What do you know? We don’t all have the luxury of deciding when and where we want to care about something. Suddenly the Rebellion is real for you. Some of us live it. I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old. You’re not the only one who lost everything. Some of us just decided to do something about it.
DIEGO LUNA as CASSIAN ANDOR in ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY | 2016
“I’m speaking to you from my heart. Look, I don’t know if I’m going to have a career after this, but fuck that. Today is about innocent people who were halfway through their process, we don’t know what George Floyd could have achieved, we don’t know what Sandra Bland could have achieved, but today we’re going to make sure that won’t be an alien thought to our young ones. Every black person in here remembered when another person reminded you that you were black. So none of you out there, all those protesters on the other side, protesting against what we want to do, protesting against what we want to try and achieve, burn you, this is so vital. I need you to understand how painful this shit is. I need you to understand how painful it is to be reminded every day that your race means nothing and that isn’t the case anymore, that was never the case anymore.” John Boyega at The Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park June 3rd 2020
The Last Jedi resolved the intrigue surrounding the heroine of this new sequel-trilogy, Rey, and her parentage with a gracefully simple, bold assertion: Rey is… just Rey. Not the daughter of some space aristocracy or legacy lineage, but a hero of her own making. […] That Rey’s parents were ordinary people meant anyone from anywhere could be born a hero; what determined a person’s place in the world was who they chose to be, rather than their last name. “Rey is our protagonist. And the truth is, in the story, the toughest possible thing for her to hear is, you know, you’re not gonna get the easy answer that you’re so-and-so’s daughter, this is your place,” [Rian] Johnson told me after The Last Jedi’s release. “You’re gonna have to stand on your own two feet and define yourself in this world.”
Instead of taking the baton from Last Jedi and running with it to new heights, The Rise of Skywalker retreats right back into the safety of nostalgia. […] It’s as if Abrams and Terrio scrambled for a loophole specifically to mollify the “fans” upset that this hero—worse, this girl—dared to wield such incredible abilities with only her own strength […] Bookending the saga Anakin began with the story of a girl from nowhere who sets right what he helped unbalance might have been resonant. But who cares for that when there’s another billion-dollar franchise to set up and potential spin-offs to tease?
— Melissa Leon, ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ Erases the Power of Rey’s Story and Surrenders to Sexist Trolls
the mandalorian b like i can leave my tiny baby in the car with the windows cracked where my gun closet passcode is 1234 and i regularly encounter criminals trying to kill my baby