#this scene vs tros' blue

[henfox]

ADAM DRIVER in the annette trailer 2021 dir. Leos Carax

#ben solo??? #annette #henry mchenry #adam driver #annetteedit #henrymchenryedit #adamdriveredit #adriveredit #annette film #filmedit #m* #annette* #ad* #this scene vs tros' blue

[dalekofchaos]

My critique of the Sequel Trilogy Lightsaber duels

My biggest problems with the Sequel Trilogy are the blatant rip off and unoriginality, no clear plan at all, lore breaking bullshit, lack of worldbuilding and poor executions of great character concepts. In this post, one of my My biggest gripes with the Sequels is the terrible Lightsaber fights.

The only good duel in my opinion is Finn vs Kylo Ren. This feels raw and powerful. A hardened soldier who has just became familiar to Lightsaber combat vs a trained dark side warrior. Despite Ren's years on training, though, Finn puts up a good fight and is able to hold his own before having his back sliced up. But.....that's what kills the fight for me. Finn's injuries. If this were in the first 6 movies or anywhere in the EU, Finn would be in a wheelchair or in a bacta tank for life. And guess what? A movie later and Finn’s injuries are never brought up again or treated with any severity.

Like Finn’s injuries, Finn’s rivalry with Kylo Ren is dropped for no reason whatsoever and never mentioned again. Finn and Kylo Ren are narrative foils, yet after TFA it’s dropped??? From the start they have been prominent foils to each other: dark from light and light from dark, both in the First Order but in drastically different positions. And Kylo too obviously has strong feelings about his defection. I also believe that Finn is the awakening in the force that Kylo and Snoke felt. Perhaps that is why Kylo focused on Finn and is so angry about him. Finn is also the first person to use the legacy lightsaber and is the first to actually fight Kylo. TLJ could've focused on Finn and Kylo being  narrative foils having a force connection and Kylo wondering why Finn would switch to the Resistance while Finn wonders why Kylo joined The First Order and  Rey standing in the middle of it all wondering with the new realization that her family has a mixed past of good and evil and her questioning where exactly does she belong? The way at the height of tfa when Kylo Ren rejected Han Solo’s offer for redemption and killed him he looked over and noticed Finn. Like they both locked eyes and in that moment was a surge of emotions between them— shock (and some fear) on Finn’s end, and anger on Kylo’s as he shouts at Finn that he’s a traitor— and those circumstances set Finn and Kylo up to be the dynamic for the sequel trilogy. They were foils, and the trilogy had the potential to truly expand on that and see their development in a final standoff/rematch at the very end. But it was wasted, because why have good movies.

Rey vs Kylo Ren. This duel was bullshit from start to finish. Okay, I don't care how force sensitive she is. I don't care that she downloaded Kylo's abilities in the interrogation. ANd I don't give a fuck WHO she turned out to be related to. If you are thrown into a tree, you are gonna be out for at least an hour. I will hand it to them that it feels like a genuine fight, but it just feels cheap when Rey won. It also doesn't make it any better that Kylo's injuries doesn't force him to wear the helmet at all times, his facial wounds are non-consequential. Rey has no prior training. Never held a lightsaber. Rey fighting off thieves with her quarterstaff is not the same thing, it is understandable that Kylo was struggling because of his injuries, but Rey didn’t struggle against Kylo. Even Luke struggled with Vader and Anakin struggled with Dooku. What should have happened is as it looks like Kylo is about to win, Chewie from the Falcon fires his bowcaster to keep Ren at bay and both Rey and Finn make it to the Falcon. This way we can keep Kylo Ren strong and show Rey struggling to overcome Kylo. It will also show This is how powerful he is when injured, so imagine him at his peak. Instead we get a pointless fight instead of Rey and Finn just escaping Starkiller base while Ren collapses due to injuries and Rey beating Kylo served no purpose(the end goal to destroy Starkiller Base was already accomplished) and helped derail their villain of the trilogy.

