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writeyouin · 4 years

Note

Tfa request #1: what is the thoughts of bumblebee/jet twins/ blurr/ sari ( when she’s a teen! ) who has a crush on a dorky yet kind hearted person and what is thier reaction of when they kiss s/o, she fainted or got a nosebleed...( this happened to me but I fainted =u=|| )

TFA X Reader Inserts – Blowing a Gasket

A/N – Hey anon, hope you had a good birthday. Here is a gift for you.

Warnings – None.

Rating – T

Bumblebee

“YEAH,” Bumblebee cheered, punching the air victoriously. He was the only one who had opted out of the nature walk that Prowl had planned, and without Sari who was with her father for the day, he was left alone with the video game console.

You had dropped by only a little earlier to see everyone and had opted to read your book until they all came back. Normally, you would have played something with Bumblebee, but he seemed to be enjoying the single player game so you had left him to it.

“Nice job,” You said, looking up at the screen and seeing that he had finally gotten the golden relic he was after.

“Nice job?” Bumblebee repeated cockily. “I think you mean that I’m the king of ALL videogames.”

You snickered, “That is so precious. You want to talk to me about being the best player, then come back when you’ve got a platinum relic.”

Bumblebee tutted, “Those are impossible. Nobody can win one.”

“Move over amateur,” You said, taking the controller from Bumblebee and moving the small bandicoot on screen onto a level you knew well.

Starting the time trial, you caused the character to jump, spin, crush boxes, and generally beat the score Bumblebee had set. By the end of the level, you were the proud owner of a platinum relic.

“NO WAY!” Bumblebee goggled at the screen. “HOW DID YOU DO THAT?”

You stretched victoriously, “Years of practice. You know, if you play the second game and jump on the head of the polar bear in warp room two ten times-”

Bumblebee tried to look as if he was hanging onto your every word while internally, he was freaking out. How had he never noticed how cute you were before? It was so obvious. Maybe you had a crush on him too? Wait- A CRUSH! Colour rose to Bumblebee’s face plates.

‘Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no. What if (s)he doesn’t feel the same? I need to know, right now. Why is (s)he still talking about the game? Can’t (s)he see what’s going on here?’

Unable to be patient and wait for an opportune moment wherein Bumblebee might learn if you had feelings for him, he dove at you, pressing his lips against yours, making you let out a muffled yelp.

Pulling away, Bumblebee stared at you, waiting for you to say something. Blood rushed to your face, turning it beet-red. You squeaked as blood started trickling from your nose.

“Primus!” Bumblebee screeched, jumping back.

“It’s okay,” You tried to explain, cupping your nose to catch the blood.

“HOW IS THIS OKAY? YOU’VE BLOWN A GASKET!”

Bumblebee practically drove off to get Ratchet, forgetting his comm-link in his panic. You meanwhile, were left to mop up your bloody nose and search for an explanation by the time Bumblebee came back; all in all, it wasn’t the smoothest first kiss.

The Jet Twins

Jetfire and Jetstorm were listening intently as you talked about the movies you were going to show them back at the base. You had a feeling they would like your old favourites as much as you did. The twins both loved that you took the time to teach them about Earth media and its origins. You were like a walking dictionary of what was cool and what wasn’t, yet if they liked a character or plot that you didn’t, you welcomed the new opinion.

The three of you came to a busy crossing where you had to wait for the traffic lights to change. As you chattered away, the twins gave a small nod to each other, indicating that it was time for something they had been planning since Megatron’s defeat.

Bending down to your height, they simultaneously kissed your cheeks. Afterwards, your head swivelled from Jetfire to Jetstorm, who were both grinning triumphantly.

“I- I- Uh-” You opened your mouth to say something more, but nothing came out. Instead, in a rush of nerves, you crumpled to the floor in a faint.

Jetstorm picked you up, watching you curiously, “Brother, I think she may have-”

“-overheated, yes it seems to being that way,” Jetfire finished his brother’s statement.

“Do you think her cooling fans are to be working?”

“I am thinking that human fans may be slower than ours, brother.”

“Let us be carrying her home then.

“Yes, lets.”

With that, the twins took turns to carry you home, each eager to hear what you thought of their kiss once your heating systems returned to optimal condition.

Blurr zipped back and forth in front of your house, waiting for you to come home. He had repeatedly run this one stretch of path for four hours; he’d been at it so long that the path was a mess of tire marks and scraped concrete. Far too anxious to stop for even one second, Blurr remained a prisoner of his thoughts, running to keep a hold of his sanity.

During the war, Blurr was only consumed with thoughts about the Decepticons. Now that those dark times were behind him, Blurr had time to think about other things… mainly you. He’d always known that he had liked you as a friend. You were one of the few people that could keep up with his fast mind and faster mouth after all. However, he had only realised that very day that he liked you.

Blurr hated the anxiety of wondering what you would think of him romantically. It made him erratic, like there was a swarm of scraplets living in his brain, threatening to tear him open from the inside out. There was really only one solution and that was to tell you how he felt; whether you accepted or rejected his affections, Blurr would at least have an answer and that would be enough.

Finally, Blurr saw you coming around the corner of your street. He rushed forward to you and started jabbering.

“(Y/N),IhaveromanticfeelingsforyouandIthinkyoumayreturnthemifyoujustgivemeachance.Itdoesn’tmatterthatwe’refromtwodifferentspeciesifwedon’tletitmatter,therehavebeenweirdercouplesinthepast.Whati’mtryingtosayiswillyougooutwithme?”

You stared blankly at Blurr. Usually, you were able to keep pace with his fast talking but there was no way to understand the fast-paced speech he had just given you.

“Excuse me, what?” You asked, dumbfounded.

Panicked by the prospect of repeating himself over such a delicate manner, Blurr pressed his lips quickly against yours, pulling away just as fast to stare at you.

Only a few seconds later, blood started dripping down your nose. Blurr was sure he had hurt you, and cursed himself for his behaviour, starting a rant about human fragility, though you only caught snippets.

“BLURR!” You shouted exasperatedly, surprised that the usually confident bot was so nervous now. “I’m fine, it’s just a little nosebleed. I- I like you too.”

Blurr, somewhat exhausted from the override of emotions flopped onto the floor. After cleaning your nose up, you laid down next to him and the two of you relished a few minutes of calm, each momentarily lost for words.

Sari

You and Sari walked through the park on the way to meet the Autobots for a game of improvised baseball. As you talked, you noticed how subdued Sari was. She hadn’t been herself all day; clearly something was on her mind.

“A penny for your thoughts?” You asked, drawing her attention back to you.

Sari sighed, then forced a smile, “It’s nothing (Y/N), don’t worry about it. I guess I’m just distracted.”

“C’mon Sari, something’s bugging you. You may as well talk about it. I won’t judge, whatever it is.”

“I know you won’t. It’s just… I was thinking about by dad.” That first sentence seemed to unlock a flood-gate as Sari began spilling her guts, “I just worry that one day Megatron might want him back. What if he decides to take him again? My dad is totally defenceless, and he could end up building something way worse than a space-bridge. I get that it’s not likely, but I still worry, y’know?”

“Hey,” You said, grabbing Sari’s hand reassuringly. “It’s all gonna be okay. No more bad stuff is gonna happen to you, but if it did, then you’ll have the Autobots to help out, and me as well, even if I can’t punch Megadork through a wall.”

Sari giggled, and smiled at you. You always knew what to say. She only wished she had a way to show you how much you meant to her. Blushing at the idea that just crossed her mind, Sari kissed you before she could lose her nerve.

As soon as her lips left yours, you let out a nervous croak, fainting soon after. Sari stood over you for a minute.

“Hmm.” She prodded you a few times in a small attempt at waking you up. “That didn’t go exactly how I planned.”

She called the Autobots to let them know that she would be late to the baseball game due to an ‘unexpected delay,’ and then she laid down on the grass next to you, awaiting the moment you would regain consciousness.

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ashasdramadrawer · 3 years

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Ouch, what if

Start out with a huge plot hole.

Here’s the thing- the big divergence is meant to happen because Carter doesn’t go up to the room with the rest of the people observing.

Ok. Carter says in the lab.

Why did the rest of the observers? Why would they want to stay when they could sit down and be safe? None of that makes sense? The point was to kill Erskine to deny the use of the serum to the allies after figuring out if it worked?

Yeah. Makes no sense to me.

1. Hydra needed to know if the serum worked, which is why the spy guy didn’t blow things up earlier. He wouldn’t want to be caught up in the blast.

2. He was meant to steal it and kill Erskine. This explosion? Too early, and he could have killed himself while doing it.

3. No blood where Steve is shot. And ignoring Steve’s canonical chronic illnesses.

They’re doing their best to give Carter and Rogers time alone to bond. Which they did not canonically have. Nice.

They fuck up the timeline because Red Skull got the tesseract well before Operation Rebirth by the scale of a few years- it was the entire reason that Hydra’s tech was lightyears ahead of the Allies/what Stark understood. That tech was being used by the spy to escape the sabotage on Project Rebirth. So. Weird.

They’re showing Carter as being far stronger than MCU Steve Rogers with the serum. More on par with Ultimates Cap, maybe?

And... ok. So, the BIG difference in the story is Red Skull finding the tesseract late. This also makes no sense for her to have gotten it so early because it was hidden in the Alps, WITH Zola, well before Steve got to the European theater. How did she even get to Europe anyways?

... so the entire story of TFA is subverted (because it was ABOUT the tesseract itself and what Red Skull was doing with it) by them getting it early. I. I know What If stories tend to be full of holes because they don’t follow logically from, like, anything, but really? THIS is how you decide to turn Steve into Bucky to follow Carter into the fight? And how they keep Bucky from being experimented on by Zola?

And! Notably missing is Jim Morita, and in a non-speaking role is Falsworth and Gabe Jones (Who was Peggy Carter’s OG husband in the comics!) And all the Howlies are in costume when they’re freed!

And, annoyingly, the only woman we see IS Peggy Carter. Literally. Just Peggy.

Only person who is not white is the blink-and-you-miss-it cameo of Gabe Jones.

Ah, the infamous Thirteen Letters quote. Yeah. It really doesn’t fit here unless they were really, REALLY trying to steal from stucky.

There is an argument to be made that the earlier scenes, before the train, were NOT meant to parallel all of the stucky scenes from TFA. Until you get to this one. And it is blatantly a ripoff that moment, which is one of the most tragic and romantic scenes in the movie.

... nice. Peggy just tortured a prisoner of war. Never saw Steve do that.

HEY! There’s the back of Morita’s head! AND a brief glance at his face! Cool!

Still no women other than Peggy. Still no speaking roles to characters who aren’t white.

I just realized where the second half plot comes from- this is a remix of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes introduction to Cap story “Meet Captain America”. The big climactic fight was in a castle where Baron Zemo was opening a portal to somewhere.

Peggy, you suck at plans.

Okay, honest question: Why is Steve still alive? They had him for days, and they really didn’t need him. Why was he just laying on the floor and doing nothing? He should have been, if he was alive, restrained somehow.

And now they’re charging up his suit with... random electricity. Ok then.

Ok- I know you can show stuff in a cartoon that you can’t do with IRL stuff easily, but Carter is WAY OP.

I’ve never seen a version of someone with the Super Soldier Serum doing what she’s doing. Even the other versions of Cap didn’t do that.

*shrugs* Is it amusing? Yeah, especially if you’re a Peggy fan. Does it crib really, REALLY heavily on taking all of the stucky tropes and putting them on steggy to make the ship viable? And is the timeline a goddamn mess?

Yup.

Our one POC speaker was a Nick Fury cameo at the end. No women other than Peggy spoke at all. Yeah.

That’s. Irksome.

Listen, at least Wonder Woman had the entire amazon nation, and a handful of female characters in the background and crowd. I literally saw NO OTHER FEMALE CHARACTERS than Carter, save for the nurses taking her blood. And I don’t want to even think about what that could mean.

It is a conspiracy theory to feel like this entire episode was meant as a way to kill stevebucky. But.

I can’t say its wrong?

The entire story doesn’t revolve around Peggy’s choice. That’s the premise, but it’s a false one. It revolves around a group of men deciding to not go sit upstairs, where they had every reason to be. They had no reason to follow Peggy’s lead there. In fact, most of them had been on their way there, if not in the room, in tFA. There was no reason for the bombing to have gone differently if she was staying in the main room. The other big difference was a timeline fuckup, which was not affected by what Peggy decided to do- when Red Skull got the tesseract. He got it sometime after Erskine was rescued, but it was well before Project Rebirth started. That is the big difference here. Not something Peggy did.

So yeah. I think this whole thing was meant as a way to kill stevebucky as a ship.

But there’s no reason to think that Steve and Bucky didn’t get to grow old together, either. So maybe a win?

#mcu salt #what if..?

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ilonga · 4 years

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rise of skywalker and sequels salt time, y’all

things I’m salty about in the rise of skywalker and the star wars sequels, in no particular order:

- Finn was sidelined

- FINN WAS SIDELINED

- he was such an interesting character with so much potential (a stormtrooper who deserted!! pretty sure that was the first time we’d ever seen that!!), and it was all ignored and he was turned into background noise for what?? kylo ren??

- seriously! after TFA, the movies should have explored his backstroy! we should have seen his stormtrooper past affect him!! maybe a stormtrooper revolution!! he should have had a CHARACTER ARC!

- also his force-sensitivity being turned into a joke and comic relief was frankly insulting

- they could have done so many things with that side of the character (even though it was kind of out of nowhere)! parallels between finn and rey, finn questioning his identity, the whole a former stormptrooper being force sensitive thing should have been explored!

- Poe was sidelined

- Poe was a spice runner for no reason?? 1) isn’t that a rude stereotype, and 2) Poe is not Han Solo 2.0!! he was his own, different character!

- Finn/Poe didn’t happen

- gonna be salty about that forever, though I guess I saw it coming :( (it’s disney, what did I expect?)

- but they gave Poe a straight love interest that we’d never heard of before this movie and who he had like two lines of dialogue with just to rub it in?? like, really?

- they completely forgot Rose existed

- like, listen, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the finnrose kiss either, but you can’t just pretend it didn’t happen and hope everyone forgets about it

- and sure, rose’s introduction and character in TLJ was a bit clumsy

- BUT YOU CAN’T JUST IGNORE HER AND PRETEND SHE DIDN’T HAPPEN

- she had a lot of potential as a character, and interesting backstory, a practical pragmatic personality, and a lot of ways she could play off the other characters

- TROS could have been where we saw Rose grow as a character and really shine

- instead, she was forgotten

- ugh

- REY PALPATINE WAS THE DUMBEST FRICKING THING OKAY--

- like, first of all, palpatine coming back for some reason somehow was the most ridiculous direction this movie could have gone and didn’t work, at all

- their enemy for the first TWO MOVIES was the First Order and Kylo Ren

- they had a huge moment in TLJ where the Resistance is steadily being destroyed and they won’t last long against the First Order

- now they’re supposed to take on the First Order and a now-supposedly-immortal emperor palpatine who has a collection of unmanned star destroyers he can control for some reason??

- both of them at once? the resistance is barely alive as is, now you’re adding an OP extra army + sith lord to the mix?

- I mean, this is ridiculous. Palpatine’s dead. Anakin’s big sacrifice in return of the jedi was KILLING palpatine. now he’s back, and the resistance somehow realises he’s back and decides he’s enemy #1 now?

- how did the resistance find out a dead sith lord came back to life on a remote planet anyways?

- and WHAT ABOUT, YOU KNOW, THE FIRST ORDER? AND KYLO REN?

- Kylo Ren, who they finally decided was going to be the main villain in TLJ (even with that stupid “rey trying to redeem the mass murderer” plot going on in the background), and now they don’t have the guts to commit to making him evil (which he was for the LAST TWO MOVIES AND THE MAJORITY OF TROS)

- so, since they weren’t committed enough to make Kylo a villain like he actually was and didn’t have the groundwork for a redemption, they just decided to ignore the fact that he was evil and hope it would go away

- like, are we going to forget that he literally MURDERED HIS DAD, HAN SOLO

- or that he and his first order destroyed a whole SYSTEM OF PLANETS? filled with billions of innocent people?

- he personally tortured Poe, he personally tortured Rey, and he was complicit in a system that kidnapped Finn, took him from his family, and brainwashed him

- not to mention that one of the opening scenes of TROS was him literally massacring people

- but no!! it’s all fine now, bc he looked at his dad’s ghost a little sadly and got a new lightsaber color

- like, no. he isn’t “redeemed” because he’s decided he has the hots for rey. heck, that makes it even worse. he’s been trying to manipulate her for all three movies, he’s gaslighted her, he’s threatened her, he’s hurt the people she cares about. NONE OF THAT IS OKAY. and it’s even less okay that all of his evil deeds can be written off because rey’s “”love”” for him “healed” him or whatever the fuck they want us to think

- and why would they have Rey HEAL him? after SHE stabbed him? in what universe does that make sense?? even if rey didn’t defeat him fairly bc he was distracted or whatever, this is still the supreme leader of the army rey and the rebels are trying to defeat. like, rey, are you a part of the resistance or not? it doesn’t matter if he was “nicer” to you than the rest of the rebels. He’s still your ENEMY. Your “”empathy”” here helps no one, least of all yourself. Kylo Ren dead would have been a massive victory for the resistance--maybe they’d even have had a chance against the first order then! you know, the first order? the enemy you were fighting for the last two movies?

