#hopefully it will still get resolved... i just got past Krypton Man

[supermanshield]

Clark and Jimmy in Adventures of Superman #458

[kateofthecanals]

Thoughts on The Last Jedi

Chock full o’ spoilers under the cut, which I have divided into stuff I liked and stuff I didn’t like, so it’s not ALL bad, lol.

Please note, though, that these are my impressions after only one viewing. I definitely need to see it again (and I will soon), and I’ll be reading everyone else’s posts and meta (good and bad), so my feelings might change...

Until then...

*deep sigh*

Okay, so, my chief problem with this movie is that the first 2/3 of it basically turned out to be pointless. There was all this terrific setup and seeding -- like, literally, those scenes between Rey and Kylo were plucked right out of my fantasies and headcanons over the past 2 years -- but then in the last 30-40 minutes it was like “oh haha just kidding!” and we ended up in the same place we were at the end of TFA. The characters didn’t actually evolve. They went through ALL that but just seemed to ultimately decide that they were better off where they were before. Nothing ultimately mattered -- the Force bond, the hand touch, Snoke’s murder, the team-up in the throne room, the revelation of Rey’s parents, etc... What did that actually accomplish if Kylo was just gonna go right back on his bullshit and Rey was gonna go right back to the Resistance like nothing even happened?

Breaking down more specific things below...

STUFF I LIKED:

- As I said, those early scenes between Rey and Kylo, feeling out their Force-bond, were terrific. Everything I had been hoping for. FORCE-BOND CONFIRMED!

- The Hand Touch scene omigaawwwwd. It was basically Force-sex, complete with Force-gasm. The way it was filmed, the insinuation was preeeeetty clear -- the soft, warm lighting, the fact that Kylo took off his glove so as to facilitate SKIN-TO-SKIN contact, the EXTREME CLOSE-UP of their fingertips where you could see their fingerprints, the little gasp Rey let out.... It was the hottest, most sexually-intense scene I could have imagined without any actual sex being involved. Very clever of Rian, considering this is a Disney movie and whatnot. Too bad they got caught by lame Uncle Luke! ;-P

- 8-PACK CONFIRMED!!! I actually saw a post about this scene prior to the movie but I thought it was just a JOKE. I cannot believe they actually did that, I was laughing so hard. Primarily because you just KNOW Kylo did that shit on purpose, thinking to himself “Hmmm, what can I do to Seduce Her To The Dark Side...? Why, she’ll never be able to resist my SWEET PECS!” Like... bro... stop. LMAO. Anyway, I appreciate the catering to the female gaze. ;-)

- R.I.P. Rey Skywalker and Rey Solo. Can we please move on now? (Though a friend did say he suspected the revelation of Rey’s parents wasn’t actually true, but, like, she was the one who confirmed it, so why wouldn’t you believe it???)

- R.I.P. Finnrey? Between Rose smooching Finn, and Rey grinning as she watched Finn hold vigil over injured Rose, I think we can say yes. Or maybe we’re just being trolled here too...

- The team-up in the throne room made me soooo happy; even the other people in the theatre were cheering. I’d LIKE to think that this is foreshadowing a future partnership of some sort between them, but... 

- The fact that, after learning the truth about Kylo, Rey insisted on calling him Ben. He seemed really affected by that too. Well, for a little while anyway...

- PORGS, GLORIOUS PORGS! I just wish there had been more of them, LOL. But I’m sure Rian wanted to use them sparingly so they wouldn’t wear out their welcome, so he achieved that at least. 

- I think I’m content with how Luke’s story was resolved. I have to ponder it some more before reaching solid conclusions, but he went on his own terms, which I think is the best we could have hoped for. And we can be sure there will be tons of Luke Force-Ghost action in Episode 9, lol.

- When Rey and Kylo had hand-sex, she saw Kylo becoming Ben again, and Kylo saw himself and Rey ruling the Galaxy side-by-side. I don’t think those were mutually exclusive visions of the future -- if this trilogy is all about finding Balance, then I think that the truth of those visions (filtered and interpreted between two very disparate perceptions) will meet somewhere in the middle. My headcanon endgame for Reylo has always been Rey and Ben becoming Gray Jedi and teaming up to “rule” the Galaxy from a position of that ever-coveted Balance, so I think that is what those visions could be hinting at. At least, I’d like to think so, but those last 30-40 minutes gave me major reservations...

- So, I’m putting this one under Stuff I Like but it’s not something I really liked or disliked, I just thought it was a bizarre choice, and that was this sudden playing of Hux strictly for laughs. Like, yeah, in TFA, he was a great source of comedy for myself and others (#coasters), but the whole reason he was so funny was because of how utterly seriously he (and the film) took himself. But then he became somewhat of a caricature of himself in TLJ -- like an SNL sketch version of Hux. I mean, I enjoyed it and was entertained, but it was just an odd choice to me.

STUFF I DIDN’T LIKE:

- The turning point for me, going from “YES YES YES!” to “oh...” was immediately after the team-up in the throne room, when I quickly realized that Kylo didn’t kill Snoke because he suddenly “woke up”, and he didn’t do it for Rey... he did it so that HE could be the HBIC. He didn’t change at all. His ambitions only became amplified.

- I was really bummed when Snoke “revealed” that he was the one who facilitated the Force-bond between Kylo and Rey, but I was relieved to see this wasn’t the case after all at the end when Kylo and Rey had that one last Force-encounter. But again, what was this actually worth in the end? She closed the door on him. It was established in this film, via Luke, that a Force user can close themselves off to the Force. Who’s to say Rey won’t do the same to Kylo? That she will find a way to cut him off completely? There’s literally nothing stopping her, because she has clearly given up on him...

