#i fucking hate lucasfilm. i hate the story group. and i hate rian johnson

[falllpoutboy]

let me make it clear to you all and reiterate what other fans have said before: finn got sidelined for rey. finn got sidelined for rey. the moment he loses to kylo in tfa and stays unconscious for the remainder of the film and for a little bit of tlj, he has been sidelined. do i love finnrey with all of my heart? fuck yeah i do. but do i wish finn had gotten the development and attention like rey and kylo got? do i wish he wasn’t downgraded to a side character and had more influence on the plot? do i want finn to be seen and recognized as one of the best star wars characters? hell fucking yeah i do

[let-fans-be-fans]

STAR WARS Episode 8 - The Last Jedi

Only read after watching The Mandalorian s2 e8

Imagine a Lucasfilm Story Group that has actually worked as a group since 2015.  Chuck Wendig’s draft of the first Aftermath novel has been roundly mocked and pulped before ever being committed to print.  This isn’t about that, though.  This is the germination of the story seed that is planted in The Mandalorian, so join me as we explore one of the possibilities that could have happened within the Star Wars universe: What If Grogu (the Child/Baby Yoda) first appeared in TLJ?

Ahch-To, the steps.  Luke Skywalker regards his guest Rey with a quizzical expression, telling her simply but firmly “I can’t take that, but there is a place for it somewhere...” and the two move inside Luke’s little hut.  Passing by a large levitating pod, Rey (and the audience) experiences mental flashes of meeting Finn.  Smash-cut to Finn himself waking up in the recovery suit in the med-bay.  Finn/Rose/whatever sub-plot (this post isn’t about fixing THAT car-crash, let it marinate) ensues, does what it does.  This timeline’s Rian Johnson, however, is co-existing with LFL’s Story Group and especially Dave Filoni.  They’ve cooked up one hell of an A-plot, and it continues thusly:

Rey never sees what is in the pod, and begins to wonder if Luke is messing with her or starting to go a little peculiar from isolation, on account of how he talks to it.  In fact, something is starting to make her feel slightly more at ease.  Maybe even a little guilty when Luke’s mood turns sombre and he says, “I know.  About Han, and Ben...”  We maybe even get a little nostalgia-boost by Luke opting to use the training remote and blast-shield helmet to start training Rey.  It’s like poetry, it rhymes.

All through this time, Luke has not withdrawn himself from the Force out of shame.  He has always kept himself open to it, learning from the spirits of his teachers.  The night that Rey decides to leave and try to aid the Resistance (or to confront Kylo Ren for her own reasons) is the night that Luke receives a visitation from two very unexpected spirits.

That’s right, y’all.  The first Force ghost appearance of a non-Force-sensitive character in the Saga.  Padmé and Anakin show up to give Luke the news that some strange, dark figure has attempted to kill Leia by shooting at her private chamber on the Resistance flagship, only for Luke to not understand why they don’t know the attacker’s name.   “You don’t need to hide it, to protect him.  You know, as well as I do, that it was Ben!”  Anakin shares a concerned look with the spirit of his wife, and the next thing he says would absolutely blow the cinema audience out of every single seat in the house.  “Luke?  Son, listen to me.  Who is this Ben?”

That’s right.  Anakin Skywalker, the former Sith Lord Darth Vader, has absolutely no idea that our sequel trilogy’s Vader-like antagonist (his own grandson) even exists.  Even as the Force ghosts watching over Luke and Leia and their families for all this time, both Padmé and Anakin explain that from their perspective, something is bending the Force itself around Ben Solo, pulling him away from not only the Light side, but also from its Dark side.  “The boy, Ben Solo, is living his entire life surrounded by a wound in the Force.  This wound, it’s very subtly, slowly eating him!”

Luke is still in shock from hearing the ghosts of his parents telling him what is happening to Kylo Ren.  Rey is trying to keep him out but the villain is urged by his twisted Master, the Supreme Leader of the First Order.  Their telepathic communication is picked up on by Luke, who all at once sees what has truly become of his nephew.  Ben Solo appears to his uncle, surrounded by tendrils that look like animated cracks in a pane of window glass.  This is the wound in the Force, and its presence is felt most strongly by the eldest living Force-sensitive on the island of Ahch-To.  A short cry splits the cracked and bleeding image of Kylo Ren and Rey wakes with a sudden start.  Luke is frowning as he looks toward the floating cradle, then he makes his decision.  We (and Rey) are about to meet the 100 % physical in-camera puppet.  Cast and crew are made to sign an infinite supply of Non-Disclosure Agreements, Rian Johnson is talked into only letting Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley and the puppeteers onto the sets while everybody else is shooting their things.

