#did the jedi order fail anakin? yeah they kinda did pretty big time

[thetwofaced]

And on today's fandom petpeeves

God fucking redeeming Vader. Like, I'm sorry but Darth Vader IS NOT REDEEMABLE.

Is Vader am interesting character ? Yes.

Is he somewhat tragic? Kinda.

He also MURDERED CHILDREN.

BABIES.

WILINGLY.

And Vader is 100% aware of his choices. He KNOWS what he did. He's a monster and that's just what it is. Anakin? Sure he is redeemable- he can still be brought around. But Vader? Absolutely the fuck not

EDIT:

Since I apparently need to make this clear. This is in context to Vader lives fanfics specifically

[thebastardofgloucester]

So...The Rise of Skywalker (Spoilers, obviously)

No Star Wars movie is anywhere close to perfect. Frankly, they all have serious flaws of logistics or plot logic or characterisation changes or deus ex machinas or lack of originality (which includes A New Hope when you look at its inspirations). It's pointless and silly to pretend otherwise. At its best, Star Wars overcomes that with captivating characters, glorious spectacle, and John Williams.

I think you'll all be familiar with how much I disliked The Last Jedi (and chafed at being lumped in for disliking the movie in with bigots, unimaginative fanboys, and the like).

I liked The Rise of Skywalker. A lot. It had more than enough to offset its major shortcomings, in my opinion. It was not 'soulless,' it was not a complete recreation of Return of the Jedi anymore than The Last Jedi was a rough retelling of The Empire Strikes Back, and it was not as bad or incoherent as Attack of the Clones, jfc are you high

There are certain areas where I am more sympathetic to that not being the case for some people than others. I don't think it completely junked The Last Jedi, but it did demonstrate a huge gap in creative visions, preferred plot structures, and other priorities. Blame for that should not lie with JJ Abrams (or Chris Terrio) or Rian Johnson, who did what they thought was best, and what they were hired to do, and what they thought audiences would enjoy. It should lie with the Lucasfilm story group and Kathleen Kennedy, who had every opportunity to make a trilogy with a united vision and simply declined to do so. (There are a set of different issues with Disney that I'll get to)

Anyway, here's my take on individual components.

Rey ‘Palpatine’

We might as well start with the single most contentious part of the film, and where it is perceived (wrongly, in my opinion) to clash the most with The Last Jedi: Rey being of the Palpatine bloodline.

Rey's arc was about pushing past her own past traumas and doubts and the repeated attempts of other people to define who she was to make her own identity. It is about the refutation of destiny, of genetic determinism. I'm not really sure how anyone really came away with a different impression. I understand being annoyed that Rey couldn't just come from nothing, but call me an annoying fanboy - I wanted some explanation for how Rey was a match for the grandson of literal Space Jesus. Anakin being the most powerful Jedi ever born (and how he was failed by those who were supposed to guide him to that destiny) is kind of central to the entire mythology of Star Wars. Is it reductive and elitist? I guess. I certainly enjoy having Jedi not born of the Skywalker bloodline in the old EU and the Clone Wars/Rebels story. I was frustrated by killing off all of Luke's students as part of resetting the universe in The Force Awakens, and never learning anything about them.

Honestly, as somebody who was in the Rey Skywalker camp (and wrote fanfiction to that effect!), I was glad to be wrong. This was better. It gave Rey more agency, and emphasized found family.

The exposition is weird and clunky. JJ clearly meant for Rey to have some kind of blood link to the previous mythology of the series - you cannot watch the sequence in Maz's castle and tell me otherwise. Rian didn't want to tell that story. JJ did. Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm threw their hands up in the air and Disney raked in the cash. Looking at that Maz castle beat, there's a very good case to be made that Rey was supposed to be either a Skywalker or a Solo, and Palpatine was JJ's attempt to not completely throw out Rian's idea (that her parents went into hiding, becoming 'no one,' abandoning her and being killed somewhere else - their motivations in TLJ (drunks ditching her) are imputed by Kylo and Rey's own fears of abandonment, remember).

Weirdly, I think that of the outcomes, Palpatine was the best one. Explaining how Rey ends up alone on Jakku when she's related to either Luke or Leia is pretty hard without further damaging their characters. Palpatine having lovers, mistresses, whatever before Mace melted his face is gross but entirely plausible. The timeline is...confusing - I guess there's enough basis for Palpatine still having agents running around, chasing down Rey, that even years after his death Rey's parents would leave her behind in an attempt to protect her. It's a bit muddy, but so was Anakin being Luke and Leia's father before we had the prequels. A novel here would probably help if it is written competently)

The point is that Rey's arc refutes genetic destiny. Instead of being afraid of her, as the Jedi were of Anakin (and to an extent, the Skywalkers were of Ben) Luke and Leia (specifically Leia) allow her to grow into her own person, and ultimately she chooses to take the name Skywalker to honor them (and Ben's sacrifice). The problem in my mind is less that Rey is a Palpatine by blood or a Skywalker by choice, and more that she's the only Jedi standing at the end of the trilogy. Making Finn's absolutely obvious force sensitivity a bigger deal narratively in TROS would have helped a lot (more on that later). And we still have the important implications of Broom Boy! He's not erased from existence, there simply wasn't room for his story in these 2.5 hours.

The First Act (and a bit)

The first 30 minutes or so of The Rise of Skywalker are...nuts. They feel less like a movie and more like a series of trailers or a 'previously on' for a movie we never saw. It's about as well done as it could be at establishing plot threads, the situation of the Resistance v the First Order, and where characters are starting from, as you could reasonably expect, but it's like cramming the entirety of the Jabba's Palace segment of Return of the Jedi into about half its runtime, at most.

What it comes down to, and I said this at the time, is that The Last Jedi is a very bad sequel to The Force Awakens. That doesn't (REPEAT: DOES NOT) make it bad film, or even a bad Star Wars film. But in terms of what the middle movie of a planned trilogy should be. It is. Not Good. JJ had seeded hints of Rey's origins and opened a bunch of mysteries. You can contend that he never intended or was never capable of answering them, and I think that's entirely unfair and reducing JJ's opus to the unsatisfying ending of 'Lost' is stupid and lazy, but they were there. The Last Jedi threw all of that out with extreme prejudice. I deeply disliked that; other people didn't. Either way, you had a problem (and you would have had even more of a problem if Colin Trevorrow had directed Episode IX as planned - this could have been SO. MUCH. WORSE.). The Rise of Skywalker is a natural sequel to The Force Awakens, though Palpatine's return could have been foreshadowed much better (or at all, if we're honest?) and it really makes me wonder how much changed from the first drafts of The Force Awakens to the version of The Rise of Skywalker we saw on screen.

I saw some criticisms that we had to read the tie-in material (including a bit from Fortnite??) to understand all the specifics of what planets these were, who Kylo Ren was murdering, etc...I don’t really think any of that was particularly important. It actually opens up a ton of new storytelling opportunities and made the universe feel big again, which The Last Jedi didn’t, at least for me. Apparently the planet Kylo is fighting on is Mustafar. That...doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense (maybe we finally have a Star Wars world that isn’t a single biome?) but it wasn’t actually that important. We saw Kylo searching for the Sith Wayfinder and murdering anybody in his way, we saw Poe and Finn being pursued from one end of the universe to another, and we got the 16 hour deadline before the fleet was ready (which was...weird, admittedly, but not in the slightest less weird that the fleet running out of fuel on a slow-motion chase or needing to fly off to an entirely different system to find a ‘code breaker’ to counter a techo gadget thing that let you trace people through hyperspace.

And yeah, if you are going to forgive The Last Jedi the dumb codebreaker/fuel shit which led to the detached Canto Bight B plot, you have to just acknowledge the Wayfinder thing as a macguffin that gets the plot moving in a certain direction and gives a clear path from narrative point a to narrative point b. Rian is not ahead of JJ on this aspect.

The subsequent fetch quest is less about the macguffin and more about the character beats on the way. Kylo and his boy band pursue Rey, Rey realizes her powers are kinda scary and hella impressive (including the healing mechanic, which is entirely precedented in past canon), you get to see some brilliant, funny, and touching moments between the trio we were not allowed in The Last Jedi, Rey discovers hints about her past, and Lando shows up.

