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sometimesrosy · 4 years

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What elements make B/E such an obvious romantic obstacle to B/C, narratively, etc?

A lot really. I mean, first, with that time jump, we needed to see that Bellamy had grown and moved on from the trauma of earth. Who better to show that transformation than the grounder who represented betrayal and brutality and murder and war to him? The one who betrayed him and almost killed his sister and held him captive. To forgive HER means he’s over the s3 bizness where he treated all grounders as the enemy who deserved death just for existing in some cases. We SAW him learn the lessons, but with the time jump and B/E he now INHABITS it. He’s grown from it.

There’s also the parallels between CL and B/E. first alliance, then betrayal, then kidnapping, then working together, then saving from sucide, then forgiveness, then love. I know some people consider CL to be endgame, but my theory here is based on CL being over, for important reasons within the narrative. So to parallel two relationships that are important and transformative, but not endgame, and to show the longer pace of B/E which shows that Bellamy was healthier than Clarke was, is a sign of character development.

Bellamy needed a relationship in order to move forward on the ship, so he wasn’t a wreck. He needed to be a whole person, who COULD live without Clarke, because the Bellarke relationship is a relationship of equals, and it’s NOT codependent. They don’t fill in the holes of the other person. They are not INCOMPLETE without each other, They needed to be shown as complete people on their own. So showing that he’d not been destroyed by her loss meant having him accept love, accept that he deserved love. Therefore, he needed a healthy relationship.

OKAY. This turned out to be A TOTAL EPIC post. And it’s too long so after the jump. STay tuned.

IT COULD NOT BE RAVEN. Wanna know why? Because Raven has her own journey. And she CAN NOT be second choice, because of her problems with finn and clarke in s1. Raven needs someone to be head over heels over her, if she’s going to have anyone. And if Bellamy had been in a relationship with Raven, CLARKE would always be standing between them. And with Clarke’s resurrection, Bellamy’s SOULMATE, Raven would be cast into second place, thus ruining Raven’s character arc, and putting Clarke into the SAME narrative of being the other woman, without any development. This would be a failure of storytelling, lacking growth and transformation which is NECESSARY for this story.

As long as Bellarke is endgame, Br/aven could NOT happen. If Bellarke is NOT endgame, Br/aven is actually the CLEAR AND OBVIOUS choice for Bellamy’s next relationship. They already love and respect and like each other. Raven is a major character. The audience loves and wants them both happy. If Bellarke were not endgame, then Br/aven would have been. If Bellarke were PLATONIC, for real? Then Br/aven should have been developing all this time. But since Bellarke is an endgame romance, Br/aven CAN NOT happen romantically.

THUS they needed a character to be his romance, to show him moving on, but it couldn’t be a character who was TOO essential that we would replace Bellarke with that ship, as would have happened with br/aven. Although it also needed to be a character who was tied to the major issues we’ve been dealing with, someone who maybe reminds him a little of Clarke even. Enter Echo. betrayals, ruthless, sneaky, beautiful, cheated in the conclave, almost killed his sister, does whatever she has to to save her people, loyal.

I’d also like to bring up Echo’s name. And I think her name DOES matter. At first I thought it was because she was an ECHO of CL and that betrayal for Bellamy. The myth of Echo, as the nymph who pined after Narcissus didn’t make sense to me, as Bellamy wasn’t a narcissist in love with his own reflection... UNTIL someone made the point that the classical concept of soulmates was one soul split into two bodies, so a person and their reflection COULD be a metaphor for this soulmate concept. Which made Bellamy in love with his reflection/soullmate Clarke, which now ENTIRELY fit the Echo and Narcissus myth. Echo is in love with Bellamy who is obsessed with his soulmate Clarke (who in s6 was ‘behind the glass’ like a mirror image! huh. Who was it that posted that theory!? that sounds like a confirmation to me.) Now again, Clarke and Bellamy are separated by this distance, and Echo goes in to find him? I hope Echo doesn’t fade away like her namesake did, but it’s possible. But Narcissus also dies at the river, in love with his reflection, becoming flowers, right? This actually fits my spec that Bellarke will “die” but in reality just be separated from their family and live out their lives in pastoral happily ever after. Anyway. The myth of Echo and Narcissus, means Echo is NOT the soulmate.

Also. JR said Clarke and Bellamy were soulmates. And fine, I don’t use commentary in my analysis... but I do if it fits, and this fits. They are SHOWN as being soulmates from season 4 AT LEAST. “you center her.” “you got it backwards.” for an example.

Okay, but now lets get to the narrative. What I told you before is more about storytelling and tropes and character development. Or HOW you tell a story. Now we’ll get to canon evidence. There’s still some storytelling in there. I’m gonna start with s5, because that’s when romantic b/e showed up.

This was the big sign to me of what was going on with Bellarke and B/E.

The first episode of s5 was almost ALL Clarke. We were focused on her survival in the wastes. We were given access to her feelings and thoughts and pov. We were given her monologue. Which was not a monologue.

It was a conversation, one way, with Bellamy. The voiceover of 5.01 was Clarke making her 2199 radio calls. Which is a romantic trope. They were, essentially like a diary, or love letters, or even a prayer, in a way. For that little bit of the story, in fact, huh. We could almost think of that whole episode as being Clarke’s tales of survival, told to Bellamy as a kind of epistolary tale. What we see IS what she said to Bellamy. Hmm. That’s interesting.

ANYWAY. My point was. The audience is put square inside Clarke’s head, and her head is “why haven’t you come home,” and talking to Bellamy and missing him.

THEN we get the scene where Clarke is talking to Madi about them, and missing them and then the camera pan up through the stars to Bellamy looking down on them, unknowingly, at the valley.

THIS IS THE MOST POETIC THE MOST ROMANTIC SHOT IN THE WHOLE SHOW. MAYBE IN EVERY SHOW EVER. It is a poem. She yearns for him, across time, beyond the stars, and he’s looking down on her, thinking she is dead, and the INFERENCE is that he’s yearning for her too, past death.

A love that literally lasts past death time and space. ULTIMATE EPIC LOVE STORY. And they are finally going to be reunited. AH, resolution for their separation and their love.

AND THEN... dun dun dunnnn, the plot thickens.

Out of nowhere, the reveal that Bellamy and Echo ARE LOVERS.

BAM! OBSTACLE. more, ROMANTIC obstacle.

Clarke’s yearning was romantic in nature. We don’t see inside Bellamy’s head, but making the obstacle to their reunion no longer tech, but instead an established romance, means that the narrative has set Bellarke on a romantic path. Because otherwise another romance would not be an obstacle. Heck, Echo is not against Clarke. Even when she was threatening her life she wasn’t really against Clarke. She gets her. As a leader and partner, she gets her. Echo is ONLY an obstacle if the goal is a romantic relationship between Clarke and Bellamy.

That it’s set up this way, as a shock, is part of the romantic narrative.

THIS is on purpose a slap in the face. Because the audience has been set up to want them to come home TO CLARKE, to want a Bellarke reunion and to FEEL that they belong together.

THEN when Echo is sure things will change between them, and Bellamy assures her that nothing will change between them on the ground, this is what’s known as DRAMATIC IRONY. The audience knows that Clarke is alive, they know that the bellarke bond is epic, they know that Clarke is yearning in a romantic way, they know that when Bellamy finds out that Clarke is alive EVERYTHING will change with his relationship with E.

But then, we get a misdirect, or rather, a plot obstacle to B/E. Octavia is not forgiving and she’s scarier than ever.

B/E is set up from the VERY BEGINNING as a romantic obstacle.

Then to prove it, we get

Clarke’s VERY shocked and jealous face when B/E reunites and kiss. That the camera focuses on HER, shows her watching them, and not on THEM means the main emotional weight of the scene is not the lovely reunion between loving partners, (thank god you’re ok i was so worried i’m so glad to see you again love love love,) but rather on clarke. (omg bellamy is kissing someone. bellamy is not mine. heartbreak, jealousy, shock!) See the focus is NOT on the established relationship, the B/E leg of the love triangle, but on CLARKE, the pining one, the one whose love is unrequited. The soulmate.

IF B/E were endgame, the focus would have been on the relief of the reunited lovers. But we’ve just spent like two episodes on the reunited (non-romantic apparently) soulmates, and the CANON relationship can’t even get an infocus shot?

A close up of someone’s face means the narrative wants us to feel their EMOTIONS. We got lots of those when Clarke and Bellamy reunited, when they hugged, when they struggled to regain their connection. But with the B/E reunion. Their faces were obscured, not shown, blurred.

Ok. And YES, Bellamy then moves on to focus on Echo and B/E, and saving her from Octavia, and that is to show that B/E is real. Because no obstacle that is not made real is going to be enough to really scare the audience into worrying that it could stop our heroes from their goal. IT HAS to be real. But even while Bellamy is proving to O that he loves Echo, the focus is NOT really on B/E, but on the Blakes relationship. And on Bellamy and Octavia. This is teaching us who they are now, after 6 years apart.

Then there’s a love scene between B/E, or half a love scene anyway. The beginning. It is cut off in the middle and cuts to CLARKE getting ready to leave.. Oddly, the music for the scene stays the same, which CONNECTS the two scenes. A LOVE SCENE cut with a LEAVING SCENE. An established romance confirmed, a pining soulmate leaving aka giving up. And in the next scene, we get this dynamic reinforced... however, there is a change. The romantic couple is confirmed again, while Clarke watches. HERE we are shown a closeup of her face, tears in her eyes, all about how she feels about their relationship, after the close up of their faces I think, and sadness and love yes. this is real. Then Clarke steps back, straighten her shoulders and accepts it. She won’t interfere. He’s not hers to love. HOWEVER, then Echo LEAVES. The established couple separates. And we turn to Clarke and Bellamy immediately he knew she was there somehow.

While B/E are split up, Bellarke are brought back together, although at this point they are non romantic, with each member choosing Echo for him. And we spend many episodes with them rediscovering their soulmate bond and getting closer and more intimate as they do so. While Echo has her OWN narrative and it has nothing to do with Bellamy or b/E.

This leads to Bellarke making pledges to each other, over her daughter, and he swears to take care of Madi when/if Clarke dies. Bellamy promises to parent his soulmates daughter while his canon girlfriend is off risking her life. They bond as, well, co parents. Making them a family unit, Mother, Father and Daughter, though no romantic or sexual relationship between the two?

Not so fast.

“Another traitor who you love.” Octavia lays out the issue. Bellamy loves Echo. Bellamy loves Clarke. She is comparing Echo and Clarke in his love. This is a ROMANTIC love comparison. She’s goading him. He doesn’t take the bait. Because he has a plan.

Bellamy sacrifices his sister for Clarke’s life. Poisoning her. His sister who has been established as the person who means more to him than anyone else in the world. When it was O or E? He chose O and let E go off on a suicide mission to win a place with wonkru. When it was O or C? He chose C and poisoned O. That is an equation. Bellamy loves these three women. C more than O. O more than E. C>O>E. When compared, Clarke wins over Echo. If Octavia made it clear that the love is romantic, then Bellamy made it clear that his love for Clarke is deeper than his love for Echo, even if he’s not ready to face that or deal with it.

AND THEN SHE LEAVES HIM TO THE PIT. He knew he’d betrayed Clarke, but it is confirmation to him that Clarke does not return his feelings. So, when that’s sorted out, he has a moment where he’s choosing between Clarke and Echo (the earth vs the sword, it’s a heavy handed bit of symbolism so we don’t miss it.) He chooses Echo. It’s the logical choice. Head over heart.

MEANWHILE, Echo and Clarke are having their own life or death convo. In which we find out that Bellamy loves Echo, Echo loves Bellamy, Clarke always cared for Bellamy but thinks him dead at her hand. NOT SO FAST. Bellamy is alive, “oh now you care?” AND THEN, revelation from the past FlameLxa tells her love is not a weakness, she was wrong to betray Clarke (canon love) and Clarke should not do the same thing (betray her love bellamy.) Remember also CL and B/E are paralleled. Remember also all the same players were at MW the original betrayal. L walked away, Echo walked away, Bellamy was under the ground, and Clarke stayed to get to him. it’s just interesting. So in the end, Clarke betrayed ELigius, spares Echo and sends her daughter (another love equation. Clarke canon loved Lxa, but she tells Madi she loves her SO much more than Lxa. Now she risks her greatest love Madi to war in order to save Bellamy. Here’s the equation. Clarke loves Bellamy>Madi>Lxa. We have two equations using actions to prove a primacy in love. Clarke love Bellamy more than all of her other great loves. Bellamy loves Clarke more than all of her great loves.

HOWEVER B/E comes back together to fight. As a couple. It is a couple reunion, but not as romantic as their first reunion, or their goodbye. THEN, they are fighting together and it isn’t romantic. And from there to the end of the season, the B/E romance disappears.

HOWEVER, Bellamy learns that Clarke cares for him so much that she called him every day for six years. That changes his perception of Clarke, and how Clarke feels for him, and when she urges him to come in, he says, broken, I can’t leave them behind. “Not again.” With the understanding that leaving HER behind was the trauma that he can’t do again.

So where did B/E go? It doesn’t matter. It’s literally not important to the narrative. Echo literally goes to sleep. B/E is frozen. What is important. Bellarke’s intimacies of saying goodbye to their families and their connection that is still there. And THEN them waking up TOGETHER and facing the loss of Monty, the revelations, the new world AND the commitment to be better, to be the good guys, together.

Known: B/E is a canon relationship. Clarke loves Bellamy and has been pining for him for six years. Bellamy loves Clarke but has moved on though he cannot ignore his feelings for her. Bellamy CHOSES Echo, but Echo keeps disappearing from his story while he focuses on Clarke and their relationship.

HOW do I know Echo is the romantic obstacle and Bellarke is the endgame rather than Clarke being the romantic obstacle and B/E being endgame?

Because the story focuses on the deepening relationship fo Bellarke, while his attachment to Echo stops it from moving forward. It focuses on the FEELINGS of Clarke about B/E, but not the feelings of Echo about Bellarke. It is never even presented. Her feelings are absent, when if her ship was endgame it would be about her feeligns at least partly. Now we do seem BELLAMY’S feelings, but his feelings which start out as about Echo vs Octavia, who hates Echo, shift and become Clarke vs Echo... evenn though Clarke does NOT hate Echo and accepts her just fine. So what is the conflict?

The conflict is that he can’t have competing feelings fo Clarke if he loves Echo. That means his feelings are ROMANTIC.

YES. He does choose Echo near the end of s5. This is because Clarke leaves him to die. Not because his feelings for her are not as strong (remember C>O>E) but because HER feelings seem to show she doesn’t care about him. UNTIL Madi spills the beans, and then he shifts back to Clarke a bit, even though his choice is STILL Echo.

Bellamy loves Clarke but thinks Clarke doesn’t love him so he chooses Echo.

Clarke thinks Bellamy loves Echo and not her, so she refuses to show him or admit to him that she loves him and she attempts to move on and keep him as her “platonic” soulmate.

Echo loves Bellamy and Bellamy loves Echo but Echo has no idea Bellamy also loves Clarke or that he is deciding between Clarke and herself. She has no say in this narrative. It’s not about her. It’s about Clarke and Bellamy. She thought the problem was Octavia. And while that’s a problem, it doesn’t affect Bellamy’s feelings for her.

Echo has done nothing to make him not love her. Their relationship has remained stable. The only change is that there is another love in the equation. That Clarke’s existence puts B/E into jeopardy means that the Bellarke love is AT LEAST as strong as the B/E love. Possibly more... the love equation says more, but we will get more proof of that in season 6.

When we actually see the love triangle thrown into comparison CONSTANTLY. S5 had Bellarke and B/E separated. We got very few shots of them all together, and when we do, it’s Clarke’s jealousy and dismay on display.

However in s6, right from the beginning, the shots have all three of them in view. With Echo between Bellarke or Clarke between B/E often. Oddly, we also see Echo supporting Clarke. Or not that oddly. They’re a lot alike. She’s not competitive with Clarke, though. Even though there IS a competition. She does’t know about it. We see Bellamy choosing B/E with Clarke on the outside in ep1, but by the time they get to Sanctum, we start to see Bellamy choosing Clarke, or Clarke AND Echo (come look at this echo) with his focus on Clarke not E. We see him REACHING OUT to Clarke. (commiserating about raising their adopted kids without school, then the radio calls conversation which she runs away from because she’s scared.) Even in the eclipse psychosis, he goes after Echo first, but then turns his attention to Clarke. Murphy gets in the way as he always does, but he ignores everyone else.

As time goes on, though, we get a NEW dynamic. He’s starting to argue with Echo. It’s over Octavia mostly, but Clarke and Bellamy use Octavia to speak about their feelings for one another, without admitting them, so is that happening here? He’s using the argument over Octavia to express his feelings of frustration and distance with Echo?

Look. I’ve been showing you the love triangle. It is a CANON love triangle, which means B/E is romantic and requited and Bellarke is romantic although it’s unrequited.

I need to show the love triangle in order for B/E to be A ROMANTIC OBSTACLE.

But just showing the love triangle means it could be B/E that is the endgame and Bellarke that is the love triangle.

How do we know this isn’t the story?

Well aside from the love equations. We see Bellarke get closer while we see B/E bickering constantly over tactics, over octavia, over feelings, in season 6a. Clarke talks to him about her regret over the pit. The making amends scene is actually pivotal in their relationship. In the C/B/E love triangle.

He accepts Clarke’s amends, and her claim that he is so important to her. He didn’t want to talk about it. But she is open and they are intimate. Cut to Clarke being PHYSICALLY intimate with Cillian, and Bellamy looking on with all sorts of emotions in his face. Sorrow, happiness, pining, regret, jealousy, acceptance, longing, who knows? And we IMMEDIATELY get Echo coming up, trying to talk to him about Octavia, and him turning ViCIOUS on her, blaming her for not being human, not being emotional, not being open (which clarke just was and is.) He’s STILL watching Clarke. B/E is falling apart, not because of anything that Echo did, but because of something that Clarke did, again. HER actions are the deciding factor, and HIS emotions are where the choice is coming in. Echo has no control over it. Her emotions don’t matter. Her actions don’t affect it. He is not a character who has agency over this storyline, over her own relationship. This scene leads to Clarke being betrayed at the same time that Bellamy apologizes to Echo and Echo, FINALLY, opens up to Bellamy about her past.

For the first time, Echo has agency in how her relationship goes, and Bellamy admits he’s a dick and commits to Echo. NOW. If this story were ABOUT B/E as endgame, this would be the point where their relationship rises to new heights and becomes stronger.

Instead. Clarke dies. And Bellamy’s attention and emotions go to CLARKE. Even when she’s dead dead, all he can think about is not having Clarke, how it’s not living, Echo comforts him but it goes nowhere. Instead, we see him grieving ALONE. Echo is willing to destroy everyone, but Bellamy chooses what Clarke would do, and keeps everyone safe.

Until he finds out Clarke is alive, and then all bets are off and it’s a race to bring her back, canon, “you only care about Clarke.”

Yeah.

True.

Another pivotal scene. Bellamy leaves Echo to take care of their people and goes with Josephine to save Clarke. Echo says “Go save Clarke,” which is a parallel to Clarke telling Echo to “go save him.” Echo let Bellamy go to Clarke the same way that Clarke let Echo go to Bellamy.

We’ve now switched who the primary relationship is. It’s Bellarke, not B/E. Echo and Clarke made the choice to let the other woman “have him.” They gave up their claim.

Everything we see with Bellamy and Josephine acts as if Bellarke is romantic and the true love in his life. An epic love compared to Josephine and Gabriel DOZENS of times. And Bellamy’s last ditch save her from death scene is GLARINGLY romantic in the way that all the best fairytales are romantic.

There was never anything to compare to this in the B/E story.

The next morning, Bellarke talk about leaving Echo and spacekru behind to save Clarke, and Bellamy still isn’t willing for her to risk her life to save them, although she insists, and they agree to do it for Monty. SO MUCH INTIMACY. And Octavia witnessed it.

Their goodbye is more romantic and more intimate than Bellamy’s reunion with Echo, even though she was STATED as at risk and being in danger. She almost died. And all she got was a hug, much like he’d hugged Harper after the fighting pit.

The hug when Bellarke is reunited, however, is cast in romantic buttery light, with emotional close ups of their faces, and a rather intimate discussion of feelings and pain, with a parallel to their OTHER hug outside Camp Jaha, which was one of the pivotal moments in their relationship.

This in contrast to the pat on the back he gave Echo before this, and how Echo, who is standing right there, disappears from the scene.

The final scene after this Bellarke intimacy, has B/E back together. ExCEPT there is NO initmacy. He’s the leader, she’s the soldier. No feelings. Just defense and tactics.

From the beginning of season 6 to the end, Bellarke and B/E have switched placed. on the non-romantic/romantic scale. Comfort and intimacy goes to Bellarke. Team work goes to B/E.

THE JOURNEY of the love triangle switches from the primary leg being B/E with a side order of Bellarke partnership, to Bellarke with a side order of B/E partnership.

Technically, because we’ve had no time to sort out all these emotional issues with B/E (although we kind of have with Bellarke) B/E is still the canon ship.

But that’s just a matter of dealing with the plot point. Because the NARRATIVE is now about romantic Bellarke, and all that’s left to deal with in regards to the B/E romantic obstacle is how it ends. (And for Echo’s side, she has been focusing on Ash, and her own independence. They have set her up to have a self empowered storyline, which means she does not need and should not have a king anymore. Bellamy is her king, even now. And she needs to be her own person. Which means B/E is doomed even without Bellarke.)

