#anti-the last jedi

[swsequelsalt]

"Why The Last Jedi Isn't Just Bad - It's Toxic" by M. Krasava

DISCLAIMER: This editorial was originally published on Scavenger's Holocron, a sadly-now-defunct Star Wars news site. I feel like it's a tragedy to have it deleted from the Internet and only accessible to dedicated parties who know about it via the Wayback Machine, so I'm reposting it here as a form of greater preservation/availability.

Currently being regarded as the most controversial Star Wars film to date, fans of the popular franchise seem to have settled into two groups: this is either the best Star Wars film ever made, or the worst. Cinematically speaking, the movie has stunning visuals and a great cast of actors, but that’s not the problem.

The problem is that while The Last Jedi is being branded as the most feminist Star Wars film to date, its “feminism” seems like a cheap marketing ploy to appeal to a wiser audience and downplays some of the key problems within the film itself: it’s built on a foundation of sexism, misogyny, and racism. In other words, if you’re anything other than a white male, this film isn’t made for you.

And director Rian Johnson hasn’t exactly been shy about his opinion regarding the film’s white male villain, Kylo Ren. Rian told Empire Magazine that, “We can all relate to Kylo: to that anger of being in the turmoil of adolescence and figuring out who he’s going to be as a man.”

The only problem is that we can’t. Despite Rian’s insistence that this film is about the “transition from adolescence into adulthood,” Kylo Ren is already a well-established adult with a history of bad choices. We know from the canon Star Wars novel Bloodline, written by Claudia Gray, that Kylo Ren was at least 23 years old when he destroyed Luke’s Academy. At this point, he’s already an adult capable of making his own choices.

The film reveals that the final push towards the “dark side” was when Ben Solo awoke to see Luke standing over him with his lightsaber while he was sleeping. Without considering the possibility of a miscommunication, Ben Solo brought the roof down on the last Jedi, and then systemically went about converting or eliminating the rest of the students in Luke’s school before burning it to the ground. From there it can be presumed that he officially took on the role of Snoke’s apprentice, dubbing himself Kylo Ren as he joined the ranks of the First Order.

The problem is that it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing relateable about being a white adult male who decides to sign up with a Nazi organization and the very premise that we should try to have sympathy for such a character is chilling, especially when you consider that he murdered Han Solo not more than a week prior in film time.

(PUTTING THE REST UNDER A CUT)

But there’s another element to Kylo Ren that makes him harder to relate to. He comes from a place of privilege in society. Ben Solo was born to two war heroes, and while those might be big shoes to fill, there’s nothing that would indicate that Han and Leia were terrible parents to their son. In The Force Awakens, Leia admits that she sent Ben to train with Luke because she feared Snoke’s growing influence on her son (turns out, she had a right to be concerned). In Chuck Wendig’s canon novel, Empire’s End, from the Star Wars: Aftermath series, we see Han excited, if not a little daunted, about the possibility of becoming a father.

In other words, there’s nothing relateable when you think about a wealthy white male growing up sure of his place in the world and deciding to leave it all behind to join a fascist organization.

Compounding on this, there is someone who is relateable: Finn. Finn was not born from a place of privilege. If anything, we still know very little about Finn’s origins aside from the fact that he was abducted from his parents and raised to be a Stormtrooper. Despite years of conditioning and being ranked as the top cadet in his class, Finn was able to maintain his sense of self and when it came down to his first battle, he decided not to shoot and kill an unarmed villager.

This is the character that most people should be able to relate to. Finn is a character that isn’t sure of his place in the world. He grew up with the First Order and left everything that he knew behind him in order to try to do what he thought was right. Although he initially planned to seek a quick exit from the conflict at Maz’s castle, he didn’t hesitate to rejoin the struggle when he discovered that Rey was in danger. Finn spent most of his time in The Force Awakens running away from something – the First Order, from Jakku, from delivering BB-8 to the Resistance, but we see his progression throughout the movie to the point where he risks his life for Rey and helps the Resistance destroy the Starkiller base. At this point, Finn has rightfully earned his status as a hero.

Until The Last Jedi where Finn is again painted as selfish and cowardly, and the film does not shy away from this fact. Initially branded as a traitor by Rose when he tries to get the beacon as far away as possible to prevent Rey from falling into a trap, he is consistently belittled by Rose throughout the film. She consistently calls him cowardly and self-centered, and Finn’s characterization seems to shift in order to fit this description. When Finn is explaining his plan on hyperspace tracking to Poe, he is excited and confident: he can do this. When he gets to Canto Bight, he suddenly regresses, becoming immature and distracted by the glitz and glamour all around him. Finn knows what’s on the line. Rey is on the line. Poe is on the line. The Resistance has less than 24 hours, and yet he suddenly becomes bumbling and distracted.

This becomes Finn’s character throughout the rest of the film. Brash, impulsive, and worse, being frequently portrayed as the butt of everyone’s jokes. When we first see Finn, he is wandering about the halls of the Resistance in nothing but a bacta suit, as if Finn has suddenly forgotten how to care for himself. The film plays into the stereotypes that many people have about black male individuals. Instead of being treated as the hero of the Resistance, Finn is relegated to a comedic side role based on slapstick humor and unfunny comedy that ultimately doesn’t contribute anything to the plot.

In other words, Finn’s side plot reflects the film’s stance of diversity: we’ll wave it in your face for a few minutes before we wave it aside to make way for the two white protagonists. It’s a bold statement, but not untrue. Rian Johnson first joked that it would be “funny” to leave Finn in a coma for the entire film: “We did at some point joke that it would be great to just have him be in a coma for the whole movie and keep cutting back to him.” He explains that each of these cuts back to Finn would have him uttering some nonsense in his unconscious state, and at no point in the entire run time of the movie would the former Stormtrooper wake up. 

When John Boyega first accepted the role of Finn, JJ Abrams told him that he was going to be the new star of Star Wars. Rian Johnson blatantly admitted that it would be “funny” to simply delegate the black lead to the sidelines, where he doesn’t have more than a few scenes of incoherent babbling to serve as comic relief.

Not to mention, it’s Rose who ultimately has to teach Finn about the seedy belly of Canto Bight and how it operates: through slave labor. Another character shouldn’t have to explain to Finn, of all characters, the tortures and ills of slavery. After all, that’s the only life Finn’s known, taken as his family and raised in a life of servitude as a Stormtrooper to the First Order.

