#pro Star Wars sequels

[mysticaltora8276]

In addition to that post, I would like to point out that yes I do like the sequels. Are they perfect? Well no they are not. Nevertheless, I do like the Star Wars sequels. They continue the theme of things being cyclical. There were some ideas to put in mildly that I didn’t like, but there were also things I did like. I for one believed the main character. Rey does deserves the name of Skywalker. And yes, Finn should’ve had a better story arc and they should’ve used Rose the fact that they didn’t use her more is a crime onto itself. Ben Solo’s arc was pretty interesting, but I wish they had hammered home how he had been turned. But with all its flaws, I still like it. I think it’s kind of funny that the same arguments being thrown in the direction of the sequels were the same arguments I heard about the prequels. And now look at them oh the irony.

[mysticaltora8276]

That’s why when the sequel haters complained about how Rey “is stupidly overpowered“. I look at them and just say her connection is instinctual she trusts in the Force that’s how she’s able to do these things. The Force is not about gaining power. it’s not like a video game. It’s about trust in something outside of yourself and allowing it to come into you, which is what she does it instinctually that’s why she’s so good.

There's a panel in Star Wars 17 where Vader tells Luke "Your strength in the Force has grown since last we met" and Luke corrects him "My connection to the Force, Vader," and this is interesting for what it says about the difference between Sith and Jedi philosophies but it's also an interesting character note that Luke feels compelled to be pedantic even in the middle of a goddamn firefight.

[the-far-bright-center]

Star Wars isn't a tragedy. Only the Prequels are. Disney (and most of tumblr it seems) may think all of Star Wars is supposed percieved in a sad or tragic manner, but it's not. Return of the Jedi is triumphant, redemptive, and uplifiting. It's the fairytale ending that bookends the greek tragedy. The combination of fall and then redemption of the human soul is the entire point.

Anakin is a tragic character, but the Skywalker saga itself NOT meant to be tragic, neither in its tone nor its actual outcome.

[jewishcissiekj]

ugh one of the most tragic things about Order 66 and the Jedi Purge is the erasure of all that history by the Empire and by time. More than just history, it's the erasure of culture, the purposeful cleansing of the Jedi ways and people from the Galaxy. All these stories and people were lost, not to time, but by the intentional extinction of everything they ever were. In Crimson Reign #3, The Archivist (written by Charles Soule) puts it in a way that genuinely struck me when I was reading it.

You don't have to read all that, but I feel like it drives the point across wonderfully. The Jedi Order not only died because of Order 66 and the Purge, but the very idea of it was also made into a death sentence. Each Jedi's life, before the Empire, was preserved through the seemingly eternal memory of the Order, the Jedi Archives, or their lineage, and those who took their path. The Empire erased any trace of that memory, collapsing the tradition of millennia. As a Jedi, you are almost ensured to be remembered, and your actions are certain to have echoes throughout the ages. The Empire, and more specifically Palpatine I should probably say, did everything to take it away. What's left of The High Republic? What's left of the heroics of generations of Jedi? What's left of their life stories? Their meditation or lightsaber techniques? It's the tragedy of the Jedi order, and it goes so much deeper than the awful loss of about 10,000 Jedi during Order 66 and the purge (not that that should be underestimated).

[antianakin]

I just saw this take in a collection of Star Wars videos I was watching and just…… what even:

where do people come up with stuff like this. Also I needn’t say it but this makes me so angry

This is what happens when fans try too hard to make something "make sense" in universe rather than accepting a meta/out-of-universe explanation for it.

So sure, if the ST introduces the idea that you can "Force heal" by learning it from some sort of Jedi text, it begs the question of why we never see any of the Prequels Jedi using it. Did they know about it and simply chose not to use it? Was it restricted to Jedi HEALERS for some reason? Did they NOT know about it because it was in a really obscure text that nobody even remembered anymore? And the ST chose not to answer any of those questions, which leaves the fans to try to come up with their own answers.