Thus I have shown why C/B/E is a love triangle. Why Bellamy needed a relationship ANY WAY. I take for granted that Clarke was in love with Bellamy and he was her fantasy boyfriend over the time jump. That Bellarke is romantic as is B/E, that the show has created a love equation for both of them. How the love triangle is shown in s6. How B/E fades while Bellarke grows, and that B/E is the romantic obstacle while Bellarke is the soulmate endgame.

I’m so tired now.

#the 100 #bellarke #b/e #love triangle #romantic obstacle #c/b/e #romantic development #romantic tropes

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wonderful-writer · 4 years

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09 - Negotiations

Summary: Unity day has arrived, and Y/n gets a little too drunk, revealing a truth she didn’t know she had. Once morning arrives, she meets with Anya at the bridge in hopes to not repeat history, but things go south quicky when Jasper fires the first shot.

Word Count: 3.20k

Based Off: 01x09 “Unity Day”

A/N: The next few chapters, along with this one, are my favourites just because it gets more into Y/n and Bellamy’s relationship

You and the others gathered around the screen that Raven had set up for camp to watch Jaha recite his Unity Day speech. You weren’t exactly listening, but you were brought back to Earth when Jasper came out of his and Monty’s tent with a large container.

“Whoo! Yeah! Monty strikes again!” He removed the goggles from his eyes, running out into the middle of camp. “Call this batch Unity Juice!”

You laughed at your brother’s antics but went over to him to have a drink with everyone else. He started to fill everyone’s cups and as you waited, you noticed Octavia slipping out of camp.

You decided you would ask about it later, but for now you wanted to have some fun. You realised that you were on the edge of the group and may not be able to get any drinks at the moment, so you went back to Jaha’s speech.

“The first Exodus ship launches in 60 hours, carrying the reinforcements that you need, so stay strong.” He informed you. You noticed your father's face on the far right side of the screen, but didn’t make a sound about it. He was likely going to be on the first ship with Clarke’s mother and almost all of the other important people, so you would have to face him at some point.

You began watching the pageant, which always had been the best part about Unity Day for you, until the radio signal cut out. “What was that?”

“Probably just interference, I’ll see if I can get it back up and running.” Raven responded, moving to the radio. You nodded and shook off your nerves. Worse things have happened.

The Unity Day party had progressed very far into the night as teenagers drank and drank. You only had two drinks so far, but excused yourself from conversation with Monroe to approach Bellamy, who was watching the party instead of joining in the fun. You saw Clarke approach him too, but continued with your walk.

“Hey, the comms are still dead.” She told the two of you.

“Best Unity Day ever.” Bellamy commented.

“I’m pretty sure there’s one that beats this,” You defended.

“Oh really? Tell me, princess, which one beats this?” Bellamy asked, motioning out to the raging party in front of you.

“Unity Day. 12 years ago. I was the storyteller, 9 years old. Got up there and puked my guts out three minutes into the pageant.”

“Okay, that definitely beats this. I have to see the tapes when they come down.” Bellamy laughed.

“Wait, that was you?” Clarke asked, and you nodded. “Oh my God, I remember that! Four other kids threw up because they couldn’t stand the sight of it, me included.”

Bellamy just laughed harder, and you shook your head. “Do you really knink now is a good time to be having a party, though?” Clarke turned serious. “I mean, the grounder is out there.”

“Grounders.” Bellamy emphasized. “By now, he’s made it home. He’s probably putting together a lynch mob.”

When he saw Clarkes stress, he spoke again. “Relax. I got security covered. Why don’t you go get a drink?”

“Why don’t you?” You asked him. “Clarke isn’t the only one who could use a drink, Bellamy.”

“I could use more than one,” Clarke commented.

“Then have more than one.” When she shook her head, Bellamy told her, “Clarke, the Exodus ship carrying your mother is coming down in two days. After that, the party’s over. Have some fun while you still can. You deserve it.”

Clarke agreed and walked away to get herself a drink.

“What about you?” You asked.

“What about me?”

“You can’t tell Clarke to relax and have a drink if you’re not going to. That makes you a hypocrite, you know.” You smirked. Bellamy rolled his eyes playfully and you laughed.

“Well if you’re not going to drink, then I guess I’ll just drink for the both of us then.” You smirked at Bellamy and walked away while still facing him before turning around to grab your second drink and continue talking to Monroe.

You had about four drinks so far, and because you’d never had any type of alcohol before, you were still a bit of a lightweight. Of course, you were sober enough to know what was going on, but you were less tight-lipped and more… loose with what you were saying and doing.

You had been roped into a game of truth or dare with Monroe, Harper, Jasper, and Monty a little while ago, and playing drunk - even if you were only tipsy - was better than playing sober.

You sat around the fire and Monroe had asked you if you wanted truth or dare. Everyone was less incapacitated than you were, because you held your word with Bellamy; you were going to drink for two people. “Truth,” You slurred.

Monroe laughed and asked you, “If you had to, would you have sex with Bellamy?”

You thought over her words for a minute, before looking up from the fire and answering casually.

“Hell yeah I’d jump his bones,” Your answer had everyone practically in stitches, but as you thought over your answer you added, “If I absolutely had to.”

And almost immediately after that, a very sober Bellamy looped your arm over the back of his neck and hoisted you up, putting an arm around your waist in an attempt to steady you. “I’m gonna take her back to her tent before she says or does anything else incredibly stupid.” He told the group, carrying you off to your tent.

Once you were inside and had your jacket off, Bellamy laid you down and covered you up with the makeshift blanket you had, thinking back to what you had just said while you giggled about nothing.

“Would you actually have sex with me?” He asked bashfully.

You stopped your giggling and motioned for Bellamy to come closer.

“Hell yeah, I would. You’re hot.” You said, giggling again and reaching up to boop his nose. Bellamy blushed, although he couldn’t place why. You passed out soon after you told him, and he left the confines of your tent to get some air.

It didn’t take long for you to wake up again, more sober than before. Your face was screwed up, indicating that you were confused. Your brain was lagging and your movements and reflexes were slower than normal, which was understandable. You remembered everything up until sitting around the fire with Monroe, Harper, Jasper, and Monty. Then it got hazy.

“How long have I been out?” You asked Clarke as you made your way towards her.

“Surprisingly, not that long. Bellamy carried you into your tent about an hour ago.” She said. “Speaking of, when he left the tent he looked about as red as the apple he was eating earlier; care to explain?”

“I would love to, but I can’t remember much after I was at the fire.” You groaned. There was a dull throbbing at the back of your head, one that you could deal with, but was ultimately annoying as hell.

You stayed with Clarke to keep yourself out of trouble, as she only sipped very slowly on her drink in case anything were to happen. She was playing some drinking game while you stood by and watched her with amusement. It was when Finn came by and interrupted her that you stepped up.

“What is it?” She asked.

“Let’s take a walk. The three of us.” He motioned to you as well, and you left the party.

“Did something happen?” Clarke asked.

“I need you both to come with me, but I can’t tell you why, okay?” He asked.

“Finn, tell us why.” Clarke demanded.

He looked back at the party and dragged you further away from it, speaking in a low tone. “I set up a meeting with the grounders.”

“A meeting? I don’t understand. With who? And how?” Clarke asked.

“I was just with the grounder that we had in the dropship. His name is Lincoln.” Finn told you both.

“Wait a second,” You interjected. “He spoke to you?”

“It’s not important.” He told you. “If we want to live in peace-”

“Finn, we can’t live in peace with people who have done nothing but kill us.” Clarke said.

“Can you think of a better way to stop the bloodshed?” He asked her.

“Yeah. With the guns that the guard brings down.” Clarke responded.

“You really want a war?” Finn asked angrily. “Because at this rate, that’s what's coming.”

“Actually, I’m on Finn’s side, here.” You told her. “I mean, if we threaten them with guns and violence they’ll only retaliate worse. If I’ve learned anything from reading history book after history book in solitary, it was the same way thousands of years ago.”

“The British came to what was called Canada in the 1800’s and there were Native Americans already living there, so the British forced them to conform to their ways and slaughtered them and oppressed them for years. They buried the Native Americans culture for decades and they were forced to deal with it. I don’t want to be a part of repeating history and causing unnecessary violence, Clarke.” You taught her.

“Look,” Finn resumed. “I know it’s a long shot, but this is our world now, and I think we can do better than the first time around.”

Clarke looked doubtful, so Finn told her that he trusted Lincoln.

“I don’t.” Clarke rebutted. “But if we go, we have to bring backup.”

“No way,” Finn disagreed. “We’re not bringing guns. Those weren’t the terms, and if we’re gonna do this, we’ve got to give it a fair shot.” Clarke sighed, but agreed. You went to get your pack and jacket while Clarke went to get hers, instructing you to meet at the gate. You took off the daggers on your thighs and removed the sword from your hip before meeting the pair at the gate and heading off.

“I would love it if you were right about this, but did you ever consider it might be a trap?” Clarke asked.

“Yeah, but since it’s Unity Day, I decided to have hope instead.” Finn responded cheekily.

“I hope your hope doesn’t get me killed, Finn. I tried it once, it didn't work well with me.” You shook your head at the memory of literally almost dying at the hands of a grounder.

“Seriously, Finn. You’re putting a lot of faith in a guy who stuck a knife in Y/n.” Clarke nodded to you.

“Eh, it’s fine. Really; I’d rather die trying to get peace than kill others without.” You shrugged.

“And you’re sounding more and more like Bellamy.” Finn commented.

“I’m just trying to keep us alive.” Clarke affirmed.

The sun had risen by the time you got to the meeting place, which was an old bridge where Octavia waited. As she noticed you, you went up and hugged her.

“Did you set this up?” You asked her. She nodded and you let go of each other, Clarke barely giving each other time to fully let go before interrogating her.

“So you’re the one that helped the grounder escape.”

“I trust him, Clarke.” She told her.

“There’s a lot of that going around.” Clarke side-glanced Finn, who pointed out that someone was coming.

Running through the brush was Lincoln, and once Octavia caught sight of the man, she ran up to greet him with a hug. You smiled at the pair. Even though Lincoln had almost killed you, you felt happy that Octavia was happy with someone. She’d basically been alone her whole life and she found someone who believed in her.

Then, there was the sound of hoofbeats on the ground, and people came riding in on horses. You and Clarke gasped at the sight, having never seen them before. You, Finn and Clarke ran forward to Lincoln, Finn exclaiming that there wasn’t supposed to be any weapons.

“I was told there wouldn’t be.”

You and Clarke began to walk forward with Finn, who was stopped by Lincoln. “They go alone.”

You and Clarke nervously walk forward to meet the woman who wasn’t hearing a face covering. You silently decided between some glances that you would do most of the talking, to avoid any unnecessary bloodshed or misunderstandings between yourselves and the grounders.

You met in the middle of the bridge. The grounder looked you both up and down before speaking. “Your name is Y/n?” She asked you. You nodded.

“And you are Clarke?” She asked Clarke, who also nodded. “I’m Anya.” She introduced herself.

Clarke stuck out her hand to shake, but Anya just looked at it before Clarke pulled away.

“I think we got off to a rough start,” You began. “But we all want to find a way to live together in peace.”

“I understand,” Anya responded. “You started a war that you don’t know how to end.”

“What? No, we didn’t start anything.” You spoke, trying to explain, but Clarke interjected.

“You attacked us for no reason.” You glared at Clarke, and tried to explain yourself, but Anya spoke up before you could.

“No reason? The missiles you launched burned a village to the ground.”

“The flares?” You realised. “No, that was a signal that was meant for our families. We had no idea-”

“You’re invaders.” Anya interrupted. “Your ship landed in our territory.”

“We realise that we’re invaders.” You spoke up again. “We didn’t know that anyone was here, we believed that the earth wasn’t survivable. We thought the ground was uninhabited.”

“You knew we were here when you sent an armed raiding party to capture one of us and torture him.”

You looked down and sighed at Bellamy’s actions.

“These are all acts of war.”

“I see your point, Anya. I do. I’ve read enough history books to realise that this is a repeat of what happened centuries ago. And that’s why we came here. To put an end to all of this before it starts.” You informed her.

“Lincoln said more of you are coming down, warriors.” Anya questioned.

“Yes, the guard. But also farmers, doctors, engineers.” You persuaded. “We can help each other. But not if we’re at war.”

“Can you promise that these new arrivals won’t attack us? That they’ll respect the terms you and I agree on?” She asked.

“I can’t give a full guarantee right now, we would have to get our radio working again and talk with the council, but we will do everything in our power to get them to honour the terms that we’ve set.” You told her truthfully.

“Why would I agree to an alliance that your people could break the moment they get here?” Anya raised her voice in anger.

“If you fire the first shot, those people coming down won’t bother negotiating.” You told Anya. You were seeing more and more how this was like the history books that you collected. You didn’t want to be like the British, and that’s why you were here in the first place.

“Our technology,” You spoke again. “They will wipe you out without hesitation, and I’m trying to prevent that.”

“They wouldn’t be the first to try.” Anya spoke.

“Y/n, Clarke! Run!” Jasper called out from beside the river, startling you. He began firing shots at the trees across the river, grabbing your attention as Anya pulled a dagger from her sleeve, but Bellamy shot her in the arm before she could move another inch.

She ran back to her horses and you locked eyes with Bellamy as Finn called for you both to get down and avoid any arrows or bullets. As you leapt to the ground, an arrow very narrowly missed your arm, creating a small cut on your shoulder. “Finn, get back!” Clarke called out.

He didn’t listen and instead grabbed the both of you and hauled you up, dragging you away from the bridge as grounders still fired arrows at you, one landing in Lincoln’s chest. He broke it off and instructed the four of you to run back to camp and not to stop until you get there.

You ran behind Clarke with Raven, Jasper, and Octavia ahead of the two of you, and Bellamy and Finn just behind.

Nightfall came once you reached camp, finally slowing down. You breathed heavily along with the others who tried to catch their breath.

“What the hell was that?!” You shouted angrily at the group.

Bellamy and Finn glared at one another until Bellamy spoke up, ignoring your question. “You got something to say?”

“Yeah. I said no guns!” He yelled.

“I told you we couldn’t trust the grounders! And I was right.” Clarke shouted at Finn.

“Why didn’t you tell me what you were up to?” Raven asked her boyfriend.

“I tried, but you were too busy making bullets for your gun!” He defended.

“You’re lucky she brought that!” Bellamy interrupted. “They came there to kill you, Finn.”

“You don’t know that!” You shouted for the first time since your arrival. “Jasper fired the first shot!”

“You ruined everything.” Octavia blamed him. His face turned into a look of hurt as she gave him a disgusted look. Before turning around and heading into camp.

“I saved you!” He yelled after her. “You’re welcome.” He scoffed, heading inside after her.

“Well if we weren’t at war already, we sure as hell are now.” You glared at Bellamy, who ignored your gaze.

“You didn’t have to trust the grounders, Clarke.” Finn told her. “You just had to trust me.”

You conveyed a look of hurt and betrayal to Bellamy as you followed Finn and Raven to head to your tent to sleep, although there was a guarantee you wouldn't get much. Your shoulder began to burn a little where your surface wound was, as the adrenaline of running and yelling kept it away.

Before you even walked past the middle of the camp, a loud explosion caught your attention, as well as the rest of camp’s.

You looked up to see something entering the atmosphere, which you assumed was the Exodus ship.

“Huh. I guess they’re early.” Octavia commented from beside you. You hadn’t even noticed she was there.

You watched as it came closer to the ground, but became increasingly worried. “Hold on. They’re going too fast. And no parachute? Something’s wrong.”

You watched it hurtle towards the ground and crash in between two mountains, a large mushroom cloud floating upwards into the air. Your heart stopped beating in your chest as you grabbed Octavia’s forearm in shock.

Your grandmother. Your father. They were both supposed to be on the ship. “No,” You whispered. Tears brimmed your eyes, making your vision cloudy as you shook your head.

“No. No, no, no!” You sobbed, nearly collapsing as Octavia pulled you into her arms for support.

She pulled you into your tent and sat down on the bed with you, letting you rest your head in her lap while she stroked your hair and covered you with the blanket. You cried into her lap until you fell asleep, but Octavia never left your side that night.

Taglist: @soullessbabee | @hyperion-moonbabe-art3mis | @dummythiccwitch | @sireddobrev | @gxvrielle

#bellamy blake #bellamy blake imagine #bellamy blake series #bellamy x reader #bellamy x you #bellamy x y/n #this is war series

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lightaroundthecorner · 5 years

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TROS - What did I even watch? Or how I lived to see the day Disney murdered a prince, left Cinderella alone in the desert, and hoped for the world to rejoice because it was “fun”?

Dear friends, I’ve been here for the spoilers and I’ve even talked with some of you. I went to watch the movie today, with 0 hope of anything except of seeing my baby Ben Solo and Adam’s fenomenal acting (and listening to some good John Williams).

I knew it would be horrible, but as @nevernerdenoughblog said seeing it makes it even more. Like @clairen45 it felt so wrong. Should I rejoice with a Reylo kiss that Rey gave but seconds later didn’t even cry over Ben’s dead body? I refuse to acknowledge this characterization of Rey. She was the only one that ever believed in Ben Solo, she shipped herself to make him know he was loved and wanted and to help him. Where was this Rey in this movie?

I am sorry guys (especially for the tagging) but I need to write this out or it will eat me and you guys are the few ones that relate to my pain. You know what really hurt me the most in all this? Toxic masculinity disguised as feminism.

1) FAREWELL HEROINE’S JOURNEY

They trashed the Heroine’s Journey. They murdered it and spit in its face. JJ Abrams simply decided that the Heroine’s Journey (done in act 1/ep. VII and act 2/ep. VIII) was not cutting anymore and decided to send Rey on a Hero’s Journey (ep. IX only, new 1st, 2nd and 3rd act altogether), where she has become this almost toxic masculine fighter under Leia’s training — Badass girl? Yes. Full of anger? Yes. Logical? Yes. Connected to anything? No, not even herself, she kept on the run, afraid. In search of the Jedi detachment? Yes. —, only to send her happilly off to a desert planet in the end of her journey and finishing with her alone talking with an old lady.

Which remind us of the start of TFA, meaning she has comeback to what? Luke didn’t even comeback to that “home” in Tatooine the end of his Hero’s Journey? So she went to a place of death to what? This is a slap on the face of the Heroine’s Journey. This is how toxic masculinity corrupts and interrupts the most uncomfortable (to psychologically unhealthy bystanders) and fundamental (to the woman herself) phase of Heroine’s Journey: You want love, family, a partnership, connection, nurturing or progeny? That is weak, it is foolish. You need to fight, to conquer, to take, take and take. Otherwise you won’t be strong or independent.

REALLY???????????

I AM CRYING! WHY? WHY? WHY? Daisy, are you really seriously satisfied with this ending? Because REY DESERVED BETTER.

BTW, BEN SOLO DESERVED BETTER! The true feminist of this story DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER! ADAM DRIVER DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER! He always respect the director’s view, does his best to accomplish it and brings his best acting to the table. The only saving grace in the whole movie to me was Ben’s arc because 1) Adam was doing it and 2) He honored his character. Man he deserved so much better!!!!!

I’m not even going to repeat what everyone already said about where is George Lucas’ Fairytale Story, because you guys said it all. But I have a beef with Disney executive decisions:

2) WALT DISNEY - HOW I WISH WALT WAS ALIVE

Walt Disney. Much have been criticized concerning his choices to make HEA in fairytales. But what now? We find balance by wanting our children to grow up to be cynic and seeing the feminine as weak? Unhelpful? Bad?

“Yo independent women! You need no prince even if you have one. He can compassionately and selfelessly die to save you because he loves you and you can go off, happily, to celebrate with your friends! You don’t mourn his body, oh no. You don’t tell him you love him. You forget him. You go be that cool lonely warrior.”

Excuse me but I can kick ass and have the romantic love life and children I want! I can have both! Because I am a human being and I deserve it. This is not a matter of being a men or women. This is a matter of balancing the feminine and masculine within.

But that is not just it. BEN SOLO DESERVED BETTER! WALT WOULD NEVER, EVER LET A CHARACTER THAT WENT THROUGH ABUSE AND SO MUCH PAIN DIE THE WAY BEN SOLO DID! Is that a Disney movie??????? I mean, what did I just watch????

Walt Disney, the man who promised P.L. Travers, upon knowing who Mr. Banks was to her (her deceased alcoholic father) and what Mary Poppins, her work, meant to her, said:

“George Banks and all he stands for will be saved. Maybe not in life, but in imagination. Because that is what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.”

THAT IS WHAT STORYTELLERS DO! Like so many fanfic writers in this fandom @nite0wl29, @stargazer1116, @intp-slytherin97, @eleanor-writes-stuff, @postedbygaslight, @raven-maiden, and so many others!! Btw, thank you all!! My vacation starts tomorrow and I’m going to read again all your amazing fics to regain exactly that: HOPE!

What was TROS? Leia and Luke believing in the good in Rey? The whole Jedi Order believing in her? I have nothing against that but why didn’t they believe or help Ben too? Ben didn’t receive any of that love, WHY? What was wrong with him? What did he do?! He was the most selfless of souls, just like his Father and Grandmother. Is this vicntim blaming??? WHY DISNEY, LUCAS FILM and JJ ABRAMS, WHY?!

I used to think people were wrong when they said Disney was only doing SW for money. Because Walt Disney also said and lived by this rule:

“The important thing is the family. If you can keep the family together — and that’s the backbone of our whole business, catering to families — that is what we hope to do.”

