#post tros interview

[hamliet]

Excited for your thoughts on the bnha ending

Also I’ll be honest I dropped this like 200 chs ago and I’ve just kept up through your metas because I was so disillusioned with the manga 🥲 I even sold my copies

it's a bit bittersweet to see bnha handled this way. sometimes i think we'll get a promising continuation from the author which is major cope for me T.T

fix its are otw but damn it doesn't mend that it ended this way rn

Diff asks, answering together.

Not saying too much because there's not much to be said besides that a friend who wrote a meta who won't post it (to all our detriment!) said it best last week: this story is cowardly. It's afraid to say or do anything because it wants to make everyone happy and realized it can't, so now it just wants to make no one upset, but everyone's upset.

I feel sad for Horikoshi. His recent interviews are quite depressing, and he seems burned out and done with his own manga in a way that makes Gege look enthusiastic about JJK.

Like, he doesn't confirm Touya dead or alive--which frankly I will take--but leaves it up to the reader to decide. Is the doctor's word final, or is Touya crying a symbol of healing since he previously couldn't? I know which one I choose to believe, but this way people can choose to fit the manga into their personal beliefs. He's trying to say nothing to avoid rocking the boat. And that's just sad, especially when we consider what likely contributed to that.

Which is to say, on a purely story level, the story has no power. There's being open to other perspectives and then there's not having a message. This is sadly the latter. It's a mess. Deku "heroes save" doesn't save, but he's still heroic, but that line isn't demolished or destroyed. AFO may be dead, but he won in the end because what he used to taunt Deku came true. Deku's character is nothing more than a vehicle--no struggle, no emotional climax, no principles. The ships are not even confirmed because the story can't even commit to the obvious Ochaco/Deku (which I dislike even!) for fear of angering other loud shippers. Society is the problem, but also the answer. The hero system is the problem, but also the answer. It's not a paradox because it doesn't explain the layers at play here. It's just noodles that have cooked far too long and turned into a congealed mess.

The only message I can take from it is "yay authoritarianism" which I'm going to hope Horikoshi is saying accidentally (and most likely is). It's as meaningless as GoT season 8, and TROS, and that's not good company to be in.

[the-force-awakens]

with it officially being disability pride month, I wanna talk about my favorite disabled headcanon, which is for the one and only, my most beloved Poe Dameron. Buckle up, because this is a long post.

I actually have a few different disability headcanons, most of which hold up to canon/are extrapolated from canon, so we'll keep that in mind as we go through. I expect this to have about...four parts total. Let's go!

Hard of Hearing

I think a good case can be made that Poe is hard of hearing, with a few instances that could point to this fact, primarily the very beginning of the Rise of Skywalker. Even though Chewie is sitting right beside Poe, Poe does not understand what Chewie has said, because his head is turned (at no other point does Poe have any problem understanding Chewbacca, so we know it is not a linguistics issue)

It's only when he turns towards Chewie and Chewie repeats what he said that Poe understands what was said. There's also the frankly adorable moment in The Last Jedi that's extremely easy to miss, because it's a far away shot and we just barely catch what Poe says:

BB-8 is beeping so fast trying to catch Poe up that Poe has to request that he slow down so Poe can understand him. Other possible evidence of him being HoH (beyond the comical amount of explosions he's constantly caught in) is that there are several shots where we see Poe carefully watching the lips of the person he's speaking to as they're talking, as if that might help him keep up.

And (I don't have a gif of this lmao I'm not giffing him getting hurt) when Poe gets shot in tros, @/dameronalone pointed out it could be evidence he didn't hear the approaching stormtroopers when he turned to look the other way. @/hermitmoss has also pointed to his line at the start of tfa while being snarky at Kylo as further possible evidence, about how it's hard to understand Ren with the voice modulator.

Essential Hand Tremor

Another fact pointed out to me by @/hermitmoss (thanks Braigwen) is that when Poe goes to cover Leia's hand with his own in the Last Jedi, we see that his hand is shaking:

I later noticed that this isn't the only time that we see Poe do this, we see it again in the Rise of Skywalker, where he cannot keep his blaster steady as Rey approaches the serpent at all.