We also get to my least favorite part of the film.

Poe Dameron is Better Than This

I do not understand why they ret-conned Poe into having a past as a smuggler, or why Keri Russell’s character was even necessary. You could explain it as youthful rebellion, maybe after Poe’s mom Shara Bey died (both his parents were Rebel veterans - that’s a lot of pressure), but it fits awkwardly into the established timeline.

The one good thing that came out of it was a moment where Poe is tempted to leave the Resistance, but that only makes sense because of Poe’s terrible hotheaded, reckless characterization in The Last Jedi, neither of which at all fit with his portrayal in the Poe Dameron comics (which are excellent). Poe eventually gets where he needs to be, and the conversation with Lando after Leia passes is one of the best moments of the film, and justified bringing Lando all by itself. Oscar Isaac is apparently really frustrated with Poe’s character and I cannot blame him. Rian Johnson started this weirdness, and it is one of the greatest flaws of The Last Jedi and more people need to acknowledge how racist it was to reduce a 30-something brown-skinned veteran to an impulsive, out of control idiot who gets physically and verbally smacked around by two white women, and JJ didn’t really try to fix it. I guess his arc kinda works in a vacuum. I still deeply dislike it. Cutting that entire section down to the bare bones would have made more room for...

Finn and the Triad

The dynamic between Finn, Poe, and Rey was fantastic. There is abundant basis for Finn and Poe to be canon romantic interests, and I cannot conclude it was anything but Disney’s cowardice that prevented that from happening (and honestly, same for Finn and Rey). JJ is no more to blame than Rian - I genuinely believe this came from higher up. It sucks. A lot. What we do get is precious, and frankly makes Rian’s argument for separating them (that they would get along and it would be boring) kinda silly. They are also incredibly funny together - John, Isaac, and Daisy play off each other so damn well, and I was cackling when the Falcon was on fire and Poe was mad about BB-8.

Finn is absolutely force sensitive. It is apparently what he was trying to say to Rey, he has feelings that turn out to be correct like three times, he wielded a lightsaber with some proficiency in The Force Awakens. It’s canon. Why it isn’t explicit is a function of the Force User plot becoming divorced from Finn and Poe in The Last Jedi. JJ and Terrio also could have fixed that, and chose not to.

We got a tantalizing glimpse of what could have been with Janna and the other defectors. It was really good, but it wasn’t nearly enough, and I am Mad about it. To borrow from some great ideas on twitter, Janna could have revealed that her unit heard about Finn on Jakku and it inspired them to defect. They could have together swayed a bunch of reluctant stormtroopers to rebel (they were otherwise just treated as facist canon-fodder, which, not great when a lot of them are child soldiers!). It was perfectly set up from TFA and they just...dropped the ball.

Like I said, I’m Mad. TLJ did nothing with Finn as a defector or the child soldier thing in general, and TROS did the bare minimum. Huge, huge wasted opportunity. We got promises that we’d get to find out more about who Finn is and...we didn’t, or at least, not in the theatrical cut. TLJ had a scene of Finn and Phasma talking about his being a traitor/defector. Rian cut it down to a fight scene and the ‘Rebel Scum’ line. Writers jail for both of them, tbh, though JJ clearly cared about Finn (he’s why the character exists as he does, as why Boyega was cast, and maybe if TLJ doesn’t make Kylo into Rey’s co-protagonist we get something different. I'm not going to blame Rian for something JJ could have fixed if he cared to.

And least we got something, I guess.

Kylo Ben

I think the first time I actually cared about Ben Solo as a character was when Kylo symbolically ‘died,’ and Ben was saved by Rey’s healing abilities. That was excellent writing, even if it was not subtle. I liked Leia and Han (as part of Ben’s memories) have a role in helping him find some sort of redemption. I was frustrated and mad that Anakin Skywalker’s grandkid could be a straight up space fascist with even fewer redeeming qualities. He still deserved to die. He had no family to go back to and he was directly responsible for thousands of innocent deaths and closely linked to the death of trillions. Like Vader, you don’t just come back from that.

Like Anakin, Ben made his own choices. Was he manipulated by Snoke/Palpatine? Sure. He still had multiple occasions to chose differently and did not. It’s part of his flaws as a character. Han and Leia did their best as parents - we find out Leia even abandoned her Jedi training because she was afraid for her son. Ben’s inevitable fall (which mirrors that of Jacen Solo, a truly fascinating character who I will always be Mad about) soured the sequel trilogy from the start in some ways, but it is hard to envision it without Ben turning. I don’t know. I think without Ben being who he was we simply have a different set of movies.

The kiss is...I don’t even know. Rey clearly cared about Ben, and believed he could change, but also refused to compromise who she was in order to pull him back to the light. I would have vastly preferred a forehead kiss or something along those lines.

On balance I’m glad he got a Vader redemption. I think Palpatine came back in part because Ben simply was not a particularly captivating villain, and without him to provide contrast and make the stakes clear, Ben’s redemption is not possible, and that’s arguably an even worse outcome, especially given how he was manipulated so much at an impressionable age. I’m really glad Leia had a chance to influence his turn as her final act in this life (Carrie deserved a better ending but it was the best they could do after Carrie’s death imo).

Grandpa Palps

First, Palpatine finding a way to survive and setting up multiple contingency plans to return to power is completely in keeping with his portrayal in both the old and Nu EUs (a big part of the post-Endor stuff is Operation Cinder, where Palpatine posthumously ordered the scouring of dozens of Imperial loyalist worlds to spread fear and prevent the Empire from continuing without him). Palpatine also LOVES his superweapons - he built two Death Stars, ffs. A fleet of them is not exactly a stretch in terms of strategy. The Rise of Skywalker definitely felt like it owed a debt to one of the more divisive bits of the old Star Wars EU - the Dark Empire series of comics by Tom Veitch and Kevin J Anderson, which have cloned Palpatines, Luke turning to the Dark Side, an ungodly number of superweapons, and a planet where Palpatine hides and builds them after his defeat.

I don’t think his survival ruins Anakin’s arc - Anakin’s actions still destroyed Palpatine’s Empire (that he helped to build) and its 26 year reign of terror. The galaxy got 30 years of relative peace and then a war that was not nearly as destructive or large scale as the Galactic Civil War. People saying it makes Anakin’s arc irrelevant are just being silly.

Retconning Snoke to a cloned puppet (probably an unwitting one) is actually not a bad writing choice. It explains why he was such a cardboard cut-out villain, and why he was so easily defeated. Honestly, I’m far more okay with how he died in The Last Jedi now that I know this (even if the pacing and the placement of that scene is still utterly bizarre).

The new EU set up cults and fanatics around the Dark Side and its avatars in the emperor and Vader. None of that felt particularly implausible to me as a result.

Legacies in the Sequel Trilogy

I really loved the ‘thousand generations live in you’ conceit. I loved the power of the old Jedi, snuffed out by Palpatine, helping Rey defeat him one last time (including my girl Ahsoka, RIP, I'm sure you went out like a badass). These are legacies and powers that don’t require blood ties or dynasties, they just rely on the force spanning the whole of the GFFA.

Ben is offered the chance to either turn away from his grandfather’s dark path early enough to warrant redemption, or to follow it through until the end. He actually chooses to do neither. With Leia’s dying intercession, he ends up following Anakin’s path to an extent, but his story is ultimately about the tragedy of expectations, fears, and the immense weight of the Skywalker name and legacy. All of his family are caught up in it. Rey is mostly apart from it, and then explicitly subverts her destiny to be Palpatine’s heir, and faces her fear of ending up there, by intent or just fate. As Luke says, some things are stronger than blood. Rey’s story is the ultimate testament to that, and it’s a pretty powerful message.

Leia. Oh god. I was absolutely thrilled when we found out she trained as a Jedi, and then served as Rey’s Jedi Master after Luke failed Rey so badly (after failing Ben). I think Luke’s story from TLJ to TROS is easily the most consistent, honestly. He made mistakes, both with Ben, and then with Rey, and he recognized it. The Rise of Skywalker acknowledges that Luke wasn’t right in how he handled training Rey either, and that went a long way to making me better accept how Rian portrayed him as flippant and dismissive and cynical.