SW is about family and I refuse to accept ep. IX as SW. It has all the make up of SW, but it lacks the heart and very essence of it.

As dear @eleanor-writes-stuff said, so much for criticizing Rian Johnson, only to consagrate his work. That man honored the storytelling art and I’ll be forever grateful to him for his touch in SW and for how his writing touched and changed my life. And I know Waltz would have approved too because he also said:

“I prefer to entertain people in the hope that they learn, rather than teach people in the hope they are entertained.”

3) PLOT? WHAT PLOT?

Leia’s feelings for Ben have remained ambiguous, you can both read her as someone who wants her baby boy dead (because her death allows Rey to stab Ben to death if she wants to, when Ben was never going to harm Rey) or not. Actions speak louder than words, and this was the movie when Leia would have the chance to assume the responsability for her mistakes and take action, instead of only claiming she believed her son was alive.

If she clearly wanted to reach Ben, was Maz’s words needed? No, they weren’t. It was exactly because Maz needed to voice it that proved Leia’s actions could be read as ambiguous. Again, actions speak louder than words. Her body only disappeared after Ben’s did too because what? She was expecting him to die so she could collect his soul?

I dearly love Leia’s character but LEIA DESERVED BETTER! CARRIE DESERVED BETTER! In the end I’m not sure what to make of the ST Leia. She could have helped Ben but clearly sent him away to Luke because? What?

Ben Solo get his redemption from his own 2 hands + his father’s memory (not force ghost) + Rey’s confession. In the end he becomes the bride of the monster, only to die right after, in a what? Plot twist?

Finn, who? That was so messed up! Rose? Poor Rose!!! Hux? Oh Hux deserved better too. I was glad to see that Poe matured though and grew in his arc.

I’m also mad and confused about other plot points:

Ben throws his bleeded kyber krystal away because of his father. Okay. Why did no one help him when he cried on the Force to crack his kyber and soul, but Luke Force Ghost appears to catch Rey throwing a lightsaber in an on fire tie fighter?

Rey would turn to the Dark side if she killed Palpatine, right? 5 minutes later she won’t turn to the Dark Side anymore even if she still kills him in anger? Just because the self righteous jedi chose to let Ben get thrown down the abysm by himself but Rey was the Chosen One?

Still on this topic, so she choses to give up her soul so Palpatine uses her body as the vessel of his soul and the legion of siths, in order to save her friends, but she won’t take Ben Solo’s hand, even if she claims she wants to + retaining her body, to do the same?

I think force bonds don’t make much of a difference anymore when one of the parts dies. Ben can die and Rey seems pretty okay?

INTERESTING FACT: Beside me there was a father with his 6 or 7 year old son. The child kept asking what was going on everytime the movie introduced any plot twists or too much information too quickly. When the Reylo kiss came on screen, you know what the kid said? “I told ya!” I wanted to cry when seconds later the boy was claiming now was Rey’s turn to bring Ben back. Children understand the Heroine’s Journey and it doesn’t scare them. It is beautiful like that. The father then had to try and explain to the boy that other things were going on and that no, “that guy was gone”. What have you done people?

4) EPISODE X

I must have a clown face. They lied to us about this movie being “The Rise of Skywalker”. Maybe they lied to us about this being the end of the saga? Considering JJ claims this is fun, happy and hopeful, yeah, I doubt they are making an episode X or ressurecting Ben Solo after throwing in the garbage the Heroine’s Journey. I vaguely remember Adam also said he wasn’t going to appear in another SW.

IF they do announce an ep. X, I’m not watching it unless Ryan or someone like him directs the movie.

I loved to see Han Solo’s memory helping his son. That man trully loved him and it is tragic that he screwed up as a father only because he thought he wasn’t enough to be a good one and that Leia and Luke would know better.

I also loved to see Ben Solo as his father son and grandchild to his grandmother and great grandmother. He was beautiful and I love him and he’ll be forever with me.

I liked the Reylo kiss... but Rey’s actions in this movie have affected me so that it doesn’t feel like they scrapped the surface of making justice to this that could have been the happiest and most balanced of all SW couples.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN EPIC. IT COULD HAVE BEEN GRAND. But it wasn’t.

I’ll forget TROS. YBTOTT is now canon to me, because it is a perfect 3rd act in this trilogy, and @postedbygaslight honors the Heroine’s Journey like few writers have the gut and courage to do. Thank you so much Wayne!

And if anyone had the patience to read this to the end, thank you. I feel it too guys, this was awful and horrible.

#star wars #sequel trilogy #heroine's journey #tros spoilers #ep. ix spoilers #the rise of skywalker spoilers #spoilers #I extremelly rarelly consider a movie horrible #but this I can't deal with

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legobiwan · 5 years

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Just got home from The Rise of Skywalker. No pithy intro, I’m just going to jump right in and it’s going to be a LONG rant here so buckle up, my friends, and be sure to read below the cut. SPOILERS AHOY YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Okay, so yes, the first third of the movie went at a blistering, nearly nonsensical pace. JJ really had to cram a whole watermelon’s worth of exposition into a...well, you know, there was a lot to take in. This movie had to do so much telling instead of showing because it was such a departure (and middle finger to TLJ) from what came before.

The thing was, the first third was also the most interesting part of the movie. I actually wish the whole trilogy had started with all of the Sith nonsense. (Actually, I wish they had started with Kylo absolutely wrecking shit like he did and then the Palpatine scene. People would have made all the wrong assumptions and it would have been glorious to unravel it over three films.) There is a strong history of Sith artifacts in both Nu-Canon and Legends, and it wouldn’t have been out of place, considering what we know now, to have made Rey, Poe, and Finn’s quest for these artifacts the start of the new trilogy, and then told the rest of the story in a non-linear timeline. Probably too experimental for a Star Wars reboot, but it would have grabbed attention and everyone like creepy Sith shit.

Frankly, I would have dropped zombie-robot Palpatine at the very start of the trilogy, as well. It’s bonkers but I don’t hate the Rey Palpatine thing and they could have spent the rest fo the movies explaining this weird-ass lineage and how it relates to Kylo, Snoke, etc. and then have built back to the final confrontaion on Exegol.

Leia. Trained. Rey. I so so so so so wished we had been able to get more of this. This, in my mind, is what it should have been all along. I liked TLJ (okay, so shoot me) but Master Leia is a whole other level of awesome. If I had to rewrite Luke and Leia’s roles, it would have went something like this:

Luke was searching for Sith artifacts. Luke was becoming disillusioned by what he was learning of the Jedi through “The Sacred Texts.” WHO DOES THAT SOUND LIKE? Hmmmm, I wonder....

Could you imagine Luke started to go a little Dooku in this respect, and so instead of fucking off the Ach-To because he had a feeling that was more “gravy than of grave” about Ben Solo’s dark sidedness, he fucked off to Ach-To - or even better - gave up training in order to keep himself from going down a darker path.

And so instead, Leia is getting involved with training (and probably also governing at the same time because she would be an overachiever like that.)

Enter Ben Solo, who is Force sensitive, strong, being trained by his mother and occasionally his uncle, who is not totally plugged into the light side at the moment, which can rub off on Ben. Meanwhile, Han is maybe not the best father (he wants to be, he tries, but it all comes out wrong. I’ve been watching a lot of Psych lately, so I’m thinking of a dynamic similar to Henry and Shawn, but a little more dramatic.)

Of course, Palpatine is seeing all of this behind the scenes, he’s fostering ill will and discontent through the scattered remains of the Empire, sending Snoke clones out to be almost pseudo-religious/cult figures in the wake of the economic and social devastation left by the Empire’s fall and the floundering new government. Extremism, in pockets, rises. Extremism which preys on discontent, which preys of the desire for family, for belonging.

Enter again Ben Solo, who has been pitted against the other strongest trainee, Rey (insert whatever last name you want. She knows it’s not her real name, she knows she was an orphan on Jakku, but she was brought by Luke to be trained). Ben is pissed how she and Leia bond, has been talking to his uncle, and perhaps encountered a Snoke clone on the way.

Rey, on the other hand, is no one but wants to be someone, and that manifests in weird ways during her training. Perhaps she leaves at some point, perhaps not. But the seeds of her being Palpatine’s bloodline are laid within her. She wants to seek that belonging Ben has.

Okay, but getting away from my personal rewrites of the sequels, Star Wars is about family and lineage, both blood and found. There was so much potential to play on this throughout the trilogy with the Skywalkers, with Rey’s relation to Palps that if they had just planned the damn thing, it could have been brilliant.

Moving ...(for now)

I felt so bad for Oscar Isaac. I felt like I watched his soul slowly depart his body over almost 3 hours. That man was not a happy camper and it came out in his performance.

Power levels. Here’s the thing, guys. Magic needs to have consequences. Sure, you can cast a spell, but what does that take from you? You can use the Force, but to what degree? How much? Even Anakin exhausted himself at some points, and he was (allegedly, according to one Qui-gon Jinn), the Chosen One. It’s the first law of thermodynamics - energy can neither be created nor destroyed - and the Force is literally the energy of every life thing in the galaxy. You take the energy, use it towards something else, it has to drain from somewhere. This is what bugged the hell out of me with Rey’s Force Healing abilities (an ability that doesn’t thrill me to begin with as it’s so easy to overuse). Kylo keels from resurrecting the dead (and yeah, he was pretty beat up already), but Rey barely seems to breathe a beat harder. Once you start ignoring the consequences for magic, you end up like a shitty video game, and one of the criticisms I’ve leveled at the movie is that it feels like a montage of Battlefront and I can’t say that’s totally off point.

JEDI HUNTERS. Ochi. I will bet my right liver we’re going to hear something about this on The Mandalorian.

So I know a lot of people wanted to see Rey Kenobi, but there was one piece of glaring evidence in the film why that would never be. (Aside from Kylo just announcing it to Rey.) She has a lightsaber, but she still ends up using a blaster. So uncivilized.

Speaking of The Mandalorian - Stormtroopers with Mando jetpacks. Hmmm.....

I loved techno-Sheev hooked up to all the equipment just floating. That was creepy as hell and played with the whole cloning and extension of life that was such a large part of the Darth Plagueis novel (which I still consider to be canon, higher powers be damned). Also, Palpy’s glowup with the wardrobe was hilarious.

Dark!Rey was hot. There, I said it.

Let’s talk about romance. Or the lack thereof. Or the shoehorned thereof.

Poor Rose got shafted in this film with no explanation. I didn’t buy that whole thing in TLJ, but god damn anyway. (Finn also got shafted, for different reasons, which I will talk about later.)

If they were going to romance, just let it have been Finn and Poe, Finn and Rey, or fuck it, even a trio.

I mean, I could have bought Reylo if it had been presented better. (With context. Adam Driver is an amazing actor, another thing I’ll talk about later.)

The Reylo kiss though - my theater laughed. No joke.

Of course, this was the same theater that thought Lando was trying to mack on Jannah at the end, so who knows what we were all thinking in there. (On that note, Lando was hilarious because no matter what, he was just having a grand ‘ol time in the movie. I like to think he got a medical spice card in his retirement years and was just enjoying anything that came his way, be it Wookiees, Jedi, starships, wars, whatever.)

While the Reylo kiss didn’t hit the mark the space lesbian background kiss got cheers, so there was some hope for my fellow theater-goers.

Did anyone pick up on Threepio saying the Senate made the bill that would render him incapable of translating the Sith language? No doubt that was a Palpatine move from TCW era.

What is up with these movies and desert/jungle planets? Ugh. Thank everyone for Kijimi, at least that was interesting.

New characters I loved: Babu Frik and DO.

Finn’s Force sensitivity. Yes, I totally buy it. I wanted more. I wanted more fucking context of a Stormtrooper who would have known nothing of the Jedi getting these feelings and then bailing from the First Order (or, if I were writing the movies, bailing from the remnants of the Empire/Snokes weird military cults.) Totally underutilized character development.

We. Were. Robbed. of Good!Ben. Adam Driver is so phenomenal. Form the little we saw of redeemed Ben, he is the perfect mix of his parents, from the “Ow” to the eyebrow wagging, the swagger, the smirks...I LOVED good!Ben. I wanted so much more good!Ben. What a transformation.

Speaking of which - the scene between Kylo/Ben and Han was terrific. I wish we had had more context for why everything went south, but it was so good and the type of family dynamic we really needed more of.

The Knights of Ren looked awesome in this film? They needed to be like the Black Order of Star Wars, and they were getting to it, but not quite there. Gods, they could have been the enforcers of Snoke’s cults (Palpy’s puppet cults) that could terrorize far more than a normal, brainwashed Stormtrooper, who was only useful as cannon fodder (I mean, if we look at the history of the clone army to the Stormtroopers, it would be terribly fitting.)

That ship tug-of-war was DUMB. (See my rant about magic and consequences). But, if Rey was going to shoot lightening Palpy-style and blow up a ship, Chewie should have died. I’m sorry, that’s terrible, I love him, but there needed to be consequences for actions and throughout the film, there were either no consequences or random consequences that were a narrative convenience rather than developed into the plot/characterization/worldbuilding.

Here’s the thing with the ST - there is so much potential. There are some awesome ideas. But they wanted to play if safe with JJ by rebooting the OT, Rian was too far out for them, there was no cohesive storytelling, and so we get these little glimpses into what could have been amidst a shitstorm of trailers for Battlefront 17.

we could have had it allll....

Final rating: 4/10

#the rise of skywalker #the rise of skywalker spoilers #tros spoilers #tros #hello there #rants from the lego compound #and what an appropriate tag it is #rey #kylo ren #finn #poe dameron #sheev palpatine #leia organa #luke skywalker #han solo #bunch of other characters i'm not tagging right now

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reylorabbittrail · 5 years

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Long, Barely Coherent Thoughts about The Rise of Skywalker

Since some of you wanted to hear my thoughts about “The Rise of Skywalker”, I’ve taken some time to write them up and provide context for why I responded the way I did.

A small preamble: I didn’t hate it. Hate is a strong word. And there were moments that I liked. Some that I even loved. However, the aggregate feeling for the movie overall was disappointment. For certain elements, it went beyond that into something genuinely painful and I don’t think that will make sense unless I also go into why I loved the previous two installments of this trilogy.

Also, if you loved this movie, I’m very happy for you. This is about my personal response to a piece of media and I make no judgements on those who enjoyed what you saw. I wish I could join you.

Finally, I will be talking about some sensitive subjects, including child loss and abuse. Please be aware of that before reading further.

Okay, so what was my overall impression of The Rise of Skywalker?

Soulless. Cowardly. Incoherent. Badly paced.

I spent large portions of the movie unable to get into the action because the pacing was so breakneck. There was no time to breathe. Consequently, there was never enough time to recover from one rush before another started. If everything is exciting, nothing is.

I think that this was a deliberate choice to cover up the lack of sense behind the exposition. Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron looks dead inside as he temporarily takes up the mantle of Basil Exposition to explain that somehow or other, Emperor Palpatine has returned and there’s a hard time limit on destroying his fleet.

This is a fine example of a running problem throughout the movie. Whereas both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi used visual storytelling to move the story forward, things in TROS were explained through dialogue time and again. And the dialogue was incredibly clunky.

But back to the story. We are given a paper thin explanation of the Emperor’s return, and immediately are thrown into a fetch quest to find the Big Bad. I’m sure it will make an exciting video game adaptation.

The thing though is that the fetch quest makes no sense. One of the wayfinders is found in the first two minutes of the movie. Yes, it’s in the hands of the bad guys. But does the audience not remember that our heroine is bound to the villain? Why couldn’t she try to use that bond to get at the directions? Why does the Resistance not try to use that bond? Has she hidden from them her connection to Kylo Ren? Either she’s built up a wall of mistrust between her found family and herself by keeping the bond a secret, or she’s revealed all and no one thinks to try to use that bond to their advantage. It’s just conveniently overlooked.

Oh, a sidenote. Wayfinder. Why? There is an in-universe word for such objects already. It’s a holocron. Why not use holocron? We throw Star Wars-isms at the audience all the time. It would be an Easter Egg to the diehards while not bothering the general audience one iota.

Back to our fetch quest. We head to the desert planet of Pasaana. There’s a festival going on. A festival about family. Rey looks longingly at children and infants. A child gives her a fertility necklace. And then suddenly she’s connected by her bondmate through the force.

Now it’s no secret that the Rey and Kylo dynamic is one of the reasons I loved the first two movies in the trilogy. The actors have great chemistry. More importantly, the characters have interesting conflict. And yet that conflict seems off in this movie. TLJ left them complicated enemies. But they feel out of character. I don’t understand what each is trying to get out of their encounters. I have to do massive amounts of work to understand their actions and the dialogue doesn’t help. Because it doesn’t ring true.

Setting such details aside, Kylo rips off the necklace in a moment worthy of the Phantom of the Opera and for once it’s an action that makes sense, having both the subtext of obsessive love and jealousy, and the text of offering a clue for analysis to Rey’s location. Bravo. The writers did something right.

Meanwhile, we get a clunky reintroduction of Lando Calrissian. Has he been stuck on this desert for over 7 years? Longer? We just don’t know and he doesn’t tell us. Our heroes hitch a ride and then we get a fun speeder chase.

Okay, a couple more questions. There’s some good stuff here. The omnipresence of the First Order helps convey how thorough their control is. But why doesn’t Rey hotwire the speeder? It was established two movies ago that she’s a good mechanic. And on Jakku that kind of skill makes sense. Why hand that off to Poe? And why this Trio stuff. It’s fanon. We have just been assuming that Finn’s best friends would form the new Han, Luke, and Leia. Because reasons. None of them textual. It was a failure of TFA to not establish this dynamic if this was an essential element of Star Wars that had to be there from the start.

Which gets to the heart the problem in fandom which is that Star Wars is different for every fan. What is essential to the series is subjective. For me, Star Wars is light sabers, hyperspace, the Force, epic battles, strange world with one biome only per world. So I’ve never felt like something was missing. But if an essential element was a very particular character dynamic (like a good guy Trio), then I can see why some fans felt let down. As if all the pieces were there but never got put together.

Back to Pasaana. We have a brief descent into the underworld in which Rey has a moment of true Jedi compassion and is rewarded when her compassion for the monster leads to an exit from said underworld. Nice. Mythically coherent. And hey, we also get one of the MacGuffins we’ve been searching for, so, bonus.

Now we get the arrival of Kylo and his backup band. What was the point of these dudes? I mean, they look cool and I can’t wait to edit videos of them to classic NKOTB. But narratively, why are they there? Why did Kylo reforge the mask? Why all these questions in the third act when we should be in the process of tying up loose ends.

Rey, in a moment reminiscent of bull leaping from Crete, goes out to stall them? I guess? And then ends up in a battle of wills with Kylo that leads to her inadvertent use of Force Lightning.

Okay, another side trip. Are they trying to make out that Dark Side Powers are genetic? Because that’s all I can figure. Really, it’s kind of gross because it suggests that darkness isn’t a human trait that we all carry and must confront, but rather that Rey’s specific problem is a dark legacy. Which, that’s Kylo’s story. He’s the one grappling with the legacy of Vader and how that led his family to fear his darkness rather than aid him in confronting it.

Anyway, we have Rey briefly thinking she’s killed Chewie and that sets our heroes off to our next quest location and another set of problems: Why did we make the Latino man a drug runner and car thief? No, this isn’t just putting an unneeded real world spin on the universe. This is about narrative consistency. Because in a bid to make Poe Dameron an ersatz Han Solo, they broke his actual in-universe back story that had been established in comics and novels. That Poe Dameron was a pilot in the New Republic Navy, the child of war heroes Kes Dameron and Shara Bey. He grew up on Yavin IV. When did he have time to be a smuggler? He’s only a few years older that Ben Solo.

See Lucasfilm has a Story Group that is supposed to help keep narrative consistency between the various media released. And I can’t help shake the feeling that the Story Group was ignored or stonewalled. To please who? The fans? Which fans? Because I would be under the impression that the fans who read the novels and the comics, who dig the trivia aspects of the universe, would be the first to desire the universe to remain coherent.

The Kijimi stuff is fun. Babu Frik is adorable. C3PO is touching. There’s good moments. There really are.

We now go to the infiltration of the Star Destroyer (Does it have a name? Nerds, help me out here. Usually I know this sort of thing.) Again, good moments. I like the implication that Rey’s Force Powers disturb Poe, but it’s never brought up again. One of dozens of Chekhov’s guns left unfired. This is incredibly sloppy in the plotting. Hux is the mole!?! Fun. Yet, again, wasted. And out of character, but I’m sure that’s not going to bother the general audience. Rey gets caught sneaking around in Kylo’s bedroom? Priceless, and some good imagery (smashing the altar to Vader) combined with incredibly clunky dialogue and some more serious questions that never get answered.

The whole time Kylo thought Vader was talking to him it was Palpatine? Why the hell does he still have that mask on a pedestal? He just couldn’t bear to get rid of a collectible? He hadn’t had time to konmari yet? And just what does smashing the pedestal symbolize? Is this the start of Kylo breaking free? We’ll probably never know.

