my interpretation of the movies is the interpretation he hoped from his audience. I really can't grasp why people insist on the idea that it's some kind of universal truth and experience that if you don't listen to George Lucas' commentaries on his work, that somehow gives you a fundamentally different story.

Anakin is not answering "yes" when he is asked if he’s allowed to love because he answers by distinguishes between the kind of love which is forbidden for a Jedi Knight - attachment and possession - and love which is central to a Jedi's life, which is compassion, which is unconditional love. Whether or not you agree with this distinction is your own business, but dismissing it as nonsense or even as a lame attempt on Anakin's part to convince Padmé that they can have a romantic relationship is not making as much sense as many would like to believe, even if you don't know anything about Buddhism. And it's very clear in Lucas' story that they do love.

Furthermore, if we're at it, if you want to adhere only to what you can see and hear when you watch the movies, then you shouldn't make statements like "Anakin was forbidden from being with his mom" - that's simply not supported by the source material. I guess this is why people try - and fail - to argue that when Anakin tells Padmé that "I know I'm disobeying my mandate to protect you, Senator, but I have to go" it somehow supposed to mean that he would disobey the Jedi Council if he would contact his mother.

Padmé: Must be difficult, having sworn your life to the Jedi, not being able to visit the places you like or do the things you like.

Anakin: Or be with the people that I love.

Reading this conversation as some kind of evidence that a Jedi is not allowed to love people and like places or like doing things or that they're, but then they are not allowed to be with them or go there or not allowed to do those things is nonsense, sorry. A Jedi Knight's life, as Qui-Gon explicitly warned Anakin, is hard. They don't go where they want to go, because they go where they're needed. For a good Jedi Knight, who lives on the joy of compassion and giving himself to others, the two are the same. They live for others.

When Anakin tells Obi-Wan in Episode II that he finds Padmé's presence intoxicating, he warns him, "You've made a commitment to the Jedi order, a commitment not easily broken." The only thing we can get from the movies and the tv show is that they're not having romantic relationships, they don't marry and are not having children - none of these are able to support the idea that love itself, romantic and non-romantic alike, is forbidden for a Jedi Knight. In Clone Wars, he explicitly tells him, a Jedi Knight is not forbidden to have romantic feelings. But, when duty calls them and when it comes to choosing between duty and that relationship, they must choose duty. This is very clear in the source material. And if we think about it, it makes perfect sense: Obviously, there are many functions and roles in life where one can live on compassion and on giving oneself to others, and also being able to get married and start a family, but the role and function of a Jedi Knight, who is a guardian of peace and justice in the entire known universe, dedicating his life to lifelong spiritual and psychological progress, marriage and kids would cause troubles for him and for his family as well. If you think about it, a Jedi who starts a family, must be fully available for the whole galaxy and must be fully available for their family at the same time; they must be like a parent to their apprentices and must be a parent to their children; and they must support their family, and in the same time, they must keep themselves in perfect spiritual, physical and mental condition, deepening their connection to the Force. Not to mention to preserve a healthy amount of time for themselves. The duties of a Jedi and the duties of a parent and a spouse cannot be fulfilled by one person without the expanse of another - or if you can fulfill both, it will be hardly without the expanse of yourself. So, it's unwise.

So again: to me, there is no discrepancy between "Lucas’s story" and what you label "the BTS nonsense", and never was. Maybe this is something to think about.

#george lucas #anakin skywalker #jedi order #long post

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gch1995 · 3 years ago

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“Life seems so much simpler when you’re fixing things. I’m good at fixing things. I always was. But I..”

-Anakin Skywalker to Padme Amidala in chapter 21 of the novelization of Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones (Salvatore, 1749).

While Anakin is technically talking about a broken shifter on the surface, this quote he says to Padme pretty much explains his motivations for why he ends up making the personal life choices he does, for better or worse. He feels like he needs to be powerful enough to fix the galaxy for the better and protect everyone he loves from bad things happening by being their hero and savior because he never had the ability to do so before. Then, when he can’t do that, he hates himself, and lashes out violently at those who caused himself and/or loved ones grief, guilt, and/or pain in the heat of the moment because Sidious taught him that was valid catharsis, and he constantly was being emotionally/individually denied and shamed for seeking healthy opportunities for catharsis, expression, personal freedoms, and support from Obi-Wan, Yoda, and the Jedi Council who all had power over him over the past ten years altogether. Afterwards, he hates himself even more for lashing out violently, but he doesn’t feel safe enough to go back because he knows there aren’t many opportunities for him to be safe doing so in these constantly toxic and oppressive environments under abusive, corrupt, and manipulative authority, so eventually he stops trying after going dark out of exhaustion until Luke comes along in ESB and ROTJ.

I’m not saying that Anakin is innocent, or that Obi-Wan, Yoda, the Jedi Council, or even Palpatine forced him to turn on the Jedi in Revenge of the Sith. Padme, the Jedi Order, and the Republic didn’t deserve Order 66, being hurt in ways that contributed to their ultimate demise by Anakin, and/or being killed outright. As deeply compromised as Anakin’s agency and emotional/mental health was with his limited options, grooming for subservience to corrupt, manipulative, and oppressive authority, and slave mentality, he did still have a conscience. While Palpatine did also tell him he could end the war by joining him, Anakin genuinely didn’t feel he had much of a choice after years of conditioning, and his support system was really limited, too he also was motivated to do terrible things that he knew were wrong to achieve personal worthy ends of saving Padme. He did stop trying after going dark. He deserved punishment for his crimes.

However, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, but I don’t know how so many people in this fandom can blame it all on Anakin for growing up to eventually become Vader when his entire life was spent under the thumb of abusive, corrupt, emotionally negligent, morally hypocritical, and oppressive authority figures in slavery and two space soldier cults from whom there was limited to nonexistent healthy support and safe escape opportunities. I don’t know how so many fans can pretend like Obi-Wan, Yoda, and the rest of the Jedi Council in the prequels didn’t heavily contribute to turning Anakin into a monster almost as much as Palpatine, even if unintentionally, by emotionally/individually/socially denying, invalidating, shaming, and oppressing him every time he did try to reach out to them for healthy and reasonable support, teaching him that emotional expression and individuality was “dangerous” altogether, instructing him to use the clones as slaves and enable slavery on the outer rims, including on his home planets, whenever they deemed it “necessary” for their “greater good.”

Like, I know Obi-Wan and the Jedi Council got their karma for treating Anakin like garbage, though it was far worse than they deserved. I know Luke found a healthy balance in the OT movies with that whole “no attachment” Jedi rule, if you ignore the bullshit Disney sequels that retcon everything. However, it always did bother me that Obi-Wan and especially Yoda never could admit just how much their old system was a toxic mess in which they fucked up. I’m not just talking about in regards to Anakin Skywalker, though he stands out as their greatest failure because he was an opportunity for them to self reflect on their flaws and improve their system, but pretty much every kid in general. Children never should have been getting trained to be soldiers under the age of 18, and, enforcing that whole “no attachment” rule created more harm than good.

#attack of the clones #quotes #attack of the clones novelization #ra salvatore #prequel star wars #anakin sywalker #darth vader #obi wan critical #yoda critical #jedi council fuckery #I hate how excessively anti-emotion the Jedi are in the prequels #and to be honest Obi Wan and Yoda are the same in the ot movies with Luke #Anakin’s not innocent but obi wan Yoda and the Jedi council helped influence him to become a monster almost as much as Palpatine #even if unintentionally

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smhalltheurlsaretaken · 4 years ago

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Hey! I literally love your last post so much but I'm confused about the rebels bit (never watched it). How does Rebels criticize the jedi? Thanks!

Aw, thank you! (Lol, this is such an old ask I don’t remember what that post was, but here goes).

Well in s2 Ahsoka, Kanan (a survivor from Order 66) and Ezra (his Padawan) all go to an old Jedi Temple to talk to Yoda about Vader and his Inquisitors (Darksiders who hunt the few remaining Jedi and kidnap Force sensitive kids). Yoda is only there spiritually and the three of them get different visions. Ahsoka sees Anakin as Vader, and Kanan has to fight several enemies and eventually admit he can't protect his Padawan from the world, only guide him (which prompts the vision to finally make him a Jedi Knight, as he survived Order 66 as a Padawan.)

And Ezra... Ugh. Ezra had a previous encounter with Yoda, in which he got his lightsaber crystal. Basically Yoda asked him why he wanted to be a Jedi, and Ezra had to do some self-examination and eventually realized that helping and protecting people made him feel alive, which greatly pleased Yoda who told him he might become a Jedi after all. That's a really great exchange and I love the character development Ezra gets, as he starts by saying he wants never to feel powerless and eventually realizes that's not the right answer.

But in this second encounter, as Ezra asks how they can defeat the Inquisitors, Yoda basically says that fighting is rarely the right path. And to illustrate that, he says that line about the Jedi being arrogant and joining the war swiftly "in their arrogance," which really bothers me. He also says they were "consumed by the Dark Side", which is why they're now gone. In all fairness, he also mentions that they were motivated by fear, which is partially true.

Now, I write analyses and I try to be intellectually honest about them, because ignoring contradicting stuff weakens your argument instead of helping you. Except this time, I really can't accept this quote. I have an excuse, Lucas wasn't involved in Rebels so it's not the highest canon in my opinion (the 6 movies + TCW are, here are the quotes justifying my position), and I feel like that assertion is out of character for Yoda, ignoring his ST ghost appearances, and also plainly factually incorrect.

I understand that Ezra really needed to be taught not to always seek to fight. At this point, he's still an emotional kid who occasionally struggles with the Dark Side. Not fighting is important to a Jedi's path, so I can understand Yoda's intention. But the example he uses? According to Lucas, the Jedi were drafted in the war. That's not jumping into a conflict out of arrogance, that's literally being dragged there against your will. And sure, there’s Geonosis, but how exactly is rescuing a bunch of your people that’s getting slaughtered by a Sith Lord the same thing as arrogantly jumping into a fight? Like, what’s the option here? Not go, and let an innocent Senator and a bunch of Jedi be murdered?

It's like Rebels!Yoda isn't acknowledging that the war was fake and that a Sith Lord engineered it as the perfect trap (which is recurring problem in Rebels; at one point Ezra, Kanan and Rex have to fight an old Separatist tactical droid and Ezra "solves" the Clone Wars by pointing out that nobody won except the Empire, so really they were on the same side all along, and he gets praised for doing what "a bunch of Jedi, senators and Clones couldn't do," ie getting both sides to talk to each other – except wtf??? setting aside that the Jedi and Rex were aware of the war being fake by the end of it, and that the Separatists were openly led by a Sith Lord and attempted to commit genocide several times in TCW and did commit mass murder, and reduced like several worlds to slavery or starvation and were backed by the worst big corporations you could imagine, the war would NOT have ended if the two sides had tried talking it out. 1) The Senate made it illegal 2) the big corporations arranged for terrorist attacks on both sides the one time they tried to negotiate so the war would drag on and they'd get more money out of it 3) Sidious. Was. Controlling. Everything. What. The. Heck. Would. Have. Been. Accomplished. By. Negotiating.) Plus the question of whether or not the Jedi should even fight is like... constantly raised by the Jedi during TCW, so I really can’t see it as “oh wow we didn’t even take the time to think and we got killed because of it, we really sucked.”

Seriously, there’s this S6 quote:

MACE: Are you sure we are taking the right path? YODA: The right path, no. The only path, yes. Designed by the Dark Lord of the Sith, this web is. For now, play his game, we must.

Like yeah, totally rushing in and being eager to fight lol. Nothing to do with being boxed in and having no alternatives.

So yeah that's bothers me and I don't think it jibes with the rest of canon. I don't remember Yoda telling Luke (who, in the beginning, is as eager to fight as Ezra is) that the Jedi "disappeared" because of some fault of their own, or because of an eagerness to fight. (Seriously, pussyfooting around the fact that the Jedi were slaughtered grates me.) The OT never, ever, ever implies that the destruction of the Jedi Order was their fault - and unless you assume that the OT is “pro-Jedi propaganda” (*laughs in dumb youtube comments*) then I don’t see Rebels weaving it into its narrative as legitimate.

