#the last Jedi discourse

[artist-issues]

And besides, the Star Wars “Tropes” that you really should’ve been there for were all fulfilled!

“The Greater Good is Always Worth Fighting For”

Luke is already the kind of character who wants to be part of something good, and bigger than himself, in the first Star Wars movie. Ben Kenobi is an old man who’s still fighting the Empire and answering Princess distress calls in the face of terrible danger. The Skywalker Twins both jump in with both feet to combat an evil much bigger than themselves, at great personal cost, and they wind up teaching Han to do the same. By contrast, Han starts out selfish and fighting only for himself; both Luke and Leia criticize him for being unwilling to fight for something bigger and better, or caring only about money and his own skin. But all these characters grow to demonstrate, through their risks and their sacrifices, that the greater good is what’s constantly worth the fight. Just like how in The Last Jedi:

A former Stormtrooper, who was literally raised to see fighting as an aggressive duty only used to inflict pain, establish control, or crush spirits, learns that fighting is about saving what we love, not hurting what we hate. Even sacrificing himself “just to make them hurt” was portrayed as the wrong thing to do, because it wasn’t motivated by love; it was still motivated by a selfish feeling of hate and revenge.

Even after what Rey wants most—finding out that she means something to somebody who understands her (like Kylo Ren or her parents)—is taken away, she still chooses to go back for the Resistance and save them.

Luke starts the movie having lost all hope—in his own merit—and then ends it by choosing to sacrifice himself, not just for his friends in the Resistance, but for his nephew’s future.

DJ contrasts Rose Tico, who is willing to give up everything from her sister to her treasured keepsakes for the sake of the greater good. But DJ, on the other hand, won’t give up anything for anybody. Which is portrayed as a scumbag way to live.

Poe starts the movie fighting for the moment, not for the greater good. He thinks only as far as the next-big-hero-move. Then the movie teaches him that losing a battle in order to keep the greater good going is what leaders do, even if it means “failing” in the moment.

“Nobodies Can Make a Significant Difference”

Star Wars doesn’t open from the perspective of a Princess or a mighty warrior or even the protagonist: it opens from the perspective of a little maintenance droid and his fretful friend, who just so happen to be in the right place at the right time to carry galaxy-saving information. Luke is introduced as a farm boy, going nowhere. Not famous. Not noticed by the Empire. Han is a lowlife in a crappy-looking ship. Nobody expects him to save the day. Ben Kenobi’s former greatness is forgotten and barely mentioned; he’s introduced as a possibly-crazy old hermit. They’re all nobodies who make a huge difference when they do the next right thing. Just like how in The Last Jedi:

Rey is nobody. From nowhere. She wants to be somebody, from somewhere, and she’s just…not. No matter what she hopes or what she tries. She doesn’t JUST find out that her parents were nobody important and she has no great destiny: She starts out the movie “looking for my place in all this,” and learns that a) she’s not going to get to be Luke’s real apprentice and b) the best she can do, at the end of the movie, is just lift rocks out of the way. No big hero moment of bringing Luke Skywalker back, or Ben Solo back, or resurrecting the Jedi Order. Just…doing the next right thing. And it saves the day.

Poe, again, wants to be a big hero. He doesn’t just want to do the next right thing—he wants to win. But he’s slapped, sidelined, and ultimately taught that its not all about him.

Rose Tico is just a maintenance worker. She’s not a pilot, not a warrior, not a general or a Princess. She’s nobody important’ s daughter or granddaughter. But she saves Finn and demonstrates the most important theme of the movie.

BB-8, just one little droid, saves the heroes twice, first on Canto-Bight by bringing the ship, and then on the destroyed flagship when Poe and Rose are about to be overwhelmed.

Finn is just one wayward Stormtrooper, who used to be a janitor; a coward who keeps trying to run away. But it’s that cowardly janitor who faces down and defeats Phasma, one of the most feared faces of the First Order.

Luke chooses not to be the Legend who prevented more evil by killing a flawed legacy; instead, he chooses to be “what the next generation grows beyond.” Humble, modest, just a link in a greater chain.

Broom boy. He’s a slave in squalor, with nothing but stories of great deeds and heroic last stands…but he has the Force—the potential to make great changes when he grows up. There’s no better symbol for small things becoming significant than a child. Especially when you add the Force.

“There’s Always Hope For a Good Change”

This one’s easy. The original Rebellion exists based on this principal. Leia keeps fighting after Alderaan is destroyed and never gives up. Luke loses his family and instead of saying “the empire is too strong to beat” goes and fights them…and refuses to give up on the potential good in Han, the potential good in his father—heck, he even believes Ben Kenobi is a “great man” though everyone else scoffs. You could even argue that Han sees a potential softness in Leia that she’s too mission-focused to show all the time. The point is, the original Star Wars is full of characters who have every reason to give up on, or ignore, the hope for a good change. But instead, they go on hoping and acting in faith. Just like how in The Last Jedi:

Rey has seen Kylo Ren murder her only almost-father-figure, almost murder her only close friend, torture her, and promise to destroy her next almost-father-figure. He also reveals the most heartbreaking crushing of her dreams anyone ever could—she has no parents. But one glimpse of his turmoil and Rey refuses to give up on him. She won’t even kill him when she wakes up first after he refuses to turn good and promises to destroy her friends all over again.

Rey also won’t give up on Luke, and he’s super mean to her and won’t help her friends. But still, she only leaves him to try and inspire him by doing what he did; going and saving someone from the Dark Side.

Kylo Ren has no reason to believe his mother will love him, or accept him back, or ever come around to his point of view, but he still won’t kill her.