The underlying racism in The Last Jedi does not, unfortunately, stop with Finn’s character. We know a lot more about Poe Dameron’s character from the popular Poe Dameron comic series that highlights Poe’s adventures with Black Squadron before they find Lor San Tekka.

In fact, Poe’s arc is highlighted by its racism, as Poe’s character is reduced to a mere stereotype of his ethnicity. From the Before the Awakening, piloting flight logs, and comic series, we have a complete picture of who Poe is as a character. He tells L’ulo, “I’m the best. But you’re the best too” which highlights who he is as a person. He is a gentle soul that sees the best in people, trusting Finn not only to help him escape, but to lower the shields on the Starkiller Base when he said he could. Poe is a genuine nice guy who would give the shirt, er, jacket off their back to help a stranger.

And we see absolutely none of this in The Last Jedi. 

Poe is described as rash, dangerous, and aggressive by Vice Admiral Holdo, played by veteran actress Laura Dern. She’s dismissive of him, and while a part of it does play into more harmful stereotypes that I’ll get into later, in this instance, it’s hard not to. In the opening first scene, Poe is prepared to let everyone, everyone die just to take out a First Order Dreadnought. Even though successful, Poe seems more focused on the success of his mission than the countless deaths of his fellow Resistance fighters.

And that is not who Poe Dameron is. To say so makes a complete mockery of a fantastic character whose character has already been set and esteemed by fans. Changing his character to comply with stereotypes in order to try to advance the plot isn’t “moral ambiguity” or “challenging the character” – it’s just bad writing.

In short, Poe becomes aggressive, dangerous and hotheaded, all to fulfill the stereotypical role that the narrative wants him to play. His character attitudes are changed in order to fulfill a plot device, and that’s the conflict set up between himself and Vice Admiral Holdo.

This conflict is disappointing. It focuses on a female leader putting an aggressive, chauvinistic male in his place. It’s supposed to be empowering, but it’s not, especially when you have to have one character act so differently in order to get to that point. The problem is that the kind of feminism this movie is preaching is white feminism, which is dangerous in and of itself.

But what does white feminism mean in this case? Vice Admiral Holdo, and even Rose, both undermine and belittle Finn and Poe, treating them like children. This concept of infantalization upholds racist stereotypes of black and Latino men being both incompetent and irrational. In Poe’s case, it works to also uplift the alleged moral superiority of white women over people of color. And it’s not feminism.

It’s just disgusting.

Holdo is held up as someone that people in the Resistance are supposed to respect as a leader, and yet she refuses to tell the very people she’s leading what their plan is, citing Poe’s earlier reckless actions as an excuse. Even according to the Navy’s Leadership Principles, keeping your people informed is the second principle on the list. In other words? It’s pretty important. Vice Admiral Holdo’s refusal to do so is driven by petty motives, and while Poe is painted as ridiculous and childish the entire movie, he’s actually proven right when the First Order does the very thing he was afraid they would do.

One of the “lessons” from Poe’s story line is you should always blindly trust authority figures even when they provide no valid reason for doing so, and this is an extremely dangerous and topic example to set, especially in today’s society when people of color are so often made targets of police brutality, which again feeds back into the movie’s underlying theme of systematic racism.

Holdo herself seeks redemption from her mistakes by turning around and ramming her ship through theirs – an admittedly cool move, although it would be cooler had we not seen Admiral Raddus suggest the idea of plowing through a ship no more than a year earlier – and dies so that Leia can explain to Poe that Holdo was a good leader (without really stating how) because she was more concerned with fulfilling the mission without getting credit for it.

The problem with this? It means that Holdo had to die in order for Poe to “understand” what it meant to be a leader. This doesn’t work for two reasons. For one, Poe is a decorated Commander who had already served as a leader in the Republic Navy before joining the Resistance. Painting him as a cocky flyboy with a chip on his shoulder just doesn’t work when it goes against everything we’ve been told about his character. The “lesson” Poe was supposed to learn was one he already knew.

The second problem is that it meant that Holdo had to die in order for Poe to learn this lesson. In other words, we’re back to that age-old trope: a woman had to die in order to advance the plot/characterization of a male character.

And that’s where we get to our final topic: sexism. For a movie that preaches itself as so overtly feminist, it is rich with sexist undertones that are immediately apparent on the surface. Most of these are notably in the interactions between Rey and Kylo Ren, but there’s another character that I wanted to touch upon first. Rose Tico.

Despite Kelly Marie Tran’s boundless enthusiasm for her role, Rose Tico is ultimately underwhelming as a character. Despite mourning the death of her sister, her ultimate presence in the film seemed to be reduced to a girl with a bad crush on Finn.

I’ve already touched upon how poorly Rose treats Finn, but Rose herself seems to have gotten the short end of the stick in terms of the plot. Her character exists only to serve Rian’s image that your heroes aren’t what they seem, tazing Finn when she sees him trying to escape. From then on, Rose’s status seems to be downgraded to “Finn’s crush” as seen in the description of this deleted scene:

Originally, the film spent some more time clarifying the dynamic between Rey and Finn, and further setting up Rose’s crush on the Resistance “hero.” Rose chastises Finn for “pining for Rey,” which Finn quickly denies, claiming that he was “raised to fight” and that he finally found something to fight for in his friend, Rey. “Whatever,” responds Rose with a hint of jealousy.

Rose’s constant nagging of Finn and being catty about Rey enforces a negative female stereotype that has no business in a Hollywood blockbuster that claims to be catered to young girls, especially when it seems that Rose’s role has been reduced to working the love triangle dynamic between Finn and Rey. This seems like it could only lead to a destructive end for the character, especially considering how she attempts to save Finn’s life by almost sacrificing her own at the end of the film. Rose presents us once again with the trope that a female character must sacrifice herself in order to advance the plot of the male character, in this case, to prove her love for him. It’s a frustrating trope, made all the more exhausting when you consider what her role might be in the next film.

If you focus on the look Rey gives Finn putting a blanket over the unconscious Rose, it sets up tension for the next film: assuming Rey and Rose engage in competition for Finn’s attention, putting the two girls at odds with one another.

Because if the sexism in this movie wasn’t blatant enough, that’s just what Star Wars needs: two girls fighting over a guy. While frustrating to watch, it’s also extremely degrading to both characters and reduces both of their arcs into nothing more than instruments to direct the story of a male character.