Again, choosing alternatives to fighting is a great lesson on a personal level, but it doesn't work on the scale of the Rebels/Empire conflict - or the Jedi/Sith one. Ezra should often choose not to fight because of what it'll do to his soul. The Rebels should not stop fighting because there is no cohabitation with something as evil as the Empire. Imo Yoda is always presented as wise enough to know the difference.

The last thing that makes me think it's out of character is Yoda's spiritual journey in TCW s6. He gets all of his flaws thrown into his face and has to conquer them – he has to face his literal Dark Side and he wins. And yet at no point during that arc is he ever made to conquer his ‘Jedi arrogance’ or whatever. He has to face his worst fear (first vision, all the Jedi dying), let go of his attachments (second vision, him having to accept that he can’t live in a perfect world where everything is beautiful and no one is dead), and reaffirm who he is as a Jedi (third vision, refusing to give up on Anakin and trying to save him rather than to kill Sidious) but at no point is he ever made to recognize that wow, the Jedi are the worst for fighting.

I’d argue that the very purpose of the visions showing him Order 66 and Anakin falling are to make him accept that these things are completely beyond his control - and as such, not his fault. He doesn’t get to fix things, because the fate of the Order is not in their own hands. It is, in fact, in Anakin’s (from a thematical/narrative standpoint). Yoda has a hard time with it (actually he almost shuts down when he first sees everybody dead and his first reaction is to say that he failed them, so I can’t accept Yoda blaming his grandkids for dying) but he accepts it in the end, when he tells Mace and Obi-Wan he’s not certain one ever wins a war, but they might still find ‘victory for all time’ (referring to balance aka Sidious’ death in RotJ).

So anyway that’s my beef with Rebels!Yoda. Not hate on Rebels though, there are many parts of it that I really, really love - but some of them kinda infuriate me, and this is one of them.

#ask #anonymous #yoda #yoda appreciation #in defense of the jedi #long post #meta #more like me ranting #my meta

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gffa · 6 years ago

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So... I've seen a /lot/ of your thoughts about the prequel-era of Star Wars, and the original trilogy of Star Wars is pretty much loved by everyone... but that latest meta got me thinking. What exactly are your thoughts about the new trilogy so far? What do you love about it, what do you hate about it, and where does it fall in the end?

My feelings are pretty boring, to be honest! I like the sequels’ characters pretty well, but I’m middle of the road on the plot and the worldbuilding. There are things I like about it very much, there are things I dislike about it, there are things I’ve dug out of the whole thing that I like, there are things I’m never really going to get over, and mostly it just doesn’t really sing to me like the prequels and originals do.Things I like about the sequels:- The characters are all pretty darling and I very much want to know more about them and their stories! Rey and Finn and Poe are precious, I really love Maz a lot, I’m interested in Ben Solo, I appreciate TLJ bringing us the Leia/Amilyn potential, I WILL FIGHT A MAN FOR ROSE TICO, etc.- TLJ actually made me really think about Luke Skywalker a lot, how I see him and how fallible he was in the originals, versus the Pure Cinnamon Roll that was all I saw for a long time. And it really, really helped me understand his character a lot better.- The supplementary material has been really good to me. Whether it’s the absolute batshit of Phasma (SHE MADE HER ARMOR OUT OF SHEEV’S YACHT, THAT IS THE SINGLE GREATEST THING HER CHARACTER COULD EVER DO, LOL) or the sheer adorable feelings that Cobalt Squadron gave me about Rose Tico or how Battlefront II’s storyline connected the dots between the OT and the ST really well for me, how much I legit enjoyed some of the lines from Jason Fry’s TLJ novelization, or the Poe Dameron comic being amazing, or a whole bunch of other things! The ST has given us the chance to have these things that I really love and I cannot (nor do I want to) full divorce those things from the movies in my mind, which means I have affection for the movies because I love the whole big picture that Star Wars is building with these characters and the galaxy!Things I don’t like about the sequels:- TLJ is something I don’t mind in and of itself at this point (mostly because I’m just so tired of the arguments) but it’s never going to be what my heart wanted, it’s never going to be satisfying for me in that sense. Yes, I get where they’re coming from, I think it’s a fascinating look at showing that yes the dark side/dark emotions is a LIFELONG STRUGGLE to overcome, that Luke fell back into them because it’s not a one-and-done thing, but that means that’s the ONLY story we got for Luke from the sequels, as played by Mark Hamill. If we’d had more stories of Luke with Mark, I think it would be easier to take, but this is the only thing we’ve gotten so far with Mark Hamill on the big screen, so it has all the weight of our expectations on it, and because it’s undoing so much of what ROTJ worked so hard for, it’s never going to be satisfying. I think it’s justified in what it did, but it’s never going to sing to me. (I would like to hope that TROS will stick the landing and make me change my mind, I’m absolutely willing to be won over, but I’m skeptical.)- Rey’s being wrapped up in the Skywalker themes, they’re going to have to step really carefully to stick that landing for me as well, and so far I haven’t been satisfied by the story. I don’t necessarily need her to be a bio-Skywalker (though, that would be my preference), but I need her connection to them to be thematically coherent, and so far it’s not enough for me. It’s not the worst ever, but so far it’s not singing to me, either.- The worldbuilding in the movies has been very lackluster. The planets all look like Earth locations for the most part, the aliens aren’t very creative, there’s a weird eschewing of established aliens, like they don’t actually want this to be Star Wars in setting, and there’s no sense of this being a bigger galaxy in the movies. The supplementary material does a lot of this lifting and I live in that space, so I’m not as cranky about it as I might have been (ie, god bless Battlefront for its gorgeous planets omg), but it’s pretty noticeable in TFA and TLJ.- The squandering of the OT cast. I’m actually okay with Han’s death in the movies, but I’m frustrated by totally taking out any impact it has on Luke and Leia, that they weren’t even there. Leia briefly feels Han’s loss and staggers over it, there’s mention of it in the TLJ novelization, but that’s about it. She feels Luke’s death, she gets a moment to talk with him in TLJ, but it’s so brief. Ben only briefly feels her and doesn’t pull the trigger on her, until one of his squadmates does. And, hey, I get it, this isn’t the OT’s movie, they had their movies, this is the ST’s movies. But I feel like there was a way to give them more meaning, to have their presences actually felt in the characters’ lives. TLJ at least started us on Luke and Ben’s relationship, but for all the weight it’s supposed to have, it’s barely a blip compared to how much time he and Rey spend together. There’s barely any interaction between Leia and Ben at all in the movies. Han and Ben get one scene. It’s harder for me to connect to Ben when he’s so disconnected from the people who he grew up with and so I’m told he’s part of this legacy, but I don’t feel it in the way I wish I did.Contrast this against the prequels, where Obi-Wan and Anakin’s dynamic is expanded on, that those interactions give such weight to their battle on the Death Star, to the way Vader won’t shut up about Obi-Wan, the way Palpatine’s influence on Anakin’s life has more weight now that we’ve seen what went down with them, and why it was such a huge thing for Anakin to break away from him, why seeing Obi-Wan and Anakin and Yoda standing together as spirits has so much more meaning, now that those connections were established. You can add in new characters (like Padme and Ahsoka) while still building up what was already there, but I feel like the ST really hasn’t connected the dots that well. There’s still this HUGE gap between ROTJ and TFA/TLJ and maybe one day I’ll come around on that, I certainly have enjoyed what we’ve been given so far, but there’s a disconnect between the ST and the OT/PT so far that’s hard for me to overcome.Where it all falls in the end:I’m hoping that I will come around and fall in love with the ST, but I’m skeptical because the ST is what brought me back to Star Wars, it’s where I started out after I watched TFA, that was where my investment was, until I started spreading my wings a bit, and the PT/OT really just bit into me hard in a way I never expected. I started out as largely a blank slate (I was a fan as a wee thing, but my feelings back then are pretty much the opposite of what they are now, other than that I Liked Obi-Wan Kenobi, apparently that’s my one true constant!) and one part sang to me and one part didn’t. I’m not sure TROS (especially not in the hands of JJ, who made Alias, which, look, I loved that show, but its ending was not strong, and don’t get me started on his Star Trek, SIGH) can change that for me. I hope to be proven wrong! There are a lot of things I will focus on and yell happily about–I love the characters, I actually genuinely enjoy looking at Luke’s character, I’m enjoying the worldbuilding of the books, comics, and games SO MUCH, but idk I just don’t have the same passion for the ST despite that I love the individual pieces a ton.(AS A NOTE: If someone really loves the ST and has fun with it, I would like to request that you continue to do so, because people loving things always wins me over, like, the most fun I have is when someone goes, “I love that thing! And I also love this thing!” and it makes me want to love that second thing, too! That kind of positivity always wins me over more than anything else.)

#meta #sequels discourse #stormmodblog

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clairen45 · 7 years ago

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Cracking the Mirror

The mirror scene in Ahch-To is probably the most puzzling we have ever had in Star Wars, the one we keep on getting back to, commenting, critiquing. I have seen many fascinating metas on Tumblr about this scene, usually wondering what Rey sees in there, what she should see, and what we, the audience, think we did see there. Maybe, we can less focus on what’s in there and really pause at the mirror itself and what it stands for. Because, come to think of it, mirrors in this franchise are a rare commodity, and since we are finally given one, let’s wonder what it brings to the story.

A story is a mirror that one carries along the way... Stendhal

The mirror is first and foremost a device, a tool, created by men that testifies to the many ways man has been trying to appropriate and define his own identity and image. Before mirrors were engineered and become quite a casual commodity, people could only get glimpses of themselves in a fleeting reflection in the water or in the eyes of people looking at them. You had no idea of what you looked like except as defined by the gaze of the others. The gaze of the others is still very much present today, but, thanks to mirrors (and cameras), we can get firsthand an idea of what we look like, and sometimes take control of our own image (hello selfie!). This is huge. At the same time, how truthful can a mirror be? We still look at our reflection through the prism of our own expectations, desires, fears, and insecurities, and a mirror in itself can be warped or broken, or photoshopped (I see you Instagram filters) . It is sometimes partial, and limited. At any rate, it is always a frame, and an inverted image of who we are.

Novelists and writers were quick at seizing the analogy between their work and that of a mirror. It is quite cliché to consider that most of the works of art, and that also include the visual arts, are more than often meant to be a reflection of our cultures, societies, and of individuals. We can easily project ourselves onto characters and stories, because they, one way or another, reflect ourselves, our feelings, our desires, our fears, our expectations, and our insecurities. And like real loooking glasses, these works of art, whether fiction or documentaries, can be warped, broken, partial, and limited. And they are always a frame. They don’t even have to be realistic. Through the Looking Glass is actually a good example to keep in mind because there again, it was very much a story about stories, with Alice going through the looking glass of fiction, and entering a world that is all about exploring the imaginary and the creative power of words. Fairy tales and nonsensical works have a lot to say about ourselves. There are many ways to view Lewis Carroll’s looking glass, but I will keep that notion for now.

So what a genius stroke to have us, puzzled audience, going back to that Ahch-To mirror to look for answers about our story. Like Rey, what do we see in there, and how much does that tell us about our expectations and about ourselves? And what is true of this scene in particular is true of the whole franchise as a whole. RJ has been pretty clever in the way he portrays his characters. Like Luke, we project much of ourselves into this story, maybe sometimes to the point of losing ourselves. And like Rey, we come to look for answers. And thus, like Rey, we are bound to be disappointed. For what we get, after all, is always shadows on a screen.