Rey escapes on the Falcon. After getting the worst character reveal in the Saga. I’m sorry. Rey Palapatine is just dumb. I liked that she was a nobody. It allowed her to be the Forces solution to the manipulation and abuse heaped upon the Skywalkers. She was brought into the story and bound to the last scion of House Skywalker as a corrective. She wasn’t overpowered. (No really. She executed a few very basic Jedi skills in the first two movies, none of them exceptional.) And her skill level makes sense the moment you understand that she is bound to Ben Solo. She is literally downloading his training. She can do what he can do. Even her fighting style mirrors his. Fun fact: if you watch the scene in The Last Jedi where she’s practicing sword forms on Ach-to, and compare them to Kylo in his duel with Luke, they’re identical. To a move. Rey is powerful because the Force chooses its vessels. No one was asking who Mace Windu’s parents were. Or Ki-Adi Mundi’s. But Rey is skilled because a very clear in universe device means she has access to Ben Solo’s mind and that included every skill he ever learned.

Alrighty, so now our team is on to the next step in the quest, the ocean moon of Kef Bir, one of the many moons in the Endor system. (No, it’s not the Forest or Sanctuary Moon with the Ewoks.) We meet Jannah, another wasted character. She is pretty and could have been cool. But she exists for us to realize that Finn is probably Force Sensitive and that he broke conditioning not due to innate morality but because he’s not a Muggle.

Which brings me to my gripe with how Finn’s character was treated. He spent the whole movie running around shouting Rey. That’s it. That’s his arc. I don’t mind that he can feel the Force. But I feel like his development was regressed. He had a clear character arc in the first two movies. From a man running away from responsibility to one willing to fight for a friend, to a man willing to commit to cause. This movie should have had him building on that, and perhaps like Moses returning to free the rest of the Stormtroopers who are canonically child soldiers brainwashed into fighting for the bad guys.

Back to the plot. Rey takes off for the Death Star, searches the haunted house and yet again has her moment in the cave, this time confronting a dark vision of herself. Dang that was cool. Would have liked to see more of that. Anyway, she confronts Kylo and he smashes the holocron. Emphasizing for us how pointless this fetch quest has been. Girl could have hopped a ride in his TIE at any point and dealt with the fallout after they dealt with the emperor.

They fight. It wasn’t a bad fight. Just not my favorite. It did emphasize though that Kylo is never ever fighting on the offensive with her. Never in three movies has he ever taken an advantage of an opening for a killing blow, and never was it more obvious than in this fight. Kylo gets distracted, Rey stabs him mortally, and this act seems to wake her up from whatever possessed her in the throne room. She heals him and runs away.

This brings up another thing that bothers me. I know the filmmakers were working with some severe challenges with their footage of Carrie. I don’t think it was badly used for the most part. But I was left baffled at what exactly was going on here.

I was not baffled at Kylo/Ben’s confrontation with Han. This was the high point of the movie for me. It was pitch perfect in tone, and touched on the one an only sin Ben ever committed that wasn’t connected to a war objective, the murder of his father. And it made clear that the prodigal was loved and wanted and it wasn’t too late to come home. The heart of Ben’s problem has been the conviction that he has done too much wrong to come home, and while it is only a memory, it is a true memory of the man who loved Ben enough to walk straight into Hell though he knew it would probably be the death of him. I can forgive this scene for throwing the lightsaber into the ocean. I realize that most of the audience doesn’t know that you can heal kyber crystals. Yes, the saber was a metaphor for Ben’s damaged and unstable soul, and yes, it would have been poetic (and badass) for him to show up later with a healed lightsaber, stable and blue and looking like something an angel would fight with. But I’ll forgive that for the poetry of what happens on Exegol.

And then we go to my low point. I’ll set my costumer’s beef with Luke Skywalker’s wig aside. It looked cheap and that’s all I’ll say. It was more the deliberate middle finger to TLJ in the lines while ignoring that Luke’s most iconic and Jedi-like moment in the original trilogy was casting aside his lightsaber in an act of compassion. Yes, Rey was burning her ship and throwing away her weapon for the wrong reason. And it was a deliberate echo of Luke who also was appalled when his fear was twisted by the Dark into an attack on his nephew. She is overcome with the same shame and fear of self. Luke can speak to this in a real way. With better dialogue, it might have worked for me. Alas, it didn’t. Instead we got more exposition to provide us with an extra lightsaber. And more questions about why everyone in this family gave up on Ben Solo.

Here’s the thing. If Leia remains untrained, lots of things make sense: her instinctive but infrequent use of the Force; her fear for her son and sense of inadequacy in dealing with he struggles with darkness, her unresolved issues with her father which lead her to hide her parentage not only from the galaxy but also from her own son. All of this is undone by the training reveal and makes us wonder why everyone was willing to help a descendent of Palpatine but not their own flesh and blood. And in a movie that used dialogue to explain nearly everything, these lacunae stand out more than they would in a film that trusted the audience more. See you could have had Luke say “We messed up. We gave in to fear. And we didn’t want to make the same mistake with you. Rey. I’m the son of Darth Vader. I know more than any man that we are more than our bloodline. And forgetting that with Ben was the worst mistake of my life.” But he didn’t. Which in a movie which tells as much as or more than it shows seems like a deliberate choice.

Have you noticed that I’m ignoring the space battles? That’s because they’re forgettable. I just didn’t care about them. Especially since the galactic conflict remained essentially unresolved. Back to the Force Plot, the only plot that matters.

Rey confronts Palpatine. Yawn. At this point I just don’t care. For most of the movie, she hasn’t seemed like my Rey. I couldn’t relate and by this point I’ve lost interest so I’m more wondering where did all these people come from. Are there concessions? How much does a hot dog and Coke cost on Exegol? Does this stadium have bathrooms? Nice to see that it’s built like the AT&T one down the street with the sliding roof panels. And then my boy Ben Solo arrives and the film is good again. Without a word of dialogue (besides “ow”) Adam Driver delivers the best performance of the movie, showing that the Han Solo of the trilogy was there the whole time in his son. Was there ever a more Han Solo thing than running into a Dark Side temple in your pajamas, armed only with a blaster? And then Rey passes him Anakin’s saber. OMG. Brilliance. The best part of the movie. For a moment I thought that they would at least wrap it up well. And for a moment they’re side by side and all is right in the world. And then Palpatine throws Ben in a pit.

I hate this. I don’t hate this movie but I hate this moment. For three movies we’ve set up that Rey and Ben (He’s Ben now; don’t’ @ me.) are equals in the Force. They have a Yin/Yang dynamic that made this work. The natural conclusion here should have been that they take out Palpatine together. Because both have a beef with him. This is the man responsible for ruining the lives of four generations of Skywalkers. And while Ben is at the bottom of a pit, Rey stands alone, calling on the Jedi to help her.

The Jedi that are ignoring the Skywalker at the bottom of the pit.

Including Ben’s grandfather that he’s been begging for years to help him.

Including his uncle who promised to always be with him. (We were robbed of Ghost Luke trolling Kylo. Robbed I tell you. Mark Hamill would have nailed that.)

Ben is at the bottom of a pit being ignored while the Jedi transform Rey into their sacrificial lamb for Girl Power points.

So, yeah, I hated how Rey defeated Palpatine. It was wrong. It wasn’t in union with her bondmate. It wasn’t through the power of love and compassion. It was Space Wonder Woman meets Harry Potter. And then she dies. Because the Jedi only ever viewed people as tools in their grand battle with the Sith.

But Ben. Oh, Ben loves Rey for who she is. And he climbs out of the pit without a lick of help from anyone and cradles her lifeless form in the most heartbreaking Pieta, and you can see on his face the moment he make his decision and gives everything of himself to bring her back. It was beautiful, and they share the most pure, the most perfect kiss.

And then he dies.

And that’s where the movie breaks me. Because he didn’t have to die. It doesn’t make sense. Why does Leia hold on until this moment? Why does Maz seem satisfied? Where did Ben go? Why does he go unmourned? Where is his Force ghost? This movie just leaves us with more questions.

And the very end kills me. Rey is on Tatooine. A dead world that holds no importance to her (or Leia, I might add). She buries the Skywalker sabers. A funeral. She sees the ghosts of Luke and Leia bless her as she takes on the Skywalker name. A name that she could have taken in a life-affirming way through marriage, but that appears as scavenged from the dead that she has surrounded herself with as she ends the movie an eternal child, side by side with a stolen droid.

It makes no sense.

But whence my nerd rage? Why do I care? Why have I devoted over 3K words to this?

Because the first two movies in this trilogy made me care about these characters.

When I first saw The Force Awakens, I connected immediately with her loneliness. Loneliness is something I get viscerally. I have always been socially awkward and had difficulty making friends. I rarely felt known or understood and I understood that deep longing to belong. When Rey was being interrogated by Kylo Ren, that was what struck me. He notices her loneliness.

And you realize that Kylo is projecting. That he is seeing in her a kindred spirit. He too is lonely, and trapped by fear into being stuck in a place that he knows in his heart of hearts is a dead world. He too is trapped by relics of the past.

So, you see, Rey and Kylo were both me. I had lived that loneliness. I had experienced profound isolation and the sense that no one truly understood me. I desperately wanted them to find their belonging and heal their wounds. And that’s certainly the story that TLJ picked up on and continued.

But there was more. I became fascinated with the question of how the son of Han and Leia fell, and I could see the possibilities in the pattern of their characters: Leia, the woman driven by duty, trying to build the New Republic to make a better galaxy for her son, and leaving her son vulnerable to predation in the process; Han, a man who had only just stopped running from responsibility, and who’s own lack of father figures left him feeling inadequate as a father. Throw in a villain who can groom and psychically abuse their son and you have the ingredients for a tragedy.

And because I identified with Leia, Ben became, in a way, an additional child. A parent’s greatest fear is that in trying to do the right thing for your child you inadvertently make things worse. Poor Leia. She needed a mother to tell her child mattered more than a bill in the Senate. That the galaxy could wait. But Palpatine killed her mother. Both her mothers, because he was as complicit in the death of Breha Organa as he was in the death of Padme Amidala Naberrie.

So when Ben Solo died, it was like losing a child. And anyone who knows me personally knows that I do not choose that phrasing lightly. And being a mother, there is always a sense of survivor’s guilt. The sense that if you had done the right thing, it wouldn’t have happened. It doesn’t matter if that isn’t the truth. It’s how it feels.

I have met so many people online who identify with Ben Solo because they were abused as children. Who like him processed their trauma in unhealthy ways. It’s not where I come from, but I have the capacity to empathize and hear the message they’re inadvertently being told: that if you do bad things because you’ve been groomed and manipulated and brainwashed, you can’t come back. Even if you turn your life around, it won’t matter. You’ll only find peace in death and you will die unremembered as punishment for your sins. And your family will replace you with someone nicer and easier to live with.

But I can hear you saying: It’s not that deep. It’s fake and in space. It’s just a story.

Well, here’s the problem:

1) The brain does not distinguish real people from fictional characters. The part of the brain that produces serotonin and dopamine can’t distinguish fact from fiction. This is actually why art has the power to heal. The catharsis experienced in a work of art can help us process trauma because we relate to the characters in the story. But the flip side is that stories can cause genuine trauma. If we related to characters in a story and they are treated unjustly, we feel that injustice and it hurts as badly as if it were real.

2) Ben Solo was written to be sympathetic. He is the child of beloved characters. His backstory is one filled with pain. He was failed by every family member who should have protected him. He was abused physically and mentally for years. Recently published materials exonerate him from the destruction of the Jedi temple. It was all part of a plot to push him to the Dark. All Ben ever wanted was to be loved for who he was. And that was snatched away from him.

3) I can’t turn off my brain. I can’t stop asking questions and trying to make sense of things. I can help but see the Chekhov’s guns and the symbols and the messages, however inadvertent.

4) It is a grand failure of a movie if it only works on a surface level and not when you start digging deeper. Every other Star Wars movie, including The Phantom Menace, rewards the person who can’t turn off their brain. This was the first one that falls apart so completely the second you start asking questions.

I wish I could like this movie. I was prepared to like it if not love it. And while I got Ben’s redemption and the Rey and Kylo romance that I wanted, I feel like I got nothing. Like they don’t matter at all.

I am planning to start new hobbies in the new year. I got some war gaming miniatures painting sets for Christmas and I’m glad I have a new special interest to pour myself into. I have enjoyed sharing my love of Star Wars trivia with my kids but it just hurts too much at the moment to spend time thinking about a franchise that has been so badly mangled. I’m probably in the bargaining stage of grief at the moment. I wholly buy the theory that there was happy ending filmed and someone blinked in the game of chicken, leaving us the mess that we were handed.

I’m also planning to get back to writing. If even Disney can’t tell a fairy tale properly anymore, it’s time for a new batch of writers to get out there and tell the stories I want to hear. I am sick of grimdark fantasies and cynicism masquerading as sophistication. I may write a fanfic or two to fix the story in my mind, but I think that ultimately I need to be creating original works. I know that there are children eager to believe in happy endings, plenty of women who believe that Byronic heroes can be redeemed, and not a few men who will buy both if the story is well told.

#tros spoilers #negativity #cw:child loss #cw: abuse

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imagitory · 4 years

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Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker review [SPOILERS]

Hey, everybody! So I just got back from seeing the newest Star Wars and...whew, am I tired!

For those of you who want a spoiler-free review, I’ll just say that there’s a reason people are so split about this movie. In some ways, I could argue that TRoS is trying to be its own stand-alone thing, and it does so by shoving in way too many plot beats and new characters without enough development or even a satisfactory conclusion for them...and yet at the same time, it tries so hard to evoke the original trilogy like The Force Awakens did, whether through iconography, cameos, or other kinds of fanservice. To put it very simply, if you disliked The Last Jedi, you might come out enjoying this more, since this movie and its director clearly shared your view, but even if The Last Jedi is a flawed film, I feel it still ended up having better direction, character arcs, and storytelling than this film did.

For those of you who don’t fear spoilers...journey on.

The Good!

+Just like in the other installments in this new trilogy, there were some great action moments. I liked when Kylo and Rey were fighting over the First Order ship with the Force, pulling it back and forth like they had previously done with Anakin’s lightsaber. Poe’s lightspace jumping in the Millennium Falcon was a cool trick, and I actually really enjoyed the short suspenseful bit with Poe, Finn, Rey, and the droids sneaking around in the wintry planet Kijimi, too.

+The trick at the end where Rey passed Kylo Anakin’s lightsaber through the Force and the two battled side-by-side while in different locations was neat. I might’ve liked to see that trick used differently (see below), but it was still really cool.

+Poe and Finn were acting like SUCH boyfriends during this entire movie. I don’t care how much “NO HOMO” J.J. tried to slap on these guys in the script (and I’ll discuss that in a minute), these two were friggin’ boyfriends and that was canon, end of story.

+I liked that Leia was able to mentor Rey, and Leia’s death was appropriately sad. It felt like I was mourning Carrie all over again, especially since we’re so close to the anniversary of her death.

+It was kind of cool to see Luke’s old X-Wing again. I might’ve had it reappear in a different way, but it was still cool.

+Rey hearing all of the Jedi in her head for the first time when she was facing Palpatine at the end was great. I might’ve pushed it further and made it more visually interesting, but I’ll get to that in the more negative section.

+For all of the rather unnecessary fanservice, there were a few music cues that really worked -- namely, the Imperial March echo when Rey arrived in the old throne room on the Death Star, Leia’s theme upon her death, and the Jedi theme when Poe saw the fleet of reinforcements arriving.

The Not-So-Good...

+The Reylo-ness of it all. *dodges knives* OKAY. LISTEN --

If you’re a Reylo shipper, then good for you. I mean that sincerely. But I’m sorry, I am convinced that this ending could only have been satisfying to you if you were on the Reylo ship from the very start due to your own personal shipping preferences, because there is NOTHING in the films that justifies the powerful emotional bond that these two supposedly share. Rey and Kylo only met two movies ago, and in both movies, Kylo showed no interest in improving himself and being a better person. None. I don’t care if Rey “sensed” goodness in him -- that is a terrible, weak short-cut for a writer to use, to tell us that Kylo is good without showing it to us. We still see him slaughter people en masse in the very first scene of this movie. We still see him trying to force Rey to join him, even if it puts the people she cares about in danger. We still see him hooking up with Palpatine -- FRIGGIN’ PALPATINE -- after he’d only just rid himself of Snoke. I don’t care if Kylo thinks he can get rid of Palpatine like he did with Snoke -- I don’t care if he’s conflicted and worried about Rey -- we the audience see no evidence that Kylo has truly changed his ways and is worth saving. Leia SACRIFICED HER LIFE to try to help him -- for what?? I know she’s his mother, but I’m sorry, Leia: if your husband couldn’t save your son from himself, why would you be able to? Why didn’t you almost dying in The Last Jedi not affect your son more, if he really cared? Why was calling his name all you had to do? Why didn’t you do that before he started killing all these people? Because it wasn’t dramatically convenient? Because he was fighting Rey at that exact moment and the writers needed to find a way to end that action scene that otherwise could’ve ended with either Rey or Kylo dying? And I’m sorry, but this whole storyline resulted in the one thing I’d dreaded more than anything would happen in a story that shipped these two -- Rey became a tool to Kylo’s redemption. Rather than standing apart as someone with no legacy who builds her own through being a good, noble person, she became defined by her familial and romantic relationships more than she was by her actions. I know Rey ended up defeating Palpatine in the end, but most of her screentime still ended up devoted to her “bond” with Kylo Ren and showed how her love brought him back to the Light. Because seriously, screw the love Kylo’s parents showed him, or Luke showed him -- all they did was sacrifice themselves trying to help him while also standing by their morals and never being tempted to fall like Kylo did -- no, only Rey could’ve brought him back to the side of Good.

And before any of you even try to wave the Sith Lord of my Heart, Darth Vader, in my face, as Snoke said in The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren is no Vader. Vader was tethered to the Empire and to the Emperor, thanks to the injuries he sustained on Mustafar that left him trapped inside his mechanical suit -- if he’d left the Empire, he would’ve died, and on top of all that, he’d already lost his entire family and turned everyone he’d ever cared about -- who were all Jedi -- against him by falling to the Dark Side. Vader had been Anakin -- a slave who was bought out of enslavement by the Jedi, who then turned around and taught him to -- to borrow a phrase -- “conceal, don’t feel,” even if it meant turning a blind eye to the death of his wife and unborn child. Kylo Ren turned to the Dark Side because...honestly? WE NEVER GET A GOOD ANSWER. The best I can get from the films is that Kylo Ren was manipulated by Snoke, who went on and on about how powerful Kylo was and how he should use that power to “bring order to the galaxy” and stuff like that, and then one night Luke held a lit lightsaber over his head for a minute. That justifies falling to the Dark Side and slaughtering all the wittle Jedi? No! And yet Kylo never once has to grapple with what he did -- he never has to make amends. He’s just forgiven, like that! And although Vader likewise never got the chance to make amends, his sacrifice means more than Kylo’s because Vader, through his sacrifice, finally learned the true meaning of love after an entire lifetime of knowing so little of it. The only people who had ever loved Anakin either died or left him -- Kylo always had people who were willing to forgive him, and he spat in their faces. Vader had no one, until his son discovered who he was and tried to reach out to him. And when he reached out, Vader didn’t stab him through the chest or immediately brand him with the murder of his evil master -- Vader followed orders and brought Luke before the Emperor, yes, but when Luke was about to die, Vader saved him.

Kylo Ren’s story could not and SHOULD NOT be Vader’s story, so giving him the same ending is completely unjustified and mismatched with the story being told. Even if the story of a girl and a guy saving each other with “the power of love” was somehow equal in emotional resonance to that of a son trying to reconnect with his father and his father sacrificing his life to save him, that story of a guy and a girl was not built up properly, as we never get much backstory about why Kylo fell, much action on his part to acknowledge his mistakes, or rationale for why we should care about him despite what a terrible person he was and still is. He cares about Rey -- great! Does he care about the Resistance? Leia? Luke? Han? Lando? Chewie? ANYBODY excluding himself and Rey? Han as a Force Ghost at one point suggests that Leia will never die as long as they remember what she stood for -- since when is that something KYLO REN ever cared about?! Leia DESPISED the Empire and Darth Vader, and yet Kylo Ren and the First Order have done nothing but wrap themselves up in their rhetoric and iconography!

On that note, though, I will acknowledge that Kylo Ren, as a character, has always given me certain troubling real-world-like vibes, and that may be part of the reason why it really infuriates me that the movie tried to redeem him. Kylo Ren is a privileged young man from a respected, powerful family who embraces and romanticizes the atrocities of a previous generation, resents others (rather appropriately, a young woman and black man with no greatness in their family names) for taking what should be “rightfully his,” and vows to bring things back to when that previous evil institution was in its full glory -- isn’t that exactly what modern alt-right Neo-Nazi types do? Romanticize the Third Reich and the Klan and wrap themselves up in their supposed “glory,” while being nothing but a pale, pathetic, anger-driven imitation? Even if you don’t personally see Kylo the same way I do, I hope you will at least respect that -- given this lens I see the character through -- it makes sense why I dislike any attempt to give this character sympathy.

