#anti TLJ

[antianakin]

The options for TLJ are as follows.

Luke is intended to be wrong about everything he says and the message is that the Jedi are and always were fundamentally good, but he still spends two hours shitting all over a culture that's been completely genocided for decades because he feels guilty about how he invaded his own nephew's mind while he was sleeping and then wanted to kill him for a moment because of how dark said nephew's mind was.

Luke is intended to be RIGHT about the Jedi and he failed specifically because he repeated their mistakes, but he's wrong to have lost hope entirely and realizes by the end that Rey can become a "new source" of light that will only succeed because she'll be different from the old Jedi.

So the options here are either that Luke was character assassinated in such a dramatic way that it's impossible to really pick up on the real message of the movie, or that Luke's storyline WAS intended to be Jedi critical the entire time. Both options suck. Both options completely sidelined Rey in her own story and made her character completely flat and pointless.

I'm sorry, but you cannot convince me that this movie was good or had anything kind to say about the Jedi since it spent the MAJORITY of its runtime talking about how awful the Jedi are and blaming them for everything that's gone wrong in the galaxy, turning one of the most beloved Jedi in the entire franchise into a mean spirited mouthpiece.

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

*enables you* what happened with TLJ 👃

After all these years I still can't properly find words to explain how deeply betrayed I felt after the credits rolled and I shuffled out of the movie theater with everybody else. There was a TON of hype surrounding this movie, an absolute fuckton. I only saw positive reviews about it, the cast, the director, the plot. I got excited to see where Rian Johnson & Co. would take the ST.

The only remotely negative comment I saw before watching the movie was a fandom blog saying they didn't like what happened to Poe. Since this blog was about racism in fandom, I knew something was off. That was my only warning.

And y'know, it was like, five minutes in? Ten minutes? And Poe makes a "Yo mama" joke at Hux? I used to go into movies with an open mind and spent days gathering my thoughts about them because I was always slow to react, slow to gather my thoughts into coherent strings of words. It's how I enjoyed Michael Bay productions and JJ Abrams' love affair with lens flare. I never got actively angry with a movie I was watching, and I was fucking angry by the time the movie ended. I still remember texting a friend while standing out in front of the theater because I was so confused. The response to TLJ was so positive so why did I come out of the movie so frustrated and confused and dissatisfied with the whole thing?

It's been years and we all know how this movie divided the Star Wars fandom and just... broke Fandom Spaces in a way I never expected. We all know what TLJ did and didn't do, and how TROS provided the final nail in the coffin that was the ST experiment. But back then, all I saw was positive commentary about the themes and messages of TLJ, how it portrayed failure and the dangers of putting someone like Luke Skywalker on a pedestal, how the Force was female, how... important it was to see Poe get characterized as a hotheaded hotshot who needed to be demoted, slapped around, and stunned in order to learn some kind of lesson, how important it was to see Finn lose everything he gained in TFA so that he could relearn how not to be selfish or something while starring in a fucking incredibly tone-deaf B plot, how Rey... I'm not sure exactly what because she didn't need training anyway and then spent most of her time trying to bring Ben Swolo back to the light????? Rose was so promising as someone who grew up under the FO's thumb but she and Kelly were fucking abandoned by Disney so I don't know if Rose existing was actually a good idea if it meant giving Kelly unending trauma. Mark slipped up by calling Luke "Jake" and expressing his displeasure in front of cameras, and I was so fucking baffled and alienated by his character after knowing how his story ended in ROTJ that I couldn't connect with whatever lessons I and he are supposed to be learning. JJ set up Snoke like a mystery box and Rian just yeeted him off without so much as a fucking explanation so what was the point of that? Hux was a fucking joke. Phasma was barely there. The only character that Rian cared about was fucking Kylo Ren and Adam says years later that he was never supposed to get a redemption arc anyway.

Like, this was the movie everyone hyped up? This was the movie that didn't answer any questions left unasked by TFA and didn't bother to move forward with character development for any of the known characters? I spent money watching a slow space chase that ended on a planet made of salt and killed off Luke for Reasons? Am I stupid? Am I dumb? Am I a peasant incapable of understanding the masterpiece Rian directed, this so-called Best Star Wars Movie Since ESB?