Poe gets half the Resistance fleet killed with his recklessness and almost destroys their escape plan, but Leia and even Holdo, who he led a mutiny against before she sacrificed her life, but refuse to give up on his potential as a leader. Holdo doesn’t even hold it against him before she dies. She looks at his tranquillized troublemaking self and tells Leia, “I like him.”

When Rose meets Finn she thinks he’s a hero, and meeting him makes her smile even though she’s grieving her sister—and then he destroys her idea of him by turning out to be a coward, lying to her, trying multiple times to escape, and believing that abusive planets like the one she grew up on are charming. But she still saves his life basically the whole movie long, and is always teaching him. Even though he insulted everything she believed in by trying to run away from a fight her sister died in.

Best example: by only coming back as a projection, Luke Skywalker managed to inspire his sister so she wouldn’t give up, inspire Rey to be a Jedi anyway even though he’d spent all their interactions discouraging that, and, most importantly—he made it impossible for Kylo Ren to murder another family member. By sacrificing himself, he made a difference, without letting his own death be one more thing Kylo Ren would have on his record of evilness. That’s better than what Ben a Kenobi did when he died in A New Hope, letting Vader strike him down. Instead, Luke doesn’t let Kylo Ren “strike him down.” He pretends to give him the option, just to buy his sister and the Resistance time. But he never really gave him the option to kill his own uncle. Because just like he believed there was hope for change in Anakin, he still believes there’s hope for change in Ben.

The Resistance ends the movie as thirty or so people, packed into one freighter with a juvenile Jedi, a broken lightsaber…and they’re still going to keep fighting. Heck, they just held off their enemies with busted mining speeders.

Those are the real Star Wars Tropes. Those things are the real “magic of Star Wars.”

And they’re beautifully portrayed at every angle in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. If all you’re looking for are

spaceships that follow specific rules

legendary magic-wielding family-reveals

practical-effect alien designs

all-powerful god-villains

a world that has an airtight canon that’s never been tampered with

then you never really got Star Wars. And I do accept criticism. And I will literally prove it further if anyone argues with me.

"Rian Johnson was mocking Star Wars fans for expecting Star Wars tropes in TLJ!"

No. Star Wars fans just happened to have the exact same flaw that the character, Rey, had: too much focus on her parents. That made her easy to relate to. But the whole point, down to the first movie she was introduced in (which WASN'T written by Rian Johnson) was that her parents were never important.

Star Wars fans should've expected that reveal. It was already set up. Maz literally tells Rey in the first movie to quit focusing so much on her parents. The filmmakers literally told you "she's wrong to put so much stock in who her parents are" in The Force Awakens. He just carried that theme on and y'all weren't ready for it because you never wanted to accept it in the first place.

=

Same thing with Snoke. Kylo Ren was introduced as a character who only wants one thing: strength. He thinks that strength will solve his emotional frailty. He's insecure. (Because reasons, to do with his family and their lack of faith in him.) Rey straight-up discovers that his biggest fear is "never being as strong as Darth Vader" and says it out loud so that the audience will get it.

You really think, when he was introduced as a character who believes killing mentor-father-figures will make him feel stronger and therefore more secure, that Snoke ever had a chance of getting past the second movie alive?

=

They straight-up introduced these characters with certain flaws, which lead to certain motives, which so happen to lead to different conclusions than common Star Wars fan theories.

Because that's the beauty of the Sequels. They acknowledge the legendary status of the Original Trilogy Tropes, then grow beyond those tropes.

Or at least. They were starting to. Until Star Wars fans threw continued hissy fits because they didn't want a story, they wanted a 💫 Star Wars Checklist Cleverly Disguised as a Story.💫

Then the powers-that-be were like "okay they're really not looking for a good story, just give 'em the checklist they were looking for." And you got exactly that in The Rise of Skywalker.

But Rian Johnson wasn't mocking you. He was just taking the next logical, compelling step in the previously-established arcs of well-written characters. And carrying on the Sequel's initial trademark of "appreciate the past by growing beyond it." Y'know. Like a good writer.

[sjbattleangel]

Special thanks to @agramuglia for inspiring this awful joke.

Everyone: "Steven Universe/She-Ra/Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend Of Korra/Star Wars: The Last Jedi/The Last Of Us/The Last Of Us Part II/The MCU/G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel run/Gail Simone's Birds Of Prey run/The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance/The Persona games/The Sandman/X-Men/The Simpsons/Everything by Dan Slott/Everything by Tom Taylor/Everything by Jason Aaron/Everything by Donny Cates/Everything by Brian Michael Bendis/Everything by Devin Grayson/Everything by Jonathan Hickman/Everything by Scott Snyder/Everything by James Tynion IV/Everything by Joshua Williamson, etc are anti-intellectual, regressive, pro-status quo, far-right Trojan Horses pretending to be "diverse and progressive" just so they can take advantage of naïve leftists."

Me: "No. That's Velma".

[banthaboyboba]

[aripithecus]

"Luke Skywalker was poorly written in The Last Jedi!", they whine. "You mean you're furious that he was written as a person with flaws and not some legendary perfect hero, is this not the very opposite of what you wanted for Rey?"

[penny-anna]

like to me a lot of The Last Jedi discourse feels like if i mentioned really not liking The Courtship of Princess Leia and someone retorted with 'oh you just don't like that it said Han and Leia's romance wouldn't be smooth sailing post canon' and I'd be there like no that's a whole new sentence. i know what i didn't like about it and it wasn't that.

[lizardsfromspace]

What's the worst thing about fandom in the last 20 years, and what's the worst thing about fandom that's always been true of it?

The worst thing about fandom in the last 20 years has been the incentivizing of fandom-as-conflict: not merely as a field in broader culture wars but as the field for endless intra-group battles.