+ *inhales heavily* ...Rey...is a Palpatine. *groans in aggravation* J.J., ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? Did you not get why Rian Johnson made Rey’s backstory the way he did, or were you just so in-line with anti-TLJ fans that you wanted to spit in his face in film-form? I know a lot of people were pissed off when Rey was determined to be a “nobody” after what felt like hints of a more developed backstory in TFA, but I seriously can’t help but think that those people missed the point. Rey being a nobody and yet being talented in the Force fixed the whole problem brought up by the Midiclorians in the prequel trilogy -- namely, the thought that you can only be born special, because of your genes. With Rey not being a Kenobi, or a Skywalker, or a Palpatine, it says, “Yes -- you don’t need to have been born special. Anyone can tap into the Force, because it is everything, as are we.” This is even why it’s hinted in previous movies (and once or twice in this movie, though it doesn’t go anywhere) that Finn is Force-sensitive -- Finn, a ex-Stormtrooper! But by turning Rey into a Palpatine all along, J.J. has once again made the Force only something that a select few can tap into -- only special people can have the power needed to stand up to evil. Sure, ordinary people like Poe and Finn can blow things up, but only special people like the Skywalkers and the Palpatines can stop the Sith from destroying the entire rebellion. Instead of this being a story about a girl who had no legacy and yet earned the title of heir to the Skywalker legacy purely through her noble heart and selfless deeds, this became a story of two people -- one from a good family and one from an evil family -- having to come together to deal with their family drama and save the galaxy. Maybe some people wanted to see that from the start, but frankly I didn’t, and even if that story could’ve been told well, it was not the story that we were set up to watch, after we saw The Last Jedi. It also irritates me because of how much the film tries to play Rey’s parents SELLING HER ON JAKKU as them “saving her” from Palpatine. I call BULL. Even Luke was only “saved” from Vader by being given to relatives on a backwater planet -- Rey’s parents ABANDONED her. If you thought that Frozen 2 retconning Elsa and Anna’s parents’ attitudes toward Elsa’s magic was problematic, whoa, boy, have a gander at this. (I actually kind of like Agnarr and Iduna as individual characters in Frozen 2, but I actively have to distance Frozen from its sequel because of canon discrepancies like this.) Rey’s parents didn’t need to have a “good reason” for dropping her off on Jakku -- this film even acknowledges that Rey’s real family is the family she found: Finn, Poe, BB-8, Chewie, Leia, and the Resistance. Rey’s parents could’ve been assholes. Many people’s parents are assholes. Rey is not their child anymore: she is a Skywalker, and that’s all that matters.

+Oh yeah, and speaking of The Last Jedi, NOTHING matches up in this. J.J. literally wrote two complete movies and shoved them together in this one in a vain attempt to completely retcon the last film. Poe earning back his position in the rebellion after learning a lesson about not always barreling into danger without thinking? His character arc has vanished and he shows no more talent for strategy or leadership than he did before. Rey only seeing herself when she was looking for her family? Nope, turns out she was a Palpatine all along: the Force was just trolling her, I guess. Kylo accusing Rey of killing Snoke? Doesn’t come up at all. The young boy using the Force to pick up the broom? Never appears. The signal sent across the galaxy asking for help? Poe says half-way through the movie that nobody came, so it may as well have never happened. Rose and Finn? No mention of the kiss on Krait or anything -- they act like they barely know each other, and Rose has almost no screentime. Even Lando’s return, which should’ve been great, happens when he appears on this random India-like desert planet -- why was he there? Why does he no longer live in Cloud City? Wasn’t he its leader? Wouldn’t he have better fit in a planet like Canto Bight, one that was glitzy and kind of seedy, instead of a pastoral place like that? It’s like reading the first six books in the Harry Potter series, only to end on a version of Deathly Hallows where -- surprise! -- Hermione was actually a pureblood witch all along and she’s actually related to the Lestranges and also Hagrid pops up in Godric’s Hollow to save Hermione and Harry from Nagini for no reason at all, plus Ginny is just a side character now and the author seems to want you to think Harry likes Hermione even if Ron and Harry totally have more chemistry but NO HOMO YOU GUYS COME ON.

+Hahaha, on that note, WOW, have I never seen a film more desperate to try to prove to its audience that its two male main characters are not totally boyfriends. Even though J.J. decided to placate angry fanboys by rather unfairly marginalizing Rose Tico (come on, she may not have been written the best in Last Jedi, but you’re not going to fix that by IGNORING HER ALL TOGETHER), he still thought it best to introduce two new female characters, Zorii and Jannah, who both could’ve been very interesting if they’d had their proper amount of screentime and development, but instead only serve to be substitute “love interests” for Poe and Finn. That might sound harsh, but they literally have no other substantial relationships that get explored in this movie outside of the ones with their respective “guy.” It felt like the film was going, “Look -- Poe’s not gay! He’s got history with this chick, and he gives her a look at the end! And look -- Finn’s not gay! He might’ve been trying to confess his feelings to Rey which totally made his not-boyfriend uber jealous BUT THEY’RE NOT GAY YOU GAIS, and he’s doing stuff with this girl, who was also a Stormtrooper!” Sorry, film, but methinks you doth protest too much. (Even Poe’s actor Oscar Isaac apparently thinks so.)

+Another theme from The Last Jedi that I loved and J.J. clearly didn’t is that the dichotomy between “Jedi” and “Sith” doesn’t inherently equate “good” vs. “evil,” and therefore just because the Sith are evil, it doesn’t mean that the Jedi -- who preached detachment from all affectionate emotions and familial ties -- were right. Even the Resistance is flawed. It’s actually something the prequels and the Clone Wars TV show preach too, and it brings so much more grayness to the Star Wars mythos. In The Rise of Skywalker, however, the Jedi and the Resistance are just seen as the good guys, period, end of story. Who cares if it results in your story being shockingly simplistic and oddly shallow, when compared to the rest of the Star Wars universe?

+The treatment of the Stormtroopers in this movie was actually kind of infuriating. We consistently get reminders about how the First Order’s Stormtroopers were child soldiers who were stolen from their homes and brainwashed, as evident by both Finn and Jannah, and yet throughout the entire movie, they still get cut down in the hundreds without care. Even Finn -- an ex-Stormtrooper himself -- shoots them up like they’re NPCs in a video game! For a film trilogy that did something so powerful by showing the humanity underneath the white helmet, we sure got a film that didn’t give a shit about these people unless they had their helmets off.

+Speaking of the First Order, I saw the Hux-as-the-traitor “twist” coming and I hated finding out that I was right. Honestly it could’ve been played very interestingly if Hux maybe tried to overthrow Kylo and take over the First Order himself, therefore showing how Kylo’s fear-stoking and hatred don’t bring out any loyalty in his followers, but it only results in Hux immediately getting axed off and replaced with another First Order officer we’ve never seen in any of the previous films and therefore don’t care about. Why couldn’t we have reused D.J. the hacker from the previous movie as the spy, or better yet, have the “spy” actually be Kylo, leaking information that he thinks might coax Rey to the Dark Side? The last two films built Hux up as an interesting character, but he was tossed out even more unceremoniously than Commodore Norrington was in the Pirates films.

+This problem of “replacing one antagonist with another out of the blue” is replicated on a large scale with the return of Palpatine. This entire film series has been centered on Kylo Ren and the First Order, but all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we’re just expected to turn all of our focus onto Palpatine and the Knights of Ren, both of whom have had no bearing on the story previously. It could’ve been cool to learn more about the Knights of Ren, but we don’t learn anything about them -- we just see them suddenly being there, when they’d never been there previously. As for Palpatine...did we REALLY need him brought back? Really? The First Order was a threat because they’d wrapped themselves up in their romanticized, false view of the Empire -- that was a choice they made. It didn’t have to be because Palpatine was secretly alive all along and was pulling the strings -- people can do things of their own accord, without a grand, evil mastermind coming back from the dead out of nowhere. Kylo Ren finally got out from under Snoke’s shadow in The Last Jedi and I was so excited to see him come into his own as a villain, but instead all he did was skirt around the coat-tails of Palpatine the entire movie, and it was really disappointing. I WANTED a final confrontation between Kylo and Rey in the climax, like the films had been building up to -- instead all we got was a half-baked “redemption” for Kylo where he teams up with Rey to fight somebody else who just wandered into the story out of nowhere. Even Palpatine’s plot didn’t make any sense -- he tells Kylo for the first half of the movie that they need to kill Rey even though Kylo really wants her to turn to the Dark Side instead, only for Palpatine to (I guess) change his mind at the last minute when Rey arrives in his lair, and yet they play it off as him having planned for that to happen all along because he needs Rey to kill him so she can become one with him and all of the other Sith -- look, I know Palpatine’s whole characterization is hinged on him being a criminal mastermind, but all I want is some consistency! How are we supposed to know what the threat is if we don’t know what our villains want?

+“The Force” is used to rationalize a lot in this movie, from where Rey decides to walk to what plot devices our heroes will need later to why our characters do what they do. Even Finn, who in The Force Awakens accented that he made a choice to break away from the First Order because he saw what he was doing was wrong, now apparently believes that the Force decided that he should join up with Poe and Rey...and I just don’t like that, let alone buy it. The Force was never equivalent to “destiny” -- yes, Anakin was the Chosen One, but he only fulfilled it because the Jedi believed in it enough to train him and he fulfilled the prophecy in a way no one could’ve imagined...and even so, the Force doesn’t dictate everything. Everything is part of the Force, and the Force is part of everything -- but it shouldn’t just be a deus-ex-machina that moves the plot along or does whatever the author needs it to do. For instance, why can the Force suddenly heal wounds?? Since when is that something it can do?? If it could do that, and someone largely self-taught like Rey can do it, then why didn’t Jedi Master Anakin or Obi-Wan ever do that? Why didn’t Anakin use some of his life force to save his dying mother? Why didn’t he think to use it on Padme, or why didn’t Obi-Wan use it on Padme? Why didn’t Luke think to use it to save his father? The only reason why the Force can do that now is that the writers needed to justify why Kylo could give up his remaining life force for Rey, but in order to do that, they give the Force an ability it’s never had previously and doesn’t match up with the previous canon.

+If we’re talking about the Force, though, I have to write a separate bullet point accenting this -- WHY. DOESN’T. FINN. USE IT?? The film clearly likes the thought of Finn being Force-sensitive, but it’s too cowardly to just make Finn a Jedi. When Kylo and Rey were fighting over the ship, why didn’t Finn do something to help?? Why didn’t he blast Kylo or, more relevantly to this discussion, show off some of his latent Force talent by helping Rey yank the ship back? Why didn’t Finn use his Force ability to reach out to Rey while she was fighting Kylo, or fighting Palpatine? He could’ve been the one to wield Anakin’s lightsaber and fight side by side with Rey in that final battle, if Kylo had been the villain like he should’ve been. Maybe Finn confronts Commander Hux inside the command post while Rey’s fighting Kylo, and when Rey tries one last time to connect with the Jedi of the past, she’s able to connect to all of the Jedi, living or dead -- including Finn, as he also has been nurturing a talent in the Force! Through their new mental connection, Rey and Finn are able to help each other, while also being surrounded and spurred on by the corporeal, translucent spirits of Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace Windu, Ahsoka Tano, and the rest, all appearing and disappearing one after another around Finn and Rey as they fight. Poe should’ve been commanding the troops from above in Luke’s old X-Wing, it being the only ship he could get his hands on (because I’m sorry -- Han gave Rey the Falcon, she should be the one using it, yet this film just stubbornly kept her out of the driver’s seat for some reason), giving them all of the support he could from the air so that the rest of the First Order can’t interfere with the four-way duel between Finn, Rey, Kylo, and Hux. Maybe when the electricity in the ships gets messed up, Poe’s even able to remember something Rey or Finn told him to tap into the Force enough himself to keep himself airborne until he’s able to crash-land safely. While Hux and Kylo fight to destroy their opponents individually, each seeking glory and victory solely for themselves, Rey and Finn fight together as friends, taking lessons from the Jedi that are their mentors but also standing apart from them and being better than them.

+This movie really felt like two stories smashed together because there were way too many plot lines that were dropped like a hot potato not long after they were introduced. Finn having something to tell Rey? No conclusion. 3PO getting his memory wiped? Resolved quickly a few scenes later with little fall-out. Chewie supposedly getting killed? We find out within minutes that he survived. All of the new characters we meet, like Zorii and Jannah? They get one or two short scenes each where we barely get to know them at all. Even the India-inspired planet I mentioned earlier gets blown up because the First Order thinks it’ll upset the Rebellion and get them to come out of hiding, but...this film is the first time we’ve even seen this planet! We barely spent any time on it! This is really the obvious first choice of a planet whose destruction would upset the Rebellion? We don’t even know any of the characters who live on it personally! At least when Alderaan got blown up, Leia’s parents were on it, so we feel sad for Leia’s sake, but we haven’t built up any emotional investment in that planet that was just blown up.

+Along with this movie feeling like it had too much stuff in it, it also felt very, VERY long. The pacing was very bad, with there being no organic rise and fall to the action and the climax really just feeling like a bunch of plot turns stacked haphazardly on top of each other. When I came out of the theater, I even heard a little boy say to his dad, “That was really long,” and I had to agree with him. It’s not even that long compared to other Star Wars movies, but I just felt like I was being yanked around by the arm throughout the entire run-time, so rather than feeling invested in what was happening, I found myself tuning out and wanting the filmmakers to just get to a point.

Overall, I really don’t think I can recommend this movie. Every Star Wars fan should probably see it, and it’s possible that quite a few of you might get more out of it than me if you disliked The Last Jedi and want to see a movie that “sticks it” to that movie for whatever reason...but even if you do, surely you would agree that stories should not be written like this, where one part is completely invalidated by another and there’s no build-up for anything that happens? Stories should not be just something that you’re passively pulled through by the author -- they should engage you: make you feel for the characters, make you think about its themes, make you guess what might happen next. A story doesn’t mean less if you can make educated guesses about where the story might go if you see where it began -- it also doesn’t mean less if it subverts old literary or canon tropes. But this movie didn’t subvert anything -- instead it openly contradicted and retconned just about everything in the last movie, to the point that Rise of Skywalker clearly wanted to be two movies but didn’t have enough development or care put into it that could prompt a real emotional reaction from its audience. In short, it ended up being an overly complicated, watered-down retread of Return of the Jedi with none of the power in its supposedly “bittersweet” ending. The first two installments in this trilogy got me excited for a new take on Star Wars, to the extent that I for the first time actively looked into the fandom surrounding the films instead of just enjoying the films on my own. It’s therefore quite disappointing to me that the trilogy had to end on such a weak, petering note.

Overall Grade: D

#the rise of skywalker #star wars #star wars spoilers #spoilers #opinion #analysis #oh boy here i go #reviews #anti-reylo #anti-kylo ren

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geekundercover · 5 years

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Okay, just gimme a minute to screech about The Mandalorian

Just watched the season 1 finale today and I’d like to vomit my disorganized thoughts before I begin the long wait for season two (or at least the inevitable rewatch) because I’m just so delighted with this series. If anyone is planning to watch but hasn’t yet, beware of The Spoilers below the cut. Also, it’s really long under there.

First of all, can I just say how refreshing the format was for a Star Wars property? I know some people didn’t like that a number of the episodes were “filler,” but god I LOVE monster of the week style shows! It just allows you to... abide in a fictional universe that doesn’t feel as up-close if you’re constantly zipping along the path of a plot (not that plot is bad, of course). It really captured the feeling of old serialized storytelling, or genre shows like Supernatural, Merlin, or Grimm, while also nailing that space gunslinger atmosphere in a setting I already love.

And speaking of space gunslinger, I was so ready to be indifferent to this focus character when my dad persuaded me to start watching. I was just off the bat convinced we were going to get a stock, grim badass trying to capture the spirit of the Boba Fett craze with a different coat of paint. But no, I can genuinely say I really love Mando as a character in his own right. He can be blunt at points and can certainly open up a can of whoopass when he needs to, but most of the time he’s just.... nice! He’s respectful and pretty polite, while having his points of frustration and annoyance. He doesn’t jump immediately to violence when there are alternatives, like being respectful of the Tuskan Raiders’ lands and addressing them in their language. He’s got damage, but he doesn’t wallow in it, but rather turns it into empathy for other people that are suffering and doing what he can to help them. His devotion to his creed and the people that took him in give him a depth I wasn’t expecting. And when he finds people to care about, you can tell he REALLY cares.

Related to above but deserving its own separate bullet point, Mando and Baby Yoda. Like... bounty hunter adopts small child and has adventures with it was not a plot I was expecting but I’m so happy that it was what we got. Found family is my THING, and this show came through on that relationship. And it really was a relationship, even if the other half is just a baby. You get Mando going from feeling honor-bound to help the kid and finding somewhere safe to drop him to genuinely caring about this little bugger. Baby Yoda himself also has a slow progression of becoming more aware of the situation around him, getting smarter about staying alive in all these dangerous situations, and growing more protective of his guardian at the same time. So in the finale, when they’re officially declared adopted dad and adopted kid by Mandalorian custom until further notice, it feels legit and earned, not just a fandom joke.

And Baby Yoda himself is something they did well. It’s not just a cute puppet meant to be hauled around and to sell toys, that kid has a personality, and that personality is Little Shit. He’s constantly fucking around with things, cackling in dangerous situations. I think they struck a good balance of having him be vital to the plot without overusing him or the cute factor.

I’ve been ranting about this since episode 4, but what this show does with the scale of the conflict just drives me bananas. Absolutely batshit with joy. When TROS is summoning ten thousand star destroyers from literal nowhere, ALL of which are mounted with Death Star cannons, I can only facepalm at how far the power creep has run away from the creators. In Mandalorian though? They take things that have previously been jokes in Star Wars and make them into real threats. When the only force sensitive person in the show is a literal infant and everyone else is running around on the ground with blasters, it almost becomes a completely different universe. A single AT-ST in episode 4 becomes a massive and genuinely intimidating threat for a bunch of foot soldiers, most of whom are untrained and under-equipped. I out-loud exclaimed “Oh shit, they’re screwed” when a single TIE fighter entered the battlefield in episode 7. Even stormtroopers, outside of targeted gags, are something to be taken seriously when they’re in numbers.

In relation, this is another thing I really like about Mando as a character. People in-universe regularly comment that Mandalorians, both this one specifically and the people as a whole, are kickass, and they are. But that doesn’t mean they’re invulnerable or supernatural in their abilities. They’re just really tough people with some cool gadgets. Mando isn’t cutting through swathes of enemies with ease; he gets knocked down, injured, and his life is in danger constantly, especially when he’s alone against a threat. It doesn’t make him less of a talented warrior; it just makes him more human, and as equally reliant on his smarts and non-martial skills to keep himself alive.

Side characters! I loved them (most of them). By the end of the series I was bummed as hell that we weren’t going to get a DnD style party of them joining up with Mando and Son as their crew. It felt a lot like Rogue One: fairly simple characters with a few core traits, but they were such likable traits and their motivations made perfect sense, so even with the short amount of time they got, they still resonated. Cara especially I loved for multiple reasons. I really appreciate that they made this big, brash, kickass woman character and nothing felt tropey about her; she felt genuine. I love the battle bros relationship she grew with Mando, and how sincere it felt without even a suggestion of some romantic subtext between them. They appreciated each other’s skills at first, but you can see it grow into genuine respect and care for one another. They got the time to hang out together during those weeks on Sorgan, chat about their lives, arm wrestle together, make jokes. It was that kind of relationship building, even just a little bit of it, that I was missing in the sequel trilogy and that made the Rey/Finn/Poe triad feel so hollow despite how much I wanted to care for them.

I love how (and I say this with true sincerity and appreciation) how bloody inconsequential and small these characters and this story feel in the grand universe of Star Wars. Really! None of these characters have any relevance to the greater SW narrative they live in the middle of. Mando’s got a reputation, but only in certain circles. Cara was a rebel, but she deserted years ago after all the important shit was over with. Even Baby Yoda and the former Imperial force after him feels so small scale in comparison to everything that came before and will come after. The fate of the galaxy isn’t in their hands, what they’re doing doesn’t really matter on a grand scale. Even so, it matters to these characters. When Kuiil chose to leave the peaceful retirement he’d won after so long, when he chose to go back into danger because he didn’t want to see someone else be harmed by the lingering influence of the old evil regime, it really struck a chord with me. What they do in the finale, and the good deeds Mando does throughout the series, might not shake the foundations of the galaxy, but it is fighting back against the darkness that’s hung over it for so long in their own way. Changing the world a little bit at a time.

I admit, as much as I love the Jedi, it’s really nice to see the SW universe from a perspective other than theirs. I’ve never been all that interested in getting into content outside of the movies before, but this might be enough to push me toward stuff like the Clone Wars just for more of that. Definitely makes the universe feel richer.

The galaxy! Actually feels! Like a galaxy! Take notes! New Trilogy writers! The episodic format actually lets the locations breathe a little while still getting enough mileage to make things feel broad at the same time, rather than jumping around so quickly that planets feel confined to a single location and have no depth to them at all. The Mandalorian felt like flying around in Mass Effect: there isn’t actually a whole lot to explore, but there’s just enough lore there and enough of a story can unfold in the different locations to give them meaning. If there was one thing I’d want to change or add, I’d love to see an episode take place in a less backwater setting, like a big city or busy space port. I understand the budget concerns, as well as maintaining the Western/lone ranger genre and tone, but it would definitely add in some life and have plenty of adventure opportunities.

Allow me one more detour back to Mando, and specifically the helmet removal scene. I just love how they did it. Could have made him stoic and cool, but they didn’t. He ain’t some young, handsome rogue under there (although I certainly wouldn’t say Pedro Pascal doesn’t have looks). He’s got some years under his belt, he’s dinged up and bloody and sweaty, his hair’s a mess, and he looks like a rabbit in headlights. Once again, standing O for making a badass action hero that’s still allowed to be vulnerable, human, and a bit of a mess sometimes.

Like... all of IG-11, both his first appearance and in the finale. Other people have already gone into detail about that, so I’ll just say ditto, I love him.