But I couldn't say anything. I couldn't be dogpiled for hating such a empowering movie for women, a diverse and inclusive movie that had the likes of John and Kelly and Oscar. I couldn't be lumped in with the Star Wars dudebros with their raging misogynistic and racist takes on the movie, the cast, Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm, Disney, etc. I couldn't be seen as one of them just because I didn't like a movie that I should like, I'm supposed to like. So I sat in silence, read meta, witnessed the fucking catastrophic explosion around some wild ass AO3 fandom essays written by a racist OG member of OTW about Finn/Poe, saw hate piled on black and bipoc fans, saw r*ylo fans come for John and John clap back at them, just saw an absolute fuckton of hate, and so by the time TROS came around I just... checked out. There was no way JJ could salvage what Rian had done and I was right. TROS was a corporate-run soulless garbage end to the Sequel Trilogy, but it ended just as The Mandalorian finished its first season and regained a lot of good will with this small story about a lonely Mandalorian bounty hunter who encountered a Force-sensitive Baby Yoda.

And then TBOBF/Season 3 of the Mando Show happened, just like how TLJ happened. All the promise, all the unanswered questions of the previous movie/season, all fucking dropped or provided with the worst, most unsatisfying answer. I'm sure others have found better answers and can live with what Star Wars gave us, but I haven't been able to. TLJ came out years and years ago, and I am still so bitter today. I'm still so bitter because TFA had such an incredibly compelling setup with such promising characters, and then TLJ Did That.

I got so heated while writing this. I'm still so mad. I'm still so bitter. I bury my head so deep in the sandbox I built for myself so that I don't have to think how Disney is twisting and contorting all these Mando'verse shows so that they all eventually lead to the ST, their precious hot potato child that just... didn't have to end the way they did if they actually had a fucking plan and fucking stuck the landing. I'll give the MCU this - their Phase 1? They fucking stuck the landing. I fell off the train tracks and haven't really watched the MCU since Captain Marvel, but at least they had a fucking plan and didn't fucking derail themselves like Disney did with the Sequel Trilogy.

I could be nice to people who like this movie but I'm not going to be. They can be nice on their own blogs.

Man, I can't even watch Knives Out or Glass Onion because my blood starts boiling. Just. TLJ did a lot to ruin what I hoped would be a positive and creative connection with Star Wars, and it took the Mando Show and the 2 minutes where Din and Luke locked eyes on the Imperial light cruiser to bring me back.

I'm gonna stop before I get way too heated for sleep.

[mystarwarsmatters]

Don’t worry y’all, Twitter is still trying to convince everyone that TLJ was a good movie and SW fans are the problem 6 years later.

[oreolesbian]

rereading HTTE, and in the first 5 pages of luke’s introduction, zahn already does a better job characterizing luke’s fear of being the last remaining jedi, the shouldered responsibility of his burden to help rebuild the galaxy post-war, and his depression about all of it , leagues better than TLJ could’ve ever dreamed of. also hot chocolate scene my beloved

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Every once in a while I remember that Rian Johnson invented Rose Tico because he originally had Finn (child soldier who was brought up with propaganda and any attempts at identity stomped out recently escaped the people that enslaved him) and Poe (child of the New Republic, grew up in peacetime) at Canto Bight together and saw no potential for conflict or real difference between them. And then I stare into the distance and contemplate what could have been.

[ragnarssons]