The Throne Room Duel. Everyone knew that Rey and Kylo would kill the Praetorian Guards. This is a fight with absolutely zero stakes. It's one thing if Rey and Kylo dueled Snoke himself, that might be a good fight. But come on, did anyone REALLY think they would lose? There is no tension in the scene and it is pointless. Kylo Ren and Rey are fighting a faceless a group of guards that we know absolutely nothing about and have literally no purpose in the entire story except for this one fight. We know neither of the characters are going to die because these are just faceless red shirts and there is still like 30 to 40 minutes left of the movie. Terrible editing takes away any enjoyment one might have with the fight choreography, if you've got to literally photoshop out the bad guys weapons in post production to not look stupid you might need to recoreograph the shot. There are multiple times where Rey, Kylo and the guards are just doing motions and actions because they look cool but serve no purpose but to look cool. Kylo stabbing the ground? Pointless. Rey twirling her rave stick around while someone falls behind her, pointless. Not even once do we see them displaying their powers is what cheapens the fight. Kylo Ren is powerful enough to freeze a blaster and a person in place and Rey herself unlocked Kylo’s powers, so the two of them could have easily ended the fight sooner than it was dragged out. Kylo is powerful in the force but he SERIOUSLY could not stop a Praetorian Guard choke holding him and Rey struggled with a guard? Rey and Kylo were stronger in TFA and are just made weaker in the duel with the Praetorian Guards. Kylo could have frozen half of the guards and Rey could have mind tricked the other half into killing the frozen guards and Kylo and Rey could have finished them. They are masters of light and darkness, but they are made weaker. The throne room scene is a symbolization of everything wrong with the movie. It’s all flash, but no substance and the more you think about it, the worse it gets.

All this duel makes me believe is that Rey and Ben should’ve both switched sides in TLJ. Rey gives in to the dark side and Ben returns home. Rey is the most Sith like character if you obey the rules of George Lucas for Light and Dark sides of the force. Ben Solo is more Jedi like throughout the movie until the end. Let me explain. Rey throughout the sequel trilogy has given in to her passion and anger. In the end of TFA Rey gave in to anger and hate to defeat Kylo. and in TLJ she is shown to use anger and hate throughout the movie. She is shown to as Yoda put it “take the quick and easy path to the dark side” gives in to anger and hate in almost every scene before she boards the Supremacy and gave in to the temptations of the dark side water cave. Her dark side actions in TROS speak for itself. Ben is calm and clear minded like a Jedi, he even wants to cut all ties to attachments like a Jedi. Everything we were told of the Jedi and how disciplined they are, Ben displays that in TLJ until after the Throne room fight. Hell, EVEN THE THRONE ROOM FIGHT SUGGESTS THIS. Think about the fact that Ben really does not move or even engage. He just stands there and dodges and swings once when the guard rushes him. Contrast that to Rey, who is clearly being more aggressive with her lightsaber and attacking rather than just being passive. How again is Rey the Jedi and Kylo is the dark side force user in this movie? They’re fighting in the exact opposite way they should be. Rey fights for the kill while Kylo gets a glancing blow in the armor in the opening fight. Their style of fighting in the Throne Room with the Praetorian Guards really suggests that they should’ve switched sides. What they should have done is have Ben realize that Snoke was evil and shows regret for his actions and turn to the light. While Rey feeling betrayed by Luke and the revelation of her family turns to the dark. This would not only be unexpected but would even rival Vader’s “I am your father” twist. And it would logically follow what we’ve seen of these two characters leading up to this point. Rather than just out of the blue Kylo turns angry and irrational and Rey is calm when Ben was calm and rational throughout the movie and Rey was full of anger and hate throughout this movie. You have them follow an arc that makes sense for their individual personalities. Ben is always calm, but he felt betrayed by those on the light, but he comes to realize that betrayal was an incorrect perception and he desperately wants to make amends to Luke and Leia and therefore he should rejoin what he knows in his heart is good. While Rey is full of passion and anger and as that builds up and she realizes that even the great Jedi Luke Skywalker is a disappointment and her family abandoned her, she knows the only person who can live up to her own expectations is herself and that self-centered attitude leads her to the dark side. That would make sense and we would have something to fight for, save Rey from herself or stop her.

Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren. Originally, I thought they were gonna have Luke first send the Walkers’ turboblasts right back at them and use the force to bring down the transports, TIEs and the shuttle and then toy with his nephew like Vader did to him and leave Kylo Ren in defeat and his ruined fleet. In a way he did(minus the ruined fleet), but it took away any tension away by having Luke just be a force projection. He wasn't there. His moment with Leia and 3-PO doesn't feel genuine anymore. And the "duel" if you can call it that is just bad. Luke doesn't have his Green Lightsaber and their blades do not clash. A Jedi is all about defense. But a Jedi will also fight in self-defense to defend others. The argument that Luke did the "most Jedi thing ever" is bullshit. A Jedi will stand up for what's right and face the threat. Instead Luke pulled a practical joke and died pointlessly. I mean if he instead pulled the X-Wing out afterwords and told R2 "Come on R2, we've got work to do." I would forgive that and then we could've gotten a genuine master and apprentice relationship between Luke and Rey and a proper reunion between Luke and Leia. But no, he has to die of force exhaustion. If Palpatine, who uses the force like crack didn't die of force exhaustion, then why did Luke?