The freaking Scout Trooper scene, man. That shit had me howling. You don’t really think about troopers much, they’re just cannon fodder shouting stock lines a lot of the time, but there are still people under there. Finn kinda helped me wake up to that, but these guys were a hilarious flipside to that. Just two dumb fuckin’ idiots making idiot talk at work.

Mando earning his sigil and jetpack, and then his first flight.... *chef’s kiss*. I am such a SUCKER for first flight scenes, and this one was awesome. If Disney wasn’t such a copyright Nazi, I would have already made a short crack vid of that scene with Defying Gravity over it.

That’s a lot of thoughts up there, but I’ll conclude with this one. I just had... fun. The Mandalorian was fun! Not in a guilty pleasure way, but it didn’t need to be in an Oscar-worthy way either. It was just a series of adventures I was delighted to tag along on, with characters I truly came to care about. And at the end of the day, it ended on a triumphant and patently Star Wars hopeful note that delighted me and filled me with anticipation for future adventures to come.

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #star wars

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alistairs-raven · 5 years

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My ranking of all 11 Star Wars films in order.

Disclaimer: I actually like all the SW films in some way except my least favorite. But there are definitely some that have more that I dislike about them. Also my opinions are 100% the only opinions one can have, and if this list offends you, it was meant to offend you personally.

11: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

I have watched this movie twice, once in the theater and once during a marathon. I also have never seen this movie in it's entirety because I cannot focus on it. It bores me so much that I keep blanking out and daydreaming. I cannot tell you anyone's name except the main character and the main imperial officer. I just could not get into this movie, but I will say if nothing else, it had the best Darth Vader scene ever.

10: Star Wars 9: Rise of Skywalker

It took me days to figure out if I liked this movie or not. There are actually a lot of things that I like, but the things I didn't like I REALLY didn't like. So much so, that this movie actually really hurt me to think about. And apart from a movie being boring, it shouldn't feel like personal stab to what matters to you. I liked Palpatine (pointless as that plot was), Kylo Ren and Rey's amazing acting, and seeing old friends again. This movie also had good humor. The bad things are too many to count, but mainly this film was poorly directed, full of 3 films worth of plot that make no sense, and the worst offender is that it felt like the director (JJ Abrams) did not care about these characters at all. I had fallen so in love with pretty much everyone in the ST, and to see almost all of them sidelined, stereotyped, and departing from any previous character development just hurt. This film made me cry, and not in a good way.

9: Star Wars 1: The Phantom Menace

I don't hate this movie. In fact when it first came out, I enjoyed it. Sure I was a dumb little kid, but I rewatched it a lot. Sadly, as an adult I see now all the issues with it, none I have to really get into since everyone knows at this point. The parts I enjoy are Darth Maul (hell yea), the podrace, and this film also probably has the best score of the entire series.

8: Solo: A Star Wars story

This one was good, it just wasn't great. The actor's portrayal of Han Solo was perfect, Lando was perfect, I loved seeing places that you only hear about in passing in the films. Freakin Darth Maul (hell yea). The not so good was this movie had a very generic heist plot, it felt incomplete, and I didn't really connect with anyone besides Han and Lando.

7: Star Wars 6: Return of the Jedi

This one also falls into the 'just okay' category. There's no real plot except a recycled one from episode 4, Luke has no personality in it, Leia is sidelined. The goods are that Vader's sacrifice to save his son was so unexpected and beautifully done (at least in the original cut), the Jabba Palace scene is one of my favorite parts of the entire series, and the rebel characters in this movie are super fun (Ackbar, Lando, ect). Also the ghosts at the end was a very nice touch.

6: Star Wars 2: Attack of the Clones

I HATED this movie when it first came out. I only saw it once and not again until last year when my friend insisted we marathon the SW movies. Now I love this movie, because it's the good kind of bad. The whole thing is just a meme, with some of the worst dialogue of the entire series. However, the characters are all super fun. Rewatching it years later, I was pleasantly surprised that I now love Hayden's portrayal of Anakin Skywalker. His character is by far the best part of the movie. He brought so much energy to the character, and I actually really connected and felt for him. I always loved Kamino, and I think it's very creative. The effects were also a lot better. The bad is the poor directing, horrible dialogue (sand), and that this movie killed Boba Fett for me.

5: Star Wars 4: A New Hope

These next three are hard for me to rank. Episode 4 is fun, creative, makes you feel like a kid again, has effects that were so groundbreaking that they held up for 40 years, changed filmmaking itself, introduced us all to a universe that has touched so many lives around the world. I am convinced that the Lightsaber sound is the best sound design in history. All the characters are likeable, the score is the best in all of cinema, and there is such a sense of satisfaction when this movie ends. It's hard to find faults with this movie, but of course our dear Mr. Lucas had to change this movie that was perfect, so now it's full of ugly cgi. That added Jabba scene is so dumb.

4: Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith

I loved this movie when it came out and I am still very fond of it. When it came out we all thought it was going to be the last SW (lol) and I was determined to enjoy it as much as I could. It has the best effects of the prequels, all the characters are well acted, there's so much emotion and heart in it, and it has some of the coolest planets and settings in it. I LOVE the opening scene, I still can't watch it without my jaw dropping a little. There was a lot of hype leading up to it, and I grew really fond of General Grievous and was disappointed to see him barely used. It also suffered from the bad dialogue issues that plague Lucas films. Despite the good acting, there were awkward moments that I feel were a case of bad directing. Padme dying from a 'broken heart' despite now having babies makes me feel that Lucas doesn't understand people.

3: Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens

This movie is very special to me for personal reasons - I almost didn't live to see it. But it was well worth staying alive for and gave me a new reason to live. It introduced me to Rey, a nobody who has had to deal with being alone for so long. Something that I can relate to. And it also introduced me to Kylo Ren, the angry and also very alone character that quickly became my favorite character of all time. I even legally changed my name to Ren. Finn, Poe, BB-8, Hux, Phasma... so many characters that I all love and have spent hours talking about, roleplaying, reading about, drawing, and just enjoying. My complaint is the plot, which is simply a remake of episode 4. I also am not the biggest fan of JJ Abrams directing style, as I feel he can make movies very well, but he's not a very creative storyteller and is infamous for simply repolishing things other people have done. Also Rey's theme is my favorite song in the entire SW score.

2: Star Wars 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Before the ST, I had watched this one more than all the others. Hoth, the battles, Yoda, the asteroid field, cloud city, Vader, Lando, I am your father moment, Leia being force sensitive, the list goes on. Also this movie gave us the BEST bad guy theme (until dual of the fates that is). This movie felt a lot cleaner than the one before it and the one after it. It also had good dialogue, character development, and depth that's missing when Lucas is directing. It was less fanservice and more just a good film. However I never understood the tree scene (wtf was that). And it always bothered me that Lando allowed them to hurt his friend, granted it wasn't what he originally thought was going to happen.

1: Star Wars 8: The Last Jedi

I went to this movie 10 times in the theater and have seen it countless times since it came out. I LOVE everything about this movie. It's creative, full of new ideas and concepts, has so many emotions, beautiful art direction, and deepened every single character in it. Rarely does a movie come along where every character develops and is different at the end. Rarely do we get a movie in a huge series that focuses on being a good movie rather than fanservice. I could not predict this movie, and was on the edge of my seat for the whole thing wondering what in the world was going to happen next. The director, Rian, is clearly a fantastic storyteller who can also do subtlety. The first 4-5 times I saw this movie I was still seeing new things. It revived a love of Star Wars in me and I dreaded what would come after because I doubt anything will ever be this good again. I certainly hope we get something as good or maybe better one day. This movie solidified Rey as my favorite SW protagonist.

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jesterlady · 4 years

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Rise of Skywalker review

After Watching Episode IX for the second time, I feel like it’s finally time to make my feelings known regarding the sequel trilogy and to vent some of the negativity by getting it down in somewhat rational fashion.

If any one recalls the 6k I wrote on Avengers Endgame, you’ll know what to expect.

Now it’s been a while since I saw either Ep VII or VIII, so my memory is likely rusty on details.

My feelings on this trilogy in general have been extremely negative. It’s interesting, but after I saw Force Awakens, I actually had a very positive reaction at first. It felt like a Star Wars movie (following the New Hope formula). But after a while, even before Last Jedi came, I realized that I actually was disappointed, not necessarily in the movie as a movie or the new characters, but the direction the whole trilogy was likely to go.

I must confess a great deal of this feeling probably arose from watching Clone Wars and Rebels in the meantime and becoming very caught up in those time periods and what they represent for Star Wars. And that’s just it…the sequel trilogy takes what came before, what those people bled and died for, and basically said it didn’t matter. They didn’t actually save the galaxy. The victory at Endor has become incredibly cheapened by the First Order’s existence…and it doesn’t even matter that apparently it was Palpatine all along so it’s suddenly very connected in a haphazard fashion.

They could have told a much more interesting story about the struggles of rebuilding a galaxy. They could have had the same characters, they could have had the same arcs (terrible ones mostly), and the galaxy could still be in danger. But starting off with a brand new evil empire like destroying the old one didn’t even matter, not even letting Han and Leia stay together…like, that’s just creating drama for the sake of drama. We have to destroy everything that was built before, because we’re really unoriginal and don’t know how to create new stories or build on top of a good foundation.

Say what you like about the prequels (I am a fan in general) they had a very cohesive story, building toward a single point. The sequels…did not.

Now, we must all acknowledge the elephant in the room. That of the atrocious planning and divided directional control that went into making these movies. I don’t know what Disney was thinking! The MCU for all its faults is a cohesive whole. With a franchise infinitely more popular and lucrative and with a fraction less of the movies, you couldn’t pull off having a story that makes sense?

And I’ll just say that even if JJ didn’t like what Rian did with TLJ, basically completely doing a 180 and trying to go the other direction, was selfish. It destroyed further rather than fixed the problem. I don’t have anything else to say, other than the lack of unity is probably the ultimate problem after the initial direction in the first place. I didn’t really approve of TLJ. The Rey/Ben parts…sure, but the slowest chase scene known to man and completely superfluous side ventures to a gambling planet were utter drivel. So it’s not that I’m a Rian vs JJ person. I think the lack of unity and that they both screwed with each other’s narratives is the problem.

Anyway, we’re here to talk about TROS. (And how about that, coming up with a title that is super confusing since we already have Revenge of the Sith. I guess that’s ROTS…but come on!

So…this will be fairly chronological but as I get deeper into character arcs and plot points, it will delve all over the place.

The intro of a Star Wars movie is usually fairly jarring. We’re dropped into the middle of a situation and all we know is three paragraphs long, to tell us what’s going on and what happened. But this felt even more jarring than usual.

Suddenly knowing Palps is alive in the credit titles is so off course. Knowing he was alive at the end of TLJ would have been preferable, leaving us time to stew over how he was still alive and giving them time to come up with something more coherent than the absolute zero explanation we were given. The return of an essential character/villain like that deserves way more gravitas and planning than the shock value we were presented with. The idea of him being alive is not so shocking to those familiar with the EU, but that was explained and explained well, whereas how long he’s been planning this, Snoke, the ships, how…it’s all completely ignored and I guess we can come up with explanations on our own. So…is Snoke his clone? Or a part of him? How many Snokes were there? There are so many questions regarding their relationship…how it relates to Kylo/Ben, how it relates to Rey, how it relates to their bond, but I’ll get more into that later. And more on those ships.

Pretty sure a blow no one can be faulted with is Carrie’s death. If she had been alive, I have to believe so many things would have been better. She uttered the only sensible line in the movie…never underestimate a droid. Something everyone else went on to ignore even though droids made the whole movie possible. Ugh. I do think it’s funny that since TFA we’ve all been told to call her the General now…no more princess cause princesses are apparently weak, but she was suddenly a princess again this movie.

The Jedi texts, I’d like to know more about that. Very plot device-y really, if you think about it. All this info about new and improved powers and places and things and considering how much lore we know as an audience who actually have been exposed to when the Jedi were still around, opposed to Luke onward…it’s just an excuse for story. Same thing with the Sith wayfinders and that dagger. I guess you could make the argument for Palps having them made after ROTJ, but…that makes no sense. But it’s the only thing that makes sense since how could anyone make a dagger the exact shape of a crashed Death Star before it crashed? But the Jedi texts…super old texts…reference the wayfinders. And it was already in the vault of the crashed DS. All I’m saying is that doesn’t make a lot of logical sense and someone needs to explain it to me. And to stop making mysterious keys and clues to things. It makes sense the Sith loyalist would have it since he needed to go back to Exegol to deliver Rey, (though he had clearly already left Jakku and killed her parents, so was he just going back to say, oops, I messed up? Palps clearly got the message somehow) but maybe it would have been better for them to keep all the Oracle stuff in and explained all this stuff properly. Like I’m confused about Palpatine’s plan and he’s usually the master of strategy.

Okay…Poe is so unlikable in this movie. And he really doesn’t have an arc. Maybe a little one, struggling with the burden of leadership. But he mostly seems to be there to argue with people and be rude to Threepio. This is a waste of a good character. He was barely in TFA, he was a total mess in TLJ, and here he’s just a jerk. I got nothing good to say for him. Which is a shame because he could have been awesome.

We will talk about Rose and her complete lack of presence. Up front, I never cared for Rose in TLJ…didn’t see the point of her. She brought nothing to the story in my opinion and whether she was supposed to be a love interest for Finn or to symbolize hope or just be representative of WOC, I don’t know. But her being shifted to the sidelines of this story is a blatant statement of disrespect. The actress has been very publicly discriminated against online and instead of taking care of her, the director and studio pretty much stated they agreed with that by what they did with her character. Aside from that…makes zero sense for someone who was so built up and had such a big part in TLJ to be so downplayed and have her story just stop in the middle. It’s bad storytelling. Especially while you’re bringing in a troop of new female characters to do…what? Basically things Rose could have accomplished and would have made more sense doing.

Along the lines of pointless things…what is the point of the Knights of Ren? They were so built up…such an ooh, scary prospect and they play zero role in this. They have no point. They have no purpose. We know nothing about them unless we hunt for backstory in comics and things like that. But you shouldn’t have to do that to understand the point of someone in a movie. I’d also just like to point out, if they’re really Force sensitives who were Jedis in training…maybe? Then they should be a lot harder to defeat and why don’t they have light sabers? And…why are they the Knights of Ren if there isn’t at least a discussion about what their leader is doing when he comes to Exegol. Like they’re just trying to kill him from the second he enters. I’d be like…hi, boss, so why aren’t we killing the girl…or something like that. And if they’re the Knights of Ren, his…family for lack of a better term, people who trained with him since boys, I’d like to think he at least would have some compunction of striking them down…would try to reason with them first. They might still be brainwashed like he was, but he would know that better than anyone. I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s my knee jerk reaction. A waste of possibilities.

Want to talk about another waste? Hux! Never liked him and his Hitler youth attitude, but really he was not important in this trilogy, like at all. DG is too good an actor to not have his talents used better. He, Phasma, and Kylo were built up as this villain trilogy to stand against the Rey, Poe, Finn good guy trilogy, and basically none of them got any kind of development other than Kylo. I knew Hux was the spy and I believe it is funny that he is the spy solely because he hates Kylo so much, but other than that…he was a waste of space. Better to have him finally rise and become the commander he’d always wanted to be instead of Pryde suddenly being there and being all evil and competent for some reason. Having him be significant for having followed Palpatine before would only actually be significant if we had seen him serve Palpatine before. It’s just another instance of this brand new character suddenly taking the place of an established one for no reason.

We can talk about Finn now. Finn, who also suffered from lack of actual character arc and purpose in the movie other than running after everyone and being worried about them. The whole Force sensitive thing is old news…we all knew about it a long time ago. And this way of revealing it…such poor methods! As far as I know the only reason you’d start thrashing around and declaring you never told someone something is because it is going to be a declaration of love or like a super big confession of guilt. I mean, that’s what they wanted us to think by keeping it in suspense for so much of the movie and it’s just…not that big of a deal. Like it’s not a surprise, it’s not a death confession topic. It was just stupid.

As for the idea that he only left the First Order because of the Force, well, that just implies that only Force sensitive people know right from wrong and can make moral decisions…it’s just not a good message. Now whether Jannah’s whole platoon is Force sensitive is not clear, but it’s strongly implied. And the fact that it’s what he wants to have told Rey is also not clear. Like you have to figure that out (possibly with online help), it’s not inherent in the narrative. Also…could have been told to Rose, Jannah not needed. In fact, this whole storyline would have actually made much more sense and been better if it’s something Finn had been dealing with in TLJ and perhaps came with an army of defectors or been out convincing people this whole time. Potential storyline wasted. Plus…for someone who’s an ex Stormtrooper, watching Finn run down hallways and strike down troopers is pretty insensitive and OOC if you ask me. Just a super bad way to take the character. And he really didn’t do that much else other than be the main person who does the thing that destroys the thing so everyone else can do the main thing they’re there to do.

Wow, and can we talk about Threepio’s treatment in general and in this trilogy in particular? I will be the first to admit that Han and Leia especially weren’t all that great to him all the time. But it was how they would have treated anyone, I think. Poe particularly just laid into him all the time for no reason, even after he sacrificed himself for them. Like…just really made me mad at Poe and really mad at everyone the whole movie. It appears that Threepio, one of the two original droids of the whole franchise, gets the least respect out of any of them. With all the fanservice going on, you’d think he’d be treated better. I love the HISHE part where he talks about taking a last look at his friends and it certainly ain’t none of this trio! You want to talk about underestimating a droid! I know he’s not everybody’s favorite and I’m probably biased, but if we’re ranking droids in the SW universe, which we all do, Threepio’s not at the top for me either. That spot belongs to Chopper. But I’m still going to accord Threepio the respect and dignity he deserves for seniority if nothing else. Because he tries so hard and no one ever thanks him for it. I like BB8 and all, but he goes under Threepio and R2 both in ranking! And let’s not forget if not for a droid’s knowledge of Exegeol (so convenient) and the way to get there, you resistance jerks are all toast, so respect!

Zorii, Zorii, Zorii, frankly another superfluous new character. But I liked her best out of all of them. I can see that little something something with her and Poe and I think it would be cool for it to flourish now that the war’s over and they can put the really convenient past and betrayal behind them. Poe being a spice runner isn’t bad but isn’t good either. It’s just convenient, because they suddenly needed black market stuff. Also…like how’d she survive? Really. Because it’s such a big deal for her to have gotten that thingamajig and it’s not like people have warning when the bad guys blow up your planet. There is no evacuation time.

I’ve mentioned her a bit so Jannah, again, other than it’s cool there are more women in the galaxy, just took up screen time for other characters to develop. Were they trying to insinuate she could be Lando’s daughter, because that makes zero sense! And why all of a sudden he’s champion of finding the lost families of the galaxy is super weird. Also, it was cool to see him flying the Falcon and all, but did he really add anything other than gravitas from the original trilogy? I’m usually a huge fan of fanservice, but I didn’t really feel like a fan being serviced. I felt like someone constantly having nice things thrown at me so I won’t notice the murder being done in the other room. A nice shot of Wedge, too.

So many extra resistance people always there. Like I love Dom, but why was he there?

But talking of other people really who the heck is Maz? I mean she just shows up out of nowhere and knows everything about the Force and the Jedi and people’s pasts and what their decisions are and we don’t have a clue why. Like who is she? How does she know these things? Where does she even come from? Like why does she talk about Leia trying to reach Ben and why does she smile when Leia dies, what does she know that we don’t and why?

I guess now for the really hard stuff. Rey and Ben.

They were the only ones who really got developed and even then, I think Ben got robbed out of his ending.

So Rey’s heritage. Being a Palpatine, very disappointing. If there’s one good thing I liked about TLJ it was the idea that you didn’t have to be part of some great bloodline to be special in the Force. The Force doesn’t care who your parents are. Most of the great Force users we know have literally nothing to do with who their parents are. If anything, it has more to do with their lineage of training. So JJ basically saying screw that idea and forcing Rey into that was very disappointing. And apparently electricity is very genetic…Dooku aside, of course! It also implies the Dark side in her is because of the Palpatine heritage. But the Dark Side of the Force exists for a reason, for balance, and provides something important to the galaxy. It’s already proven even the Lightest of users and bloodlines have that pull.

Rey has been alone and searching for family this whole time. Having someone to belong to was important to her. But…the message of her finding a family and joining one, I think is a lot more important than her finding out her past and heritage. Just being Rey at the end instead of having to say she was Rey Skywalker or Rey Solo would have made more sense! Of course…I also think Solo makes more sense for her anyway given her connection with Han, her training with Leia, and her bond with Ben. She did train under Luke as well, granted, but she had more Solo connection than Skywalker. They just wanted the cool name. But also doesn’t make sense since Palps calls Ben the last Skywalker in the movie as well. But whatever, I don’t really care.

Let’s talk about this whole dyad in the Force thing and the grand plan. Because I can’t logically reason it out myself.

So Palps apparently has a plan to bring Rey to him as a girl so he can have her kill him and his spirit can go into her body and he can reign through her because his old body is like super fried and the clone thing ain’t working so hot. Doesn’t happen, but he’s also working on his other plans to corrupt Ben and bring him to the Dark side, under the influence of Snoke, to do what? Like what is his plan there apart from just general evil and revenge and nasty stuff? But all along there’s apparently been this Dark prophecy against Ben (and we all know Palps is the manipulator of the Dark). Luke said Leia gave up her Jedi training because she sensed that at the end of that journey was her son’s death. You’d think then they’d honor that sacrifice by not killing him, but whatever.