- ... as has everyone else. And with good reason, tbh. The moment Kylo threw Rey under the bus for Snoke’s death, declared himself new Supreme Leader, and went fucking buckwild on Luke, I knew all hope for redemption was gone. Even Leia was like, “nope, I was wrong, he’s lost for good.” Basically what I got out of this movie was, Rey and Kylo “flirt” with the other sides of the Force for a hot second but then just ultimately decide that they belong where they were in the first place. Gee wow what awesome character development...

- The revelation of Rey’s parents was just so... banal. I felt like this was thrown in there just to put the question to rest, without any additional thought or exploration, even though that was made such a HUGE deal of in TFA. But, nah, they were “nobodies”, end of story, case closed, that’s all she wrote. It was never even explained how Kylo knew about Rey’s parents!!

- I’ve seen people claim that this movie “shuts down” anti arguments for good and that is simply not the case. There is still plenty of ammo from this movie they can use, chief among them Kylo’s cringeworthy statement to Rey that “You’re nobody. But not to me.” Oh great, I can see the Discourse already... reeeaaaally wish Rian hadn’t thrown fuel on the fire like that, but here we are. I mean, there’s some degree of justification in that (a) Kylo can’t people and this was the only way he could think to convince Rey to stay with him by playing off her one biggest weak spot, and (b) he’s perpetuating the cycle of abuse tactics instilled in him by Snoke, but NEITHER ONE OF THOSE THINGS ARE GOOD EXCUSES. Like, okay Kylo, it’s lovely that she means something to you, but telling her that YOU are the only one who sees something special in her is a dick move for sure. (Basically, the scene felt like the Blackwater to me, with Kylo trying to implore Rey to come with him, she refusing, and him just flipping the fuck out on her... YA BLEW IT, SON! Hopefully, though, like Sandor, Kylo will realize that, if he REALLY wants to be with Rey, he has to become a better man... that HE has to change for HER and not the other way around... But I am not hopeful this is a direction Lucasfilm will ultimately decide to take.)

- I’m glad everyone’s happy that Kylo didn’t actually KILL Leia (which I knew he wouldn’t) but I dunno how many brownie points he gets considering he still let those other fighters take her out... I mean, she SHOULD have died, but apparently she’s from Krypton or something? LOL... But anyway, I mean, he may have not known that those other fighters were around him, but he still could have done SOMETHING, but he didn’t.

- And he barely even flinched when Snoke was torturing Rey. You’d think that, I don’t know, since they have a Force-bond and everything, that he would have been able to feel her pain or something???

- During Kylo’s attack on Crait, at a certain point (around the time Luke shows up), Rey just, like, disappears, completely, and doesn’t show up again until the very end to do her rock-lifting trick. Firstly, where the hell was she that whole time, but more importantly, wouldn’t it have been kind of awesome if, like, she could sense what was happening between Kylo and Luke and using their Force-bond try to talk him out of it? And see him actually STRUGGLE with it because he’s still torn between wanting to be with her and wanting to be the Big Bad? Buuuut no, because at that point, both their minds were made up, and Rey had given up on him anyway.

- On a more technical level, I was really disappointed by how the Force-bond sequences were filmed. I expected way more from Rian Johnson; this was something any first-year film student could have come up with. Now, I’m not claiming to be “better than Rian Johnson”, but in my headcanons of Rey and Kylo’s Force-conversations, there was a noticeable atmospheric shift -- some sort of visual cue that something “different” was going on... Instead of just this basic cutting back and forth between them in their respective locales. Meh.

- I didn’t find Rose that memorable, sorry. And her whole mission with Finn, much like the Kylo/Rey storyline, ended up being completely pointless, thanks to Admiral Holdo needlessly keeping vital info about her plans from Poe. WHY??? All of it was just an elaborate excuse to send Finn off on another adventure where he would end up back with the First Order so he could finish off Phasma, period. Like, yeah, there was that little hint at the very end that those kids who took care of the fathiers would, like, have something to do with the Resistance in the next movie, but honestly that could have just been a little meta commentary about how kids have been inspired by the Star Wars franchise over these past 40 years. Which is nice and all, but Finn and Rose’s mission was still pointless.

- Same with Holdo. So here’s this lady who just shows up out of nowhere, keeps vital information from Poe for no good goddamn reason, thereby forcing him to come up with his own plan and send Finn & Rose on a wild goose chase, and then suddenly we’re supposed to buy this close, intimate relationship she has with Leia so that we’ll feel all wistful when she decides to go on a suicide mission to protect the Resistance?? That should have been Leia, tbh... and not just for cheap emotional impact. At that point, Leia believed both the cause and her son to be lost and really had nothing else to lose at that point, and it would have been well within her personality to take out as many motherfuckers as she could to go down with her. Holdo should have been set up as Leia’s heir apparent going forward, and Leia going all kamikaze on the First Order would have been an interesting parallel to Luke also sacrificing himself to protect the ones he loved. AND it would have solved the whole issue of how to move forward in the story after Carrie’s death. I mean, we know that Leia was supposed to play a big part in Episode 9, but we’ll never know what that was supposed to be anyway...

Okay so those are the just the things on the forefront of my mind today. I might think of some more, and like I said at the top, my opinions on these might change... and y’all are free to try to change my mind. ;-)

No but seriously, very anxious to hear other people’s opinions!