And the real answer is that the people who made the ST had no fucking idea what they were doing and quite honestly don't seem to have cared much about narrative continuity much at all. There's Force healing in the ST and not in any of the others because Force healing like what we see in the ST would kind-of ruin the entire POINT of the other stories. Luke could just... save Anakin. Anakin could just save Padme. Obi-Wan could just save Qui-Gon. Then where would the story be? Force healing is unsatisfying within the narratives we've been given and ruins the entire point of the message Lucas was sending with them.

But nobody who was making the Sequels fucking cared, so. Now we have Force healing from some random Jedi texts. Cool. Whatever. People who hate the Jedi are just going to hate the Jedi, they'll find whatever reason they want to do so, regardless of what the actual films show and regardless of what Lucas says. As someone who DOES like the Jedi, my explanation for why there's suddenly Force healing that can be learned from a text is that the people making the ST were fucking stupid and nobody realized or cared that it broke a lot of the narratives from the prior two trilogies and went against the themes of those films. That's it.

[auditect]

Ladies, if your strong female character...

is a skilled pilot

can use force lightning without turning to the dark side

hails from a force-sensitive lineage

her weapon of choice is either a blue or a yellow/orange lightsaber

That's not your strong female character! That's Plo Koon!

[unleashthegoats]

EPISODE 13: JAKE SKYWALKER: THE WORST JEDI

Welcome to the second episode in our Fixing the Sequels series! This time we’re focusing on that controversy of all controversies, Jake Skywalker. Some people liked him, others felt like he was an insult to everything Star Wars had ever stood for before this, but we had some ideas on what we would’ve liked to have seen happen for the character in the Sequels. 

[jedi-enthusiast]

Debunking the "The Jedi Are Evil" Theory Made by The Film Theorists PT 2

Point 2 - That Luke was Right in the Sequels

In the Sequels, Luke says this:

"Now that they're extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified...but if you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure, hypocrisy, hubris."

And, after bringing this quote up, Matthew says this:

"While this kind of tea spill coming from Luke was considered pretty sacrilegious, both by other characters as well as the audience, I think that Luke has a point if you examine the movies with a little more scrutiny. His criticisms aren't exactly unfounded."

Now, first of all, what Luke is saying here cannot be trusted as "fact" or anything to go off of, mainly because of two reasons.

---

1. He's trying to convince Rey not to be a Jedi or, at the very least, to not make him train her (which is pretty much the same thing), and at this point in time he pretty clearly hates himself and blames himself for the state of the galaxy. He's been stewing in his rocky hideaway for who knows how long, with nothing but the ocean and his own self-loathing to keep him company.

He's saying this here so that Rey will give up and not make him train her, because he's scared of making the same mistakes he did with Kylo Ren and fucking up the galaxy even more (we see a similar thing with Obi-Wan in the Kenobi show, where he refuses to save Leia at first because he's scared of not being able to save her--like he wasn't able to "save" Anakin).

And the traits, the "legacy," he's assigning the Jedi...isn't actually the legacy of the Jedi. It's him assigning what he believes to be his own legacy to the Jedi as a whole, because it's easier for him to deal with his own failure that way.

and 2. Luke is framed as being wrong for saying this. None of the other characters agree with him, eventually he does end up training Rey, and eventually he lets go of his pain and fair and grief and "becomes a Jedi again" and faces his "legacy of failure"--Kylo Ren.

It's obvious that the movies are clearly making him out to be wrong when he says those things, you don't need to have a neon sign posted above his head that says "WRONG" in order to see it. So taking his words at face-value is just trying to take a bad-faith reading of the Jedi--rather than the "objective scrutiny" that Matthew is purportedly putting the Jedi up to in this theory.

---

I would also like to argue that Luke's only real knowledge of the Prequel Era Jedi and their actions/beliefs/traditions/etc. is...lacking, to say the least.

The Empire literally destroyed and desecrated every Jedi Temple that they could find, they wiped out all the information they could about the Jedi, and then spread anti-Jedi propaganda through the galaxy for years. Not to mention that, by this point, pretty much every Prequel Era Jedi is dead.