This manifests in many ways: as seven hour videos complaining about The Last Jedi, as Twitter backlash campaigns, but also as stans defending their faves from any and all criticism real or imagined, as the endless boom-and-backlash cycle to any fandom meme or joke you see on Reddit, and as the drive for people to look for evidence other people discussing a thing they like are hysterical illiterate dolts, before anything else.

Or, in other words: a lot of fandoms are full of assholes these days, whose main interaction with fandom is using it as a reason to be an asshole, and to defend being an asshole. The actual “fandom” part of fandom no longer really exists for them. The discourse more or less is their fandom; someone whose main fandom activity is sharing videos about how Steven Universe is a fascist (?) isn’t in the Steven Universe fandom, they’re in the videos about how Steven Universe is a fascist (?) fandom. I mean, the chief fandom for many people is their side in the fandom war. What type of fanfic you write is secondary to what your affiliations are vis-a-vis battles over fanfiction

(One trend I've noticed is people who aren't at the stage where they only talk about what they hate and not what they love, but are at the stage where they can only talk about what they love in relation to what they hate. "I love this movie...and it proves this other movie is bullshit made by a hack". No ability to say just "I love this movie", period, end of sentence. This is how like two-thirds of Film Twitter talks about film, the remainder are all the grindhouse people going "man you've GOT to see Wrong Turn 5")

Another one, that I think is related, is that fandom’s become...more transitory, maybe? There’s Big Fandoms that are inescapable and then everything else feels like it’s here for a weekend and then it’s gone. And we’ve always had fandoms that endure and fandoms that vanish quickly, when the show runs short or turns out to be bad/boring, but we did use to have a lot of enduring if small fandoms for Okay shows most people hadn’t heard of and now you don’t really. Or they burn themselves out fast.

So we’ve reached this stage where fandoms are either so big they have seven hour long discourse videos, or they’re a smattering of fanart over the course of two weeks last August. But that isn’t really the fault of fans so much as modern media release schedules.

A lot of fandom activities of old are just...impossible now, with many shows? The slow build of speculation and fan works and in-jokes and theorizing and analysis simply can’t exist in a world where the premiere comes out the same day as the finale, and you can’t talk about the finale because you have no way of knowing if the person you’re talking to binged it all in one weekend or is still on episode four. That was the kind of thing that sustained the fandom of something that wasn’t a big hit, or even something that was. My fave fandom experience ever was watching the online Lost fandom wildly theorizing for all six years of Lost, and we’d never get “and what if the Smoke Monster is a dinosaur but only the head?” under a Netflix release model. Now at a base level, we either have shows nobody can discuss because nobody’s sure who’s seen or what, or shows where everyone just discusses the finale right away, and where you get One Week of Show and then a massive hiatus, which either kills all momentum or...drives fandom in the direction of hyper-analyzing everything and fighting because, well, what else is there to do? And that plus the outrage cycles of social media plus the fact that “man who yells at Star Wars” is now a viable career choice result in, well. *gestures upwards* All that

(Really, shout out to Cartoon Network for engineering the Steven Universe fandom to Be Like That through their inscrutable strategy of dropping episodes during one random week every five months or whatever)

As for something that's always been with it...cliques and a certain fannish elitism, like, that sees engaging with media in a fandom sense as more creative or analytical or intelligent than your average person. You see it now in the form of, like, people holding up fanfic above published fiction as more representative or authentic (I’ve seen more than one post on here strongly implying queer rep doesn’t exist in mainstream non-fic storytelling???), or going “well, we think about shows, unlike those normies watching sports”. But that was probably way more pronounced a thing in the past, in the 40-50s sci-fi fans were calling non-fans "mundanes" and calling themselves "slans" as an in-group signifier (a reference to a book with superintelligent psychic mutants known as slans). Like at the very least we should be happy no one’s calling non-fans “muggles” anymore. In the evolution from “mundane” to “muggle” to “normie” normie’s probably the least bad one

[jessequinnfirstofhername]

The Rules:

Every twenty-four hours there will be another round. After every round, the film in last place will be eliminated.

If there are multiple films tying for last place, there will be a special elimination round. In these rounds, every film in last place will be eliminated, even if all the films have tied equally.

When there are only two films remaining, they will face off against one another in a week-long poll to determine the victor.

If you feel that no mere Star Wars film deserves to win, then please hit the "No Star Wars *Film* Is As Good As ___!" option and reply to this post with the non-film piece of Star Wars media you wish to include in the poll. The non-film piece of Star Wars media with the highest 'write-in' votes will then be added to the poll in the next round. Welcome to the poll, Andor and Star Wars: The Clone Wars!

This is all for fun. Don’t take it too seriously ;)

Our next casualty: The Force Awakens, the film that launched a thousand Discourses (tm).

^^^My face when I see TFA-era Discourse (tm).

Without further ado: Round Four!

[the-far-bright-center]

#LUKE WAS RIGHT #everybody is like love is what made ani fall BUT NO #love is what kept anakin sane #it is what kept him in the light for the longest time #that even palpy was like i gotta remove all his loved ones from the picture and isolate him #love brought anakin back to the light #LOVE saved the galaxy #Padme was right and so was luke (via @brilliantlymad)

I think there’s something rather strange going on with all the folks who insist that the Jedi Order in the PT was right and didn’t forbid love and Anakin should just have followed their teachings when the whole point of the prequels is that they are prequels. They come before the OT, and the OT proves the Jedi wrong. They literally do not make sense if they don’t do that.