The cradle pod swings back its protective lid slowly, and there he is making his debut before an audience that paid full movie theater (remember those?) ticket prices.  Exuding full fucking “Gizmo in the box on the coffee table” energy, the Child glances sleepily between Rey and Luke.  This is why the legendary Jedi Master left the civilized New Republic, he tells Rey.  The massacre of his first generation of Jedi students, the betrayal by his nephew, all of it would have been for nothing if he couldn’t save one very important life.  Rey is sworn to protect the Child, who is old enough now to speak his own name.   “Grogu?  Is that what he said?”  “One of his protectors told me it’s his name, right before telling me how I looked just like my father.  We had a pretty good laugh about that...”

Leia/Poe/Holdo subplot, and [THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH WILL ONLY INCITE SHOUTY BEARDO YOUTUBERS TO SCISSOR THE HEADS OFF ACTION FIGURES THEY BUY WITH THEIR OWN MONEY, THEREFORE IT IS CENSORED TO SHIELD THE AUTHOR FROM PROSECUTION]

Before the Holdo manoeuvre, the Hyperspace Karen or whatever you want to call it, Rey acts out the plan that she and Luke have concocted in secret so that Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon can safely evacuate both Luke and Grogu.  Rey hasn’t been told about the wound in the Force that swirls around Kylo Ren, but for some reason she can now see the same churning mass of tiny cracks in reality, and they spread out behind the Supreme Leader Snoke in much the same manner that Palpatine’s throne sat before the spiderweb-looking window of his tower on the Death Star.   This is it, we think.  Snoke is the wound in the Force drawing Ben away from his true self.  Even as the lightsabre that Rey brought with her ignites and strikes Snoke dead, the audience is thinking along with Rey that the wound is going to close up.

IT GETS BIGGER.  AND IT FUCKING CONSUMES SNOKE’S BISECTED CORPSE LIKE A SHADOW VERSION OF THE THING FROM THE 1982 MOVIE

So no.  Rey sees it happen, but Kylo remains completely oblivious as he takes up leadership of the First Order.  Something about the way he accuses Rey of the murder makes us think he really believes it too.  As Rey narrowly escapes, haunted by the sight of the living animalistic wrongness that ate Supreme Leader Snoke, General Hux is rather confused.  “Forgive me, ah, Supreme Leader.  But you are the first Supreme Leader of the First Order.  There was never a previous holder of that position, my Lord.”  I know!  Right!?

The Resistance’s last ships have limped along the supply line to the long-abandoned old Rebel holdout on the silicate world of Crait.  The wreckage of Snoke’s flagship the Supremacy, hangs in space, permanently suspended in the wake of the Holdo manoeuvre.  From the epicentre, a single pinprick of darkness begins to expand hungrily to devour the light from the hyperspace explosion.  The great wound left in the Force crawls across the destroyed vessel, the thinnest tendril of its immense darker-than-space form now separated from Kylo Ren.  Or, so it would seem, anyway...  Reunited with Rey, Luke gives her an understanding nod when she informs him of how the lightsabre of his father was literally ripped in half by the destruction of Snoke’s flagship.  Some of the elder members of the Resistance don’t have the slightest clue what Rey’s mysterious words mean.  As far as they know, Kylo Ren has been the brutal enforcer of the First Order, only recently declaring himself the first Supreme Leader of the faction.  Finn and Rose both speak up in defense of Rey, both of them surprised to hear that Leia also knew of Snoke’s death and the destruction of the flagship by her erstwhile friend, Amilyn Holdo.

Nobody can agree what happened, because a large subset of Resistance personnel share vague, half-formed memories of things as Luke, Rey or Leia tells them.  No droids, or Chewbacca, share their recollections, and uneasy looks pass between members of the post-war generation and the Skywalker twins.   It’s a quirk of the Force!  Every sentient born after the death of Emperor Palpatine, the unfortunately waylaid Maz Kanata informs them via hologram, possesses a significantly higher potential for Force abilities than the generation who grew up on the fringes of the rise of the Empire, the clamp-down on Jedi and suspected Jedi.