- is this the message you want to be sending to young girls in the audience? that it’s ok if their partner hurts them, hurts other people, is a bad person in general, because their love can “”heal”” him? and that eventually, he’ll turn good if you just try hard enough?

- this is how people wind up in abusive relationships!! that shit is NOT okay

- and the kiss is ridiculous for the same reasons. you don’t owe kylo ren anything, rey. Not in the least for “rescuing” from a situation that was pretty much created bc of him. He’s the one who teamed up with palpatine at the beginning of the movie, remember?

- sometimes I feel like this movie forgot that kylo ren is, you know, a bad person, which the other two movies spent their entire runtime showing us

- like darth vader’s sacrifice was one thing. first of all, it was for his son, his child, and secondly, vader was very much under the power of the emperor and debatably had the mindset of a slave

- kylo ren, on the other hand, was completely under his own power. HE was making the choices, and calling the shots. HE murdered Snoke. And he died for a girl he was manipulating and gaslighting constantly and that he didn’t have much of a connection to other than “the force”

- like, darth vader’s “”redemption”” definitely wasn’t perfect either. you can argue that him killing the emperor and sacrificing him self to save his son didn’t negate any of his actions or him being a bad person. but it was definitely more meaningful and better handled.

- and let’s talk about rey

- I will forever be bitter that rey didn’t get a meaningful character arc and character growth

- which is so disappointing because she was SUCH an interesting (& mysterious) character with so much potential in TFA

- I feel like, in making her palpatine, which was pretty out of nowhere and contrary to the last jedi, they were so busy trying to fit her heritage into the movie in a way that sort of made sense that they forgot to make the movie about her growing as a character and person

- couldn’t they at least have given her her own lightsaber?

- I mean, her being a palpatine is already ridiculous because since when does palpatine have a son? (clone, whatever) And since when did that son have some sort of epic struggle where he refuses to join palpatine and runs away? and when did that son find someone he fell in love with, and have a daughter? and then subsequently abandon her, a seven-ish year old, on a dangerous desert planet? (I mean, wasn’t palpatine dead by then anyways?)

- it just doesn’t fit with the already established star wars universe. we already know palpatine’s story (well, not the beginning of it, but enough). It was movies 1-6, clone wars, and rebels. if he had had a son that had a luke-esque struggle against the darkside, it would have shown up.

- it just doesn’t fit

- but anyways, back to rey

- I guess they were trying to give her some luke-style struggle where she struggles with her heritage and a pull to the darkside that she has to ultimately triumph over? but it doesn’t work

- one, because she never HAS any struggle with the dark side. shooting lightning out of your fingers out of nowhere doesn’t count (and wasn’t that a ridiculous scene. it was more comical than anything else, which is definitely not what they were going for)

- a struggle with the darkside is about being tempted to give into anger, fear, and hatred, and struggling not to do the wrong things and turn evil. In luke’s story, we SAW that. we also saw luke’s horror and eventual acceptance of his heritage, which we never really saw with rey. It was just like, “okay, guess I’m a palpatine?” and it wasn’t nearly as impactful bc palpatine had been dead for the past thirty-ish years. as a contrast, vader was a living and very present villain who the heroes had to contend with, and it was personal for most of them.

- so I guess they tried to make that her character arc, but it didn’t work. so we were left with a stale character who didn’t really have any meaningful victories or losses.

- is she really a “”mary sue”” like everyone’s claiming if they never really made the story about her?

- I think that was the biggest thing that was so unsatisfying about the sequels

- she was hyped up to be the first real mainstream female jedi protagonist (obviously clone wars got there first, but movies are definitely more mainstream than a show, sorry cw :( ), but she never really got a journey, struggles, or real triumphs. which is such a shame because she was this really empowering character in TFA that I was so excited to see more! but her trilogy-wide character arc just wasn’t satsifying

- I wanted to see her really struggle, and rise above her struggles! I wanted her to have meaningful triumphs!

- also I don’t think she ever got injured either, which is definitely a deviation from the star wars trilogy pattern. that’s kinda strange. (luke lost his hand & got electrocuted, han got frozen in carbonite, leia got tortured & shot, anakin got, well, a LOT of injuries, but even before becoming darth vader w/ the foregone conclusion, he had his arm cut off, padme was pretty heavily injured on genosis, and obi-wan was injured in the fight against dooku)

- yup

- also the sith wayfinder was kinda dumb, and I never felt like there were real stakes in TROS

- and let’s address the rey skywalker thing: ok, fine, I get what they were trying to say, kind of

- and I’m not foaming at the mouth about it like some people are. I’m fairly indifferent

- but it would have been a lot more meaningful if rey had had like, a really close, deep relationship with Leia and Luke, so she could say that she and they considered her a skywalker

- but she didn’t have that sort of relationship with them, not really. Sure, she and leia were friends on-screen, but that was it. and luke didn’t really seem to like her all that much.

- so like, “meh”

- especially since Leia’s technically a Solo or an Organa, so that line working really relied on her relationship with Luke, which wasn’t strong enough

- yea, so that’s that

- the “jedi voices” scene was pretty cool though (AAAAH AHSOKA!! AND ANAKIN!! AND ALL THE OTHER JEDI!!), and I liked her yellow lightsaber (although she could have built her own lightsaber at the BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE, instead of carrying luke’s the whole time)

there are things I like about the sequels, mind you. a lot of things!! but there’s a lot I was disappointed in too.

congrats if you got this far, that was a LOT of salt

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shikai-the-storyteller · 4 years

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I absolutely didn’t go back through and edit this at all and hardly any of this is verbatim but I tried to take notes on some of what Mae Catt said during her stream if anyone is interested!

EDIT: Here’s a cleaner post with most of the Q&A.

She says she doesn’t want to yuck anybody’s yums re: ships. She seems Arcee and Grimlock more as friends, but she didn’t say they can’t be in a relationship

They fell in love with Perceptor so they wanted him on the “End of the World fighting the Quintessons” team

They had to dedicate a lot of effort into Dead End b/c it takes time to send in info for modeling a character and deciding on their alt mode

She was pitching Obsidian from Beast Machines really hard. She didn’t know what his personality would be it was just a “Look how cool he is!” sort of thing

Thought it’d be fun to have someone pessimistic like Dead End be on the team

“According to us, Drift did not make it, but I fully endorse whatever you want”

“The brand team had grown up on the toys as we had grown up on the toons, so we just wanted to make the best thing imaginable.” That’s nice

Rodimus was never considered for the show “it’s been covered to death”, but they were adamant about portraying Hot Rod as someone who wanted to be a leader

Hot Rod is someone who is learning to be a leader

“Please don’t tell JRO I forgot about Whirl” re: talking about why they chose each character for the “Anti-Quintesson” team

Q: Re: Why did Drift try to kill Roddy A: They said they needed a double-agent and they needed someone who would (seemingly) kill Hot Rod

She loves that Optimus is just trying so hard to rebuild Cybertron, I just want society to start rebuilding

Q: Since you mentioned Optimus's death... he didn't seem to have a plinth in "our" Matrix realm. Does that mean the list of Primes works differently? Like are the 13 more of a dynasty, rather than all being a group together? A: They decided Optimus would be in the Alt! Universe matrix because they wanted to show he was dead. Logical backflips because he needed to be among the 13 to talk to Windblade.

She says Starscream’s death hurt her most

They didn’t want to kill people off willy-nilly for shock value

"The audience will fall in love with Slipstream so she has to die" LMAO

She almost wanted Starscream to emerge from the Judge heads untouched but she’s ultimately glad that idea got shot down

Dead End’s eyes are white

She’d love to have a MTMTE Magnus / Minimus included. She wished and prayed to have Frenzy and Rumble

They wanted Jazz to be a lady!!!!!!!

These characters are like grown ups (kinda) with their own lives that we don’t see. Lots of stuff happening between episodes

“Rumble and Frenzy are always considered in my heart, but there wasn’t enough time or space or assets to do so”

“Alt Soundwaves also had their own Laserbeaks. I wonder if the scientist would’ve taken them out. He might’ve just gotten rid of them.”

“A lot of intelligent life is inherently mechanical” explaining why so much of the life we saw in the show were robots

She would’ve liked to have the other shows show up (TFP, TFA, G1, Shattered Glass) but they don’t have those assets or budget. “This will quickly become unclear to audiences who aren’t (you people).” They couldn’t have all these references when some of their audience wouldn’t get it

“Why does anyone collect what they collect? That’s a really angry dad who’s got five children and he plays music. Gotta have that” --re: the Scientist and Soundwave

Knock Out was considered but every Transformer under the sun was discussed at some point in the Writer’s room.

Developing Sky-Byte’s character was simultaneous with Jetfire’s character, "We knew we wanted Sky-Byte to be a poet, and we wanted him and Megatron to be chummy”

From the getgo they didn’t want any humans distracting from the Transformers

Q: Is Megatron dead? A: “In discussions we wanted to kill him. Wanted to do a reverse Optimus death. However, in the final product, I kinda enjoy the ambiguity rather than the final decision. Can’t remember if we were decisive about that in the script.”

She wanted them to have IDW Tarn in there “OBVIOUSLY (the perfect decepticon) should look like this guy. A faceless mindless Decepticon that only serves Megatron”

Q: Is Dead End a good boyfriend? A: Dead End is a work in progress, but maybe Percy is patient enough to get him there

Q: Is Astrotrain a good boyfriend?” A: “No, no...he’s not a good person, really”

“When I was desperately trying to save Starscream’s life even though I brutally murdered Slipstream--” LMAO She wanted Starscream to have amnesia and she says she wanted to have a redeption arc. She wanted him to have a Windblade shard and have it be kind of like Castaway, where he only talked to it (and the shard only had 5 phrases it could say) and eventually Bee would befriend him Wanted to write Starscream as an abuse victim who expected the worse of the Autobots, but she wanted him to warm up slowly

Wanted a Starscream and Optimus episode where he’s like “you did your best and that’s what counts”

Q: Is Percy a good boyfriend A: “Absolutely--WAIT HOLD ON. He’s very blunt, he doesn’t mince words, if you can handle his bluntness then you’re good. He is what he is and you have to deal with him.”

Q: Is Soundwave a good boyfriend? A: Soundwave is not a good boyfriend. He’s a good casual romance but he’s not a good boyfriend. Soundwave would be a terrible listener. He hears a lot but he’d tune you out.

Percy did permanently take over Mac’s bar

She really wanted Obsidian and Transmutate to be in the show.

If Thunderclash was in the show he and Jetfire would HATE each other. Thunderclash would be a rival reality star (maybe) to Media Fire

Fave Episode was “I Am the AllSpark” b/c of that Megatron and Starscream dialogue Also S2 04 Soundwave and Shockwave

Transmutate would be more like the uprising version (?) but modeled more on the BeastWars version

The Starscream & Megatron beatdown was super severe and they were like “holy frick they’re really going for it” when they saw the boards for it

She likes the Windblade / Slipstream ship

Her favorite VA is Jeremy Levy, he’s a really cool guy

She thinks Starscream and Cheetor could become (not necessarily friends, but connected?) because of their connection to the All Spark

Describes Starscream as an “Awful gremlin” several times

They say Megatron didn’t actually kill Starscream, just really beat him down hard

“Don’t take things I say as the end all be all”

She doesn’t think Bee would be a Prime, Windblade and Hot Rod would be a better Prime. He wouldn’t want to be a Prime. He’s the #2 to Primes!

With unlimited budget combiners could’ve been included, but it doesn’t seem like they thought about it

Astrotrain and the Insecticons are from Megatron X’s universe

Megatron’s priorities changed when he saw his doppelganger. Realizing he was a horrible tyrant, that scared him enough to return and not kill Optimus and make peace no matter what.

She thinks Cliffjumper and Bee wouldn’t get along, solely because of the IDW2 comic stuff

Got 26 episodes for season 3 because they got the 4-part movies

Megatron cares about his troops but not in a way that we would notice that care

Wasn’t a HUGE die-hard TF fan when she got into the series but she was a bigger GI Joe fan, she reread a bunch of things and did a lot of research

Cut joke: S2 E5 Megatron and OP finds the All Spark Decepticons and Autobots popping all over the world, Soundwave pops into Brazil where there’s a music festival and he’d crash the concert and hang out. He likes EDM the most?

The Titans want to be cities. They want citizens. They want to be lived in, that brings them joy (ouch)

Q: How did the Decepticons learn to stream? A: Because they’re deceptive! He knew he should dedicate some time to winning the hearts and minds of humans. Starscreams’ funeral was not the first time they streamed Optimus would use the official media channels, not a streaming service. Megatron would try to speak more directly to the people.

From the conception, the show wasn’t going to have humans

She thought people would ship Dead End / Percy but it wasn’t until she saw art that she started shipping them

Q: Is Optimus the type of streamer who would take 10 minutes to figure out how to un-mute his microphone A: Optimus is a dad. He has no idea what’s going on re: streaming. Optimus would say embarrassing news while Bee and Hot Rod are in the middle of streaming

Doesn’t ship Bee with anyone, she sees him as a little brother

Randolph put Rack ‘n Ruin in the show.

AcidStorm is genderfluid

Cold Construction doesn’t exist in this show. Maybe there’s one jet mode all the seekers really like

We have Mae Catt to thank for Whirl

Percy didn’t transform because not a good time to turn into a microscope while you’re trying to save your planet from Quintessons

If she were a transformer she’d want to be a stealth bomber. She’s 5′3 so she says she’d probably actually be a motorcycle like Chromia

They killed Prowl because it was Shadow Striker doing the killing and he’s a self-sacrificing lieutenant.

Enjoyed writing Starscream most, Clobber and Hot Rod became a joy, S2 E4 was her first one, it was fun getting into Hot Rod’s voice. She said it was hard doing Optimus’ voice, she’d always pass it off to someone to look at it.

She loves the idea of Wild Wheel robbing Astrotrain in train-mode, totally wild west-style

One of her proudest things was turning Lugnut into a gal

They wanted to include more female characters

They love Cosmos, she has a little toy of him. R2D2 but a transformer! They loved having her in the show

Blurr really was the fastest

Maccadam looking like a buff Rung was just a strange coincidence

Q: Megop rights? A: “Oh absolutely, duh”

Says we absolutely SHOULD write fanfic. Fanfiction made her into the writer she is today, she says you should write it

There’s a lot between episodes, people living their lives and characters living on the ship that don’t pop up in the show

She wrote non-stop Matrix fanfic from 12-20 years old, she learned a lot thanks to writing fanfic

Uses “They” pronouns for Rack ‘n Ruin but they both use “he”

Sad that Skywarp didn’t get a speaking line

Re: Starscream’s redemption arc: She wanted Starscream to have amnesia if they went the “he comes out of the ruins of the judge totally fine”. “A redemption arc needs to be facilitated by a character acknowledging that what they did was wrong. He would have a laundry list of excuses for everything, even if there was all that evidence to the contrary, but needs to acknowledge that reasons don’t matter because people got hurt. Needs to intend to do better. Let them try and let them fail, they don’t need to 180, it’s hard work to be a better person.”

Shadow Striker is taller than Optimus or is his height. She loves the gender-neutral designs for a lot of characters

She’s not going to say whether Ratchet finished medical school or not Laughed at the "i don't believe that man has ever been to medical school" comment

Q: How would you feel about a female Optimus Prime? A: [GAY LAUGHTER] “So do you turn Optimus Prime into a woman, or do you take characters like Elita One and uplift her? I would want to lean more into giving Elita One more oomph, I do love how Optimus doubts himself and if he’s worthy of being a Prime.”

Says Rack ‘n Ruin are probably the Prime in that one weird universe lmao

Loves the idea that Transformers have siblings / families

She doesn’t think Cybertronians celebrate birthdays. “Why would you celebrate being alive for 4 million years that sounds like a nightmare.” She says that people would be celebrating milestones if nothing else

She’d kill to have Perceptor meet the other stunticons

She says she doesn’t post fanfic as much anymore. Sends them to Natalie as love letters (Ghost Busters fics specifically)

In a world where you had unlimited budget it’d be fun if Cybertronians were constantly shape-shifting and changing their forms, they’d like having Transformers who “grew a beard” and decided to “shave it”

Re: Ratchet and Medical school: she wants a “I choose to believe Ratchet has never been to medical school” shirt

Natalie (her GF) said hi

She doesn’t understand cycles or astrocycles, she doesn’t understand the weird Transformers time stuff. (mood)

Natalie explained how ghost traps work and it was a delight "You're basically making a pocket dimension, that's how you capture ghosts" “The Technology for a ghost trap is like magic and science”

Maecatt's bringing all her TF toys over to the camera

Q: Elita prime when? A: All the time, in my heart!

Q: Why are you so mean to Percy? A: He's so mature and pragmatic that he can take it, and is willing to take one for the team bc he understands that it's what he needs to do. Yes, he’s calmly feral.

Yes to the hurt/comfort Deadceptor fanfic joke answer

She jokingly says she's willing to buy Cyberverse fanart prints

“Arcee was fun to figure out because there’s an extra bit of pressure to develop a female character, there is extra pressure to do it well since it’s representing a different community (not that women are different species) more representation is needed. “What kind of woman can our Arcee be?”” Scared to write her poorly, but they realized she could be a fun dynamic duo with Grimlock, someone who could keep up with him, not a “girl” version of him, but someone who could stand on her own two feet

Collecting Soundwave because Soundwave is COOL. Wouldn’t you collect a single father of 5 who carries them around in his chest?