Luke, in the original trilogy, gains his ultimate triumph, his ultimate victory, because he loved in defiance of the teachings of the old Order. He quite literally had the ghosts of the past telling him, explicitly and without ambiguity, that he has to put his love for his father aside and kill him, as is the duty of a Jedi. Luke has the weight of millennia of teachings weighing down on his shoulders, telling him they knew and know better than a young, inexperienced man barely out of his teenager years. That he should follow their teachings or be destroyed. That is an immense weight to carry, and many people would and explicitly have given in to it in-universe. What are your feelings and ideals in the face of such immense legacy, after all?

But Luke doesn’t give in.

He doesn’t bend.

He says “I may be young, and I may be new, but I believe to my heart and soul that love matters more than this legacy. Matters more than your teachings.” And he says this to the ghosts of his mentors. That is such a powerful moment and one I can’t believe George Lucas didn’t create it deliberately for even a second. This young man, being told he has to kill or die trying for a system that is dead or dying itself, that couldn’t survive itself, and refusing to do so. He is the living refusing to continue the violence of a dead generation. He is the young man refusing the draft into a war the old generation started, saying “peace and love matters more than you being right.” He is the embodiment of breaking the cycle.

And the movies vindicate him.

The main villain vindicates him with his last dying breath.

Darth Vader, dying, says “You were right.” and admits he and his were wrong. The main antagonist, Luke’s nemesis, in the face of his son’s immense, defiant love, gives way and does the impossible: he comes back to the light and dies a Jedi. The very thing the old Order says was impossible.

They were wrong. They have to be. The narrative demands it, the movies don’t make sense without it.

The solution was never to continue the cycle of the old Order, or Luke would have failed there, would have failed when he said “I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” And claimed that defiant, deviant, condemned definition of being a Jedi over the one presented to him by the Grandmaster of the old Order. If the old Order was right, Luke would have to be wrong. Be wrong about love, be wrong about laying down the sword, be wrong about refusing to fight. He would have to be wrong.

But the old Order is dead, explicitly killed by a monster, in some part, of their own making. It’s members only existing as bones in the ground or ghosts speaking from beyond the grave. They did not deserve it, it should not have been inflicted on them, but the narrative is clear on this: “The old way is dead, and was dying for a long time before that. Long live the new.”

Luke is that new. Luke is the breaking of the cycle, the reforging of swords into ploughs, the extended hand. Luke says “I don’t care how much I was hurt, I refuse to hurt you back, and you don’t need to hurt me either.”

“We can end this together and choose love instead.”

And Darth Vader, killer of the Jedi, End of the Order, lays down his arms as well, and reaches back as Anakin, saying “You were right.”

It wasn’t Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace, Qui-Gon, or even Ahsoka who achieved the ultimate victory in the end, following the tenants of the old Order. It was Luke. Young, inexperienced Luke, who saw that the age of legacy handed to him was only history, that the sword handed to him as his life was only a tool, and that the decrees of the dead were only advice. And he took it all, said “thank you for your experience, but I’ve got it from here,” and laid it all down to instead extend an open hand towards his enemy.

And his victory, his ultimate triumph, his vindication, was that he was proven right when his enemy reached back and became just another person. Just another person, just like him.

The Jedi did not deserve what happened to them, and they did not deserve to die. But the story is clear on this: the Jedi of old were wrong, and the Jedi of new, the Last Jedi, was right. No sword or death will ever end the rule of the sword or end the bloodshed. But love?

Love can ignite the stars.

[artist-issues]

Also can I just point out that from the beginning, the door for Kylo Ren to return to the light and save the galaxy from the First Order was wide open?

I mean. The people who created the story with new Bad Guys? Had them blow up the entire government of Good Guys in the first movie. The former heroes are all tired and dropping like flies. The new ones are untried and afraid of the Force. Good Guys need a miracle, overnight, so they put all their hope on Luke Skywalker.

Without him, what do we have?

The scavenger - she’s strong with the Force.

The former Stormtrooper - he has insider’s info on the First Order.

A gutsy pilot - he’s got training and guts from legendary heroes.

Oh but you know who has all those helpful elements combined, if only he’d be on the Good Guys’ side?

(And as awesome as that gif is, they did not redeem him early enough in the third movie, so the door started slamming shut.)

[pitynostars]

i think what massively turns me off this season is 99% of it is fandom bait. the susan teases. the master teases. mrs flood. the copy/pasted scene from the end of the world in space babies. the way RTD talks about the finale being such a spectacle and then it's just the empty universe from flux copy/pasted. the ruby is normal reveal copy/pasted from last jedi.

and none of it really matters or goes anywhere or has any emotional depth. it's all just stuff he knows fandom will latch onto and talk about and theorise and argue over. it makes it feel like the whole thing was written with the audience's reaction in mind, what would generate the most ragebait/discourse to keep people talking about the show. rather than having any coherent or interesting narrative it feels like endless clickbait shit designed to just keep u watching In Case it all actually means something. like with the landscape around media atm... i get it i guess. but it also just means it. sucks ??

[stephantom]

The source material is too flimsy and inconsistent to bear this debate. Choose whatever interpretation you like. Choose multiple contradictory ones for different fanworks and different moods. Do not attempt to treat it like a logical and consistent reality, except for fun, and know that it’s an impossible task and that other people’s attempted explanations (for fun) do not necessarily reflect on their actual beliefs about reality.

I feel like the ‘the Jedi were too strict with Anakin and it was abusive and that’s why he fell!’ is telling of a certain … power fantasy some Star Wars fans have.

Because Anakin didn’t have to be a Jedi. We know he could’ve left the Order, because that’s what Dooku did. The man’s the most skilled fighter pilot of his era, a capable combatant, has experience with diplomacy, has worked as a bodyguard, etc, etc, he would not even remotely struggle to find work, even without taking into account that his wife is a wealthy senator who could easily support him. Hell, while he’d probably have to give up his lightsaber, it’s not like it’d be impossible for him to build another one – it isn’t illegal for a non-Jedi to own a lightsaber, and it’s clearly possible to acquire lightsaber crystals outside of the Order because, again, Dooku has a lightsaber. It’s not even like he’d have to give up his friendship with Obi-Wan – Obi-Wan has friends who aren’t Jedi, he has a whole bunch of them. So does Yoda.