It would seem that this Force baby boom did not extend to First Order space (being mostly disaffected ex-Imperials, their families would be more careful to weed out any aberrations in the bloodline and try not to be of interest to the Emperor) as only Kylo Ren, their rightful Supreme Leader and master of the Knights of Ren demonstrates any ability to touch the Force.  That voice that only he can hear in the presence of Darth Vader’s ruined helmet tells him, its tone and pitch and cadence shifting (starting as the booming bass rumble of Vader’s synthesized voice before being joined by the harsh rasp of Snoke.  The low, menacing tone of Maul and the cackling, wheezing Palpatine.)  Power is the only thing worth holding onto.  Let the past die, kill it if you have to.   Cut out the weakness that keeps you bound to things like family...

“This is not going to go the way you think.”

Driven on by the maddening chorus of voices, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren has now managed to track his hated Resistance opposition to the deserted world of Crait.  Ships entering the vicinity of the mysterious hyperspace blackout are slowly consumed, vanishing into the great wound and becoming officially non-existent.  Alone against his crazed nephew, the Jedi Master Luke Skywalker steps out onto the crystalline plain before the bulkhead doors of the former Rebel base.  He cannot be hit by the guns of the lumbering walkers that his errant nephew orders to fire on him.  Kylo’s attempts to telekinetically barrage Luke with the salted earth of Crait simply do not phase the man.  As he calmly reminds Kylo: “The Rebellion is reborn today. The war is just beginning. And I will not be the last Jedi.” Kylo Ren’s dangerously unstable lightsabre blade harmlessly passes over Luke as he ducks out of its reach.  Finally, the angry young man seizes his moment and lashes out at Luke’s midsection.  Nothing?

The Jedi Master nods his head slowly, the camera pulling back to reveal him sat in a meditative posture atop a flat-headed rock just off the shore of his home island on Ahch-To.  Focusing his will through the Force, Luke appears not only in front of Kylo Ren, but also between Leia and Rey inside the base.  The two of them in turn are surrounded by a loose semi-circle of the younger, more Force-sensitive recruits of the Resistance including Finn and Rose Tico.  All of them, opening their conscious selves to the Force, are helping to shoulder the burden that Luke has taken on.  Proudly, Luke slowly rises from his seat and sends a mocking salute to Kylo.  “See ya ‘round, kid...”

The last supplies are loaded onto what few Resistance carriers and short-range fighters they have left, as well as the famous Millennium Falcon. Rey and Grogu both agree that their first priority is to properly re-establish contact with Luke Skywalker.  Furious, Kylo retreats to his ship-board meditation chamber, pounding his gloved fists into the ashes surrounding the remnants of Vader’s helmet.  Cursing the scavenger girl seems to spark some interest in the bizarre otherworldly whispers, the flash-image of Rey in the dark young man’s thoughts prompting the inner voice to remark, “We shall be re-united soon enough.  Yes, you will see what new powers I possess in time, sister...”

SMASH TO END CREDITS!

[elvesofnoldor]

anyways now that i finally got it over with and watched tros, i got some thoughts^tm abt tros nobody asked for

things i absolute love:   1. young luke and leia sparring in a flashback  2. when all the voices of jedi speak through rey to grant her strength i think one of them was ahsoka’s!!! anyways we love ahsoka!!! i never thought i’d even hear her voice in a major star wars movie and im happy that i did  3. lando’s presence in the entire film  things i don’t love and kinda hate:  1. ok first of all, i actually like  the film ending on tatooine and with a shot of rey looking over the twin suns--the fact that the story ends where it begins...beautiful. BUT it’s still unsatisfying because rey isn’t a true skywalker, she just adopted that name. when it’s revealed that rey is a sheev (palpatine isn’t a last name lol even tho they kept referring to her as a palpatine), it seems the audience i watched the movie with thought it makes perfect sense and i suppose it does, but it’s still a shitty answer to rey’s true parentage, esp considering that....idk, nothing about her as a character--already as bland as she is--suggest this. 2. the fact that the tros interacted but they don’t get along, at all. its like, what’s the point again?  3. finn and poe and characters of colour being sidelined. it’s absolutely true, they are. it was all about rey and kylo, but EVEN THEN, lmao, if u gonna focus on these two bland ass characters, might as well make it so that their arcs make some sense? but no, their arcs make not even cents ok luv, not even one single cent. rey and her relationship with, like, anger and the dark side is like such rushed arc that never really gets explored in three whole movies but thats the whole point of her struggle lmao. the story in tros is all about them and their story doesnt even make no cents, so how good the story is gonna be   4. the over-simplistic portrayal of light side vs dark side conflict 5. the whole hux was a spy for the resistance thing was such cheap joke, its so stupid. what a shitty villain he is