Hopefully JJ will take the next episode in a different direction, but the damage that has already occurred in this film cannot be understated. There is, unfortunately, a lot of ground to cover regarding Rey’s story, so I’m going to start with the most visually striking one: Rey’s costume.

In The Last Jedi, Rey adopts what has been dubbed her “Jedi Training” outfit, trading out her three signature buns for a simpler hairstyle and trading out her light Jedi garb for a bit of a darker color. It’s a way for Rey to separate herself from the girl we saw crying desperately over her parent’s retreating ship on Jakku, keeping the same appearance a decade later in the hopes that they would come back to recognize her.

Many who speculated that Rey would undergo this physical transition after she discovered the true origin of her parents and worked to free herself of that disappointment found themselves disappointed. Rey didn’t change her clothes and her hair after she learned about her parentage from Kylo Ren, she learned about it after.

Despite being wet from the rain, another reason for this change is that she was shipping herself off in a box to see Kylo Ren, prompting those who want them to be romantically involved to start citing the Snow White parallels. It’s not hard to believe that the reason for this change was to make Rey appear more feminine. With her hair down, she looks more like a girl and less like the hardened warrior who had to fend for herself back on Jakku.

But wait, wouldn’t that mean that Rey’s entire role in the movie basically focused on developing Kylo Ren as a character? It does, and you wouldn’t be wrong to think that way. Even during Rey’s training sessions with Luke, the conversation is always geared back to Kylo Ren in some way, whether it’s Luke talking about his past or Rey assuring Luke that she won’t end up like Kylo. Either way, we hear Kylo’s name spoken more times between them than we actually hear anything about the Jedi or the things that Luke learned about the Force on his travels (say, Pillio, perhaps?)

It becomes clear early on that despite Rian Johnson saying that the film isn’t about what the fans want, that certain scenes were added in to appeal to a certain demographic. For example, Adam Driver’s uncomfortable shirtless scene?

Rian himself says that the scene had a “specific purpose” of creating an increasing feeling of “uncomfortable intimacy.” In other words, Kylo Ren’s shirtless scene is basically synonymous with a dick pic: no one asked for it, but there it is, one of the most subtle forms of sexual harassment. Think about this another way: if Rey’s character was really a boy, would the shirtless scene still be present? Or necessary?

Hint: it’s not.

The fact that Rey’s character only seems to exist to play a role in Kylo’s story is concerning, considering that she is touted as the protagonist of the sequel trilogy. Even though she witnessed him murder Han Solo no more than a few days prior, she becomes emotionally intimate with him pretty quickly, opening up to him about the strange experiences she had in the “dark place” beneath the island.

And therein lies the problem. When they touched hands, Snoke gave her a vision of Kylo Ren turning back to the light side to compel her to rush off to the Supremacy in the hopes that she could turn Kylo Ren back to the light and turn the tide of the war.

There’s only one problem with that.

It’s not her problem.

Rey was a civilian. As Kylo Ren himself told her, “You have no place in this story.” She has no part in the conflict between the First Order and the Resistance, and yet she was swept up in it all the same. It shouldn’t be necessary for her to rush off and turn the tide of the war, and while it fits with the Star Wars theme of how one person can make a difference, the trope that a woman must rush off and sacrifice herself in order to progress a man’s character and offer him redemption has been a long-running frustrating trope. If Rey wants to help the Resistance, that’s her choice, but it shouldn’t be necessary to rush off and try to save the person who kidnapped and abused her.

It’s one of the things that makes any sort of Kylo Ren and Rey team-up so off-putting. In The Force Awakens, he kidnaps her and invades her mind in order to try to find the location of the map. After she escapes, he confronts her in the forest, throwing her into a tree several feet up in the air in a move that could have potentially killed her. Then she wakes up just in time to watch him slice through Finn in a move that could have killed him.

Oh, and did I forget to mention how she watched him murder a defenseless Han Solo right before her eyes only moments before? The man who, as Kylo himself taunted, presented a father figure that she never had?

In other words, Rey has absolutely no reason to trust Kylo Ren. She has no reason to even want him to get redemption. For all of Rian’s talk about how he wanted to keep this film “morally grey,” trying to make a genocidal murderer relateable, or even redeemable, was not a step in the right direction. Wouldn’t it have been more compelling to watch Rey wrestle with the ramifications of eliminating Kylo Ren once and for all? Instead of trying to find redemption for the dark side, wouldn’t it have been far more interesting to explore a situation in which Rey realizes that good people must sometimes do bad things for an overall good to result? 

Perhaps, but that’s not the film we got. Instead we got a team-up between Kylo Ren and Rey where, moments after they work together, their alliance is quickly severed. Rey asks Kylo to call off the attack that is sure to eliminate the Resistance, including Finn. Kylo, however, refuses and tells her to move on and join him in ruling. He tells her, “You come from nothing. You’re nothing. But not to me.”

Fortunately Rey grabs the lightsaber and rejects his offer, and the final scene of her closing the Millennium Falcon doors on him seems to confirm that she has severed her connection for good. The problem? The damage has already been done.

Rian Johnson has already set up the Kylo Ren and Rey dynamic to be potentially romantic, between the shirtless scene, the hand touching scene, to be filled with an uncomfortable kind of sexual tension between the girl that declared to Maz, “I don’t want a part of any of this” and the man that murdered his father.

As troubling as that notion is, it does get worse. Kylo Ren tells Rey, “You come from nothing. You are nothing. But not to me.”

The problem is that Kylo Ren’s frequent gaslighting and emotional manipulation throughout the two films reaches its climax: he has discarded Snoke and wants to use the powerful, yet naive Rey, to further his own power. Still, the sexual if not romantic implications are there, pushed along by a group of shippers that call themselves “Reylos,” who desperately seek for Rey to redeem Kylo through, well, you get the idea.

There are several problems with this. One of the first ones is the fact that Kylo Ren is 32 years old, whereas Rey is only 19. While many are quick to claim that age is just a number, Rey is emotionally immature, having been isolated on Jakku for most of her life. There is absolutely no good reason to try to push her into any sort of relationship with someone who is so destructive, especially when the sole reason for doing so is to help Kylo Ren find redemption.

