#she has what rey star wars was never allowed by the audience or the writers to have

[paranormaljones]

I'm a Lucy Carlyle defender (how many posts have I started with that exact sentence) but less in a "she's never done anything wrong in her life" way and more of a "this is a female character who was written with full agency to respond realistically and behave accordingly in regards to her age, maturity level, and environment, which includes being allowed to respond negatively to circumstances that don't necessarily warrant a negative response, and we need more female characters written like this" way.

The important thing about beloved Lucy Carlyle is that she's allowed to make bad choices but she is not vilified for them. And she's allowed to come back from them and try to make things better, even if it takes her a little while to get there. She's also just allowed to make choices in general, good or bad.

She's allowed to be angry. She's allowed to be scared. She's allowed to be snarky. She's allowed to be sad. She's allowed to be defensive. She's allowed to be sentimental. She's allowed to behave the exact way a real person would in her circumstances. She's allowed to have emotional agency. She's not written to fulfill a trope or a fantasy. She's a whole person.

And we need more characters like her.

[piglet26]

Reylo Scenes: TLJ

Rian Johnson gets loud vocal dislike for trying to make part 2 to JJ Adams film and his treatment of Luke Skywalker. Now I'm going to be honest..... Star Wars fans complain. That's part of the passion of it all. I guess. One area that he did succeed in was Reylo. He dealt with it with complete mastery. His invention of the forceskype or forcetime which allowed the protagonist and antagonist to actually talk was genius.

To add, I read the novelization which does expand on the story overall and it's great to read. There are comics as well. All which expand on the story.

Rian Johnson also is due a thank you for this moment.

We'll call this no-more-daddies-Ren. That face should not be covered up.

Romance has always been apart of Star Wars. Yet, in the sequel trilogy there was this hyper paranoia of anything feminine and so anyone who sensed a romance happening I guess was just an unhealthy fool.

From a pure storytelling stand point, the dynamic between the hero and the villain is genuinely interesting. The fact that they are Ying Yang, alike but different, bonded yet on opposing sides and they attracted to one another only adds to the drama. It's the richest dynamic of the sequel trilogy.

So to all the Reylo haters

In the first forcetime scene the rules of the forcetime get established. Rey can't hurt him physically (yet) and Ren can't jedi mind trick her.

The production team continued to show their balance yet opposition. When Rey wakes up the warm sunlight is on her face and her smooth cheek. In Ren's scene the light on his cheek is mechanical and the skin is scarred. Rey is surrounded by nature. Ren is surrounded by technology. They both have a childlike innocence to them. Something is happening to them that had never happened before. Something unique even amongst force users. Ren is curious. Rey is just pissed off.

Ren is a man who feels very let down/betrayed by everyone in his life so by the time we meet him in The Force Awakens he doesn't want or need anybody. Within his comic Ben Solo is described as someone that everyone, including his peers, watched for signs of darkness. He's a bitter, hurt and jaded young man.

Rey is the denial queen. She has a childlike way of thinking that is purely optimistic. She latches onto people very quickly Finn, Han Solo, Chewie, Leia, Luke on and on. She understand the stories of the resistance, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, but doesn't understand any of the complexities. She's a very 'this is the truth as I know it so it must be the truth' kind of person.

When we arrive at the second Forcetime.

Rey overlooking the ocean. Ren overlooking the first order. Ren begins hearing the ocean waves. Rey begins to hear the snap of electricity. Ren sensing her turns and Rey, sensing him, adjusts and there they are.

Rey, understand that she can't physically act out her anger against, verbalizes it. She's angry, but she wants the anger to be simple and it's not. He is tied to her in a way in some way.

What's interesting is Ren is very open to her in wondering why the force is connecting them. In the book Rey describes his eyes as hungry. Also, Ren wants to be understood by her. He uses this moment to reach her and get someone to understand a portion of how he became the man he is. The audience sees him approach her, get into her space, challenging her emotionally, physically and her ideas about him.

"ah, you do" if it's possible to verbally create a orgasm....Adam driver accomplished it for women. It doesn't hurt that these two seem to always be eye fucking each other. The intensity in which they lock onto each other and don't pay much around them any mind. The actors writers dream of.

The scenes serves a purpose though. Kylo is once again shift from simple bad guy to complicated bad guy/human being. She doesn't know everything. In the mix of all of this is her experience with Luke. She disillusioned and she's disappointed with Luke. Her experience is shifting her to understand Kylo's position more.

Which leads to their third forceskype aka shirtless Ben

Rey, girl, you're not asexual. It's the first where we see she does have a reaction to him physically. She opens herself to understanding. She wants to know if he had a good reason for killing his father. She also expresses her jealousy of him. He has a family, he had a father who loved him. She would give anything for that. Kylo is also expressing his pain and how relates to her. They both feel abandoned by their parents. Kylo wasn't abandoned in the way Rey was, but he feels abandoned. Kylo looks at Rey like 'hey you don't see the similarities between us?". You also being to understand Kylo Ren's need to embrace the dark side because everyone on the light side failed him.

Part of her journey in The Last Jedi is about embracing her womanhood. After the force bond with the shirtless Kylo Ren. She goes to the dark sided vagina cave. She jumps in and when she emerges her childhood hair buns are gone. Rey enters in this vision and looks for answers as to who/where her parents are. Nothing is revealed to her. She didn't find the answers she was looking for and the hope that she will find them goes out of her. In this moment she's desperately lonely. Here our hero spiritually seeks out through the force bond the one individual she feels will relate to her, our villain.

Why do people call this scene "The Finger Touch Love Scene"

Cause the level of intimacy these characters reach without many words and without being lewd. Rian Johnson, bravo!

The way Kylo Ren is just present, reassuring and nurturing as Rey relays her trip into the dark cave. This is a moment where he could stoke her negative emotions to the dark side. He doesn't though. He's completely emotionally present for her. Kylo Ren sits within his ship in a area that's lit with a soft blue light as he reaches towards her he's in the warm of the firelight. Now he is physically present for her.

Rey is completely raw. She's allowing herself to be seen emotionally naked. This is the first scene where she gives him something with free will. She gives him union.

She reaches out from underneath the blanket. He takes his glove off and they slowly, innocently, reach for each other. The eye contact they maintain as the force theme begins, we as the audience understand something profound is happening. Within them, in this moment, there is a balance in the force.

They both have a vision of one another. Ren sees her past. Rey sees a glimpse of his future. This is the moment for Reylo, they both said to themselves "we're never letting this go". Rian Johnson confirmed it's from this moment that Ren decides to kill Snoke because that's the only way to protect Rey from him. Rey shift her belief system to complete Team Ben. She doesn't have a plan when she goes to meet Ben within the First Order. She just has complete faith in him that when the moment matters he'll stand by her.

We arrive at the elevator scene and just prior when she arrive onboard the supreme in a coffin from the Falcon that has his calligraphy on it. It's their first interaction after that intense force bond.

She expresses her faith in him and the possibility of a future. This is the first scene where she walks up on him. She wants that closeness and connection now. He's closed off we come to understand later, he's become he's protecting his mind from Snoke understanding his true intentions. They both express what they saw in their vision and conviction that one will join the other. It's canon that in this moment Kylo Ren wanted to kiss Rey.

Snoke - It's not his story. Kylo Ren looked like a badass killing him. That's all we needed you for boo. However, I did enjoy the internal dialogue of Snoke that the novelization affords. Through the force Snoke can feel Kylo Ren's need for approval which is something that frustrates him. He can feel his conflicted nature for Rey and for the light. He can feel his pain and confusion when Snoke says he bridged their minds (he didn't). That was enlightening.

My favorite moment is right after Kylo kills Snoke and Rey and Kylo looks at each like

"You with me?"

"Yeah, I'm with you"

And they turn to face the pretorian guards. They are with each other, but they do have a misunderstanding on what that means.

The fight scene is great and beautiful. Kylo Ren is a supportive partner to her and she to him. Kylo support her body with his and he takes on the majority of the Pretorian guards. He has a moment when he checks in on her, she get's hurt, he's upset and scared but then centers himself. When he's in trouble she supports him. It's described in the novel that they can feel each other's emotions through the force.

(Couldn't find the gif of her getting cut)

[padme-amitabha]

Is Anakin a Mary Sue?

Now it may shock you to learn this but it turns out that Disney Star Wars is kind of a contentious topic. The fandom's been more or less divided between those who like the sequel trilogy and those who like good movies but both groups spend a great deal of time slinging [ __ ] at each other over every form of social media known to man and truly no battleground is more fiercely contested than the protagonist of each trilogy. People who hate the Disney trilogy tend to criticize Rey for being an overpowered, flawless, perfect, invincible and unrelatable character for whom everything just kind of happens with no real struggle or difficulty a Mary Sue if you will.

Meanwhile supporters of the sequel trilogy are quick to leap to her defense usually with one of two potential counter arguments:  1. You just hate strong women 2. So what if she's op as [ __ ] Anakin Skywalker from the prequels was a Mary Sue too and you don't criticize him. You just hate strong women. This argument was brought into sharp focus for me the other day when I was perusing twitter in search of calm, logical, rational discussion about the merits of the sequel trilogy and I chanced upon this little gem of a comment. Ah yes that famously perfect protagonist who wins everything, always makes the right decisions, has a selfless and compassionate personality, and is universally loved and respected by everyone. Well random twitter [ __ ] as it turns out, I am ready to have that conversation right now. So saddle up y'all because the drinker's here to round up this [ __ ] and put an end to this argument once and for all. Let us journey deep into the world of the Star Wars prequels and see if we can figure out whether Anakin Skywalker really is a Mary Sue.

Now in order to do this, we have to nail down what exactly a Mary Sue is. Well according to the dictionary definition it's a term used to describe a fictional character, usually female, who is seen as too perfect and almost boring for lack of flaws originally written as an idealized version of an author in fanfiction. Now the finer points of what makes a Mary Sue can vary depending on who you talk to but after consulting multiple sources and drawing upon my own experiences as a writer, there's a few common traits that I think most people would generally agree on:

1.      Mary Sues usually possess skills and abilities that are not consistent with their situation and personal history. They can do stuff they shouldn't realistically be able to and they can do it better than anyone else.

2.      They usually possess flawless idealized personalities that no real person could measure up to they never give in to negative emotions like anger, greed, jealousy, selfishness or arrogance.

3.      They're universally loved respected and embraced by every good character they encounter even when there's no logical reason for this to happen.

4.      They never get seriously challenged, fail at anything or get beaten by anyone, success and victory come easily to them.

5.      They always make good decisions and strive to do what's right in any situation so why is this actually a problem.

Well I think the answer should be obvious, Mary Sues are boring as [ __ ]. If a character has got no flaws or weaknesses and never really gets challenged or tested by anything then what is there to get invested in?

It's the flaws and failings of a character that make them interesting in the first place and their struggle to rise above and overcome these flaws that make them so compelling. If these things are missing from a character, then there's nothing for the audience to latch onto or care about. There's nothing to like or root for. That's the essence of a Mary Sue and that's what we're going to be looking at here. So, with that in mind let's see how Anakin stacks up against this list shall we?

Point number one: Being overpowered and having abilities that he shouldn't. Now this more than anything else is what people tend to latch onto when they criticize Anakin and who can blame them really? On the surface it seems pretty ridiculous to see a nine-year-old boy doing stuff like this autopilot but let's put it into a wider context, shall we? When we first meet Anakin in The Phantom Menace, he's a slave living with his mother on Tatooine. He's spent most of his life salvaging junk and using it to make new stuff that can marginally improve their quality of life. As a result, he's become pretty good with technology. Well that makes sense, I guess. He's even applied these technical skills to pod racing where he's been fairly successful despite suffering at least one major crash that we know about. Again, this kind of makes sense when you consider he's strong with the force which would likely give him heightened perception reactions and understanding of the world around him, you know qualities that are important to high performance racing drivers. Anyway, his racing abilities allow the main characters to win an engine part that they need to repair their ship as well as enough money to buy his freedom. Sensing his importance Qui-Gon Jinn takes him under his wing and begins to teach him about the force. Remember when older mentor characters were allowed to teach the protagonist things? I miss that. He also takes part in a space battle that destroys an enemy mothership at the climax of the movie. Now as goofy as this scene is in its execution, it's not actually inconsistent with Anakin’s abilities and experiences. If you've worked around technology vehicles and ships your entire life and you can pilot a racing pod to a high standard then it stands to reason that you could probably operate other types of spacecraft as well, particularly if you have a droid on board to manage most of the ship's systems for you. However, for the sake of argument let's concede the Anakin in The Phantom Menace is indeed more skilled competent and capable than your average person.

So, what kind of effect would this have on a young man from an impoverished background suddenly thrust into a much larger world of power, politics and opportunity? Well that brings me neatly along to point number two: Mary Sues are supposed to have flawless personalities never giving in to anger, jealousy, resentment, vengeance or ambition. All throughout the second and third movies in the prequel trilogy, Anakin displays an increasingly severe set of personality flaws that begin to undermine his position in the world and his relationship with other characters. He's impetuous and hot-headed, frequently rushing into dangerous situations without waiting for backup or considering the risk to himself particularly when someone he cares about is in danger. Keep that one in mind because it'll be important later. He's ambitious but also impatient, feeling like he's been unfairly held back by other characters, particularly Obi-Wan Kenobi, and this resentment causes a growing rift between the two men that eventually spills out into open conflicts. Rather than taking the longer and harder path to wisdom and understanding, Anakin wants everything right away. He also cares deeply about people close to him and this attachment often manifests in explosive bites of anger and jealousy when he feels that they're being threatened like when his mother gets kidnapped and killed by Tusken Raiders, causing Anakin to go on a violent rampage that escalates into wholesale slaughter. Afterwards even he's shocked by what he did or when he believes that Padme has turned against him by Obi-Wan Kenobi, causing him to lash out violently against both of them. By this point he's been totally consumed by uncontrolled jealousy anger resentment and betrayal. All of the emotions that lead to the dark side of the force. The point here is clear: if you [ __ ] with someone he cares about then mercy and compassion go right out the window.