(Hell, it’s not even like non-Jedi aren’t allowed to use the Force. As Palpatine points out in the Revenge of the Sith novelisation, it’s not even technically illegal to be a Sith Lord.)

The only reason Anakin can’t leave the Order is because he doesn’t want to. He wants everything: He wants the power, prestige, excitement, and community the Jedi offer, but he also wants to not have to follow their rules. 

And I think for quite a lot of people that’s a very relatable thing, right? We want to have it all. The fantasy of being a cool Jedi is, for a lot of people, ruined by the addendum that there are things you would have to forego to do that. That’s one reason why the idea of Grey Jedi, which fully is just that ‘you can have your cake and fuck it too’ is so appealing to so many fans.

But that’s not what life is like, in reality or in fiction. And Anakin’s fall brings that crashing in: He tries to have everything, and he ends up with nothing. Less than nothing, because at the end of it, not only does he not have any of the things he wanted in the first place, but he’s also lost his freedom (because let’s make no mistake, as much of a terrible, gleeful executor of cruelty and misery as he is as Vader, he is also Palpatine’s slave) and his body.

It’s easy and in a way quite appealing to shift the blame elsewhere and go “Well, he could’ve had it all, but people more powerful than him stopped him from doing so.”

[aripithecus]

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[psychomusic]

so. I've been reading some posts on the jedi order tag AND i won't talk about my opinion on "are jedi good or bad discourse" BUT i wanna point out some lore to everyone who's complaining about the jedi taking kids into their order: (in the EU) it wasn't always like this.

if you take swtor era (more than 3000 years before the prequels) there were many jedi who joined at an older age. like, for example there was a guy who broke his engagement to become one. most jedi remember their families because they were old enough when they decided to go.

THEN in darth bane's book trilogy (circa 1000 yesrs before the prequels) there is a passage where two sith lords are talking about taking bane, already an adult, to study at korriban. one doubted him because he was too old, ans the other told him he sounded like a jedi, and that ONE DAY jedi will have to accept only kids into their ranks if they really want to find "pure" people that can learn their lessons quicker.

one day!! so it wasn't always like that!! the ongoing wars with the sith, who corrupted and killed many of them, had pressured them into taking always younger people into their ranks.

also, consider a thing that this video explains super well: training to become a jedi is not like exercising, because there is a transformative lesson at the end of the training that changes everything. you can't just do as much as you can, but not finish.

the transformative lesson, as the video explains, is that through the force, everything is the same - from rocks and ships to life and death. at the end of the training you have to understand this fundamental truth.

yoda says "you have to unlearn what you have learned". during times where they were constantly killed off or corrupted by the dark side (and if you haven't learned this lesson you are more susceptible to this corrupting), younger people were taken in to actually finish their training (a training that was ultimately about being a good person AND that you could leave at any point if you weren't sold on that, too)

(remember that for the sith failure = death. like. that was the alternative for force sensitive kids. it's not like sith had any moral problem with taking kids away without consent. sith don't have moral problems: they believe that them being stronger in the force means they can do whatever they want as long as their strong enough to go and do it. there are MANY passages in many different star wars stories, even in different mediums, that say this out loud)

AND (this is more of a critical thought than just stating the lore) the fact that they started doing it out of necessity doesn't mean it's 100% good BUT you know. the whole set up of the prequels is that we're starting off the story in a period of crisis and decadence all around. most of the systems of the times were about to fall. OF COURSE they had problems. if they didn't, we wouldn't have the story to begin with.

that doesn't automatically mean jedi = bad and sith are better, tho. you wouldn't take the last, chaotic and decadent period to jugde something, would you? it's like deciding that the athenian democracy sucked because people at the times of Demosthenes failed at recognizing the new schemes in which the world was evolving into, and still believed that their city would be important as it had been in the previous century. They just didn't fucking expect the Macedons would conquer half the world known and more, and have the subsequent political power. Still, their experiences in the 5th century with democracy were very good, even better than ours on many fronts, if you contextualize a little. the jedi had flaws, and most importantly, they didn't fucking know the future and everything that ever happened, ever, so they made mistakes. that doesn't automatically make the system ill, or bad, or not-working. systems can have setbacks when the world changes. (just like athenian democracy had one when they lost the empire that was funding the democracy. they even had a tyranny for a while and then fixed the problems. that doesn't diminish retrospectively their democracy)

[artist-issues]

I appreciate you trying to cut down on the reblogs, and your continued well thought-out responses!

Snoke

I'm going to cut to Snoke real real fast because I really don't think that you're reading the scenes he's in in TFA in the proper perspective--

--there's no "film language" evidence that they were really trying to make you guess and wonder about Snoke. Some wondering, yes. Some mystery, yes. But certainly it was not meant to take up any more headspace than the Emperor did in the OT. Certainly not.

Do you know why? Because compare how Snoke is introduced and how much is said about him to other characters. You can tell who the filmmakers wanted you to really, truly wonder about--and it's Kylo Ren. 

Everything, from the scene blocking, to the music, to the costume choices, to what every other character says about him, to how much time those other characters are given to audience-surrogate-wonder about Kylo Ren, points to just that: the audience is supposed to be trying to figure this guy out. Lor San Tekka makes his little comments before Kylo Ren cuts him down. Leia and Han have an exposition-tidbit conversation where you get tantalizingly broad-strokes explanations for why the son of a redeemed smuggler and beacon of hope turned to the Dark Side. 