This movie is metafiction in its very essence: a story that tells us about stories, the way fiction is created, and our ambivalent relationship with it. The infinity of Rey is like the infinity of versions of the same story we could have had, variations, retelling, rewriting. But also the infinity of interpretations we can ascribe to a story. And when we finally demand ONE, one legitimate version that will answer our questions about “what is that story? what is it about?”, what we get eventually is just the fiction itself. Nothing more, nothing else. Remember Luke in the cave? That scene is afer all the pendant, the mirror image of this one. What is Yoda’s answer when Luke asks about what he will find in the cave? “Only what you take with you”. If we apply this again to metafiction, this is just as relevant as to what Rey sees in there: what you find in a fiction is always about yourself, what you bring in there, what you take with you and project onto a story. Which is why we never get to watch the same movie or read the same book as the others in the end... Because, Narcissus that we are, we will only and always read about ourselves between the lines.

To be honest, the mirror as a metafictional device is a common trope. It is often used by painters with their self-portraits, and even sometimes as a trick inside the painting to provide with an image of the painter reflected inside the painting. For instance, this one by Dutch painter Peter Claesz

And this is obviously not one of those infamous goofs that people look for in movies, when you happen to see a cameraman reflected in a mirror or a window... In a way, this device works a bit like a mise en abyme, a literary term that I like to refer to as the laughing cow effect: a picture within a picture within a picture.... Or a text within a text within a text... A movie within a movie... Well you get the picture!

And as far as Star Wars goes, you can talk about mise en abyme, in the sense that, as we have so often discussed, the ST keeps on mirroring themes, shots, scenes, lines of dialogue, costumes, characters of the ST and the OT. The use of this device can be interpreted as a homage, as a critique, or a subversion. Mirrors, no matter what, are always an inversion of something. So the ST, in many ways, is a mise en abyme of previous Star Wars movies. That was obvious in TFA, but it is still true in TLJ. TFA was very much looking inside a mirror at the OT, TLJ is very much about going through the looking glass. Which mirrors (ahah) what Rey does in there.

What? A mirror in my Star Wars? !!!!

Let’s pause there. Yes, a mirror in Star Wars. Unheard of. I insist. You would think that with the amount of intricate over the top dresses and hairdos, you will get Leia and Padmé prepping in front of a mirror? Nope. Nada. No mirror in Padmé’s apartment. I checked. The one time she is styling her hair (that is to say, languidly brushing her curls on a balcony in ROTS), she is enjoying the view and not her reflection. When Leia fixes her buns on the Death Star post trash compactor mess, no pocket mirror in view. Do we get Leia in her apartments? Nope. What about reflections in water? Nope. In windows? N-O to the no.

Enjoying the view, my friends, not looking at ourselves. Our gaze is on a galaxy far far away (or the green screen). The closer we got a mirror image of a character in the OT and PT is that:

Feast your eyes on your face in .... the cave, Luke. Coincidence that it happened in a cave? Shall I venture, probably not?

So why so shy on the mirrors, guys? What gives? So we have lightsabers, hyperdrive, blasters, and countless trickets that serve whatever purpose, but no one has a mirror in this galaxy? Like really? Didn’t bother inventing one? Ummm? Let’s apply theories.

1.Leia and Padmé probably do not style their hair themselves and have handmaiden and droids to help with that. Sure, but that doesn’t mean they would not enjoy a look at the final product. Check for the pesky piece of parsley between the teeth, the smear of blue milk around the mouth...gee, I don’t know.

2.this is a noble story with a big picture in mind, mmmokay. It is about the fight between good and evil, not about the petty satisfaction of checking oneself out in a mirror. Ummm.... I’ll come back to that. There are a lot of meanings you can ascribe to looking at yourself in a mirror. And believe you me it would have done Padmé or Anakin good to have one long go at the looking-glass before making most of their galaxy-shattering decisions. Just saying... Especially in a story that is so much about duality, fearing to become someone else, and so forth and so on.

3.Well so far, it’s a story about boys. Boys do NOT check themselves in mirror. As a reminder: Narcissus, Dorian Gray, and just for the heck of it, 3 pictures from Disney movies...

Ok, granted, there is one little boy (not a man) and two lions. And they are NOT using a looking glass, just water. Like Narcissus. And they are not checking out themselves to see if they look good, they are asking important questions about identity. Because that’s what boys do! Dammit! Like, you will seriously make me believe that Lando or Poe would never check themselves out in mirror? Well, there is that dude in Disney, just so you know...and other peacocks I am sure.

What about reflective surfaces in the PT and the OT? We are bound to have some. Well, here they are:

C3P0, Padmé’s Naboo Royal Starship, and Vader’s helmet: shiny, mirror-like surfaces that always lead back to Vader.THE Darth. Interesting connection, because, in the end, Luke, as we saw in the cave, is afraid to find Vader’s face looking back at him “in the mirror” (so to speak): he is afraid of becoming like his father. The three examples I suggest are reflective but they are not mirrors. They do not reflect anything or anyone in the movie. They still function as symbolic mirrors though. Vader is the mirror that Obi-Wan and Yoda show Luke as a cautionary tale: do not become like him, do not turn to the dark side! Which is even more ironic since Luke keeps on saying he wants to be like his father, that is his final answer to the Emperor after all: “ You have failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me”. From the audience’s perspective, faceless Vader is also the mirror on which we are projecting our fears. As for Luke, he is what we fear, what we don’t want to see in ourselves. What about C3P0? What does he reflect? As the comic relief, golden mirror to Vader’s dark mirror, he helps us face our fears, he voices our concerns, he helps us go through the trials very time we laugh at him. A blundering fool, he is also very much us, a twisted mirror of ourselves we can laugh at.

And what about Padmé’s ship? Ah, well, that is after all the only looking-glass that Padmé will have, a very symbolic and very significant one. It is the ship that takes her to her future husband after all. In folk tales, you have numerous superstitions about mirrors and finding your future husbands. One is about putting a mirror under your pillow to dream about your future husband, others include an apple and a brush, and Padmé will share a fruit with Anakin and will be brushing her hair, so she does end up having the three (though she is already very much wedded and bedded when we see her with the brush!). This ship plays an important part in the story in each move of the PT: first it allows Padmé to meet Anakin and allows Anakin to follow his destiny as a Jedi by leaving servitude and his home planet; in AOTC, it plays a part in Anakin and Padmé’s coming together, but it is also linked with the death of Anakin’s mother and his first outburst of sheer violence; in ROTS, it is central in the final tragedy of the story when Padmé flies to meet Anakin on Mustafar, with Obi-Wan hiding onboard, and it will finally carry away a dying Padmé in labour. So the ship/mirror is a vessel of love and a vessel of death (also materialized with the glass coffin).

And what do we get in Claudia Gray’s Bloodline, another ship, Leia’s ship, which is, revalingly named Mirrorbright. So a ship as a mirror. Again... But then, Claudia Gray’s novel belong to a different part of the story. It is part of the path to the ST. And that is indeed the crux of the problem why we did not have so many mirrors before. It is indeed because the OT and the PT were boy’s journeys, where mirrors traditionally do not play an important part. Whereas in girl’s journeys, well, they are unavoidable. Enters Rey... enters the mirror. And also, in the process, let’s not forget that Disney is in the wings, and, oh boy, Mr Mouse knows a thing or two about mirrors. Let’s give a peek at what they usually stand for.

Mirrors of power and the power of mirrors

Because mirrors were so rare and precious they soon became associated with power and magic. So, most often, mirrors will be associated with a figure of power, a king, a queen, a wizard, a witch or a sorceress. But most of the time, because of the notion of the mirror as a vanity piece, it is associated with a female figure. Examples of note: Galadriel’s mirror in The Lord of the Rings, the queen’s magic mirror ins Snow White, the Snow Queen’s distorting mirror in Andersen’s tale, or Circe’s transforming mirror in The Odyssey.

A mirror gives to its owner a very important power indeed, the power to see. And if you are talking about seeing, you might as well be talking about seers. A seer has a power of divination, he can see the past, the present, the future, “things that were, and things that are, and things that yet may be” to quote from LOTR. This is linked to another important magic propriety of the mirror: the mirror is a portal, a vessel, that can carry your gaze to somewhere or someone else, that can reveal the truth of things, what lies beneath, that gives access to the hidden nature of things and of people. Most of the time it is associated with evil powers. It can reveal what people are truly like, as with Ursula in Little Mermaid,

or accentuate flaws and what is bad within people’s hearts as in Andersen’s tale of the Snow Queen, or reveal the way the owner of the mirror sees the people, as it is the case for Circe, for whom all men are pigs and animals.

Which is why the mirror scene almost always features in scenes of transformation or changes, either physical or psychological, whenever the characters are about to make life-altering decisions, and question their identities. Examples:

It can be an actual looking glass, or any other symbolic reflecting surface, usually water, like in Galadriel’s case, but think also in The Black Cauldron, of the pig Hen Wen which can create visions through water.

In the case of divination, it is a portal through time, but it can also become a portal through space and become an entryway to another place, or another dimension. It is the case for Alice, for example.In Star Wars particular universe, this resonates through three different examples: Padmé’s ship that has a mirror like surface, Leia’s ship in Bloodline which is named Mirrorbright, and the recent Star Wars Rebels episode, A world Between Worlds, that actually features a portal onto other dimensions. This, in my mind, underlines the crucial part played by mirrors in this new trilogy and how mirrors can tie in the different episodes together, literally, or symbolically.

Now, let’s look more particularly at the relationship between women and mirrors in classical stories.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall... you know the drill

Well, the first idea is not very positive. Many feminist studies have brought forth and underline the idea of the mirror as symbolic of the patriarchic discourse that frames, reifies, and stifles women’s agency. Through representations of women with and within mirrors, women become solely objects of desire and beauty, subjected to the male gaze. hence countless and countless of paintings of women looking at themselves in mirrors... Women entrapped by their own beauty, vain, and often oblivious to what is going on around them, preferring the mirror to the open window. Do they have an agency, do they own themselves, does their beauty belong to them? No they don’t. No it doesn’t. The mirror is always a frame, and like the genie’s bottle, it gives less powers to the genie that it actually binds it to the owner of the bottle, aka here, the beholder. A woman exists solely in the male’s appreciative gaze , otherwise she doesn’t exist. Mirrors in paintings are here more than often both to multiply and highlight attractive parts of the woman, or to give access to parts that are not seen. The female subjects is even sometimes trapped within different mirrors, not to mention the one that is the painting itself, the gaze of the painter or the audience.

Mirrors are normally there to guide about desire, and teach you a lesson about what and who should be desired, and considered desirable. Narcissus’s story is supposed to tell a story about how auto-erotic desire is not considered ok: loving yourself too much will be the death of you, so to speak. But, revealingly, in this particular cautionary tale, the hero is male. I am not sure whether the morality of the tale would have been the same had the example been female.Vanity, as attested by countless paintings and women’s magazines, is more than encouraged in women, as long as they make themselves desirable to the gauging male gaze.

It is very revealing that in Snow White, the most famous tale featuring a mirror, the voice in the mirror is always interpreted as male.

An older and a young woman are not competing in order to be the most powerful, but to be the prettiest, to the point of killing themseves, either literally because they do not qualify anymore (the evil queen turned old hag must be ditched and put away), or symbolically by turning into inanimate objects. Snow White, dead in her coffin, is still a prize for the young prince who is ready to take her home and add to his collection of trophies and knick-knacks. And it is a Glass Coffin after all. Same difference. These women are framed in the mirror, and framed by the mirror. The Queen’s looking glass is a coffin in the end for both women. It is lethal and poisonous. The evil queen may well be the designated bitch of the story, but she is as much a victim as Snow White of the infectious discourse of the mirror (see for instance Gubar and Gilbert’s wonderful work about it).

The patriarchal voice in the mirror is very normative about what the “good girl” should be, look like, or act as.The good girl is for instance, the angel in the house of Victorian times. See for instance Jane Eyre, when Jane, preparing for her wedding day with Edward Rochester, gets a nightmarish vision in a mirror, a female creature who plays with her wedding veil, and tears it in two. As many critiques have argued, Bertha Mason, the madwoman in the attic, is very much a double for Jane Eyre, the angry soul within herself that she must tame, but who sometimes escapes and lashes out, for instance at the beginning of the novel in the infamous crimson room.So Bertha’s apparition right before the wedding might be a manifestation of Jane’s unconscious who rebels at the idea of being “framed” by the very possessive Edward Rochester. It is as if the woman walks out of the patriarchal mirror (and attic) that usually confine her to act out for Jane and expose some of her fears.