All of his skills, abilities and potential which seemed so overpowered and unnecessary in the first movie in fact serve a very important purpose for his character development. They've generated a sense of superiority, arrogance and overconfidence, and a reluctance to listen to criticism or advice no matter how well intentioned they might be. These are dangerous flaws in his personality all by themselves but combined with his overwhelming emotional attachment to people he cares about it creates a potent cocktail of reckless ambition and deep-seated insecurity that makes him uniquely vulnerable to manipulation something which will later prove disastrous because while Mary Sues are universally loved respected and trusted by everyone, Anakin certainly isn't in the first movie. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu and Yoda are all against training Anakin to become a Jedi despite his obvious potential because they know he's already too old to be inducted. This lack of early discipline in his life would leave a dangerous gap in his personality, making him unpredictable and less able to control his emotions, two factors which are extremely dangerous for Jedi. These misgivings would carry over to the next two movies where Anakin is elevated to the Jedi high council on Palpatine’s orders but the council itself refuses to grant him the rank of master because they feel he hasn't earned it yet. Now a different man would see this as an opportunity to prove himself by working hard and earning their trust eventually winning them over and gaining the recognition he deserves but Anakin takes this as a personal insult from the council which drives a deeper wedge between him and a Jedi order which he believes will never truly respect or accept him. Wow it's almost like Palpatine knew this was going to happen and engineered the whole thing to pull Anakin closer to him portraying himself as the only one who can help Anakin realize his full potential. It's a surprisingly smart piece of characterization that's completely consistent with everything we know about both men. The higher Anakin rises the more it stokes the fire of his ambition and superiority and the more he comes to see anyone who doubts or cautions him as a threat to his success. This arrogance and overconfidence also causes him to test himself against powerful opponents before he's actually ready for them and unlike Mary sues who easily win every battle they have to fight, Anakin’s recklessness causes an escalating series of losses like here where he tries to take on count Dooku all by himself and it ends with Anakin getting his [ __ ] arm sliced off. But his desire for revenge against the man who defeated him ultimately causes a more powerful and better prepared Anakin to execute him in the following movie, again proving his willingness to give into vengeance and anger even against helpless opponents or here in his climactic confrontation with Obi-Wan where his enemy has the advantage but Anakin presses the attack anyway and well I think we know how that turns out. Just as a side note I love how this carries over to Return of the Jedi. See Luke’s taking the high ground here just like Obi-Wan did.

What we have here is a clear pattern of behavior from a man whose ambitions consistently outstrip his abilities. Rather than demonstrating patience and restraint and taking the slower and harder path to lasting wisdom and fulfillment, Anakin’s inherent character flaws cause him to push himself beyond breaking point with increasingly disastrous consequences which brings me neatly along to the final points: whereas Mary Sues consistently make good righteous decisions and always strive to do the correct thing, Anakin on the other hand demonstrates a consistent pattern of mistakes and misjudgments that ultimately cost him everything. As I've already shown you the flaws in his personality are exacerbated by his powers and abilities making him easy prey for a ruthlessly ambitious man that knows exactly how to flatter his ambitions and prey on his weaknesses this eventually causes him to commit terrible crimes like murdering an entire tribe including unarmed civilians murdering children, executing a helpless opponent, helping to kill a jedi master, trying to murder his own wife, trying to kill his mentor and best friend, joining forces with an evil dictator to overthrow the republic, delivering this scene…

What I’m trying to say with all this is that Anakin Skywalker is the very furthest thing from a Mary Sue that you can get. Trying to label him as a Mary Sue for no other reason than because he's good at lots of stuff demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of what a Mary Sue is and also of who Anakin is. The reality is that he's a powerful but deeply flawed man whose unique combination of circumstances and abilities have created a dangerous personality that's vulnerable to manipulation and corruption his greatest strengths ultimately proved to be his most terrible weaknesses with consequences that echo across the entire galaxy. Now I have my own thoughts on the prequel trilogy as a whole and I’d be lying if I said they were great movies but fundamentally I think the story they tell is actually pretty [ __ ] good and I’m just gonna say it: Anakin’s rise to power and fall to the dark side is a damn good piece of character work that Disney would have done well to pay more attention to. Anyway, that's all I’ve got for today. Go away now.

I would argue the prequels are great movies but he makes some very good points. I have seen so many Disney fans claim Anakin is a Mary Sue, when he’s anything but a Mary Sue. 

[frumfrumfroo]

Many people in the general audience and critics have talked about TROS as a beginning and not an ending, like “Rey’s journey/adventure is just beginning,” and beside the obvious problem there that this was supposed to be her coming of age arc and she should’ve reached and fulfilled metaphorical adulthood in this movie which TROS took away, I realized *why* it felt this way. TROS was made with the principles of a superhero origin movie, down to her finally taking the “special title” at the end

My SWCU theory would hold that they did that on purpose, but as time has gone on I feel like maybe imagining they did anything at all on purpose with legitimate aforethought on a macro level is giving them too much credit. They’re probably just hacks doing hackery, Marvel films always make a shitzillion dollars, and they wanted the most crowd-pleasing possible finale. Hence cardboard cut-out characters, the death of nuance and thematic content, empty spectacle, empty ‘banter’, and never committing to a single narrative choice.

Terrio is under the impression he’s a smart person and certainly thinks he did something incredibly clever with his ‘original sin’ twincest shit because he has no fucking clue what he’s talking about on any level, but Chris’s quest to lodge the point of his head in the depths of his colon to better sniff his own farts is the closest this dumpster fire comes to having an ‘artistic vision’. He wanted to be told he was the bestest at mythic storytelling and he brought it ‘full circle’, illustrating he doesn’t understand either of those things, not that I needed more evidence.

Remember when I spent so much time talking about how SW protagonists are not superheroes and their storytelling architecture was completely different and fandom expectations of MCU style sequels to TFA about Super Rey and Friends!! was a fundamental misreading of what SW is?

(Open ended sequels to narratively complete, stand-alone films can more or less go anywhere within tonal and genre constraints (even that isn’t a hard and fast rule; MCU directors have certainly been allowed to shift tone considerably) because every film is its own thing, but their protagonists need to be somewhat static after the origin film. You get the one substantial character arc where they ‘come into power’, so to speak, and after that they face new external threats while remaining fundamentally the same; they are already a fully actualised person whose further growth will be minor rehashes of their original arc or fallout from it. Stability and continuity come from the hero, there’s no overall thesis outside the hero’s identity, it’s episodic. No one can reliably predict where the next one is going because there’s no framework and it’s just wherever a new writer wanted to take it.

But the Star Wars protagonists are were not superheroes and they don’t have an origin story followed by escalating episodic adventures, they have a three act crucible of maturation with a beginning middle and end. Which is thematically predictable because it is beholden to a structure, to an idea about what the entire story is supposed to say. They’ve barely started their development at the end of the first film and they are challenged as characters not as RPG heroes who need to level up. Fighting in SW is metaphorical and winning the fight is never about physical strength or physical training. Training is fucking irrelevant. Luke never becomes ~better at fighting~ than Vader, he never becomes ‘stronger’ than the Emperor- that is not the point and that is not the source of his victory. The only moral victor in the PT was Padmé- who doesn’t fight at all in RotS- and she will be vindicated in the OT. Everyone else fucked up. Luke fulfils the promise of his mother’s love and faith.)

Nope. Traditional storytelling is dead. It’s all serialised superheroes now. Hope you don’t want to see anyone morally struggle or grow or change. Hope you like that ubermensch propaganda. Idealism isn’t even for kids any more. No one is allowed to have it, it’s nihilism all the way down.

[enchantedbyhiddles]

Over the last few years, Hollywood has finally caught up to the fact that half the population are women. It’s taken decades of being sidelined in favour of male-led stories for female characters to really start taking centre stage, in action films (Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman), comedies (Booksmart, The Favourite), horrors (A Quiet Place, Hereditary), dramas (Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Roma) and other genres, and the stats have really supported this move.

Just last week, a new study found that young women are going to the cinema more than men while other research has shown that the top-grossing movies, from 2014 to 2017, with female leads outperformed those with male leads.

Feminism sells, hooray! We knew it!

Now studios are wising up to this fact. However, in recent weeks we’ve seen a pattern emerge in big-budget movies that see them pandering to women by shoehorning in an insincere display of feminism.

Take X-Men: Dark Phoenix for example, which has a scene involving Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique and James McAvoy’s Professor X arguing about the team’s increased number of risky missions to save humans to improve his political clout and popularity. After making her pretty reasonable point, she suddenly switches gear to make a dig about the name of their squad.

“By the way, the women are always saving the men around here,” she says. “You might want to think about changing the name to X-Women.” Next thing we know she’s been killed, or “fridged” as it’s called, in order to spur three male characters into action.

Then there’s Men in Black: International which has two similar moments. Tessa Thompson’s Agent M asks Emma Thompson’s Agent O why the secret organisation is still called “Men in Black.”

“I know!,” O exclaims. “I’ve asked the question… attachment issues!”

Later in the movie, and as seen in the trailer, Chris Hemsworth’s Agent H says, “We’re the Men in Black… the Men and Women in Black,” a line that drops like a lead balloon when you consider how many more men in black actually appear in the movie, have more screen time and altogether have bigger roles in the overarching narrative than, you know, women in black.

And who can forget when the superheroines of the MCU lined-up in that climactic battle scene in Avengers: Endgame? Though it's proven to be a source of inspiration for very young female viewers, we’ll give them that, to more discerning viewers it has served as an all-the-more condescending reminder that the franchise has spent the last decade putting its male heroes on a pedestal.

It’s really no wonder that the self-awareness of these moments have caused eyes to roll. You can just picture the male writers, who penned the scripts in all these cases, patting themselves on the back for thinking they’ve come up with truly feminist moments when in reality they only prove how little they understand of the concept or what women want.

Women don’t need to be reminded that these franchises, and movies in general, have historically championed male characters at the expense of female. We know, we’ve known for decades. What we want to see is the evening out of the playing field to allow for women to play as many leading roles as men in a way that makes sense to the character and story.

Captain Marvel, for example, has an abundance of feminist moments and dialogue that at first can be seen as overly trying to serve a feminist fist-pump. But actually, Carol Danvers has spent her whole life overcoming misogyny and sexism to prove she is just as capable as any man, in fields that have traditionally been overrun by men, so it makes sense that she’s confronted with these issues throughout the movie.

That’s one of the reasons female audience members have connected to her because they can also relate to the feeling of being overlooked, being asked to prove themselves at work because of their gender or even being asked to smile by a random man.

That’s why those moments feel like a more organic show of feminism, as do the scenes in Wonder Woman where Diana, who has never questioned her self-worth, strength or intelligence at home on Themyscira, expects to be listened to in a room full of men and treated with as much respect on the battlefield.

The feminism is woven into these scripts, written or co-written by women, in a way that makes sense for these characters rather than trying to correct misogynist missteps in their respective franchises. Other blockbusters have done this in an even more subtle way by just making their lead female and not looking at them through an objectifying male gaze.

The new Star Wars movies and the Transformers prequel Bumblebee do exactly that through Rey and Charlie, and even the latest Disney animations have moved on from the “Princess searching for love” trope by having the likes of Moana and Elsa searching for purpose instead.

They also prove that you don’t have to be a woman to write female characters in a nuanced and empowering way as male screenwriters like J.J. Abrams (Star Wars), and Jared Bush (Moana) can pen scripts that offer solid female narratives too.

History, however, has proven that male writers are also the worst culprits for delivering one-dimensional women and cringe-worthy feminist dialogue and the latest X-Men, Men In Black and Avengers movies are examples of this problem.

So if studios are really sincere about correcting the gender-balance of movies, and the film industry too, then its time they got more women writers like Jennifer Lee (Frozen) and Christine Hodson (Bumblebee) to pen its movies.

That way, we might be able to nip this faux feminism trend in the bud sooner rather than later.

[atamascolily]

Lily liveblogs: “The Rise of Skywalker,” part three

I end as I began: hopelessly confused about what the point of all this was. (Except for money. I got that part loud and clear.)

Rey just leaves Finn behind, because... friendship, right? Jannah does not have a good opinion of Rey right now, and tbh, I can't blame her. I realize Rey is under a lot of stress, but... her behavior since arriving on this "moon of Endor" has been wayyyy out of line.

Also, Poe pulls up with the Falcon right then, so I guess they got it repaired in record time, lol. Convenient.

Meanwhile, at the Resistance Jungle Base, everyone is sad because Leia is dead. I wonder who's in charge now???

"Goodbye, dear princess." Oh, so she's a General right up until she dies, and then it's back to princess again? I wish the ST would make up its mind about her title.

Oh, I guess Poe is, since he showed up and actually has a rank??

Chewie LOSES IT at the news Leia is dead--I feel you, bud. I feel you so hard.

Kylo tries to look dignified as he broods on the wreckage, but he looks awful. Like a drowned rat, with a convenient lightsaber-shaped hole in his tunic where Rey stabbed him. (She didn't even take the saber with her or drop it into the sea or anything! WHHYYYYYYYYYYY - gimme a reason, any reason, even a stupid one.)

And then Han shows up. Is he a ghost? Is this a memory? Is Kylo hallucinating? WHAT WHAT WHAT IS HAPPENING??? (This would have so much more resonance if we had SEEN how Han's death impacted Kylo earlier on instead of that one confused flashback at the beginning of the film....)

grizzled Harrison Ford looks great, why the hell did they kill him off in the first movie whyyyyyy

Okay, so they answer the question and this is a memory, which is fine, I usually love this trope, BUT it would be hella more effective if we'd seen Kylo arguing/interacting with memories of Han earlier instead of this happening for the first time NOW...

"Come home." Uhhhhhh, I honestly don't know what exactly Leia did, but she certainly kinda abetted killing him. What home does Kylo have now, anyway??

So Han says that what Leia fought for is still around, which is true, but Kylo is ostensibly the supreme leader here, so he doesn't just have to go AWOL, he can drag the FO leadership with him, and what passes for their government, he could SURRENDER and end the war right now. Does he? Of course not. He fucks off all by his lonesome after Rey and Palpatine because... that's all he knows how to do, apparently.

There's a callback that is supposed to resonate but doesn't work for me, because I just can't make myself feel for Kylo at all. Yes, redemption is hard. Yes, you have to work for it. Stop whining and just do it!!