Heck, the first scene Snoke is ever mentioned in, at all, is a scene specifically written to tell the audience more about Kylo Ren, not about Snoke himself. It's about "how does this Kylo Ren guy relate to this Hux guy? Oh, he cares more about the droid and the map to Skywalker than he does defeating the resistance, because that's contrasted against this 'Supreme Leader Snoke' guy's orders to destroy the droid if necessary."

More evidence: the first scene Snoke is ever in, that he ever even speaks in, is the one where the audience is teased with--no significant tease about Snoke--but about Kylo Ren. It's the very first big chunk toward the Kylo Ren mystery, and Snoke is the one to introduce it: "...your FATHER, Han Solo."

Yes, you can learn some things about Snoke in that scene. He's disfigured, he's old, he's imposing, we can barely see him, etc. But they're not the kind of "things" that are used to make an audience want to learn more--at least, not more than they're intended to want to learn about Kylo Ren.  

Even the lighting in that scene, Snoke functions as a prop. When he's there his hologram blocks the only light source in the room. When he's not, a beam is free to fall, and has Kylo Ren standing alone, in a spotlight --and in that spotlight, he's solitary on the left side of the screen, near the lower-third,  in a beam of light, surrounded by darkness, and the space--the space where Snoke used to be--is left empty. The composition of the shot is totally unbalanced. Subconsciously, the visual makes you wish someone else were standing in that empty space, across from Kylo Ren. 

Oh wait.

It's Rey. 

I could yammer on and on about film language and shot composition, but the point is: "Darkness rises, and light to meet it." That's Snoke's line. That's Snoke's whole point. That’s all. How interesting he is only goes so far--because his point, as a character, is to make space for the audience to focus on Kylo Ren, and by extension, Rey. 

There is no evidence that the filmmakers ever intended for you to care more about Snoke beyond what he brings to the table as a big arrow pointing back to Kylo Ren. And his death lights that arrow up so effectively. And since that’s the point of the arrow in the first place, his death was the perfect thing.

Now.

I agree that Kylo Ren as the big bad was not the answer. But a very strong argument can be made that TLJ was not setting him up to remain the big bad. Because: every scene with Hux, who is introduced as "the guy who hates and is surprisingly not afraid of Kylo Ren." Combine that with where Kylo Ren’s head is at, and how far his entanglement with Rey and his motives have progressed by the end of TLJ? And you do not have a recipe for him remaining the big bad for very long.

Now that I'm done harping on Snoke, back to the main argument.

Finn

I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t see how you got there. Not from what’s actually in the movies.

Here's the thing: I believe that when we watch a movie, we should believe what the filmmaker is telling us about the characters—based on the evidence they put in the film. Now, if what they put in there is contradictory, (which I thought was your initial argument) obviously then the filmmaker is doing a bad job, they've broken our trust as an audience, and the whole thing starts to feel like an exercise in futility.

But when I said that Finn is fighting Kylo Ren at the end of TFA, not as an attempt to "try" to do anything,  but to vent his anger at the injustice and oppression and cruelty of it all--I gave evidence for how I got there. To repeat myself:

Evidence A: What we know Finn's worldview and entire character flaw is--he doesn't believe good can win.

Evidence B: We've only seen him fight back one other time, and it was in a slightly-similar situation; Takodana, the First Order just destroyed the Republic and Maz's castle, and some random Stormtrooper is calling Finn out as a traitor, proving they haven't forgotten about him and, in some sense, they'll always find him. That makes Finn angry--because he believes he can't win, nobody can, not ultimately, and they won't even let him run away. So he fights back. With an angry expression.

Evidence C: Finn does not work with the Resistance with the ultimate goal of "finally trying to resist," which, since he's already been in one fight before (revealing, in due progression, that he can stop running in key circumstances) could have been his response. But it isn't. "I don't [know how to deactivate Starkiller's shields.] I'm just here to get Rey." There is nothing in the forest on Starkiller that would cause his character to move from "angry at the unstoppable evil" to "believing it's better to resist than run."

Finn does not know that Rey will get up. Ever again. <- I just made a truth statement, and here’s my evidence for it:

That is very clear when he openly turns his back to the guy with the lightsaber to run to her and have that whole reaction, as if she's the only thing worth thinking about in the world, while she's unconscious. Something pretty devastating and grief-inducing has to be happening for the guy with the escape-mentality to turn his back on the monster with the lightsaber. And that devastating thing is: she flew twenty feet up in the air, hit a tree and fell twenty feet down again, and she’s not moving, and she’s not waking up—in that moment, he doesn't know if she's going to wake up ever again.

So there is no way to use "he was trying to resist long enough to distract Kylo Ren so Rey could help" as an argument for his supposed "new some-kind-of-resistance mentality." He doesn’t know she’s going to get up, much less that she or anyone has a chance of being helpful.

All the evidence in the film up to that moment (what other characters say about him, what he chooses to do versus what he chooses not to do, and most importantly, WHY he makes any of those choices)  points to the fact that Finn is not fighting because he believes evil can be defeated.

And that is the point.

The movie says, "at least he's not running away. But he's still got a ways to go."

Just like how Luke begins to trust the Force, enough to switch off his targeting system, in A New Hope. But he doesn't jump straight to "trusting that he can also lift giant spaceships out of swamps" or "trusting that if he finishes his training and believes in The Cause, it'll be better for his friends than rushing off to rescue them."

There is evidence in The Force Awakens that when Finn stops running, he still hasn't resolved his problematic worldview. He's still believing that "There is no fight against the First Order. Not one we can win." 

Therefore, he tries to get in the escape pod to save Rey in TLJ.

