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pyreo · 7 years ago

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Man I dunno what everyone was so mad about I thought the last jedi was great

I have some thoughts

Also I’m ready for the Discourse now so if you guys have posted anything that I skipped for spoilers, please reply to this post and link me so I can reread

I cried, I cried so much at That Leia Bit early on. It was so beautiful. Her sheer determination and manifestation of will to live, after everything that’s happened in real life, god, fuck

I love Leia god I’m gonna fucking cry again right now

This movie’s THEMES though?? I was surprised at how daring it was. They deconstructed, literally deconstructed, Star Wars. The hothead pilot with the daring plan to save everyone that’s ‘so crazy it might just work’, ignoring the orders of his superiors? He’s wrong. He’s so goddamn wrong. He makes everything worse with this plan.

Bold, conscientious, I love it. Is that what guys were mad about?

Luke, originally the optimistic, light-hearted kid living the dream of a space adventure... is bitter, disillusioned, has given up entirely. He had a moment of lapsed morality that ruined everything he’d built and started this whole sorry thing by betraying his pupil. HE betrayed Ben. He couldn’t live up to that ideal of being pure and perfect and good all the time and thinks he’s a failure, so the Jedi order must die rather than be taught by him, someone who can only fail further.

I love, absolutely love, the theme of letting go of old traditions. I feel very strongly about it. It’s something you can notice daily, how we cling to routine and fawn over old documents that have lost their relevance. The Jedi tree with its last library burning up was gorgeous. Over and over again the Jedi had slipped up, made the wrong call, and god knows there’s a lot of insight in the fan community about whether the Jedi are even right about anything. And this validated all that. It’s right to let it all go, to build something that works better, and that someone who’s failed can make the best teacher. Question your goddamn traditions.

The movie was about failure, pretty much. The rebels got what they thought was an important win at the start, and then they were tricked, they got beaten, their lives are on a timer, and they fail and they fail and they fail. A string of events and everyone’s best efforts that just... fails. They brought up hope a lot and it was absolutely deserved, I think, just looking at how the story really, really worked to make hope a precious and rare thing.

I like that Poe learned some humility, after seeing the assumptive general was some older lady and he... clearly had hoped he might get it himself. After being demoted. And then he starts seeing his own leader as a villain and.. like, I’m not imagining it right, I don’t think what Poe did was at all justified. He obviously cares deeply for Leia as we all do and yet when she was hospitalised he didn’t listen to the last advice she gave him. He didn’t try to learn from his demotion. Instead he thinks he might get made general because they were buddies and then takes issue with not being privy to the new general’s plans, putting his own plan into action that ultimately kills tons of his comrades. It’s all about learning from failure and not letting it beat you.

I also liked that this woman, who was set up as Poe’s antagonist, who he held a mutiny against, was supposedly failing the resistance by planning an escape. And she had purple hair. Like, we KNOW what some guys who see this film are gonna think about that. And then it turns out, no, this experienced woman, trusted by Leia, DOES know better than a spunky daring pilot. She IS extremely brave and sacrifices herself and saves the resistance. There’s no reason for her to have purple hair she just does.

God, I am still hung up on the main plot being “the heroes have a cunning plot that might just succeed, and then it doesn’t and it fucks EVERYTHING up”. Like, god damn, thank you.

And it’s about Rey too and I admit I was fairly worried throughout as they clearly connected Rey and Kylo together? Two sides of the same coin kind of thing? But on reflection I think it works. They’re both young force users trying to wrangle their way through emotional turmoil without losing the side they’re on. Kylo is confused by remorse, I guess? For killing his father, he seems to think the dark side means no regrets and yet he has them, so could he be good? Rey is extremely powerful and Luke says she might go immoral just like Ben, so will she stick to her guns despite having no mentor figure, no surrogate father, no parents, etc

Kylo’s redemption was an illusion fostered by Snoke to trap Rey, but it reveals why Rey is on the side of good: she thought Kylo could be saved and threw her life aside to attempt to get him. She was stupid yeah, but tricked by the most powerful person in the galaxy because she is like Luke, and will not give up on someone that might leave the dark side, which is what makes both of them heroes.

Honestly I didn’t see anything wrong with the movie, aside from I guess... I’d say it was heavy on the one-liners, that’s all. Finn didn’t have as much growth as Rey or Poe, but he still got to use his backstory skills, and face-off against his old boss, and god the energy in a black man going hand-to-hand and beating a top agent of a fascist regime who calls him scum? GOD

So many things were relevant and real. It’s always been about Space Antifa but like now it’s REALLY about Space Antifa. The city of abominably rich space assholes who just look good and gamble and rest on a social construct of animal abuse and child labour, who get their shitty 1%er casino smashed in by a stampede? I think we all really needed that right now.

Anything I’ve heard that didn’t make sense I accept entirely. Luke drinking some titty juice? It’s not that goddamn weird. It was showing how he lives on this island, for one thing, and how he’s not a legend, a space saviour they can call on to win the war. He’s just a fuckin old dude living in a cave, milking weird animals for food. The weird island creatures I think people complained about? Wtf do you think Star Wars has always been about if not weird loads of space creatures. Luke’s... ending? What’s wrong with it. He went because he got the closure he wanted, he saved the rebels from Kylo and atoned for his past mistake. He realised Yoda was right and that the galaxy needed to move on from the old order and something new would replace him. And, crucially, he did not stall Kylo by letting himself get killed, I think he needed Kylo to see ‘revenge’ in his grasp and try to take it, to tell the boy that killing in anger would stay with him, to stoke that doubt the death of Han caused, and then reveal that Luke was not ended by the heir of Vader. There’s a big, meaningful difference between Han dying at Kylo’s hands and Luke giving him the option and tricking him, then peacing out on his own terms having moved past his years of guilt.

My head hurts from taking it all in, but hahah, I really thought I was in for a bad movie there thanks to the internet. It was genuinely great.

#star wars #the last jedi #the last jedi spilers #tlj spoilers

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