We're supposed to think that Kylo will stab Han again (I guess?) but he turns and throws his saber into the sea. So that's why Rey didn't take it - so he could make a dramatic fucking gesture with it.

Palps is upset that Leia messed up his plans, but whatever. He orders Pryde, who apparently is now in charge of the FO in Kylo's absence, to come to Exegol. Apparently Pryde is a diehard Imperial (and possibly Sith cultist/Palpatine's secret puppet/agent??) I guess. It's never explained, he's just bad. And his name isn't subtle, either.

Palps just wants to burn everything to the ground for... evulz, I guess? I got nothing.

Pryde's star destroyer pops out a giant gun and blows up a planet.... apparently, Kijimi. Why, I don't know. Because they were just there?? Anyway, BOOM. Kijimi literally explodes.

What the actual fuck. How is that EVEN POSSIBLE?? What was the point of building two Death Stars if a Star Destroyer can do that????

Oh, apparently, that was the new model from the "Sith fleet" with a better upgrade. sounds fake, but okay. Poe is not thrilled by this news. The same Resistance member brings him the bad news, so I guess that's her official job??

Poe is genre-savvy enough to know that every ship in the Sith fleet has planet destroying weapons and they're doomed unless they stop the Final Order... which isn't new? I thought there was a countdown to an attack in 16 hours or something. What did they think they were attacking with? I don't even know, this movie is that incoherent.

Rose pops in with a message broadcasting on every channel about the "Resistance is dead. The Sith flame will burn. All worlds, surrender or die"... but given that it's in a language that isn't Basic, there's this one random dude with a beard who translates for the audience... and even though I assume it's meant to be some more commonly spoken language, given that the Sith have their own language in this movie, It makes it seem like this Random Resistance dude understands Sith and... I have questions.

Poe goes to sit by Leia's shrouded corpse because apparently they haven't buried her yet??? I wish Poe and Leia's relationship was more prominent in the movies, because I love the dynamic they're supposed to have, but never actually manifests in any of these movies.

Lando shows up to console him!

"How did you defeat an Empire with almost nothing?" "We had each other."

DAMN RIGHT YOU DID AND THE NEW GENERATION COULD TOO, IF THE WRITERS WEREN'T INTENT ON SEPARATING THEM CONSTANTLY AND MAKING EVERYBODY SUFFER....

Poe decides to make Finn his co-general. I have a lot of feels about this.

Turns out D-O knows all about Exegol because he used to belong to Ochi... that's actually earned, I'll allow it. Hilarious Rey never asked the droid about it  (or any other details of his past, given that she was pretty sure Ochi killed her parents).

Ahch-To! Rey is wearing her hood and I don't know why. She's throwing driftwood into the flaming wreckage of Kylo's TIE and sobbing and... I don't know what's going on here. There are SO MANY REASONS she could be crying, I don't even know.

And she tosses her lightsaber into the sea... just like Kylo did. Parallels. I get it. And just like Luke did to her... She's giving it up because she doesn't feel worthy of being a Jedi because of her heritage, I guess?? (I'm guessing because this movie doesn't explain shit.)

Speaking of which, there's Luke's ghost, right on schedule! I love his snark but it's SO OUT OF LINE given his behavior in the last movie... and the fact that Yoda told him he had to let go of the past and let the books burn. I mean... the fuck???

Rey has this dark throne vision that's driving her, but ironically that's the one vision we don't see in this whole mess.. we have all these OTHER visions instead, I can' teven keep them all straight.

Oh, she's decided to model Luke and fuck off to Ahch-To forever because she feels she made a mistake. that's absolutely the WRONG LESSON from Luke's life, Rey!!

(also, what happened to saving the world? The sith wayfinder? She just conveniently forgot Palpatine was gonna slaughter everybody because she's having heritage angst?????)

Leia not telling Rey about Rey's heritage makes perfect sense when you realize just how much Leia's life was fucked over by the knowledge that Darth Vader was her father--once in ROTJ and again when she got kicked out of the Senate and ostracized in Bloodline.

Luke has Leia's lightsaber conveniently hidden in his hut... so now Kylo/Ben can have a weapon of his own in the upcoming fight, gag. (Really, Rey should use it to make a double-bladed saber, but she won't, sigh.)

The flashback looks like a video game to me. The CGI is not terrible, but doesn't look nearly as real as the rest of the film to me.

Also, I'm forever mad that Leia gave up her saber thinking it would save her son, that is SO AWFUL, especially since IT DIDN'T WORK, HE STILL TURNED OUT EVIL ANYWAY AND RUINED YOUR LIFE.

"A thousand generations live in you now" would have so much more resonance if Rey was an avatar of the Force or a reincarnation of Anakin instead of the metaphorical. (Yes, I know it will be realized literally later on.)

[Just realized that Kylo's obsession with Rey would make TOTAL SENSE if she were an reincarnation of Anakin given how much he idolizes his grandfather!!!]

Whyyyyy doesn't Luke talk here about the revelation that Palpatine is alive? That he and his father failed to kill the Emperor? That Rey has to finish LUKE'S journey, too??? But no, it's all about Leia here.

Rey somehow didn't notice the wayfinder in Kylo's TIE until Luke says "you have everything you need"... I guess? I don't know how she missed it before!!!

And the X-wing rises out of the water like the deus ex machina that it is... somehow still spaceworthy after six years in the ocean. Okay, then.

Apparently, Force ghost Luke can still manipulate physical objects through the Force??? Okay, I can kinda buy that, but... still....

I love how Artoo doesn't even wait for Threepio to get started with the bullshit, he just imports the uploaded memories right away without asking. Normally, I'd be mad about consent, but a) they're married, and b) he's restoring Threepio's personality, so I'm okay with it.

I love how warped and creepy the space is around Exegol.

Also, D-O looks just like a desk lamp.

Oh, so the Resistance follows Rey through Luke's X-wing computer via Artoo. Convoluted, but it works, I guess.

Okay, so time for some technobabble, but there's a navigation tower (the new shield generator) they have to hit for REASONS with a "ground team" (aka strike team). Sigh.

Love the dismissal of the "Holdo maneuver"--which is essentially kamikaze-style suicide. Not a great battle strategy if you want to survive the fight.

Wait, wasn't Poe angsting earlier about how nobody answered their call from Crait back in the last movie? What makes him think this is going to be any different?????

Okay, so all the FO folks on are on Exegol now?? Who is piloting and crewing those Star Destroyers?? Are they First Order or Final Order people? What happened to the First Order? What is the relationship between the First Order and the Final Order? Are they the same thing with two different names?? (But no, there are two fleets, the Sith destroyers are different.) What happened to the First Order then? Does anyone notice and/or care the alleged "Supreme Leader" of the First Order is missing in action??? I'M SO CONFUSED.

Okay, it makes sense that Poe is in an X-wing given he's a hotshot pilot, but he's also a general, and... I'm so confused about the tactical aspect of that, but fine, whatever. Also, Artoo is in the X-wing with him instead of BB-8, who I thought was Poe's droid (to the point of reaming Rey over injuring him earlier in the film!!!) WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE???

we're baaaaacck in the creepy sith ruins just like the beginning of the film, but so much has happened that my brain has fried and so the parallels are not as compelling as they could be.

WHEN DID THEY PICK UP JANNAH?? Has she been there the entire time and we just didn't see her until now, or did they stop back at Endor's moon along the way??? I'M SO CONFUSED!!!

Finn has " a feeling" where the ship is... it's the Force, why are you teasing us like that. LET HIM BE A JEDI.

Okay, I actually really like the fact that all the FO deserter stormtroopers from Endor are using their mounts so their enemies can use the tech against them. That's poetic justice right there. And also, epic cool. Good thing all the ships are still in the atmosphere... (nobody's wearing masks like Finn did for the Kijimi pickup)

I don't know how there is lightning in a fucking underground pyramid, but 10/10 for aesthetic, I love it.

"Grandma, it's me, Anastasia"--oh, wait, never mind.

The reveal that Rey is in a giant arena is hella creepy, even though it makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. Where do all these people come from? What do they do? Where do they live? What do they EAT?? Are they born Sith? Brainwashed Sith?? Cultists? Clones??? I NEED ANSWERS HERE.

Palpatine dangling in his creepy metal arm-thing is a lot like GLADoS from Portal.

So... Palpatine can possess the person who kills him in anger??? Explains a LOT about how he treated Luke, actually. And why it was so important that Anakin finish him - one, because Anakin's body was failing, and two, because he did it for love.

Love the aesthetic of the flickering lights for added creepiness and nothing is quite real. Even if it makes no sense. My id knows what it wants, okay??

Jannah and Finn teaming up for the battle is great, BB-8 actually gets to do something for once, and I love Jannah's crossbow.

Oh, now Palps is going to monologue about Rey's parents, while telling us no interesting details whatsoever. Sigh.

HOW THE FUCK DID KYLO GET TO EXEGOL AGAIN????????????????? she left him stranded in the middle of a frikkin' OCEAN... and he just knows how to get back to Exegol without the macguffin,.... how....?

(yes, I know he's supposed to be "Ben Solo" again, but so far there has been zero explanation in the film itself, so I'm just gonna keep calling him Kylo.)

Okay, there's a TIE fighter next to the X-wing, but... where did he GET IT?????????

That "ow" is priceless. I watched that sequence twice.

(clearly Kylo has not been exploring ruins much recently.)

Finn explaining to Rose that he's going to sacrifice himself for the cause, exactly like she wouldn't let him do in the last film... and Rose goes with it. Okay, then.

Now Kylo has to fight his own boy band... who were secretly following the Emperor's orders the entire time (?) THE ENTIRE FIRST ORDER WAS LITERALLY A FRONT TO KEEP KYLO REN DISTRACTED AND KYLO TOTALLY BOUGHT IT. I... have questions, but I actually admire the sheer audacity of this.

Kylo fighting said knights would be way more emotionally engaging if we a) knew anything about them, b) had seen any interactions between Kylo and the knights earlier, and c) gave a shit, but none of those happened, so we don't.

Kylo and Rey have some sort of Force bond communication thing that is super vaguely filmed so it's hard to understand wtf is actually happening. Rey tosss her saber back and... Ben pulls it out behind his back.

what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the FUCK

I won't say that wasn't forshadowed, because it kinda-sorta was. I will just say that this movie has NEVER EXPLAINED HOW THEY CAN DO THAT or talked about it at ALL, just treats it like a fact, and I... have questions about how reality can be bent that way even if you are a Force dyad or whatnot.

So Kylo's fight with the knights parallels Rey's fight with a bunch of Imperial guards and it's so hard to care. Th timer says there's still a half an hour left, how is that possible???

So... it's okay to stab people as long as you do it with the properly colored lightsaber, I guess???

Kylo shows up, he and Rey exchange Meangingful Looks, they raise their sabers, Palps zaps them and slurps up "the lifeforce of your bond" and uses it to grow younger, whatever the hell that means ughhhhhhhh please let this be over soon.

Did he know they were a dyad before? Is THIS his real plan? I'm so confused and I have no idea wtf is going on.

RIP Snap. I guess I should care more about you, but I don't think you're mentioned in any of the other movies, so... *shrugs*

Poe has a meltdown but.... Lando shows up AGAIN to give him a pep talk, and also a fleet. Like seriously, Lando gets results, if he'd been running the Resistance, the war would be OVER by now.

Is the "Nice flying, Lando!" Older!Wedge?? I think so. I hope so, anyway.

Zorii shows up too, to fight and also insult Poe over the comm... I guess she's upset about Kijimi being destroyed? (Or maybe not given how she was so eager to get off it???)

Palps tosses Kylo into a pit, which... given that Palps survived, maybe not the best plan if you wanted to actually kill him.

Then he shoots force lightning through the hole in the arena into the sky and... zaps all the new fighters.

Well.

Okay then.

Rey wakes up and... reaches out to the spirits of past Jedi for help. (Apparently, Palpatine doesn't care about her killing him now, because he's young and healthy again, so it's okay to kill her? I guess he can always try again with another grandkid, lol.)

Also, it's funny how Rey is a Palpatine and blood is sooooo important and scary and destiny until someone's trying to diss her and then she's just "a scavenger girl". And by funny, I mean terrible. Sigh.

"I am all the Sith." I don't think the Sith, by the nature of their existence, can embody their predecessors the way that the Jedi can. I mean, to be a Sith is to be alone, and there is that whole Rule of Two business if that's still canon now. I mean, unless the Sith literally eat their masters and thus become them? But it seems a little late for THAT detail.  

But it's okay because Rey's embodying all the Jedi this time (and has TWO sabers, lol) and she turns Palpatine's Force lightning back on himself and he turns into a crisp. You'd think the Sith Lords would have worked out a defense against that, since that's how Mace Windu scarred him in the first place, but okay then.

The entire arena crumbles. All the faceless cultists are crushed by falling rock. Pryde goeth before the fall. Lando rescues Finn and Jannah before Poe can. All the star destroyers are stranded because the command ship is gone and start blowing up.

Anyway, Rey collapses in the ruins. Finn senses her fall. but Kylo climbs out of the pit and cradles her in his arms. (ewww ewww ewwwwwww NOOOOOOO) and cradles her to his chest [gross gross grossssssss she's dead and can't consent and I can't decide if that makes it grosser or not, she's never let him do this while she was ALIVE fuckkkkkk]. He finally lets go and then places his hand on her stomach, and ughhhhhh I have so many issues with this I don't care if he's reformed, he's been stalking for three films, this is NOT OKAY and does the Force healing trick, and...

literally he could have just put a hand on her forehead or shoulder, which I would still hate, but would be less creepy than this.

Rey wakes up, puts her hands on his, sits up, startled and... doesn't say anything, doesn't even flinch, and smiles. "Ben."

and she kisses him. I knew this was coming. I still hate it.

he smiles, falls over, and dies. Like, literally, it's like Rey's kiss murdered him. I'm a terrible person, I know, but I really can't mourn him.

Kylo's body vanishes (Leia's stayed intact, damn it!) proving I guess that he was good after all?? I thought only special people learned the vanishing trick??? Leia's body vanishes right at the same time, and... I don't get it, I really don't.