Carrie’s absence was so badly felt. As I’ve said previously, I think they did the best job they could with the footage they held back and Carrie’s recorded audio. They managed to give her a relatively coherent story and an effect on the plot which she didn’t really have in The Last Jedi. I’ve seen speculation that it was supposed to be Leia, not Luke, who gave Rey that pep talk on Ahch-To, and in some ways it might have made more sense. Selfishly, I’m still glad it was Luke, because it helped reconcile my feelings about him in The Last Jedi. But they really did a great job in a really, really tough situation.

Rose Tico

Let’s just get it out there: the film’s treatment of Rose Tico and Kelly Marie Tran was inexcusably bad. Whether her character was a great addition to the cast in the Last Jedi or not, KMT faced horrendous abuse from various bigots and assholes, and after making a lot of public promises they reduced her to barely a minute of screen-time and no real impact on the plot. It’s shitty, it’s bad, and JJ and Disney should feel bad.

Introducing a character like Rose mid-way through a trilogy is risky, and while it worked with Lando, JJ clearly had no idea what to do with her. It’s just a mess, it’s the biggest black mark on the film, and on the sequel trilogy more broadly. Nobody comes out looking good here, and Rose Tico needs a Disney + series of her own or something. Protect Kelly Marie Tran at all costs.

The Rest

- Lando was great. So great. I wish we’d gotten the line that his daughter had been stolen by the First Order (and thus was potentially Janna) - we’d better get a book or a film or something. Lando’s conversation with Poe salvaged his character arc. Billy Dee Williams did a damn good job getting in shape for the role. He came out as genderfluid recently. He’s an absolute treasure and thank god they didn’t waste him.

- I just wanted to reiterate how HAPPY I AM THAT JJ ABRAMS MADE LEIA A JEDI HOLY SHIT

- It was a blink and you’ll miss it moment for people who didn’t read Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath series, but the death of Temmin ‘Snap’ Wexley in a battle where his step-dad (Wedge Antilles) made a brief appearance was devastating and I still don’t know how to feel about it.

- The space battles were awesome. Lando and Chewie bringing in the cavalry was what we were so cruelly teased for in The Last Jedi, which I am still mad about. Forget the logistics, forget the story logic, it was awesome. Maybe in the future I’ll be more annoyed. I honestly doubt it.

- Hux lives (and dies) for drama. He’s the pettiest son of a bitch in the GFFA, he would absolutely turn informant to win his fight with Kylo Ren, especially if he suspected that Kylo had killed Snoke and then was an incompetent child. His dying shortly thereafter is honestly exactly what the character deserved.

- On the cavalry moment, and the galaxy rising to destroy the First Order - I loved it in Return of the Jedi’s special edition, I love it here. There’s a thematic resonance with our heroes overcoming their fear and the galaxy at large being stirred to action. I just wish we’d gotten a few ragtag forces to show up at Crait, but that was a choice Rian made. I’m glad JJ chose differently. It was incredibly Star Wars.

- The 3PO stuff was weird, especially given how emotionally centred it was in the final trailers. It was also tied up in the Poe stuff I disliked. I don’t really know what else to say. At least R2D2, BB-8, and him felt like characters, not purely plot devices.

- Chewie - his reaction to losing Leia was absolutely devastating, his relationship with the next gen trio was great, and his death fake-out was...weird. I could go either way with that - killing him would have been a huge risk I could have respected, on the other hand if he was going to go out he deserved better than that (like, say, a moon getting dropped on him saving the life of Han Solo's kid). His ‘death’ did set up a crucial character beat for Rey. And there were, in fact, two transports, I remember that.

TLDR;

It was a fun movie! It tried to do way too much because The Last Jedi was not an effective sequel to The Force Awakens, and that’s on Kennedy and the LFL story group more than anyone else. It nailed the broad strokes of the Jedi/Force plot in my opinion, including subverting genetic destiny and the power of blood ties over everything else. In the process, it let a number of characters down, who were unfortunately also the characters of color, which is: not great.

I found it rewarding as a fan. It rewarded my faith in the goodness of the denizens of the GFFA and the power of found family. I’ve loved Rey from the start and I’m thrilled with how her arc ended with her burying the Skywalker legacy and making a new start with her new family in Poe and Finn (and Rose, damn it). I’m glad it made me feel better about Luke Skywalker and finally made Leia a bona-fide lightsaber wielding Jedi. I was exhilarated coming out of it, instead of exhausted and frustrated like I was in The Last Jedi. It didn’t make me hate Star Wars. It had extreme Return of the Jedi energy, and that is literally all I needed out of this film.

Here’s to a load of more complex, nuanced, and adventurous storytelling that the Skywalker saga never really allowed. I’m still excited for the prospect of Rian working with his own characters in the universe. I think JJ should probably be done.

Chuck Wendig said that the Star Wars universe was junk. Fun, whimsical, exciting, but ultimately not really a well-crafted piece of art. I’m inclined to agree.

[chaseyesterdays]

So this is probably a tad late but I realized you are probably the biggest Star Wars fan I follow (okay maybe not probably) but I want your opinion on TLJ and to an extent TFW, like you honest impression and opinion. I have no problem asking off anon/sending a message if you’ve got some opinions™️, just state so.

Hi Anon! I’m perfectly comfortable answering anonymous messages or carrying on conversations via DM, so however you feel most comfortable is fine by me! I do have A LOT of opinions though and I’m probably not going to remember half of them for this post, so if there’s anything you want me to elaborate on or any other questions you may have, feel free to ask me however you like!

(I’m putting this under a cut because holy crap, this went on so much longer than I ever thought it would.)

Okay, first off: I think TFA had great potential as a film. ( I know you asked more specifically about TLJ, but I feel like I have to start at the beginning to get my thoughts semi-in-order. TFA introduced what could have been very interesting characters: a female orphan scavenger Force sensitive, a POC stormtrooper raised from birth for destruction but with a kind heart that ultimately guides him, a hotshot pilot with a gentle soul and a desire to do the right thing while remaining loyal to whom and what he believes in – even a female stormtrooper captain who could have had such a great backstory if they’d just let her. I can’t demonize TFA too much on not developing these characters because it’s the first installment in the saga, but still, where TFA failed is in its progression of the characters. I can almost forgive Rey’s overt Force abilities in the fight with Kylo Ren because yeah, we’ve seen the same with Luke on a slightly smaller scale, but it still felt a little bit jerky to me in terms of flow. Finn and Poe fared better in my opinion, but only because I felt like this new trilogy would give each of the new trio a movie in which to shine: TFA would be Rey’s and Finn and Poe would have what became TLJ and Episode IX to be more of the focal characters.

But here’s where I have issues with TFA. First, the movie was just a remake of A New Hope with different characters. I get that JJ Abrams was trying to appeal to the original fans while still providing that same magic to bring in the younger generations, but sheesh, the whole plot is essentially recycled with a few things moved around order-wise. Desert planet that isn’t Tatooine but looks like it, jungle planet that isn’t Yavin IV but looks similar, a “Death Star” that isn’t a Death Star but is essentially a Death Star, the death of a wise old mentor… There was literally no originality. I think JJ let his fears of fucking up the saga get the better of him, so he was too afraid to branch out and make the movie really great. He could have used similar elements and plot points as an homage to the first movie while still providing his own take on modernizing the film, or placing different characters as the focal point. In the end, even though I cried like four times watching it because Han Solo was one of my favorite characters and didn’t deserve to go out like that, I can’t rag on JJ too hard for TFA. He tried, but he fell flat on some things, and ultimately his treatment of an Original Trilogy character opened the door for some atrocities to be committed down the road.