so, i'm rewatching star wars, like marathoning through it...... and i gotta say............. i hate tlj more and more every time i watch this saga. and i finally put ideas around why i hate it. it's just so clear that rian johnson didn't want to make this movie. he wanted to make a star wars movie, suuuure, a star wars movie of the likes of the acolyte verse in terms of exploration of lore, expansion of possibilities, new nuances to the story, etc. but not star wars, as in the skywalker saga, as in, the middle piece of a new trilogy. there are interesting concepts explored in the movie, interesting ideas being arisen, interesting questions being asked. buuuuuuut, it takes episode 7 and goes "welp let's erase all of that!" and throws it in the trash, thus successfully destroying the new trilogy before it even had a chance to stand on its own. beyond that, and even more unnerving, it takes the entirety of the skywalker saga, ep1 through 6 and goes "welp let's erase all of that!" and more, "i can do better". NO YOU CAN'T! you just can't. because rian johnson never understood the point of the star wars story. it's just so obvious! i still 100% believe luke would never turn the way he does on episode 8. like, sure, it could've happened, a what if, a parallel universe where he gives up on vader or whatever, but this luke??? luke from the return of the sith? luke from the books? luke from the comics? luke from just anything star wars that has been created??? no. never. no. jamais. non! it doesn't even have anything to do with the force or being a jedi or whatever, it's also about leia, about han, luke would never abandon them, luke would never give up when it comes to them. i'm not saying luke wouldn't make mistakes with ben, or whatever. i'm talking about who luke is at his core, about the values of family, loyalty, faith, he's always uphold during ALL the other movies or medias in which he appeared. in this context, tlj luke just doesn't make sense. it's a luke. it's not the luke. he's an interesting concept, of a jedi abandoning the ways of the jedi, questioning them, etc etc. but it doesn't suit luke. for starters, because luke never upheld the jedi beliefs 100%, far from it. and even the characters from the new saga aren't themselves! leia isn't herself (for the little she's used). then you have iconic characters like 3po, chewie, r2 that are completely sidelined: even that, is against everything this saga has stood for. these characters are part of the team, the family, you can't build a story by sidelining them completely. all chewie does is sit by the falcon and try and eat these stupid furry pets: a reminder, HIS BEST FRIEND JUST DIED! he's right next to luke, whom he's fought wars with, loves, and is loyal to. do we even have an interraction between luke and chewie????????? 🙃 finn literally spends the entirety of ep7 learning to belong, and then he wants to leave again?????? poe is... just, not poe. like, no. there's just nothing to say about these characters cuz they're just not the characters set up in episode 7, and how do you do that? how do you take on the mantle of the middle piece of A TRILOGY and just decide to shit on what came before????? and just leave no room for whatever could come next????????????? but oh noooo, rian johnson is too busy making stylish, pompish bullshit about the force and rey-not-rey-because-ooc doing weird shit and force exploration and pretty battle on a planet that makes stylish shots, let's just ignore how he treats the characters, i meaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. 😐 anyway, I (STILL) HATE TLJ.

[competitivedust]

Saying you liked The Last Jedi because of Worldbuilding™ as if there was any of that in the movie at all. That's one way to make sure I disregard all your opinions in the future. They had to make a guy taste the salt on Crait so people knew that it wasn't Hoth.

[caripr94]

Rogue One/Sequel Trilogy Salt

'A New Hope' is the story of a boy who grows up in a tranquil home and dreams of joining a war. What if we have the story of a girl who grows up in a war and dreams of returning to the tranquillity of home?

Gareth Edwards

This quote is evidence that Jyn Erso was written to be a foil to Luke Skywalker. Before Rogue One came out, I and a bunch of other fans were speculating Jyn to be Luke's wife and Rey's mom (due to the resemblance to Rey, the speculation about Rey being Luke's daughter, and the parallels between Jyn and Luke (and between Jyn and Mara Jade, Luke's Legends wife, to the point where it seemed like Jyn might become the Disney canon version of Mara)). Even after the film came out, I was still hoping for Jyn to pull a Phil Coulson for that, particularly with that kyber crystal necklace she had.

Years later, after Lucasfilm has mangled up Rey's origins along with the latter two sequels, I haven't completely given up on that idea, but it's been barely on my mind, and I've been torn between that and Jyn's relationship with Cassian Andor. But now, reading that quote has stirred up my feelings towards the former (and from what I've been recently reading about Cassian, he's kind of old for her anyway). It seems like a great opportunity that Lucasfilm has wasted.

@araitsume @aomoviegeek @reynaberrieorgana @fyeahreysky @finnrey-skywalker @roselani24 @jonesgirl88 @tragicfantasy-girl @vaderdala1541

[sunshinechildskywalker]

Okay okay okay okay I wanna hear your Luke rant. I’m going to rant too because I have to get some things off my chest.