The male discourse in the mirror is also eminently present in the concept of The Phantom of the Opera. In Leroux’s novel, as transcribed also in the wonderful musical, Erik’s voice is the voice in the mirror.

It seemed to command me, personally, to come, to stand up and come to it. It retreated and I followed. ‘Come! And believe in me!’ I believed in it, I came . . . I came and — this was the extraordinary thing — my dressing-room, as I moved, seemed to lengthen out . . . to lengthen out . . . Evidently, it must have been an effect of mirrors . . . for I had the mirror in front of me . . .

In the musical: “Look at your face in the mirror -I am there inside!”. You can easily argue that Erik is not a patriarchal voice, which I totally agree with. He is still a voice though that is robbing Christine of her agency, and that manipulates her, that turns her into a vessel for his own desires and needs.

Besides, the patriarchal voice does not necessarily have to be male, as Disney has reminded us again and again. Women are more than complacent in this framing of other women, mostly because they have internalized the patriarchal voice. Look at Disney’s Tangled, that normally does not revolve around a mirror in the original tale. The young girl is also “framed”, imprisoned for real, but also by a woman’s speech. Mother Gothel’s motives are not too far from the evil queen’s in a way. Just like her, she fears growing old and less beautiful, aka less desirable, less valued as a woman. Because a woman’s power does not, in most tales, go further than her desirability in the male view. Rapunzel wants to go out, get some agency, but instead she is maintained, inside, as an object who is valuable only for her long hair. Long hair is not very practical, but it is sure valued as something appealing.

Or look at these other framed girls. Mulan is transformed so as to fit male expectation of what a desirable young bride must look like.

And as for Aurora, this is moments before marrying the Prince... and symbolically dying. Symbolism not lost here, for a tale that is normally about menstruation. This will be Maleficent that she hears calling her on the other side of the mirror, but her status as a bride and her death come really with great timing in the way the themes are interwined... Needless to say I am not so thrilled by the prospect of Cinderella’s glass slippers (even less so when you consider that shoes are the punishment of choice i the traditional tale for the evil queen in Snow White).

The ultimate framed girl is maybe the Lady of Shallott, in Tennyson’s poem. Like Rapunzel she is trapped in a tower. But she is also denied her own gaze on the world. She can never look outside, for fear of being cursed. The only gaze she is allowed on the world is through the medium of a looking glass. So, she is symbolically trapped in a mirror.To what does she owe this curse and what is this curse in question? We do not know, neither does she. Probably just the curse of being female.

Can the voice in the mirror be tamed?

Well, yes, so to speak, and that is perfectly illustrated in the Disney linguistics under the trope of “girl in love looks into a mirror”. Like that one:

Who has evolved from: Gee, I can’t stand the way the patriarchal discourse is keeping me in prison and depriving me on any agency. Exhibit A:

To being reflected in the water alongside love interest during a magic carpet flight, Exhibit B:

Oops, wrong one, but you will remember from the movie.

That type of framing fits the pattern of girl must fall in love, girl must marry, at least she marries someone who is looking positively at her and sends her back a good reflection on to herself and her own agency. So yes, the voice in the mirror can be tamed, that means choosing the right partner.

The Case for Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast, in particular Disney’s version is a particular case, and is much more interesting and further developed than Jasmine’s example, because in the end Jasmine is featured in the mirror in the typical vanity piece: she is looking lovingly at herself as the object of Aladdin’s love, while making herself pretty. Belle’s case is another pickle altogether. Like Jasmine, it starts with patriarchal discourse and framing, with not one but two male voices trying to frame her: Gaston who wants to marry her because she fits the perfect picture he has in mind, and the Beast... Gaston needs Belle to satisfy his own vanity, and the Beast needs Belle to turn back into a prince. So in both cases, at the beginning of the story, it is a matter of selfishness and appearance. But in Gaston’s case, the framing is quite emphasized.Gaston is also both a prisoner of the mirror (his narcissism) AND the voice in the mirror. Look at the ways Gaston is framing Belle in a storyline as well as visually on the screen:

Gaston loves mirrors... the Beast not so much. Enters the magic mirror. The first time we see it it is between the Beast’s hands. The magic mirror does what a mirror symbolically always does: show you the object of your desire. When Gaston looks in a mirror he sees himself. When the Beast looks inside his magic mirror, he sees Belle. And he realizes that she is too good for him, and that, as he now stands, he is unworthy of her love. By seeing the object of his desire, he first truly takes a good look at himself, something he fiercely refused to do all these years by destroying the mirrors in the castle or his portrait.He also gently puts the mirror down, refusing thus to frame her or define her as solely the object of his desire.

Then Belle gets to see another mirror when she starts roaming the castle: it is broken and reflects multiple facets of her. This is already something interesting, because the Beast is the one that broke the mirror. So for a male to break the symbol of patriarchal discourse, this is rather good omen for the way their relationship can develop. Symbolically, it also means that Belle is multi-faceted, that she is not the prisoner of one discourse, one image; that she has the potential for different identities, adventures, and choices; that she is not confined purely within one frame.The mirror is open.There are also some missing pieces, it is like a puzzle. And the way it is fragmented echoes the puzzle created by the Beast about his own portrait, which foretells that these two are made for each other, that they complete each other.

Next time we get the magic mirror, the Beast gives it away, on his own free will, to Belle. Which symbolically means that he is relinquishing some of his power, ready to share his agency, and the patriarchal discourse with her. He also relinquishes ownership of her image: he gives her image back to her. She has sole custody of her image. She is not confined within the looking glass, as, say,Snow White in her glass coffin, or Cinderella in her glass slippers. Just saying.

And Belle gets to choose what she wants to see in there. She is not imposed a given image or just her own reflection. The object of her desire is her father: she is not ready for womanhood and a relationship, she is still looking back into the past and not forward into the future.

Belle gets to keep the mirror. So she has power inside her hands, she is very much her own agent. When Gaston, the symbol for limiting patriarchal discourse, threatens to put his father into an asylum in order to get her to be his wife, she uses her agency by brandishing the mirror. Gaston was calling her discourse bullshit, he was denying her words, she will show him. And now appears the Beast, that she now looks at most tenderly and lovingly. The Beast has become the object of her desire and she still hardly understands at this point. But, more importantly, the magical object, the mirror has come full circle between the hands of Belle. She used to be framed in it, now she is the one framing the object of her desire in it.

Gaston of course snatches it away from her, and uses it as a weapon. He is the ferocious “wounded in his pride” patriarchal voice. He will try one last time to “frame” what love and desire should stand for, what Belle’s place and fate should be, so he locks her up and plans to kill the Beast who has relinquished all power. But, at this point, Belle and the Beast are beyond the frames of the mirror. They have acknowledged who they love and desire, and accepted each other as they are.

This is a very interesting use of mirror in a story, I must say. And it already probably raises lots of parallels in your mind with Reylo... as it should.

From the Mirror to the Speculum: know thyself and the broken glass

So, what about Rey and mirrors in TLJ? Revealingly, A LOT of the stories that I have tried to recall in the scope of this mirror study are usually matched up with the ST themes and storyline. Snow White, for instance and her glass coffin like Rey’s pod (and Padmé’s own coffin admittedly), Beauty and the Beast, Jane Eyre, or the Phantom of the Opera. A lot of reflections too in The Lion King 2, a movie that has a lot of possible parallels with the ST thematically speaking. I am pretty sure the connections are not lost there. And there is this particular art design realized for TFA, but omitted (why?) from the book The Art of The Force Awakens.

They used a photoshoot that Adam Driver had done with a model for a magazine to imagine a concept art that prominently features a mirror, on the right. This was in the developing stages for the new ST, and I think a good reason why they would not include this specific picture is because it was letting too much out on what they were trying to achieve, or what they had in mind for these two. But the mirror is there, and, if it played no part in TFA, it does play a big one in TLJ.

But before looking at this particular mirror, let’s look again at the “path” that leads us there, and at other possible reflections. There is first the Mirrorbright lullaby, a traditional song from Alderaan, that Claudia Gray uses in Bloodline, which centers around the moment when Leia’s true lineage is revealed and thus when Ben learns the truth about his connection to Vader.

Mirrorbright, shines the moon, its glow as soft as an ember

When the moon is mirrorbright, take this time to remember

Those you have loved but are gone

Those who kept you so safe and warm

The mirrorbright moon lets you see

Those who have ceased to be

Mirrorbright shines the moon, as fires die to their embers

Those you loved are with you still—

The moon will help you remember

The combination of lullaby as a genre and moon as a theme screams motherhood. The moon is linked with fertility, and rebirth. The theme of the song is that people who are now long gone are still with us through the love we bear them. In Bloodline, the song can remind Leia of the loved ones she lost on Alderaan, but in the context of the ST it resonates in her loss of Han, Luke, and how she grieves for her lost son. As a path to the ST it is important, because it ties in with previous dead ones: Anakin and Padmé, especially in the context of embers... See for instance @fluffycakeistainted’s great meta about ashes and embers, and the comparison between Reylo and Anidala. And in the aftermath of TLJ, it is also interesting because Rey and Kylo parted amid embers, and are last seen grieving for what could have been. Could we get a moon or moonlit scenes in episode ix?

Another interesting item from “path” to the ST, is in Claudia Gray’s Leia Princess of Alderaan, and comes from Holdo. I think there is much to make of Holdo’s cryptic lines and their influence on the fates of the characters in the ST, between “the spark that will ignite the fire” and this specific line: “Mirrors bend light”. I am unsure what to make out of this at this point, but I really want to keep this idea in mind for episode ix possibly.

Now in TLJ itself, there are three important points I want to underline before tackling THE mirror from Ahch-To cave.

Phasma as a mirror. Sure, as a chrome dome, her shining uniform is supposed to look super cool and super badass. Contrary to Vader and C3P0, you can actually see items and people reflected in her armor. I wonder if it might mean something else. Especially since she is usually positioned as Finn’s antagonist. She is Finn’s mirror, the image that he left behind, what he does not want to be. She is his particular foil and nemesis. She is the mirror in Finn’s own storyline.

The “oculus” in Snoke’s throne room. This is akin to the wizard’s magic glass. It is not a looking-glass but a magnifying glass. Like a Devil’s Mirror, the purpose it serves in TLJ is emphasizing bad things, here the destruction of the Resistance fleet.

The many reflecting surfaces in the scenes where Kylo appears. In the throne room or on the deck before Force bond 2. They are revealing of the duality of the character. In this particular scene, what I find particularly interesting, is that when he will turn he will indeed see his image reflected... in Rey, through the Force bond. I will not develop this particular point because I think it has been done before, but the way they fight and move mirror each other...

Ok, so, thank you for indulging me and having read that far. So, what about that mirror scene? The pièce de résistance... It appears to Rey at the moment when she has given up on Luke being the hero that will save the day and help her find answers about herself, and right after Kylo tells her what happened between Luke and him. All the truths she was holding on to are shattered: the hero and the monster. So she turns back to herself and what she has always wanted: the truth about her parents, and to have her parents back. If the Light had no answers, maybe the Dark will.

Of course, the first degree of the analysis is very much about the classical “know thyself”, the quest for identity. She first gets an infinity of replicas of herself, before asking the mirror to “show them” to her, fingers barely touching the surface. Then, two dark figures walk towards her, gasp, fuse, re-gasp, somewhat look like someone that could be Kylo, major gasp, and then turn into her own reflection. Disappointment. For everone and not just Rey.The story is very much about herself. To come back to previous references, she is like Belle roaming the castle: the mirror is cracked, reflecting many possible identities and lives for her.