And speaking of atrocities, that leads me to TLJ. Now, I’ll be honest here, I’ve only seen the movie once and fucking refuse to watch it again, but I’ve read a lot of other people’s reactions to it and examined some articles/YouTube videos explaining why everybody else thinks it’s such a bad movie, so I’ll call on what I remember for now and if anything else comes up in the future, I’ll let you know. But I’ll start here and now by saying that the reason TLJ was a failure from the start falls directly on the shoulders of Rian Johnson. Rian Fucking Johnson, Mr. Hubris, who literally said he set out to make a movie that destroyed fan expectations and worked to keep them guessing (if I remember correctly – like I said, I’ve sworn off TLJ content for awhile now just to keep my blood from boiling). The direction Rian took TLJ made no fucking sense and completely torpedoed the outline that JJ had for the movie, derailing the trilogy as a whole just because Rian wanted to be the smug, smart asshole who knew better than anybody what was gonna happen. As a result, the movie is full of plot holes and directionless actions and flat dialogue and ridiculous characterizations, and it’s not just a failure as a Star Wars film, it’s a failure as a movie in general because the plot simply doesn’t hold water. It’s literally a low-speed car chase with some cool effects that made half of its characters either useless, annoying, OOC, or redundant. It’s bad. My creative writing professors aren’t even dead yet, but if I’d turned in that script for one of my classes, they’d be rolling in their graves. (Did I mention I studied writing, grammar, composition, storytelling, character building and plot development for four years in college and make my living as a writer now? Trust me, I know my shit.)

First off, one of the biggest failings Rian Johnson had aside from the general plot was mistreatment of characters. The POC characters Finn, Poe, and Rose bore the brunt of that because Rian wouldn’t know how to write good POC characters if they literally smacked him in the face – hell, even the best of us white people are still learning. But Poe was reduced to an angry Latino stereotype, which made absolutely no sense considering his actions and attitude in TFA. He trusted Leia and the Resistance leaders and followed them because he respected them, not because he was blinded by them or whatever else anyone can try to insinuate. Admittedly he’s right to question Holdo because her actions make no sense and there’s literally nO REASON FOR HER NOT TO TELL HIM WHAT’S GOING ON, but he wouldn’t just fly off the handle and stage a mutiny like that. He would have talked to Leia about it repeatedly, talked to Holdo and others repeatedly, and Leia would have made Holdo see sense if she was in character AND SHE NEVER WOULD HAVE FUCKING STUNNED POE.

Ahem.

Finn and Rose’s storyline is harder for me to remember because I hated that cantina sidequest thing so much, but what I do remember is feeling like Finn wasn’t even the same person (he wasn’t, because Rian Johnson killed him and put someone else in his place) and Rose was just redundant because it felt like she was created to be a love interest so Finn would be with someone other than Rey (again, I’m fine with platonic best friend relationships, but considering the fact that Finn/Rey would be a biracial relationship and the big ship R*eylo is founded on a whiny white man literally abusing the female protagonist, it just seems like a blatant attempt to undermine the POC characters and relationships in the film). Now let me be clear: what happened to Finn and Rose is not the actors’ faults, as they were at the mercy of Rian Fucking Johnson, and it isn’t the characters’ faults that they’re so weak. That’s all on bad writing and Rian Johnson, and I’m in no way blaming anyone but him for destroying them. (Also, I don’t want Finn to die at all, but having Rose save him from sacrificing himself just so she could kiss him and declare love for him and keep fans guessing again is just…so bad, Rian. Why won’t you let your characters make sense.)

And then there’s Rey. If I’m remembering correctly, both Daisy Ridley and Mark Hamill said they didn’t get back into character for TLJ because the characters they played, Rey and Luke, weren’t even the same characters in this film, and whoo boy, does it show. First off, I hate this term, but Rey was essentially a Mary Sue in this film. She had pretty much no training with Luke but somehow managed to be an amazing Force user anyway?? Look, I’m a naturally talented singer, but I didn’t just get good because of that, I got good because I worked hard and studied technique and worked with instructors who helped me take my natural talent and channel it and refine it into something better. That’s what Luke should have done. That’s what Rey should have gotten. But neither of them were in character so of course we didn’t get that. Instead, we got an angry, sullen Luke who tried to murder his nephew in his sleep, which NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED BECAUSE HE SAW ENOUGH GOOD IN DARTH VADER NOT TO MURDER HIM SO WHY THE FUCK WOULD HE DO IT TO HIS NEPHEW, HIS SISTER’S ONLY CHILD. No sense people. No sense.

Rey being a nobody is a controversial point because some people love the fact that a great Jedi can be anyone at all. I get that. But what those people don’t realize is that the Skywalker line came from a slave woman. She was a “nobody” in the grand scheme of things – no disrespect to Shmi Skywalker, who was a powerful woman and a goddess in her own right. Making Rey a Skywalker (either from Luke’s line or Leia’s) does not diminish the “nobody” thing. In fact, it’s the only thing that makes sense, because that lightsaber belongs to the Skywalker line and it wouldn’t just call out to anybody – my creative writing professors would have shot that shit down in a heartbeat. So I think Rey will actually end up being someone with a connection to the Skywalkers; some people theorized that “The Chosen One,” AKA Anakin born of midichlorians, could be almost an avatar-like thing, or Rey could be a reincarnation of Anakin if she’s not a Skywalker/Solo somehow. Kinda farfetched, but no less farfetched than the rest of this fucking movie, so whatever.

Tying Rey and Kylo together could have been so interesting if Rey was his sister. I loved the idea that Rey and Kylo were both Solo children of the Skywalker bloodline, representing the Light and Dark sides of the Force and proving that ultimately, the balance between Dark and Light is what defeats true evil and restores balance to the galaxy (after all, balance is not the absence of dark or light, but an equal ratio of it, and I firmly believe that being a Jedi should not be banishing all the darkness in you, but simply controlling it and centering yourself on the balance between love and passion and anger and pain). It would have made such a good story for Kylo Ren to be a double agent or a legitimately brainwashed young man struggling to do what he thinks is right and being misled but still using his gifts to support balance once he realizes he’s been led astray. Instead, we got literally the worst villain ever: he’s not intimidating, he’s whiny, he pitches temper tantrums, he’s selfish, he’s abusive, he’s impulsive… The writers can’t figure out what they want with him, because they’ve worked so hard to make us sympathize with him and like him and set him up like a misunderstood kid, but then they go and have him make the conscious choice to be evil but still be all those “good” things? It makes no sense. His character progression is all over the place because Rian can’t write and the Kylo he created is not even the same character as JJ put in TFA. And as a result, we now have just about canon proof that Rian wanted R*eylo, which is just another glorified abusive relationship that “stans” keep romanticizing. Gag me with a spoon. I’m done.

Also, who the fuck was Snoke? How was he so powerful? Where did he come from? How did he brainwash Kylo? Who trained him or how did he learn all he knew? How could he see everything and sense everything but not hear, see, or feel Kylo moving the lightsaber? Why were he and Phasma completely nerfed and killed out of nowhere with absolutely no character development or reason for dying? The world may never know.

And here’s where I get really angry: the sheer disrespect for the Original Trilogy characters. Harrison was ready to retire as Han, and I can understand that – I don’t like how Han went out, but I can almost forgive that because I don’t want the actors to be miserable. But what they did to Luke and Leia is unforgivable. Straight up, point blank. Luke Skywalker would never try to murder his nephew in his sleep. Leia would never stun Poe or send her son away or be a terrible, absentee parent. Luke would never be the person he was in that movie, because even in the depths of despair, Luke chose good, chose to see the good in others. He and Leia never gave up hope or belief that good would always triumph over evil. The Luke I saw in TLJ had none of that, and Mark Hamill himself said it wasn’t Luke, it was “Jake Skywalker” or some other nonsense. Mark is a genuinely kind and accepting person, so if you manage to make him angry about a character he’s played for more than thirty years, you’ve fucked up big time, and Rian Johnson did just that. And what’s worse, there was no reason for Luke to die aside from the fact that he just wasn’t convenient for the writers to consider anymore. Han’s death happened to let Harrison retire, but Luke’s was just to get the old generation out so Kathleen Kennedy and the other Powers That Be could do whatever they wanted in the Star Wars universe and milk that cash cow for all it’s worth. Now that Carrie’s gone, all real ties to the Lucasverse are gone, and I’m not convinced they weren’t going to kill Leia off anyway for the reasons I stated above. The blatant disrespect of that, of destroying characters I’ve loved my whole life, who literally kept me alive when nothing else did… It’s unforgivable. I wept like I lost loved ones watching Luke and Han die, and I refuse to do it again.