The line, “You’re nothing…but not to me” is a quote that unfortunately most women have heard far too often. It’s an emotional manipulation tactic in order to try to isolate a woman from her friends and family until she only relies on her abuser for support, and this is exactly what Kylo Ren is trying to do here. With Luke unwilling to teach her, Kylo wants Rey to rely on him, and solely him, so that he can use her power and manipulate her to further his own goals (which is to lead the First Order to…conquer the galaxy? It’s not quite clear.)

It’s a frightening message, especially when you think about who this movie is supposedly marketed to. Think about how many children dressed up as Rey for Halloween. How do we explain to girls that the man who killed Han Solo, the man who emotionally manipulated her and tried to use her just to validate himself, is the person that she should ultimately fall in love with? It paints a dangerous picture that girls internalize before they have enough experience to make their own decisions regarding their own relationships.

Remember Edward Cullen’s creepy manipulation in Twilight? Apparently that’s crept into Star Wars as well.

And this gets to the heart of the overall problem. The Last Jedi is ultimately soaked in sexism, misogyny and racism, and yet Kathleen Kennedy and Bob Iger widely praised the film before its release. How can Kathleen Kennedy, who said that she was proud to have a feminist icon in Rey, be willing to reduce Rey’s entire story to “the love interest?” If the executives and storygroup approved such blatant racism and actively worked to rewrite characters in order to fit their stereotypical narrative, what hope do we have that the next trilogy will be better, especially when they gave Rian Johnson full control over its content?

Rian himself believes that Darth Vader was worse than Kylo Ren, and while that is probably a conversation as controversial as the movie itself, Rian still wholeheartedly believes that despite what happened in The Last Jedi, that Kylo Ren can be redeemed. It shows that the storyline that JJ Abrams set up has been reduced to simply furthering the narrative of the white villain, and the rest of the characters are simply players in his story, which is why they exist as nothing more than stereotypes in Rian Johnson’s version of Star Wars.

And that’s the disappointment. While The Force Awakens received criticism for being too similar to its predecessor, A New Hope, JJ did set up some interesting and mysterious characters. While Captain Phasma’s role was ultimately underwhelming, fans were assured that she would have a much bigger role to play in Rian Johnson’s world.

Unfortunately, we all know how that turned out. 

Phasma’s quick dismissal wasn’t the only disappointment. Snoke was killed off without any satisfying explanation to who he was or even what he wanted the First Order to do. The Knights of Ren, which were mentioned in The Force Awakens and played a role in Rey’s vision, disappeared from the narrative entirely, instead being replaced by Rian’s Praetorian Guards.

For many, Luke Skywalker’s return was the biggest disappointment. Mark has made no secret in recent weeks citing how he didn’t agree with Rian Johnson’s vision of Luke and how he wished George Lucas had directed the sequel trilogy instead, a mere three days before The Last Jedi hit theatres. It fits into Rian Johnson’s grim version of reality: our heroes can be defeated, and idolizing legends is ultimately unsettling and disappointing when faced with reality.

But by disappearing into the Force, did Luke not himself become a legend, the very thing that Rian seems to chide against? The film’s “message” seems to give audiences such mixed signals, it’s not surprising that audiences claim that the film seemed better after a second viewing: basic elements of the plot just doesn’t make sense, like how the First Order has suddenly developed hyperspace tracking despite the film only taking place a few days after the events of The Force Awakens. 

There are other plot holes that point out the flaws in logic in the story: where did Rey learn to swim on Jakku? How can bombers drop bombs in space when there’s no gravity for the bombs to fall? Since space exists in three dimensions, why didn’t the First Order just have a ship drop out into hyperspace in front of the Resistance Star Cruiser and blow it to bits? And why was General Hux, a serious, straight-faced villain in The Force Awakens, who ordered the destruction of the Hosnian System, delegated to a comedic side role who’s only function was to serve as a cheap laugh and be the butt of an awkward your mom joke? Instead of using the antagonism between Kylo Ren and General Hux to show the crumbling of the First Order and how the small band of Resistance heroes we’re left with at the end of the movie might stand a chance against them, it seems that the First Order’s army, which was flowing with Nazi imagery in The Force Awakens has just been reduced to campy slapstick humor.

Despite these obvious problems, the most glaring ones still remain in the fact that Star Wars is a film that claims to market itself to the people it exploits and ultimately rejects. It’s no wonder that merchandise and ticket sales have dropped when the movie is back to focusing on a white male lead, like so many other before it. Kylo Ren tells Rey that you have no part in this story, that she doesn’t belong – something that minorities, women, and the LGBTQ+ community have been hearing their whole lives.

But if this movie isn’t made for these people, then why does Disney keep trying to insist that it is? Most people who have been critical of the film have been met with the chorus of, “You’re just upset that you didn’t get what you wanted” as if it’s somehow wrong to expect more from what you receive. The story was set up so that we would get answers. How someone as powerful as Snoke managed to manipulate Kylo Ren from the womb and grow the First Order from the seeds of the Empire, Phasma’s increased involvement, and especially the question of Rey’s parentage, has been dangled in front of us like a carrot on a stick for the past two years, and it’s ultimately unsatisfying to see all those threads being clipped off and brushed aside with a, “Oh! It didn’t even matter!”

If it didn’t matter, then why feel the need to keep up the secrecy and suspense for two years, when the final product is ultimately disappointing? (Point not withstanding, Kylo Ren tells Rey that Snoke showed him that her parents were buried in a pauper’s grave on Jakku. Why her parents would actually return to Jakku, or whether Snoke was actually telling the truth, is a matter that JJ has yet to resolve.)

It’s not wrong to be a critical consumer of the media that we consume. It’s not wrong to say that we deserve something better. Minorities and women can and should demand to be treated with more respect than they were shown in this film, and the overwhelming amount of racism and misogyny in this film is something that most avid fans of the film have not provided an answer for.

People who claim that The Last Jedi is a good movie, while at the same time acknowledging how deeply misogynistic and racist it is, are contributing to the larger problem we have as a society. It’s saying, “I know it’s racist and misogynistic, but it entertained me, so I’m okay with it.”

It might just be fiction. It might just be a story. But all media we consume influences us, subconsciously or not, in ways that we may not even be aware of. Star Wars may not be real. These characters may not be real.

But it still affects how you feel, and that seems pretty real to me.