Therefore, he's not despairing when Canto Bight officials find him and Rose, because at least he got to wreck their city.

Therefore, he's willing to ram his mining speeder and blow himself up to take out one cannon--with a furious expression--while Poe and Ross try to call him back--because at least “they won't win” in the moment. He still doesn't believe they'll win the ultimate fight, but he can make them hurt in the moment.

There's evidence for that progression in both movies. And the pacing is good; he has a whole third movie to live out what he just learned: "We can win the ultimate fight, if we focus on saving what we love, instead of the reactive raging against a cruelty we think is inevitable."

But I’ve said all that already, let’s talk about what you’ve said!

Listen, even if what you're saying were true--that Finn goes from "we can't win so I have to run" --> "we can't win but if we can't run it's better to die trying," …you still haven't proven how TLJ messes that up. 

I've made my point. Now let's see if we can make yours.

TLJ starts where you claim TFA leaves off: "we can't win but if we can't run it's better to die trying." What's the problem here? He tries to run to get Rey, and he can't, because Rose tazes him. Then he sees that he can still run--with the whole Resistance, running--if he can switch off the light speed tracker. Then he fails and the First Order catches up and so--if he can't run, it's better to die trying. Right? 

And then he learns what Rose tries to teach him from the very first moment they meet: his worldview is still wrong. They can win. He just needs to move his goalpost from fighting what he hates for the sake of hate to saving what he loves, which is better than dying-trying.

Do (save your friends) or do not. There is no "try!" (Sacrificing yourself for a moment, against one cannon, is no guarantee that you're saving what you love in the long run. It's just dying "trying.")

See? Even if I come at it from your point of view, there's nothing wrong with TLJ. In fact, even from your point of view, there’s a lot right with TLJ. It takes the next logical step in Finn's progression, and saves the best object-lesson he needs to learn (Rose's sacrifice) for last, so that you can't even fault it for leaving him with nothing to do in the third movie--he got the lesson, now let's see what he looks like when he lives it out. No step backwards. None.

Poe 

The narrative does not tell you that Poe is wrong specifically for wanting to save lives. The narrative tells you that Poe is wrong specifically for wanting to save lives only one way; with the in-the-moment stand-and-fight hero action.

He needs to learn that being a hero has more to do with faith than it does control of the moment. That sacrifice is only sacrifice if you actually manage to accomplish something meaningful for someone else.

What happens on Jakku and what happens with the dreadnaught are not opposite actions. They are different scenarios--but the reason behind Poe's actions are the same. A hero saves lives. But how the hero does it, that's what Poe gets wrong. And he gets it wrong the same way both times.

Even if you characterize Poe as needing to learn "he alone is not the difference between success and failure," (which I don't think quite covers it, but nuance 🤷‍♀️ ) TLJ is still a great story for teaching him that lesson. 

You haven't explained how it's not. You've only explained that you didn't like it. You "feel like he's smarter than that." Smarter than what? Smarter than what, that you’ve seen of him from the movies?

When Poe made the decision to attack the dreadnaught, everyone seems to forget that nobody in the Resistance knew they could be tracked through light speed. Therefore, Poe was not making that stupid of a decision, throwing all their bombers at the dreadnaught. Not from his perspective. Not even from Leia's perspective! Taking out a dreadnaught was a great thing, a good thing.

But the point, which Leia is making even before she knows they've been tracked, is that no, Poe isn't stupid--but the ends don't justify the means. The why behind his bombing run decision was bad. The how he accomplished his mission was bad. It demonstrated a lack of faith that there could be other ways. It demonstrated too much focus on a mindset where, as you say, "if he doesn't give everything," every time, they'll fail.

But maybe you meant, "I just feel like he's smarter than that" Or "his conclusions don't fit" about his reactions to Holdo, specifically?

Well, why don't they? What, in the movie, makes you think any of his decisions were illogical or unintelligent?

Remember, all the information Poe has is:

All our other commanding officers are gone, so this Vice Admiral is in charge, even though she clearly wasn't part of the command before.

She just gave a speech but didn't say anything of substance about what we're going to do? She just said "we must survive" is our mission. (Not "we must fight, or we will outsmart them," or anything I or what I believe Leia would've said.)

She won't tell me the plan, and also she just insulted me, borderline called me a traitor; me, the guy who blew up Starkiller base, the guy Leia trusted with plans.

She's not doing anything active to stop the Flagship from tracking us, and they can track us through hyperspace. I sent Finn and Rose off to solve the problem; meanwhile, she is not doing anything active like that.

We lost our support ships and our fuel supply is low. Still she's not updating me with the plan. 

She's fueling up the unarmed, defenseless transports, but there's nowhere to go; therefore, she just wants to abandon ship and last as long as we can with no destination. 

The transports have no weapons and no shields; meanwhile, our big ship at least has both. 

I was up-front with her about Finn and Rose, which is a long shot plan, but it's more of a plan than "abandon ship and get picked off while we have no destination:” she reacted badly to it and still wants to abandon ship.

She's doing everything she can to stop us from my escape plan just because, from what she said, “it’s risky.”

Let's review what Poe does not know. 

There is an uncharted mining planet nearby, so the transports actually aren't floating with nowhere to go.

The transports can't fight back but they can actually cloak, which is ONLY useful if they have somewhere to go (which they do.)

On that mining planet is an abandoned rebel base.

Abandoned though it may be, it is heavily armored and powered enough to send a distress signal all the way to the Outer Rim.

If any Resistance members are somehow captured and happen to also know what Holdo's plan is (like Finn and Rose do, because Poe told them) then the First Order could ruin the plan--by running a de-cloaking scan.