The duels in TROS are all equally terrible. Not once did I felt any excitement between Rey and Kylo's duels as I did with Finn and Kylo from TFA. Every Lightsaber duel is forgettable. The fight in Ren's Quarters is just bad. The fight on the Death Star Ruins is just terrible. It's like they both got high on deathsticks and could barley remember that they are both trained with a Lightsaber. Fighting in ruins surrounded by water SHOULD BE EXCITING! But they did everything in their power to make this duel boring, mediocre and lackluster. They act as if they are swinging bats, not Lightsabers. Lightsabers aren’t baseball bats, stop treating them like they are!  

The worst part is that THIS was the final Lightsaber duel of the Star Wars saga. A huge step down if compared to Obi Wan vs Anakin in Mustafar and Darth Vader vs Luke Skywalker in the Emperor’s Throne Room, which unlike the previous prequel, had awesome shooting and use of the soundtrack, also being very lengthy.

Then we get the Luke and Leia flashback. The ONLY well choreographed fight scene is a fucking flashback.

Then Ben Solo and the Knights Of Ren. Again, we know the Knights are gonna die. If JJ Abrams bothered to characterize the Knights, then yes they might've had a chance, but like the Praetorian Guards, they exist for background and die pointlessly.

Of Course we don't get to see Palpatine duel wielding his twin Sith Lightsabers and fighting Rey and Ben, cause JJ mr I hate the Prequels can't give the fans any decent Lightsaber fights. Instead of Palpatine facing Rey and Ben in an epic climatic final battle, we get Palpatine killed by his own lightning.

The fights in TFA is adequate at best. TLJ is meaningless. TROS is absolutely terrible and forgettable.

John, Daisy and Adam deserved better choreography than they were given. There's no excuse for the lackluster duels we see in the ST, whether from Rey, Finn or Kylo.

One of the biggest complaints for the Prequels is Lightsaber fights is "they are too choreographed" and anyone who believes this is an idiot. What? You wanted Jedi in their prime to slap sticks like old people? You wanted them to fight like drunken hobos? One of the best things in the prequels was finally getting to see the Jedi finally go all out in some awesome lightsaber duels. The Jedi should be masters at Lightsaber combat. Fight choreography is a good thing. Look at the duels in the prequels. You can like or hate them but the duel between Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon and Maul was great. As was Obi-Wan vs Jango, Yoda vs Dooku and every duel in ROTS. Even The Clone Wars had great fight choreography. There was more planning and choreography in The Clone Wars S7E10 than in the whole sequel trilogy.

Seriously, why wasn't Nick Gillard contacted? He is the main reason why the Lightsaber duels in the prequels were so good. I don't care if too many Lightsabers were a big complaint amongst the Prequel haters, the duels were good. So instead of great fight scenes, you traded great fight choreography for mediocre baseball bat fights?

The choreography is not the issue alone. There is no emotion. In TFA. Starkiller Base was already set to blow, so the fight was pointless. In TLJ there is no emotion at stake for the Throne Room fight and the Resistance already got away prior to Luke's pointless death. Rey vs Kylo doesn’t even matter because the characters HAVE THE SAME GOAL. Both want to get to Exegol via a wayfinder before the duel and both get to Exegol with a wayfinder (or memory of it) at the end of the duel. While Kylo gets redeemed, the duel wasn’t necessary for this part as Leia just needed to talk to him and then give him the force induced memory. The only thing this proves is that Rey is not a Jedi because she gives into anger and blind rage to start the duel.

The duels in the prequels and originals had themes, emotion and meaning. Not just that but they looked damn impressive and was the spectacle that helped made Star Wars, Star Wars.

There isn't any good musical scores for any of the Lightsaber fights either or at the very least, nothing memorable. Nothing as iconic as Duel Of Fates, Battle Of Heroes and the Throne Room fight in ROTJ. I don't remember any themes in the Sequels and that's a problem.

And it doesn’t help that these duels have no meaningful deaths either. A bunch of faceless guards and Luke (through indirect means) are the only deaths via a duel. But this is what happens when you hide the mentor archetype on an island and have the hero and villain go at it for three films.