#anti-tlj #anti-the last jedi #anti-disney star wars #star wars negativity #star wars sequel negativity #star wars #why the last jedi isn't just bad - it's toxic #last jedi toxic #the last jedi is toxic #tlj toxic #tlj is toxic #scavenger's holocron

[inquisitor-apologist]

Thinking about how, at the end of the day, at the fatal moment, the sunset of the Republic, it wasn’t Yoda, or Obi-Wan, or even the Chosen One himself standing in the way of Palpatine. It was Mace Windu.

Mace Windu, the inventor of Vaapad and Master of Form VII, the Jedi's strongest duelist, the only person to ever defeat Palpatine in combat. Mace Windu, Master of the Jedi Council and the youngest Master ever appointed to it, the revered leader of the Order. Mace Windu, who forgave even those who tried to kill him, who risked his life over and over again for his troops, who, after 3 years of desperate war, tried to negotiate with battle droids. Mace Windu, who knew the clones were created by the Sith and chose to trust them, who saw every Shatterpoint in the Republic, and loved it still, and fought for it until his last breath, until he was betrayed by Anakin, who he believed in and trusted despite everything.

Mace Windu, High General and hero of the Republic, the embodiment of the Light, the last and greatest champion of the Order, the best Jedi to ever live.

#I’ve said my piece goodnight #don’t play with me Mace Antis I have receipts for every last one of these #pretty much everyone agrees that he was the best duelist there was and he obviously won the fight #Anakin's choice wouldn't make thematic sense otherwise #also vader did not defeat palpatine in combat sorry he just grabbed him while he was distracted #it literally had to be a fair fight and Anakin had to be the one to choose to create the empire that's what the prequels are about #Star Wars databank calls him ‘revered’ shatterpoint tells us he was the youngest (real) member of the council #Boba Fett (tcw) and Prosset Dibs (comics) tried to kill him and he asked for amnesty and forgave them #literally just watch the Ryloth arc he spends most of his screentime saving his men #in tcw season seven he pleads with the battle droids to surrender hoping that no one else has to die #there's the part near the end of tcw where the council realizes that the clones were created by Dooku but Mace and the rest of the council #trust the clones so much they're willing to ignore it #the scene from Mace's POV in the rots novelization talks about how much he loves the republic and how he was blindsided by Anakin's betraya #because he trusted him!! we see in aotc that he has more faith in Anakin's abilities than Obi-wan #and he defeated the most powerful sith of all time single-handedly #BEST JEDI EVER!!!!!!!!!!!! #sw prequels #star wars prequels #prequel trilogy #sw prequel trilogy #star wars prequel trilogy #sw rots #star wars rots #revenge of the sith #star wars revenge of the sith #galactic republic #pro mace windu #mace windu #pro jedi order #pro jedi

[vintageseawitch]

"omg i didn't know this book was based off a REYLO fanfic waaaah i don't like that 😭😭"

#reylo #kylo ren #pro kylo ren #ben solo #pro ben solo #anti tros #pro the last jedi #fanfic #reylo fanfic #ali hazelwood #the love hypothesis #love on the brain #love theoretically #not a fan of how people dislike kylo & say mean things about him #there are PLENTY of pathetic villains y'all simp over #you just don't like that it's not original star wars #since these folks also talk horribly about the prequels 🙄 #SO EDGY #oh no he massacred so many people #THERE ARE SO MANY VILLAINS THAT DO THIS & YOU LOVE THEM #anyways my precious bby Kylo did nothing wrong 😇🤗 #he's the best guy around #what murdahhh

[theweeklydiscourse]

Yeah…I really don’t see how the plan for Ben Solo to go down a path that ends in darkness and villainy is a preferable outcome for his arc. Also, I think that not enough people consider how that outcome would reflect on Han, Leia, and Luke as the individuals who raised him. Because if the child of two of the legendary heroes of the Galaxy suddenly turned to the dark side without warning, I feel like that would signify that something went wrong with the way they raised him.

And if that were the case, that means that those problems must be addressed meaningfully in order for the story to come to a satisfying conclusion. Delving into why he did what he did necessitates an interrogation of his family and raises suspicion on the quality of their care and family dynamic. This is why so many commentators on the state of the sequels argue that Ben was just inherently inclined towards the dark side, that he was evil from birth and there was nothing his poor parents could do to stop it. Because the notion that Ben was inherently evil absolves the trio (and the viewers by extension) from reflecting upon the mistakes or flaws that might’ve led to his fall to the dark side.

This is not me claiming that Ben had no agency in his decision to go dark, but I do think that my points are relevant in discussions about his arc in the sequel trilogy. It doesn’t make sense to me. It doesn’t make sense to have the child of the heroes be the character to reject redemption and lean into the inevitability of his supposed evil and the impossibility of any other alternative. Having him be irreparably evil undercuts the overarching themes of not just the sequel trilogy, but of Star Wars as a whole.

#ben solo #kylo ren #I need to have TROS surgically removed from my brain #star wars #anti tros #the last jedi #luke skywalker #han solo #leia organa #princess leia #reylo

[oathena11-writes]

I have seen the repeated sentiment that we can like the Jedi and Anakin. Yeah, that's true. 

But why assume that people want to like Anakin, that they think they have to hate Anakin? Yes, a large part of why people don't like Anakin is just because of the genocide of the Jedi Order. 

But there is so much more reason to dislike Anakin that have little to do with the Jedi. 

Although, the anti Jedi people who like to use Anakin to say why the Jedi are bad make it real hard to find reason to like Anakin.

I'm not a big hater. I don't like to hate. But... I don't like Anakin.

I don't want to like Anakin. 

Yes, I'm pro Jedi, and funnily enough, my feelings regarding how Anakin treated the Jedi are just the cherry on top of the huge pile of why I don't like Anakin.

Why I don't like Anakin: Simply put, I've encountered people like him in my own life, including my own mother, and that means I do not have the patience for a character that's like a person I'm low contact with in real life. 

Anakin is enough like my mom that I have written him with how my mom would react in mind. Sure she's not actually murderous, but she is very emotionally immature and takes things personally. 

I am still untangling the damage she did to me growing up, and realizing how much she did that wasn't right now that I am raising my own children.

Worse, I am like my mom, and like Anakin. They are what I could be if I wasn't putting in the work to be a good person. If I wasn't trying to always learn from my mistakes. If I wasn't always trying to step back from my emotions to recognize I'm being irrational. 