⬆️ Poe doesn’t know any of that. Given what he knows, versus what he does not know, then combining that with who he is and what he believes heroes do--plus the fact that Holdo and Poe's personalities are engineered to rub one another the wrong way--all of that equals "consistent, in-character action."

You know what it does not equal?

It does not equal a lack of smarts. Or lack of relatability.

Poe did the best he could with the character flaws and strengths that he has--bravery, straight-up guts, ingenuity, confidence...but he didn't know what he didn't know. Which is where trust is supposed to come in. But he didn't know or like Holdo, and her leadership style seemed antithetical to what he believes heroes do, so he chose to trust Finn and himself instead.

Not stupid. In-character. Young, brash, inexperienced, except in last-stand moves. Needing to learn a particular lesson. But not unintelligent. Not even illogical--his logic makes sense given the information he has.

Now, could he have made other decisions based on the information he had? Absolutely. That's one of the main ideas of the movie, and one of the main discussions around faith in philosophy at large:

“More than one thing is true at a time.”

So, do you take those truths and make a faith-based decision, or a fear-based decision? If so, what are you putting your faith in? Your ability to control as many variables as you can see in the moment? That’s fear, or pride, or both. OR, do you put your faith in what you can't control: things like your friends, your protégés, your commanding officers? The goodwill and rebellious spirit of people across the galaxy that you haven't met but hope are out there? The will of the Force?

Poe knew the things on the list that I made above. 

But. Poe also knew other truths, too.

He knew that Leia had worked with Holdo in the past, and trusted her. Poe also knew that Leia had criticized him for thinking too narrowly, instead of like a leader; she demoted him, for a reason. Poe also knew that there was a lot he didn't know. But instead of making choices based on those facts, he made them based on other, simultaneously-true facts.

More than one thing can be true at a time—again, the question is, what will you act on? Will you choose humility and trust, or not?

Same themes with Luke.

Luke knew some truths. 

Ben is extremely powerful because he's a Skywalker.

Ben has great potential for good.

Ben also has great potential for evil.

Ben has darkness in him.

That's not all Ben has in him.

Snoke had turned his heart.

Anakin's heart got turned, too, but Luke had experience turning it back.

Ben could cause pain, destruction, the death of everything Luke loved in the future.

Yoda also said "always in motion, the future is."

He can’t have any future if Luke kills him.

Luke could've made several decisions based on any of those truths. For a moment, he considered making the wrong decision, based on those truths. Then he checked himself. 

But it was too late. Why? Because Ben Solo knew some truths.

My Uncle is standing over me with a lightsaber.

My Uncle sensed the darkness in me.

My Uncle is definitely afraid of me. Just like my parents, who sent me away.

Also, my Uncle is my Uncle. He loves me, and if not me, he loves my mom and dad; probably not likely to kill me.

He's saying "Ben, no!" which isn't something people who want to carry on a fight to the death usually say to their opponent.

My Uncle can't fear me or threaten me if I kill him.

Ben Solo could've taken any of those truths and acted on them. He chose to act on the stuff he could control right away. Didn't have to. But he did.

Rey knows some truths. Finn knows some truths. Rose! Rose knows some truths, and it is beautiful to look at what faith-based decisions she makes in this whole movie. But you see my point…

…and one of the running sub-points used in this well-structured movie to point back to the Star Wars Main Point: "Faith Triumphs Over Fear."

It still looks to me like we could almost agree on Poe's worldview, or get close to it--you just don't like that his worldview combined with his circumstances cause him to make the choices he makes, which says more about what you wanted than how well the film tells a story.  

The film never promised you the things you began to want. Not based on our discussion so far, or what’s in the film.

TFA didn't set Poe up to be right all the time, or careful, or even considerate. It also didn't set him up to be stupid or unlikeable. And TLJ continued both those sets of characteristics: not careful, not right all the time, not considerate, but still not stupid, still not unlikeable. 

Unless you're an audience member who...forgive me, I'm not meaning this any type of insulting way...misunderstood him at the start, and therefore expected something different of him, and therefore were pre-disposed to dislike him once you saw more of who he was already set up to be.

(I'm not insulting you or your perception skills; I misunderstood La La Land before someone pointed out where I had blind spots. Luke misunderstood his role until Yoda pointed out his blind spots 😂)

Another day, another looking forward to hearing from you again 🫡

Idk how TLJ can be viewed as a continuation of TFA when it barely keeps the same themes, all the characters act differently, and it barely picks up on any of the story threads TFA left off

[stopthatmyhandsaredirty]

For some reason, I feel a little guilty saying this.... but I'm so glad The Acolyte season is wrapping up tonight.

The discourse around Star Wars properties is always fairly horrific, but this has to be the worst I've ever seen in my 30 years in this fandom (yes, worse than The Last Jedi).

I'm exhausted. My mental health took a huge hit over the last month and a half with all of the vitriol. I've almost completely disengaged from any online discussions. Star Wars is supposed to be my escape from this hellish world we live in. Instead, it's been so highly polarized you can't say you actually like something without being called a shill.

The show is not perfect by any means. I was intrigued by the opening few episodes. Episode 5 blew me away... but I thought the flashback structure was handled so clunkily that Episode 7 was a misfire in my opinion. Hopefully Episode 8 will make up for it, but at this stage I'm not holding my breath. I'm just annoyed because I really don't trust this show to stick the landing anymore, and that will just fuel the toxic fans even more.

It's annoying that I even have to think about shit like this. I am going to do my best to just start focusing on what I like or dislike and not worry about the rest of the fans. This shit makes me miss the 90s when all we got were new books and comics that only 300 people read and it was almost impossible to find anyone to talk to about it.

Anyway, hopefully it's a solid finale. I'm just broken at this point.