Maz apparently skipped the final battle to watch over Leia's corpse and I.... definitely don't get it.

was Leia possessing her son this whole time? What. Just. Happened??????

Rey flies away in Luke's X-wing under her own power, and... "Red Five is in the air again," says Finn. People are rising up all over the galaxy, though against what, I'm not clear, and the skies are suddenly clear, implying that the Emperor was warping the weather with his darkness.

We see Star Destroyers blowing up behind Cloud City and on the FOREST moon of Endor with the Ewoks and I just... never knew they were there??? Were they connected to the rest of the Fleet somehow (like the Katana fleet in Legends??) Where did this come from?? Wicket and his son are clearly satisfied, though why they think anything's going to change is beyond me. And was the First Order oppressing them? Why didn't we see any of their fleet when our protagonists were IN THAT SYSTEM AND SO WAS THE OSTENSIBLE SUPREME LEADER???

Another Star Destroyer crashes on Jakku, so literally NOTHING HAS CHANGED THERE, LOL.

Back at the Resistance Jungle Base, everyone cries and hugs, Poe and Zorii have a moment that goes nowhere, Poe's arm is somehow in a sling (???) There's a very brief lesbian kiss, but it gets even less screen time than Rose Tico, so again, don't think that counts as representation, but nice try.

Maz gives Chewie Han's medal from Yavin and... where the hell did she get it??? Leia's corpse??? Creepy!!

Jannah comes up to Lando and asks him where he's from, and when Lando asks the same question, she say she doesn't know. "Let's find out." Wow, that's way more interesting than most of this movie!

Rey hugs Finn and Poe and I... just... it's the tearful hug of "wow, we've all been through a lot of trauma since we last saw each other and also I was a jerk and threw you across the sea with the Force to get you out of my way and I abandoned you without saying goodbye to isolate myself on an island in the middle of nowhere until my ghost mentor reminded me I could save the day".

ButWeDon'tHavetimetounpackThatNow.jpg

Rey takes the Falcon to the Lars' moisture farm on Tatooine with BB-8. No one is in sight. This is an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere, not a shrine to the Legend of Luke Skywalker. Rey slides down the sides on a piece of metal and into the courtyard. She wraps up Luke and Leia's sabers and... we cut to her back up on the ridge near the droid garage, using the Force to bury them in the sand.

Then she pulls out her own saber and it's yellow-bladed and looks like a double quarterstaff (although I only saw the top blade ignite). What she should have had this entire movie.

There's a random woman with an eopie there, who... came over to investigate? there is literally NO ONE ELSE FOR MILES. HOW????

The woman asks who she is, and we have callbacks to that earlier conversation on Pasaana. Rey hesitates, sees Luke and Leia's ghost on the horizon, smiling their approval and says "Rey Skywalker". The movie ends with her standing  watching the double sunset... alone except for BB-8.

Wow, she's literally come full circle from being alone in the desert with a droid to being alone in a different desert with the same droid. What the fuck.

Cue triumphant music and credits.

Oh, and I just realized we never found out what was so important for Finn to tell Rey about... so that went nowhere. I assume it's "he can use the Force" but apparently that wasn't important enough to ACTUALLY INCLUDE, sigh.

Did Rey fuck off to Tatooine to be a hermit? Is she going back to her friends? Is she going to train the next generation of Jedi? How will she keep the cycle from repeating? Is it broken? Is Palpatine really dead this time??? How does she feel about Kylo/Ben?? Is HIS ghost still around stalking her, too? Why did she take the Falcon? Doesn't it belong to Chewie now? Why didn't the rest of the gang come with her???? I'm so confused.

This was even worse than I had anticipated, and I came into this with super-low expectations. This wasn’t bad in a “bad B-movie kind of way,” this was bad in the “nothing makes sense, it’s all jumbled blur, I am numb and cannot begin to care” kind of spectacle.  I cannot imagine watching this in a theater. No wonder the critics savaged this. 

[reylorabbittrail]

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.

[silentbutsweet77]

So I finally saw TROS and I’m still trying to digest all the plot holes and just overall mess of a movie it ended up being.

Rise of Skywalker is basically the Rise of pandering, fake feminism and commercialized greed.

We start the film with the news Palpatine has returned. Yet we were never given any real explicit hints to this in the prior two films. We see Kylo confront Palpatine but it all moves so fast that you can’t properly take in the scene. Adam Driver does the best he can acting wise but it overall fell flat for me. Pacing here is my main issue.

We then get our Rey training scene and then we get the trio scenes with Rey, Finn and Poe. Unfortunately we get next to nothing of Rose. Because apparently JJ felt he should pander to the toxic fanbros minority that whined and complained over her character. We never get any explanation to what happened between Finn and Rose. I guess we as an audience are just supposed to forget the bonding scenes between Finnrose in TLJ. Oh and forget about their kiss. Who needs plot continuity.

So that takes us to Finn. Since TFA they’ve made it clear he has a crush on Rey but that it was never reciprocated or that serious. They are pretty much the Luke and Leia of this trilogy. Even right down to the ship bait that they would occasionally throw out to keep you guessing. How original right? But I digress.

My biggest complaint is that they don’t really give him his own storyline away from running around worrying about Rey. We understand that they are bffs but Finn should be more then a prop for the main protagonist. If Finn is force sensitive, then show the audience and stop with the innuendos. If Jannah is the new love interest, then allow them to have more then one or two minor bonding moments.

Poe is pretty much the same old Poe. But oh let’s throw in there that he was a spice runner. And lets give him a new love interest that the audience knows next to nothing about. His Han Solo transformation is just about complete! Groundbreaking writing right there. *sigh*

We then get a myriad of angry emo Reylo Skype sessions. Gone are the days of soft TLJ Rey. No we can’t have that. A strong woman apparently can’t show vulnerabilities even to the man she loves. We then get angry stabby Rey. You know the same Rey who shipped herself across the galaxy. The same Rey who could’ve killed Kylo in the throne room but chose not to back in TLJ. Ah yes that Rey. When we do get a proper bonding moment after Rey stabs Kylo, the pace is then put into fast forward mode once again. The plot of the never ending MacGuffins takes precedence over character development. We do get a beautiful moment between Han and Ben and I’m grateful but it’s one of very few sadly.

The Palpatine moments with Rey actually had me lol. It reminded me of some crappy video game. The cheese was living large in these scenes. Ben coming to the rescue and wielding his light saber in sync with Rey was visually stunning and helped remind me of why I ship Reylo. The jedi speaking to Rey was fine but it should have been to both. Rey and Ben are a dyad. They are Star Wars version of soulmates. Anakin is Bens grandfather, talk about wasted potential. But not just wasted potential, a plot hole that just doesn’t make sense. Ben is a Skywalker. Rey is not. You’ve built up dual protagonists but in the end you are really only focused on one. You’ve had the heroines journey for Rey and this beautiful redemption arc for Ben. Yet you completely diss Adam Driver by not even allowing him a speaking role in these final moments. Lucky for JJ, Adam is such a great actor that his body language told the story.

The longing when Ben holds a lifeless Rey was so powerful it luckily didn’t need words. The kiss was beautiful and then we get an emotional goodbye filled with mourning and a proper funeral. Oh wrong movie? How silly of me. JJ literally copies the redemption arc in Return of the Jedi but robs us of the emotional impact. A strong woman like Rey can’t show too much emotion after all.

So to sum it up JJ envisioned Rey as this feminist hero that didn’t need a man. Because in his mind this would’ve made Rey weak. Well I’m here to say that’s fake feminism and quite frankly it’s bullshit. This is why we need more input from female writers. Especially where romance is concerned. The two do not need to cancel each other out.

So where does all this lead in the future? Well that’s all up to the greedy mouse.

Gotta love the ambiguous plot holes they left all over the place! Ben fading away at the exact moment Leia did was certainly not by chance. The no closure for Bens passing also feels too weird. The healing shot that centers on Rey’s tummy. Is she pregnant? Bens hand could’ve been placed on her head or heart but they chose her belly. The fertility necklace that transfers from Rey over to Ben. Symbolic? It certainly could be.

Finn being force sensitive another plot left open ended. Jannah not knowing where’s she is from while talking to Lando. How subtle. Is Lando the father lol?

In short with the new popular Galaxy’s edge at the Disney parks, it totally makes sense for Disney to continue to milk this in the form of comics/books. It’s money over art unfortunately.

My final and only hope is that if they resurrect Ben, that it’s done right. Show us that Ben has atoned for his sins and allow him a happy ending with Rey. That’s an actual fairytale that ends with hope.

[irinapaleolog]

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker had raised the hopes of Reylos, fans who longed for Rey and Kylo Ren to end up together in the end, healing the wound inflicted on the galaxy two generations earlier by Emperor Palpatine and Anakin Skywalker. The marketing certainly hinted at such and, at least for less-invested viewers, the film delivered on its promise of romance: Reylo (and Bendemption) did occur, and Rey and the redeemed Ben Solo shared a passionate kiss, which is why it may be so perplexing for the general audience that Reylos hated the ending. Two weeks after the release, they're still mourning on social media, and demanding for Disney to #RealeaseTheJJCut, a reference to an edit that would have delivered the conclusion they wanted, and purportedly what director J.J. Abrams intended. So, what happened, exactly?

While romance is certainly not a new concept to Star Wars, it was never depicted from the perspective of a woman. However, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi made moves to remedy that: The camera stays with Rey when she interacts with Kylo; the lighting, music and the chemistry between the actors drew in many women. The trope being trapped was "enemies to lovers," a classic of romance literature. In The Force Awakens, Kylo is infatuated with a "lowly scavenger," despite himself and his training. In The Last Jedi, the two characters establish a connection that goes deeper than their pasts, ripe with wedding imagery from around the world, before separating again.

The comparisons with the doomed romance of Anakin and Padmé popped up. If the tragic lovers of the prequel trilogy married in the second movie and died in the third, surely the sequel would turn it around, allowing the last descendant of Anakin Skywalker to fix what he had broken and to triumph where he had failed.

It's easy for a certain segment of the audience to dismiss the power of romance, but it remains most lucrative literary genre in the world. Romance writers master the art of the promise and the delivery, which is a happy ending for the main couple. There are tragic romantic novels in which one or both of the lovers die, but that's not what Disney was promising with Episode IX. From that perspective, The Rise of Skywalker punishes the male lead by killing him the moment he chooses to save the love of his life. Abrams and his co-writer Chris Terrio were going for a parallel with Return of the Jedi, but that movie was never promoted as having romance at its core, and Darth Vader didn't have his entire life in front of him.

The Rise of Skywalker then goes out of its way to show how little Rey really cared for Ben, to the point where, after watching the final scenes, it's difficult to assess what impact he had in the plot. The film also does that to Hux and Rose, but in the case of Ben Solo it's particularly egregious because he's the last of the Skywalker bloodline. If they were going for Return of the Jedi parallels, they could have included either a funeral or a Force ghost, but the audience is denied that, which is a strange and cruel narrative choice.

Even worse, the ending broke the promise made in the promotional material. Yes, there was a kiss, but it's swiftly punished: The heroine ends up alone in a barren planet; the Byronic hero is never mentioned again. The other side of fandom might argue that Star Wars should have never catered to romance, but they would be the first to complain if a film advertised like Fast & Furious turned out to be a family comedy; false advertising elicits the same kinds of reactions in everyone.

Ben Solo's death, isolated from the romance, is also problematic because he was coded as a conflicted, groomed, abused, abandoned and brainwashed child soldier fighting to break from his programming. The ancillary material supports this, and in Marvel's The Rise of Kylo Ren, it's shown he never attempted to kill Luke Skywalker, he didn't burn the Jedi temple, and he didn't attack his fellow students. It was a set-up designed to turn his family against him and place him within the First Order. Han, Leia and Rey work  for two entire movies to try and bring him back. By killing every single character that even attempts to turn around, the film confirms their worst fear -- that the only way out is death.

There'ss another horrifying message lurking in The Rise of Skywalker, however, if you are coming to the film from this perspective: that your family will disown you and forget you the moment you misbehave, replacing you with a "good child." That's exactly what happens to Kylo Ren; despite his efforts to come back as Ben Solo, neither Luke nor Leia nor Anakin help him. Ben has to imagine a conversation with his father to move forward, and in the end, his mother and his uncle replace him with Rey, who becomes their "found child" and assumes the Skywalker name.

But Kylo was filling a different role too -- the monster boyfriend, whose most famous example is Beauty and the Beast. While the original purpose of tales like Beauty and the Beast was to prepare girls for marriages in which they would be under the authority of their (potentially monstrous) husband, the tale evolved, and the monster became a focus for those that society had misunderstood or repressed. It's the grown-up version of little children, who feel powerless most of the time, preferring the Hulk over any other superhero, only with romance, darkness and danger thrown in; it's a way to explore a problematic aspect of reality through fiction. Unfortunately, instead of allowing fiction to play its role for women, the monster boyfriend trope is incredibly policed ("it's toxic!"), a criticism that doesn't extend to monster girlfriends (see Mara Jade's murderous origins and her eventual marriage to Luke Skywalker in Legends).

Many women in Star Wars fandom identified with Kylo Ren for those reasons, and the more the character was attacked on social media ("he killed his father!" "he's ugly, unworthy of being a hero!"), and the more stories about what really happened to him were published, the more affection he drew.

And while we are talking about ancillary material, The Rise of Skywalker contradicts almost every single narrative thread about Kylo published to date, which were hinting at redemption as far back as 2017. Most Reylos engaged with that material wholeheartedly. Despite the amazing talent involved in its creation, those fans view the ending of Episode IX as a slap in the face, and many women feel like they have wasted their time buying into a franchise that ultimately never cared about fulfilling its own promises about happy endings, telling a complete story, or even offering hope and compassion to the characters that needed it the most.

However, all of that might have been better received had the film been generous with the heroine, the first woman to be the primary protagonist in the Skywalker Saga. For two and a half movies, it even looked to be a story in the fairy-tale tradition, with a poor orphan discovering her inner power, defeating an unspeakable evil, forging friendships and, ultimately, finding the love of her life and becoming the leader of her people.