And hell breaks loose because the whole story is a flashback she tells Kylo, who becomes her mirror image in the flesh, sitting on the same terracota stools, holding out the hand, fingers barely touching the surface, her tear mirroring the scar on his face. As itself, the first degree is revealing enough. What she has come to find in the mirror is Kylo himself, whether we see him or not reflected there. Here he is, minutes later, and the scene speaks for itself. We also get another added power associated with the mirror, when they both get visions through the encounter, apparently of the past for him, and of the future for her.

The second degree is not that far from the mark either. The entrance to the cave is, as many have pointed before, very reminiscent of female genitalia. So for Rey looking and gaping at the entrance of the cave is pretty much like using a speculum. She is taking interest in her sexuality, in her womanhood, with a visual imagery that is VERY reminiscent of the way Caravaggio painted Narcissus looking at himself. I can’t include the clip for now, I will as soon as I can, but seriously, compare the way she bends over the entrance with that:

Down the hole, she falls, you would say much like Alice, and like Alice and Narcissus she almost drowns. Inside the cave, traditionally the image of the womb, a mirror. Replicas and reproductions could point to the fact that Rey, as a mother, has the potential to replicate herself, to live through the generations out of the children she can bear. It is also that laughing cow effect again... Something of the matriochka doll concept: even in her mother’s womb, a baby girl already holds within herself all the eggs that represent potential new babies, so a girl within a girl within a girl...

As I have pointed out before, mirrors are also supposed to reflect the object of desire. It is very significant that this mirror scene happens RIGHT AFTER the half-naked encounter with Kylo, and the flustered reaction she gets from the sight. But Rey is, at this point, unable to understand or process this desire. Just like Beauty when she gets the Beast’s magic mirror, she asks to get a peek at the past, her parents. She mistakes what she really wants. The same mistake that she did before and that Maz highlighted on Takodana: “the belonging you seek is not behind you”. She did not ask for what she really desired because she was unable to identify it yet, and so she did not get the right answer to her question, just a blurred vision. Through the Force vision, she gets something that changes her perspective though, since she throws herself with wild abandon at the mercy of Kylo and Snoke, so sure she is of what may happen.

Ok, so, guilty as charged, I also “speculated” a bit about what appears in the mirror. That’s what we are expected to do: the whole point of the mirror scene is to have us speculate after all. I will argue that it is awesome that we didn’t get any clear vision in this mirror. Just Rey’s face. For all the reasons that I have listed above in my detailed exposé on mirror scenes.

No patriarchal voice or discourse, Rey is the agent and the narrator of her own story: hurray!

No framing as the good girl, many different possibilities

No foil images: her opposite, her antagonist, an alien or corrupted version of herself, nothing hidden is revealed

If we had seen Kylo for sure in the mirror people might have still been tempted to interpret it as a clear sign that they are meant to fight, that he is her enemy in the mirror, since the image is prompted by fear and the Dark side

Cracked mirror is always a better option for a heroine, it leaves ways of escaping the frame, of not remaining a prisoner

Going through the mirror for Rey does equal in her journey accessing the truth, the path to reality. She is the heroine of her story and not the footnote to someone else’s story, she is a message and not just a messenger. She acknowledges that Kylo and her share something unique. She has a more nuanced approach to the whole picture. It is key in the letting go of her search for idealized parents.

Because she failed to find the appropriate reflection in the mirror, she goes and seeks the one that she needs.We DON’T NEED to get Ben/Kylo in the scene. We shouldn’t get Kylo in the scene because it is much better that she goes identifying him as the true object of her need and desire on her own, outside of the mirror. This is a great subversion of the mirror trope in the heroine’s journey. It is not in the mirror that she really learns to know herself, what she needs, what she wants or who she is meant to be with. It is not in a mirror that she gets visions of her fate, her future, or any access to power. She gets ALL THAT when she touches fingers with Kylo: that’s her real mirror scene. And it’s one that she chooses, initiates, provokes: she is the one looking for him after the cave scene (from the novelization), she is the one talking and framing the discussion, she is the one initiating the touch, and dragging him inside HER frame, and not the other way around.

I leave it there for now. This was quite a long one and I fear a bit rough because as a process it got interrupted many times. I hope it can spark discussions.

#reylo #reylo fandom #reylo meta #reylo fam #mirrors in star wars #disney parallels #star wars meta #themes in star wars

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gch1995 · 3 years ago

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Yep! In spite of generally having non-malicious intentions, Obi-Wan Kenobi was a very arrogant, cowardly, deceitful, hypocritical, manipulative, self-centered, and low-key vindictive bastard who spent most of his life throwing everyone he cared about under the bus to kiss Yoda’s ass so he could fit in and get on the Council after Qui Gonn died and he got that promotion to padawan master. He is that coworker who would sell you out to your boss to get you demoted, fired, or written up if it meant getting a promotion at work in return in a heartbeat. He is that self-righteous toxic friend, parent, or partner who will always rewrite the reality of having mistreated you badly when you call them out by turning around to point the finger at you for being the “bad guy” for not just taking it from them instead. He is the same person Anakin became in the sense that he became someone who was willing to throw others under the bus for his own ends of “the greater good.”

Not intentionally evil, but the Obi-Wan we see in canon is not a very good person, so why so many fans can woobify him really baffle me. I honestly think it’s because he got played by Ewan McGregor, who is a fine actor, but that doesn’t mean the character he plays in Star Wars was ever a particularly good person either. It doesn’t help that George Lucas did damage control to appease the Kenobists and Jedi apologists by trying to make out Obi-Wan and Yoda’s deceptions and manipulations of Luke, Anakin, and their other Jedi recruits for their own ends of the “greater good” seem less terrible than we consistently saw they were in the OT movies, PT movies, and TCW.

That’s really the most frustrating thing about the SW narrative, George Lucas, many of the writers, and Jedi fans of the characters involved in it before Luke. Like, anyone who actually uses their brain when watching and reading SW content will come to the conclusion that the Jedi before Luke are really only framed as the “good guys” because they are the lesser evil of two deeply fucked up magic military cults in the galaxy, not because many of them are really all that much better or good at all. To be honest, I think George Lucas wanted them to be flawed before Luke because it’s a consistent thing throughout all of his movies and TCW, but I think he’s too afraid to actually own what he portrayed on screen by saying the Jedi had become bad guys after they defeated a millennium ago because they became so afraid of facing the dark side and potentially failing again that they decided to sacrifice their bravery, empathy, honesty, and humanity to try to stay in control at all costs and avoid ever having to confront or do anything that risked their safety ever again.

Unfortunately, you can’t really accomplish peace and good things for yourself and others around you if you become too afraid to take risks and face your greatest fears. Coincidentally, that eventually became Anakin’s problem after spending his childhood and early twenties within the Jedi, too. He became so afraid of taking a risk to face his fears by standing up for himself that he ended up sacrificing his humanity to try to hold onto security through power for himself and those he cared about at nearly all costs.

I shouldn't be so annoyed by this, but it bugged me when Obi-Wan stans claim Obi-Wan always tried to give Anakin - as Vader - chances to come back to the light; even on the Death Star.

Not only is this blatantly not true (Obi-Wan literally gave up on Anakin after Mustafar, that's a canon fact), it takes away from Luke's sacrifice and victory.

Luke was the only one who believed there is a chance for Anakin to redeem himself. He was the only one who didn't believe in the "Anakin is gone and his body is possessed by Vader" crap that Obi-Wan tried to make him believe. He was the only one who didn't see his ~attachment~ to his father as a weakness and embraced it as a strength.

Obi-Wan was wrong. Luke was right. Get over it.

#obi wan kenobi critical #anti kenobists #i don’t hate kenobi but the fact that both fandom and the creator go out of their way portray him as blameless and wise irritates me a lot #the obi wan we see in canon generally has pure intentions but he’s an asshole in his methods and arrogance

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thebigreylotheory · 7 years ago

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My TLJ Review Part 2 or Lukey Thoughts

Alright, now that I’m over my Ahch-To Luke-like hiatus, it’s time to talk about Ahch-To Luke.

He’s exactly how I imagined he’d be:

A grumpy Pooh-bear.

Seemingly, unlike a lot of fans, I wasn’t disappointed by Luke’s role, portrayal, or amount of action.

‘Cause I had emotionally prepared myself for Luke to pretty much do nothing in The Last Jedi…(therefore him doing ANYTHING was exciting for me).

Why, you ask?

There are many parts to that answer. And I’ll try to organize this as nicely as possible, I did buy a new filing cabinet and all. My Rey and Kylo Pop Figures live there quite nicely.

A)I knew the time for the story to be solely about/focus on Luke Skywalker had passed. I’ll be honest, way back in the day (now), as a kid, I was disappointed that George Lucas decided to make prequels instead of sequels starring Mark, Carrie, and Harrison (I wanted more of what I knew and loved). As a creator, I respect what George wanted to do. However, fact remains, a bunch of time passed, and from a story sense all of our original main characters leveled up to the mentor archetype stage.

1) I, by no means, see or read every SW interview, but on many occasions in print, tv, Youtube, Mark mentioned statements along the lines of “passing the baton,” and “it’s their story now [new kids]” (paraphrasing). He wasn’t just telling the truth from a certain point of view. He meant the action wasn’t going to follow him. I love J.J., but I feel like some fans, based on the TFA switch-a-roo marketing, felt like they were finally going to get a swoll-gym-Luke Skywalker. Or Bruce Lee.

2) Mark also made several comments about being on the “if it tastes good don’t eat it diet,” not getting to eat his favorite crackers while watching movies, and being allowed to take his time on the stairs/hills of Skellig Michael. He’s human, he’s a prolific voice actor, not an action star (I type this while I’m eating cookies, don’t tell Dr. Captain McHusband, M.D. or he’ll lock me in the gym cave. “Kirby Fluff is my natural state” doesn’t work on him). Anyhow, this was a clue to me that Mark wasn’t going to be too keen on doing a whole lot of stunts. I mean, in comparison, Harrison had it easy in TFA. All he had to do is sit in the pilot seat of the Falcon and raise a blaster to make people happy. Lightsaber battles are hard (Dr. Captain McHusband, M.D allowed our battles to count as daily cardio until I broke his lightsaber. Oops, the dark side isn’t stronger, at least not in plastic.)

B) I knew there was no good reason for Luke to be stuck on Ahch-To. I had already reasoned either:

1) After all these years, Luke’s plans still weren’t going so well, AND like a dummy he accidentally got himself stuck on Ahch-To. Which fans would have complained about (he has the Force!)…I can hear the Luke-is-still-a-goofy-farmboy cries from the Alternative Universe all the way in this dimension.

2) He was hiding like a coward cause he didn’t want Snoke to “get” him. Prior to seeing TLJ, I thought this was most likely the case. For whatever reason, I assumed, perhaps, Luke didn’t want to be turned into a “tool” like his nephew. Maybe I thought Snoke was more powerful and Luke knew it. Something along the lines of he thought Snoke would tempt him Christ-in-the-wilderness style. But, the hole in the argument, I mean, what could someone give Luke that might have been better than ruling the galaxy with his birth dad?

3) But, they surprised me a little by going grizzled, i-don’t-care-anymore, shut off from the Force Luke. However, given the circumstances with Kylo, the death of his other students, from his perspective letting down Yoda as a teacher, it was the most realistic approach in IMO. Not sure if there are therapists in the SW universe. (Or how much hugging Ewoks would really help.) What else would a failed, depressed character do to deal?

C) I knew he needed to change as a character. Else, there wouldn’t have been an interesting character arch. For me, it would have been hard to suspend my belief if he was the same person from, guessing, thirty something years ago. (Look how much Obi-wan changed!) I always loved Luke, but I know a lot of people prefer other characters in SW (Han, Vader, Lando) because they saw Luke as a young, naïve, goody-goody. He blew up the Death Star, faced his father “The Chosen One” most-powerful-Jedi, and the Emperor…what was left to change and challenge him? I think his own pride in having done all that was a good place to start. Even from the beginning he was “I’m Luke Skywalker” and later in ROTJ, “I am a Jedi.”