Shockwave altered his vibes to have maximum bad vibes to destroy the All Spark

Rebooting the franchise: she’d maybe do beast wars or something

Skullcruncher is a lady! She misses Mac but Percy takes good care of her

She loved Beast Wars Inferno, she loved that Inferno called Megatron a Queen. It was played as a joke because the 90s weren’t very socially conscious, but she liked that Megatron never corrected him or beat him down

She wanted to have Lightbright and Nickle in the show

"Maybe Drift is alive, maybe he's rethinking his decision and he'll come back later"

She said it's hard talking about writing a show because you're designing the experience and you have to make sometimes what sounds like cold and pragmatic decisions (eg: "we need a cold and spunky female") which sucks, but they need to balance out the show. She says she'd never do that just for the sake of doing it, but it's part of something that they do need to be aware of while working on a show “Starts from a weirdly cold pragmatic place, but we try and put truth in it”

Q: Is Skullcruncher Percy's bouncer now that he's running Maccadam's? A: Oh totally

She felt bad about the writing thing because she says "you could throw a rock in California and you'd hit a writer / director or whatever" but she says she really likes being an authority on things now, even if it’s weird

She said Drift would've been helpful in S3 for sure, maybe he'd come up with Repugnis

Q: If Tarn is the perfect Decepticon who's the perfect Autobot A: Someone with a Firetruck alt mode, Autobot insignia as a face. Nat and her talked about it a lot. She says Optimus SHOULD be a fire truck, it makes the relationship between him and Ratchet a little more fun since Ratchet is an ambulance, and Optimus has an AX. It just makes sense! She agreed that the perfect Autobot would be Thunderclash after the chat said that

“If you put the proverbial budget-gun to my head, I’d keep Unicron in planet-mode because it’s more mysterious, but I want both alt modes”

Her favorite Megatron is Beast Wars Megatron

They didn’t want to go the Unicron route because everyone goes that route

Q: What sort of documents DID Optimus work on in the archives? A: Probably historical archives and working on all the Primes. Something like the French / American revolution equivalent, which informed his speech writing for Megatron and his own ethics. (NICE)

She doesn’t like Sky Lnxy’s design, it’s creepy. “He talks in the G1 episodes and the voice makes it worse.” She can’t get over his face

“Found” the social awkwardness for Optimus. Optimus depicted as a father figure in S1 because it’s from Bee’s perspective, S2 / S3 they were able to explore more and found the limits and found it was hard to maintain that level of heroic dialogue. Optimus would feel awkward about it too. Randolph did an impression of Optimus’ speech. “He can’t not be in war-mode” :(

Q: Were Optimus and Megatron friends ever, or did they just work together on the speech stuff? A: Oh hell yes, I think [the story] is always enhanced when they’re friends and when Optimus really believes in what Megatron was working on. Optimus’ rejection of Megatron is what pushes him over the edge, his best friend rejecting him pushes him into a place where he becomes a tyrannical person.

Q: Does Maccadam know we love him? A: *puts hand over heart and looks into the distance* Yes

“Who knows where Dead End ended up” then backtracks and says “Wait that sounds flippant”

Soundwave’s favorite Earth song is Despacito

Q: What's the best selfie Arcee's ever taken A: Mae Catt loves the one with the giraffe. She likes the idea of Arcee having a bunch of human friends

Q: What do the Transformers think of the Florida Man? A: They can’t really tell the difference between humans, they don’t really get it. It just sorta looks like all the normal stuff they see on Earth (or something)

Q: Who's the Florida Man of the Transformers A: Rack ‘n Ruin or Skybyte. But he’s too nice hmmm.

Leaned into the wackiness of Wheeljack because of the VA

Q: What does Optimus do when he's not giving speeches / being a leader when they were all hanging out on the ARK? A: I think he reads, he seems like a heavy reader. It’d be cute if he read really bad Earth romance novels. He seems like a guy who needs a break from everything.

Q: Does Optimus have hobbies? A: Not to borrow from Rung, but doesn’t it seem like Optimus would make model ships? Very quiet, very focused detail-oriented hobby. Oh duh, he also plays basketball.

“I’d love to see more jets [who aren’t our usual gang] and find out all jets are kinda snobby”. Kaon and Tarn would be fun, it’d be cool to make up places.

(Someone asking if Optimus would read 50 Shades of Gray, someone else saying “They’d take it the wrong way because Transformers turn gray when they die”)

Everyone on the Autobot side are friends with each other.

Q: Does Megatron do anything for fun or is he too angry? A: I want to say he’s too angry, he has fun beating people down but I don’t think he’s had fun for a long time

Q: Were you surprised that Jake Tillman was in his 20s listening to his Optimus the first time? A: Jake Tillman was a vine-r she listened to a ton. She’d heard him when he was in his teens

MaeCatt loves that Shadow Striker saved Windblade’s body and kept her safe

Q: what was most important to you personally to put out in each episode? like humor/characterization/arcs A: Wanted to make sure she didn’t write dialogue that was condescending, wanted to be true about the character. Needs to be true to the characters (and gay)

Transformers probably don’t know what memes are. They know what they ARE, but they don’t get it. They wanted Hot Rod to be super into Earth culture (winning races and driving off before humans could realize no one was in the car), but they never had time to really get into that.

Wound up in the Cyberverse writer’s room thanks to her agents, says she was the only person who gave a crap about GI Joe stuff, the executives were so sweet and let her chat, and they said she wasn’t a good fit for the current live action project so they sent her to the animation side, they sent her to Michael Howzer and they hit it off talking about GI Joe stuff. She was a post PA, someone who helped editors finish things for TV, got a call with an offer.

#i talk #Cyberverse #Mae Catt #I'm watching Cyberverse #Transformers #Cyberverse Spoiler /#Primordial Robot hell

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unexpectedreylo · 4 years

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Closing Arguments For Reylo

After it seems like we’ve spent a year anticipating this movie--from the film wrap in February to the teaser trailer in April to the Vanity Fair stuff in June to the D23 trailer at the end of August to the Road To TROS stuff to this final trailer and the onslaught of press for the film--we’re finally in the home stretch.

Who will live? Who will die? Will Reylo ride off into the sunset, a HEA at last for a Star Wars couple, will it end in tragedy or worse yet, will it end in a vague incoherent muddle? After all, no fairy tale ends with “they lived ambiguously ever after.”

I think we’re all going to be nervous sitting in the theater come Dec. 18-20 because whether we believe “leaks” or not, we’re just not going to know for sure until we see the film. I’m almost as nervous about their misusing/under-using Adam in this film as I am about the filmmakers blowing Reylo.

Yet of all of the sequel films, I’m the most confident about this one going in. This is the last film in this story and it’s not going to end with the message that the Skywalker family was somehow a mistake or some curse upon the galaxy that needed to be eliminated, while the few positive aspects about the Skywalkers are handed off to Rey because she’s such a nice girl. It’s not going to end like Romeo and Juliet. It’s not going to end without redemption for Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. The final chapter in the series is not only going to redeem him but everyone else who screwed up before him. It’s going to end this conflict and a Jedi Order 2.0 is going to arise. There will be a big party at the end. It will give you cavities and possibly blood sugar spikes.

As far as I’m concerned, Rey and Ben being together--in LOVE--is an integral part of that happy ending. Cinderella gets her prince. Beauty finds true love with the man who had been the Beast. Anastasia marries Christian Grey and has a baby. There’s just no such thing as a heroine who cheerfully ends up without her lover and in spite of what a lot of people think, Star Wars spends far more time utilizing traditional storytelling tropes (though in new ways) than subverting them. Like I wrote in my piece about gothic romances, the woman gets the man, the manor, and the money. Rey walks into TROS already with the metaphorical substitutes for the manor (the Falcon) and the money (the objects associated with the Skywalker family). She’s already in with her potential mother-in-law. All she needs is for Ben to show up to the metaphorical/literal wedding.

And everything is pointing toward that happening. I’m not saying TROS will end with Ben and Rey in a wedding or Rey waddling about preggers. Maybe it will end that way, maybe it won’t. But it will at minimum pair them together a la Han and Leia at the end of ROTJ.

First, let’s take on the only legitimate, in-universe obstacles to Rey and Ben being in a romantic relationship. No, I don’t mean that they could be related. What I do mean is that there are two things that would prohibit romance: one is obvious...no Bendemption. But I’m certain it is going to happen. The other is the old school Jedi prohibition against forming attachments, including romantic relationships. Many fans expect this deeply unpopular rule to be cast aside. But in the name of fairness, it bears pointing out that so far, this deeply unpopular rule hasn’t been cast aside in the movies. Sure there was a bit in the TLJ novel implying Luke wasn’t fond of this deeply unpopular rule but on the other hand, he lived it. Generalissima Leia did lots of other things but never became a Jedi herself. Maybe she was too busy. Or maybe she’d rather bonk Han to her heart’s content than become a space nun. There’s been some recent news that Leia was originally set to finally take up the Jedi mantle in the last ST film, something that obviously changed after Carrie’s passing in 2016. Note that this would have been after Leia had become a widow. Several months ago I’d listened to a podcast containing an interview with former Lucasfilm employee J.W. Rinzler. He revealed that while the expanded universe was allowed to go nuts with Jedi romances and marriages, Lucas kept grumbling that “Jedi aren’t supposed to marry!” He disliked Mara Jade partially for this reason.

Of every argument against Reylo happening that is the one that no one seems to take seriously yet it’s far more likely to be an issue than a sudden revelation of Rey Skywalker-Solo. The question is were Chris Terrio and J.J. Abrams willing to say, “Hey George, your rule sucks so we’re gonna throw it out” to Lucas’s eternal annoyance? Or, is the coupling of Rey and Ben supposed to have happened all along, even in Lucas’s drafts? Are Rey and Ben a glaring exception to the rule?

My argument is that they are going to be an exception. Reylo is not just about hot people hooking up, it’s about mystical forces coming together in a union that will bring the peace and stability that has evaded the galaxy since the Clone Wars. In other words, it’s a divine marriage. Ben and Rey are not ordinary Force users. They are extraordinary among the extraordinary. We already know Ben’s tremendous raw power comes from being literally the great-grandson of the Force itself. Rey I’m sure is something very similar, a demigoddess of sorts. Ben and Rey will demonstrate one can love deeply without it corrupting into selfishness, possessiveness, obsession, and everything else that led Anakin into believing killing his comrades to save Padmé was a really good idea.

Okay, let’s look at some hard evidence.

What’s the one word that keeps coming up over and over again with Rey and Kylo/Ben?

Intimacy.

Or some variation thereof:

“At the premiere I heard somebody in the balcony say, “Yesssss!” You can see Adam was training hardcore throughout the whole process. It’s fun but it also has a specific purpose, which is the increasing feeling of uncomfortable intimacy. That was sticking with the theme of trying to give Rey the hardest thing you could possibly give her, which would be unavoidable intimate conversation with this person that she wants to just hate. This was just one more way of upping that ante.”--Rian Johnson, Los Angeles Times, December 18, 2017

“It’s all about those Force connection scenes. The keyword being intimacy. And the idea that this was a way to just, why not step that up?(...)And so it was just another way of kind of disrobing Kylo literally and figuratively a little bit more, and pushing that sense of these conversations becoming increasingly more intimate.”--Rian Johnson, People magazine Dec. 23, 2017

“They just had this horrific fight, but Rian wanted this incredible intimacy and this cascading, twinkling waterfall of sparks from the fight before.”--Ben Morris, ILM Visual Effects Supervisor, Collider Dec. 25, 2017

“Even to the point where Adam flew to Ireland just to be off camera for Daisy’s stuff, which was essential because they’re such intimate conversations.”--Rian Johnson, People magazine Jan. 6, 2018

“That came about first and foremost from wanting a sense of intimacy”--Rian Johnson, Force of Sound Documentary Feb. 20, 2018

“And have it, you’re in their heads with just that intimacy.”--Matthew Wood, Supervising Sound Editor, Skywalker Sound Feb. 20, 2018

“Having a big sound there just didn’t have the intimacy that the scene demanded. It can be so hard to get the balance right to where the audience is feeling the same thing as the characters.”--Michael Semanic, Re-recording mixer Skywalker Sound, Postperspective Feb. 21, 2018

“But we fall back on romance because it's the best analogue we have. Rey and Kylo's relationship is more intimate than that. They've literally been in each other's minds. Rey's seen his deepest fears; he's seen the past she's buried. None of us have had that experience.”

“My point is romance may not be the endpoint of that. (Though it may be.) The analogue may be misleading, because it's an analogue. Their connection is deeper and stranger and far more complicated. I think TFA/TLJ covers those complications wonderfully, with Ep IX promising more.”--Jason Fry on Twitter Nov. 26, 2018

“At times it’s more intimate, sometimes less intimate.”--Adam Driver, Entertainment Weekly, December 2019

Relationships that are intimate aren’t necessarily romantic or sexual in nature but in modern parlance, it’s often used as a euphemism for a romantic or sexual relationship, or for sex itself i.e. “Tyler and Kaitlyn weren’t intimate until they got married.” Because of that, it would be hella weird if they described a familial or friendly relationship in this way. If I didn’t want my audience to believe there’s anything that could possibly be sexual happening between my characters--especially between an eligible attractive man and an eligible attractive woman--I would avoid using the term “intimate.”

If that doesn’t sell it for you, consider these statements:

“It’s the closest thing we’ll ever get to a sex scene in Star Wars”--Rian Johnson re the hand touch in TLJ. (Who the hell says that about cousins? Or just friends?)

“it is certainly true there is a romantic drama...”--Rian Johnson, some Japanese interview from 2017. (By the way this was misquoted into stating there was no romance in TLJ at all.)

“I (Rian) disagreed with John (Williams) twice regarding the score. For example, there's a scene where Kylo Ren and Rey touch hands, before they are interrupted by Luke Skywalker. When John wrote the score (for this scene), he was very protective of Rey's character, exactly as is Luke. Kylo ('s presence) was menacing, musically speaking. It's a valid point of view, but I didn't think of the scene like that. I wanted it to stay on Rey's POV: I wanted that we could believe in this romance.”--Rian Johnson, Classica magazine April 25, 2019 (Note: this is an interview from English to French then translated here and here back to English but the word “romance” is the same in both languages.)

The above statements and various others we’ve all seen over the years are helpful to explain what we’ve seen in the past two films: they’re building toward something.

On one level, the filmmakers are building toward another alliance between our space children, like what they had in TLJ. It’s obvious that they will need to team up to defeat Palpatine because who else could? It’s also obvious that they are key to the Force being in balance. There has been interesting speculation on Twitter about how those forces will come together and the symbolism of a marriage by uniting mystical objects.

But being Force buddies in a tag team match against Palpatine isn’t quite high enough stakes. Nor is “might makes right” the message of Star Wars. These two have to be willing to fight for each other, to the death if necessary. They have to have something to live for as well. They have to have the secret sauce that Darth Sidious doesn’t have. And what I’m talking about is love. Not just the compassionate love of agape (that’s what Anakin was talking about in AOTC but he meant it differently of course) or the friendship love of philia but also the powerful, creative love of eros. It’s basically what was happening in the throne room scene in TLJ. They were fighting for each other and the future they saw when they touched hands. Come on, nobody is going to do any of that just to find an apprentice or to convince someone to join an insurrection you barely spent any time with yourself.

A divine marriage between the two most powerful Force users will end the war and herald in a new age. Either they are a new incarnation of the Prime Jedi or they will become the mother and father to this incarnation.

Plus they will kiss and get in a lot of nookie. The end.

Credits: r/starwarsspeculation, @reylo-evidence-collection, r/starwarscantina, @reylo5 (Instagram),

#reylo #reylo fandom #reylo fam #rey x kylo ren #rey x ben #tros #bendemption #hea

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themattress · 4 years

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TROS’ Backtracks on TLJ

Critics are up in arms about them, but I’d like to look them over and analyze them:

Luke throws away his lightsaber -> Luke catches his lightsaber

This was a joke that both TLJ lovers and haters should be able to enjoy: lovers can enjoy the parallel and how it shows Luke’s change of heart, while haters can enjoy the reversal and “a Jedi weapon should be treated with more respect” line throwing shade on Rian Johnson.

Luke is cynical and jaded about the Jedi -> Luke embraces the Jedi again

I am baffled by this complaint. Did any of these critics actually understand what even happened in TLJ? Luke already realized he was wrong to be so cynical and jaded about the Jedi and about being a legend following his talk with Yoda, which is why he did his Force astral projection at the end and proudly declared that he “will not be the last Jedi”, the opposite of his earlier “It’s time for the Jedi to end” mantra. It’s character development.

Luke sunk his X-Wing underwater -> Luke raises his X-Wing from the water

Yes, and it was beautiful. Whether Rian Johnson meant to or not, by placing Luke’s X-Wing underwater he had just placed Chekhov’s Gun on the table. It needed to go off, Luke had to do accomplish the thing he couldn’t in The Empire Strikes Back because now he believed.

Luke's lightsaber is broken -> Luke's lightsaber is repaired

Rey took the pieces with her so that she could repair it in TLJ.