There's no one around to really tell Luke about the Jedi's actions or culture and what little information he might've been able to dig up probably wouldn't have amounted to much. So, when Luke says this, it can only really be taken as a commentary on the Post-Prequel Era Jedi, because he doesn't know enough about the Prequel Era Jedi to make any criticisms.

---

Matthew then says:

"There are certainly examples of the Jedi doing some pretty unsportsmanlike things to innocent victims throughout the old movies, like manipulating-" [plays a video cut of Obi-Wan in ANH, mind-tricking the stormtroopers into thinking that R2 and 3PO "aren't the droids they're looking for"]

This example is pretty easy to debunk, because Matthew leaves out the context.

Obi-Wan has to do this.

Because let's look at what would probably happen if he didn't:

1. He and Luke would be arrested and turned in to the Empire, probably Vader, and Vader would immediately recognize Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan would get murdered.

2. Vader would realize Luke was his son and probably try to indoctrinate him into an Imperial way of thinking, and Palpatine/Vader would probably have Luke "trained" (read: tortured) into becoming an Inquisitor.

and 3. The droids would probably either be memory wiped or destroyed, therefore destroying the plans for the Death Star that the Rebellion needed to destroy it--and the Death Star wouldn't be able to be destroyed, more planets and people would probably be killed.

Aside from the thing with the Death Star plans, Obi-Wan probably knows that that's what's gonna happen--and, if the Empire is looking for the droids, then it's pretty obvious that the droids are important to the Rebellion. So it wouldn't be a stretch to say that Obi-Wan probably understands that the Rebellion would be hurt by their loss.

Not to mention that stormtroopers aren't "innocent victims."

They actively sign up to work for the Empire and take part in the oppression of countless peoples and worlds. And It's not like Obi-Wan pulled aside a random stormtrooper just so he could mind-fuck him, they were approached by the troopers first and he reacted defensively. He didn't even make them do anything bad, he just told them "these aren't the droids you're looking for" and had them go on their way.

---

Matthew's quote, continued:

"-stealing spaceships and crashing them-" [cut to a video clip of Obi-Wan and Anakin in RotS, crashing the Separatist vessel they escaped on after rescuing the Chancellor]

Once again, this is pretty easy to debunk because, again, Matthew leaves out the context.

The Separatists literally kidnapped the Chancellor of the Republic and the Jedi had to rescue him. They had to steal the ship to escape or be captured, and likely executed, by the Separatists--therefore allowing the Separatists (who are literally enslaving and oppressing countless other systems and run by a fucking fascist dictator) to win the war and take over the rest of the galaxy.

Once again, the Jedi were acting defensively.

And I feel like, all things considered, the Jedi stealing that Separatist ship, to escape from a situation the Separatists caused, in order to keep the galaxy from falling into the hands of an oppressive dictatorship and attempt to stay alive...is a pretty damn reasonable decision, don't you think?

And, just for added context, the ship was literally falling apart when they crashed it. They didn't crash it on purpose, it was an emergency landing. If you're gonna say the Jedi are bad for "crashing" the ship, you may as well get mad at every pilot who ever initiated an emergency landing because it's literally the same thing--and if we're putting the Jedi up to "objective scrutiny" then there shouldn't be any double standards.

---

Matthew's quote, continued:

"-or just outright lying about their own powers-" [cut to a video clip of Mace and Yoda talking, where Mace says they should tell the Senate their ability to use the Force is diminished and Yoda saying they shouldn't because it will only multiply their adversaries]

Here the Jedi weren't lying, like...at all.

No one was asking them about their ability to use the Force, so they couldn't be lying. They were withholding information, information that the Senate--as non-Jedi--had no right to know about unless it would actively affect the Republic. Which, again, at this point in time it wouldn't.

But, fine, let's just pretend that the Jedi were lying...

...they were lying for good reason.