These are the only two circumstances I can find of his hands trembling in the movies, though, and we know from plenty of other scenes that Poe ordinarily can keep a blaster extremely steady:

Autism & ADHD

Okay this one I don't consider to be a headcanon, lmfao. I genuinely believe that Poe was intentionally coded as autistic/ADHD by Oscar Isaac.

Oscar playing/coding Poe as something that is never explicitly confirmed by Disney is far from new: Poe is coded as a bisexual (or pansexual) man, because that's how Oscar Isaac saw Poe and chose to play him, and even if we weren't gifted with it being made explicit, it's still there in his performance.

If you happen to be a fan of Oscar Isaac, or just a Marvel and Star Wars fan both, you'll know he starred in the Disney+ series Moon Knight last year as the Moon Knight system (Steven Grant, Marc Spector, and Jake Lockley).

Shortly after the first episode premiered, Oscar Isaac revealed in an interview that while trying to figure out who Steven was as a person, he came up with the idea that the system be on the Autism Spectrum, and approached Marvel to see if he could include it into his performances, and it was green-lit.

The Lunar system is the best intentional autistic representation I've ever seen, there are so many things they do that are so minor that I doubt most people would ever consider to include, but they are things that me and my friends do.

And there's an overlap in how Oscar plays the various autistic habits and traits of the Lunar system in how he portrays Poe. Most notably, Poe and Marc have extremely similar meltdowns:

There's plenty more overlap (Poe does the same anxious stim Steven does, of rubbing the inside of his index finger with his thumb) but there's so much there I'm not sure where all to begin. I have gone more in depth on the various autistic traits Poe shows throughout the films in this gifset here, though.

I'll go ahead and include some of the moments we see him stimming, that I have evidence of:

(he also does this same hand thing when he starts to leave BB-8 and promises to come back.)

We also see him fidgeting anxiously with his hands during the briefing in the last jedi:

Poe also has a habit of running his tongue along his bottom lip while he's stressed or thinking something through. Here's three examples from across the trilogy (there are plenty more):

We're leaning a little closer into ADHD territory now. I don't really know how to explain why I think Poe is ADHD, to be quite honest, besides the fact that he just radiates ADHD energy to me and I heavily relate. This is a man who cannot stay still, and frequently talks with his hands:

But there's also the fact that Poe oftentimes has a tendency to not be able to fully see the potential of negative outcomes to his decisions - he sees point a to point b, and sometimes becomes laser focused on that. It's something I understand perfectly, because it's hard for me to pull away from something I've already fully committed to doing, and it's even more difficult sometimes for me to truly understand what (and what kind of) consequences my actions will have.

Other evidence of him being extremely autistic (and adhd) is just....that he makes autistic expressions?

Like this...is an autistic expression, I've seen my best friend make this exact fucking face before, I don't know how else to explain it.

Misc Thoughts

Aside from the above, it's pretty much canon that Poe has anxiety and depression — at the very least, Poe Dameron: Free Fall by Alex Segura certainly does not shy away from the suggestion, and is one of the most implicit portrayals we have of it outside the films — it is a series of catastrophizing his circumstances that leads Poe to joining Zorii for a little while as a teenager, following a joyride that ended in a crash that Poe explicitly wishes he had not survived.

The movies themselves also points to Poe having PTSD, partially through the writing but mostly due to the nuanced and thoughtful performance Oscar Isaac gives as Poe (that goes....woefully underappreciated, seriously he adds so much depth to every single scene as Poe, including the thread of anxiety in Poe's voice when Rey mentions Ren's ship is over Kijimi, or constantly looking out to make sure they're not being followed in tros).

(Good expanded material follows through on this, such as Poe's reluctance to discuss anything about what happened aboard the Finalizer in the Poe Dameron: Flight Log, and becoming irate at the thought of having to. He's an extremely traumatized man, and he certainly doesn't deserve to be thrown out of an airlock jfc and he isn't as arrogant as the fascist regime he is fighting, tbh he's not arrogant at all).

Conclusion

I believe that sums up the majority of my Poe is disabled thoughts, or at least the ones that I think holds up very well within the canon framework. He's extremely disabled and - in the case of being neurodivergent - this is critical to understanding him as a character, especially considering his arc ends up being focused on interdependence.

I wish all fellow disabled folk a happy pride month, and I wish all very ableds a very "please do not be ableist on this post". You will be blocked otherwise.