Instead, The Rise of Skywalker leaves Rey effectively where she started, on desert planet, taking with her someone else's droid and someone else's name. She doesn't grow, and she doesn't even confront or integrate her inner darkness. Rey, who had been wonderfully feral up to that point, becomes a creepy Stepford smiler.

That, in a nutshell, is why Reylos are angry, despite getting their space kiss. For many, The Rise of Skywalker felt like a bad punchline after a long con from Disney, and Star Wars has the bitter taste of a franchise that accidentally tapped into women's interests but had little interest in them as intelligent viewers engaging with the material.

[red-winters]

*Note: I’m basically writing this down as it occurs to me, trying to crystallize and put into words why I, personally, found the sequels...lacking.

You really don’t have to agree, and I might even change my mind with the introduction of alternate viewpoints and other good arguments, but for now, this is what I have.

Opinions on the Skywalker Legacy, Rey, and Reylo

Something I just realized about Star Wars and TRoS:

Hope for a better future is important and is a recurring theme in the Star Wars Universe.

The prequels were fascinating and tragic because it covered the Fall of the Republic and its protagonist/hero-figure. We invested a lot in the characters despite knowing how everything would end because we knew, ultimately, there would be a “happy ending” with their children in the Original Trilogy. RotS was heartbreaking because of Anakin’s fall, Padme’s death, the end of an age, and Obi-Wan’s exile, BUT it didn’t feel completely hollow because we got to see a new hope (Anakin’s children) enter the galaxy.

The sequels... took that happy ending away and cemented the Skywalker legacy as being one of loss—specifically, the breaking of a family. Anakin’s life was a tragedy for many reasons, but the recurring theme there was the loss of family to death or estrangement or both. He was locked into a life of loss until the end when he was finally able to break free of the cycle by saving Luke and redeeming himself, thereby reconciling him with his son, his family, the boy Shmi Skywalker raised, and Obi-Wan.

Luke and Leia initially differed from him because they gained and kept what Anakin never could seem to hold. They were supposed to be the start of something better, something new. What made the original trio work was that “found family” dynamic that seems so important to a successful Star Wars story’s narrative DNA. That should’ve been the end of a cycle, but the sequels broke that for everybody. Maybe it was necessary in order to set the stage for the newest Star Wars installment, but still.

When we meet our OT heroes again, Han and Leia are estranged and Luke has lost his hope, lives alone, and is deliberately shunning the family he’d built. Leia and Han are marginally better because they do eventually gravitate and return to each other, but even that is dishearteningly temporary. That sense of distance and estrangement pulls all of them down and never fully goes away.

It gets slightly better when Rey enters the picture, but ultimately, even her arc just reinforces the Skywalker legacy of loss—from two sides even, if we count Rey as a “spiritual” Skywalker with Ben filling in the literal Skywalker legacy category. The writers put a lot of work into developing her relationship with Kylo/Ben and had the chance to break the cycle—once and for all⁠—with these two and surpass the previous generations, but they didn’t.

Was it to “shock” the audience? Was it because the writers believed two characters living “happily ever after” was considered unrealistic? I don’t know, but the more I think about the ending, the more convinced I am that a happy ending...would’ve been the most surprising and fitting path they could’ve taken.

Let’s consider it for a moment: Star Wars is about hope, about being better than the previous generations, repeating themes, and breaking cycles—for the better. Star Wars is about family, found family, and redemption.

Where Anakin lost Shmi, eventually lost Obi-Wan, and had a false “father figure” in Palpatine, Rey could’ve had Han, Luke, and Leia (in a greater, more supportive capacity than in canon—even if only in spirit).

Where Anakin lost Padme due to his own fear, Rey saved Ben due to their faith, trust, and compassion in/for each other—which is why Ben’s death feels like such a great loss to me.

Where Anakin and Obi-Wan lost their brotherhood and Luke and Leia were separated by time, trauma, and guilt, Rey and Finn could’ve developed an even stronger bond, complementing and supporting each other from different viewpoints. They could’ve come into their own identities as a new, better type of Jedi and as an architect of true change in the galaxy as the Storm-trooper who decided he couldn’t live with taking innocent lives, defected, and started a revolution. The writers could’ve developed and explored deeper familial—perhaps as metaphorical twins?—bonds between them, and their similarities as orphan “nobodies” who grew up without their families.

Where Anakin lost his way for decades, existing in a state of being emotionally and spiritually “dead,” Ben and Rey could’ve found and lived theirs. Where absence defined Anakin and Padme as parents, Ben and Rey could’ve broken that mold.

Where Anakin’s Jedi path starved him of his bonds and allowed insecurity and obsession to fester, Ben and Rey could’ve walked a new path and created a new type of Jedi—or something else altogether—not defined by an unhealthy fear of attachment, living in harmony with their emotions, and capable of love without being ruled by fear.

Where Anakin and the Old Jedi Order’s (unintended, perhaps) effect on the Skywalker Family Legacy was loss, isolation, and estrangement from family, Ben and Rey could’ve redefined that legacy into one of unity, support, and togetherness. Where family and attachment was excluded from Anakin’s understanding of the old Jedi, Ben and Rey’s “found family” approach could’ve built up and strengthened the new Jedi. Where Anakin started and lived his Jedi path by losing his mother and his family, Ben and Rey started (in the case of Ben, re-started ) theirs by finding their family.

Where Anakin, Luke, and Leia’s paths lead them to living lonely lives, Ben and Rey could’ve found a path, still following the Force, based in unity and teamwork.

Where Anakin and Padme lost their children, lost their lives, and their chosen paths/vocations (to death or forswearing their oaths), Rey and Ben could’ve found theirs together, creating a stable foundation for a better version of the new Jedi than Luke or the previous generation were capable of building.

Instead of all that... what we have in TRoS is a Rey that is alone (again), naming herself a Skywalker, and adopting a broken legacy she and Ben could’ve—should have, maybe—already fundamentally redefined. We get a warped image of a Rey who could’ve been the beginning of a new era...but is, in reality, the final nail in the Skywalker family coffin.

[whereismywizardhat]

I know I’m not the first one to say it, but the thing that has really been driving me mad every time I devote brain space to The Rise of Skywalker is that it is a thematically dead movie, that not only cheapens its own trilogy, but the original trilogy too.  Like, every negative stereotype of the sequel trilogy is represented in force.

I hated this movie.  I truly loathed it.  I put spoilers under the cut but the basics are that I’ve been ruminating on it since I saw it opening night and it’s made me more mad the more I turn my brain back on.  Any good reviews of this movie you see are probably because this movie moves faster then the Millennium Falcon, shooting stupid, pointless sequence after stupid pointless sequence into your brain so quickly that it makes you forget that what it’s showing to you is utterly banal and gross.

I think that the Sequel Trilogy is, ultimately, a failure.  A lot of people believe Return of the Jedi is the weakest of the original trilogy, that cast fatigue and the beginnings of Lucas’s drawbacks showing as a writer hurt that film overall.  If that’s the case, then The Rise of Skywalker shatters it’s predecessors because the film’s contempt for the Last Jedi in turn tells you that none of it was worthwhile.  The Last Jedi was a flawed film, but it was trying to drag Star Wars into a place that was healthy for the franchise.  Rise of Skywalker says “No”, and tells you that the sequel trilogy was afterall nothing but digging up the corpse of the Original Trilogy and parading it in front of you one last time.

Rey being born of nobody was important both as a way of getting away from the weird eugenics thing that Star Wars courted as Anakin Skywalker went from “Powerful Jedi” to “Virgin Birth Chosen One”, and as a way of differentiating herself from her nemesis.  Kylo Ren is the heir to some great dynasty, Rey comes from nothing, it’s part of their yin/yang thing.  Making her a dynasty too destroys that, brings back the eugenics in full force, AND adds a bunch of plotholes to boot.  “They sold you to save you” is probably the worst dialogue I’ve ever heard, including Anakin’s attempts at flirting under Lucas’s pen.

Palpatine being alive is... nonsensical.  A desperate plea for forgiveness to twitter after not explaining Snoke.  Going in, I assumed it was an evil force ghost, the sequel’s equivalent of that period from Legends where Palp’s rapidly decaying clones were being burnt through and he tried to possess Leia’s baby in the womb.  Not so much.  It seems Palp just... kind of appeared through a plot hole.  Exxegol is fine as a base, I thought it was Korriban/Morriband and was disappointed that they didn’t go with the Sith planet (except they did, I guess Sith all use the same firm for designing their ).

Which goes into Kylo Ren.  Adam Driver was really just... not given anything to do (a recurring problem).  To his credit, the character is on the ball for the first half of the story.  It’s just... all chemistry with Rey is gone, a problem Finn has too.  The movie doesn’t have time to take a breath to allow the actors to emote at each other, and Kylo takes the worst of it because he’s already a terse character and the mask is back so you don’t even get his face.  The film gives one moment that works with Kylo: his vision of Han.  I’ve seen some comments on this that didn’t like it, but to me it’s quite obviously the light side equivalent of Rey’s evil Rey scene.  Rey looks forward and sees evil, Kylo looks backwards and sees a version of the first films climax with what he was supposed to do.  It’s... the one moment in the entire film where I felt like there was some actual craft in what was going on.  That’s without getting into how robbed Kylo Ren was as a villain.  The Last Jedi basically set up Kylo Ren as the ultimate big bad, having achieved everything Vader wanted.  Here, he’s back to being a lackey of a weirdo in a bathrobe, who doesn’t even have the benefit of being a force ghost who he can’t stab. 

I mentioned Finn before.  Finn has... no presence in this film.  He screams after Rey, he gets a one film love interest while the previous movie’s love interest kinda just sits there scowling in the background while a hobbit whose name I didn’t catch gets more lines, he has some force sensitivity but the kind from the original movie where you squint at the screen and learn what the audience just saw while Rey has taken levels in D&D paladin.  He has about the same amount of significance in this film as Obi-wan did in Phantom Menace, that is to say none except we know he’s an important character in a movie that came out before this one and he gets one action sequence near the end.

Poe makes out slightly better, taking up a lot of screen time.  Poe has never been a consistent character in this trilogy.  One movie he’s a compassionate cool dude, the next he’s a fuckup cowboy who doesn’t play by the rules, this one is he’s a weird stand in for Han Solo, being handed Han’s smuggler backstory and acting like Han did in ESB’s first half (without the UST with Rey).  He is just as unimportant as Finn, but ALSO has to be given a lot of screen time to actually establish some rapport with his castmates because he wasn’t previously given any time with Rey and only a small amount of time with Finn.

The supporting cast from previous movies... may as well not exist.  Other then Leia, all the original trilogy characters are just around.  Chewie gets a fake out death.  Lando shows up, gives a speech, and disappears til the end.  Wedge makes a cameo ten second after his stepson dies and has no reaction to that, and the only reason I know that is because I’m so invested in Wedge that I bought the tie-in novel because it had him in it.  In fact, most of the supporting cast from Force Awakens dies.  Snap, Hux... that’s about it.  I’m sure they would have killed off Rose if JJ thought that letting her languish in the background with no lines wasn’t a worse fate for the character.  As previously noted, one of the Hobbits from LoTR has a bigger role then she does.  The movie also introduces an entire legion of runaway Stormtroopers... for no reason other then to introduce Finn’s third love interest in three movies, Tika.  She’s fine.  I’ve heard there’s a deleted scene that says she’s Lando’s daughter kidnapped by the FO.  Glad we got the weird “Who’s Your Daddy?” thing out of the way with this side character before the fans bullied the director into retconning it to being Mace Windu’s secret love child.

Consistently, this movie feels like a fever dream fan fiction with a budget.  I consider A New Hope’s original cut to be the platonic ideal for an adventure film in terms of pacing.  Prologue, Three Acts on Three Planets, with the tension ratcheting up with each planet.  It’s follow up is a slower, more cerebral film after a bombastic opening.  Rise of Skywalker takes neither option, instead going for a hypnotic, Fincher-esque pacing with no brakes.  It doesn’t want you to realize what you’re watching is shlock.  What isn’t a calculated spit in the face of it’s predecessor, The Last Jedi, is a stab at the hypothetical second JJ Abrams Star Wars film which didn’t exist to reference back to.  Rise of Skywalker exists, and it exists to appeal to the most toxic elements of the Star Wars fanbase.  I don’t think it’s salvageable.

Somewhere, out there, there is a version of Rise of Skywalker that is thematically coherent.  Maybe there’s one that actually follows up on it’s predecessor like... every other Star Wars saga film instead of an imagined film that didn’t happen.  I dunno.  Regardless, it really makes me question whether Disney actually understands what they’re doing, or if it’s all just luck and nonsense that let them become a monopoly.

I guess it wouldn’t seem so awful if the Mandalorian wasn’t just sitting there.pursuing a part of the Star Wars universe that feels fresh and original rather then ruining better films.

[red-applesith]

I love your blog and I have a question. What do you think is going on with Luke's old lightsabre? I'm afraid it means their bond is severed.

Hi, anon! Thanks for enjoying my brain farts. Sorry, it took me so long to respond, but I have many thoughts about the lightsaber, and I tried to summarise as best as I can.

First, I’m going to postulate that on a meta level, the Skywalker lightsaber represents Star Wars itself and the place of the person wielding it inside the narrative of the saga.

WHAAAAAT? I hear you asking. That’s not what my question is about! I know, I know, but let me explain because it means an awful lot for Reylo. :P (You’ll see, it will all make sense.)

2015, The Force Awakens brings back Star Wars. For ten years the franchise has been “locked away” in  Lucasfilm’s basement the same way the Skywalker lightsaber has been locked away in Maz’s castle.

Maz Kanata: I’ve had this for ages. Kept it locked away.[hands Solo Luke’s lightsaber]Han Solo: Where did you get that?Maz Kanata: A good question - for another time.

Translation: We don’t have time for useless backstory, we’ll keep that for tie-in materials.

Force Awakens introduces new characters, never seen before: Rey, a scavenger and Finn, a stormtrooper. Both are without parents, which leads to wild speculation from fans.

Who are they?

Why are they here?

Star Wars is about the Skywalker family, always been, so it means they have to be linked one way or another to the Skywalker legend, right?