And here’s what it all comes down to for me: hope. Star Wars was founded on hope. The whole franchise was created in the wake of the Vietnam War when everyone needed something good to believe in, a clear divide between good and evil where good won simply because it was willing to fight for what it believed in, support others, love others, do the right thing. Even when the chips were down and everything was at its darkest in ESB, they always had hope, and in the end, hope won out. There are literally documentaries out there and books written about the success of Star Wars and the fact that hope is its literal cornerstone. The sequel trilogy destroyed all of that. There is no hope anymore. The Resistance is pretty much decimated at the end of TLJ, and at the hands of a government (not even a government??) that rose up out of nothing and destroyed like twelve planets with a flick of a switch and blew billions of people away (and of course we never hear another word about that because that can’t be important at all). Everyone is dying. There are no ships left. There are no forces – less than 100 people made it off that salt planet whose name escapes me and I don’t care enough to look up, and it might have been less than 50. There is no chance that the Resistance can rise up out of nothing and overcome that. Considering how far Rian derailed the progression of the trilogy as a whole, I don’t know how on earth JJ can come back and fix it with literally nothing on his side – all for the sake of shock factor (I swear, I shake my fist at Rian Johnson in my head at least once a day). I know the modern trend is to shoot for gritty, hopeless, “realistic” films because that’s what the current mood is in this country and around the world, but that’s not what Star Wars is about. That’s never been what Star Wars is about. The whole story was built on the foundation of hope, that good could rise and triumph over evil, and there’s simply no room for that in this sequel trilogy. Essentially, the sequel trilogy has failed because it destroyed what makes Star Wars “Star Wars” at its core, and for that, I will never forgive it. The prequels may have been dark, but they exist to show that while the good can fall, ultimately, they can rise again even if in the smallest of ways. “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” The narrative is so convoluted and misconstrued in the sequel trilogy, and it will never be able to find that same foundation of hope again because Disney fucked up. As I said in 2017, “Star Wars is dead. Long live Star Wars.” So I’ll stick to my Original Trilogy and remember the good things that kept me going, the characters and actors that saved my life and made me realize that even in the face of darkness, hope and love can overcome all. That’s Star Wars to me. Honestly, that’s what Rogue One delivered, and if you take anything out of this, it’s that Rogue One is the only Star Wars thing Disney did right. But the sequel trilogy isn’t Star Wars, it isn’t even halfway decent storytelling, and I hope that on the day I die Rian Johnson and everyone responsible for TLJ can lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.

I probably left a lot out because I have so many feelings on this matter, and this response is like encyclopedia-long as is, but it’s the truth of what I feel, and I really hope I shed some light on the topic for you (probably way too much light, but I digress). Thank you for caring about my opinions Anon! I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to put my thoughts down, and if you managed to make it to the end of this ridiculous post, just know that my inbox and my asks are always open for any clarification or fandom-screaming or thoughts in general. Have an amazing day, and as some people whom I love very dearly used to say, “May the Force be with you. Always.”

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

The Last Jedi: What I Disliked About One of the Most Fascinating Films Ever Made

The Last Jedi is probably one of the most controversial films ever made for a lot of reasons. This movie did a LOT of shit, a lot of shit that would piss people off. Hell, it even pissed ME off. But when I see people on the internet frothing at the mouth and calling this movie the worst shit pile to ever exist, the most offensive thing Star Wars has ever produced, and threatening the director with death and calling him a soulless piece of shit bastard… I’m pretty inclined to defend the movie. Frankly, anyone who reacts THIS negatively to TLJ is an utter braindead moron; you do realize you can dislike a film without being completely, insanely hyperbolic, yeah? Again, there’s a lot I hate in this movie too, and I’m gonna talk about it shortly, but in a franchise with Jar-Jar, the holiday special, and vast swaths of the Legends continuity, is this seriously the worst this franchise has had to offer? If you answer anything other than “No,” congratulations, I’d say you’re about the same mental capacity as people who think Watto is some sort of offensive Jewish caricature.

But as much as I would love to spend an entire post insulting all the whiny bastards in the Star Wars fandom, I have more pressing matters: criticizing stuff in The Last Jedi. And boy do I have a lot to criticize. I actually did review the movie a while back, and while I stand by my initial thoughts, I gotta go into more detail about what I didn’t like. However, before continuing, I want to make one thing  absolutely clear:

I think The Last Jedi is a genuinely good movie. Maybe not GREAT per se, as I have more criticisms for it than just about any other film in the series, but excellence is just so wholly ingrained into the DNA of Star Wars theatrical films that even at their most divisive they still have some level of charm. And at any rate, this movie is a hell of a lot more interesting than Rogue One. I’d say out of the newer films, this one sits behind Solo. Anyway, let’s get on to the main event… here are all my issues with The Last Jedi, presented alphabetically, and with lots of spoilers:

Canto Bright: This is probably the most annoying waste of time in the entire film, a blatant and obnoxious stretch of padding the runtime. Nothing that happens in the entirety of this subplot is truly important in the grand scheme of things; the only relevant bit of plot is that they find DJ, and this could have been done a lot quicker. This wouldn’t be so bad if they had made Canto Bright a bit more interesting, but it just feels like another attempt to rehash Mos Eisley’s cantina. It also doesn’t help this part of the film has blatant, unsubtle moralizing and cuts away from far more interesting plotlines that get much less development, particularly Rey training with Luke.

Ditching Kylo’s Motivation: In The Force Awakens, Kylo was motivated by a sort of misaimed admiration for his grandfather, where he viewed Vader as someone to emulate and who he looked to as he struggled between the light side and the dark side. All of this helped make him rather intriguing, as well as making him a very intentional Darth Vader clone character; his whole purpose was to emulate Vader, after all. All of this is ditched close to the start of The Last Jedi, and the Kylo in this film feels almost entirely different to the one seen previously. While I did like Kylo Ren  a lot more in this movie, I wish they didn’t completely rewrite his character and ditch everything established in favor of what they did. It could have easily been worked into how he acted in the film.

Finn’s Diminished Importance: After being something of the star of the last film, complete with a noticeable character arc and a lot of focus, Finn kinda gets shafted here, relegated to a shitty, unnecessary sideplot that leads the heroes nowhere. It just seems really weird, though I’m not unhappy Rey got more focus and was fleshed out better.

Holdo: While I tend to view people who write her off as “The purple-haired feminist bitch” or “Captain SJW” as inferior human beings – and they are, seriously, if you unrironically say shit like this you’re a drooling nincompoop – I really can’t deny in the slightest that Holdo was written rather poorly. She really is a poor excuse for a captain, openly lying to her underlings and keeping things secret when explaining the plan would have effected nothing except her entire crew’s compliance. It almost feels like this plot was written so we’d be on Poe’s side, but it works a bit too well by making Holdo far too arrogant, stupid, and haughty to really get behind. If not for her awesome heroic sacrifice  (one that might not have been needed in the first place if she’d been more honest but hey) I’d probably list her as one of the worst Star Wars characters ever… but a heroic sacrifice of this magnitude,  no matter how unearned it may seem, never fails to impress me.

Killing Snoke: I can kinda see what they were going for, seeing as Palpatine as well was killed with very little revealed about him in The Last Jedi… but we have now had several years worth of canonical prequel material to flesh him out, and it’s honestly pretty stupid to assume you can pull off the same trick in a franchise twice and expect it to go off as well. Snoke was unflinchingly cool, creepy, and badass, so his bisection comes across as a waste of a truly intriguing villain. That there may be prequels detailing who he was do little to ease the sting of Andy Serkis being built up as the big bad only to be cut down. At least in Black Panther he got more substantial screentime; here,  he’s s till cool, but it just feels like there is so much more he could have been.

Luke’s Attempted Murder: While overall I loved Luke’s characterization in this film and how it tied excellently into the theme of not deifying your heroes due to the trouble that can cause, it’s hard for me to rationalize Luke’s attempted murder of his own nephew, leading to Kylo Ren’s turn to the dark side. While Luke has always been a bit impulsive, this man believed he could redeem Darth Vader, AND DID SO. Need I remind you what Anakin did to those younglings? And yet his own nephew, he won’t give him the benefit of the doubt. Yes, he did stop himself, but the very fact he went in there lightsaber ready to cut down the child of his sister and his best friend just feels really jarring and out of place, even within his more cynical characterization.