Yoda is right here. Even if we ignore the fact that Yoda is a stand-in for GL and what he says is quite literally the canon truth (since he's the creator), the Senate is already pretty at odds with the Jedi, which we see later in AotC when Palpatine and the Senate pretty much strong-arm the Jedi into accepting the role of Generals in the war, despite being told point blank by Mace Windu that they're peace keepers and not soldiers. Do you really think the Senate (read: Palpatine) wouldn't have used this information against the Jedi?

And, are you completely ignoring the fact that Mace is literally saying that they should tell the Senate and Yoda is disagreeing with him?

Obviously Yoda's take on what they should or shouldn't tell the Senate isn't something that the entire Order believes--it's just his opinion on what they should do.

You can't say that "the Jedi are liars" and then play a clip that literally debunks that by having two Jedi disagreeing with each other about whether or not to tell the truth.

[sjbattleangel]

Any Last Jedi fan here who also happens to hate Lily Orchard's horrible revenge-fic The Sith Resurgence? Because I'm one of them.

[mysticaltora8276]

Although I do defend the sequel trilogy, quite a lot elsewhere I must say that the eternal empire was well kind of silly even for Star Wars at least I thought so. It wasn’t helped by the Sith Tabernacle choir that almost made me laugh out loud in my seat. Palpatine gaining power yeah I could see that he did so that part wasn’t too unbelievable the Sith Tabernacle choir was just silly though. I honestly wish that Ben had become the antagonist and Rey redeeming him would’ve been enough and him going to prison for his crimes. Suffice to say if they wanted to bring Palpatine back it would’ve probably been better if he had just possessed Ben’s body. But we got what we got, and I can tease and make fun of it as much as I like, but it is part of the canon whether. I am thrilled about the idea or not.

I mean, legends added to your silly, stupid moments that everybody wanted to forget. Trioculus stories anyone? Or Crystal Star? I mean, that was so bad.

[whennoonecares]

Calling Kylo Ren "Ben" feels like deadnaming him

Here me out: Ben was feeling fundamentally altered after his traumatic experience with Luke Skywalker, and as part of separating himself from it, he chose a new name.

So referring to him as "Ben" feels like denoting who he was before, and "Kylo" for who he is afterward.

In that way, I feel like Rey insisting on calling him "Ben" after she learns that name is sort of disrespectful of his decision to distance himself from his family.

Though, I acknowledge him distancing himself through his name does ring a bit hollow when you remember his near-constant comparisons of himself to Darth Vader, BUT I would argue that that was implanted by Palpatine.

Because fundamentally Palpatine didn't care to acknowledge that his Grand Plan was just fuckin wrong, yet he's trying so hard to hold on to all that work he'd done.

But he's just a stubborn, vain man, and it would've been baller to see a Kylo that chose that name for himself.

ALSO!! Wouldn't it be baller if he chose the name "Kylo", no last name? Wouldn't that coincide so very well with "Rey", no last name?? The dichotomy of someone with no family because his family was slowly killing him, vs someone with no family who was only staying alive for the hope they'd be there for her?

And while we're on the topic of Rey, I can respect her taking on the last name "Skywalker" IF Luke had shown that he, y'know,, liked her at all? He seemed pretty begrudging about the whole thing to me.

Wouldn't it have been cool for her to adopt the name "Palpatine" as a way to reclaim power from that horrible man?

[the-far-bright-center]

Trying to interact with Star Wars fandom these days is so frustrating because so many fans don’t seem to realise how much they are allowing Disney's reframing of the Lucas-era material to dictate their understanding of the story and its characters. Why should Disney’s ‘additions’ even be considered a valid frame of reference for material that predates it? Especially when not even made by the same creator? The Lucas saga has been around for decades prior to any of Disney's retcons and meddling, after all. So why people expect OG saga fans to take their Disney-influenced interpretations seriously, I’ll never know.