[nullheaven]

Ten people I’d like to know tag

Tagged by @katoprofen thank u my dear❤️❤️❤️

Last song:

Favorite color: white

Last book: idk its been a while since i read a book

Last movie: the interview (2014)

Last TV show: the sopranos

Sweet/Spicy/Savoury: all of em

Last thing I googled: festa da cuca em joinville

Current obsession: watching the sopranos, fruits and posting bullshit on tumblr

Looking forward to: HOLIDAY TOMORROW, continue my painting and watching more of the sopranos

Tagging @celtos @pushkatim @enig-og-tro @clubcope @bish0ps if yall feel like it

[artist-issues]

What's your opinion on Rey's next film after Star Wars episode 9? What do you think Lucasfilm will do with Rey's story and journey in the next film?

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (“Ms. Marvel”) will direct the next Rey film from a script by Steven Knight (“Peaky Blinders”).

Information about the story of Rey’s film

PUBLISHED APR 10, 2023

Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said at the fan convention that Ridley’s new “Star Wars” movie will follow Rey as she builds a new Jedi Order, but the executive teased a bit more about the plot in an interview with IGN: “Star Wars” fans will pick up with Rey well over a decade after “The Rise of Skywalker.”

“Well we’re 15 years out from ‘Rise of Skywalker,’ so we’re post-war, post-First Order, and the Jedi are in disarray,” Kennedy confirmed. “There’s a lot of discussion around, ‘Who are the Jedi? What are they doing? What’s the state of the galaxy?’ She’s attempting to rebuild the Jedi Order, based on the books, based on what she promised Luke, so that’s where we’re going.”

As for whether Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker could be involved in the film via flashbacks or as a Force ghost, Kennedy said: “I don’t know if we’ll spend a lot of time in flashbacks or [on] Force ghosts or things like that, but certainly, the spirit of what he represents to her is going to be significant.”

Source: Variety

More information about the film in this post here.

I really think they lost sight of who Rey was and who she was set up to be in Episode 9. If they had completed her character arc in a meaningful way, a I feel like I would be better set up to answer this question. But as it is, she doesn’t seem to have any direction or purpose in the end of TROS.

Yeah, she’s rebuilding the Jedi, but like…why? What are they to her? The only thing she learned about the Jedi beyond myths and rumors was that they were proud fools—from Luke, that is. And then even after he died and his Force ghost had a brief moment with her, it’s not like he was really showing her what the Jedi were, or what they were like, or how to start a community of Jedi. He was just giving her general advice about how to do the right thing—and framing that with “confronting fear is the destiny of the Jedi” or whatever.

But see, that’s the thing. In the original trilogy, it made sense for Luke to end his story by training Jedi Knights and restoring the Order. He started out learning that his father was a Jedi Knight and wanting to figure out what that was so he could be one too—then he learned what that was—then he remembered his promise to Yoda to pass on what he’d learned.

Sure, Luke was learning big character lessons along the way, to apply to himself. “Let go of control, focus on doing the right thing in the present” for example. But those were lessons he learned while pursuing the goal of becoming and embodying the next generation of Jedi.

That was never Rey’s goal.

Rey’s goal was just “find my place/find out who I am.” It took all of the first movie and even part of the second in her trilogy for her to even accept that she might, in some way, be connected to the Jedi tradition. But she never promises to teach anyone else. She never promises to pass on what tiny amount she has learned. She never shows any interest in doing that. For Rey, being a Jedi only mattered in connection with answering her question “who am I?” She never showed any desire to teach anyone anything, or continue a legacy.

In the last movie, she chants “be with me,” but that comes out of nowhere. It makes no sense for her. She always wanted a family she could be with; she lost her parents, she lost Kylo Ren (who she had a deep connection with, I don’t care what kind) and she has Finn and Poe…and in TROS she treats them like they’re workplace friends, not her last remaining shot at a family.

What I’m saying is, the character goes from “I have to find out who I am” to “I have to rebuild this old religion I have no personal ties to and was never really dreaming of being a part of.” With no rhyme or reason.

So what are they going to do with this new movie?