Phasma: Phasma has come across as a forced Boba Fett replacement since The Force Awakens, to the point where in both films she has appeared in she has been completely and utterly outshined by mooks – Nines (AKA TR-8R) in TFA and the Praetorian Guard in this one. Despite her getting a ton of fascinating backstory and depth in  canonical supplementary material, literally none of that is ever showcased even slightly in this film, and after a short, underwhelming fight scene, she apparently falls to her death. Sure, she COULD have survived, but this still feels like a rather big waste of the character. For someone they hyped up so much, the way she is handled really feels undignified.

Rey’s Parents: I’m not gonna lie, this reveal is stupid in and of itself, but the stupider thing is that a lot of people seem to be taking it at face value. When was it collectively decided we should trust the creepy, evil Sith lord who has made it perfectly clear he wants control over Rey? Why are we taking Kylo’s word that Rey’s parents were drunks who sold their kids as FACT? Honestly it just seems like a further ploy to manipulate her more than anything.

Reylo: While it isn’t canon as of yet, this movie really hammers in a bunch of hints for the obnoxiously popular ship between heroine Rey and antagonist Kylo Ren. And, quite frankly, I absolutely fucking hate this ship, but probably for a lot different reasons than most people. Do I think it’s shipping abuse? No, I don’t think it’s that any more than I think any other hero-villain ship is. Do I think Kylo doesn’t deserve to be redeemed by Rey? That’s not it either; the entire premise of this franchise is that any person can be redeemed. Kylo Ren is really no exception, though considering he killed my favorite character I’d be happy to see his ass beat. No, I hate it because I just absolutely hate the trope, if it even is one, of the hero redeeming the villain through romantic love. I feel like it would cheapen Rey’s character, and just turn the entire new trilogy into an overly long romantic drama. All the heavy-handed hints towards this pairing is just gag worthy, and frankly I’m going to be annoyed if they ruin both of these characters by going through with it.

Rose: Rose is without a doubt in my mind the worst character in the entire franchise. This seems like a rather tall order considering her competition, but consider this: her biggest contributions to the plot are the Canto Bright plotline, the absolute worst part of the film… and stopping Finn from performing a badass heroic sacrifice that might have saved the heroes a lot of trouble, delivering the stupidest line  in Star Wars history, kissing Finn, and fainting. She’s just utterly pointless to the point she feels like someone’s OC from a fanfic where they get with Finn was slipped into the script.

Wasting DJ: So you get Benicio Del Toro,  and you put him in your movie. Great so far, good. He does some weird accent and makes the character have a quirky personality, still good. You give him a very morally ambiguous personality and show the shades of grey in this idealistic universe that leans towards black vs. white most of the time, excellent, awesome! AND THEN… he betrays the heroes and vanishes from the film. What. DJ didn’t die, and he could come back… but he just feels shoehorned in and just doesn’t really reach his full potential whatsoever. He was such an interesting idea, and they just did the bare minimum with him.

Despite all of this crap, though… The Last Jedi still manages to be awesome. Holdo’s final sacrifice, the Kylo Ren and Rey fight against the Praetorian Guards, Yoda’s surprise appearance, Luke’s final battle… Hell, I even liked seeing Leia finally use the Force by flying through space with it; as cheesy as it is, it left me floored when I saw it in theaters. Then, of course, there’s that epic opening space battle… there’s just a lot to love here. In particular, my favorite moment is probably Luke becoming one with the Force. Maybe it’s not my MOST favorite moment, but it just feels so poignant and important, with his final moments mirroring the start of his journey, as he gazes into twin suns one last time before joining his teachers and father. It just… it gets to you, you know? I may have a LOT of issues with this movie, and a lot of stuff I didn’t really like in it, but more than any other movie I have so many issues with, I like and even RESPECT this film. You can say a lot of things about this movie, but one thing you can’t say is that it’s dull. It sparks discussion, and debate, and obnoxiously hyperbolic worst-everism. At the end of the day, whether it’s good or bad doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is that this film just… IS. And one way or another people will have something to say about it. Just don’t be a hyperbolic douche about it and try and enjoy things, you know?

[hubskitchen]

Hub’s Kitchen Entry 1: Star Wars: The Last Jedi Review: Move on from the past and learn from failure

Man oh man, this is going to be a fun movie to talk about. If this were a voiced review, the sarcasm would be huge. Anyway, hi guys, the name’s Hub Pie, but you can just call me Hub, and welcome to the first entry of Hub’s Kitchen, a blog where I talk about all kinds of stuff. If you’ve read my introduction post, you would know that my first real post will be on Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the most recent movie in the Star Wars franchise, and Disney’s third Star Wars film that they put out. I should get this out of the way now, but there will be MAJOR SPOILERS for this movie, The Force Awakens, and Rogue One. I think The Last Jedi is a movie that you can’t really talk about without getting into spoiler territory. Talking about this movie without spoilers wouldn’t do this film justice.

I’ll just say right off the bat that I liked this movie, like a lot. I’d say this is my favorite Star Wars movie Disney’s put out, with The Force Awakens being the middle child and Rogue One being my least favorite. Rogue One wasn’t bad, but that’s only because the third act of the movie saved the entire movie for me. Yeah, that end sequence with Vader killing the Rebels was awesome, but that does not single-handedly save a movie. Rogue One was brought down by an incredibly slow pace, and outside of K2-SO and Donnie Yen’s character, I didn’t like any of the characters in the movie, not even Jyn Erso, who’s easily the most boring Star Wars protagonist in my opinion. The Force Awakens was pretty good. I didn’t mind that the movie took a lot of inspiration from A New Hope other than the Starkiller Base, because the characters were really likable and the movie actually felt like Star Wars, unlike the prequels. I’ll talk about those movies in a different Hub’s Kitchen entry. The Last Jedi is an odd film if you ask me. As an overall package, I’d say The Force Awakens is superior to TLJ, and at its worst, this movie reaches Rogue One levels: Not bad, but nothing that good either. At its best however, this movie is excellent. So now that I’ve said my overall general opinion of The Last Jedi and my thoughts on Disney’s previous Star Wars films, let’s dive deeper into this movie.

The Last Jedi is about failure. Every character’s arc in this movie connects to this theme. A good example of this is Finn and Rose Tico’s subplot, which has been heavily criticized amongst the detractors on this movie. I have mixed feelings on this subplot. On one hand it does connect to the theme of the movie, as Finn and Rose fail to destroy the First Order’s tracking device, the crucial element that prevents the Resistance from escaping the First Order. On the other hand, this subplot feels like a drag compared to the rest of the movie and the subplot is always cut back to when I was getting more invested in the other better parts of the movie. I guess I should talk about Rose now. She’s okay. I won’t be getting into the whole race thing about Kelly Marie Tran because I don’t care about that kind of stuff. When we first see her, we know that she’s a maintenance worker for the Resistance and because of that necklace she has, we learn that her sister was killed when Poe decided to destroy the First Order’s Dreadnought ship (more on Poe in a bit). My issue with Rose is that she doesn’t really have any sort of development throughout the story. I was reminded of Mace Windu with Rose, and that is not a good thing in my opinion. Rose is still pretty likable though, so it didn’t ruin the character for me. The other problem I have with Rose is the forced romance with Finn after he was going to sacrifice himself to stop the First Order’s battering ram cannon. It just showed up out of nowhere and wasn’t really hinted or implied throughout the movie. Speaking of Finn, he easily had the worst treatment out of the new characters from Force Awakens in my opinion. Not only is he treated to the worst subplot of the movie, but Finn felt stoic this time around to me, whereas he felt more like a fleshed out character from the last movie. Maybe that’s just me, though. Finn’s still cool, but he didn’t really get a whole lot to do in this movie. I honestly would have preferred if he weren’t in the movie, at least not much, but eh, whatever. So yeah, not the best part of the movie, I can tell you that. Though, seeing a casino in Star Wars was pretty cool, I guess. I mean, it’s still kinda weird to see a casino in Star Wars, though it’s not as weird as the Ewoks defeating the Empire in Return of the Jedi if you ask me.