Otherwise, what place do they hold in Star Wars?

Apparently for some fans, none.

The movie also introduces Kylo Ren, formerly known as Ben Solo, who turns out to be the legitimate heir to the Star Wars legacy. The problem is, He’s one of the baddies. Shock and horror!

Back to the story: The Skywalker lightsaber calls to Rey, but she freaks out and refuses to answer the call to adventure and runs away.

[to Rey] That lightsaber was Luke’s. And his father’s before him. And now, it calls to you.

Translation: The Star Wars saga was about Luke, and his father before him. And now, it’s about you.

While in the forest, she meets Kylo Ren. Ultimately, the Force awakens in her thanks to this fateful encounter.

Translation: Here is our heroine and, whether you like it or not, her narrative intertwines with Kylo Ren’s (He is what narratively drives her right back into the story after she refuses the call to adventure). Hold your horses before screaming that it’s reducing Rey to a plot device; there’s more to come.

Interestingly enough, after Rey ran away, Finn is literally handed Star Wars when Maz tasks him to bring the Skywalker’s lightsaber to Rey.

Maz Kanata [To Finn]: Take it. Find your friend.

Translation: Your role within the story is to support Rey. In Star Wars, you are instrumental in her success. Hold your horses before screaming that it’s erasing Finn; there’s more to come.

That’s why the fight on Starkiller is so amazing; it’s a fight for the control of Star Wars. Of course, we know that the answer is that Star Wars now belongs to Finn, Rey and Kylo, but this is how the story unfolds:

[Finn wields Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber]Kylo Ren: That lightsaber… It belongs to me.

Translation: I am the rightful heir to Star Wars. This story is about me.

Finn: Come get it.

Translation: Yeah? You better earn your place in that narrative then! It’s not because you are the son of two main characters that you deserve to be the focal point of the story.

And for a brief instant, Kylo Ren succeeds. For a short moment, he’s about to “win” the legacy battle. He’s the centre of the Star Wars saga. Until the Skywalker lightsaber ‘slips through his fingers’ (flies past him) to end up in Rey’s hand.

Translation: You forgot about something kid, your Skywalker heritage doesn’t give you a free pass. It’s Rey’s story as much as yours. We’re not going to make it easy for you.

What follows is a beautiful fight in the snow, chock-full of raw emotion and symbolism and at the end, Rey uses Ren’s legacy against him: She “steals” his knowledge of the Force and uses his moves and the weapon of his family against him.

He ends up deeply wounded yet strangely fascinated. Rey leaves confused but stronger; and when the Resistance decides to send her to Ahch-To, she finally accepts the call to adventure.

Translation: Rey, you have earned your place in our narrative by embracing what the Skywalker saga been about so far. Go, girl! Kylo, you’re a total mess, and Rey is more deserving than you to be a Skywalker.

By rejecting a side of your family/history, you lost the central place in our narrative, but we didn’t kill you because there is hope for you. You have two movies to get your shit together or to mess up so badly that the Skywalker will go extinct.

NOW, LET’S EXAMINE THE LAST JEDI.

Allow me to get poetic here: Picture J.J. Abrams, wearing Jedi Robes handing over the Skywalker Lightsaber to Rian.

“Here. Star Wars is yours now. Go play with it.”

And the first thing that Rian does is to take his toolbox and take the lightsaber apart.

What is it made of?

What part goes where?

Do I need all the parts for it to work?

How can I make my own lightsaber?

For the second instalment of a series, you want to shake things up, push the characters further. And that’s what Rian does.

The film starts; Rey hands the Skywalker lightsaber to Luke, who looks at it dramatically before throwing it away.

Translation: I’m not the main guy anymore, why are you trying to bring me back into this shit?

The fact that this time it’s Luke who refuses the call to adventure is funny and unpredictable. It also leads Rey to question her place in the narrative because she took the mantle of Star Wars and she expects to follow Luke’s Steps.

Rey: I need someone to show me my place in all of this.

Translation: If I’m not here to be a Skywalker, what am I? Who am I? Why did the writers bring me here for? Aren’t you supposed to hand Star Wars to me?

And the thing is, Rey’s origins have been at the heart of all Star Wars speculations for two years, so the audience demands answers as much as Rey. And they want her to be this big, never-failing hero because girls have to be absolutely perfect because our society is too sexist to let them be just humans. To the MRAs she’s a Mary-Sue, to the toxic social justice activists, she’s nothing but a precious cinnamon roll who becomes a victim as soon as something remotely dangerous or sexy happens to her.

After Luke’s introduction, the next big scene where the Skywalker lightsaber makes its apparition is that funny scene where we see Rey training.

First, she’s using her staff, because that’s her trademark weapon, then she looks at the Skywalker lightsaber, picks it up and starts playing with it. And if you pay attention she’s not wielding it elegantly; she’s just waving it around until she slices the rock, destroying the Caretaker’s wheelbarrow.

Translation: I want to be part of this story even if Luke doesn’t want me to be, but right now no one takes me seriously, and it hurts.

There’s also a lot to say about why she’s waving the lightsaber like a metaphorical… well… you know what. I mean… And why Luke and the nuns are looking at her disapprovingly for wielding a phallic object on the island, but I’ll keep that for another meta.

Rey: I felt something… it awakened, but now I need to know how to wield it.

Translation: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Now, let’s jump to the fight in the Throne room because Rian successfully managed to make a brilliant Star Wars movie without that much Star Wars in it so we don’t see the Glowing Sticks of Skywalker Legacy as much as in Force Awakens.

Luke being an ass, Rey turned to Kylo Ren to find answers. In turn, Kylo found in Rey his counterpart, his equal and his dream to be loved and accepted for who he is (But since in this movie he believes he’s a monster, the relationship is kinda doomed from the start). The silver lining is that he also found the motivation to get rid of his abuser.

Rey ships herself to the First Order, holding the Skywalker lightsaber very close to her heart.

In the elevator, Rey and Kylo have a quick conversation about what they saw when they touched hands. Both saw the other “turning.”

REY: Ben, when we touched hands, I saw your future.  Just the shape of it, but solid and clear.  You will not bow before Snoke.  You’ll turn. I’ll help you.  I saw it.

Translation: I think I finally understand what my place in this narrative is. I’m here to be the heroine who will bring Ben “You’re-my-only-hope” Solo home and everyone is going to love me for it. Also, I hope the audience understands that I’m not your sister because I want to climb you like a tree.

The next thing, they’re standing in front of Snoke, who is being a creepy, manipulative mofo as usual. Note: if you hadn’t caught up on the sexual predator subtext of Snoke in the Force Awakens, I hope you finally opened your eyes because it wasn’t subtle at all and I was like a 3-year-old watching a pantomime, crying and shouting at Snoke to leave Rey alone.

Immediately Snoke takes the Skywalker lightsaber away from her and reveals that “he’s the one who bridged their minds together.” He even goes as far as bumping her head with it like we’re in a cartoon.

She tries to take control of Kylo’s weapon instead and is denied that power too.

Translation: I’m making Star Wars about myself. I’m the important one. Me! Me! Me! It’s all about me. I deny my apprentice his true heritage, I deny your right to live in this story. You’re both pawns, and I’m going to use and discard you as I please.

In the meantime, Kylo is finding the resolve to kill his master. When he strikes, it’s with the lightsaber that belongs to the side of the family he’s been trying to reject for so long. He’s embracing the truth that is his family. And in a poetic, climatic turn of event, he floats the lightsaber into Rey’s hand so they can fight together.

Translation: I have the same flirting skills as grand-daddy: when I fancy a girl I float stuff to her, but lightsabers are way cooler than pears. Also, I’ve changed my mind since Force Awakens; you can definitely share my story, and maybe my bed.

During the fight, the non-stop swapping and sharing of weapons is not only highly erotic but also symbolic of that shared destiny/story, and it’s no coincidence that their last conversation becomes so meta.

Everyone and their mother has been latching onto Kylo’s harsh words towards Rey’s parentage to say he’s gaslighting her into accepting his marriage proposal but Rian spoke up about that and I’m not going to repeat the obvious.

Instead, I want to talk about Rey trying to take control of the lightsaber because it’s significant of where her character can go.

(Anon, I’m going to address your question finally!)

For an instant, she looks tempted to take his hand but then, she calls for the lightsaber.

REY: Ben?

Translation: I’ve started to develop feelings for you, but they’re not strong enough for me to give up my life, my friends and my dreams. I misunderstood the vision. I thought it was my role to save you and “bring back hope” to the galaxy. You say I have no place in this story if I’m not a Skywalker or if I don’t become your better half, but I don’t believe in that.

Perhaps the audience expects in this instant that she’s going to grab the weapon and strike Kylo Ren because he was the bad guy all along. But that’s not how it plays. Unexpectedly the Skywalker lightsaber REFUSES to fly into her hand as it did in the previous movie and the Force once more separates Rey and Kylo Ren.

Translation: We’re not done yet. We have another movie to make. Come back in two years.

The lightsaber makes its last apparition at the very end. Rey is holding the broken pieces and speaks with Leia

Rey: Luke is gone.  I felt it.  But it wasn’t sadness or pain, it was peace.  And purpose.

Leia: I felt it too.

Rey: How can we build the rebellion from this?

Leia: We have everything we need.

The last frame looks as pretty as a Renaissance tableau. End of the movie.

So, wait a minute you’re going to say, you haven’t really answered the question. Is their bond severed because the lightsaber is broken in two?

Long story short; no.

First, their Force bond is still present, but I assume you are talking about the chance to see their relationship moving past being enemies.

And I want to say, yes. A thousand times.

Rian spent a whole movie shaking up Star Wars and he knows it. That’s why he shows the shattered lightsaber. It is “broken” but not beyond repair. You just need to reassemble it. At the same time, it is no longer the “Skywalker lightsaber”, it’s about to become something new, something else.

So do I think Rey and Kylo’s relationship is beyond repair? Absolutely not.

Despite their difference, their destinies are still intertwined and 2 major obstacles to their growth have been lifted:

Kylo is now free from the influence of his abuser and the two male figures who failed him.

Rey took control of her narrative by refusing to be reduced to the role of “Kylo’s wife” and The Last Jedi demonstrated that it was never her job to save Ben Solo in the first place.

The next time they meet, no one can argue in good faith that their relationship is platonic in nature. If they end up together in episode 9, no one will be able to argue that Rey has been weak and useless (or whatever sexist BS people will throw at her) or that Kylo was given a free redemption card.

The soil is plowed, the seeds are planted. Brace yourself for the harvest.

[kindabraveandlittlestupid]

A love/hate review of the Star Wars The Last Jedi and also the disappointment in corporate Disney trimming the extended universe away from the Star Wars. Just to be clear, I don’t stand with those toxic males of the web who attacked Daisy Ridley, Kelly Marie Tran and the rest of the cast/crew. The movie is a work of fiction and I above all other emotions value decency as the foundation of my views and beliefs (or at least I try to make that my foundation). I am gonna share my opinions/views as always, I am just a guy on the web with little power what Hollywood makes. If you agree with me, that's great! And if you don't, that's fine too.

Goodbye J. J. (Hate) My first complaint is the change of direction from the first movie. J.J. Abrams had managed to establish some worthwhile intrigue with the characters/plot like Rey's background, the hunt for Luke, and Finn's moral crisis. Seemingly the new director/writer decided to take a step away from these established storylines/characters to explore his own take on these things. Luke is no longer interested in the good fight and embraces apathy, Rey comes from nowhere/no one, and Finns short coma results in him having the same cowardly acts from the first movie instead of giving him personal growth after his heroics at Starkiller Base. It's like whiplash where you have had expectations of these story/plot threads being followed only to have them be ignored or to become completely unremarkable in the next film.

Rose & Paige Tico (Love) I admit there is a lot of things about this movie that rubbed me the wrong way but the addition of Rose was not one of them. The Star Wars has always suffered from a lack of female characters in the movies and they seem to be making some strides to balance out the gender scales. She provided a new character to focus on away from the Roguish Pilot and the Ex-Stormtrooper giving us the optimistic/loveable Mechanic that we could invest out feelings in (which reminded me of another sci-fi female mechanic who I wish I saw more on screen).

What upset me about Rose was the fact I wanted to know MORE about her backstory and her relationship with her sister, Paige. The geek in me would love to have some webisodes dedicated to their relationship (as well as other characters) and how they got into the rebellion in the first place but alas the story relegated her to a secondary plot line on a gambling planet that showed off rich people being assholes which was ultimately pointless to the storyline and failed to further the plot.

I look forward to seeing how they develop her in the next movie, considering so few people are left in the Rebellion... I mean Resistance. On a parting thought, I am still not sure about the Fin/Rose kiss they tried to apply to the movie... felt a little forced if you ask me.

Marvel Humor (Hate) There is a noticeable change to the formula of the Star Wars movies and we know this new formula very well. Disney has been enjoying the tidal wave of cash coming in from the MCU with movies like the Avengers, Ironman, Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy and so on which brings in billions (with a B) into the Magical Kingdom. Naturally, they think they struck gold (which they have) but now they are taking that Marvel Universe humor and projecting it into other franchises they own to try and milk money out of them.

This was on full display in Star Wars with the ‘prank call’ Poe used while talking to Hux. This universe enjoyed some banter in its previous movies but this very scene seemed foreign in the Star Wars Universe. As if Hux wouldn't have a laser cannon blow Poe right up. The movie continued to layer more and more MCU humor into the movie with Chewie eating the Porg in front of other horrified Porgs, Luke throwing a lightsaber nonchalantly over his shoulder, and tickling Rey with a piece of grass.

Granted there wasn't AS MUCH humor as you might see in Guardians or Ironman but they are starting to inject it into the films and in my opinion, it undermines the quality of the movie and the universe quite a bit by trying to make it something its not. This is why I enjoyed the grittier Rogue One so much that applied some humor with the android K-2SO but didn't allow shtick with other characters (which was good).

The point is their Gold Equation of humor connecting to the audience shouldn't be transplanted so easily from one franchise to the next, it robs the authenticity of Star Wars and what we know and love.