…Anything they want, they basically retconned all of her direction, as a character, in TROS. She’s actually a Mary-Sue now. They want her to be the next Ahsoka, they can go for it. They want her to be a fallen empress, fine. They want her to marry Poe Dameron or grow old and wise like Yoda, whatever, they can do it. They’ve already proven they’ll just make up whatever they want without sticking to any of their previous decisions for her character. 🤷‍♀️

[racingliners]

sewis for the ship ask game thing! :D (sorry bout the double ask, btw, i didn't scroll far enough to see this game before sending you the other one 😅)

don't worry about sending double asks!!!! yelling into my ask box is both welcome and encouraged!!!

makes sense, compels me

I mean I'm literally writing a goodness knows how long it'll end up being sewis fic in TRoS of course I find it compelling. I really do love them a stupid amount. The fact they made their F1 debuts in the same year and briefly raced in the junior series together. The back to back seasons they fought for the championship. Baku 2017 and the fact how they said that despite what Seb did was so dumb it brought them closer together. All the on track battles and shared podiums. Seb stopping his post-race interview in Mexico 2018 because he wanted to congratulate Lewis. Lewis saying Seb's friendship made him feel less alone in the sport. "There is no lack of bravery in Sebastian". No one is doing it like them!!!!

ship classification game

[redrascal1]

I'm repeating myself...but even almost four years later I STILL can't get my head around how truly awful TROS was, not just with its depiction of all the characters, but with its gaping plot holes.

Wow - Finn is Force sensitive!

For how long? Kylo 'sensed' his reluctance to kill waaay back in TFA, he would have known he was FS back then. When did Finn suddenly 'become' FS? And why didn't he do anything with it?

Luke knew all along that Rey was Palpatine's granddaughter. Yet he professed no knowledge of who she was in TLJ. So, Terrio, an avid Luke fan, makes him into a scheming liar. And they say Rian Johnson 'demonised' him.

Wasn't Poe the child of a couple of Rebel heroes? So, how come he was smuggling drugs with Zorri Bliss?

Palpatine had no children in 'canon'. As said by his actual creator, George Lucas.

If Rey's father was a clone of Palps how come he looked nothing like him?

If Leia had truly been trained as a Jedi - why not train Ben herself instead of sending him away?

Abrams made it very clear in interviews post TFA that neither Snoke or Kylo were 'Sith'. So, how come Snoke is suddenly a Palps clone?

Why didn't Hux find out Kylo had killed Snoke? He was intelligent enough to design StarKiller yet they made him into a stupid sod who never questioned how Rey had managed to kill ALL of Snoke's guards as well as him.

What was the purpose of Pryde? He was just an older version of Hux.

Where on earth did Palps suddenly produce his fleet from?

HOW THE HELL DID HE SURVIVE THE FALL INTO A REACTOR SHAFT?

Luke in ROTJ: I can't kill my own father.

Rey in TROS: Grandad, you're toast.

How can this be the example of Jedi perfection?

I don't think I'll EVER be able to get over what a mindblowingly awful film TROS was. And yet they have 'canonised' it in stone.

[absolxguardian]

I know when it comes to the practical, the fact is that exploitative systems like capitalism will always find a way to use new technology to do more exploitation, but a lot of the posts I've seen about "CGI necromancy" treat the act itself as unethical, and while I don't have an answer, I do think something like that needs to be examined.

Because when it comes to mediums other than live action film/television, stuff like that has been happening for a much longer time. While there were all these articles and thinkpieces about CGI Tarkin in Rogue One and Disney even asked the permission of Peter Cushing's family- no one did anything like that for Tarkin appearing in the Clone Wars or Rebels. I don't think they would if there was a photorealistic CGI Tarkin for a video game. People did the same thing with Leia appearing in TROS via archival footage, but Carrie Fisher's death had no effect on Leia appearing in the comics or even casting someone to portray her in Star Wars Resistance.

Idk, I think there's some kind of instinct to say that actors have a level of ownership over the characters they portray when its live action, but when its a franchise that isn't really there. There are over 40 years of stories featuring the OT trio that didn't involve any of their original actors. No one blinks twice when actors sign away their image rights to be used to produce toys, video games, and/or comics. (Although the 'capitalists are going to exploit' aspect of it is that these companies will now use these signed away image rights to take work opportunities away from actors, rather than just for projects where actors have no place). Even the questions asked of actors in interviews show that we give them too much ownership over their characters, when those character's words and actions are decided by the screenplay.