[antianakin]

So I have some further thoughts on Luke's behavior and attitude towards the Jedi in TLJ based on reading this post that's been going around recently that showed some comic panels discussing the public's views about the Jedi during the Prequels era. In it, it says that Palpatine is able to encourage hate towards the Jedi because, on some level, the public already hated the Jedi, equally as much as they loved them, because "It is hard to look at people who have become their best selves and the Jedi represent people who have already figured out how to be their best selves. It reminds you that you have not." The Jedi being good people naturally creates a COMPARISON between themselves and the people they've chosen to serve. Some people might choose to be inspired by that and rise to the challenge, but others choose to be defeated by that and fall more into despair. But those people don't want to ADMIT to defeat and so, instead, they blame the Jedi. They hate the Jedi. They accept the Jedi as scapegoats for their own failings.

This is a common pattern we see across the Prequels era, the Jedi becoming scapegoats for the galaxy's failures. They die because the Republic is corrupt, they die because ANAKIN is corrupt, and neither the Republic nor Anakin want to look at themselves honestly and do the work it takes to be better, so when Palpatine tells them that their struggles and failures are in fact the JEDI'S FAULT, it's so much easier to believe that than it is to accept the truth.

And it's hardly just the Republic that has this problem, Dooku does something similar with the Separatists, turning the Jedi into their personal villains, their children's boogeymen, who started this war with their own arrogance, so that they can keep on looking the other way as their army commits atrocity after atrocity in their name.

Those who try to remain neutral also tend to blame the Jedi for not putting an end to it, for fighting back at all, for not somehow miraculously managing to create a peace with the Separatists. Satine does it, the Lurmen do it, those little farmers on Felucia do it, Trace and Rafa Martez do it. It's so much easier to blame the Jedi for doing or being enough than it is to recognize that this war happened because EVERYONE ELSE was choosing to be selfish rather than work towards peace and all the Jedi can do in response is protect as many innocent civilians as they can until the people in charge ARE willing to put in the work to find peace. But instead of recognizing that complicated reality and unraveling the web that spells out that YOU ARE ALSO PART OF THE PROBLEM, it's so much easier to just blame the Jedi.

They became the galaxy's scapegoats, MOST ESPECIALLY during the Prequels era. It disappears more during the Rebellion era, probably because it's pretty hard to blame the galaxy's problems on a people everyone thinks has been wiped out already. And the rebellion itself seems to see the Jedi more positively, as a symbol of hope in a desperate war that they have no hope of winning without help. Obi-Wan and Luke represent that hope to a lot of people.

But then the Jedi are killed again and the only person left behind is Luke. Luke who fell prey to his own doubts, Luke who made a mistake that had disastrous consequences, Luke who feels guilty. And he cannot face the pain and the guilt and the fear he feels about what he believes he's done, the failure he now sees himself as, so he runs and he hides.

And he blames the Jedi. Like his father before him.

It's too painful to look at himself and acknowledge what he's done in order to let it go and move forward. It's too painful to face his own fears and doubts. So he doesn't. He tells himself the problem was in the way HE was taught, the problem was in the system itself, not the teacher. The problem came from the Jedi, not himself, never himself.

The Jedi become the scapegoats for their own destruction, yet again. The Jedi get blamed so a Skywalker can hide from the pain of his own failures, yet again.

And while Luke seems to barely know anything about the Jedi in the original trilogy, and what he does know seems to be generally positive, it's entirely possible he heard some of those whisperings about how the Jedi had been corrupt, how the Jedi had started the war in their arrogance, how the Jedi had maybe deserved what was done to them, how maybe the galaxy was better off without them. Maybe he heard rumors that the Jedi had taken children from their families, that the Jedi were incapable of love. And during his years in the rebellion, after meeting Obi-Wan and Yoda, he knows this to be untrue, he's heard plenty of legends about them as these great heroes that he believes more, but after his own failure, maybe those whispers come back to him and start to grow. Those whispers and rumors build a nice little shrubbery around the darkness he's allowing to fester in his heart, keeping him from having to ever look at it fully. What if those whispers had been right all along and HE'D been the one in the wrong to think that Obi-Wan and Yoda were the heroes of legend? What if the real mistake had been in trying to become a Jedi in the first place?