Next up is Poe Dameron, General Leia and the Resistance. Like Finn, I don’t like Poe as much as I did in Force Awakens, and that has to do with his arc of the movie. So at the beginning of the movie, Poe leads the Resistance to take down a First Order Dreadnought, but despite General Leia telling Poe to fall back, he says “fuck that,” and ends up destroying the Dreadnought, but at the cost of the entire bombing unit of the Resistance being destroyed. This is Poe’s failure: His recklessness got the entire bombing unit destroyed. I know he was trying to take down a big First Order ship, but at what cost? It’s a net negative than a net positive and Poe gets demoted because of that. Recklessness doesn’t always win the battle. Then the First Order catch up to the Resistance after they went into hyperspace thanks to their tracking device. In the midst of this, we see Kylo Ren again (and I’ll talk about him when I talk about Rey and Luke), but he hesitates to shoot his mother down (again, more on that later). A couple of TIE Fighters don’t get the memo and blast Leia’s portion of the ship and we think she’s dead, but Leia ends up using the Force to bring herself back to the ship, but she needs to recover. This scene has been one of the most controversial moments on the film, and like the Finn and Rose subplot, I have mixed feelings on it. It is really silly and is a little hard to take seriously, but in the original trilogy, particularly with The Empire Strikes Back, we know that Leia is Force-sensitive. How else would they have found Luke hanging from that pole after his fight with Vader? So it makes some amount of sense that Leia would be able to do this. Who knows? During the period of time between the original trilogy and now, she could have been more attuned with the Force, only not in a Jedi kind of way. Given Carrie Fisher’s death from last year, I feel like the movie was in a tight spot with her. Giving Leia a death so quick in the movie might have been disrespectful to Carrie Fisher, but on the other hand, that “Leia Poppins” scene as people are calling it is a bit odd. Carrie Fisher was great in this movie, in fact, all the cast was great in this movie, especially Mark Hamill, but we’ll get to him later. Rest in peace, Carrie Fisher.

Back onto the Resistance subplot, once Leia is in recovery, we get Vice Admiral Holdo in command (the woman with the purple hair). Not much of this subplot is really explored until later when Poe sees Holdo’s plan to evacuate the Resistance into small pods as cowardly so he starts a mutiny which ends with Leia coming in and stunning him. Then Vice Admiral Holdo decides to buy the Resistance time by ramming the ship into the First Order battlefleet which gives us the most gorgeous moment of the movie. That shot was amazing. Though, if we want to talk about Leia having a good send-off, I think that would have been. Imagine Leia ramming the ship into the First Order battlefleet. Would have circumvented the “Leia Poppins” thing.

Finally, let’s talk about the BIG subplot of this movie: Rey, Kylo Ren, and Luke. This is easily the “make it or break it” section of the movie, and for me, it made the Last Jedi. Let’s start with Luke. The theme of failure symbolizes Luke as a character. 30 years after that happy ending of Return of the Jedi, and here he is, a broken man after seeing darkness in Kylo Ren, to which Luke thought of killing him, but hesitates and ends up losing all his students in the process. Luke brings up that the Jedi are failures, which is an interesting point. In the prequels, the Jedi deemed Anakin Skywalker as the “chosen one,” but that resulted to him turning to the Dark Side and Order 66, which killed the majority of the Jedi, leaving Obi-Wan and Yoda left. By the time of the original trilogy, the Jedi were romanticized and thought of as legends. Then we get to the sequel trilogy and Luke is deemed a legend, and he decided to pass the Jedi teachings down to future generations. Luke wasn’t really a Jedi Master in the way the prequels contextualized them. The prequels defined a Jedi Master as having really excellent Lightsaber skills and being stoic, not falling into extreme feelings. Keep in mind that I haven’t seen the Clone Wars TV series so I don’t know if this is expanded upon in that show. I’m only going off the movies, and the prequels and the original trilogy’s definition of a Jedi differed greatly. Putting all the movies into context and given what we know, Luke was never a Jedi Master. He had a good understanding of the Force, but never did all the amazing stuff the Jedi in the prequels did. And given that one mistake he made cost him the death of his students, I’d be a broken man too. Though I did love the callback that R2 made with Leia’s original message to Obi-Wan. That was great.

The way the movie portrays Rey and Kylo Ren as characters is interesting. Throughout the movie, Rey and Kylo talk by using the Force, though we later find out that this was a plan from Snoke (more on him in a bit). We see that these two are conflicted about their sides and both try to convert the other. There’s a bit of darkness in Rey, so Kylo tries to convert her to the dark, and vice versa. Hell, we see early in the movie that Kylo does not shoot Leia, his mother, down. He hesitates, symbolizing the conflict within him. Rey meanwhile wants someone to show her her place in the world, given how part of her huge character flaw is not letting go of her past with her parents. That’s why she was attached to Han in TFA and why she’s attached to Luke in this movie. Now, we have to talk about those things about the movie now: The big stuff.

So, The Force Awakens left a lot of questions for the audience when the movie ended, starting with: How will Luke react to seeing his father’s old lightsaber again when Rey gives it to him? The Last Jedi says: Luke chucks it over his shoulder. A lot of people saw this as a cheap gag, and with the way it was shot, yeah, it kinda was, but it makes sense given what Luke has been through. To him, that lightsaber means nothing because of what he went through. While to us, the audience, it’s a huge deal because it was Anakin’s lightsaber in the prequels, Luke’s lightsaber in The Empire Strikes Back, and that was somehow in The Force Awakens, to Luke, it’s nothing more than a tool, a reminder of a past he wants to forget about.

What about Snoke? He was built up to be the new big bad guy for this new trilogy, the new Palpatine, if you will. What happens in The Last Jedi: Kylo proceeds to “Darth Maul” him. What I mean by that is that just when Snoke was going to be really interesting, he gets killed off. I hear Darth Maul is in the Clone Wars TV show, but I’m talking about movies exclusively here. Personally, I felt that the movie knew that Snoke was a lame character, and decided to kill him off. I’m a little disappointed that Snoke didn’t have the same level of presence Palpatine did in the original trilogy and even the prequel trilogy. I didn’t really care about his backstory being fleshed out that much, because that’s not really important. It’s why the Palpatine’s backstory was never mentioned in the original trilogy. All we needed to know was that he seduced Anakin to the Dark Side of the Force and became Darth Vader from that. The prequels built upon this backstory, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make.

Rey’s lineage? She was the daughter of junk dealers on Jakku, who traded her away for drinking money. This is something that I love. A lot of people were hoping for Rey to be Luke’s daughter or Obi-Wan’s daughter or something, but nope. I love this because not only does it not pointlessly make Rey a part of the bigger Skywalker conflict by making her a family member, but it also states that greatness can come from anywhere (which is also signified in the last scene of the movie). It just felt fresh to me. If Rey were were part of a great Jedi lineage, I would have been pissed, personally.

I know I said The Last Jedi was about failure, but it’s also about letting go of the past. This is symbolized with Luke, Rey, and Kylo Ren. Luke’s past events haunt him, and at one point, he decided to burn the tree that had the ancient Jedi, but not before ghost puppet Yoda did it for him. Yoda basically tells Luke to let the past go, which I think is a good message, especially to a man who’s as broken as Luke is in this movie. Rey has to eventually accept her lineage and move on from that. Both Luke and Rey come to accept their fates in this movie. Kylo Ren, however, doesn’t, and what’s funny is that he’s telling Rey to “bury the past,” yet he’s obsessed with wanting to get revenge on Luke and kill him. We see this on the entire scene on Crait. Kylo furiously tells the First Order to fire on Luke. Doesn’t work (along with Luke’s badass shoulder rub). He rushes to Luke with his lightsaber, but sees that Luke is using the Force to project himself on Crait. “See you around, kid,” was a badass line from Luke. So was his death. Oh yeah, it’s time to talk about Luke’s death.

Luke’s death was really well handled in my opinion. A lot of people criticized that he didn’t make his way to Crait, but early on in the movie, we see his old X-Wing in the water. It’s likely that it’s out of power and won’t work. So we see Luke project himself using the Force. I don’t know if the Force can allow people to do this, then again, Force lightning exists, so I guess it makes sense. Because Luke puts so much energy into this technique, he ends up dying as a result. He looks to the distance where he sees two suns, very much like he did in A New Hope, and accepts his fate. As Rey says “He didn’t die with anger or sadness, but acceptance.” Besides, he gave the Resistance time to escape and had a heartfelt goodbye with Leia, which was a great scene. He even gave her the dice from the Millenium Falcon, sort of. So yeah, really good moment in my opinion.