Palps created or controlled or was at the back of Snoke (however he was at the back of Snoke) and so he’s pulling the strings during TLJ. He knows everything Snoke knows. So if Snoke created the bond between Rey and Ben, then he’d be very aware of that. So how does the whole dyad thing work? Because it’s made very clear Palps doesn’t know about the dyad, otherwise he likely wouldn’t have tried to do the dark ritual/strike me down plan first when it would have been so much easier to get them both together to drain them.

So…have they always been a dyad from birth? Was the dyad created separate from the bond when Snoke created the bond? A Light balance to the Dark bond? Regardless of how, clearly they are one soul and connected more powerfully than anyone else in generations.

But Palps and his plan…he tells Ben to kill Rey. What was he actually trying to do since it’s clear he didn’t want Rey dead?

My only thought is that he thought Rey would actually kill Ben and thus give in to her Dark side and be more ready to be Empress…

But Leia’s sacrifice and all of that still confuses me. Palps said that Leia interfered with his plans.

Now in that fight Rey was the instigator, was the one trying to wreak damage (freaked out by her vision and revelations, I’m sure) and Ben was the one winning that fight. Like he was going to win until Leia stopped him. But was he going to kill her? Because I think it’s pretty clear that Ben has never wanted to kill Rey even if he was trying at first before the bond really started. Either way, Leia stops him from doing something and Rey stabs him instead. Then Leia dies and snaps Rey out of it. Was it the reaching out to Ben or the death that Palps was talking about interfering with his plans? Because again…he didn’t want Rey dead at that point.

I don’t know. Having a fleet full of ships hidden for how long, when did those weapons go into place, who’s manning the ships? Because apparently there’s the regular First Order fleet still out there conveniently being taken down by the rest of the galaxy after this fleet burns, so have these recruits just been sitting out there, chilling at Exegol for years, waiting for this order and attack? Total side tangent and question really, but it all makes no sense.

Leia’s death…so much speculation on why her body didn’t vanish until Ben died. There has to be something significant there and I’d really love to know if it’s a future plan or if it was part of the original end of the movie since clearly it was changed. Maz smiles, remember. Also…is she somehow giving her life for Ben’s to bring him back? She’s clearly a Force Ghost at the end of the movie.

Okay…so Han memory. I did like that and I did like that Ben could get absolution from his dad and have that be the final thing that turns him from Kylo to Ben. I wasn’t sure I could forgive Ben ever after TFA. I cried so much and I was so mad. That’s Han Solo, y’all. HAN FRIKKING SOLO. I mean how do you even kill Han Solo?

Granted, I think we were all robbed of a story where Han and Leia are a united front raising their kid and trying to protect him from danger, but that’s just me. I mean we could have had The Mummy 2 in space, guys. ROBBED! Someone write that AU, please.

And can we just talk about Adam Driver’s acting for a moment? I mean, the boy is phenomenal. He goes from being one person to being a completely different one effortlessly. From the moment he throws the light saber in the sea, his mannerisms and physicality is so different. It’s amazing. Kudos to him. Absolutely. Oscar worthy! He does it without having any lines whatsoever apart from ‘ow.’ And I like Ben Solo and I’m sad we didn’t get to see more of him. He’s so Han’s boy, so Han’s boy. Love that! He’s an awesome character in his good boy sweater. (Love the sweater and while we’re on the subject, could him and Chris Evans have a sweater off with the good boy sweater and the white knit sweater please?)

Hey, Luke got to raise a X Wing finally. That’s the kind of fan service I’m talking about.

One of my favorite parts of the movie actually was the whole Jedi from the past bit. Mostly because I saw my boy Kanan getting his recognition and rightful spot as one of the great Jedi, up there with Obi Wan and Anakin and Ahsoka! I also loved Ahsoka being there and the other Clone Wars greats. Really cool. I do kind of wish they had included Ezra, too, but that’s just me loving on my Space Blueberry! And wishing James Arnold Taylor who put so much into Obi Wan could have at least done Plo Koon since Ewan took his place as Obi Wan. Either way, that was the only homage and respect paid to the other two trilogies and the Star Wars legend in general. The only acknowledgement of how much sacrifice and history went into this franchise before now.

Now…can Rey kill Palps now and not have his spirit go into her because he’d already made himself revitalized with their dyad energy or was it because no ritual had been done? Just wondering. Or was it a loophole since all she did was defend herself and his own lightning killed him?

There’s a lot about energy and healing and the Force in this and so you can speculate all over the place about what the rules are. (You’d think in the Clone Wars healing each other would have been a thing!) And since we’ve never deal with a dyad before, we don’t know how it works. But it really kind of feels like even with how drained both of them were after Palps took their bond…it either should have been returned to them when he died or their combined energy should have been able to keep both of them alive. Or something. Two in one means connection and honestly, I feel like both of them should have died or both of them should have lived.

I know a lot of people think it was the perfect end for Ben because he redeemed himself (like Anakin) and there would have been no place for him in the galaxy after all the evil Kylo had done. (Much less if you read the comics!) But I’m a sucker for a redemption story and I think the hardest punishment always is to face your past and work through what you’ve done instead of taking the easy way out of death (not having to actually atone). I think it’s a beautiful potential for forgiveness and grace and realizing none of us can really save ourselves.

And whatever you think of Kylo/Ben or his ending, it’s clear something was changed at the last minute. There’s a whole lot of editing done on that last scene when he revives her and they kiss and on Tattoine. There are apparently screen tests people swear they saw where he didn’t die. I won’t go into the scene analysis some Reylos have, but jaw moving and talking on Rey shots that were cut, it looking more natural for her to have been pulling him back up rather than him falling down, it looks like his hand is the one in the burying lightsaber scene… He was obviously supposed to live at some point and why they changed their minds, I don’t know. He is one of the most popular characters and they lost a cash cow when they killed him off. Silly idiots.

As far as Rey goes, I also think that’s terribly unfair, to give her the connection she’s been yearning for her whole life and instead of giving her a future, you stick her back on a sand infested planet, sliding down in a parallel to TFA, and burying the past sabers, and being alone. I know she’s still got friends and stuff but I think she won’t know her new place in all of this and she’s going to feel very lonely.

Also, where did the yellow saber come from? Did she cleanse Ben’s saber? Did she find a new kyber crystal of her own? Come on now…don’t be mysterious and weird. Normally I can take mysteries being unsolved if great care is taken to resolve relationships and characters and this trilogy and story did neither, so no love from me.

As for shipping them. I didn’t really through the first two movies. I was curious to see what would happen, but I could have gone either way. I did ship them after this one. I do love two broken people finding solace in each other. And I think there is such potential there for these characters and as a relationship that could have been done so much better and wasn’t and that’s what is the saddest thing of all.

I really have an urge to write an AU…Luke Skywalkers’ Academy for Sensitive Younglings (title patent pending) and rewrite the whole stupid thing. I fear I have neither the time nor inspiration for that. But I would dearly love to see awkward teenage versions of these characters growing up and learning and being stupid and given a chance to become the best versions of themselves. My vision of the future.

Probably in another 30 years there will be a fully formed, all ready to go evil Empire that no one has done anything to stop anyway…

So there we go. I probably have more to say but that’s all I got and that’s with taking notes!

#star wars #spoilers #text post

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sobi-fans · 4 years

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Thoughts on TROS

So I’ve received a few asks asking about my thoughts on The Rise of Skywalker, and I haven’t replied because I have many thoughts and I’m still processing stuff. But yesterday @riselioness messaged me to ask the same, so I thought it was time to try and organise them on a page.Yes, I am very, very late to this party.

Obviously spoilers, so I’ll put it under a cut. Also, I’ve only seen the movie once, and that was back in December, so my memory might be a little hazy. I probably need to see it again.

For the sake of context, I have no OTP for the sequel trilogy, but I have been known to read Reylo and Damerey on occasion. (And randomly Gingerflower – aka Hux/Rose – purely because of that TLJ deleted scene where she bites him!) Let me tell you, being on the outside of the shipping wars has been very interesting, and it seems abundantly clear to me that your enjoyment of TROS depends greatly on who you ship, or whether you ship at all. I would have been happy if Finnrose endured or Stormpilot became a thing, but ah well. Onwards!

I’ll try and keep this somewhat cohesive, but I feel like it’s going to be all over the place. Apologies.

Let’s start simple. Stuff I liked that doesn’t have a ‘but’ attached:

- Lando (where’s he been all this time?)

- Wedge (where’s he been all this time?)

- Finn being able to show his individuality with clothing and hair that’s his choice

- Purely for shallow reasons, Poe’s outfit

- Poe and Rey channelling Han and Leia with their bickering at the start

- The Force bond stuff was visually stunning with the dual locations

- Luke’s expression after he raises the X-wing, like ‘Yeah, finally nailed it!’

- Ben Solo channelling his father – also Adam Driver in general for making Ben so very different from Kylo with just body language and facial expressions alone. He literally moved like a huge weight had been lifted from him, and it was pretty amazing to watch

- The fact that Rey’s mother is Villanelle from Killing Eve

- Kaydel looking like Endor Leia at the end

- LGBTQ representation!

- Seeing young Luke and Leia

The stuff with Leia was very poignant and emotional, but I can’t exactly say it was good. It’s tricky. I don’t feel like I’ve separated Leia from Carrie in my mind, so it’s really hard to look at it objectively. I do know that when Chewie howled after Leia’s death, I teared up pretty much immediately!

I have mixed feelings about the trio interaction. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice to see them together, and I love their banter, BUT it felt incredibly forced. Shoving them together for the sake of them being together does a disservice to all three characters. This was the last movie. They should all have been developing their individual stories at that point. Rey with her Jedi stuff, (which she does get to go off and do, but not without Finn traipsing after her like a lost puppy), Poe finding his feet as a leader of the Resistance, and Finn doing literally anything else other than running after Rey yelling her name all the time.

There was a lot of stuff that I wanted to like, but mostly it came across as missed opportunities. Such as:

- Jannah and the other former stormtroopers – this would have been such an interesting idea to develop, and would have given Finn a cool storyline of his own that didn’t involve Rey. I would have liked to see Finn reaching out to current stormtroopers, persuading them that they had other options. That would have been cool. A stormtrooper revolution turning the tide of the final battle!

- Finn’s Force sensitivity – where did this come from? Okay, so maybe it was hinted at in TFA, but it wasn’t carried over to TLJ, and JJ should have respected that in the interest of cohesive storytelling. And as interesting as it could have been to see, it doesn’t take any strength away from Finn to have him not be Force sensitive.

- Hux being the spy – this is such an interesting idea, and it’s hilarious to me that he would go to such lengths to be petty towards Kylo, but it was executed in a rush, much like a lot of other stuff in this movie. They could have made Rose his handler, which would have been a nice change in their dynamic after TLJ.

Stuff I did not like: (warning, rants ahead)

- Completely unnecessary new characters – elaborated below

- Pryde – what was the point of him? Hux could have easily fulfilled that role if they didn’t want to develop his spy storyline.

- Zorri – could have been cool, but seemed shoehorned in to remind us that Poe Dameron is straight, thank you very much!

- Poe being a former spice runner – just why? Poe already had a perfectly good back story.

- Palpatine being back – I know opinions vary on this, but I’m not a fan. Doesn’t it just cheapen Anakin’s entire story arc? (This is not to take anything away from Ian McDiarmid’s performance, which was amazing as always.) Also the complete lack of a reasonable explanation for how he returned. In fact, doesn’t someone even use the word ‘somehow’ at some point?

- Rey Palpatine – again, I know opinions vary, but I hated this so much. I’ve been team Rey No One since the beginning! This is our first female protagonist, and in my opinion the thought that she came from completely humble beginnings was fascinating. To link her to a powerful name – a powerful male name, at that – and for it to be literally stated that her power comes from him was just kind of deflating, to be honest. Also, it makes no sense. Are we expected to believe that Luke there-is-good-in-Vader Skywalker writes off his own nephew because of his potential darkness but is A-OK being a mentor to Rey Palpatine?

- Leia knowing that Rey is a Palpatine – this makes no sense either to me. Leia accepts and nurtures Rey despite her bloodline, sensing that there is good in her, yet thinks that her own son is irredeemable? The sense of ‘we had a bad child, but we found a better one’ is just…ugh. And this happens throughout the ST, even with all the Jedi standing behind Rey having abandoned Ben for years. Even if you believe that Rey is more deserving of that attention, the callousness just doesn’t seem very Jedi-like to me.

- Leia’s reasons for giving up her Jedi training made no sense.

- The sidelining of Rose – it seems painfully clear that JJ had no idea what to do with her character, so she’s just kind of…there. I refuse to believe that they couldn’t have come up with something, even if it was just her accompanying Finn or Poe on their storylines. That wouldn’t have given her a whole lot of agency, but it would have been something.

- Rey ending up alone on a desert planet, exactly where she started. Yes, I know she’s likely not going to live there, but visually the movie is showing us that nothing has really changed. We know Rey wants a family, and the hug with Finn and Poe was lovely to see, but to have the last image of her be her alone on a desert planet is actually kind of depressing.

- Rey calling herself a Skywalker – like the Palpatine thing, it’s linking her to someone else’s legacy. I think it would have been more powerful for her to declare herself ‘Just Rey’. No one’s on at Finn to declare his surname, are they?

Now on to the big one. Bendemption and Reylo.

I have been hoping for Bendemption from the beginning, because redemption, compassion and forgiveness were key themes of the OT for me. But I had a feeling that if Kylo did get redeemed, he’d be doomed to die, because as we know, JJ likes to follow the exact same patterns that we’ve already seen before. I have issues with Vader’s ‘redemption’ on the grounds of it being a ridiculously quick turnaround, (quicker than Kylo’s, even), plus he gets an easy way out just returning to the Light and then dying straight after. Lo and behold, the exact same thing happens here. What would have been really interesting to see, in my opinion, is Ben living to atone for what he’s done. That would have been true redemption, and I think the same is true for Anakin too.

Now, as we know, Kylo is much worse than Vader, even though Vader spent literally half his life on the Dark Side, murdered thousands of people, including children, chopped off his son’s hand, tortured his daughter and her future husband. We know this because Kylo killed Han Solo, the fanboys’ favourite. Therefore, he is much worse, despite only having been on the Dark Side for about six years after being mentally manipulated from birth by the most evil man in existence. Don’t get me wrong, I am not apologising for Kylo. I’m aware he did terrible things, hence why Ben should have lived to atone, but I do believe that he gets an unfair level of hatred, largely stemming from killing Han.

As mentioned above, I have occasionally delved into Reylo fics to see what was out there. I’ve always been a supporter of watching their story play out, because enemies to lovers was something new for a Star Wars movie, and it’s a cool idea to explore. We’d previously seen it with Luke and Mara in Legends. (Mara, incidentally, being someone who was redeemed and lived to make up for her bad deeds.) I loved Ben Solo for the short amount of time we got to see him. The interactions between him and Rey over the bond were so cool to watch. Ultimately, though, I don’t feel like their story was particularly well handled in this movie. I buy it because Adam and Daisy were so brilliant, but I can’t help but feel that Ben’s death was a giant cop-out.

I have mixed feelings about Rey facing Palpatine alone. I can see that there’s some kind of strength to her battling alone there. (Except she wasn’t, because she had every Jedi standing metaphorically behind her.) That said, to have Ben out of the fight felt…weird. Since TFA certain people have said that Rey and Ben/Kylo were two halves of one protagonist, which makes me think that he should have been present there instead of tossed into a pit. Also, after the mental mind games that Palpatine has been playing for his entire life, he pretty much deserved to be. But I don’t know. I think I need to watch it again and see how I feel.

This ended up being super long and ranty, sorry. I’ve probably missed a lot. Maybe I’ll change my mind on a few things when I see it again. I thought writing this out might help to organise my thoughts, but I’m not sure it has!

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dealingdreams · 5 years

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Okay TROS thoughts...here we go. I’m putting them all below the cut in case somehow you’ve avoided spoilers

so general thoughts...i didnt hate it nearly as much as i thought i would so thats pleasant but im gonna break it down more

things i liked:

Adam Driver. just Adam. Fucking. Driver my dudes. This is like a backhanded compliment because JJ is so fucking lucky Adam was cast because the emotional depth of the film rested literally all on his shoulders for me. I only felt the weight if he was acting in a scene.

I’ll admit im biased but I did adore the interaction between Finn and Poe. Their bickering amused me and the tenderness between them was wonderful...I think Oscar played Poe a bit jealous as well which i liked.

the Reylo scenes to me where beautiful. Ben never lied to her, she tried to deny it but she knew he never did. I loved that he was kinda guiding her, protecting her, loving her, and antagonizing her all at once. I loved how soft their kiss was, their smiles are literally the light of my life. Rey’s face when she healed him. Ben just staring at her as she tells him she did want to take his hand...just chef’s kiss

I loved the saber fights. Ben’s fight at the beginning was hot as fuck...and his fight as newly redeemed Ben Solo was even hotter somehow.

I enjoyed the fight scenes between ben and rey! how often ben just let her walk away, and despite that one scene which i will mention below...i like i even tho rey was rather aggressive idk...it didnt really feel like she was trying to hurt him much either? i just think they had a lot of chances to kill each other and didnt take it...so i like that

i knew she was looking at ben in that clip i knew it...she only makes that soft face at him

I always enjoy stupid ass C3PO jokes for some dumbass reason

Han and Ben’s scene was heartbreaking and beautiful. Again tho JJ is fucking lucky to cast Adam cause recycling dialogue from TFA wouldnt have worked at all had Adam not been so fucking amazing

the save chewie hall blaster scene was fun

i liked how fucking dramatic children ben and rey were with that damn ship lol...no im gonna force pull it...no im gonna...what dorks

while i didnt like the entire way the force bond was used i did enjoy seeing it still strong and growing

confirming canon soulmate reylo was a highlight

ben’s hair looked bomb

finn’s outfit was cool

Jannah was beautiful (please correct me if i misspell her name)

dark rey was glorious tho

that new little droid is literally me so i adore it

that sith cave thing was really fucking cool looking

the visuals of the film were most of the time stunning

sooooo...now to what i didn’t like:

I think this first one is the most obvious for those who know me but...Ben’s death just feels so utterly useless to me. especially when they gave him a metaphorical death earlier in the film. i feel extremely hurt and betrayed. Disney has gone out of their way to make us sympathize with Ben Solo. They’ve revealed more and more of his past...how alone he was, the abuse he suffered from snoke and palpatine. just fuck...they just kill him...the moment he realizes he’s free and loved they end his life....literally WHAT THE FUCK. it’s a chicken shit way out of a redemption arc honestly. Not letting u just breath after his death was also so horrible. We barely got to see Rey mourn, we got a split second of it then it jumped to another scene...another second of her looking sadly at her sabor to have the moment interrupted

tag on to above but...they didnt have him as a force ghost cause Disney is intentionally keeping where he is ambiguous so they can sell more shit which pisses me off so much

thats not how the force works

there couldnt have been that many sith could there??? cause like there can only be 2 at one time....fucking rule of 2 so how the hell were there that many

palps being like...see i actually want you to kill me...is ridiculous

rey palpatine is the most idiotic thing i have ever heard. Rey being a no one from no where was such an amazing thing. Just anyone can be strong in the force...you dont need royal blood to make you worth something....then they just retcon that??? the fuck I MEAN THE FUCK.

Finn does nothing but worry about Rey the whole film. I know folks dont like his storyline in TLJ and while i understand that and do think it could have been written better i still adore it because Finn grew. He grew from just caring about a small group of people to caring about an idea to caring about something bigger than him. I didnt see any growth in his character in this film. His heroics were beautiful to see and I enjoyed seeing his heart but that was John’s acting more than the writing it think.

sidelining rose was fucking disgusting

the trio felt forced to me

the leia scenes didnt work for me honestly and they mostly just made me sad

bringing in lando now felt weird

ive wanted force sensitive finn for a while but didnt feel right

why the fuck have finn want to tell rey something but never do...ugh i hate storytelling like that

they never explained how palps is back...he just is

rey stabbing ben felt odd to me. i loved the moment when she healed him, and i know technically her anger and darkside was coming out and she acted on instinct...nevermind that even before leia called out to him ben coudnt follow thru with the killing blow.

....i’m sure i’ll think of more as i get angrier

anyways over all...id be lying if moments didnt make me laugh or smile...if i didn’t feel a sense of nostalgia and enjoyment for 80% of this movie. The thing is that even with so much of it being enjoyable to me it still felt void. An action movie, with new characters, a confusing plot and very minimal emotional depth.

The emotion hinged soooo much on Adam or me. The biggest reason for that aside from that fact that Ben Solo is one of my all time favorite characters, is that the things Rey is dealing with in the film are directly related to her being a palpatine...and i HATE THAT. Like straight up wanna fling it into the sun.

Rey never needed to be related to a force royal bloodline. She should have been allowed to remain strong because she was just strong. Kylo’s equal in every way, not because she was the granddaughter of a sith which btw you can’t inherit force powers. Retconing something so touching and unique from TLJ was just...fucking idiotic. All to please the loud but small misogynistic fandom that thought a woman couldnt be that strong on her own so she must be related to someone

The biggest thing....tho is killing Ben. it felt so unnecessary and just...i feel so betrayed. The interviews leading up to the film got my hopes up that i was worried for nothing. I always thought they’d kill him, because cinema seems to not know what to do with characters has tragic as him without just killing him in the end. we already got a redemption = death plotline in this franchise...why couldnt we get a redemption = life instead??? My friend who doesnt even like sw that much...tros was actually the 2nd sw fim she’s ever seen...thought it was unnecessary as well and agrees with me a lot about my feelings despite not having the same intense emotional attachment to him as me. She for a moment thought they’d be together at the end but nope. Its just...pointless to me now, the sacrifices han, luke, and leia made to reach Ben are for nothing. Their deaths...pointless...Ben means so fucking much to me. I’ve never felt such an intense emotional bond with a character before so im just hurting so fucking much right now.