Which seemingly showed a lot of pride as a trait (IMO Han didn’t run around saying “I am a smuggler!” with the same gusto). So, I do think Luke having to face himself, and the fact that Luke Skywalker failed, was the last, best villain he could have.

And in the end, he wins. He helps, because that’s what Luke Skywalker does.

Other Lukey movie thoughts:

I’m sure this lightsaber toss was a little disappointing for Luke…I know the last time he tossed the lightsaber there was a scramble of eligible students vying to get it. But you know, superior Skywalker blood skills and all, Ben caught it.

AND I know if Rey doesn’t fix and then toss the lightsaber at the end of Episode 9, im-gonna-be-disappointed, cause tossing the lightsaber is a Jedi tradition when they don’t need it anymore, ya know?

Anyhow, back on topic, I actually laughed (I think I was the only one) when Luke threw the lightsaber away.

Interestingly, I’ve seen some heartache over this, as some fans believe that Luke wouldn’t disrespect his father that way. I think that gets into interesting territory over if one is more of a OT or PT fan…I know it was Luke’s father’s, but I always saw it more as Luke’s.

And I dunno if Luke could be described as sentimental over objects…that’s seemingly Kylo’s trait.

And just like lightsabers, first Luke had blue milk, now he has green. I’m actually kinda shocked other fans aren’t more upset that Luke is robbing some poor little sea calf of his dinner.

Or how untidy he’s become. Aunt Beru taught him to keep his face clean, even on dirty ole Dagobah.

Overall, I was happy with his reunion with Chewie, the Falcon, R2, the holo-clip of Leia from ANH, and his lessons to Rey. Although I am very much looking forward to the deleted scene of the third lesson and deciding if its deletion was a good or bad thing.

I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped when Yoda showed up to have a little chat with Luke, troll him and give him some advice at the same time. And it’s good advice. The sort you could play on repeat when you’re having a bad day (do I hear a new bad lipsync yet???)

Finally, I guess the only other elephant in the room, is Luke choosing to stay on Ahch-To instead of leaving with Rey.

I admit, in theaters the first time, I was a little, “Ah, Luke, come on, help already, don’t be that way grumpy Pooh bear” about it. But not devastated, cause I reasoned this was a plot device, so someone could be left to save the other heroes later on.

Also, if Luke had left with Rey, we would have, IMO, gotten into repeat ANH and TFA plotlines, aka mentor character runs around base-like setting with newbies. (Or even, possibly TPM with mentor character and apprentice chasing baddie into a corner like area, only to have mentor die.) It might have been cool, but I’ve yet to see a description of this scenario that I like better than what actually happened in TLJ or one that doesn’t rob Rey of scenes or power as a character.

At the end of day, I like the miraculousness of Luke’s return on Crait. ‘Cause for me, as a spiritual person, it means, if you boil down Luke Skywalker as a character, he’s still a Christ-like figure. I could probably write you a whole thesis on the comparisons of Luke appearing to everyone on Crait being similar to Christ appearing to his followers after the crucifixion (someone out there probably will)(Im-gonna-wait to write the thesis on Kylo being like Paul, I guess). But, yeah, it defied my expectations of what Luke would and could do. Especially if he knew doing so would possibly kill him. Definition of a true hero.

His “fight” (arguably final lesson) with Kylo, even though they never really lock blades, takes my breath away. I didn’t think SW could top the snow fight in TFA, but now I’m tied with the Praetorian Guards for *fangirls* “the good parts” (aka the scenes I will lazily watch over and over on Youtube ‘cause Bluray startup is just too many seconds to wait).

Yup, I did tear up a bit when Luke fades away. But, honestly, I couldn’t have imagined a better, more peaceful way for Luke to go. In ANH when he first looks into the double sunset, I always had this feeling that he was searching for something more. To end his character’s journey with the same double sunset, really felt like that search was over. It was perfect.

But, I got a feeling seeing Force Ghost Luke is going to be pretty cool *wink wink*.

#the last jedi #the last jedi review #luke skywalker #my star wars diary

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thecatsaesthetics · 7 years ago

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Review of The Last Jedi (Spoiler Filled)

Okay so let me say this, it wasn’t as bad as I expected. I think going in with the lowest possible expectations helped make it better. I don’t think it was as bad as TPM or AOTC but it certainly could have been better. Nowhere close to TES or ROTJ, I think it was on the same level as ROTS if I’m honest. Good on the surface but makes little sense when looked closely.

I will say this I did not see romantic Rey and Kylo, and when I originally saw the “join me” scene I did, but looking at all there interactions they weren’t romantic. I think if anything Rey and Finn’s romance grew and IDK why nobody is talking about it. R*ylos are overstating it, even the shirtless scene, to me that was more for comedic relief, I didn’t see Rey blush or anything. She looked uncomfortable and I think Rian Johnson simply wanted a shirtless Adam Driver to please the fangirls. I think if you’re reading romance into that scene you’re way overstating it.

Also I still think Rey Solo is extremely possible. Everything in the movie screamed siblings to me, hell it screams Jaina and Jacen. They literally did a Luke and Leia parallel scene. I’m sorry but IDK why anyone is believing 100% Kylo on this one. They literally tore the Skywalker lightsaber in two. To me that said everything.

I will also say I saw signs that Finn is force sensitive, that fight with Phasma put a lightsaber in his hand and he’s jedi. JJ Abrams could totally bring that into play in episode 9.

Let’s get on to what I liked and disliked

Like:

This might shock people, but I actually liked Rey’s story. In terms of her naivety, I think that makes sense when you calculated A. it’s been only for 3 days since TFA and B. Kylo and Snoke were manipulating her mind it makes sense. The end of the movie where she closes the door a powerful moment. I generally liked seeing her struggle attempting to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.

The ending scene between Rey and Leia was like such an incredible scene. I loved that.

Finnrey’s hug.... and Finnrey longing for each other!

Finn getting the force theme played behind him at one point!!!! Force-Sensitive Finn lives!!!!

Anytime Hux was hurt I was happy. The movie started off with the narrative making fun of him and I was extremely enjoying that. IDK why nobody told me that. I really loved it.

Finn’s fight with Phasma. Best scene ever! I enjoyed every second of him killing her.

Kylo being evil because he’s evil. With the exception of the Luke shit they very clearly painted Kylo as evil just because he’s evil.

Luke and Leia’s final scene, that for me was amazing and the only time I saw my Luke Skywalker on screen. The moment where he said “nobody is ever really gone” was something Luke would say. Everything else with Luke was shit, but that scene was just how I imagined Luke would be.

Rose, besides her first scene with tasing Finn I loved her character. I found her character very lovely and JJ Abrams better bring in more of her. I really want a back story on her.

I liked the CGI and the directing, Rian Johnson delivered well there. I can see how at first glance you would like it solely for that.

Disliked

Luke Skywalker, Jesus he was OOC AF. It’s no wonder Mark Hamill hated this. People who saw it with me were like “He’s like Obi-Wan or Yoda” not understanding at all that Luke’s entire arc in OT was how he wasn’t like either of those men. Luke’s ending wasn’t satisfying to me at all, the idea that the man who saw good in Darth Vader would at first glance attempt to kill his 23-year-old nephew made little to no sense. Even with Luke “I regretted it instantly” claim I don’t buy it. That was a disservice to Luke’s character and for me, this ruined the movie. Luke didn’t train Rey, Luke ended his life for no purpose. I’m just so disappointed by this.

The treatment of Finn, there is no question he was sidelined. His story hardly mattered to the plot. Yes, Finn was a hero, but the story didn’t need Finn and Rose’s story. It was an add-on, an afterthought. It’s clear that Rian Johnson didn’t care about him. Of all the storylines he could have done, and he did this really bizarre story. This is disgraceful in my opinion. Nobody should be okay with this. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such a pointless secondary story in Star Wars before. Look at the other secondary stories in Star Wars, TES, Han and Leia who was used as a ruse to get Luke without them the plot falls apart, ROTJ Han and Leia’s plot is critical to blowing up the Death Star, AOTC Obi-Wan’s plot to get the clones is what saves the day. So I think this “Ummm tried to stop The First Order but failed miserably” plotline was so pathetic. I’m super upset by it. This and Luke really prevented the movie from being great.

The pacing, it felt like more time passed then what did. I don’t understand how the resistance got in such bad shape? How much time had passed? I don’t understand at all.��

Rey not being trained. Listen unless she turns out to be a Skywalker/Solo Mary-Sue is okay in terms of her powers and abilities. Rey could best Kylo Ren and Luke Skywalker in a fight despite zero training???? Nope, not buying that.

Rey Random, if true that reveal sucked major. I personally don’t buy it but if that’s it then it sucked. All the theorizing for no purpose. All the connection, all the parallels. It’s stupid plain and simple.

Poe’s storyline, what even was it? I didn’t understand it.

Holdo, whitewashed Lando, although in some aspects I’m okay because that means Lando would have died. I’m happy Lando is still alive can be brought into Episode 9.

No mention of Han Solo by Princess Leia. WTF no mention of Han... at all????

All the slapping and hitting of Poe, Finn and even Rey. Now obviously Poe and Finn are more important and have worse connotations, but I noticed how even Rey was hit left and right. It was weird. I don’t understand why.

Rose zapping Finn. Unneeded.

Rose and Finn’s kiss, now this is more because it was done in such a god awful way. I think Finnrose overall could be romantic, but why did they give them such an awful kiss? Finn’s not at all into it, and it came off as hero worship. I think their relationship was way more important than that.

The green milk scene. Bad. WTF RIAN JOHNSON WTF.

Luke’s death scene. I’m never getting behind how he died. Fuck you Rian Johnson.

Summary:

Overall I don’t find the movie that great, put aside the CGI and the good directing and the film falls apart. I think JJ Abrams has his work cut out for him, cause this movie didn’t do anything it claimed it was going to do. Nothing has been solved, Rey hasn’t been trained, Kylo’s, even more, evil, the resistance is critically injured, and Finn hasn’t been explored.

I really want JJ Abrams to make this right guy.

#tlj spoilers #the last jedi spoilers

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fialleril · 8 years ago

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I apologize if this is a repeat, but: I was reading Anakin's page on the wiki and I saw a section where Lucas said that Anakin used to have the potential to be twice as powerful as Palpatine, but then he lost all his limbs so now he's 20% less powerful than Palpatine because your strength in the Force is tied to the amount of organic flesh you have. (And that reminded me of a post you made about ableism in the movies.) So, what is your headcanon regarding this, for both canon and your AUs?

That shit is ableist as hell and George Lucas can meet me in the pit.

Okay, okay. A slightly longer answer, if I can just figure out where to even begin. I mean, the logic here is…well, it’s not. There’s just no logic to this at all? So, what, George wants us to believe that your strength in the Force is determined by your mass? Shouldn’t that make Yoda way less powerful than everyone else? Do people gain power in the Force if they gain weight? Does your power level increase when you go to a planet with higher gravity?

Yes, fine, I’m overdoing it there but I mean really. I’m sorry, anon friend, I can’t even come up with a coherent deconstruction of George’s idea because it’s just so patently ridiculous.

And also, as mentioned, it’s ableist as fuck. Which is, if we’re being completely honest here, something that’s a common theme in Star Wars. George frequently falls back on the old and tired (and ableist) trope of representing moral failing or evil with physical disability.

The most blatant example of that is Obi-Wan outright saying it in ROTJ: “He’s more machine now than man, twisted and evil.” But the idea is borne out in both the PT and the OT. There’s Vader himself. There’s General Grievous, who doesn’t even get any actual characterization or motivation in the movies (and no, supplemental canon isn’t sufficient to counterbalance that), presumably because we can see that he’s a cyborg and therefore we know he’s evil. Even Palpatine, although he was pure evil all along, is prominently disfigured in the moment that he’s “revealed” as his true self, the Sith Lord.