And that scares me. I could be like Anakin. And that is why I don't like him. I don't want to write a character who isn't good, who is who I could be. I don't want to work at making someone better when I know it will take a miracle to change his mind, after my experiences with my mom.

Nope. Not happening. 

So. I don't like Anakin. I love the Jedi Order. Two separate statements that for me are not connected. They are separate choices for me. 

#pro jedi #anti anakin skywalker #athena ramblings #just some things I keep coming back to #it's not the first time I've thought about this #and it won't be the last #so yeah #this is where I stand #when it comes to anakin #I'm not sure I exactly hate him #but I certainly am not fond of him #and seeing people treat him like he can do no wrong #or that redeeming him/making him better is easy #Yeah #I'll stick with the haters thanks

[darklinaforever]

Antis' favorite things : Saying that Kylo Ren / Ben Solo is a Nazi. Saying that Severus Snape is also a Nazi / a racist. Saying that Zuko is a colonizer. Saying that Daemon Targaryen is a groomer. Saying that the Darkling is a genocidal. What bullshit. We love seeing people use words wrongly, proving that they don't know the real definitions.

#kylo ren #ben solo #the darkling #aleksander morozova #daemon targaryen #the rogue prince #reylo #darklina #alarkling #hotd #house of the dragon #anti hotd #anti house of the dragon #fire and blood #f&b #daemyra #the force awakens #the last jedi #anti the rise of skywalker #shadow and bone #siege and storm #ruin and rising #severus snape #snape #anti snaters

[antianakin]

@theneutralmime

Oh this could get long, I don't talk about the sequels often lol. But I recently had to rewatch the entire trilogy as research for the podcast, so I have some more solid opinions on this now, so let's go.

Rey is a character who suffered from a fairly basic set-up in TFA that went exactly nowhere when her trajectory changed in TLJ and they couldn't figure out how to fix it in TROS (and the studio execs came in and enforced certain things to happen because they figured it would make certain fans happy). Rey IS her own character, she's not just like... Luke 2.0 or whatever, but the general set-up of "young hero stuck on their own in their life they can't escape and who ends up forced into an adventure when adventure happens to find them" is... not the most original thing in the world. It can be REALLY GOOD when executed well, there's a reason it's popular, but nothing about Rey was like... insanely original aside from the fact that she was a woman as (one of) the main character(s) in Star Wars films for the first time.

And then Rian Johnson took this pretty basic set-up that everyone understood and went "what if I threw this on the ground and spat on it and crushed it for good measure to be Edgy" and that's how we got TLJ with "Rey Nobody" who somehow already knows everything she needs to know which makes her ENTIRE JOURNEY to go find Luke completely meaningless and shifts the story from being about HER to being about LUKE. It's dumb, it's stupid, and it was bad writing.

Not following the very obvious character arc set up for her in TFA means that Rey as a character vacillates back and forth between motivations and characterizations in each new film. So it's hard to know like... who Rey even IS as a character, what's important to her, what she cares about, why she even WANTS to be a Jedi, what kind of Jedi she'd actually be, etc. In the first film, she's on a very basic journey of learning to let go of the idea that someone will come back for her on Jakku in order to recognize that it's better to find ways to connect with new people than push aside those relationships for one that has already gone. This is why she leaves Finn at the end of the film to find Luke in the first place, she can't let her connection to Finn be what holds her back any more than she could let her connection to her parents hold her back. She has a greater destiny out there to follow that she can only answer if she learns how to let go. In the second film, her entire motivation surrounds saving Kylo Ren for some reason and, as mentioned before, she apparently already knows everything she needs know and doesn't need any training or guidance of any kind which leaves her exactly nowhere to go as a character. In the third film, it's all about figuring out how to connect to the Jedi of the past for... reasons and struggling with the sudden revelation that she is Palpatine's granddaughter and therefore has extra capacity for darkness in her or something.

There's nothing consistent about her across the three films which leaves Rey and her story just... in the dust. She could've been a perfectly good and enjoyable hero character had they just let her follow the path she was set up on in TFA, and instead we got... the mess she became. I LIKE Rey, I think she's occasionally fun and I like the relationship she has with Finn and Poe in TROS, but she got absolutely SLAUGHTERED by this trilogy.

But that is NOTHING compared to what happened to Finn.

Finn is unarguably the most interesting and unique character introduced in TFA. A stormtrooper deserter with the potential to be Force sensitive AND the main love interest for the other main female character? A stormtrooper who could become a JEDI, the clear potential for a stormtrooper rebellion, the parallels and connection between Finn and Kylo that so clearly demonstrated that theme of choice (with Finn being someone raised in darkness who chooses selflessness and compassion anyway vs Kylo who was raised in light with all the support and resources he could ask for and still chooses selfishness and darkness), the possibility of having true CO-LEADS for the first time with Finn and Rey as like two halves of one hero with the romance being there to lift them BOTH up rather than relegate one of them to the side. The potential here with Finn was LIMITLESS, it was INSANE.

And ALL OF IT got squandered. Every last ounce. Finn got COMPLETELY sidelined in TLJ, separated from all of Rey's storylines and replaced by Kylo Ren, his Force sensitivity was not further explored, the entire story with the rebellion could've been what jumpstarted his stormtrooper rebellion plotline and instead he got thrown off into some weird casino c-plot bullshit to try to thrust him into a new romance that wasn't with Rey, and he was just constantly being physically hurt by other characters as though it was a joke of some kind. TROS attempted to bring SOME of it back by having him going on more missions with Poe off-screen, allowed Finn, Poe, and Rey to be an actual trio with a relationship together, and hinted at the Force sensitivity more than once. But by the time TROS came around, the damage had been done and it couldn't manage to come back from that, so Finn ended up developing nowhere in that film and does basically nothing but follow around Poe and Rey wherever they go, more sidelined than ever but at least he's not constantly being hit and he IS still involved in the main storylines in a way he wasn't in TLJ.

The options were all SO GOOD for Finn and we got resolution for exactly none of them and because of how badly John Boyega and his character got treated, we'll likely never get any real resolution for his character EVER because he is understandably not going to come back to Star Wars after this. I haven't yet forgiven Rian Johnson for the choices he made in TLJ that ruined Finn.