Leia's Force flight is not explained -> Leia had undergone Jedi training

Good. That turns her Force flight into foreshadowing. Also, apparently the original plan in TLJ was that Leia, not Rey, was to be “the last Jedi” following Luke, but that plan couldn’t happen once Carrie Fisher died, so this was the only way to achieve any sort of “Jedi Leia” at all.

Rose is a major character -> Rose is a background character

This one’s a touchy issue: I believe Rose’s reduced role was inevitable given the sheer amount of characters that needed to be juggled, plus J.J Abrams’ desire to give Rey, Finn and Poe a big adventure as a trio. On the other hand, I feel like she probably had more substantial material that was filmed and was left on the cutting room floor, and that’s troubling since we have no way of knowing if this done in good faith or to appease toxic fans.

Finn/Rose is hinted as a couple -> Finn/Jannah is hinted as a couple

I think that was done because the writing was on the wall in TLJ that John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran have no romantic chemistry on screen, and they work a lot better as just friends. Although honestly, I’m not sure we’re meant to totally buy into Finn/Jannah either. Finn is pretty much a bachelor the whole way through and he has the best chemistry with Poe.

Poe develops into a leader -> Poe develops into a leader again

I think this is similar to a compliant people made in TLJ that Finn backtracked on his development in TFA about not running away from fighting. Except that was not true: in TFA Finn stopped running away but was only willing to fight for and with Rey, the Resistance meant nothing to him. TLJ was about him learning to shift his primary allegiance to the Resistance, to a cause rather than a person. Likewise, Poe developed into a leader in TLJ, but his arc in TROS is about him developing as a leader; there’s a difference between the two. Becoming a leader as Poe did in TLJ isn’t going to erase all personality flaws and hurdles to overcome any more than Luke becoming a Jedi did for him. He still has much to learn.

Snoke was never given an origin -> Snoke is given an origin

Good. TFA and even TLJ built Snoke up as a character who needed to have at least one line of dialogue explaining who he was and where he came from, there needed to be something.

Snoke is dead and Kylo Ren is the new Big Bad -> Palpatine's back as the Big Bad

I’m sorry, but there was no fucking way that the majority of the audience was going to buy Kylo Ren as the Big Bad. He was humiliatingly defeated by Rey in TFA and then humiliatingly defeated by Luke in TLJ. I liked him as the new Supreme Leader and all, but we needed a truly formidable Big Bad to be the Final Boss, and Palpatine was the best one we could get.

Kylo Ren broke his mask -> Kylo Ren repairs his mask

Because he was going back on the field with the Knights of Ren, who all wear masks.

The Knights of Ren aren't there -> The Knights of Ren are here

Yeah, their presence is really just perfunctory. Nothing bad, nothing special.

Kylo Ren slides towards irredeemability -> Kylo Ren is redeemed

Either route would have been valid, and you’re entitled to your preference. With that said, I feel his redemption was handled exceptionally well, adding such emotional weight to the film.

Hux is set to have a major role going forward -> Hux is killed and replaced by Pryde

Similar to Kylo Ren as the Big Bad, Hux was no longer believable as a threat due to being made a fool of too often, so he was replaced by a more competent villain. With that said, killing him off so abruptly was lame. He had potential as an uneasy ally to the heroes.

Rey's parents were nobodies -> Rey's parents were somebodies

Yeah, just like how TFA blatantly foreshadowed that they were somebody of some kind of significance to the Force. And Kylo Ren only saw a brief snippet of them lacking context, and we didn’t even see it; we only had his word for it. How exactly is this change any worse than changing “Vader killed Luke’s father” to “Vader IS Luke’s father”; or “Leia is Luke’s love interest” to “Leia is Luke’s twin sister”; or all the blatant retcons done in the Prequels?

Also, the Skywalker Saga’s first two trilogies were about Anakin and Luke respectively, so why should the final one heavily center around someone who has no connection them whatsoever? Her being a Palpatine, since Palpatine is the one who created Anakin, is a brilliant way to tie things together and helps give the Skywalker Saga some cohesiveness.

Rey being OP has no explanation -> Rey being OP is explained

Good. “Anyone can use the Force” should not mean that anyone should just hit the Force jackpot from birth and be automatically more powerful than most other people who can use the Force, even those who have been using it longer. And the Force being stronger in some families has nothing to do with bloodlines or midichlorians, it’s a spiritual thing that was literally mentioned in the OT (”the Force is strong in my family”.) Plus, Rey as a Palpatine is what gives the resolution where she chooses to become a Skywalker its power: the spirit is stronger than blood, and who you are biologically related to doesn’t dictate your destiny.

Rey doesn't need much training -> Rey undergoes full training

Idk, I think part of the original “Leia is the Last Jedi” thing was always going to involve her completing Rey’s. I mean, it just seems like a natural f3miNeest ajehnDA! thing to do.

Random Force-sensitive children may be important -> They're not

They can be important in future stories beyond the Skywalker Saga. It was not their time yet.

The conflict might move beyond the familiar -> The conflict is a familiar one

For one thing, this is the final installment of the Skywalker Saga, so no fucking shit the conflict needs to be familiar. It’s a curtain call for the film series as it’s been since 1977, this “fanservice” should be expected. And for another thing, TLJ didn’t move things back toward the familiar? Rey stayed good, Kylo Ren stayed evil, the Jedi were not going to end, we were back in a Rebellion vs. Empire situation. If Rian Johnson really wanted to move things beyond the familiar in the following movie, he did a piss-poor job setting that up.

"Kill the past" is the message -> "Honor and celebrate the past" is the message

I’ve brought this up before, but it needs to be said again: that was NOT the message of TLJ!!! I cannot believe how many people who both love and hate TLJ got this so wrong! The guy saying this is Kylo Ren, the fucking villain. He’s not supposed to be listened to! Rey doesn’t, and while Luke starts out with a similar mindset, he changes his views following the scene he has with Yoda, he realizes that the past, even the ugly parts of it, is valuable and should not be killed, it should be remembered and learned from. Rian Johnson’s message was a debate as to whether Star Wars’ past was all that good and that maybe it’s worn out its welcome and should be torn down so that the franchise can start anew, and the answer he concluded that debate with was no, that should not happen, the way forward is to always keep the past in mind but never get stuck in it: instead build from it and seek to improve from it. As the saying goes, “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it”, and “killing the past” is like saying “don’t learn from history”. It’s a bad message from a bad person, so don’t believe it.

And again, it’s the last installment of the Skywalker Saga. Honoring and celebrating all that’s come before is kind of a requisite for big finales like this; just look at Avengers: Endgame!

That’s everything, unless “explaining why the Holdo Manuever won’t work again” is also something that critics are complaining about, and if it is actually is then, well, I give up.

#Star Wars #The Last Jedi #The Rise of Skywalker #Comparison #Analysis #Defense #Truthbomb #This has been a PSA

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blacklakeinavalley · 4 years

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Reylo confessions / TRoS personal review upon first watching

"You opened yourself to the dark side for a pair of pretty eyes” - in retrospect this pretty much sums up how my obsession with the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy came into being. I was here for Reylo, Bendemption, and most of all Ben Solo since around TLJ. I could and still can relate to this character’s struggles and find him physically very attractive. That’s basically how it went down.

I had only once watched the OT, a few years before TFA came out. Then, in 2015, friends dragged me to watch TFA (I was like “meh, blockbuster” aka a snob at that time). I was pleasantly surprised though when I found the movie very well-made and entertaining. I did NOT get the Reylo-vibes then but remember strongly identifying with Rey’s fear at the beginning of the interrogation and Kylo’s line “You know I can take whatever I want“ making me shiver. I cheered at Rey for beating Kylo up on Starkiller Base and (joke’s on me for the worst take ever) legitimately left the theater believing him dead because of the explosion of the planet. That didn’t make me sad, but satisfied.

I did not think about Star Wars again until January/February(?) 2017. Another group of friends planned on watching TLJ together and and I browsed the Internet for some critics to read in advance, just out of curiosity. Somehow I ended up watching the interrogation scene on Youtube again and again, the sexual tension between the two I now clearly recognized finally taking my breath away. I discovered skysilencer’s/chandrilasky’s wonderful blog (which doesn’t exist anymore) about Rey’s and Ben’s relationship and generally started reading as many metas on this topic as I could find.

I fell in love with the pairing, and especially the portrayal of Kylo / Ben. Getting to watch TLJ in the theater was a bit disappointing for me though, after having read so many raving reviews on tumblr beforehand. At that time I could not really appreciate the changes in pacing and all the depths and nuances. By now I love this movie. Strangely, I never watch it in one go, only in smaller portions. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I like TFA just as well. Ironically, the fight on Starkiller Base is still my favorite Reylo scene ever - because there’s so much more going on than “Rey beating Kylo up“. For me, TFA definitely is a lot easier to watch, mostly because of the more conventional pacing, I guess.

Therefore I was quite happy when I heard that JJ Abrams was going to direct episode IX too. I actually never doubted that he had planted the seeds for Reylo in TFA / episode VII. Sadly, TRoS, which I finally went to see with my sweetheart yesterday, left me pretty untouched for the most part. After roughly two years of really looking forward to, actually longing for this day, seeing it was not the experience I had hoped for. This is not to say that the movie per se is only bad.

TRoS spoilers ahead!

I am a sucker for “grounded” speculation and have difficulties to keep away from spoilers. And I’m really invested in Ben Solo’s fate. This led to me reading JediPaxis’ leaks weeks ago and hanging around on this site pretty much non-stop shortly before and since the premier of the movie. When the realization that Ben Solo actually dies (or does he?) kicked in, I went through some kind of mourning that included having difficulties to concentrate, the urge to cry, listening to sad music, and definitely crying a lot while watching a camrip of him finding happiness and then dying in a loop.

And maybe that’s one of the reasons why I couldn’t enjoy the actual movie more. I already knew the whole plot, had seen lots of gifs and had already kind of processed the emotionally challenging stuff, at least to some extent. So I just didn’t feel much, neither surprise, nor joy or grief while watching. Again, joke’s on me for getting myself extensively spoiled and reading about other people’s (negative) reaction to the movie. I didn’t even look forward to seeing it anymore, tbh.

My boyfriend on the other hand, who has seen TFA once and TLJ twice in his life and went into TRoS openmindedly after only a very short recapitulation of what had happened in the previous films, actually really liked it. He found it very entertaining, even surprising and well-made, especially the camera-work. He was all for Rey being a power women, for example when she prevented the transporter Chewie was presumably on from leaving by Force powers (Chewie then being on another transporter, not the one that got destroyed, was a cheap move and sort of a plot hole for him though). He generally sees the whole thing as an action adventure and advocates for not intellectually dissecting it or expecting too much depth out of a Star War. He likes the OT as a casual fan (he was the one to show me the original films in the first place), didn’t like the Prequels at all, was not a fan of TLJ and found TFA okay. We are going to watch TRoS again early in January with friends and he’s looking forward to it. So for him, episode IX is the best sequel film.

What I personally liked about TRoS:

- the very beginning - because Kylo and all the voices in his head, the nightmarish setting of the Sith temple as a representation of (mental) darkness, hopelessness and loneliness ...

- the overall feeling of the Pasaana festival (joy! color! coming together to celebrate!)

- the Poe and Zorri dialogue on Kimiji, because FINALLY a quiet and somewhat thoughtful moment AT LAST

- Finn and Jannah bonding over being former Stormtroopers being another somewhat quiet moment in the movie

- Ben seeing Han in memory actually made me feel SOMETHING

- the scenes of the last battle to end all battles (both Rey/Ben vs Palpatine and Resistance vs First Order) were sort of okay

- somewhat unexpectedly, I also really sympathized with Poe during some moments of the final battle

- the Rey and Ben Solo stuff after his final turn to the light was beautiful and heartbreaking (side note: I like to think that all the Jedi were talking to Ben too as he was rising/climbing from that pit)

- Kylo Ren / Ben Solo is already an icon, thanks to Adam Driver’s amazing acting skills and admireable dedication to this role. And that’s also true for TRoS.

- I actually liked the Resistance base scene after their victory, their immense relieve was so palpable

- the overall visuals of the movie are fine

What I did not enjoy:

- Everything felt so rushed. There’s too much happening in too little time, especially during the first half. The movie just doesn’t take any time to breathe, the effect being that you don’t really get into the story - the exact opposite of what the fast pacing was supposed to accomplish. Maybe less would have been more. Or the movie lasting for 15 minutes longer.

- Probably the worst thing: Most dialogues/lines, especially in the first half, are just super cringey ... TFA and TLJ dialogue never felt like this - or have I just gotten used to their text script over time? I have the small hope though that everything will sound better (at least to me) in English (we had to watch TRoS in German). Kylo Ren talking through his helmet was the worst in that regard, because Adam Driver’s voice is so distinct to me by now that the German voice-over felt 100% out of place and got me super irritated. It was downright painful.

- Very personal opinion: Upon closer look, both TFA and TLJ seem to be about Ben pretty much all the time, and I am all here for it. I did not get the same impression out of TRoS. But maybe that’s just a “recipient as co-creator of a story“ thing and I might be able to construct such a reading also for TRoS over time, after getting to know the movie better.

What really matters to me in the end:

- I am still invested in the character and story of Ben Solo. A movie (TRoS) made me mourn a fictional character, which IS something, even if said character was built to a great extent in previous movies.

- As said before, I enjoy theorizing, analyzing and the quest to better understand stories. And I just don’t want to be mad at the creators already. Ben’s death was painful, but I understand this pain as an invitation to delve deeper into all if it. If in the end the script and plot keep making little sense (which is a real possibility), I will keep to cherishing the parts I liked.

Conclusion:

Yes, I found TRoS very disappointing upon first watching, script-wise way below TFA and TLJ. Very likely it will always feel rushed and badly written to me. Maybe I'll like it even less after watching it again in about a week from now.

But, for the reasons mentioned above, I will probably still give it multiple (undeserved) chances. Because there certainly are good parts in it.

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Kudos if you’re still here! And sorry for any language mistakes. Please comment, if you feel like it.

#tros review #reylo #ben solo #the rise of skywalker #reylo fam #blacklakeinavalley #personal

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sunshineamalia · 4 years

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Hello little Reylos!

I am a GIANT Reylo fan. I love it so much—I am extremely pleased with the way EVERYTHING went down.

Everything? Yes... well except for a couple small things but we’ll get there.

Most of you are probably confused about how I can be happy about Ben dying—and I’m not happy, I cried so hard. But here’s the deal, Ben Solo did not deserve better. When he was Kylo Ren he murdered so many people, killed his own father, and committed numerous war crimes. He has done so much evil.

With my theory for the dark side of the force—that it consumes you in way that makes Ben a different person from Kylo Ren (and Anakin different from Darth Vader—you could argue that he wasn’t really in charge of his own actions there, and I would happily listen to the argument. But even though I accept that Ben Solo and Kylo Ren are kind of different people, there is still a continuum where Kylo Ren begins and where Ben Solo begins. It’s never 100% Ben doing something or 100% Kylo doing something. And in TFA when he’s feeling the pull to the light, this shows that there’s likely more grey Kylo Ben (see what I did there lol) area than it looks like there was Anakin and Darth Vader area. So Ben was always in some control. While he certainly was abused and confused by Snoke, that doesn’t just give him a free pass; that gives him depth as a human and character and shows that he’s someone that needs our help—if he were real—because no matter your reasons, if you are doing something evil, you are doing something evil.

In TLJ, we see a new side of Ben, a kinder and softer side. We see Kylo not as Kylo, but as Ben: a scared boy who’s been confused and manipulated by Snoke. Rey sees this too and starts to fall in love with this boy and wants to do everything she can to save this person and return him to the light.

Many people who are happy he died (and I’m not happy I’m sad T_T) complain about he got more than he deserved when he got the kiss, but I don’t think he did. People can change. ANYONE has the ability to change and we should allow them to do so. But if they do, they still have to make up for the wrong they did. While that doesn’t always mean we should trust them if they’ve really hurt us, we should recognize an ability to change. And the deal is, Ben changed. Ben killed Kylo Ren and wanted to become a better person, so he saves the woman he loves selflessly; he sacrifices himself for the heckin boss woman (I love Rey so much guys) who saved the galaxy.

But even though he’s a good boy in that good boy sweater now, does that change what he’s done? Change the millions of people on those planets who died because of him, bring back those he’s murdered and his own father? No. Even though he’s changed, he still did all those things. But I believe that in coming for Rey in her darkest hour and sacrificing himself for her, he can atone for those things. Maybe not fully and I’m sure he has a lot of time as a force ghosty boy to try and fix things, but it’s a start. In fact, I think that him dying is the best thing that could happen for him. It’s exactly what he deserved—in the best way possible. He died saving the woman he loves and in saving the galaxy. He died as a hero and can now continue on to continue trying to right his wrongs and atone for his sins. Because he’s a good boy now, dying was the best thing that could happen to him so he could make up for everything he’s done.

I love Rey, and I love Ben Solo. While I do wish they could be happy, the best way for them to end was for Ben to sacrifice himself like a hero (catch me still liking and posting pictures of them looking at the sunset together tho (just because I like how it ended doesn’t mean I don’t wish for happiness)).

As for the things I didn’t like: I would’ve preferred a little less fighting between Rey and Ben to start with, but when he died I only want like an extra five seconds where she picks up something of his—like his good boy sweater—and then an extra five seconds at the place where everyone is happy and she looks at his good boy sweater sadly. Then when she buries the lightsabers on Tatooine she could also bury whatever she took of Ben’s. That only adds 10 seconds to the movie and would’ve made it feel better.