WHAT THE FUCK DID THEY DO TO HIS CHARACTER??????? They have years worth of source material showing how he would handle running the order and they throw it in the trash. YOU KNOW ITS BAD IF MARK HAMMEL HIMSELF HATES IT. Luke is the definition of optimistic ray of sunshine, he sees the good in everyone AND I MEAN EVERYONE. Vader had done so many evil things but he still held out for him to change. Maybe not objectively the smartest idea from a logical stand point but he did, and you’re telling me that he would sense some sort of darkness in Ben and attack his own nephew? I’m gonna say it, Kylo’s hatred for Luke is very justified. And if that darkness he sensed in Ben equated him unredeemable then he shouldn’t have trained Rey either cause she def had darkside callings. (I could do an hole seperate rant on Rey I hate her) And LUKE ISN’T STUPID HE KNOWS THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST HE WOULD NOT REPEAT THEM! If things went wrong he wouldn’t let it harden his heart either he wouldn’t give up on the order he’d pull it up from the ashes. He wouldn’t hide away while the Galaxy was at war letting Leia to be put in unnecessary danger and Let Darkness take Ben. He also would have sensed Han being in danger in TFA and came running! Also yes he’d read the old Jedi books but he wouldn’t be married to them! Slight gripe with Mandalorian (though technically it was a book of Boba Fett episode) THERE IS NO WAY HE’D FORCE GROGU TO CHOOSE BETWEEN DIN AND BEING A JEDI. The hole point of making a new order is it’s not the same as the last one! (Something legends does right) Luke values his attachments if he expected Grogu to choose then he would expect himself to give up Han and Leia and Chewie and C3PO and R2D2 and everyone else he holds dear. THEN HE DOESN’T EVEN COME TO FIGHT THE FIRST ORDER HIMSELF???? The force projection thing is just stupid in general but really??? And then he dies of over exertion boo hoo

ALSO WHY THE FUCK DID THEY MAKE GREEN MILK????? BURN IT!

FOR REALLLLL!!! I will post my own rant soon but basically yes, this. Legends will always be home base for me (that or just my own fanfics lol). I'm so glad we're on the same page, down with TLJ!

[brotherskywalker]

The Last Jedi was released today, seven years ago. I still passionately hate it and what it did to the prequels. I'm glad I've moved on mostly so I'm not spending countless hours talking about how stupid and badly written it was, but every time I see the title or images of it (mostly the poster), I get that same sick, sad feeling in my stomach.

That is all.

[burn-4u]

Lol why do tlj stans keep trying to compare their movie to andor. Andor is the Star Wars equivalent of better call Saul and tlj is a joss whedon movie.

[shrinkthisviolet]

☕️ While The Last Jedi was objectively terrible, they definitely made things worse by trying to retcon things in its' sequel. Either stick to your guns or don't make such drastic decisions in the first damn place.

Oh absolutely. TLJ is very flawed as a movie, but if TROS had stuck with that direction, I could at least respect the vision. But Lucasfilm was clearly so insecure by the negative reaction (gee, I wonder why that happened, geniuses 💀) that they overcorrected.

They changed Luke to be closer to how he should’ve been as a mentor...this is incoherent given that there's no reason for him acting as callous as he did last movie, and also no reason for him suddenly changing again. Luke has never been a mercurial character, so why is he now??

They wrote Rose out completely. I just...*sighs* I've heard she was more prominent in early versions of the story (this video shows some concept art from one of the official books that talks about some of the early story ideas), and as the plot changed, so did her presence...but it's very telling that her plotline got cut.

Same for Finn, by the way—apparently he and Rose shared a plotline initially. And now, he's reduced to comic relief. Well, at least they're keeping him consistent with TLJ, which also didn't care about him 💀

And of course...Poe. Who could forget what they did to Poe. Making a Latino character a Spice Runner (spice being drugs in Star Wars) is...a choice. Also...wow, he had a girlfriend before? Wowww

(I'm not gonna get in the weeds about conspiracies but uh...Oscar Isaac's words about Disney not liking him and John Boyega playing up the Finnpoe flirting do come to mind.)