It's so so easy to blame the Jedi. So much easier than facing the truth. It might be Luke's first time doing it, but he becomes part of a long-standing tradition in the galaxy of letting the Jedi become scapegoats for their own failures. Of course he's wrong, the galaxy's always been wrong, that's how scapegoats WORK.

But isn't it so much easier to just blame the Jedi?

[reylogirlie]

“That’s abusive”

“That’s manipulation”

I’m gonna explain why it’s not in this context:

Now, is this how you should address your love interest irl? Definitely not. Is Ben Solo truly back to the light at this point? No. Is Kylo’s mindset still twisted? Yes. However, some don’t seem to understand what Kylo/Ben meant.

“You’re nothing.” Kylo/Ben didn’t mean Rey was actually nothing. Hell, he legit tells her she’s anything but that. “Nothing” , in his terms, means she’s seen as worthless by the people who are supposed to love her.(I know Rey’s parents are actually good people, I’ll get into that) means that they saw her as someone- something, honestly, to get rid of.

This is what Ben thought Leia and Han saw in him; that he was worthless and they needed Luke to off him. That nobody loved him. At least, that’s what he felt before he met Rey. He knows Rey grew up thinking no one loved her, and thought that she possessed nothing of value.

At this point, Ben hasn’t fully come back. He still feels like he was a victim to the light (when he was actually a victim to the dark) and he’s telling Rey “those people”- her parents, his parents, Luke, etc consider her nothing. “Real abusers brainwash victims into turning on their friends and family” Kylo/Ben doesn’t consider the resistance Rey’s friends. He thinks they’re just going to use and discard her the way he thought he was. He thinks he’s looking out for her. Real abusers typically know their victims loved ones care but wanna get rid of them so they can have said person all to themselves.

(And before you come at me like “actually a lot of abusers don’t get what they’re doing but it���s not an excuse” yea I got that, doesn’t apply here)

“But not to me”- This is Ben telling Rey that their view on her is wrong. That she’s not nothing. That’s she is, in fact, everything. To him especially. He’s not just saying this so she can be on the dark side, that’s not his main concern here even if he still is on the dark side. His main concern is what’s best for Rey, and he believes joining himself is what’s best for her.

His mind set isn’t “I’m gonna isolate her from her friends so I turn her evil and use her for my growth” it’s actually “Those people tried to kill me and use me for my power and they’ll do the same to her so I’m gonna protect her while I still can” he thinks he’s helping her. It’s pretty fucked, but he’s not trying to manipulate her.

“He lied about her parents” no he didn’t. Was Kylo/Ben wrong about Rey’s parents? Yes. But what you people fail to remember is YOU REALLY SHOULD NOT USE THE FORCE AS A FORTUNE TELLER. The future/ past visions are often vague and altered. He only saw parts of what happened. He had no clue that her parents were actually protecting her from evil, he saw them leaving and going to shady ass places and thought they were actually trading her for alcohol. That’s why when he found out the truth he told her!!! If he was manipulating her so he could have her all to himself, he would’ve never told her the truth. Notice how when she left at the end of TLJ he let her and didn’t form a plan to force her back or hurt her. He aggressively tried to persuade her, yes, but he never seriously threatened her. He even snitches on the dark side for Rey and offered to kill Palpatine instead of killing her to complete his mission.

So, bottom line- When Kylo/Ben called Rey nothing, he wasn’t saying she was actually worthless. He was saying that’s what her parents and the people who felt turned on him saw her as, but he considered her to be everything and the most important thing to him. You don’t have to like Reylo or agree with me, but I could go on about how Rey and Kylo/Ben don’t exactly fit the “toxic relationship” boat.

[bluntblade]

It's quite funny to see people writing "how can Kylo's behaviour be adolescent when he's thirty" when a large portion of the Star Wars fandom itself is... you know.

I mean, heck, the "I can't find some positive way to fix my issues so I'm going to try and force everyone else to obey my will" feels more and more apt with every "Star Wars was always for this demographic which I fit into and NO OTHERS" take that I see.