I actually like Kylo best in TFA because I think, much like everybody else, that's where we see the real potential for what the character could've been. Kylo in TFA is really set up to just be "another Anakin" where he went dark but can still be saved by the love of the father/son bond and then he ISN'T. They set the audience up SO HARD for that eventuality, for Kylo to be secretly not as evil as he seems, for him to be someone who can be saved like Anakin was saved, so you're sitting there expecting that to happen during that scene on Starkiller Base with Han, which is why it comes as such a shock when he kills Han anyway and turns the ENTIRE NARRATIVE on its head by telling you that Kylo IS NOT ANAKIN and isn't going to be saved the same way if he can be saved AT ALL (and it's heavily implying he CAN'T BE SAVED). TLJ basically just redid this entire narrative from TFA all over again except with Rey and the dyad, but because they did it with Rey and the dyad, there ended up being a bunch of people who ended up VERY invested in Reylo as a thing and so the studio then caved to that in TROS and saved Kylo despite that never being in the original plan according to Adam Driver.

And I think it would've been kind-of interesting to have this character who seems like he should be able to be saved like Anakin, but not everyone CAN be saved, not everyone WILL ultimately make better choices when given the option, some people are just going to double down on their darkness and commit to being evil. I like the subversion of expectations from what we were given with Anakin, the way he's like the inverse of Anakin in so many ways and looks up to "Darth Vader" as a role model of sorts without ever understanding the choices Anakin actually made, both good and bad. And if TLJ had actually, you know, expanded upon what TFA had already established instead of just saying the exact same thing all over again, maybe we could've gotten a more interesting story out of his character.

Which leads us to Luke and his role in "creating" Kylo. Here again we get what seems to be a lack of agreement between the people in charge about what this story was supposed to be and say. TFA sets up that Kylo is making his own choices, he's not brainwashed, and his primary problem seems to be with his parents. TLJ then turns around and says it was all LUKE'S fault, that Luke had a moment of weakness and it threw Kylo into a fury he's never come back from, but Luke's mistake is what ultimately led to everything that followed. And like... this isn't Luke. Maybe some people really enjoyed seeing Luke be this broken old man who just makes the same mistakes over and over again, but this wasn't Luke to me. I don't buy that Luke had an instinct that caused him to ignite a weapon in response to feeling the darkness in his nephew's mind, something he's only feeling because he's literally INVADING HIS NEPHEW'S MIND AS HE SLEEPS. There is nothing about his choices here that are in line with anything we knew about Luke from the Original Trilogy. Luke would never do this to someone he cared about, he just wouldn't.

The movie's insistence on making Luke into this broken beaten old man is also, as I mentioned above, a massive mistake because it turns the story in TLJ from REY'S journey into LUKE'S journey. Rey isn't the one who has to learn things and develop in this film, LUKE is. LUKE is the one who fucked up, LUKE is the one who lost hope, LUKE is the one who has to be taught a lesson about what it means to be a Jedi in the end. Rey does shit all in this film.

It also moves the focus away from it being KYLO'S CHOICES that led to what he's become to this weirder story about how Luke screwed up and has to fix it by... trusting that Rey already has it covered I guess? Instead of focusing on how Kylo made selfish choices and what actually PROMPTED those selfish choices despite all of the support he had and the legacy of his parents and the way that that parallels the choices being made by Rey and Finn, it focuses on LUKE, someone whose story has ALREADY BEEN TOLD. Kylo ends up a little bitchass victim in this instead of a character who is making clear and concise choices, something that was established when he killed Han in TFA, so his choice at the end of TLJ when he kills Snoke and takes over as Supreme Leader doesn't have the same impact when we've already see him make that choice in the climax of the last film. It's redundant and walking back the choice from TFA sort-of undoes everything that it's trying to say about the character and makes TLJ's conclusion feel wishy washy. Is he a tragic victim who has to be saved, or is he a villain who just needs to be eliminated? It's unclear by the end of TLJ.

Luke's role in "creating" Kylo was stupid on so many levels, both structurally and in terms of character. It never should've happened and it's an insult to who Luke is and has been to this story and I haven't forgiven Rian Johnson for THIS choice either. TROS does attempt to fix this and walk it back, as well, but much like with Finn, the damage was done.

So as far as I'm concerned, TFA is a solid film with a really interesting concept of taking a premise we all think is predictable and then subverting those expectations pretty intentionally, but the other two films are a complete and utter mess that aren't worth the 10ish hours of my life they have taken from me by watching them each twice now. There's a few fun moments in TLJ and TROS but I can't say that either film is like... a good or enjoyable film overall.

#star wars #sequel trilogy #the last jedi #the force awakens #the rise of skywalker #rey skywalker #finn #finn star wars #finnrey #luke skywalker #anti kylo ren #anti kylo #kylo ren critical #kylo critical #ben solo critical #anti ben solo #anti reylo #reylo critical

[short-wooloo]

I had a chat with my brother about the fight with the night troopers in ahsoka and he pointed something out to me

It's really stupid how the characters just avoid dismembering and/or decapitating the troopers, because that's how you're supposed to stop zombies, you go for the heads and/or render them immobile

"Ha ha zombie! I slashed you across the chest! What're you gonna do now? OW! FUCK! THEY'RE BITING ME!"

It's pretty obvious that going forward all disposable minion bad guys in SW will have to be droids because disney won't let up on their "no cutting people up" internal rule, because apparently we can't even hack apart the undead, but what's the point of zombies if you can't dismember them without a thought? Zombies remove the ethical concerns of mass slaughtering bad guy minions

Y'know say what you will about it, but Rey and Kylo vs the Praetorian guards actually felt brutal in the way lightsaber combat should be, people got thrown in an electric shredder, the top half of one guy's head was cut off, throats were slit, a lightsaber was shoved into someone's face, and when Rey/Kylo stabbed a guy they really drove the saber in, like rewatch it, you clearly see them putting effort to drive their sabers through the guards

#wooloo-writes #wooloo writes #star wars #sw #anti disney #anti ahsoka #ahsoka critical #lightsabers #back in my day lightsaber hacked people to pieces #and that's exactly how we played with the toys as kids #we ran around pretending we were cutting people into quarters #zombies #night troopers #ahsoka series #ahsoka show #the last jedi #praetorian guard #rey #rey skywalker #kylo ren #rey and kylo vs the guards was the last time lightsabers felt like lightsabers

[the-pretty-corpse]

Wouldn’t it be nice?