[sw-daydreamer]

‘Star Wars’ Screenwriter Chris Terrio on Ending the 42-year ‘Skywalker’ Saga

The Oscar-winning screenwriter talks about collaborating with J.J. Abrams on the script, respecting the memory of Carrie Fisher, and ending the Skywalkers.

(...)

They had no illusions, though, that they would be able to satisfy everyone.

“We knew at the beginning that there was no world in which everyone was going to say that was exactly what I wanted,” Terrio explained. “But I hope at the very least our love for the characters and for the galaxy comes through in some way.”

Critics and audiences alike seem torn on the concluding film to the Star Wars world as we know it. It posted $177 million in its opening weekend, but that was down significantly from the previous outing, The Last Jedi. Additionally, The Rise of Skywalker is the only film in the new trilogy to not receive an “A” Cinemascore rating, indicating the perhaps inevitable mixed reactions from fans.

(...)

During the course of our near hour-long interview, he dropped a lot of plot spoilers (avoided here) and detail about additional footage not included in the finished product (also avoided here) that seemingly speaks to many of the internet-based criticisms.

(...)

AD: When you two were working together, you obviously had this shared appreciation for the Star Wars universe. When you starting working on the final script, were you responding to a pre-defined structure  or were you creating something unique between the two of you?

CT: Both actually. Kathy Kennedy and Michelle Rejwan had a clear plan for where they wanted things to end. They had clear plans about certain narrative marks they wanted us to hit. They also gave us a lot of freedom within that. We knew that Rey and Ren were utterly key to this trilogy, but we also felt that there was no way that we were going to not find a path to redemption for Kylo Ren, the son of Han and Leia. We felt that right from the beginning, when J.J. established Kylo Ren in Episode VII, there was a war going on inside him and that he had been corrupted by something bigger than himself and had made bad choices along the way. J.J. and I felt we needed to find a way in which he could be redeemed, and that gets tricky at the end of Episode VIII because Snoke is gone. The biggest bad guy in the galaxy at that moment seemingly is Kylo Ren. There needed to be an antagonist that the good guys could be fighting, and that’s when we really tried to laser in on who had been the great source of evil behind all of this for so long. That’s when we really started aggressively pursuing this idea that there is old evil that didn’t die. The source of the evil in the galaxy is this dark spirit waiting for its revenge and biding its time. The entity known as Palpatine in this version – his body died in Return of the Jedi – is patient and has been waiting. He dug his fox hole and has been waiting for his chance to re-establish his total domination.

AD: Was returning to this entity known as Palpatine always in the plan or was it newly introduced in Episode IX?

CT: Well, I can’t speak to Kathy’s overall intent. That was certainly discussed and was discussed before I ever came on. Kathy had this overall vision that we had to be telling the same story for nine episodes. Although from the sleight of hand of Episode VII and Episode VIII, you wouldn’t necessarily know immediately that we were telling the same story. She thought it would be a very strong end for the ninth movie. This fits well with J.J. because he loves magic tricks. He will often talk in metaphors and magic tricks, and so in Episode VII and Episode VIII, you think you’re watching one thing but Episode IX tells you to watch more closely – you were actually watching something else. When you rewatch the earlier films, things start to make additional sense. Ren and his devotion to the idea of his grandfather. The voice that he’s always heard in his head. The certain similarities between Snoke and Palpatine. The intention was that, by the time you get to Episode IX, you realize there were real reasons this is all happening. It all shows how this story is being fought cyclically through the series.

AD: One thing that’s fairly pervasive right now is the buzz around Kelly Marie Tran’s reduced role in The Rise of Skywalker when compared to The Last Jedi. Tell me about working through her role in the final film.

CT: Well, first of all, J.J. and I adore Kelly Marie Tran. One of the reasons that Rose has a few less scenes than we would like her to have has to do with the difficulty of using Carrie’s footage in the way we wanted to. We wanted Rose to be the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia. We thought we couldn’t leave Leia at the base without any of the principals who we love, so Leia and Rose were working together. As the process evolved, a few scenes we’d written with Rose and Leia turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we’d hoped for. Those scenes unfortunately fell out of the film. The last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose. We adore the character, and we adore Kelly – so much so that we anchored her with our favorite person in this galaxy, General Leia.