Vice Admiral Holdo (Love/Hate) Such a disappointing end to what could have been a good transfer of authority to a new female lead. I know we all mourn the death of Carrie Fisher and I appreciate the Luke and Lei scene at the end but the introduction of Holdo only to have her kamikaze the cruiser left me wondering why even make her a part of the movie? I mean really... her fight with Poe and his tactics could have carried into the next film, having her fill in as the new leader of the rebellion would have created a new strong female character and the very ‘heroic’ death she was given could have been done by Leia or Admiral Fucking Ackbar which would have been 10 times better then a random character added only to be killed off.

I blame this (like most things) on Director Rian Johnson who thought he was being clever but making the audience think "Oh she must be taking over for Leia!" only to kill her off as a sort of low-level plot twist. Frankly, it came off as less of a twist and instead of a pointless removal for an otherwise interesting character who could have moved onto the next movie.

Rey and Kylo Tag Team (Love) This might be hands down one of the best lightsaber fight scenes in the Star Wars Universe. If I am going to give the director any credit, it will be for giving us this gem of a scene where Kylo turns on his Master Snoke. This is the sort of action I crave to see in the Star Wars movies and making me wish (badly) that there was a Knight of the Old Republic film in the making. Hell, I just watched it again on Youtube just to remind myself how awesome it was.

Rey and Kylo Shipping (Hate) On the other hand with the whole force connection thing between Kylo and Rey, the idea of them being attracted to each other felt like a betrayal to well... Rey’s logic and mortality. Let us assume she has some attraction to Kylo would she have forgotten everything he did in the previous movie? Destruction of two villages on Jaku, slashing her new best friend in the back (Finn), stabbing her new father figure (Han) thru the chest, killing Lukes students, attempting to torture her for information and lastly being part of the First Order after shooting off Starkiller Base that destroyed 4 inhabited planets with billions (with a B) of lives on said planets? I know Rey might have temptations to the dark side but for fuck sake is she turned on by a literal genocidal maniac?

Rian Johnson & Disney Scaling Back the SWU (Hate) I realized this review is leaning more towards the Dark Side then the Light but I agree with some of the fanboys sentiment on the destruction of the Star Wars Universe. I am not sure if Rian is to blame 100%, I know Disney decided to cut all books, comics, and video games as NOT canon in the SWU but he seemed to have his hand in it with each rebel ship blown to pieces while escaping the Imperial... I mean First Order fleet.

This was hard for me to some degree, I played games like Knight of the Old Republic, The Force Unleashed, Jedi Academy, Shadows of the Empire, Republic Commando and read dozens of comics and books over the years. An yet because the franchise switched hands from Lucas to Disney and Disney had no hand in building all the extended universe they simply cut it away and said: “Nope! None of that counts”. I can understand why some people might get upset having invested time into exploring the Star Wars Universe only to have to evaporate before them like Thanos’s Infinity snap.

Rian drove this point home in the movie burning the Jedi texts (which contents weren't really important but symbolic of the Jedi Philosophy no longer being part of Star Wars), decimating the Rebels (Resistance) to the point the remainder all fit onto the Millennium Falcon, and even killed off or sent away new additions that could have helped expand the new trilogy into something great. Porg Plushies (Hate) *Sigh* I don’t like adding another hate to the list but few things in this movie made me personally feel good about it. We killed off interesting characters (Phasma and Holdo), had pointless side plots on Canto Bight (the Gambling Planet) and the scaling back of a great extended universe. An then we had the addition of Porgs...

I don’t dislike the concept of the Porgs, in fact, these puffin/otter hybrids are kinda cute. I dislike them as they seemed to have the pretty clear purpose of moving merchandise. Now, this isn't new for Star Wars if you know cinema you know that Lucas was highly protective of his own toy sales which is how Spaceballs was able to parody Star Wars so much as long as they didn't sell their own toys. They use the word Toyetic for this very thing of making a character or thing so they can move product off the shelves. Its why the Batmobile had so many changes with each passing movie in the 90′s.

The Porgs are no different, they maxed out the BB8 toy sales from the last movie and introduced an animal to sell plushies, slippers, bobbleheads and backpacks for kids and geeky adults. I am honestly not a fan of this sort of capitalism being pushed off thru movies but there it is and I am sure when episode 9 comes out there will be something new for them to sell us.

DJ (Love) Despite there being literally no good reason for DJ (Benicio del Toro) being in this movie with the pointless side quest on Canto Bight. This character might have some potential for future movies. We certainly explored the good smuggler scoundrel with Han Solo and Lando Calrissian but never explored the bad smuggler element quite yet (save some in the Solo movie).

I particularly liked the whole part with him explaining the manufacturing of weapons for both the First Order and the Resistance. It was perhaps one of the most insightful moments in the movie that could have easily reflected back on our own failings in regards to war. Just like how Canto Bight reminds us that the scum of the Galaxy don't just reside at the bottom but also the top. I hope to see him again but I am not sure how they will explore him in the next plot.

Super Leia (Hate) Lord knows when Leia became adept in the force that she could survive in outer space let alone fly around like Superman! This scene seemed crafted for the trailers making everyone believe this would be the way to double down on the ‘Evil Kylo’ angle and writing Carrie Fisher out of the Star Wars Universe but instead she survives as another pointless twist just like Holdo being the one to ram the ship into The Supremecy or DJ betraying Finn and Rose for money.

Just reminder if you're in space; your air escapes your body (including your butt), the saliva in your mouth begins to boil, air is cut off to your brain, and all the blood vessels on the surface of your body would break. I am glad she didn't die and had another scene with Luke but due to poor writing and trailer bait, they decided to keep this horrible scene in the movie.

Shallowing (Hate) Beyond the new additions (Holdo, DJ, Rose), the reoccurring characters become shallow in their roles. As I said, Luke now doesn't give a shit despite having 30+ years to mature, Hux is reduced to a punching bag for Kylo, Kylo is still emo as ever, Rey is becoming a Mary Sue (or perhaps not with her floundering romance with a mass murder), Finn had the same "coward, not coward" story arc from the first film, Phasma disappointingly is defeated by FN 2178 a second time, Poe is now a one dimensional reckless flyboy, and Leia is secretly Kryptonian. Point is there is no meaningful personal conflict with the characters, not enough time spent with the new ones, and a few of their portrayal betray canon for either a laugh or just because they simply didn't care.

Conclusion The point is, I liked the Kylo/Rey lightsaber battle against the Bodyguards, I enjoyed the battles in space, the silent ramming of the Raddus at light speed into The Supremacy and I still loved the new character (Rose). Most of the problems in this film start not from the characters but from Disney scaling back the universe and the new Director who changed the narrative. It bothers me just a little that everyone is celebrating the film despite these major flaws and aren't more pissed off those decades of content has just been expelled from the Star Wars Universe in exchange for the new “Disney Star Wars Universe" we will be forced to live with. About the only thing that is safe is Chewie and thats because the Wookie doesnt age like actors do. Thanks for the read.

Regards Michael California

[carterhaughs]

TLJ Analysis (SPOILERS!)

I absolutely loved The Last Jedi. It deepened my understanding of all the characters involved in a way the first movie didn’t, while at the same time making me appreciate the first film more. This film also felt like more of a standalone feature rather than just an installment in a series, which is always a good thing. The Force Awakens functioned mostly as a prelude or an overture of sorts, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but makes for a weaker film. 

I walked away from The Force Awakens liking all the characters but not really feeling like any of them had a particularly strong character arc other than Finn and Kylo. This film remedied that, and then some, adding the wonderful Rose Tico into the mix as well. Looking back on my analysis of Rey in the first film and the things I wanted for the second film, The Last Jedi pretty much checked off the whole list and delivered on all of it, big time:

The spiritual and psychological element of the Force is very important to me and we almost don’t get enough of it in this movie - although I think a lot of that has to do with this being the introduction of these characters, and I think that Daisy and Adam did a really good job with what was included.

All that being said, I needed more quiet moments with Rey because any Force-sensitive character is best-written with a hefty side of introspection. I needed to see more quiet moments in the film in general - slower moving scenes that focused solely on characterization. Nowadays, we don’t get a lot of those in action-adventure franchise movies, and J.J. Abrams rarely includes them in his films, which is his biggest weakness as a director imo. Moments like Han seeing Luke in Rey’s innocent, unbridled wonder when she sees the Resistance base planet covered in trees and says she didn’t think there was so much green in the universe. Rian Johnson, a director-writer, is very good at such moments (as in his film Looper), and I’m counting on him to include many in the next two films, which he is writing (and one of which he’s directing as well).

Also, can I just say that I love being right? I think you all already knew that but I do so love being right. I haven’t talked much about Kylo Ren on this blog bc he’s such a polarizing subject and my hands were full enough dealing with the nastier side of the Rogue One fandom without weighing in on Kylo, but I’m going to quote myself here - this is from my initial analysis right after watching The Force Awakens for the first time (I also analyzed all the other main characters in this post, if you’re interested in reading my takes on them as well) - then, as now, the conflict in him was fully evident:

I was fascinated by Adam Driver’s soulful, wrathful, deeply disturbing portrayal of our new conflicted Dark Sider. He’s embarassed by the very fact that he’s human - he turns away when Hux enters Snoke’s hologram throne room thingy like he can’t bear for anyone to see his actual face. He’d rather be a concept than a flesh and blood human with feelings and we don’t know what drove him to this. Leia absolves Han and herself of guilt, saying it’s Snoke who seduced him to the Dark Side and that Ben had too much of Vader in him. This is confusing to me, as the last thing Vader says to Luke is to tell Leia that Luke was right about there being good in him. Until we know more, I’m going to interpret this as Anakin’s acute vulnerability to the extremes of the Force (because of the whole Chosen One business) being something Ben is susceptible to as well. Snoke did something and Ben ended up killing Luke’s new Jedi Order - bad shit had to have gone down and I want that explored, stat. He’s not a completely soulless monster yet, but if no one intervenes, he soon will be.

Snoke’s final test for him was to kill his father, and he passed that test with tears in his eyes (of anger? of sadistic joy? of love? of all three and other emotions beside?). But his eyes aren’t Sith eyes yet so perhaps there’s further yet for him to fall. He says Rey would be “disappointed” if Han was her real father, but we never hear him speak a word about Leia, and I need his relationship with his parents prior to his fall, as well as his fall itself, to be described. He’s lonely, I think - he asks Rey to allow him to teach her, genuinely desperate to connect with her in spite of his jealousy of Anakin’s lightsaber choosing her. He’s filled with self-loathing (for more reasons than I can fathom - for his perceived emotional weakness, his actual physical weakness, his multiple failures in his pursuit of Rey, and so on) and punches his own wounds as if that will make them go away. I feel like I’ll have more to say about him after another viewing, because Adam’s subtle acting says so much that repeated viewings are a must for thorough analysis.

Now, the Imperials/First Order members are much more intriguing in this film than they were in the original trilogy. They aren’t cynical and above it all, or just trying to get by. They’re true believers.

Ok, see what I mean about being right? Bc damn, was I ever right. Conflict and the balance channeled thereby make up the grey areas of the Force where Rey and Kylo were finally able to meet and connect.

Luke’s arc about failure in this film moved me to tears and among the few issues I had with the film were that we didn’t get to see him continue to teach Rey beyond this film - Mark Hamill was fantastic and the scene between Luke and Force Ghost Yoda was my favorite in the film and resonated with me deeply - the truth of failure as a potent teacher and the role of the master to nurture the student to grow beyond their reach. 

I also wanted more lore from this film - more about the connections between past and present via the ancient Jedi but maybe that would have been too esoteric for general audiences. I’ve been spoiled by Knights of the Old Republic, a video game series in the old Star Wars canon that this film certainly has drawn on (that much is most obviously evident in Kylo Ren’s character design and now in the Force Bond lore and connection between Rey and Kylo - if you are interested in my meta on Revan and Bastila, and then Atton and the Exile and Kreia, you can read all that here and here, respectively).  

In any case, I am raring to go see it again and can’t wait to dive into fic and meta for this film - and as I did with Rogue One, am very much looking forward to contributing my own.

[dexi-green]

THE LAST JEDI SPOILERS!!!

I saw a lot of hate for The Last Jedi before I went to go see it. A lot directed at the misuse of Rose and sympathy for Kylo, but knowing tumblr I didn’t take it to heart, and went to go see it. Coming out of the theater I loved it. Yeah sure it was different, surprising, and I guess there were a few moments that weren’t my all time favorites, but i loved it (am I just blinded by my love for star wars so I can’t see flaws? maybe...I mean I love the prequels, and apparently you aren’t suppose to like those...) But when I came back and went on tumblr and twitter to see peoples responses now that I can look and not worry about spoilers, i still don’t get it.

Star Wars isn’t the pinnacle of Representation. Not by a long shot. But I think that it deserves more credit than the internet is giving it. So I’m just going to give my personal opinion on some of the criticisms I’ve seen.

Rose is a Rey Replacement/Meant to break up Stormpilot, Finn/Rose/Poe are treated badly, Poe becomes an angry latinx sterotype, Tries to make us feel sympathy for Kylo:

First off, my personal motto is to not go into movies (especially big franchise films like marvel/star wars/dc/harry potter) with big expectations especially regarding ships. The filmmakers do not care what you ship, and it’s highly unlikely they will be canon. LGBTQ+ representation is something that is desperately needed especially in big blockbuster films, but with the current state of Hollywood, you are just setting yourself up for disappointment if you expect it to play out. Also if it isn’t outright stated, I tend to try not to think of any relationship as romantic (I’m not a big shipper anyways).  I’ve just learned that if you want to come out of these movies happy, don’t bring your ships/headcanons in the theater.

Rose is a strong character on her own. She has a lot of potential that they can cash in on with the next film. I would say that she may be a Rey replacement or treated terribly if she would’ve actually died. Then she would’ve just been a placeholder until Finn and Rey reunited. Then she would’ve died with little growth (I say this because episode IX has (like I said) the potential to continue her character arc even more). Within this film she goes from being a maintenance worker, mourning her sister, looking up to the heroes, to becoming a hero herself. Sparking hope in the future of the resistance/jedi (you go Temiri). Infiltrating The First Order and sacrificing herself and delivering one of the most important lines in this trilogy imo “That’s how we’re going to win. Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.” 