Anyway, Ben Solo did not deserve better because he already got the best thing that could happen to him: he found out that his love loved him too and he was able to begin making atonement to his sins. But if you think he deserved better, I totally understand and it makes me sad that you didn’t get a satisfactory ending to your character :(.

I heckin love Ben Solo my dudes.

#reylo #ben solo #tros spoilers #ben solo did not deserve better #ben solo got what he deserved #star wars

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danwhobrowses · 4 years

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Why Star Wars: The Last Jedi Deserves More Respect

So after a handful of posts I think it’s time to bring back this one, the conflict was that I was considering reviews for Pokémon Sword and Shield as well as a review for Rise of Skywalker, but the latter made me think that this is an opportune moment to talk about the previous entry. Like The Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker has had divisive opinions, frankly I liked the film but I think TLJ was the best of the sequel trilogy, and I am going to explain why

Fair Warning, within this there’s gonna be spoilers for Rise of Skywalker, possibly Mandalorian, maybe Solo and definitely The Last Jedi...this will also be very long

So I know straight away that this is gonna get heat, there has been constant times where me saying that I liked TLJ has been considered trolling or ‘bait’, honestly I find myself baffled that people can hate it so vehemently, believing that the story is and I quote ‘the worst sequel ever’. While it is clear that Johnson had a different vision to Abrams, that was not a bad thing, a lot of the criticism the film gets are quite hypocritical in contrast to the Original Trilogy which is held to so much esteem, so to start I’m going to break that down. Small Disclaimer before I do: People are allowed to dislike things, not saying that if you do dislike it you are doing something wrong, just pointing out that it’s not wrong to like the film either. Disowning before Watching The first thing I think turned people off of TLJ was the interview Mark Hamill had before the film came out, people misconceiving his comments that it’s not the journey he expected seeing of Luke to mean that this is not a film he would approve of. The same almost happened with RoS with Abrams comment which was abridged to imply that Abrams disowned TLJ as well - he did not - but in a society where we want to home in on flaws and criticize before even seeing that was too wide a door left open. So without fault, TLJ already had a group of people set on disliking the film because it would be different to how they and Hamill wanted it to be and because it’s not exactly like the decanonized ‘Legends’ continuity - despite people being fine that Jacen Solo and Ben Skywalker had been merged to make Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens. It’s easy to point out that if you go into something adamant to dislike you’re going to get your wish, so the first point of order is to give something a chance to impress you, you can’t criticize something because an actor didn’t think it’d go that creative direction, Hamill did not hate this movie and people disliking their content does not automatically make it bad, Stannis from GoT hated the show, Alan Moore hates everything but that doesn’t mean Watchmen was bad, the actors for C3PO and R2-D2 hated each other but that doesn’t mean that when they acted their bond wasn’t great.

The ‘Luke is not Luke’ Criticism Hamill’s comments ease nicely into one of the main critiques that fans felt that Luke was not the same character he was in Return of the Jedi. People criticized his disconnection from the force which included tossing his lightsaber away in the opening scene, the Rashomon sequence where Luke considered striking down his own nephew - a move that ultimately turned Ben to the Dark, drinking green milk and that his last stand was a projection rather than a solid encounter. You know what I say to those criticisms?

They are bollocks, absolute nonsensical criticisms made to try and dismantle the best character of the movie. Hamill delivers his best for Luke in TLJ and his character arc is brilliant. I watched Blind Wave (a great youtube reactor channel) react to TLJ and the members noted how it was great that Luke had a character arc, something I wholly agree with. Luke was around 23 in Return of the Jedi (since the galaxy uses the standardized dating of Coruscant which has the most earth-like cycle), if you expect a 23 year old to have no room left to grow in the next 30 years of his life then I don’t think anything’s gonna get through to you, Luke is meant to be different, because since Jedi a lot of shit has happened. Luke’s discarding of the lightsaber shows his disconnect with the Force, something that had allowed the First Order to paint him as a myth and rendered everyone near-unable to find him, only tracked by the galactic map to Ahch-To from his past days of discovering remnants of Jedi past. Next let’s bring down the Rashomon sequence, the 3 tales of Ben’s turning. Initially, Luke painted a picture that he sensed that the darkness was too late, Ben woke and attacked him. Later Ben paints that Luke is lying, and that when Ben awoke Luke was there with his Lightsaber drawn with intent to kill him. The third story admits that both are correct, Luke drew his lightsaber in sensing the darkness, and Ben awoke to see it and retaliated.

This story peeves people mainly because they say that in Jedi ‘Luke was willing to fight for a single hope of light in his Father but was willing to kill his nephew for a bad dream’. A ridiculous comment that waters down and ignores the bigger picture though. For one, while Luke wanted to save his father and sensed good in him, he still ended up cutting his dad’s hand off, the indication that much like his father Luke - as he had always been in the Original Trilogy - was still susceptible to his emotions, including the negative ones. The other reason this statement is foolhardy is because they don’t listen to Luke’s narration, where he explains that it was a fleeting moment of panic and arrogance, his ego as ‘Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master’ took over when he sensed that Ben was already turned by Snoke, and it was only for a split second which he immediately regrets. It’s this moment that snowballs into why Luke disconnects himself from the force, his ego as a saviour to Jedi led to the downfall of his nephew - which led to his best friend and sister separating, the rise of the First Order being like a second Empire and the massacre of most of his other jedi students, he realised that this was the same ego that led to the previous Jedi’s downfall to Vader and Sidious and thus came to the conclusion that maybe the Jedi way is not the right way. Not only is this a brilliantly done tragedy for the character but it’s a progression that identifies with public opinion of jedi ways and the pompousness that led to Anakin’s turn to the dark side as depicted in the prequels. The use of Rashomon also connects to the Jedi/Sith connections to Samurai which was a great touch by Johnson. The green milk scene was a weird one I’ve seen being criticized, like people are fine with Calamarian fishmen but a Tatooine/Naboo humanoid can’t drink green milk? I think I need to remind you that Luke drinks blue milk on Tatooine, he is a moisture farmer as well, the ‘green milk’ scene was a depiction of how Luke survived on Ahch-To as Rey followed him, his lifestyle disconnected from the force as he lived as basically a farm boy. I don’t know why people got so mad about the colour of milk but you can’t expect those nuns to have fed him roast porgs every day The final criticism is his last stand, something I will touch on a bit later as well. In terms of Luke, people were disappointed that it wasn’t Luke actually there and while yes it would’ve been great to watch Luke tear down AT-ATs luke the EU, but he literally says that he won’t do that

it’s not a matter of can’t, it’s a matter of him strutting up to the army of the First Order will not end the war, most people don’t even know if he exists. Showing up will have inspired the resistance yes but if Luke was shown killed or captured that hope would then be instantly diminished, and Snoke and Ren would definitely be going for Luke’s head to make that so. This is why Luke goes via projection, instead of his ragged hermit self where he’d likely die similarly to how Kenobi did, he demonstrates a highly advanced force power to display himself as a clean-cut warrior who shrugs off the full might of the First Order’s arsenal and humiliates its brand new Supreme Leader, while disappearing. That stand does the Resistance far better than him showing up in person, because now the legend of Luke Skywalker lives longer than he does, he inspires a new wave of Jedi who understand his sacrifice and rebels who have just seen how one man can expose the weakness of the First Order. Luke’s last living gesture is one that inspires hope, before he becomes one with the Force at peace. If anything that is as beautiful as it is tragic of an end for Luke, but by no means is that bad. The Rose Tico ‘Issue’ Luke wasn’t the only character to get on the wrong side of criticism, undoubtedly Kelly Marie Tran got it the worst. Despicable people flocked to harass her over her character, throwing about racism just for that added content of being a horrid human being. Her character, Rose Tico, was a newly introduced character from the Resistance who joins Finn and Poe’s arcs, her main non-racist criticism is her act of saving Finn from the Laser Battering Ram ‘She has this stupid speech about saving people with love while a laser battering ram breaks down the door to kill a bunch of people’ A common theme seems to be that people are taking things the absolute wrong way. Rose’s journey with Finn is an interesting arc where she seeks to make sure her sister’s sacrifice - caused by Poe’s rash personality - is not in vain while accompanying a ‘hero of the resistance’, what she is unaware of is how her assistance relates to Finn’s journey as he tries to live up to the esteem she sees him in, he had always considered himself a defector rather than a rebel. Rose (and DJ) open his eyes to a reality that not everything is black and white, he left the First Order in TFA because he believed that they were ‘wrong’ and so by default the resistance had to be ‘right’ but TLJ challenged Finn to see both sides and make a choice for himself, a choice that is made thanks to Rose. However, his embrace of being a rebel is why he is adamant to try and sacrifice himself for the laser battering ram. I have to point out that until Rose stepped in I thought Finn was gonna die, I thought it really ballsy and a little disappointing that they were gonna kill him off, I also knew that the ship would not stop the battering ram so it was actually a relief that Rose did save him.

I think people dislike it for that reason though, they felt that Finn dying would’ve been a more shocking narrative turn and because Rose saved him she is to ‘blame’, I also believe that people didn’t like the relationship because Finn was clearly still on Rey and not everyone was on the Reylo boat or it got in the way of FinnPoe being more than just a bromance (side note, at the start of RoS I thought they were sailing on the ReyPoe for a moment, though I’m not mad about how they went), but again, that shouldn’t be the fault of Rose’s character. Rose clearly was inspired by Finn’s reputation and grew fond of his personality the more time she spent with him, likewise Finn found himself wanting to earn her esteem and taking care of her, it’s actually a shame that Rose’s role gets heavily reduced in RoS, because I do feel like Rose could’ve filled Jannah’s role (nothing against Jannah or Naomi Ackie of course) with the Canto Bight horse-things instead of the Kef Bir horse-things. So to conclude this section, Rose was good in this film, she served a purpose to grow Finn as a character and most constructive criticisms against her revolve around things either out of her control as a character or without would diminish her character role completely. The Communication Issue between Holdo and Poe Alright, let’s throw some hands up before I rub them together. I agree that Holdo should’ve told people the plan, I do dislike it when a movie creates conflict made by a lack of communication. But, he will say rubbing his hands together, this does not ruin the film. It’s worth reminding that Poe is recently demoted for reckless behaviour, the Resistance’s entire offensive fleet was destroyed due to Poe wanting to destroy one Dreadnought Ship. A reasonable punishment for Poe on his arc to realise that being a leader is more than just winning a battle, but more on that later. So Holdo comes in, new squadron she barely knows because she’s taking over for Leia, she has a plan that she and Leia know but are the only living members who know now. So why doesn’t she tell Poe? It’s quite simple, not only does the novel imply that she’s figuring out if there’s a mole - which is understandable because the First Order must’ve watched Star Trek: Into Darkness and thought ‘hey we could track ships in hyperspeed too!’ - but she’s also trying to enforce Leia’s punishment to Poe. Poe is in this shit because he refused to listen to orders, so Holdo is basically telling Poe to listen to orders, something he refuses to do and starts a mutiny. It is frustrating yes and we side with Poe because he’s the more familiar character, but had Poe just proved himself a trustworthy person who is learning from Leia’s last decree before she went into a coma she would’ve told him. This also transitions nicely into the next criticism people have Canto Bight and the Cryptographer Goose-Chase Poe’s plans of mutiny starts with sending Rose and Finn to Canto Bight, at the behest of the massively underused Maz Kanata, to find a Cryptographer so that they could disable the hyperspace tracker. People hate this scene mainly because it segue’s from the plot, it’s high on CGI and reminds them of the Prequel Trilogy

Now I can’t really contest the CGI but it was nothing bad, CGI still gets used well and the visit to the Casino aided in time for Rose and Finn to establish a relationship, have some lightheated BB-8 moments, introduce DJ the speech impediment ‘wrong hacker’ and continue to drive the shades of grey theme Finn is about to learn about. People never seem to criticize that they put their faith in the wrong guy because it leads to a more interesting conflict, so it’s strange that they hate this transition so much. The Brevity of Snoke and Phasma Two characters introduced that promised to be big deals were killed off in The Last Jedi, the nature of them both was a brave scene that many felt dropped the ball on these characters. And while I am inclined to agree on Phasma at least, Snoke’s death was actually a great turn. Before RoS we were none the wiser on who Snoke was, now we’ve seen it we know that he was basically a mass-produced puppet by the emperor...not the best of closures I’d admit but the anger towards Snoke being killed off is actually hypocritical ‘All Snoke does is sit in his chair and die’ You know who else sat in his chair and ‘died’, ol’ Sheev Palpatine. People are quick to criticize that Snoke was hyped up but barely got to show anything when Palpatine only really demonstrated the force twice in the Original trilogy before being thrown into a pit of apparent death, we allowed the Emperor a pass because we learned more about him through novels and future movies, and that’s something we eventually find out from Snoke as well.

Captain Phasma on the other hand was a sad disappointment, after one brush with death already she returned to basically be killed off again as a symbol of Finn shedding his ties as an ex-stormtrooper and embracing the role of a rebel. This is not really the fault of Johnson though, everyone seems to be more content with the alternate scene where Finn exposes Phasma’s actions for TFA, but that was a choice from the cutting room. While we can be disappointed that Phasma didn’t leave enough of a mark on the trilogy, we can always hope for prequel stuff as we had with Boba Fett, an equally wasted character in his main trilogy who could theoretically be in The Mandalorian (only a theory, nothing is concrete), but if we are willing to love the Original Trilogy despite similar issues we hate on TLJ for then aren’t we being hypocrites? tHaT’s nOt HoW tHe FoRcE wOrKs If you try to pick on Rian Johnson for ‘not getting Star Wars’ directly you would be in for a world of punishment. Two major force powers that get used in The Last Jedi is the ‘Force Skype’ and Force Projection, however both are basically using the same techniques, one is connecting minds while the other is connecting one mind to an individual place. It’s immediately told to us that this is an advanced technique but this is not something Johnson has made up. In the EU this ability is called Simifuturus or just Doppelganger, practiced by Luke, Dooku and Yarael Poof. Rey and Ben’s Force Skype is also used in the EU called Force Bond, Chain or Jedi Kinship, the ability had been fine in beloved Star Wars games Knights of the Old Republic I & II, the Clone Wars and Rebels series and aplenty of novels. For the legitimacy of these abilities cannot be contested. The fact that the ability kills Luke shouldn’t be criticized either, Luke is projecting himself light years away on Crait, with a copy of Han’s dice in a much more polished form, he physically interacts with Leia and takes on a barrage of AT-M6 blasters - turbolasers that can destroy speeders and ships with one hit - and two lightsaber slices, remember Ben felt the impact from Rey’s blaster on their first Force Skype, so Luke carried the feeling of all that damage and strain on his body and maintained his projection. So not only did Luke’s dying moments lead to an incredible display of using the Force but also one that forced him to sustain an immeasurable amount of damage and still manage to bide the resistance time to escape. Leia Poppins Ah yes, the Mary Poppins moment. I dunno how I can explain this one so easily but how about this. Leia is force sensitive, we have known this since Jedi, so to see Leia use the force was a massive moment, but she’s floating in the vacuum of space so there is no ‘up’ she is basically pulling a heavier object than herself in a vacuum, using it as an anchor so she can get to a blast door. As to why she survives in space, you can survive up to 2 minutes in space without a helmet, it is horribly painful though, it’s also worth reminding that Leia is not a human like you or me and if the Force can heal (as shown in The Mandalorian and RoS) then why can’t it keep Leia alive a bit longer in Space? She ends up in a coma anyway so I don’t see why complaints are rife here, she survives barely and it’s not like they knew Carrie was going to die sometime after the film was completed, they obviously had more plans for her so it would’ve been wrong to kill her off there when we were already killing Luke off. Did Disney Ruin Star Wars? This is a statement I’ve heard a lot in regards to TLJ, Solo and RoS, which is weird though, people were fine with Disney doing TFA, Rogue One and The Mandalorian, Mando’s journey with Baby Yoda proving that the utility of fanservice - something the trio get loathed for - can be enjoyable and it bodes well that the director of some episodes is doing an Obi Wan film. The phrase ‘Star Wars Fatigue’ also came about from post-Solo reviews, which I have expressed is dumb because MCU do 3 marvel movies minimum a year. But the reason Solo got low box office figures wasn’t because it was bad, it’s because it was released around the same time as Deadpool 2, it was left to the sharks without a chance to succeed. So no, Disney have not ruined Star Wars, if anything fan perception has damaged the franchise with people hating it because it’s not the Original Trilogy or it’s too much like the Original Trilogy, the same can be said for the EU. RoS is quite similar to Dark Empire but because Disney retconned most of the EU it’s the enemy, but let’s be honest, does anyone want the continuity to be that Chewie gets blown up? I doubt that. So WHY does The Last Jedi deserve more respect I think the mixed reviews of Rise of Skywalker has proved that maybe TLJ got a harsh end of a stick, even with Abrams’ vision back at the helm the film proved to be divisive and personally quite safe. This is probably why I liked TLJ the most, Johnson went to challenge things and build off of the previous movies as a whole, nothing really was safe, it took narrative risks that opened the door to a lot more things.