AD: Given the sheer volume of exposition required and number of characters you did have to balance, was there ever talk around expanding Episode IX into a “Part 1” and a “Part 2?”

CT: I wish we could have done that. There is a lot of plot in the movie, and as a writer, you always want scenes to let the plot breathe more. If there were a way of doing it, splitting it would have been my dream. We could have written these characters forever. There was so much backstory that had to be left by the wayside. I wish that we could have that, but George always said it was nine movies. That was the natural size of the saga, and so, other than a few initial discussions, we never really advanced that conversation. Of course, as a writer, it breaks your heart to leave stuff on the table that you think would have given the story more depth and nuance and to give the characters more to do. Speaking for myself and not on the part of the studio, I do wish there could have been a “Part 1” and a “Part 2.”

AD: Trying to avoid spoilers here, but leading into the final film, the word was that this would be the final chapter on the Skywalker saga. Yet, there’s a persistence still in the name Skywalker at the end of the film. Is this really the end?

CT: I don’t have any additional insight into that than you do, honest to God. For us, the resonance of the name Skywalker was just purely a thematic one. It wasn’t an attempt to brand something in the universe. J.J. and I had a post-it that read, “You don’t discover who you are. You create it.” So much of this film is about discovery and creating who you are through that discovery. It’s purely for thematic reasons that we included who is a Skywalker at the end of the film. [Editor note: We omitted a great deal of conversation around spoilers related to the end of the film for this answer. This printed response provides the overall sense of his answer while avoiding explicit spoilers.]

(...)

source : www.awardsdaily.com/2019/12/24/star-wars-screenwriter-chris-terrio-on-ending-the-42-year-skywalker-saga/

[reylo-is-my-anthem]

Read the Awards Daily interview with Chris Terrio..had some thoughts.

Okay...so

Good vs Bad

There needed to be an antagonist that the good guys could be fighting, and that's when we really tried to laser in on who had been the great source of evil behind all of this for so long

But why? The FO is the big bad, has been from the start of VII actually. So what is the point of bringing in another "dead" character from the OT to help fight? The FO had basically won in VIII, they were THE dominant force in the galaxy...but I guess that wasn't enough reason for the Resistance to fight. Instead of addressing the inner conflict all the characters had felt previously (Rey's abandonment and wanting to belong, Kylo's light vs dark battle, Poe's leadership skills, Finn's sense of duty after joining the Resistance) the writers throw all that to the wind and say "they need a big baddie to fight because it looks cooler." It takes away major themes from VIII like DJ's lesson to Finn about good vs bad = war machine, and how the force doesn't inherently belong to either the light or dark side.

2. Nuance

Although from the sleight of hand of Episode VII and Episode VIII, you wouldn't necessarily know immediately that you were telling the same story.[...]When you rewatch the earlier films, things start to make additional sense.

Except they don't. If anything, everything from the earlier films makes no sense at this point. "Slight of hand" just means "we didn't know so here's an excuse that sounds like we knew all along." The earlier plotlines about inner conflict were thrown to the wayside to make room for explosions, spectacle, and lightsaber battles. Character development was abandoned, and the entire ST and OT were retconned to make sense of IX. Anakin wasn't the chosen one, the last Skywalker didn't actually deserve redemption, Leia was a Jedi but said screw you to her own son, Palpatine is senile and not the genius mastermind like he once was, Luke retconned years of his life reasoning being on Ahch-to. I could go on, but what's really the point??? The writers clearly don't understand how to tell a compelling story without a grand us vs them battle, and so tried to fit in their story into the established canon by destroying the rest of it. I think they think the GA is stupid.

3. Rose

JJ and I adore Kelly Marie Tran. One of the reasons Rose has a few less scenes than we would like her to have has to do with the difficulty with using Carrie's footage in the way we wanted to.

Yeah...that's BS. Carrie had already left this world (RIP princess) by the time they started writing so they knew exactly what they had to work with. He's just back peddling and it's pathetic to watch.

4. Fast pacing

Speaking for myself and not on the part of the studio, I do wish there could have been a "Part 1" and a "Part 2."