I personally feel that saying that all of that is undercut by the fact that her and Finn “fail” or that she is made to kneel in front of a galaxy Nazi or that she got critically hurt at the end, is...saddening. She IS still a strong woc. The fact that she goes through that pain, or fails, shouldn’t take away from the good she does. Same with Finn and Poe. They get thrown around and kicked through the dirt, but that doesn’t make them any less of heroes. Like Yoda said “The greatest teacher, failure is.” and that is what this movie is about. That hope isn’t lost because you fail or make mistakes. That you get up and keep going, learn from what you did wrong and do better.

All writers know that the best way to find your characters true selves is to really push them. Right to the edge. Put them in the worse situations because then they really have to make honest decisions and show who they really are. It makes the audience feel bad, and sympathize for the heroes. It’s the difference between a Superman “I’ve never done bad in my life” type of hero and a Batman/Captain America “I’ve been to hell and back and I’ll fight for what I believe” hero. How interesting would the story really be if the heroes always came out on top in everything they do? The heroes were really on their last leg throughout this entire movie. All of them. Forced to do what they needed to survive. And that makes it that much better when they do pull through. Yeah it sucks to see Finn get berated by Hux/Phasma, so when we see Phasma fall down into that pit of fire, Finn standing over her, You feel that gratification. In TFA when we see Kylo interrogate and manipulate Rey, it makes me feel sick, so when she absolutely destroys him in the battle on Starkiller, I’m so proud and happy. Thats what its about. The triumph of good. But if there is no evil, if there is no bad guys, or no pain, what is there to overcome? What is the point? How do the characters grow?

That is on reason why I didn’t see Poe as an angry latinx stereotype. Because despite some people having a somewhat calm demeanor, everyone else was in the same place as him. He just showed it. I didn’t even seen him as angry/hotheaded. I saw him as frantic. He was scrambling to try and find a way to save everyone. He didn’t want to back down. Holdo/Leia were just calm, and tried to think of other ways. He is standing up for what he believes. And people get angry/upset/loud sometimes. There isn’t anything wrong with that. Not to go into it to much, but I think that is a problem with some people on the internet. They want representation, but get mad if the character isn’t “perfect”. But people are flawed. People get mad and loud, no matter what their race/ethnicity/gender/sexuality/etc. I feel like he would fall into that stereotype if he had...i guess, refused to help Finn in TFA, or anytime throughout that film (where he seems to be smiling in every scene he’s in??)? If he had absolutely flipped on Leia for slapping him or demoting him (and I mean got more than a little loud). If he had been angry for Holdo/Leia for not doing his plan, not because he thought it was the right course of action, but because he wanted to do what he wanted to do and nobody was going to tell him he couldn’t.

Going along with the, push characters to the edge to show the real them, thing... I am 100% not for a Kylo redemption. I can see them doing it, but I say he is a great villain so let him stay a villain. When they were teeing it up, with Rey and Snoke, I wasn’t too happy (But the battle with the Praetorian guards was cool so I was okay for a bit) I did not want him to go to the light side. I was sort of relieved when it was revealed afterwards that he still just wants to rule the galaxy, but is still sort of set in the Sith way of ��I’ll have power, and I’ll get it however I can.” So not exactly “good” in that classic sense. With all that being said, I don’t see much wrong with how Kylo is shown in this film.

Rey is manipulated and obviously has her own conflict of light and dark (a bit) so her sympathizing with Kylo isn’t exactly “good” sympathizing with “bad” (especially since this new trilogy seems to want to blur the lines between the two more so, (and hopefully give us a Grey jedi Rey)). And the audience doesn’t have to feel bad for him. We were just given a bit more of his story, and like with the other characters having flaws, the villain is allowed to have nice qualities as well. A lot of popular villains are charismatic, and amazing people persons. They have an alluring nature. A lot do bad because of bad done to them, and are on the edge of being Robin Hood types. A lot of villains aren’t textbook evil 24/7. When we feel bad for villains or antagonists, it adds to the story (i guess maybe just for some people). It causes us to talk and think about them and the story more because we can relate. It allows the messages to resonate deeper with us, and makes us look inside ourselves. In the case of TLJ, How would you let your or someone else’s failure influence you? Would you be like Kylo and seek revenge, power? or would you be like the Resistance and let it motivate you to do better?

I very much agree with people online. The Star Wars franchise, and Hollywood in general can do so much better with Representation. There is many things they could fix. Add in more POC, LGBTQ+, especially main characters. Make them complex and realistic. I know it hurts to see the one character that you see yourself in go through pain, but (and I know i’m going to get hate for this) thats a part of life, and a big part of dramatic action movies like Star Wars. Star Wars isn’t exactly a nice family sitcom. If you go into expecting no one to be hurt, then, you’re gonna have a bad time. I can’t seem to find it but there was a nice post about how every piece of media that tries to have representation doesn’t need to be “THE ONE”. Not every piece of media with a black man is going to have every single black man relate to it. Having more representation isn’t about it being perfect, it’s just that, having more. A straight, white, man can sit down and start watching a film, and if they don’t connect with the story they can turn around and go to something else. That is what we are trying to go to. Have so many different representations of LGBTQ+, or POC, or disabled, etc. communities, so we don’t all have to hang on to the same one. So we can find something we personally connect to. Just because you don’t connect or like the characters in SW, doesn’t mean no one else does. There are soooo many little boys who look up to Finn and Poe and see them as a heroes. Or girls who look up to Rose. They don’t see the negative bits that you might. Even if it is Rian Johnson’s goal to slap around the POC characters as much as possible, a lot of people, outside looking in, don’t see that. If enough people are looking up to these characters as heroes, and more people (the actors, writers, fanartists, comic writers, etc.) get their hands on these characters, does that intention even matter anymore? If we create a supportive community, what does that matter? I know we want representation but to make that a reality people have to stop berating and negatively judging every single bit of representation we get. There is plenty we can attack.So we have to be supportive and critical. Say “I’m so glad that star wars introduced a WOC. Though I think in the next movie, I would love to see her hold her own a bit more.” instead of #star wars hates poc. Otherwise the only thing those big hollywood exec’s are gonna see is negative backlash to their attempt at representation, and they will just crawl back to their straight, white, male, comfort zones. You know how many times hollywood has used the excuse of a film or show with a diverse casting not doing well so they wouldn’t have to do it again. How many times they have manipulated it to be that way? (e.g. The Catwoman and Elektra movies did badly (also got bad advertising) so they avoided making another female led superhero film for a long time.) With overall negative reviews. Then there are things like Saban’s Power Rangers in more recent years. Not the best of the best, but good and entertaining, with a diverse cast, but it did badly and you don’t see marvel or dc picking up a superhero with autism. They look at each other’s numbers, look online and see what kind of buzz it gets, and decide from there what things succeeded and what didn’t and put the good bits in the pot for the next film. So when they see people trashing the representation, guess what part they aren’t going to pick out and use again? I’ll stop now. Edit: I also want to add that I am completely open to talking about this. I do want to hear people’s opinions on why they might have felt uncomfortable with certain things, and what they think should be changed in future installments. I’m open to civil discussions, with people who respect other points of view.

[smokeybrandreviews]

Breaking Bad Actors

The myth of “Go Woke Go Broke” is hilarious to me. Everyone is out here reporting that, if you actually have a social conscious about your productions or business, you end of tanking your profits by alienating those who don’t “agree” with that position. This ain’t it, bud. Some of the most progressive shows on television, are some of the most revered. Avatar: The Last Airbender literally has no white people in it and no one cares. The show is good and respects the cultures it pulls from to build that world. Hell, even Korra has it’s moments, when it’s not up it’s own ass with the abrupt shift toward everything Avatar was against. Adventure Time was one of the best cartoons on television for it’s entire run. It grew up with the audience and never got preachy about it’s politics, even if the ending was a little forced. F*ck, man, Steven Universe exists. That sh*t ain’t my flavor but i get why it’s popular. Before anything, Steven Universe is a good show. It tells a decent story but the characters therein are what drive that show’s popularity. A stable of characters that are, effectively, all lesbian. “Woke” content can be great when the representation is integrated into the show organically. Owl House does a good job with this, or, at least it does so far. We’ll see if they start forcing things going forward. You start running into trouble when that sh*t is forced.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is how you don’t do diversity in your shows. Look, i love Catra as a character. She’s the best thing about that show. Scorpia and Entrapta re close but Catra is the only character with any semblance of an arc. I'm glad Catra got her happy ending but it was a f*cking slog getting there. The problem with the new She-Ra as a whole, is that it’s an exercise in virtue signaling. This is a bad show to begin with, bad writing, poor direction, rambling plot, but calling out the lack of quality earns you the title of sexist or anti-female or whatever else, because the diversity of the show has been weaponized by bad actors for the cause. It’s wild to me because it’s sister show, Voltron: Legendary Defender, does the exact same sh*t and is still beloved, even if the last two seasons were less than ideal. Why is there such a stark difference between the two shows? It comes down to the quality of the narrative, the focus of the production. Voltron had a story to tell. It's characters were developed and grew along with the narrative. There was a ton of diversity in that show, even a whole ass gay marriage at the end, and no one was wielding pitch forks about any of that because it was organic to the story the creators wanted to tell. She-Ra was a framework for the show runner to preach at an audience. It fell into the same trap that Star Wars under Kathleen Kennedy did and fans responded in kind. Hell, the Castlevania adaptation is one of the best shows airing now, and there was a legit bisexual love scene where Alucard was visibly bottomed and no one bat an eye, never mind the race bent characters turned fan favorites. Isaac, I'm looking directly at you. You don’t go broke when you go woke. you go broke when you get antagonistic about your sh*tty narrative being called out for what it is and use the diversity in your show as a shield from criticism. If your sh*t is bad, there isn't any amount of black dude or gay chicks that can cover that sh*t up, bro. F*cking make a better show.

I actually follow a lot of right-wing blogs and watch what could be considered toxic male YouTube channels specifically to understand that point of view. I don’t agree with anything they ever say, but I would prefer not to exist in an echo chamber. I need to have properly diverse opinions and takes to be well informed. I'll admit, though, it is exceptionally hard to see their logic, mostly because it’s racially charged nonsense, but i get why they're angry. A lot of it does have to do with entitlement and ignorance but, under all of that backwards nonsense, there is a valid point which should be considered; No one wants to be told what to think. Overtly. You can‘t put whatever message you want in anything you make, as long as it’s subtle and clever. Take Get Out for instance. That sh*t is a straight up accusation of white people and their predatory ass nature but they love that sh*t. Jordan Peele spent an hour and forty-four minutes, calling these motherf*cker out on their bullsh*t and they gave him an Oscar for it. Audiences rewarded his veiled sermon about the parasitic nature of white “culture” with fifty-seven times his budget, in profit for the studio, catapulting his directing career into the stratosphere. How the f*ck did he pulled that off when Brie Larson became the arch nemesis of every neck beard, toxic man-child, and MAGA cultists on the entire interwebs for just saying that we should have less stories about white dudes? Subtlety. Get Out is a masterclass on how to say something career-ending, while packaging it in an incredibly palatable way. Before anything that film is excellent. The writing is on point. The message is cleverly buried under layers of outstanding performances and deft direction. You’re too entertained to consciously realize you’re being directly accused of being sh*tty people. Cats aren’t looking to engage intellectually with their entertainment so you can technically say whatever you want, however you want, as long as you distract them enough to miss the sermon on a conscious level. Larson openly making her stance known to Hollywood, while commendable, is too easy. It's too direct. Sh*t makes you a target, not a hero.

Diversity matters. I think that sh*t should be in everything because the world, itself, is mad diverse. A lot of the culture here, in the states, is driven by people who look like me. Fashion, music, sports; The stuff that get the youth going is all manufactured by people with melanin. It’s mad disingenuous to present a “Hollywood so white” face to the world when the world looks so much more colorful than that. If this year has taught us anything, it’s that there is a very vocal minority that hates to see faces which don’t look like their own, prosper. Entire cities have burned because of it. Entire careers have been lost because of that. The answer isn’t to go the other way. The answer isn’t making “The Force Female.” The force was already female. Ahsoka Tano, Darth Talon, Mara Jade, and Darth Treia were all female but also great f*cking characters. Rey was a plot device that cheapened the already rich and diverse universe that Lucas allowed great creators to expand. The force was already female, and black, and Asian, and white, and blue, and green, and red, and orange, and whatever else because it was designed to be that way. Star Wars failed and sent Disney into a panic because they let a chick with an inferiority complex and massive ego, do whatever she wanted with a franchise that has existed for forty f*cking years, because Twatter has opinions and so does she. Kennedy forgot to make sure the plot around those opinions was good enough to distract you from her politics. She forgot to tell a good story and just decided to preach. No one wants that sermon in a movie, not even the most Woke motherf*cker in the world.

As a creator, myself, i get it. I’ve been on the other side of that Tumblr activism and, more than anything, it feels like if you don’t agree with whoever’s politics, you are automatically the problem. I mean, i got called racist for the way i speak by a black chick, while being black myself. It was surreal and stupid. This chick didn’t like the tone of two reviews i wrote, on a blog with eleven year’s worth of content. Like, for real? Okay. I type how i speak on that blog and i can’t help that i speak with an “urban” flair. I grew up in the ghetto. I speak to my friends like this because they grew up in the same neighborhoods. I actually have a firm grasp on grammar and syntax. I’m a proper writer by trade, working toward getting my first novel published and, guess what? It’s chock full of f*cking diversity. Not because I'm preachy, but because that’s a realistic portrayal of the whole ass world. Because i grew up in a neighborhood that had White people and Mexican people and Asian people and Indian people and Native people and Pacific Islanders and Fijians and whatever else. The world is, inherently, diverse and catering to one extreme or the other is f*cking ridiculous to me. Just tell good stories with strong characters. If the narrative is accessible, you can inject whatever the f*ck you want to say directly into the audience but you have to have a great story to start from. You have to make those colorful characters real. You have to package that bitter pill with a sugary coat so it goes down easy for those who would refuse the dose. If not, you’re just going to antagonize the audience and no one is going to give you the time of day. They're just going to tell you to get out.