We explored Rey’s connection to the force and her desires for answers being unable to be sated by it because she’s expecting more from her level of learning, we also have Snoke’s gambit to bond Ben and Rey together to strengthen both, Ben strengthens into a more mature state but continues to conflict in a less whiny way, even relenting from trying to kill his mother. We also got some ‘reverse Jedi’ stuff with both Ben and Rey adamant that the other will turn but instead of turning one another, Ben’s hatred however proves too great for Rey to accompany him which leads to Ben getting a villain promotion to Supreme Leader. We have a solid arc for Finn, Luke and Poe as he finally learns to take care of others, because as Rose was saying, sacrificing yourself is not going to beat the First Order, heroes are great but dead heroes win nothing, protecting others is the essence of the Resistance and that’s what a leader is meant to do. Hell, we even get a little Hux stuff, the way he slowly considers shooting Kylo Ren while he’s down and his constant abuse culminating in the rather obvious RoS reveal that he’s the spy. Unlike RoS, TLJ thrived on giving every major character worthwhile arcs like these which all ended up entwining in the climactic showdown, while tertiary characters did end up getting underused there were still windows for them to do more in the next episode which was taken out of Johnson’s hands, but he laid a lot of groundwork for the story to be taken multiple directions, which is actually quite difficult when you’re midway through a trilogy and on the 8th outing of a saga. In addition, the film provided Hamill’s best performance as Luke Skywalker, giving him a fitting end to his journey which explored almost every dimension of a Jedi’s character; training, temptation, losing faith and redemption.

I also loved how Johnson described the Force in TLJ, it wasn’t about Dark or Light, the Force was the Force, an energy that flows through all that is harnessed by the force sensitive, even Force Ghosts. And using the Puppet Yoda was a great and fun addition, and it makes sense that he can fire lightning, because Force Ghosts are one with the Force, they flow with the flow of nature. We got lore and demonstration of great powers that made the ‘holy shit’ moment of Kylo Ren stopping a blaster shot mid-flow look like novice work. And while we’re talking about ‘holy shit’ moments

You cannot deny that TLJ had some absolutely breathtaking visuals, moments in this film are some of the best moments in Star Wars, a combination of intensity and hype from Luke’s standoff with the First Order to Holdo’s hyperspace ram, Ahch-To’s real-life setting was also beautiful as were the design of Crait from its Icicle foxes to its salt speeders leaving a red path of smoke

This film looks beautiful and the story is multilayered with character development, worldbuilding, good action and gutsy plot twists, you know everything people (rightfully) praise The Mandalorian for. It’s definitely not a film where you’d find yourself bored and when you set aside your fan theories and the illusion that the Original Trilogy was Flawless save for the Death Star plot hole you will find this movie a lot more enjoyable. Now I don’t want people saying it’s a ‘Don’t Question, Consume’ sorta thing, it’s a matter of accepting that there are flaws but not allowing it to ruin the experience, because The Last Jedi embodies a lot of the essence of Star Wars old and new, it is probably the best that the New Trilogy has provided and it is certainly worthy of respect.

#star wars #star wars spoilers #star wars the last jedi #the last jedi #luke skywalker #princess leia #rey #kylo ren #ben solo #snoke #supreme leader snoke #poe #poe dameron #rose tico #rian johnson

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roses-foxes · 4 years

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TROS feelings but i try to keep it all in one (long) post

I’ve had some time to think about this film, read lots of different opinions on it, consider the things I hated and liked about it, and I guess I just want to share? Let’s start with the good stuff

What I liked

It’s really not much but some positivity is always nice lol

Adam Driver’s acting! He’s not the only good actor in this, but imo he’s far above the rest. I’m 90% sure he’s getting that Oscar for Marriage Story, but he’s also extremely good in this despite having probably more than half of his lines cut or altered (more on that later) and he deserves that recognition

The fact that Finn, Poe and Rey had stuff to do as a trio, even though it wasn’t well done (more on that later)

The Han moment with Ben

Rey being cheered on by all the past Jedi (more on that later too)

The concept of Rey burying the lightsabers and the last shot being on Tattooine at sunset

The lighstaber “””magic trick””” through the force with Rey and Ben

The entire dyad thing with Rey and Ben, actually

That’s literally it lmao I truly hate this film

What I think the problems are

Even if I hadn’t read stuff about it before, it’s super painfully obvious as you watch it that they had reshoots/line changes/storyline changes and it makes the film not make any sense at all, it’s such a mess.

A lot of super important lines by Kylo Ren are delivered with his mask on? There are also other instances without his mask where he’s either not in shot as he speaks or he has his arm in front of his mouth etc.. The more I think about it, the more I realise there’s literally no point at all in the story for him to reconstruct his mask. The scene where he does it is like.. 3 seconds long?? Like there’s no real emphasis on it even though it’s super important character-wise? UNLESS... it was done only to make sure lines (and therefore storylines) could be easily changed in the edit. I don’t think there’s actually a shot of anyone in the film saying, with their lips moving in shot, visibly “Rey is a Palpatine”, and that’s weird as hell? Rey herself never even really REACTS to it properly? In a saga that puts so much importance on legacy, she SHOULD have reacted, like Luke reacted when he learned Vader was his dad. Also Oscar Isaac said the actors had no idea that was a thing before the premiere..? Which implies there was no big table read with that part included and only a few people knew of that change? In my opinion it’s clear that this isn’t how the storyline was originally planned, and it probably was a last minute decision that they tried to make work with minor reshoots and some editing (the lightning when Rey blows up the ship Chewie is believed to be in could have been added in post-prod, for example).

That’s not the only change, a lot of people have pointed out that Rey speaks to Ben in the end (before the kiss), like, you can clearly see that her lips are moving and that he’s listening to her, but that conversation was cut for some reason? In many shots of that scene, Adam’s hair are longer then shorter, his hands are gloved then ungloved, Rey’s reaction to his death is super weird, he’s never mentioned again at all, he doesn’t get a force ghost even though Anakin did at the end of RoTJ, the shot where he falls back and dies makes more sense in reverse when you look at the angle of Rey’s arm etc.. it’s very possible in my mind that Ben Solo dying wasn’t originally planned either and they just reshot the kiss or something, but yeah that whole thing felt particularly sloppy to me. Props to Daisy and Adam for still making it kinda work though.

The editor of the film has said herself in a podcast that they used the “speaks with the mask on”, “not in shot” etc kind of tricks to allow them to change things up. Like idk what the hell happened to the original movie outline but I’m 10000% sure that it wasn’t what we ended up seeing at all.

What would have been my ideal TROS (or what would have at least slightly improved it)

Involve Rose Tico??? Instead of setting her aside for no reason at all, have her go on the mission with the trio, like it really isn’t that hard? Adding one (1) tiny little scene showing what her relationship with Rey is like would also have been great. Either continue the romance with Finn and develop it more, or establish that they decided to remain friends, but don’t cast it aside and pretend it never happened? What they did to her is fucking gross honestly. My heart breaks in a million pieces for KMT

Develop!! Rey!!! and Poe!! It’s clear that they were going with OT trio vibes with Rey/Finn/Poe, except that Finn’s relationship with Poe and Rey are developed separately, but Rey and Poe aren’t with each other. So it doesn’t really seem like a trio and more like 2 duos that have Finn in common, you know? In the OT, Han/Luke Han/Leia & Luke/Leia were all developed, and that’s why the trio worked as a whole by the end of the saga. Instead what TROS did was make Rey and Poe bicker 80% of the time for no real reason? Then hug? So.. are they friends or not bc it’s a bit hard to tell?

Cut that whole wayfinder plot to make it wayyy shorter. It was so stupid to watch (the knife needing to be placed exactly right at the exact right place, are you kidding me JJ Abrams? Is this Benjamin Gates or smth?), it didn’t do anything at all for the characters journey, it introduced people (Zorii and Jannah) that, as cool as they were, ended up not doing much at all...? Those were weird ass choices that ended up taking away screen time that could have actually been useful for the characters we already had. If you wanted a cool female character, JJ, Rian Johnson already had one. But where was she all that time? Oh, yeah. Off screen.

NO REY PALPATINE. Makes no sense at all, is awful, has super weird implications that are never really explained, it’s full of plot holes... just big huge no. Rey being Rey Nobody was extremely powerful. It meant creating your OWN legacy, your OWN history, it connected her with the audience more. Rian Johnson actually surprised me with this, and I would have loved for it to stay that way. This is actually what crushed me the most about the entire film, I refuse this as canon completely.

Ideally,... no Palpatine at all? Him coming back kinda ruins Vader’s arc for me. Ofc one big bad was needed after Snoke’s death and Kylo Ren getting an obvious redemption (yes, it was obvious, I’m not even gonna go through explaining it, just rewatch the 2 previous films). But Hux was RIGHT THERE. We knew he was a big BIG mean guy since his dictator speech in TFA, he had more to do with Starkiller Base than Kylo Ren ever had (yep, thats canon hoes), he always hated Kylo Ren, he almost killed him in Snoke’s throne room, I mean??? Plus Domhnall Gleeson is an excellent actor, why waste him like this when you can give him a great character arc where he does a coup and takes over the First Order?? Nonesense

Have Kylo/Ben’s redemption earlier in the movie and show him actively save lives before joining Rey’s side. I don’t necessarily hate how it played out in the film but I was pissed off that for a movie called The Rise of Skywalker, the actual Skywalker still alive barely speaks or does much once he comes back from the dark side. If you go for a redemption, GO for it, make him break Vader’s mask intentionally, make him feel Hux’s betrayal, make him be heroic. And ideally, once he saved lots of lives, imply that he intends on rebuilding the things he broke.. and make him live. Because having a last minute good action then “poof, he’s dead!” isn’t reverse Anakin/Vader, it’s a direct parallel to it. Which is a lot less interesting to watch as an audience. Why make a new trilogy if the ending is so similar to the original one? Why make it all about balance if Rey ends up forever brokenhearted bc her dyad in the force died?

Still regarding Kylo/Ben: A FORCE GHOST MOMENT WITH ANAKIN WAS SO ESSENTIAL FFS? Even one with Luke? Or literally any other Jedi, like I’m so mad about that. He was the LAST Skywalker. Rey was cheered on by all the jedi and that was cool as hell, but when he was lying in that pit he should have been cheered on too? It would have been such an awesome scene to have that parallel between them (also them killing Palpatine TOGETHER would have been better, but whatever nothing about Palp made sense)

Heavier hand on the Rey/Ben romance. I’m one of the people who saw it coming since TLJ, so I personally wasn’t surprised at all, but a lot of casual fans were and that isn’t normal. There were so many opportunities for scenes reallyyy preparing the ground for a big epic space kiss that would have felt more satisfying, instead all we got in terms of clear romance pre-kiss was “I did wanted to take your hand, Ben’s hand”. That wasn’t enough. TLJ went hard, but stayed subtle. TROS needed to go harder, and not be subtle at all.

NO RACIST DRUG SMUGGLING BACKSTORY FOR POE!! And instead maybe an arc about taking over Leia’s legacy in the resistance, about him fighting since he was a kid, about his parents being Rebellion fighters... if there was a story to be told about legacy... that was IT. Bc that’s Star Wars. You have characters trying to distance themselves from their legacies (Kylo Ren), trying to build their own legacies (Finn, Rey), and characters honouring it (Poe, Rose). It’s so stupid that they didn’t actually go anywhere with that.

Give Finn something to do??? My boy was treated so fucking dirty I can’t believe. He’s an ex stormtrooper, why didn’t he, at ANY point in this trilogy, ever think twice about killing stormtroopers? If he KNOWS they’re brainwashed child soldiers.... why not have him do something with that? Create an arc around that? He’s really just gonna kill them left and right like it’s nothing to him? We’re gonna introduce Jannah, basically a female version of him (bc apparently that’s all woc get to have --’) who’s also an ex stormtrooper, and still not build an actual storyline around that? In a trilogy about BALANCE, ffs, which implies there can be good in the bad and bad in the good?? Like I’m losing my mind here lol that’s so so so dumb. Also for the entire film he’s got *something* to tell Rey, but there are some issues there: if it was a romantic confession, it doesn’t quite work bc TLJ already gave him another romantic interest (Rey too even if ppl like to deny it, Kylo was her love interest in TLJ) + made him care about the fight besides her. So making him be all “heart-eyes puppy following her around”, especially if you plan on having her kiss someone else at the end, seems particularly cruel. But if it was about him being force sensitive, it still doesn’t really work bc 1) it’s barely implied in the film and doesn’t actually go anywhere. It was a great idea! So why not fully lean into it? What was the point? I don’t get it. 2) They don’t even resolve it. Like, he tries to tell her that *something* like 3 times, and in the end it’s just never brought up, we leave the theatre not knowing what it was. I mean?????

Have Leia’s death be more meaningful and CLEAR as to why she dies. I’ve seen like 10 different interpretations of her death. None of them make absolute perfect sense, that’s how poorly executed it was. I know they didn’t have much to work with, but I hate her dying like that, its like they tried to kill her off but had no idea how so there were like “she lays down and dies”. She’s Princess Leia ffs. Giver her some damn respect.

I think I said pretty much everything I had in mind here. If you want to chat about it, my ask box is open!

I still love star wars, but i’m gonna need to refuse to see this movie as canon in my head, for my own sanity ^^

#star wars #tros

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smuthuttpodcast · 4 years

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I have read some great or good pieces of fan fiction that incorporate a trial of Ben Solo into their stories.

Name/Handle/Alias

BonnieSwims (Twitter & AO3)

About how long would you say you’ve been rooting for Reylo?

I've been rooting for them since mid 2016. I REALLY started reading a large amount of fan fiction after seeing The Last Jedi. I am not sure if I read stories on AO3 before The Last Jedi, if I did, I started reading in mid 2016.

What did you think of the way Rise of Skywalker handled Rey and Kylo’s relationship?

I do not think it got enough screen time. The time consuming scavenger hunt with Poe & Finn, only having Kylo & Rey cross swords...all would have been forgiven IF Ben Solo lived or, if he HAD to die, if there was more screentime of redeemed Ben Solo AND Rey told others of Ben Solo, grieved his death, took Solo name, and ended up somewhere green.

Do you think the film understood why you, and other people, felt like Rey and Kylo had something together? Did it get their chemistry?

Given the acting between Ridley & Driver, I do believe the film makers understood the chemistry between Rey & Kylo. I also believe they FAILED to see how Kylo could become Ben Solo again and deserved to live. They did not acknowledge how his connection to Rey & her influence on him made Kylo believe that Rey trusted him and wanted a better life for him. Instead they went with "let's have them fight at every chance." It is true he was enraged at the end of TLJ but that feeling was from his perceived abandonment by Rey. Plus, TROS takes place a year later. The rage would lessen somewhat I imagine or if the rage against Rey was still so high, Kylo would have been MORE terrifying and just straight up kill Rey early in the movie. They did not understand Rey also insisted Ben do this for himself not for his mother, Rey, or Han or for power. That is why he was so upset that she did not take his hand when he offered. (The TROS story did get the "i wanted to take Ben's hand" correct.) There was also the strange scene of Rey looking happily at children. Was it an attempt to foreshadow a family with Ben? That's what it seemed like they were telling the audience but then at the end of the movie, I was left with thinking maybe Rey is now going to have two lovers and create a family with Finn & Poe.

What about the handling of Kylo’s redemption? Was it something you had to think through in your stories?

I have read MANY pieces of fan fiction on AO3, listened to Girls with Sabers & What the Force podcasts which seemed to focus on comparing Star Wars to works of great literature & myths, how Star Wars incorporates the Hero's & Heroine's Journey, and aspects of filmmaking. Given all the marketing with #ReyandKylo , #KyloandRey, the comics emphasizing the verbal (psychological) & physical abuse of Kylo, the comics showing how Ben Solo may not be responsible for the destruction of the Jedi Academy, the comics foreshadowing how Ben could survive being thrown off a cliff, the videos of little BB Ben Solo or Rolly Ben Solo (that never aired) and other items, it really seemed like the story was leading up to Bendemption. They did have Ben Solo redeem himself. I do think they had NO IDEA how to present Ben Solo to the Resistance after Palpatine is killed by Rey & Ben. They could not figure a way to do that so they just killed him off. I have read some great or good pieces of fan fiction that incorporate a trial of Ben Solo into their stories. Many were done well with Poe, Finn, & Rey coming to the defense of Ben because he helps them end the First Order. One story has Ben banished to a deserted planet for a year or two, then at the end he rejoined society where Rey was waiting for him. One has a trial that ended with a sentence of rehabilitation/probation where Rey might be the person in charge of controlling Ben. Other fics had it where Kylo is dismantling the FO from within so the Resistance can defeat them. Others have the First Order request an armistice. Another storyline I have read decided that since Ben saved the galaxy with Rey & he is Leia’s kid, he is pretty much absolved of his crimes since he will always have to atone for and live with the guilt of killing his father. The scene with Han in TROS was a great scene & did go a long way to Ben being redeemed and forgiven for his worst crime. The stabbing of Kylo, Rey’s healing of Kylo, & his tossing his saber was a great part of the movie and a good redemption arc. So that was good. Where the story lacked was the decision that Ben Solo still did not do enough so he needs to die. That was the mistake they made. They could have redeemed Ben & had him even start atoning for his crimes in the smallest way before the credits rolled IF they had a different plot than the LONG scavenger hunt.