Even Luke gets shades of this. There’s that moment in ROTJ when he looks at the severed wires extending from the stump of his father’s hand, and then looks at his own prosthetic. And look, I love that entire scene at the end of ROTJ more than any other part of Star Wars, but I gotta be real. In that moment, what George wants his audience to think is, “Luke is close to the Dark Side. He’s turning into his father.” And how does he show that? By showing us that Luke, too, is part “machine,” and therefore in danger of being less human.

Which is bullshit. Prosthetics don’t have any moral reality. Luke’s hand is a prosthetic, and it’s his hand. Anakin’s hand is a prosthetic, and it’s his hand. That’s it. Anakin’s life support suit is a life support suit, not a moral statement. (Okay, it’s also a torture suit, but that’s because Palpatine is awful. Still not a moral statement about Anakin.)

But okay. You asked about my headcanons. So here we go.

As far as canon and Double Agent Vader are concerned: Anakin post-Mustafar has exactly as much potential as he did pre-Mustafar. In terms of raw power with the Force, he is and always has been more powerful than Palpatine.

But that doesn’t matter. Because Palpatine’s game has never really been about the Force. He doesn’t need the Force to control Anakin, and he doesn’t need to be stronger than him to do so, either. It’s not, and never has been, about strength. If it was, Palpatine would have just contrived to have Anakin killed as a kid. But instead he spent fifteen years carefully grooming him, eroding all of his support structures, and finally trapping him (both spiritually and physically) in a life support suit designed to be more accessible to other people than it is to Anakin himself. And Palpatine crafted that cage so perfectly that when other people look at Anakin, they see the cage itself as a threat and a moral judgment.

There are any number of things that Obi-Wan could have said to match “twisted and evil” that would have been actual moral judgments. (Like, oh I don’t know, “Your father murdered children.”) But what he does say is, “He’s more machine than man.” That’s it. Apparently, Obi-Wan thinks that says enough.

And there’s a really brutal irony to that, to the fact that people are terrified of the image of Darth Vader which is, largely, the image of the Vader suit, a suit that is more truly a prison than something that grants power. (I think it was @slashmarks who said once that the Vader suit works well as an institutionalization metaphor, which is definitely pertinent here.)

My headcanon for Anabasis goes a good bit further with this. In that universe, Anakin becomes “more machine than man” in the process of destroying Palpatine and turning to the Light Side. Partly that’s simply a function of the story, which deals a lot with reversals of canon. But it was also a deliberate decision on my part specifically in response to this bullshit idea of George’s.

Anabasis Anakin doesn’t have exactly the same injuries as his canon counterpart, and his treatment for them is infinitely better. But he is still, arguably, “more machine than man.” And he’s also still incredibly (terrifyingly, if you ask the Jedi) strong in the Force.

In fact there’s a plot point in the first part of the story when the Jedi are trying to keep him safely under control in prison, so they give him a Force-inhibiting drug. And then they give him a little more. And a little more. And they keep upping the dosage until Barriss, the medic, refuses to up it anymore, because she won’t put even a Sith patient at risk and it’s not working anyway.

(The Jedi are very puzzled by this because if anyone in universe were to believe that having prosthetics makes you weaker in the Force, let’s be real, it would be the Jedi.)

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gch1995 · 3 years ago

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Yeah, @wingletblackbird messaged me, and thanked me for standing up for her because @thebitchformerlyknownaskenobi jumped on this post she made with a completely valid point and started being needlessly rude. I don’t agree with @jedi-valjean either about Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Bail Organa doing the best they could under the circumstances in regards to Luke and Leia without the consent of either Padme’s or Anakin’s remaining families, but at least she wasn’t being rude and insulting about posing the debate to @wingletblackbird’s argument that Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Bail Organa didn’t do the best they could for Luke and Leia after Anakin became Vader, Padme died, and the Republic fell.

@thebitchformerlyknownaskenobi and all of the people who are reblogging her post in agreement are needlessly being assholes and should feel ashamed of themselves. Being a POC, being poor, being a member of the LGBTQ+ community, being disabled, being mentally ill, being a victim, and/or being a woman does not automatically make you incapable of committing and/or enabling the same abuse, corruption, oppression, and victimization that any able-bodied, neurotypical, white, privileged, and straight person could commit or enable. Being a minority, being a woman, or being a victim does not give you a free pass from the negative consequences and condemnation from others of enabling and/or perpetuating abuse, crime, discrimination, oppression, and othering against others yourself. (See: Anakin’s journey to the dark side in the prequels and ot movies, the disintegration of the old Jedi Order and Republic in Star Wars, which was not solely on just Anakin and Palpatine, the Amber Heard vs Johnny Depp case verdict, and I could go on and on).

I do kind of agree that it would have been too dangerous for either of the twins to go live on Naboo with Padme’s remaining family because of Palpatine and the Empire. However, both Anakin’s and Padme’s remaining family still had the right to know the whole truth of Luke and Leia and what happened to their parents. They deserved to know that it wasn’t safe for Leia and Luke on Naboo. They deserved to know that the children of their relatives were still alive, that they could still visit them, that they could go into hiding with them, if they wanted.

On the one hand, I do get where @canichangemyblogname is coming from, but the problem is that Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Bail Organa never are shown in either the current canon or the EU, going out of their ways to give Luke, Leia, Padme’s remaining family, or the Larses all the honest information they deserve to have about the twins and what happened to their parents.

In fact, Obi-Wan, Qui Gonn, and Yoda are repeatedly shown deliberately compromising agency, deceiving, embellishing, gaslighting, withholding pertinent information from Anakin, Shmi, Luke, Leia, the Larses, and their recruits for their own benefits because they know if they told the truth and played it fair with them, they probably wouldn’t get their way so easily. They’re not responsible for all of Anakin’s crimes, nor did the entire Order deserve mass murder, but Sidious was clearly not the only one who taught Anakin that it was “okay” to create collateral damage, disrespect personal agency, manipulate others, and violate personal boundaries of others who stood or potentially stood in the way of “the greater good,” he served or his enemies because it was easier and safer than taking a risk to do the right thing by being honest, being emotionally vulnerable, being more open-minded, and being fair to all parties involved instead.

From what we get of Yoda and Obi-Wan in canon, it’s best not to assume anything they say is fully true when they have something to gain from the other person by deceiving, grooming, manipulating, and withholding information from others by doing so. They had something to gain from deceiving, manipulating, and/or grooming Luke, Leia, the Larses, and the Organas for their own ends. It was easier than doing the right thing in a situation where the odds were against them succeeding doing any better. However, that was also often the case with Anakin for his whole life, too, but he’s the only one of Luke and Leia’s predecessors who actually ever gets called out for it, actually pays any serious negative consequences for it in the narrative, or ultimately realizes he was wrong and tries to make some form of atonement for at least his children in the end.

Likewise, we never see Bail Organa doing anything to remedy the issue by talking to Padme’s family and Anakin’s remaining family in canon. From what we see in canon, Bail Organa, Obi-Wan, and Yoda didn’t give either Padme’s remaining family or Anakin’s remaining family those basic rights of honesty and full consent, so in that sense, yes, Luke and Leia were both given away to the Larses and the Organas illegally, and Bail is responsible for kidnapping Leia since he knew the whole truth about her birth parents, knew at least Padme’s family, and never was shown doing anything to tell Leia or Padme’s remaining family the truth in canon.

It’s partly bad writing from Lucas who didn’t always do a great job with execution, planning ahead, and addressing important issues, in spite of being able to come up with brilliant ideas for storytelling, and the other writers involved in Star Wars never cared enough to actually address the consent issues with Luke’s and Leia’s “adoption.” However, as a result, the picture that we get of Bail Organa is definitely not that of Father of the Year either.

Scratching Below the Surface of the Happy Organa Family

There are all these posts circulating now about how awesome Bail and Breha are. And they are. There is no denying they are good and brave people who did an amazing job with Leia and risked a lot to do it. That is to their credit. I am also 100% here for reminding people that adoptive parents are parents. They deserve that credit. So normally, I would be 110% behind Leia is an Organa. She is Bail’s and Breha’s daughter.

But I can’t, because it’s not legitimate. Every time I see these posts I want to go Yay!!! and get in with the vibes and the feels, and the bittersweet beauty of it, but I can’t. Maybe it’s because the work I do involves crisis pregnancies, adoptions, adoptees etc. and I also have family that was adopted. I am obliged to know at least a little bit about how this works. This is why I get really squicky, because…Leia was not adopted. She was kidnapped.

Think about it. Did Padme give her baby up for adoption? Did Anakin? Now, an argument could be made that Bail, Obi-Wan, and Yoda could hardly risk giving the child to Anakin, and at the time thought he was dead. So, we’ll say his parental rights are terminated as he is unfit. Fine. But, did Padme have a will? Who did she want her child to be raised by if something should happen to her and her husband? And if she did not, then Bail and Obi-Wan and Yoda still can’t do whatever the heck they want. They need to go to Padme’s family, (as well as to Anakin’s). The Naberries had a say in this as much as the Lars’ (who were never told the whole truth either). What, you deliver their dead daughter’s corpse and don’t even tell them their grandbabies survived? Ever. That’s wrong. That’s so so wrong.

Now, if you do die intestate, or if there is no section for guardianship, the court gets involved to decide who gets the kids. Granted, that can’t be risked in this circumstance. But, generally, kids do go to remaining family. Bail, Obi-Wan, and Yoda could and should still have handled this informally with them. That would be the decent thing to do.

Or are we supposed to accept that all this is legal, because all Force-Sensitive children are to have their fate decided by the Jedi, so they can do whatever the heck they want? Guess that’s why Yoda’s making the final decision on Luke and Leia’s fates. That’s probably it, isn’t it? Gross. Wrong on so many levels.

This is sooo squicky. It is impossible for me to unequivocally enjoy content about the happy Organa family without thinking that that is….not how adoption works. That is just taking someone’s grandchild. That is just taking someone’s niece. That is just taking someone’s child.

Cool Motive.

Still Kidnapping.

#you deserved better wingletblackbird #thebitchformerlyknownaskenobi is being an asshole and fake virtue signaling #being part of a minority group being a victim or being a woman doesn’t make you incapable of committing crimes yourself #and no I’m not saying that organa is evil but he had flaws and his ‘adoption’ of Leia wasn’t legal #see: Anakin’s fall to the dark side the growing distrust and resentment of the toxic old jed order and republic from the working class #no they didn’t deserve mass murder or the empire but I can also understand why people who worked for them and didn’t benefit #grew to distrust and resent them

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pokefan531 · 5 years ago

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Star Wars Retrospective 2 - Prequel Trilogy