Now we have an awkward spot where there’s other things to talk about the movie that don’t have a major role sooooooo…

Captain Phasma: Man, what a disappointment. She’s essentially Boba Fett all over again. If she is confirmed for Episode 9, I hope she gets a good fucking send off.

Porgs: Eh, they were cute but that’s about it. Yeah, it’s obvious the Porgs were made to sell toys but so were the Ewoks. To give credit to the Porgs, they weren’t huge players like the Ewoks were.

The Codebreaker: He was an oddball character. Benicio Del Toro was good in the role, but he wasn’t too memorable.

Vulptexs: These things (the crystal wolves) were awesome. I definitely want a plush of that. What? I like plushies. Sue me.

This is where I’d give my final thoughts, but I want to talk about how the audience reactions to this movie have gone down. The Last Jedi, while a hit with critics and general audiences going off of the A score from Cinemascore, with Star Wars fans, it’s more divisive. I’ve taken the time to watch some YouTube videos about The Last Jedi, both positive and negative reviews (which the majority are negative) and went to the Star Wars subreddit, and I have to say: I’m not surprised by the behavior that some of these fans have displayed. I mean, disagreeing with people is one thing, but making accusations and hating others for their viewpoints is pretty fucking dumb, even if I find some of them to be ridiculous. It’s just a movie guys, and no, I’m not saying that as a way to undermine your anger. I’m saying that because a movie is only a movie. It’s not something super serious like education or your financial state. I’m not saying you can’t be mad at this movie, but think about how much energy you can give it. You can be angry for so long before you come off as obnoxious. Whether you liked The Last Jedi or not, just let other people be. They’re not right or wrong for what they think. Trust me, you’ll be a lot happier.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a complicated film. It has a lot of deep themes and is a pretty challenging movie on a thematic perspective. It’s also incredibly bold by taking the Star Wars franchise in a new direction, a direction that it should be taking if you ask me. It’s not flawless, however. Finn and Rose’s subplot drags down the pacing, there are some comedy bits I didn’t mention that didn’t land, and as an overall package, The Last Jedi is inconsistent, ranging from being amazing to being just okay. Like I said, I liked the movie, and consider it to be my favorite Star Wars movie that Disney has released so far. I know I’m going to get some shit from people, especially diehard Star Wars fans, and hey, that’s cool, whatever gets me more attention. I’m just being honest, something that I take very seriously. I don’t give ratings to things because I think that’s pointless. Just know that I think The Last Jedi is a good movie despite its faults. Anyway, my name is Hub Pie, and thank you for reading.

[lovecastsoutfear]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Aaauuugggghhhhhhh!!!!! Y’all I loved it!!!!!!! I’m not gonna be able to form a lot of coherent thought ms but here we go!

There be spoilers from here on out!!

This is just gonna be a bunch of random thoughts about the movie so it’s gonna be kinda scattered.

I LOVED Poe’s arc in this movie!! I described it to my brother as “learning to play chess” he had to learn to think three steps ahead. Learning to take into account the cost of the decisions he makes not to always be a hero and at times to retreat and regroup to save lives. The way that he takes on Leia’s tile from the first battle in the last; callin people off of a suicide mission.

And Finn!!! His arc is amazing!! It is a wonderful continuation of his arc in TFA!! In the beginning when the chips are down for the rebellion he backslides a bit and almost runs away again. Rose literally stubs him out of that. And then on the casino planet he sees a bit of the scope of what the first order has done, through his seeing and interacting with the slave children. And then in the end just as Poe has taken Leia’s original place he takes Poe’s he ignores orders and tries to sacrifice himself. In that scene I resolved myself to him dying in a blaze of glory and I was sad but at peace with it. But then Rise knocked him out of the way. I’m glad he didn’t actually die but the willingness to die was a highly important moment in his character development.

And ROSE!!! I loved her so much!!!! She was an awesome character!! I’m glad she didn’t die also!! I love her backstory as being a former slave (I think)! Aaahhhhh! I love the line about saving what we love not destroying what we hate. I can’t really put anything else about her into words.

Leia kept surprising me! Like when the bridge is destroyed I thought they had killed her! Then they didn’t! Then I was like okay so she’s going to be out of commission for most of the next two movies so that they don’t have to kill her or explain her absence. Then she woke up!! And I thought she would back Poe up but she didn’t! Uuggghhh! I love Leia soooo much!!! That dedication! It hurt my heart in the best way possible!!

Laura Dern’s character (can’t remember her name and not looking it up right now)!!!! I love what they did with her!!! Like her first speech was amazing! But then her conversations with Poe and I wasn’t sure exactly what I thought of her!! Then I got carried away with Poe and mutiny! But then we are all in Poe’s shoes realizing that he is not always the best pint of view character. He has blinders on and is young and impetuous and at that point doesn’t have the vision or all of the information to know what to do. I love her relationship with Leia. I love that you can see from a few short lines that she and Leia have a long relationship and that they love and respect each other. And her sacrificial death is amazing!!

And now we come to Luke!! I loved him in this. A broken man consumed by self-doubt and guilt! If you had told me beforehand that it would come out that Luke had screwed up big time and pushed Kyle further to the dark side I would have been pissed off but I love the way they did it. He almost repeated his mistake with Rey. I’m so glad that she was able to call him out and through her connection with Kylo to figure out what exactly happened the night the temple was destroyed. My brother and I talked about how what he tells Kylo mirrors what Obi Wan told Anakin. “I’m sorry” and “I failed you.” Interestingly though they kinda failed their apprentices in opposite ways. If Kenobi had a major failure it was that he never believed Anakin could turn to the dark side, in some ways perhaps he needed to be harsher on Anakin and curve his path when he was on his way to the dark side; he should have seen it earlier. Luke on the other hand failed in that he was too ready to believe that Kylo went to the dark side. He saw the pathway pretty early but believed that Kylo was further down it than he actually was, and pushed him further that direction. It is a great example of meeting your destiny on the path you take to avoid it. I love his confrontation with Kylo and the fake out. The sweeping off his shoulder is such a Skywalker move! I loved that his story ended with him looking at twin suns again and that theme. Not that I think he’s actually gone, his force ghost will probs be in the next one.

Kylo!! I wasn’t completely sold on him as an interesting character after the last movie. But I loved him in this one. I loved to see him interacting with Snoke. Seeing that Snoke treats him like shit. His relationship with Rey is extremely intriguing. I love that she sees the conflict and the bits of good that are in him. He is clearly at the end of the movie clearly a man a bit unhinged who has been given enormous power. After TFA I thought maybe they wouldn’t redeem him at all in order to show that you can’t make someone come back to the light if they don’t make the call. And while my brother disagrees with me I think in The end they will turn him back. There is something metaphorically resonant in him using the different lightsabers he uses the blue one in doing good light side type things and the red when he’s leaning towards the dark. And I think the fact that he fights with it foreshadows that he is not really back to the light. Right now that blue light side saber is broken but I think Rey will use the crystal to make a new one and I predict that when Kylo is turned back he will pick up the new saber to do some good. There were definitely some shades of Vader and Padme’s final argument in him asking Rey to rule the galaxy with him.

I’ve covered most of my thoughts on Rey’s character arc in talking about Luke and Kylo. I’m just say that while I never really thought she would go to the dark side I’m glad that she didn’t. In interested in seeing where she goes from here.

Aaagghhhhh!!! YODA!!!! YODA!!!! I loved it and my happy my heart is!

Porgs were adorable! And I loved Chewy as a reluctant pet owner!

Baby force sensitive!!!!!!! I can’t wait to see more of him!

So many women just all over the place in the rebellion!

Yeah Finn get Phasma!!

Not really sure who I ship now. After TFAi love Finn/Rey; but they seem to be setting up Finn/Rose which I also really like!! I just hope there isn’t some kinda love triangle because Rey looks at them kinda longingly. Idk

Also loved Luke’s line about not being the Last Jedi.

Sorry not sorry this post is so long.