Regarding stories after TROS, I have mainly read ‘fix-it” stories that are WIPs. The newest stories have Ben alive where he & Rey fly back to the Resistance where Rey has to protect Ben from being killed. He may be in a holding cell and discussions begin on what to do with Ben Solo. Those stories are pulling on the heart strings of “What would Leia want us to do with her only child?” and so far are resulting in sympathy for the fate of Ben Solo. I have read others that are basically have Rey telling the resistance that he can’t die or she will too or Rey is protecting Ben.

What did you think of where Rey landed at the end? There had been a lot of excitement around Star Wars having a female protagonist. Do you think she lived up to the promise of her character?

I did not like the ending. She was alone on a desert planet at a house where Luke's relatives were burned alive. She did not get a family. Well sure, she knows she is a Palpatine but from the beginning with TFA, I always felt like she wanted people around her that she was related to or had the capacity to help her create her own family. I did not like how the costume & hair reinforced Rey as a child virgin. That is where she was at the beginning of TFA. At the end of TLJ, her hair in not in her childhood style, she is wearing more 'earthy' colors showing character growth. Then with TROS, Rey regressed BACK to her childhood hairstyle and went to virginal white to show she is a 'good girl in white" and also a virgin. So she did not grow, in fact, she regressed. Her ending does not come off as the hero in white. She appears as the pure woman untainted by desire or love solely focused on protecting the galaxy. Additionally, she must be a robot because she was serene and happy as she flew away from Ben’s death. She was elated to see her Resistance friends. She was also so happy to be alone with BB-8 on a desert planet where the Skywalker Family has faced a lot of sadness. SUCH A HAPPY ENDING WITH SO MUCH HOPE. Wow, that is a lonely job for a scavenger that just wanted a family. So, girls, don't lose sight of your purity and you can be a hero if you are willing to bear the weight of that role only on your shoulders because you will have to do this alone. So Rey did not grow as a character and she did not get a family (unless you count her stealing the Skywalker family name but still alone because the last Skywalker died.)

There’s criticism of the movie that argues it’s akin to “fan fiction” and that is has too much fan service. As fans and fan-fiction writers, how do you react to that?

I have read many excellent stories that are fan fiction for Star Wars. The best fan fiction are stories that are planned, follow a plot structure, have a writer that RESEARCHED the characters, planets and ideas they were incorporating . TROS was not as good as the best fanfiction out there. It is very disappointing that some people and critics are excusing TROS by saying it is fan fiction. I disagree with that. If "fan service" means throw as many planets as we can into the story, add random things that are never fleshed out in the story, have a movie full of action with too many quick cuts with a lack of dialogue, and add a bunch of ships from the larger SW universe, then yes, the movie was fan service. What happened with just making a good movie? A good movie would have been acceptable. A great movie would have been wonderful. We were given a mess of movie that killed off THE LAST SKYWALKER (Ben) with no acknowledgement, reduced Hux to a very minor character when he could have been Kylo's main adversary, and Rey takes the name Skywalker with no explanation. Strangely, Terrio implied the sequel trilogy was a set of movies about the Skywalker Twins and they are now so happy to be Force Ghosts with their sabers buried on Tatooine. Does anyone believe that when Leia tells Han to “bring our son home” she means she wants to meet Ben in Force Ghost Heaven soon? One could argue that TFA was Han's film, TLJ was Luke's film , and TROS was Leia's film. That became difficult to accomplish with Carrie fisher's death. PLUS, WHY EVEN HAVE THE VILLAIN BE THE LAST SKYWALKER if that character wasn't supposed to even be a big part of the film? So confusing & disappointing, especially since JJ made Ben Solo into Kylo Ren. If he did not want Kylo/Ben to play an important role as The Last Skywalker, why didn’t he just make Hux the bad guy all along? The only conclusion I can come to is the sequel trilogy was always intended to be a tragedy like the prequel trilogy to teach kids about tragedy, disappointment, death, the importance of mortal sacrifice for your sins even if you are mentally and physically abused. (Anakin & Ben were both psychologically manipulated.) What a way to teach a moral lesson about trust, family, friendship, and hope. Kinda hard to see those messages as the credits rolled on The Rise of Skywalker.

Are you still writing any Star Wars fanfic? Tell us about it! (Don't forget your Ao3 handle!)

I am a reader only.

I will mention that I am almost convinced that all the Terrio comments about Skywalker Twins, special effects personnel saying they were never asked to make Ben a Force Ghost, the three month delay for the TROS artbook, and so little information about Ben Solo’s ‘death” is LucasFilm admitting that Ben is not dead and they will do another Rey movie or a Solo movie called "The Resurrection of Ben Solo." Who knows if Driver or Ridley will EVER do another SW movie, though. Animated movie/TV show? A miniseries for Disney+...”The Search for Solo.”

Thank you Bonnie Swims

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bearpillowmonster · 4 years

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Rise Of Skywalker (NonSpoiler Review)

What's funny is that I changed my wallpaper right before I left because I'm superstitious and didn't want a wallpaper to come back to disappointed and the ending of TROS is very reminiscent to that wallpaper but you won't know what I mean unless you've seen my wallpaper ;D

For some background, I went into the theater and it was chilly because that was the only theater room with broken heat but it was the earliest showing for the day so they warned us but I didn't care...that is until I got there, I warmed up a little but then I had to pee so I came back and had to warm up again, affected a little bit of my experience, shaking the whole time.

Let me start with the opening, as much as people might complain about TLJ, one thing I can gather from a consensus of the fans is that the opening, though flawed with the gravity aspect, was a pretty good opening. This one's opening doesn't excite me quite as much but more just kind of jumps into it, which I can respect. They have a part where they have that ugly yellow alien, I guess his name is "Klaud", he is on one of the first poster leaks but he only pops in here, but he has no business being on the Millennium Falcon, why? That's one part I never understood.

I can tell they at least listened to some feedback with some of the inclusions and such but don't get me wrong, I don't mean fan-service, they have a moment or two of just nostalgia but I mean something like "Rey is too inexperienced to be that powerful." I never really had a problem with it but they, for one, explain it, and for two, have her training. That and some other complaints I've heard before. They do try to play "Oh, you liked this? Well let's put it in there." It does have Palpatine after all.

They don't really explain everything, like they'll just kind of brush over some stuff and then over others, I never felt like they went knee deep into anything. They had some really great parts and some great LOOKING shots but for one, it doesn't do too much that's "new" and I don't mean that as if it's like any particular movie, it doesn't seem like a retread.

And the stuff that it does do new, like I said, they just kind of brush over, such as new characters. Zori Bliss? Yeah she doesn't remove her helmet so don't get your hopes too high.

Why is Kylo's mask back? Well...to fit in with the boys. Which brings me to another topic, Kylo not being intimidating, nobody follows him. This is something that we have dealt with for quite some time, after the beginning of TFA, he just kind of stopped being scary, and in a way they take note of that but again, nobody follows him so it's kind of like "if Kylo doesn't follow the original plan then we're not following him." which doesn't make much sense and kind of just makes it seem like they wanted something to do with those characters. What about the beginning? They didn't seem to mind following him then, was that apart of the plan too? That's not rhetorical, it IS a possibility.

They do have a bit of a problem with a common trope movies fall for, I won't mention what it is but I mentioned it in my Frozen 2 review and you might be able to see it through that.C-3P0 is in a good amount, I'm surprised since he's an old character.

I thought about how each movie seemed to be focused on the single one and while that might be fine and is how even the original trilogy was done, it seems like it's not too clear of a vision or path between the 3 movies. Given the two different directors, it's in a way to be expected but also kind of hurts the movie because I can think of the path the prequels had, and yes it took time to fully realize it and everything as I'm sure this one will too.

One of the problems with the prequels was that it had good content and had the puzzle pieces but wasn't quite put together in the right way, you had to view it in a different way in order to get the vision in it's whole. They mentioned how a lot of the people that worked on the original trilogy made it what it is, that the source content was all there but it needed to be realized and cut in a specific way, this movie seems to have that same problem, it has the content but isn't sure what to do with it. It doesn't seem like it really drags, I'm not sure if it tries to cram things in there or what the problem could be pinpointed to but it was brought to my attention (afterwards) that some people think that this is JJ's telling of both 8 and 9 more or less summarized so that it will fit together. If you try to imagine this movie into two separate entities, I feel like it's possible but I also feel like there's a lot of content that was cut in order to fit the mark and be that mashup so it won't be clear until we figure that out.

I'd hate to admit it but part of the problem IS that it takes place many years after Episode 6, it makes it clear because there's a small flashback that I really liked and thought maybe in another world that that would be 7,8, and 9. But George also had scripts for these 3 films that would take place around the same time as the current ones, so I wonder if it would be any better or if it really is that kind of problem. So, LUCASFILM, RELEASE THE ORIGINAL SCRIPTS!

They take things from previous movies that might have been surprising and made them less impactful because they reuse those abilities. I suppose it's fair because a fan could argue "well why didn't they just do this?" so it's not a big deal.

"Is it surprising?" "Did it make me mad?" "Did it disappoint me?" "How does it stack up against The Last Jedi?" Well it does have genuinely surprising moments, none of that fabricating crap from TLJ imo. I didn't feel sour or mad like I did TLJ, I went in expecting stuff to happen, sure, some stuff kind of did happen that I didn't want to happen but what can you do? But there was some stuff I was hoping for that did happen too. They did, however, tease stuff while promoting the movie that I didn't see at all such as a connection to the Mandalorian, I will say that there is ONE thing from the last episode that I saw in this movie but it's not a character, maybe that was the secret, they don't flat out say it but I have a feeling that it connects to "why" they want Baby Yoda? I think it is better than the Last Jedi and before you ask, no, I don't think there are any parts like the Canto Bight sequence. I am...a little disappointed, not gonna lie, I don't regret that I saw it, I liked it but it's not the saving grace I might have wanted or "the best Star Wars movie", I did like The Force Awakens more. Probably the best thing about this movie isn't something I can say, it's an aspect, not a specific scene btw...

There's something that looks like a General Grievous hand in the droid shop scene we saw in the trailer. Also a weird little tidbit is that they put Colin Trevorrow in the credits, odd, I thought he "parted ways" as Disney would put it, and I didn't stay to watch them all, I think his name was as early as the second screen, I'm pretty sure it said "Written by:" This wasn't Trevorrow's take on Star Wars though, I really don't understand and I don't want to be the one to say it but did they do that to throw him under the bus? If not that then is this some kind of weird morph of Rian Johnson, Colin Trevorrow, and J.J. Abram's version? (It sounds scarier than it actually is but still...)

It's weird because I started reading reviews after the movie and they say completely different stuff, not from trolls or haters either, I know it's all a matter of opinion but some stuff like the "training" thing have been mentioned in reverse so these are my raw thoughts after going to the theater. I'm going to try and make a "spoilers" review, either when the DVD comes out so I can rewatch it or just later when I get a better formed opinion of it, as time goes on, my thoughts will be different, I'm almost sure of that, whether it's one way or another. If you're going into it, go into it expecting it to be a new addition, not the big bad end to "the Skywalker Saga", it's like ending it on a technicality. Big payoff to everything Star Wars has done? Not so much, a few things here and there pick up from other places in the timeline but nothing too big.

#star wars #the rise of skywalker #tros #sw

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doux-amer · 5 years

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Endgame reaction post! Scroll past if you haven’t blacklisted/Tumblr Saviored my “endgame spoilers” tag because I’m going to get spoilery. Okay first off, I had mixed feelings about Endgame. There were so many things I loved a lot and so many things I absolutely hated. Overall, I think this was a mediocre, sloppy mess of a movie when it shouldn’t and didn’t need to be (you spent that many hours making THIS? Come on); in some ways, it was worse than AoU which I thought was a miserable, bloated “meh” movie, although I can’t put it on the same level because it also did a lot of good things a hell of a lot better. Plus it was more entertaining; those three hours zipped by whereas I thought AoU would never end and suffered through it.

So good and bad! I might not remember some big things because honestly, I’m still trying to process except I don’t want to because that’ll set me off. Big plot stuff first before going into characters:

It was a bold, unexpected move to go after Thanos and kill him so quickly. I didn’t expect that! Neither did I expect a five-year jump. HOLY. FIVE YEARS. Damn. (But you telling me that Citifield was abandoned like that? Russos, Russos, Russos. Let me tell you something. Regardless of what happens, sports must go on. Listen, people still exist and want their entertainment, but hey, Mets represent. At least the support group wasn’t held at Yankee Stadium...imagine Steve, Brooklyn Dodgers fan, voluntarily going to where the Yanks used to play smh. ANYWAY, WOW THIS IS STUPID. LMAO NEXT.)

Didn’t expect him to destroy the stones either, but it made sense although...it didn’t after the Ancient One’s explanation about it affecting timelines.

Seeing the Avengers struggle to move on but be bound together so tightly regardless of location was nice.

The time travel thing was handled so disappointingly although it was SUPER entertaining and made me recall the giddy excitement I had watching The Avengers for the first time imo. Dude, I know fic writers who do a much better job for zero dollars and you got paid big bucks to make this, and I LOVE TIME TRAVEL STUFF DEARLY so this was something I was looking forward to a lot. It was just too loosey goosey and all over the place. Also, I know Steve returned all the Stones to their original timelines, but does that erase their future selves’ actions? Do the timelines that rippled out from those actions cease to exist? I assume so because the Ancient One said they needed to snip off all the alternate branches because their existence would lead to chaos, but at the same time, that makes Steve’s whole journey at the end make no sense whatsoever. But maybe that doesn’t matter because he was changing time through quantum jumps rather than using the Stones? That said, revisiting the past was a lot of fun and was a nostalgic ride; it was nice to see how far they’ve come and to say hello to the characters we started out with and fell in love with in the first place. We get to see Gamora and Nebula with Thanos which we should have seen in GotG 1 and 2, but whatever! We got to see what happened after the Avengers got Loki and the Tesseract under custody!

Seeing all these old familiar faces, many of them who are now gone, was great, but also incredibly distracting. Some of them felt shoehorned in like Rumlow and the gang. It was disconcerting. I would’ve imagined Steve’s first meeting with the Strike team to be after he went into SHIELD (like...why are they even there? The battle’s gone lol).

SEVERELY disappointed that the Big Three didn’t have a bigger fight. I guess they had to nerf Thor because the fight would be over in three seconds considering those three, aside from Wanda, were the only ones to really give Thanos a run for his money (Thor almost killed Thanos, Tony somehow went hand-to-hand in combat with him and actually hurt him too, and Steve was able to stop his fist). Seeing Steve finally wield Mjolnir was cool and I almost cheered out loud, but I also wish we got to see Tony use it because it felt like they were all worthy and united in their fervent desire to stop Thanos and save the world that it didn’t matter who wielded it, you know?

I wish they delved more into legacy, not just because that’s been a big recurrent theme for Tony since IM1, but because it would add depth to the Big Three’s farewells (although it seems like we’ll see Thor in GotG now). They can go their separate ways from the Avengers because they built a team that would live on and because more people showed up to help out (e.g., Strange and the masters, the Guardians, Wakandans, Carol, etc.). We got a bit of that when everyone made their grand entrance, but it would have been something for these three to realize...oh, this is what they’ve been working towards. This was the dream all along. This is the future Tony imagined when restarting the Avengers. This is what they’ll leave behind (and on a personal note, I wish we got to see more of that with Morgan instead of her just saying she wanted cheeseburgers. SHOW us that she’s Tony’s kid (and Pepper’s) through and through).

The callbacks were both good and hamfisted. There were some good ones and some really bad ones. It just felt really fanservice-y in a bad way when it could’ve been tastefully done. It was emotionally manipulative except it failed to manipulate me lmao? Like having Steve and Bucky share their lines from TFA? Meh. The line about cheeseburgers with Morgan and Happy? Cue the eye rolls. They went for cheap shots rather than things that would be more meaningful (LIKE REITERATING THE LEGACY THEME LOL).

I have extremely mixed feelings about the way the Big Three left. I’ll focus on that when I talk about the characters, but I’ll focus on Tony’s funeral right now. Where’s Natasha’s funeral? Where’s Tony’s eulogy? It was such a mind-boggling move to have the funeral be that short. I loved seeing that Tony, the man who had everything and nothing, the man who had no family, have so many people whom he loved and who loved him mourn him. All those people he left behind? The Russos remembering to include Harley and then choosing to end the shot with Fury, the one to bring him into the fold all those years ago because he believed in and cared for Tony from the very beginning? That gutted me. But god!!!! We got two seconds to say goodbye to a character who’s defined this entire era of the MCU and who pretty much is responsible for the MCU being a thing in the first place! I don’t need an extended service or anything, but man...it just was super quick.

Speaking of Tony and death, I loved that Rhodey was the first person to get to Tony because he’s always been that for Tony. He was there for Tony before anyone else, he’s the first person in Tony’s family we’re introduced to in IM1, and he was the one who got Tony when Tony needed him in IM1 and IM2 (found him in the desert and was there when Tony nearly collapsed from palladium poisoning). I loved that Pepper had a moment to reassure Tony and ease him into the afterlife, the way she’s always tried to make things easy for him and to make sure that he knows things will be all right because she’ll make it all right. I loved that Peter had a moment because he is, more than anyone else, Tony’s first true child (okay, Harley was his first ever, but Peter was The One). But I got pissed that none of the Avengers got to be there because the Avengers as an idea and as a family meant the most to Natasha and Tony, and considering the fallout of CA:CW, it would’ve been nice to have that moment where they were there for him. He wasn’t alone. They’re there for him until the end. It genuinely blows my mind that neither Thor nor Steve got to say even one final thing to him. LIKE!!!!! I love Peter, but why did you waste so much time with him! We’ll deal with his grief in FFH ffs! Give that time to Thor and Steve whom we’re also saying goodbye to! This is the last time the trio will be together! AHHHHHHH.