The Lightsaber duel is no longer an emotional spectacle and a grand duel to the death. It's a bunch of idiots high on deathsticks fighting pointlessly and fighting for absolutely nothing. Rey fights like a Sith but she's a Jedi. Ben fights like a Jedi but is leading the First Order? They don't matter anymore and the duels in the sequels are the most forgettable thing about them.

#Anti Sequel Trilogy #Anti TFA #Anti TROS #Anti TLJ #Rey #Finn #Kylo Ren #Ben Solo

[silver-and-stars]

The Rise of Skywalker

Okay so TROS is out in France and I’ve just seen it. And I need to get all those feelings out of my chest.

SO SPOILERS !

Bottom line for those who don’t want to read the whole summary about Kylo/Ben :

- Rey is a Palpatine

- Rey force healing Ben by giving him her life energy

- Leia dies and it makes Ben gives up the dark side.

- Rey VS Palpatine

- Ben Solo comes to help.

- Rey defeats Palpatine but dies.

- Ben Solo gives her his life energy to bring her back to life. That’s the romantic grand gesture they were talking about.

- THEY KISS and immediately after HE DIES and his body DISAPPEARS

- Nothing more is shown and said about Ben, him turning good again or his sacrifice. It’s like only Rey know that and no one will ever learn the truth. Not even Chewie.

Now, onwards for the very long talk : 

I hadn’t read the leaks, only the posts on tumblr following them : Rey blowing up the transport ship in which Chewie was in, Kylo Ren / Ben Solo dying and not being talk about again, it’s all true ! Expect that Chewie wasn’t really in the transport ship. He is fine.

More on the rest later but first Ben Solo’s redemption and death + Reylo.

So first off all, Rey goes on the wreck of the Death Star to find an item - a sith wayfinder, only two exist and Kylo has one - that could direct her to Palpatine’s lair, cause yeah, Palpatine is alive and he just lend the First Order a HUGE fleet of Star Destroyers, each equip with a Star Killer canon.

Palpatine is not doing well btw : he is vertically plugged to a machine, his eyes are white, their is missing flesh on his fingers... He hids on a sort of closed temple and has hundreds of Sith cultists (non-fighters) with him.

Kylo finds him and Plapatine tells him he made Snoke and the truth about Rey’s identity (which we don’t hear). He wants Kylo to find Rey and kill her and he will give him the Empire in exchange. 

Instead Kylo warns Rey that Palpatine wants her dead and says he doesn’t care about Palpatine’s plans, he just want her to join him on the darkside. He tells her who she is : Palpatine’s grand-daughter. Palpatine had a son who ran away and hid in Jakku with Rey’s mom but the Emperor wanted to get his hand on Rey, presumably to kill her, so they sold Rey and lied about her not being on Jakku anymore before getting killed.

So anyway Rey isn’t taking all that information so well, even less since she had a vision (that we saddly don’t see) of her sitting beside Kylo on the throne of the Siths.

On the deathstar she has a vision of Darth Rey after touching the wayfinder, quite like Luke had of himself on Dagobah. She fights with herself and drops the wayfinder. Kylo picks it up and tells her the only way she will find Palpatine is if she comes with it and he crushed the wayfinder. Rey is seething with anger and fights Kylo very agressively, most of what he does is retreating. They end up outside, on the wreck, above a very agitated sea.

Rey is really close to giving in to her anger and go dark and Kylo finally starts to get the upper hand. And then Leia happens.

Leia who felt their battle, used the last of her strength to connect with his son. She says his name and Kylo feels she is dying. He spaces out and drops his saber. Rey stabs him in the stomach the same moment Leia dies. They both feels it. Rey shuts down her saber, Ben slides down on the floor. Rey cries and looks at Ben, he is staring blankly into space, looking like a lost boy. She kneels beside him and heals him, transferring life energy into him. She tells him he was right, she did wanted to take his hand, Ben’s hand. And she leaves in his ship.

Later we find Ben still on the wreck, standing and looking at the horizon. A voice says “Hey kid” and for a sec I thought it was Ghost Luke. But no ! Ben turns around and it’s Han !