I believe you do wish that my dude. That's what happens when writers don't know how to tell a concise and compelling story. When you say that you omitted so much and there was so much extra back story that didn't get included, then what's left over? Oh, that's right, battleships and lightsabers. Silly me, I thought Star Wars was that AND a space fairytale, or that AND characters finding self-discovery, or even that AND a commentary on politics or good vs evil or literally anything else. This movie was so empty and anticlimactic, it really makes you wonder what exactly they left on the cutting room floor...probably a decent movie tbh.

These are just a few thoughts since reading the article. I first saw the link posted by @sw-daydreamer so thanks!

[save-ben-swolo]

wait so the Ben and Rey kiss WAS last minute? or did I read that wrong

You -unfortunately- did not read that wrong. In fact, they made a cut without it so they could decide kiss? Y/N? last minute in editing.

Witness the horror and give in to your anger:

So basically.... their relationship was never central to the story in their eyes if the resolution of it was just something to “tack on” or “remove” in editing on a whim. Which is why it was never built up properly throughout the movie and why the kiss felt -weird- (if we’re being honest) based on most of their interactions within the same film.

[save-ben-swolo]

EXCUSE?! Besides EVERYTHING ELSE that’s dumb about this, “the Jedi” DO NOT equal the Skywalkers. Not even close. It’s also cute that they conveniently ignore the fact that both Luke and Leia have struggled/struggle with their own (Skywalker!!!) ancestral demons (which they JUST brought up again in the Resistance Reborn novel) but since it’s a legendary name (that makes Disney $$) the shitty parts of that ancestry get to be conveniently erased, along with Ben (FUCK!!), so Rey feels good about taking the name over “Palpatine” and it erases her need for belonging and real family apparently. I’m dead inside.

This makes me wish I were illiterate

[thefudge]

what do you think of reviewers saying kylo ren was the best character to come out of this trilogy?

…….

he never did anything worth talking about!!!

seriously, all the canonical stuff we know about him tells us he was under the control of one Sith or another, at any given time. the movies & comics made damn sure that whenever he made a booboo, they retconned it by saying “it was voices in his head making him”. like, that moment in TROS where palpatine reveals he also impersonated VADER in ben’s head??? so??? then?? what is the truth??? ben solo’s descent into darkness was not this troubled young man making bad choices on his own with minor external influence, no no, he was just someone’s puppet from day one and he had no functioning thought in his brain. he was simply a mindless Victim™. even the “luke tried to kill me” bit, while enhancing luke’s character, did little for kylo ren’s, because does he ever actually deal with the aftermath? does the movie address this again?  does he understand why his uncle did what he did?? who cares??? not these movies. 

the first order stuff, does it count?? not really, because kylo ren keeps saying in TLJ how the ideology of his party doesn’t matter to him. so, is he an imperialist fascist or …does he have any other beliefs? *shrug* the movies don’t care. he doesnt have any kind of belief system, except “let the past go”, and even that is reversed in TROS. oh, he wants to rule with rey as emperor/empress? does Supreme Leader Ren do anything in his new position btw? does he have a vision of “order” for the galaxy as future emperor? we don’t know. the movies don’t care. and at this point, are we sure that’s even his desire? wasn’t Palpy excited at one point about rey being empress? i ask these things because a) Palpy insists he was every voice in his head ever, and b) the absolutely chaotic way they’ve written this dude means nothing means anything for sure. and no, it’s not a sign of “complexity” or “nuance”. they literally just let this character be vaguely “bad” so that they could change the outcome to suit their needs at the end. there was a lot of potential here,  squandered with each year. 

i think when reviewers come out of these movies calling him the best character what they mean is that they like adam driver’s acting and that he’s one of the few characters placed in a variety of compelling situations. basically, his storyline seems more interesting because they amp it up with a lot of promise and drama but when you start to think about it…it really unravels, bub. all of those interesting story beats? oh, it was just Palpy in his head, it’s okay. oh, he murdered his jedi classmates? actually no… he tried to save them. he lashed out at his parents due to a complicated family situation? haha… no… leia and han just neglected and feared him and sent him away…LOL. he betrayed luke because he was drawn to the dark side? naaah don’t worry, it was luke who “betrayed” him and that will never be touched upon again and besides, it was Palpy doing everything…

that’s exactly why they brought Palpy back btw. because they had no idea how to write kylo ren as a singular entity. i wanted to watch a movie about Supreme Leader Ren, see what he does on his own when he’s not someone else’s stooge. guess we’ll never know. 

like, i don’t wanna be misunderstood: i enjoy many aspects of this clusterfuck of a character, and this whole post is me being angry on his behalf, but taken as a whole? as a convincing antihero??? as a flesh-and-blood person inhabiting this fictional universe???? he don’t exist. they were just lucky adam driver managed to give “Schrodinger’s Vader” some additional layers. 