They even retconned Rey! Now, granted, I didn't love the idea of her not being related to anyone (it makes the payoffs in TFA feel cheap—they were very clearly setting her up as a Skywalker/Solo even as early as the trailers), but I had at least gotten used to it by the time TROS released. But then they made it worse! For no reason!

And Kylo *sighs* TLJ firmly shut the door on Rey/Kylo, a choice i was cheering about...and then TROS decided to have Kylo die for Rey*...and then they kiss??

I just...*sighs* at least if they'd made them cousins or siblings, alluded to them having a past where they loved each other and knew each other so well, I could understand why Rey would feel any affection towards him (not romance ofc—that angle was a bad idea with the movies being as they are, especially given that time he tortured her and they never even talked about it later). But as it stands?? Nope. They even try to retcon this as a "gratitude kiss" in the novelization. I just can't even.

*clumsily paralleling him to Vader, but this fails because Rey and Kylo's relationship is not nearly as strong as Vader and Luke's was, especially since Kylo literally rejected her offer of redemption last time and also she closed the door on him! And also, Kylo has never had compelling/interesting motivations for turning to the Dark Side, nor did he ever have the gravitas Vader did. It's all just...ugh

The Palpatine stuff...well, we all know that's terrible. It's not like they even needed to bring him back, even after killing Snoke (DOTF had him present as holograms, with Kylo as the Final Boss)...but hey, if they wanted to redeem Kylo, they needed a big bad to contrast him with. But the whole thing was a giant mess from start to finish. You can even see in some scenes how tired the actors are. And I don’t blame them…watching the movie itself was exhausting.

send me “☕️” and a topic, and I’ll talk about it!

[kylostantrums]

i just think that mid-trilogy star wars wasn’t the best place for rian johnson to make the statements he wanted to.

glass onion was that place. and it was perfect.

[mystarwarsmatters]

Wow, really???

Sorry, let me amend that.

No Shit.

[ragnarssons]

i hate it here, i hate it here, i hate it here........ forcing myself to chew life through the last jedi and i hate it here. ok, but forreal, to the people who said episode 9 sucked... how would you have picked up from the utter, profound, nauseating mess that rian craig johnson created with how he ended tlj?

[caripr94]

Unpopular opinion: I know that a lot of Star Wars fans are peeved about the tragedy of the sequels negating much of the happy ending of the original trilogy, but honestly, that's actually one of my favorite parts of the sequels. Why? Because it means that well-intentioned hypocritical nutheads like Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Bail Organa don't get to get away with underhanded, morally unethical stunts like separating the twins from each other, kidnapping them from their biological families, lying to them about their heritage, grooming them against their own father, and using them to try to restore their own power and get everything back to the old status quo that got them into this mess in the first place. We all get to see the consequences of such tactics and nobody (who's paying attention) gets to say that "this and that" was okay because everything turned out fine in the end.

Because even though Luke managed to break the cycle of darkness and abuse on his end by the end of the original trilogy, we never really saw that happening with Leia on her end, nor did we see many of those family issues from that separation and manipulation or many of the problems with the Old Jedi Order or any of the problems with the Old Republic get even addressed. Many of the underlying issues of the prequels that came from people not learning from their mistakes just got swept under the rug. At least with the tragic events that happened in the sequel era (at least in TFA, before Lucasfilm messed everything up in the subsequent sequels, which I don't count as canon), we get to see many of the effects of such corrupt and dysfunctional methods that these "heroic" elders used, and in some way, there's some poetic justice in that, even at such a high price. And I know that many of you are saying that "Star Wars is supposed to be a fairy tale or myth; it's not supposed to be realistic", but let me remind you that not every fairy tale has gotten a happily ever after (at least in its early versions) and it was actually quite rare for mythological heroes to get a happily ever after either.

Disclaimer: This is mostly about TFA, which was much more consistent with the original lore. I acknowledge that the later two sequels didn't have as much consistency or respect for the original lore (or even with TFA), so I don't count them as canon.