Ben says he is just a memory, “your memory” answers Han. Ben says Ben Solo is dead and Han says that it’s Kylo Ren who is dead, and asks him to come home. And Ben says it’s too late, “she’s dead”. Earlier on we had a hint that Ben wanted to go back to her but he believed he had went to far on the wrong track to be able and allowed to go back. Now Han tells him that what Leia believed in and fought for is still alive. The following scene mirror the one on the Starkiller bridge in SW7, when he killed Han, an act that still haunts him in this movie. Ben says the same lines “I know what I have to do but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.”. Han’s touches his face and tells him he does. Ben calls him “dad” in a heartwrecking tone and turn around to throw his lightsaber into the sea. When he turns back Han isn’t there anymore.

The next time we see him it’s on Palpatine’s lair. Rey got there and confronted Palpatine who told her he didn’t want her dead, he wanted her to kill him so his spirit would be transferred in her body. Of course she doesn’t want to do so and doesn’t plan on hating him either. But he opens up the roof of the temple and she can see the Resistance’s ships getting their asses kick by his fleet. He tells her that if she completes the rituel she will have control over his fleet and she could then save her new family (the Resistance).

And then she feels Ben. He is here in the temple, with only a loose shirt, pants and a blaster, reminding me of young Luke or young Han, he is fighting his way toward her but the knights of Ren have him cornered and he is now unarmed. Rey and him look into each other eyes using their force bound (that is now strong enough for them to transfer objects between them) and they nods in agreement. Rey pretends she will strike Palpatine down, just like Ben pretented he was going to kill Rey before Snoke. She rises her saber while Palpatine narrates, puts it behind her back and... it’s in Ben’s hands. He was a very endearing gesture there, like he is saying “now we’re talking” and he fights the knights of Ren, one against six, with a blue light saber. Meanwhile Rey has another lightsaber : Leia’s, that force ghost Luke gave her and she fights Palpatine’s guards. 

Ben reaches her and they stand togeteher, in sync, before Palpatine. “you stand together. you die together” says Palapatine and he attacks them. But when he does the flesh on his finger is restored. He realized Rey and Ben have something very rare in the force, a bound, a dyad. And he absorbs their power to rejuvenate/heal himself. Rey and Ben fall unconscious on the ground. Palpatine now with his full power, unleashed massive a electric beam toward the ships and starts frying the Resistance (who in the meanwhile got backup from the whole galaxy).

Ben is the first to wake up but Palpatine throws him down a pit kinda like he was thrown in one by Vader. Then Rey wakes up, lies on her back and see the fleet, but beyond them she sees the stars and says “be with me”. Many jedi voices (Luke, Yoda, Qui-Gon, Anakin, Ashoka etc) answer tell her to get back up, that they are with her.

She takes her saber and rise on her feet. Palpatine directs his electicity toward her and she blocks it with her saber. He tells her it’s useless, she can’t defeat him as he is all of the Siths, she cannot win. But she grabs the second light saber and push back, says she is all the jedis, and Palpatine is vaporized by his own force lightining.

The victory is here. However Rey drops the saber and fall on the floor, unmoving, eyes open. Finn (who is force sensitive) fells that she is dead. But from the pit arise Ben. He is injured, limping, he falls several times in his way to reach her but when he finally falls near her, he grabs her and cradles her, looking desperate. Her body is limp, her eyes still open and unmoving. So he lies her down in his laps, closes his eyes and gives her his life energy. Of course it works ! And, knowing about the leaks I think “oh no. oh no. maybe they were wrong about this part at least” and “you mom and uncle would be so pround of you right now”. Rey wakes up, sits up, looks at him, puts his hand on his face. He is so relieved, she smiles and calls his name, “Ben”. And they KISS. BOUM CANON REYLO. And when they break the kiss he gives her a smile so relieved, happy and innocent, it breaks my harts. It breaks my heart because they hug (I think) and then he falls backward. Eyes closed, unmoving and his body disappears and as it does so does Leia’s ! No more Ben. All there is left are his clothes on the ground. And that’s it.

Rey says nothing, the scene just cut to the fleet coming home and celebrating. We see her rejogning the fleet in Luke’s X-Wing, then on their base where she happily reunites with BB-8, Poe and Finn. Then she goes on Tatooine, finds the Skywalker farm, buries Leai and Luke’s lightsaber together. She has made her own lightsaber. It’s yellow.