Lowkey don’t know why they wouldn’t just undo the last five years/bring them back right after they killed Thanos other than Tony having a family tbh, but whatever lol.

The fight at the end was super cool but also stupid lol. But I did like seeing teamwork! I loved seeing the gauntlet being passed around without hesitation even when a lot of people didn’t know each other.

The thing with Nebula’s memory was....so dumb? She’s a different Nebula from a different timeline; they’re two different individuals existing, but idk I guess they tried to explain it as two computers trying to use the same hard/memory drive although really, the better comparison would be two unique computers using the same network in which case...why is there even a problem lmao. It just seemed so convenient, but oh well.

Okay, you know what? This was super long so I’m going to write about the characters and their relationships in a separate post. This kind of ended up sounding a lot more negative than I expected, but all of the things I mentioned above I liked and disliked in equal measure. It’s just...the ideas were there but weren’t executed well imo.

#endgame spoilers

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shikai-the-storyteller · 4 years

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WFC: Siege watch!

Part 1: Episodes 1, 2, and 3

[Part 2] (Linking because Tumblr isn’t even showing the post on my blog or on my dash 🙄)

As a side note: every single person in this fandom is horrible at tagging their spoilers, you guys really need to do a better job at that because I’ve got a bunch of blockers on and I was STILL almost spoiled multiple times. Come on you guys...it literally came out today, be better about this.

Alright going to try and keep expectations low because I feel like the target audience for this is G1 dudebros who take a series about transforming cars way too seriously, but I’m still cautiously optimistic because a friend vetted for the dudes working on this show so WE”LL SEE

Episode 1

Aw man there’s only 6 episodes??? Bummer, I wonder if they’re already working on Season 2 or if they’re going to see how this does and let it die in the water if it’s not popular enough.

Things I know going in: Skyfire / Jetfire is in this, Megatron has big lips, and Elita is in it. That’s literally it, I’ve managed to avoid spoilers thusfar (though a few of the promo images implied Skyfire’s a Decepticon, so you KNOW that’s gonna break bad eventually)

WHEELJACK Wednesday THURSDAY

OH MYG OSH IS THAT SKYWARP??? EXPECTATIONS ARE NOW SKY-HIGH

The transformation sequences look so reminiscent of those stop-motion videos people do of their Transformer toys transforming. This isn’t a dig at the animation style, I think that’s rather charming and I wonder if it’s intentional.

Wow Bumblebee sounds like a jerk. I’m instantly on-edge, please don’t make all the characters ~hyper-masculine mean guys who don’t know how to have fun or talk about their emotions~

“The Autobots aint paying you for attitude” YOU TELL HIM WHEELJACK

Yooo Velocitron exists!

Ahh so Bumblebee IS just a mercenary, not an Autobot

OHOHO HERE”S JETFIRE

Wow Jetfire you’re really going the bad dude route huh

Ayyyyyy there’s Starscream

YOOO THERE”S THUNDERCRACKER

Thundercracker I appreciate that you’re using fancy tech to identify wheeljack but his Autobot badge is literally Right There

WTF

WELL THAT DIDN”T LAST LONG HUH...that’s a bit disappointing

OH NVM THAT WASN”T A HEEL-TURN THAT WAS JUST A STRAIGHT UP “I”M THE BOSS” MOVE

huh so they’re making Skyfire the target of Starscream’s desire for power. hmm

WHY ARE YOU GUYS RUNNING JUST TRANSFORM INTO CARS unless they’re too low on energon to do it??

There he is...Mr. Big Lips

Well that’s a surprising take Megatron

Isn’t that Cybertron and Luna 1 in the sky though?? Are they on Cybertron rn or not??

Megatron’s voice is really throwing me off, if it weren’t for his helmet and color I’d really think that was Overlord

ITS TRUCK DAD

OHOHO HE SAID THE THING!!!!

Why does bumblebee have lips too

“What do you know of slavery?” Alright that line did make me go “OHHHH”

“Alpha Trion would be ashamed!” “Of us both, I think” ouch, but nice to see Alpha “Grandpa” Trion back in a series

Megatron PLEASE don’t say “I’m enjoying this, Prime” in that voice while I can hear Optimus groaning in the background

AYYY ELITAAAAAA

Why are the Seekers chasing these guys, who are running on foot, ON FOOT??? CHANGE INTO YOUR DANG ALT MODE

WHEELJACK SWORE

man I’m only like a few minutes in and I’m already bored. I’m going to watch the whole thing, but I feel like this is really lacking soul or personality so far. It very much feels like the script was written by people who aren’t familiar with these characters, so they’re writing them how they EXPECT them to sound, not writing them as they actually are. It’s more than a little disappointing, but this is only the first episode, so I’ll keep going and see if this is consistent throughout the series.

Oh man, just listening to Elita you can tell she was written by a dude. Oof.

There’s the Ark!

Dang everyone’s running low

Jeez Optimus and Elita wouldn’t just walk by all these injured Autobots!

And Optimus wouldn’t brush off his officers!! Agh!!!

YO Ultra Magnus!

Chromia!!!!!

oh my gosh is THAT Red Alert??

Hey where’s Ratchet though

Gosh the writing is so STIFF!!!! I can’t stand this, if I wasn’t a die-hard Transformers fan I would’ve bounced a few minutes ago

It might also be the way the VAs pause between words, please speak normally, these constant pauses between words are frustrating

Ok but where the frick is Soundwave

“His arrogance I actually like” pfft

Annnnd here comes Ultra Magnus to accept the treaty on Prime’s behalf, where he’ll get held hostage and probably wind up beefing it.

Episode 2

SOUNDWAVE!!!! BABY

And Shockwave!!!

YO SKYWARP ACTUALLY GOT A SPEAKING LINE

I want to know where Megatron got all this fabric for those stupid flags and where Ultra magnus got that cloak

Is. Is that Prowl with a weird paint job

Wow bad aim dude

Ultra Magnus you dummy....

Ok but if it was a battle then who were they fighting against???

Wow you’re really just gonna stand there and take that Magnus?

I know they’re on a time-crunch because they only have 6 episodes, but they have to do more to make me care about the characters. I’m inclined to care about them already because I’m familiar with the series and because as a stand-alone, even I’m like “Ok. So?” whenever new problems come up for them. I’m not invested!

Not to compare the two, because I feel like this entire liveblog will turn into a comparative essay, but Cyberverse got me invested in characters within the first episode! They were on an even TIGHTER time-crunch because their episodes were only 10 minutes, and yet they did a great job weaving a tight narrative and making good use of their time to tell a story and have characters charm the audience.

Optimus: Til All Are One Rodimus, coming out of nowhere: TIL ALL ARE ONE

WELL THAT”S NOT THE VOICE I WAS EXPECTING FOR SHOCKWAVE he sounds a bit reminiscent of his TFA version

What does de-rez mean

Ok but that’s assuming that this thing will automatically reprogram them?? Reformatting doesn’t automatically mean someone will turn into a Decepticon!

You know, there’s a lot of talking in the show but the dialogue doesn’t actually say a lot. It doesn’t reveal much about the characters or tell me who they are.

YOOO THERE”S SOUNDWAVE

AUDIO BOOB

It really annoys me that characters always pause after saying “I”. It’s always “I.........[long pause] rest of their sentence.”

what do you mean “Teams” Optimus there’s like 5 of you guys

I love you Soundwave!!!

Whoa wait was that Impactor in the background?

ughHHHHHH I HATE THAT MY BIGGEST PET PEEVE IS “what have you done?” SAID UTTERLY MONOTONE WHEN IT’S NOT EVEN A BIG DEAL!!! YOU CAN”T FLIP THAT LINE OUT WITHOUT ACTUALLY PUTTING IN THE FOOTWORK TO EARN IT!!! AGH!!!

Again, it feels very much like the writers read the wikipedia page for Transformers and maybe the first sentence of each character’s bio page and then wrote the entire script from there. It’s frustrating. I hate being so severe in my reviews because I hate dunking on my fellow writers because they don’t always have final say in what happens, but this is astonishingly poor writing.

Like, I can see what they’re TRYING to accomplish, but it feels like they whiff so badly.

YO IT IS IMPACTOR

oh thats Barricade that’s why I thought that was Prowl

Chromia!!!! My darling!!!! I can’t believe there’s only two girls in this show so far

Oh that’s Cog, I wasn’t sure if that was Beachcomber or what

Nice one Chromia

Oh is that Mirage?

Ugh ANOTHER WRITING PET PEEVE: Constantly having characters start to say something but then then their dialogue gets cut off. It’s fine if it’s once in a while but over and over it’s annoying

I also feel like a lot of the VAs lack...emotion. They don’t emphasize the lines. Like, “Get him into the repair bay” is one example. Depending on how you emphasize certain words in that sentence, you can infer a lot! Emotion, the state of mind of the character, etc. But when it’s delivered in such a bland way, it’s a bit like “ok whatever”, which is how I’m starting to feel about this whole show. This doesn’t go for all the VAs or all lines, but it’s consistent enough that my mind’s wandering.

RAVAGE??? RAVAGE???? RAVAGE?!?!?!??!?!

It was probably Bumblebee.

Not to be nitpicky but it should be “Neither we nor the Autobots”

The idea of reformatting is so stupid!!! It implies that Autobots and Decepticons are inherently different, which is stupid!! It’s so dumb WHY DO YOU GOTTA GO THAT ROUTE IT”S SO STUPID (ESPECIALLY SINCE THEY”RE TACKLING THE TOPIC OF OPPRESSION??? THEY”RE SAYING THEY”RE LITERALLY DIFFERENT SPECIES AND USING IT AS A PLATFORM TO SAY ONE GROUP IS INHERENTLY BETTER THAN THE OTHER. THAT SUCKS)

Episode 3

RATCHET!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lmao love your lipgloss Megatron

Ohh is Ratchet going to fix Impactor??

PROWL??? HE”S SO SHORT

Gosh please, please don’t have humans in this show

lmao Skyfire called Starscream a tool

RATCHET!!! :D

I’d like to see who was on the writing team of this show

Isn’t that Mirage?

YEAH THAT IS MIRAGE

Again with the sentences consistently being cut off....

Is that Sunstorm?

Points to Chromia and Mirage for showing the first bitof personality in this show.

Yooo Ratchet! Oof he’s not chummy with Prime huh

YOO CAMINUS EXISTS TOO

LMAO FEISTY GRANDPA

Oh Mirage come on

Actually no, don’t shut Impactor up he’s right

“I didn’t patch you up just so you could blow a valve here” *snorts*

Wouldn’t it be frickin hilarious if Magnus just popped open a panel and Minimus came out and just dipped outta there

lmao nice lightsaber Jetfire

LMAO “PULL THE TRIGGER MAGNUS”

JEEZ JUST PUNCH HIM RIGHT IN THE FACE WHY DON”T YOU

Ratchet is the ONLY character they’ve given personality in this show so far.

Jeez Mirage cool your jets

Oh for frick’s sake Optimus be cool

Megatron please stop torturing your ex boyfriend

Ok but who did they rise against??? Were there Quintessons in this universe too?

oh come on you guys

Oh boy something tells me Skywarp isn’t going to survive the rest of this episode

Oh jk, Skyfire just let him go. Well alrighty then

I’m not sure how they found the Autobot base, they implied that it was because of Impactor but that doesn’t make sense

This post is getting long so I’m going to spit it between two posts

#i talk #I'm watching WFC #Primordial robot hell #WFC Spoiler #That's how I'll be tagging my spoilers #but I'll throw a few more spoiler tags in here for good measure #transformers spoiler /#Siege spoiler /#wfc spoiler /#WFC siege spoiler /#ask to tag any other spoilers

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unexpectedreylo · 5 years

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The Rise of Skywalker Teaser Trailer Analysis

First, I’d like to pat myself on the back for correctly guessing how the panel was going to go down, heh heh. Just as a note, the “villains” didn’t appear at SWCA in 2015. They were introduced at SDCC 2015 instead. I think this could mean that we’ll see the “baddies” of TROS at a later con like SDCC 2019 or (more likely) D23 in August: Adam Driver, Domnhall Gleeson, Richard E. Grant, and Keri Russell, who I swear to God is playing a bounty hunter.

That “dorm room” poster and the character key leak from a few weeks ago were as I suspected 100% legit.

I had no idea though what to expect from the trailer itself. I was and still am SHOOK. OH MY GOD. Of all the teaser trailers I’ve seen from Star Wars over the past 42 years, that one was the best. I was shocked, I was surprised, and I freakin’ can’t wait.

Nobody got the title correct, aside from a rumor that said it was going to be called “Skywalkers,” like a silly 1980s spinoff sitcom. Close but no cigar. But really it’s perfect.

I’m going to tell my Reylos right now don’t listen to the C-students. You know who the A-students are, the ones who have gotten everything right since 2016. Right now the internet is awash with the usual super nerd dude crowd, the antis, the ReySkys and so forth with their lame or convoluted theories. Teaser trailers often aren’t literally as they appear but too many people haven’t figured that out.

On a side note, Clayton Sandell, ABC news reporter and Star Wars fan, posted on his Twitter about an interview the cast that had appeared at SWCC did with Paula Faris that will air on Good Morning America this Monday. 1) Daisy said she had relayed to Abrams her thoughts on Reylo and it’s explored in “MUCH greater depth” and 2) while Abrams isn’t going to change the parentage reveal in TLJ, there is “more to the story.” I suspected as much but fear not, I do NOT think this means Rey is Kylo’s sister or cousin.

The rest of this is observation from the trailer itself and speculation. I do NOT know the plot.

In the opening shot, it might appear that Krazy Kylo is trying to run over our poor heroine with his Silencer. But as many Reylos believe, I don’t think this is the case. Notice you DON’T see Kylo’s/Ben’s face. Rey shows no fear, but anticipation and determination. Either Daddy is training Rey or she’s hitching a ride to go with him and kick some “a.”

The shot of Kylo punching someone in the gut while holding a lightsaber (typical) and NOT using his helmet indicates to me that perhaps this is a point where he has switched sides with a FO faction that has broken away. The guy Kylo knocks down is coming at him. It’s a defensive move, not the kind of kill-the-villagers or Rebels-where-they-stand stuff he’d been doing before. Hmm.

Yes, that’s the remains of the Death Star our friends are looking at. Is it Death Star one and it’s Yavin or is this the remains of Death Star II on Endor? Will there be Ewoks???

I think those are Leia’s hands touching the medal she gave Han. It’s interesting that Abrams said that they wrote scenes around the footage of her that they had. It’s interesting how they managed to have Rey in her new outfit hug Leia like that; now that’s some movie magic. I am a little concerned about Rey being teary-eyed, but Rey would cry at a YouTube video of cute kittens and puppies.

As for Luke’s monologue, this may or may not end up in the film as is and I suspect a snippet was actually cribbed from TLJ. But I think 1) Luke is not just addressing Rey. He is likely talking to Ben OR to both Ben and Rey, like a little pep talk and 2) I think we will see Luke doing this pep talk WITH OTHER FORCE GHOSTS. That’s right, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda, and maybe Qui-Gon. You never know, we might even see the muggles in the Skywalker family tree (Padme? Han???). It might come down to just Ben and Rey to save the galaxy with their friends, but Luke is reassuring them they will not be alone in spirit.

Now for the line cribbed from TLJ...yes, he’s talking about Ben BUT it also implicates the trailer’s SHOCKING ending. I knew that laugh the second I heard it.

Sheev’s. Back. And if you didn’t get it, Ian McDiarmid himself came out onstage at Celebration afterward.

Remember, if Shmi Skywalker is the matriarch of this clan, Darth Sidious was implicated in ROTS as the one who may have manipulated the midichlorians to conceive Anakin in the first place. And it’s possible he may have done it to OTHER people and (hold on) Rey might be descended from one of his other guinea pigs. And it’s possible that in some shape or way, Palpatine used that magic power to “cheat death” and has been causing #@$! all of these years. He may have trained Snoke and ordered him to start messing with Ben in utero as well as mess with Luke, Leia, etc.. What if Ben and Rey find all of this out and it’s only together they can finally take out the trash, because it’s what the Force wants? (In my headcanon, the Force can even use Dark Siders like Sidious or Snoke to do its will.)

As for the title Rise of Skywalker, it’s really funny how so many fans forgot KYLO IS A SKYWALKER. This title screams Redemption without calling the movie “The Redemption Of Leia’s Dumbass Son” (credit The Farce Awakens). Several Reylos noticed that Kylo’s Theme plays as the title comes onscreen and it goes up in key, ending on hopeful notes. This was confirmed by our resident professional composer Christy Carew. There’s also this, but I’d take it with a grain of salt since John Williams hasn’t started composing yet.

Not only will he save himself, he will redeem his lineage. He will, as he said in TFA, finish what Anakin started. And Rey will be a Skywalker once Ben puts a ring on it and she has his babies.

#reylo #reylo fam #reylo fandom #episode ix #the rise of skywalker #tros #that trailer rocked #speculation

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