[graysistance]

“It’s so difficult to manoeuvre,” he says, exhaling deeply, visibly calibrating the level of professional diplomacy to display. “You get yourself involved in projects and you’re not necessarily going to like everything. [But] what I would say to Disney is do not bring out a black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side. It’s not good. I’ll say it straight up.” He is talking about himself here – about the character of Finn, the former Stormtrooper who wielded a lightsaber in the first film before being somewhat nudged to the periphery. But he is also talking about other people of colour in the cast – Naomi Ackie and Kelly Marie Tran and even Oscar Isaac (“a brother from Guatemala”) – who he feels suffered the same treatment; he is acknowledging that some people will say he’s “crazy” or “making it up”, but the reordered character hierarchy of The Last Jedi was particularly hard to take.

“Like, you guys knew what to do with Daisy Ridley, you knew what to do with Adam Driver,” he says. “You knew what to do with these other people, but when it came to Kelly Marie Tran, when it came to John Boyega, you know fuck all. So what do you want me to say? What they want you to say is, ‘I enjoyed being a part of it. It was a great experience...’ Nah, nah, nah. I’ll take that deal when it’s a great experience. They gave all the nuance to Adam Driver, all the nuance to Daisy Ridley. Let’s be honest. Daisy knows this. Adam knows this. Everybody knows. I’m not exposing anything.”

He is on a breathless roll now, breaking his long corporate omerta to touch on the unthinking, systemic mistreatment of black characters in blockbusters (“They’re always scared. They’re always fricking sweating”) and what he sees as the relative salvage job that returnee director JJ Abrams performed on The Rise Of Skywalker (“Everybody needs to leave my boy alone. He wasn’t even supposed to come back and try to save your shit”). Even though he also acknowledges that it was an “amazing opportunity” and a “stepping stone” that has precipitated so much good in his life and career, he is palpably exhilarated to be finally saying all this. But to dismiss these words as merely professional bitterness or paranoia is to miss the point. His primary motivation is to show the frustrations and difficulties of trying to operate within what can feel like a permanently rigged system. He is trying, really, to let you know what it feels like to have a boyhood dream ruptured by the toxic realities of the world.

‘NOBODY ELSE IN THE STAR WARS CAST HAD PEOPLE SAYING THEY WOULD BOYCOTT THE MOVIE BECAUSE [OF THEM]’

[hisredempticn]

it’d be a good story, if you came back as the underdog !   /  independent and highly selective ben solo from star wars. lovingly scolded by bianca. (blog contains tros spoilers).

[redrascal1]

Can we just appreciate what a class act Adam Driver was post TROS? Apart from admitting in an interview that he was 'sad' after the film finished, he never once moaned that his character was:

Completely sidelined for Rey in the last 20 minutes of the film

Not even given any dialogue in the last 20 minutes of the film

Didn't even get a FG, unlike Anakin in ROTJ

Treated like a supporting character despite being the last real Skywalker.

Compare his reaction to the sulky brat whining that he should have been male lead because of his ethnicity, and who made revolting comments about Daisy Ridley on twitter, despite her supposedly being his friend.

Let's just say that if he'd been my friend that was one 'friendship' that would have ended full stop. You get the picture.

[the-viking-goddess]

Did anyone at DLF ever care about Ben Solo? One single person?? Just... anyone? At this point it really feels like Rian Johnson and Adam Driver were the only ones involved in the ST who ever gave a shit about Ben and it's so fucking tragic.

I know it's pointless but I just wish that someone, even just one person, from inside DLF would spill the tea and come out and say that they cared deeply about his character and were disappointed about what was done to him in TROS. You know? Anyone, I don't care who they are. Even if it's years down the line. Just a SM post, an interview, a salty anonymous leak or something. Just one person coming out to say that they actually gave a shit about Ben Solo, that he mattered as much as the OT characters, and that they were actually fucking upset about what DLF did to him. I wish I could know that at least one person on the inside cared about and fought for him.