This time, I will do my retrospective on the Prequel Trilogy. Merry Christmas and may the holidays be with you. DISCLAIMER: This post will contain my opinions of the prequels. I am gonna be fair to the goods and bads on each three films. If you respect my opinion and understand my reasons about my retrospective and current thoughts of the films, I will appreciate it. No pure hate will be done on anyone involved in those films, and will be honest about the people and what I think they should've done. This is mainly about retrospective. To recap from my Original Trilogy posts, I played the games first before seeing the films in full length. Just to remind you, I did see Episode 2 in theatres first, before seeing any other Star Wars films. In late July 2002, I was in Peru for a trip. One day, I went to the mall in Lima. The mall looked nice, and it was mostly outdoors. The hallway and the eating area are all outdoors. I enjoyed looking around the mall with my family. Later, we said we're gonna see a movie. I didn't know at the time that I'm gonna see Star Wars, but when I sit on the seat in theater, I was waiting to see what movie it was. I didn't even ask, and the fact I have very basic Spanish skills. When I saw Star Wars logo on screen, that's when I realized we're watching it. Granted, this is my first time seeing a Star Wars movie in theater, but in the US, it's The Clone Wars movie, and The Force Awakens as a main film. The entire movie was in spanish, and I didn't understand much of it. Episode 2 came to Peru in July 2002 instead of May. I thought all the action scenes were interesting. I mainly focused on those scenes. I remember seeing the chase on Zam Wesell, The Kamino battle and negociations, Anakin fighting Tuskin Raiders, and the entire Battle of Geneosis. Also including the rest of the movie. I didn't realize the romance scenes because I watched it on unfamilar language, and filler dialogue. I would admit that they have a lot of them, but I still liked the action parts as a kid. My most memorable scene was Anakin vs Count Dooku because he cuts Anakin's arm off. I didn't notice much of CGI. I was a kid, but as of now, a lot of the CGIs don't really look terrible. Noticable, but not awful. There are exceptions like Dexter Diner scene and the hallway with Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Mace Windu. I know there's more, but the CGIs, admittedly, didn't age well. It's more like PS3 and X360 graphics than PS2 graphics. PS2 graphics would be like Food Fight or Sharkboy and Lava Girl. As a kid, after seeing it, I had fun seeing it. It's common that you had fun after seeing a Star Wars movie in theaters, but it was new to me. I remember having Galactic Battlegrounds, and so I tried to recreate the battle arena of Geneosis. I think we had a good time at the mall. I don't know if any of my family didn't like it, but I know I did. By the way, I don't remember hearing people gasping for Yoda grabing his lightsaber. Fast forward to December, we brought Episode 2 to see it in English. I understand some of them, but still enough to know a lot about the movie. I saw it with my other family members who didn't came to Peru with us. I remember some dialogues like I HATE THEM!!!. I enjoyed seeing the action scenes again, especially Geneosis. Even as a kid, I knew they had filler dialogues. I still didn't notice the romance scenes being bad though, at the time. I do think a great scene that everyone mentioned is Anakin's anger on Tuskin Raiders, and as a kid, I thought it made sense. After seeing it in English, I decide to see the Geneosis segments again few days later. I'd admit, the lightsaber duel looks pretty cool, even now. It was the only Star Wars movie I have at the time, but I mostly play the video games like Star Wars Racer, Galactic Battlegrounds, and Rogue Squadron 3D. Fast Forward to Late 2007, I already mentioned about me playing Lego Star Wars 2, and seeing the OT. My cousin decides to show us all the movie on the visit. We saw the OT first, and then we saw Episode 2. We didn't go to Episode 1 yet. When I saw the movie again, I'm like, I remember the movie. I kinda had the same opinion as I has when I was younger, but I know much more about the movie, and I liked Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan and Count Dooku was well casted. I wouldn't want to fill my retrospective on Episode 2 more, so I'll move on to Episode 1 and 3. I saw Episode 1 last, so I'll move to Episode 3. My cousin played it. The first several minutes were pretty amazing. We get to see Anakin and Obi-Wan in more action. I thought General Grevious was just a villain. I knew he wasn't written as good as Count Dooku or Anakin, but his battle with Obi-Wan was satisfied enough to me back then. Even before all the memes, I quickly regonized the dialogues from the movie. The dialogues aren't as great as Original Trilogy, it was still better than the first two prequels. Seeing Anakin vs Dooku again made me feel like I really waited this long to see a sequel. I know it's random, but I used to remember enjoying their first duel. I find it interesting that we question ourselves during the movie about what happened. We do that a lot during our childhood. My favorite duel in the movie is Anakin vs Obi-Wan. In my first glance, we do see their acutal connections, and Anakin's perspective on the Jedis. We used to play with lightsabers to fight. I remembered the birth of Vader's suit, and even the Nooo. Back then, I thought it was fine, but I get that already it's not really good. I don't mind it, and I see it as a meme. I thought my first time seeing Episode 3 was exciting. I liked a lot of parts of the movie, and to an extent, I still do. It's funny how I think about the connections back then about the events from the prequels. I never felt there was any huge disconnections on continuity. Even to this day and during the backlash on the prequels, I never was against Episode 3. I thought it was tolerable and satisfying, but I'll discuss this later. Now let's go to The Phantom Menace and how I first saw it. My cousin's next visit brought Episode 1, and we saw it together. To be honest, we over-fun the visit because he brought his lightsaber and PSP with Lego Star Wars 2. I knew about the Pod race because of the video game. We played the movie, and we were having fun in our own terms. Wow, what a memory. We do see Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan slicing off the droids and stuff, and it was a pretty good start for action. I never knew about force speed that they used to escape from droidekas until six years later. Seeing Jar-Jar the first time, I thought he was little funny back then, but I never see him as my favorite thing nor really smart. I notice the political discussions, but in this visit, we somehow just talk over it, saying how the astestics looks cool. Later, we realized Jake Lloyd was playing as Anakin, and it's because our favorite movies back then was Jingle All The Way. We thought it was cool when we first watched it. Pod Racing was pretty exciting. It reminds me a bit about the video game. Let's get to the part where Battle of Naboo started. The three of us decides to play Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Darth Maul and take turns, so we saw Duels of the Fate four times! Second one is when we start reenacting the characters. On our second to fourth time, we fast forward whenever it cuts to Jar Jar, Padme, or Anakin. It was very fun! It was. It was our favorite thing from the movie. We thought Darth Maul was a cool character and so as Duels of the Fate soundtrack. Back then, we never thought about Anakin surviving the space battle nor how unhelpful Jar Jar was in the battle because of this. After we saw the movie, we thought it was pretty good. Granted, it was actually not the best film, and even back then, we found the Original Trilogy even better. While we enjoyed all the movies back then, it was pretty fun to enjoy Star Wars. I did play the first Lego Star Wars a month after I got the second game. Since I went all through the prequel trilogy retrospective, let's discuss about the flaws and backlash that it went before. I discovered the backlash of it in 2012. I did see the 3D version of the Phantom Menace, which was almost as pointless as Solo, and I started to realize how the movie has problems with pacing and stuff. It wasn't really 3D, so it wasn't worth seeing. At first, I thought it was okay or not great. A year later, I do find more backlashes of the prequel trilogy, and some of the things made sense. Episode 1 was pretty monotone and didn't handle the politics discussions correctly. It has fillers that they could've trimmed out. I do see Jake Lloyd become a joke, and I do think he wasn't well acted, I knew it was the problem with the directing and choices. Jar-Jar was pretty dumb, and at that time, I never thought he's the worst character that anyone would say outside the fandom. Mine was Iris from Pokemon anime, and I used to proof she was worse than Jar Jar. I never blamed Ahmed Best for playing him. There was medi-chlorians thing, but I never did analysis on it. Episode 2 has the CGI and bad romance. CGI was used in most of the film, but many parts didn't look too bad. I get the Dexter's Diner scene and Green Screen with Obi-Wan, Yoda with hover, and Mace Windu, but the rest didn't seem that bad to be honest. In the last couple of years, I think the written romance made connections between Anakin and Padme really awful. I know the lines and directing made Anakin a cringe of a character, but I never blamed Hayden Christiansen. I thought he was a good actor, but I knew the production handled him poorly. I feel sorry for him for getting the hate. He was never mean or anything. He's done decent or good on other movies. I think he does a bit better in Episode 3 though. Episode 3, I honestly never understand how people see this movie as bad as the first two. I thought it did a lot better. I think it's not up there with the OT, but at least good enough for me to enjoy. I get the flaws of the movie, but I never understand it being really a terrible film. The flaws I can point out are the romance balcony scene, the pacing of Anakin becoming a sith, the Nooo Vader scene, or Padme's death explanation. I know people find General Grevious a weak villain, but I find him pretty okay. He's better in Clone Wars 2003 and 2008 one, but he's really best in the first one. The dialogues are somewhat monotone, but it wasn't as appearant, and many of them are memeable. Hello There. Your move. I got the High Ground! Not a happy landing. Ewan Mcgregor is my favorite protagonist actor of the trilogy. Obi-Wan seems pretty enjoyable. The CGIs in the film got better, but few places looks fake, but not really bad. Mustafar was a prop if you look at behind the scene stuff. Back to Hayden Christiansen, I thought he was pretty fine in this film and did better than episode 2, and I don't think the bad acting or directing are enough for him to win Worst Supporting Actor. Ian McDirmid was pretty good. The Yoda vs Emperor, I know many people find it pretty silly and I do understand, I don't really mind to be honest. I know Episode 3 is not as great as the Original Trilogy films, but I find it pretty satisfying. The things I found wrong in the backlash are few thing. First big one is George Lucas. Well, he got full control to make the trilogy, and did a lot on his own. While I do think some of his decisions are questionable, I never see him as a bad guy. Many people hate him for the prequels and Special Editions. I get it he doesn't do well on those. It goes out of hand on the hate. Many people hate on him so much that they made a song about him ruining their childhood. If you know the song and the lyrics, you know what I mean. I couldn't believe they made a song against him. That's where I found the backlash pretty brutal. The People vs George Lucas, I never seen it, but Mark Hamill did an interview in early 2017, saying how they were hating on him. Yeah, the backlash on George Lucas was pretty brutal especially since he's a creator who made the greatest franchise. I know not all creators are good people, but he had helped several people in the business. See Pixar and Lucasarts, and guys like Steven Spielberg. He had done decisions that isn't right, like special editions, but I don't think he really did anything harmful or insulting. My second thing that I find wrong with the backlash is taking it on actors. Jake Lloyd is a good example. I know you can critize the actors all you want, but don't see them as they purposely ruin the movies due to their acting or what they were told to act and say. Jake Lloyd got really bullied after Episode 1, and he ended up destroying his memorabilia and later committed DUI, and ends up in Mental Institution later on. Ahmed Best seems like a nice guy. I didn't know that even a voice actor can still get blamed even if not seen directly in the movie. He tweeted once about his suicide thoughts, but he decides not to. Thankfully, he attended Celebration 2019 in The Phantom Menace panel. Hayden Christiansen, I already mentioned him. Natalie Portman, I get that she's not really a good actress, but I don't think she's that bad of an actress. My third problem with the backlash is going against fans who enjoys the prequels. I met someone who likes Episode 1. He tells me why, and I never went against him for liking it. I never see those movies as really bad movies. I know this is a problem with the fandom since the hate on the prequels went strong in late 2000s (correct me). My former reviewer, Nostalgia critic, made 11 good things about the prequels. While his review was likable, he gives it a sense that people will go rage on him if he defends the prequels or say Hayden Christiansen is well casted. I don't watch his videos anymore, but that used to be accurate of how the hatedom was. The backlash declined somewhere in 2016 before Rogue One. I know they aren't perfect movies, but I can point out some things of what I liked about them. McGregor, McDirmaid, Christopher Lee, and Ray Park were pretty great playing their characters. My favorite protagonist is Obi-Wan. Soundtrack is amazing and it's really memorable. Lightsaber duels are really enjoyable. Some lines are memorable that they became memes. I know recently, people see this trilogy differently. I don't think the trilogy are generally a masterpiece, but it does vary by person who finds them enjoyable in any way. I'm just doing my retrospective and what I think about the criticism of the prequel trilogy. I do realize some of them are pretty fair. Episode 3 is enjoyable for me for its lore and story on multiple characters. I'm gonna include the fan edits. I recommend Hal 9000 fan edit of the prequel trilogy as a way to rewatch with several problems greatly reduced. I find his episode 2 fanedit pretty great. It did make it look like a substantial improvement that makes it watchable than the actual movie by cutting away fillers or bad scenes away as much as it can. Granted, with the cuts, few scenes that are cut can be questionable, like trimming away Qui-Gon's sense of Anakin or shortning Yoda vs Dooku to only using the force, but the fanedit is worth seeing. It add deleted scenes that made sense. I made a review of it last year, and it's pretty positive. I haven't seen his Episode 3 yet, but what I can say is that I would watch his fanedits to rewatch the prequels at the best way possible. Here's the question I'm gonna get asked since I post about the criticism. What about the sequel trilogy, especially The Last Jedi? I will cover the sequel trilogy once I see The Rise of Skywalker. It comes out this weekend, but I'm not sure when I could see it. I'll cover the history about those three movies. I am only covering the main films, not Rogue One or Solo. Once I'm done with the retrospective, I'll finally post my rank on all the movies made by Lucasfilm production.

#star wars #star wars prequels

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