#starwars #rey #finn #the last jedi #anti reylo #finn/rey #finnrey #the force awakens #the rise of skywalker #antireylo #daisy ridley #john boyega

[sjbattleangel]

Behold some of the worst Star Wars takes you've ever seen. "I love Star Wars!" No you don't, Lily. Just like certain reactionary hacks, you hate Star Wars for the most idiotic reasons ever. Case in point: 1) Lily decides to rewrite the sequel trilogy into angst-fest that over-worships the Sith as a misunderstood, persacuted race of people, turns classic characters like Luke and Leia into "old racist white folk" and of course, has her "heroic" character straight-up murder unarmed rich people!

Plus, as someone who adores The Last Jedi as one of the best Star Wars films since The Empire Strikes Back, Lily completely missed the point of the film! It doesn't need to be "fixed" as it's already a compelling deconstruction of Star Wars that challenges the notion of destiny and fixed traditions by having the characters grow through their mistakes: Like Rey learning she doesn't need to be related to someone special know where she belongs; Poe learning to stop and listen to other people's ideas; Finn learning about how other people are effected by the war; Luke learning not to give up on himself.

I get the feeling Lily's bitter because it didn't line up with her own bloated "SWTOR-and-KOTOR-II-are-the-only-SW-media-that-matters-and-the-Sith-are-the-real-good-guys" headcannon.

That and the real reason Lily hates Rose Tico is because she wasn't a sexy traumatized black lesbian with a high body-count. Because, let's face it, Lily didn't create Darth Amorosa because she wanted "diversity" and "representation". No, it was simply because she wanted a black woman to fetishize.

#lily orchard #anti-lily orchard #lily orchard is a hack #lily orchard critical #star wars #rey of jakku #rey nobody #the last jedi #pro-tlj #rose tico #poe dameron #finn #star wars the last jedi #tsr #the sith resurgence

[swsequelsalt]

Rian Johnson and his production team:

#anti-tlj #anti-the last jedi #anti-star wars sequels #anti-disney star wars #star wars #the last jedi #:( #I'll die sad about it

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Every once in a while I remember that Rian Johnson invented Rose Tico because he originally had Finn (child soldier who was brought up with propaganda and any attempts at identity stomped out recently escaped the people that enslaved him) and Poe (child of the New Republic, grew up in peacetime) at Canto Bight together and saw no potential for conflict or real difference between them. And then I stare into the distance and contemplate what could have been.

#like in what universe does finn need to be the one being told slavery is bad? #dj: oh the republic also buys weapons they're just as bad as the first order #finn: my entire childhood would beg to differ you fuck #star wars #rebelfinn #poe dameron #anti the last jedi #anti tlj #don't want this to ruin anyone's dash if they actually like tlj #poe (canonically a huge leia fan): she's a friend of leia's from the rebellion of course we can trust her #finn (grew up in the first order under phasma): yeah i used to blindly follow orders even when they seemed wrong. it didn't end well.

[dragon-extinct]

@tragicfantasy-girl

Me: Anakin shouldn't have killed Tal Merrick.

You: Anakin did nothing wrong!

Me: there was no danger to keep him alive and he was to relax after taking a life, something a Jedi should never do, because they worship life.

You: Anakin did nothing wrong! And Ki-Adi, Ahsoka, Yoda and Obi-Wan did the same thing!

Me: It wasn't at all the same thing. Their circumstances were completely different. If you continue to say that Anakin did nothing wrong, then you admit he was too incompetent to not kill Merrick.

You: Anakin did nothing wrong!

if you say so

#stanakins really have the worst image of Anakin #didn't read your last reply #but it must be something like 'Anakin is the best! Obi-Wan is the worst' #'How dare Obi-Wan let a sLaVer be killed when he was tortured mentally and physically for days? Anakin suffered worse w/ Merrick' #pro jedi #anti anakin skywalker #anti anakin #anakin critical #the clone wars #pro-jedi #in defense of the jedi #star wars

[memingursa]

>Says this to Daisy Ridley

>Doesn’t even plot out the sequel trilogy while Daisy Ridley genuinely put in work in making Rey a charming character and had to deal with people hating her regardless

[Never any hate to Daisy Ridley she did not deserve that this is to point out JJ Abrams is a dumbass writer and director]

#star wars #daisy ridley #star wars the force awakens #star wars the last jedi #jj abrams #anti jj abrams #disney #star wars the rise of skywalker

[theweeklydiscourse]

i didnt understand why reylo got too much and i wish finnpoe should canon and i wish john should stop defend tros

When you look back at the way Reylo was received back in 2016-2019, the whole uproar it caused was kind a insane for such a tame ship. You would think that Rey and Kylo brutalized one another beyond recognition with the way people were describing it People seriously treated that ship like it was some kind of fandom bogeyman and it was an object of mockery and contempt for years. You had people calling Reylos abuse apologists, school shooter apologists, and “the sort of people who would endorse fascists” over a couple from a Disney franchise.

As for finnpoe, I really hate the fact that it never had a chance of being canon. And if that wasn’t enough, both Finn and Poe got respective love interests in TROS who both had about as much personality and charm as a cold slice of untoasted bread. TROS was an atrocity for many reasons and that one is certainly up there on the list.

I’m also still confused as to why John was so defensive of TROS when arguably it did him the worst out of all three movies. TFA gave him a strong character arc and TLJ had used that foundation to expand on Finn’s journey from storm trooper to a resistance hero. Obviously both movies weren’t perfect with how they handled his character, but they’re at least better than the movie where he was back to pining after Rey and getting a half- hearted “oh he was force sensitive all along!” reveal. It’s just very puzzling to witness him critique elements of the sequels that did a disservice to his character while at the same time, lauding the movie that did him the dirtiest.

#Star Wars #tros #tlj #anti tros #reylo #reylo fandom #the last jedi #rian johnson #finnpoe #stormpilot #the rise of skywalker #Rey #kylo ren #ben solo

[coldgoldlazarus]

Okay, I can't seem to find my old post about this for some reason so I'll just say it again instead of spending more time searching: I find it both hilarious and annoying that everyone thinks of The Last Jedi as pro-Reylo when it did its absolute best to put the nail in that coffin, so we could move on to bigger and better things. (Only for Rise Of Skywalker to reopen the coffin and revive it with bullshit necromancy the same way it dragged Palpatine back to life.)

#not a reblog #star wars #anti reylo #the last jedi #done wasting my time on this