6. this movie as a whole, its a mess and it’s not even jj’s fault. there were so much shits crucial to this movie that were never even mentioned in the last two films in the trilogy or the other major movies OR EVEN THE EXTENDED UNIVERSE. it says that leia rejected the offer to train with luke after she discovered that she’s luke’s sister in like a new EU book material but it shows in this film that they did train and she had a whole ass lightsaber? since when? luke was searching for sith pathfinder (why not holocron instead huh, why not holocrons) with lando??? since when??? and if he was on this mission, then why the fuck did he abandon the search and decided to be a hermit? how did palpatine figured out how to make thousands of star destroyers that are basically thousands of death stars? because that’s a thing now? how come nobody came for help in tlj and now everybody came in this movie? no explanation whatsoever? finn knows that he’s force sensitive now, very great stuff, but how? and when? this shit should be introduced in tlj but obvs rian jackson went and fucked it over. poe was used to be involved in spice/drug dealing business? how??? since when? he was always the son of rebel veterans and that was all? damn whats the role hes playing in this trilogy at this point? tros is trying to introduce a whole bunch of new plots and concepts from holes in the ground, if it’s already doing that, why did they scratch jj’s idea of having son of mortis to be the antagonist of the film? it makes sense that an literal embodiment of force who’s been interested in anakin skywalker as the chosen one this entire time is somehow involved in creation of rey or is shown to be manipulating the skywalker bloodline. this villain’d connect rey to the heart of the star wars in an unexpected way and better justifies her adopting the skywalker name. i hate this movie and it’s actually not even this movie’s fault, lucasfilm’s poor planning years in the making and rian johnson’s jackass deciding to take the middle instalment of the trilogy as an his fanfiction independent film are the reasons why this movie and the trilogy are the mess it is.  to be fair, star wars stories has always been products of various groups of people starting with george himself winging it and dealing with what they came up with as they go, and sometimes what they came up with were better than the others and thats all. star wars is never truly good and we should just take whatever we like from what is now a disney cash grab franchise and go! 

[jyndor]

I literally don’t understand how MRAs think that basic ass corporate feminist/diversity appeals are a threat

like my dude

Kathleen Kennedy has 99 of problems but hating men isn’t one jfc there are like FOUR FEMALE CHARACTERS who get any real screen time in the sequels AND TWO of those are damn secondary characters lol do you know how many men are in leadership at Lucasfilm?

12. Out of 27. It’s a pretty good split, and that’s not counting specifically Dave Filoni or Pablo Hidalgo, who are the most well known people on Lucasfilm Story Group. Not counting the directors of EVERY MOVIE SO FAR (Lucas of course, and also JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, Irvin Kershner, Richard Marquand, Gareth Edwards and Ron Howard, all of whom are MEN). GoT’s D&D are somehow getting their own trilogy despite being misogynistic af and terrible story tellers unless they’re adapting excellent content, Jon Favreau is running the Mandalorian (and woah hold the phone there is a woman directing!!! Wow one woman in all this) and somehow Rian Johnson hasn’t lost his own trilogy despite being sort of a meh director/writer imo.

Where’s all these powerful women in creative roles? Yes they exist but it’s pretty tilted against ladies imo. And that’s like the BASIC look at this shit, which does not include any kind of intersectionality (like how few PoC are telling these stories, or how many non-professional class rich people are telling these stories—answer is none—etc).

Look at whose stories they’re not telling on the big screen/little screen/or literally at ALL—Mara Jade, a Legends character who consistently ranked amongst the most popular CANON characters for years and years. And then they brought back Thrawn, who was not as popular but also showed that they could easily retell a Legends character’s story and change it enough to fit into their vision of canon. Jyn Erso is super popular and was killed off, okay but so was my dude Cassian and he’s getting his own live action prequel show. Jyn got some shitty animation shorts and a couple books. Like Felicity Jones clearly wants to come back, and if Kathleen Kennedy, Patron Saint Of Tiny White Brunettes, really had all the power and all the desire to destroy men lol then Jyn could have a retcon a prequel show too. (I’m actually here for a legit retcon, like let them LIVE OKAY!!?)

But we’re getting content specifically about some random Not Boba Fett (lol) and a Rebel spy, both of whom are men and I’m here for both so seriously why can’t you be here for ANY screen time that a female character gets instead of flying off the fucking handle the minute you see a woman like jfc how small is your DICK

(Seriously the vitriol Rey gets is almost overshadowed by the weird foaming at the mouth hate for Rose, who is such a boring and inoffensive character I don’t get it lol).

Rich women having equal chances to tell basic as fuck stories hoping to get the pocket change from ALL people is not threatening you any more than it is threatening me.