An old lady passes by and asks her who she is. She says “Rey” and looks on her right. There are Luke and Leia’s force ghosts standing side by side and I’m already dead inside. On Leia’s left there is a blank space. I expected Ben’s ghost to materialize there, like Anakin’s did beside Yoda and Obi-wan in SW4, to shows us Ben is still with her in some way and that he was at least reunited with his mother, thzt he is at peace with Luke and himself. But no, nothing. She says “Rey Skywalker”, watched Tatooine’s suns set and that’s it. Nothing more about Ben turning back good, nothing showing some people -at least Poe, Finn AND FUCKING CHEWIE - YOU KNOW, HIS KINDA-UNCLE CHEWIE, CHEWIE, BEN’S FATHER’S BEST-FRIEND, CHEWIE WHO LET OUT AND HEARTBREAKING CRY AND FELT ON HIS KNEES WHEN HE LEARNT LEIA) DIED, CHEWIE WHOSE THREE BEST FRIENDS (HAN, LUKE, LEIA]) DIED TRYIND TO REACH OUT TO BEN - learned that Ben saved Rey’s life, helped defeat Palpatine and in the end did the right thing. For all we know the galaxy still believes he is evil and died evil. 

And really, if Rey went through all the trouble of separating from her friend and go on the Skywalker homeland - like she intended to live there- , couldn’t she just build up a life there with Ben. I can’t see how people would accept Ben and his redemption after he killed so many, including Han, and as he was such an important and feared figure of the First Order. But they could have lay low and live happily together on Tatooine and build a home and a family together there. A Palpatine and a Skywalker, united in peace and love. Two lost children, orphan now, creating their own home. A new start, a new life. But no. We don’t get that. Ben was too young to die in a Star Wars movie. This is not Rogue One wtf. 

_____________

So yeah no, I’m not quite okay. The end was too quick. The movie was nice, it didin’t felt slow or dragging, there wasn’t any horses race scene. But the conclusion was too short, to abrupt imo. You needs to spend a little more time on it after three movies ! Or you know, since it’s the end of the Skywalker saga FUCKING NINE MOVIES. Gimme a 30 minutes long ending like in Return of the King. I’m okay with this ! I do want to know what became of the Resistance, of Finn, Poe, Chewie. I do want to see force ghost Ben (since you weren’t kind and hopeful enough to keep him alive). 

Btw : R2D2 is barely in this movie and does almost nothing. It’s R2D2. Sure BB8 is cute but R2 as been around since Padmé ! He knows stuffs !! He is good at his job, let him save lives ! 

No canon Stormpilot. The queer character is has expect of an american Blockbuster own by Disney, a minor character (the lady who said in SW8 that Admiral Ackbar is dead and Leia in a coma) and she just kisses another lady for like 0.02 sec in a crowded scene.

No Rose x Finn either for that matter, not a word about the kiss, or their relation. Two new girls who have a romantic vibe with Poe or Finn, but it doesn’t lead anywhere fortunately.

Force ghost-Luke ! Memory-Han ! Leia (RIP) ! Lando (a bit) ! Chewie (still alive)! C3PO and R2 still alive ! Fucking PALPATINE wtf why were you not hinted at earlier ! CGI young-Luke and young-Leia traning in a forest ! Luke X-wing taking flight again ! The Millenium Falcon still up and running ! So many people from the old movies. 

Also Qui-Gon Jinn’s voice. Strangely it conforted me to hear his voice but dammit gimme force ghost-Ben !

What else? Oh yeah Hux betrayed the First Order to get in Kylo’s way and got unmasked and killed. No one ever talked about him again.

Also BEN SOLO IS FREAKING DEAD ! So Ben, you were a betrayed and manipulated kid ? Manipulated by freaking Palpatine and betrayed by your uncle Luke ? You want to do the right now ? Well you will have to die for it! 

No ! Keep him alive, have him earn is redemption by doing more for the good guys, to compensate the harm he has done. Or at least leave him in peace with his lover. 

I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY KILLED OFF -ALL- THE SKYWALKERS ! We like them ! Keep the young and last one alive at least !

Also the whole Palpatine business is so abrupt. That’s a thing for three movies, or two at last, not just the last one.

But I enjoyed it anyway. But my heart is quite broken. And it’s the end of the trilogy and Skywalker bloodline and story and i don’t know what to do with this.

I wished they hadn’t reused the “reformed bad-guy saves someone he loves from the Emperor but dies by doing so” plot point from the Return of the Jedi. We had seen this already, you could have done something knew and less heartbreaking. Vader at done a lot more evil, willingly, not because he was confused and manipulated, he was old, barely living. But Ben ? Ben was ready to start anew on the right path, he was young and seemed hopeful after Rey came back to life. His parents and his uncle tried to save him from the dark side. But when he finally got away from it he dies ? Just dies like that ? I thought I was okay with the idea that his redemption meant his death, but it turns out I’m not, it doesn’t feels right. 