Rey taking the name Skywalker isnt hopeful or cute its a slap in the face honestly...and it’s just weird!

The last Skywalker died loved and held by the woman he loved and that is beautiful to me. He died happy and a hero thats a balm at least...but to not let him be the one to kill palpatine...after everything EVERYTHING he put him and his family thru was another just fuck...i wanted justice for him and he just got thrown away

Ultimately...Ben and Rey are soulmates and their force bond was severed. Palpatine didnt take that from them because he couldnt have...again not how the force works....but JJ used that bond to be a battery???? the fuck...but ultimately hes forcing Rey to live the rest of her days with a gaping wound in her soul. a wound unable to be filled and will be with her for the rest of her life...thats so fucking tragic to me. you give rey someone who is her equal, who understands her, and you take him from her and force her to be alone for the rest of her life?? and we are supposed to not see that as a tragedy? Her being fineishness at the end of the film seemed like direction from either the writing or in the moment, but just further proves he didnt bother to even understand the lore he was using. Force bonds were considered i quess legends in the current SW canon but Rian brought it back...so it’s back. and well

"A bond between two living beings is not something easily broken. It is not a choice… it is like breaking a feeling. Like turning away from the Force. To break a bond, your feelings would have to change, or one of you would have to die—but even then, the bond wouldn't go away, it would simply… it would simply be empty, a wound."―Master Zez-Kai Ell[src]

and .... the only way to break it was to turn away from the Force, as Surik did on Malachor V. So basically it all came down to creating a wound in the Force”

sooo yeah...im pissed i’d give this movie a 1 1/2 out of 5

thank you for those who have read my rantings! I hope at least some of this made sense

#tros spoilers #ben solo #kylo ren #reylo #musing

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dracox-serdriel · 4 years

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TROS Ending Issues

Okay, so I’ve seen several posts regarding the ending of TROS, and I wanted to address them with some analysis by bullets. Under the cut for length, sass, and spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker.

There have been several posts out there arguing that if TROS had an original ending that was edittied away, it likely would’ve been worse for Ben Solo and Rey. For example, several people are arguing that one of the popular leaks - that Ben died offscreen in the pit after Palps threw him in “thus falls the last Skywalker” - was likely the original ending. I’ve also read several posts from Reylos that argue that whatever alternate/original ending was to TROS, it would never have had a happily-ever-after with Rey and Ben Solo together.

While I understand the general jadedenss on this issue, I wanted to point out a number of things:

In all of the Star Wars saga history, there has never been a named character who has died and never been mentioned again in the movie s/he died in. That’s right, Ben Solo is the first and only named character to die in the Star Wars saga and not spoken of or otherwise mentioned again.

This isn’t just a huge break with Star Wars tradition. This is a huge break with good storytelling pratices, too.

To have a major character die in a movie without anything said about them again is, for want of a better word, VERY WEIRD.

I know one might argue that after his death, they were wrapping up the movie. However, the same could be said for many deaths in Star Wars. Qui-gon died at the end of an episode. Darth Vadar/Anakin Skywalker... plenty of people die at the end of saga episodes. But people still discuss their deaths in that same episode. It’s not like they didn’t have time for a short exchange between -- for example -- Rey and Finn (since Finn was set up in the movie to be a distant witness of Ben’s sacrifice--even though the movie didn’t even give us that).

All good stories have descending action and a resolution. Finding a place to mention the fact that Ben Solo helped save the galaxy--and sacrificed himself to save Rey--would’ve been pretty damn easy and taken almost no screentime.

Also: Ben Solo had no lines other than those he shared with Ghost Han. He said nothing to the Knights of Ren, nothing to Palpatine, and nothing to Rey. This is incredibly odd, since he’s been trapped under the mask (literal and actual) of Kylo Ren for 2 movies, and he finally has a chance to be himself. If they planned to kill him, surely they would’ve let him speak a few times before offing him.

TROS made Rey and Ben Solo a Force Dyad.

This literally means that - according to canon - Rey and Ben share a single soul.

In terms of plot, this was unnecessary.

They already showed the bond can transfer physical objects across space.

Kylo didn’t want to kill Rey before--and he values the Force bond. He already has plenty of reason to avoid killing Rey. He needs no more motivation in terms of “resisting the temptation” of killing her.

Palpatine could’ve drained the life force of 2 powerful young Force users to restore himself (I mean, why the hell not?)

There was absolutely no reason to make Rey and Ben Solo a Force Dyad when they already had a Force Bond to explain everything.

However, by making them a Force Dyad, they irrevocably linked Ben’s fate with Rey’s.

Even if you believe Ben Solo deserved to die because of what Kylo Ren did, it’s impossible to sell the idea that Rey deserves to lose half her soul. She didn’t choose the Force Dyad. (Neither did Ben.)

Selling the idea of Rey being “free” of the Force bond with Kylo Ren would’ve been infinitely easier than selling the idea of Rey being happy with her future despite half her soul dying.

If the original ending included Ben Solo dying, it absolutely would’ve provided more information about Force Dyads--particularly what happens when one half of the soul dies. (That would’ve been tied in as foreshadowing Ben’s death.)

TROS screws up the whole thing where the original trio all died to save Ben.

Han Solo’s death “splintered” Kylo Ren (gave Ben a fighting chance).

Luke Skywalker’s death gave Kylo a chance to face the master who failed him and vent his rage without killing anyone.

Leia Organa-Solo’s death proved that Ben was really alive/made him come to the surface.

This all sounds great, except... it’s unnessary. If Ben/Rey are a Force Dyad, then the bond would always result in him falling in love with her. Which means, in narrative terms, that Ben/Kylo would always have died to save Rey, even without the deaths of Han, Luke, and Leia fueling his return to the light.

Having all 3 die for him to return to the light, only to die minutes later, is not only a waste of good character redemption arc, but also a poor use of the narrative elements here. “Saving Ben Solo” as a full trilogy arc only works if “saving” him means more than “turn him to the light.”

Also, we’ve already seen what happens when someone turns (to the Dark), and everything changes with Darth Vadar. Narratively, we should be setting up to see what happens when someome turns (to the Light), and everything changes. But that requires the character in question to be alive.

TROS had virtually nothing in terms of “what’s next.” For anybody.

At the end of the original trilogy, there was a sense that all the characters who survived were moving forward with their lives... into a better future to boot.

I will admit, I’ve only seen the prequels twice (nowhere near how much I’ve seen the originals), but they also ended with people moving forward. Leia and Luke were split up and sent to grow up with different people. Anakin was now become Darth Vadar... and so on. I don’t remember this being as strong/clear as with the original trilogy, but I do remember it being there.

Now consider TROS. What do we know about the character’s future?

Lando offered Jannah some help discovering her roots.

“People are rising up all over the galaxy” -- we even saw a “Holdo move” aka a First Order ship that I am pretty sure was destroyed by lightspeed jump -- above a planet.

Rey is... possibly becoming a Jedi? But would she? Didn’t the Jedi create the Sith? Can she be a Jedi and still bring balance? Hm... fine, let’s say she’s gonna use her new lightsaber and bring Force balance. (But I am seriously guessing here, since the movie gave us no indications.)

Finn is...?

Poe is... what, exactly?

Rose is... ?

Maz is...?

Chewie is the caption of the Falcon now, so... he’s... ?

Zorii is...?

The movie didn’t give us any insight into the character’s futures. It barely touched on what Rey - its protagonist - would be doing, other than calling herself “Skywalker.”

This is likely because Disney/Lucas Films wanted open-ended plots (because keeping track of things for continuity is clearly not their strong suit).

Even so, at the very least, we should’ve had some idea what “the trio” was going onto next. But we don’t.

TL;DR Bullet List Summary

If the original ending of this script included the death of Ben Solo:

his change of heart and/or sacrifice would’ve been mentioned in the resolution at least once in dialog

they won’t have bothered making Ben and Rey a Force Dyad (because it wasn’t needed--and killing off half your protagonist’s soul is neither “hopeful” nor “satisfying”)

his death would’ve been foreshadowed at least twice in the script

there would’ve been dialog (or at least some direct indication) of the fact that Force Healing can result in the death of the Healer if s/he either gives too much of their life force or if s/he exerts himself/herself too much with the Force (for example, in TLJ, Kylo specifically says that Force projection at a long distance can kill)

This was supposed to be Leia’s movie in the trilogy. I always assumed Leia would die (as Han and Luke died in their movies), but I never doubted Ben Solo would survive. Why? Because this is Leia’s movie. Killing her only child in her movie is, as I have said before, rude.

#tros spoilers #sw meta #ben solo #kylo ren

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kylermalloy · 5 years

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My Official Unofficial Ranking of The Originals Seasons That Literally No One Asked For

So, these rankings turned out hilariously chronological. It’s not that I think each season just got progressively worse—it’s just that when I laid out the good things about each season, and the bad things that outweighed them... this is the order I ended up with.

MAJOR SPOILERS for The Originals ahead! Also, as a disclaimer: this is all opinion-based, and I reserve the right to change my mind at any time.

5 - Season 5

So...I kind of hate the last season. Part of it is my bitterness about how the writers messed up the character dynamics, and part of it is amazement that the (mostly) same team of writers wrote the masterpiece that was season 1.

So, the overarching story for this season is...? “We’re making a spinoff with Hope next year so we have to get rid of all the characters who are close to her who don’t want to be in yet another dumb vampire show”? That’s my impression of the writers’ goals when they planned this season. Although there are a few pertinent themes about hatred and prejudice (the irony of the Nazi-esque bad guys opposing Klaus when Klaus himself had a Nazi-esque crusade back when he first showed up on TVD is not lost on me) none of the themes have a lasting impact. They’re not developed in a memorable way. We get these purist losers to serve as villains for the first half of the season, then they’re unceremoniously taken out after they’ve killed a sufficient amount of main characters.

Then the rest of the season is just...wheel-spinning. A game of hot potato as we speculate who’s going to die at the end.

Don’t get me wrong, there was some powerfully good stuff in this season. I fully support the ending, even though the majority of fans didn’t like it. I loved it. I thought it incredibly fitting for the show to end as it began—with Klaus and Elijah side by side. Facing death together as they faced life. Dying for Hope. Their family’s legacy.

HOWEVER. A few good moments at the end of the season doesn’t make up for all the crap the writers pulled throughout the season. They had NO RIGHT to kill Hayley. They had NO REASON to separate Elijah from the family—the entire show, basically—for over half the season, or to make him complicit in killing Hayley. And that darn time jump from season 4 to season 5 is just...I have no words. Klaus and Hope were jipped out of so much time together, just because the writers wanted a teenage Hope. So many sloppy decisions were made in this season, both storywise and character-wise. It really calls into question the writers’ understanding of the characters they’re writing. So much of this season undercut what the last four seasons of the show were working toward. And the regressions we see in this season have no lasting impact—like Klaus’s murder relapse, or his estrangement from Hope. They’re nothing more than cheap excuses to make the plot happen.

(Clearly I have feelings.)

What this boils down to is that the narrative in season 5 has no structure. It’s a patchwork of lazy storytelling and fanservice—a few good moments between characters we already know and love doesn’t excuse that. Although the series ended with a bang, it’s clear that this final season was nothing more than the scattered, picked-clean bones of the show I fell in love with.

4 - Season 4

So this season is much better in terms of plot—the story is tightly paced and clearly planned out.

The problem is that it’s boring.

The narrative that the writers presented this season required lots of moving around and doing things and characters talking to other characters, and hardly any of it was interesting. Klaus and Elijah spend most of the season separated in one way or another. Freya is separated from her family for a large part of the season, and I’ve only just recently rewatched the entire show—so I can definitively say that Hope and Elijah don’t have a single conversation in this whole season. Elijah, the one who first believed in and fought for Hope—before Klaus, before Hayley even, really—Elijah isn’t important enough to talk to Hope. Elijah gets shunted off to his dark arc mostly with Vincent—all to facilitate a completely unnecessary breakup with Hayley.

The one thing I have zero complaints about is Klope. Klaus and Hope were flawless in this season. They were everything I wanted. Klaus’s unsure parenting, his determination to make this change-for-his-daughter thing last, his SOFTNESS around her...that part of the season was stellar.

Klaus’s arc of healing his relationship with Marcel was also good. I don’t think it got enough screentime, and by the end of the season it wasn’t fully resolved, but I liked how it was actually addressed. (This show has a tendency to brush off Marcel sometimes)

The other thing I really appreciate about this season is that Klaus, the main character, wasn’t given a love interest this season. After his major love interest died the previous season, the writers did not try to give him a new one, or even try to pair him up with his baby mama. His relationship with his daughter was his main focus for the season, and it was beautiful.

So, season 4. Not as insulting as season 5 in terms of plot, but this plot...and this’ll surprise everyone...took too much focus. We spend more time learning about the Hollow this season than developing Mikaelson family relationships, and that’s honestly a crime. Any story that doesn’t develop the Mikaelson family dynamics is dead in the water.

3 - Season 3

At a glance, this season is awesome. I know a lot of hardcore fans liked it. I also know a lot of fans hated it. Me, I both hate it and love it. I think the idea they were trying to accomplish was a good one, but the cost? Very high, too high. The story, though it has great stakes, is actually quite shaky in places.

Personally, I never liked the Trinity storyline. The idea of the Originals facing their first sired was not interesting to me, especially when Tristan was boring, Lucien overstayed his welcome and became annoying, and Aurora turned out to be nothing beyond a silly soap opera plot device.

I did like the ending, though. Marcel finally reaching his last straw. Rising above his creator and finally showing us what would happen if the power dynamics were reversed. It’s sick and scary and exactly what I want from a monster soap opera.

But there’s a lot of things I don’t like. I don’t like that Cami was killed. Double-killed, actually. Davina’s arc was in complete shambles the entire season. Hope was out of focus for most of the season. And the werewolf drama that had caused Hayley so much grief last season wasn’t even background noise—it straight-up didn’t exist.

Like I said, I liked what the show was trying to do, but I think the writers chose an ending and forced it to happen instead of letting the pieces fall organically. There were probably some outside factors involved too, like the fear of not being renewed, actors wanting to leave, etc. My personal theory is that, out of worry that season 3 would be the final season, the writers killed Cami in an attempt to push Klaus to glorious redemption mode (don’t even get me started on how dirty they did Cami’s arc) thus giving us the conflicting death/vampirism/permadeath Cami arc in the back half. Which makes sense—but it’s still messy from a storytelling perspective.

But despite all that complaining, there were some things I truly loved about this season. The Klelijah rebuild was solid, organic, and completely earned. They began in a fractured place, seemingly beyond repair, then forced to band together in the face of threats, and ended the season possibly closer than they’ve ever been. (their hug in the finale still messes me up, y’all. I’m weak!)

Elijah got some truly interesting stories this year. While Tristan and the Strix were both duds, I actually really enjoyed Elijah’s relationship with Aya. And his relationship with Freya! Let’s be real, season 3 was really the season of Freylijah. As weird and incestuous as the Mikaelsons come off sometimes, Freya and Elijah are the most married. In fact, I’ll just go ahead and give a shoutout to Freya altogether. A hitherto unexplored Mikaelson with a sketchy-at-best history with her brothers moves into their house full-time? This could have been an epic disaster, or at the very least could have turned Freya into Rebekah 2.0—but somehow neither happened. Freya held her own, and her addition worked very nicely.

*deep breath* I have so much to say.

2 - Season 2

(Yes this list is shaping up exactly how you think it is!) Okay. I’ve got so much love for this season, even though parts of it drive me up the wall.

I’ll start with the positives: the family feels. Almost every part of the family drama hit home. The resurrections of Finn, Kol, Mikael, Esther, and the surprise introduction of Ansel were all superb ideas, storywise. The recasts of Kol, Finn, and Esther (and eventually Rebekah too!) all worked VERY well—a special shoutout to DSharman for making me truly care about Kol for the first time! And having an old family member as the main villain works SO well for this show. Dahlia was really awesome—and in the end, almost underutilized. But Freya! The addition of Freya to the family brought forth a whole new tidal wave of emotions.

And do I even need to say it? Klope, y’all. They just give me all the feels. The midseason finale will always have a special place in my heart.

That’s not to say I don’t have my problems with this season. The narrative structure comes from a very bold place—in typical TVD fashion, the terrible threats we started out fearing are soon rendered obsolete by this much huger looming threat. Alliances are formed, backs are stabbed, hearts are broken, and the end of the season leaves us and the characters picking up pieces of our hearts off the floor.

I very much like the idea that Klaus, obsessively paranoid and fearful, would turn on everyone he loves to protect his child. However, I don’t think the necessary steps were taken in the narrative for us to actually reach that point. There was too much werewolf drama—for Hayley to care about them so much, shouldn’t we know more than three of them by name? And speaking of Hayley, I kind of hated the back half of her arc. As she ascends to werewolf queen, she loses all the braincells that got her this far and decides to trust Jackson and her new family over the Mikaelsons, the oldest, most ruthless and feared supernatural beings in the world. Huh?

Altogether, I just don’t think Elijah, Rebekah, and Hayley all turning on Klaus was well-deserved in the writing—especially considering how well they all worked together in the beginning of the season. I think it was another case of the writers establishing an endpoint far ahead of time, then pushing all the characters and events to fit their plan. Still, I liked this season a lot. Not as sloppy as season 3, but still not as masterful as season 1. And without further ado...

1 - Season 1

Here it is! The masterpiece. My baby. The year of television I can rewatch at any time and enjoy so thoroughly I forget the other million times I’ve seen it. And I can wax poetic about it for days, much to the dismay of my followers.

I’ve heard some people—fans, even—call season 1 unfocused or disorganized, cluttered, still figuring itself out...but I disagree very strongly. Since TO is a spinoff, and the three main characters were already well-established by the writers (well, as consistent as the writing on TVD ever was) I never saw TO as a show that had to figure itself out. It knew who its characters were, it knew exactly what it was trying to do, and it did exactly that. It just was never what the audience expected, and it took a storytelling route that we as viewers aren’t quite used to.

This show took on the monumental task of trying to redeem one of the biggest, baddest fantasy villains on television. A thousand year old mass murderer who had long since lost any drops of humanity. A tortured soul, sure, who’d made a few cursory steps toward semi-goodness, but still damaged beyond repair...or so we think.

Klaus’s redemption comes through this child that he fathers. But it doesn’t come for free. I often say that Klaus is both the protagonist and the antagonist of season 1, because no one is working harder against his betterment than he is. We as viewers have to learn quickly that Klaus accomplishing his goals is not necessarily a good thing. We expect his struggle with Marcel to end in triumph at the season finale, because that’s what generally happens with pilot plotlines. But instead, Klaus wins the Quarter in less than eight episodes, and his rule falls apart multiple times before the season ends. (I’m especially grateful for Marcel’s character not falling into the trope of “Klaus created a monster who ended up being worse than he is!” because that’s stupid— and why Lucien, who does fall into that category, fell so flat for me. It just doesn’t work with a character like Klaus. Nobody out-monsters him.) We expect him to get everything he wanted—because he’s the main character and things work out in the end, right? No. The entire season is a slap-in-the-face wake up call for Klaus. He can’t be worthy of this child that he can’t deny he wants unless he changes who he fundamentally is. He expects to rule the Quarter through his sleazy condescension and his larger-than-life threats, but he finds himself challenged and even overpowered at every corner. He expects to mistreat his sister, walk over her and rage at her like he always does, and ultimately win her inevitable forgiveness—but she can’t take it anymore, and she leaves him.

He expects to be able to control everyone around him, placing himself at the center of everyone’s universe, and that ought to create a suitable environment for his child to grow up in. But when she’s born, he can’t even keep her safe on her first day of life. And that’s when he realizes he can’t do this anymore. Despite being a master strategizer, this can’t be how Klaus lives and acts as a father. The season finale is a beautiful culmination of this realization, as he does what he’s never quite been able to do, and trusts the people around him—release control.

Of course, this realization isn’t the one-and-done redemption story. The walk back is long and arduous and full of setbacks, as the subsequent seasons prove. Klaus’s old temperaments get the better of him over and over and over again. He learns and unlearns and learns again. And I could just go on and on about how much I love this season.

Now, after all that gushing, I still don’t know how much of the season was planned, or if outside forces (actor contracts, availability, etc.) had a hand in shaping the story, but either by tight plotting or happy coincidence, the stars aligned and this season is darn near perfect.

There are definitely flaws and shortcomings, but the overall story is just so good that I can easily overlook them. Catapulting off TVD, which relied so heavily on shallow drama, TO did what most spinoffs can never do, and surpassed their parent show. This first season? It’s to die for.

(I realize this was far too long, and I don’t really care. I’m aware of my inability to move on from shows that have ended, and I also do not care.) I’d love to hear thoughts, discussions, opinions, anything!

#the originals #original groupies #another example of ‘why we shouldn’t let kyler nightblog’#i get incredibly long winded and emotional #i always say tired-me is what drunk-me would act like (if i ever got drunk)#there’s so much i didn’t even talk about #this show is just so darn BUSY #kylerrambles #also yes I am still working on rankings of spn episodes #i just had to get this out first #rankings

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