Ben was a main charcater, one in whose redemption I was too much emotionnaly invested about to be okay with him dying like that, Vader style.

#sw9 #sw9 spoilers #the rise of skywalker #the rise of skywalker spoilers #ben solo #ben solo spoilers #kylo ren #kylo ren spoilers #reylo #reylo spoilers #sw #star wars spoilers #bendemption #tros spoilers #my posts

[smuthuttpodcast]

Some of the best fanfiction I've been privileged to read has motivations and arcs well thought-out, facts researched, fantasy well within realm of plausibility, and with plotlines that are cohesive, compelling and which deliver emotional gratification.

Name/Handle/Alias

TazWren (Ao3 / Tumblr) / Wrentaz (Twitter)

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

Since Christmas Eve, 2017, the day I watched TLJ

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

I think it was clumsy as best, lazy at worst. TFA and TLJ set up what could have been a complex interplay between two people on opposite sides who still resonated at some core level. The potential to build was there. It was hinted at through the movie but never explored in full. It's testimony to the actors that so much was communicated nonverbally. Kylo/Ben shift of focus to saving / protecting Rey from Palpatine the only way he thinks is available to him, his transformation at her hands, her confession of wanting to have taken his hand, their scenes on Exegol. There was poetry there. A handful of beautiful moments. However it completely wasted the potential of Ben + Rey as a fighting unit, as two halves of a whole, and of two people who could only belong to each other.

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

Again, I think the chemistry shone through in a handful of moments in the movie, on account of brilliant and nuanced acting. For the most part, the scripted sections were very wooden their actions lacked motivation and were overall not really reflective of who these characters had been shown to be in past movies and ancillary content. 

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

I think the process of his transformation into Ben Solo was beautifully done, as also all the scenes with his running into Exegol. However, redemption needs to be balanced against what Kylo/Ben has been subjected to from infancy till that point. Redemption cannot equal death, especially one as unmourned or throwaway as it was. It has to mean the opportunity to rectify wrongs, to prove that you are capable of being different and doing different. Ben Solo was given no choice at any point. His redemption by death served no-one, respected no-one, least of all all the people who made sacrifices to be able to save him. Not to mention, the fact none of his past abuse or what he was put through is ever addressed. All his focus is Rey. And the absolute radio silence from the so-called Jedi pantheon when it came to the prodigal son of one of their own, so to speak? No one ever made an effort to be there for Ben, and we are expected to believe he deserves to be forsaken for turning into Kylo? That's not how the world works. 

How did you handle or would you have handled the redemption of Kylo Ren in your fics? How did you envision Kylo/Ben’s redemption before TROS and how do you (re)envision it after seeing TROS?

There had to be a strong driving force for change - love can be that I've thought about how Ben could begin to make amends - by respecting choices, by doing the heavy lifting with his mother, the Resistance, by using his power to build Vs tear down, by being who Rey saw him to be. By being free of voices and finally making his own choices. In war, there are no innocents - there are only bad orders and worse orders to follow. I think it's important that both sides acknowledge that as they try to rebuild - it's something I'm exploring in one of my fics, right now. Honestly, TROS has made no difference to how I see redemption, only now I absolutely hate the idea of death as the snap that fixes it. Not in the case of Kylo Ren / Ben Solo. Not after what his universe put him through.

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?

No. TROS did an absolute disservice to Rey, by reducing her to a pawn, a vessel whose strength is defined by her bloodline and not by her own merit, and whose lifelong struggle was erased to serve the resurrection of a defunct character. There was absolutely no need to bring Palpatine back. Nor to infantilize Rey's development to the point she is only defined by what her masters thinks she is. Sticking her on Tatooine, alone, with no visceral reaction to having her other half ripped from her? On a planet that no-one in the family she blithely adopted ever had any happy memories for? At best she's shown as stupidly uncaring, at worst conniving. This is not the Rey we were set up to see.

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?

Possibly, just not the good kind of fanfiction! Some of the best fanfiction I've been privileged to read has motivations and arcs well thought-out, facts researched, fantasy well within realm of plausibility, and with plotlines that are cohesive, compelling and which deliver emotional gratification. TROS had none of that. It is an embarrassment to the history of a franchise that has always build the idea of hope, family, love, redemption.

Tell us about your favorite parts of the fandom. How does the fandom lift you up and embody the best parts of Reylo and Star Wars?

I've been a Star Wars fan for over 35 years, and the sheer love of the stories, and the myths they told, has always shone through in every installment, in every medium / format. That is amazing to be a part of. With the Reylos, I have the best of like-minded, intelligent, creative, caring, talented and funny people from all walks of life, from every corner of the globe. That is rare in itself! My everyday is filled with interactions with Reylos around our writing, art, the movies / books / comics / series, about meta, about mutual thirst(!) and also about supporting each other in our offline endeavors and lives. I have made many friends who are for life.

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

Absolutely! As TazWren am working on a post-TLJ redemption / New Order fic (Caught Between Beats), another post-TLJ fic with Kylo/Ben suffering from trauma-induced amnesia (Hoth Landing) a few modern AUs (Brooklyn Bridge Blues, an unnamed on for the Reylo Charity Anthology). As TrashcanWren I'm wrapping up a couple modern AU about single-parent Ben-Teacher Rey (All I Want for Christmas), Prodigal Son-Ben & Guardian Angel Rey (My Angel Cometh) and a canon divergent JediStormPilot AU... My w.i.ps runneth over 🤣

Thank you @tazwren for the words! You can find their writing here: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TazWren/pseuds/TazWren

[talesfromthecrypts]

May I ask, and this is 100% an honest question, why do you say from your studious pov that Half Blood Prince is coloured badly? I always thought it looked so beautiful. I like how a lot of scenes seem to be covered in mist or a blue/grey dim light.

It’s kind of two parts. One is I just hate its color palette. It isn’t pleasing to my eye at all. Which I guess its kind of a downer story so that makes sense overall. The second thing is its weird tendency to not have dynamic color. You end up with scenes that are all one shade and it’s often a green or blue green that doesn’t pop the way the other 7 movies do.

Also its just a bitch to color for gifs haha. Its my least favorite to gif despite the only one with a real pool of good Malfoy content.

Edit: i think i’m gonna make a whole post with unedited screenshots showing what i mean with prisoner and TLJ vs Half-Blood and TROS

#anonymous #so it is mostly personal preference and gifmaker ire haha #but also i have beef with the way they adapted it anyway #Anonymous

[hyperbolicpurple]

collected tros thoughts

I assume everyone who still wants to avoid spoilers has the appropriate tags filtered...

Several parts of the movie, especially toward the beginning, are very much a jumble in terms of tone and pace especially. You can definitely tell the movie went through a bunch of different versions/scripts/directors AND that they were trying to please a lot of different contingents in the audience: Force-sensitive Finn, R/eylo, Bendemption, Bendeath, big trio presence, ending with Rey Skywalker. Say what you will about TLJ, but I do think it felt like one person’s singular and coherent vision. I do think TROS smoothed out toward the climax, where you have the two main conflicts (Rey vs. Palpatine and the Resistance vs. the FO fleet) connect in both setting and theme.

The plot of most of the movie was essentially finding a bunch of different heretofore unknown significant objects, which is kind of a terrible plot for such a climactic movie, honestly. Especially when those significant objects are just maps to other places! Infinity War had plots about collecting macguffins too, but A) they were powerful objects that were intrinsically connected to the main plot and B) they were set up to be important well in advance. (I am not saying IW was actually good, to be clear.) Some of the macguffins in TROS COULD have been actually significant, especially that Sith knife that posed an opportunity for Rey to be tempted by the Dark Side, but that didn’t happen.

In a bunch of ways this movie can be compared to ROTJ (it has several direct callbacks), and it comes up short in almost all of them. ROTJ had a sense of urgency, direction, and high stakes that TROS just lacks. The only “death” is the fakeout about Chewbacca, which was unnecessary and ultimately meaningless. It was supposed to be a moment for Rey to contemplate her potential for the Dark Side, but it was handled all wrong for that. For one thing, once Chewbacca is found to be alive, Rey grins, angst forgotten, and that’s the end of that, I guess. Who cares if there were other innocents aboard that transport she destroyed? Not Rey and not TROS!

Speaking of Rey and Dark Rey, I don’t think Rey Palpatine is an intrinsically bad idea, but after the first two movies it didn’t make sense, and the way they did it was really frustrating. Rey had plenty of angst and Dark Side temptation from being abandoned by her parents--making her parents heroic and her struggle with the Dark Side basically genetic really sucked as a writing choice. I hate that mechanistic approach to people being good and evil, it’s so lazy and reductive. I was reminded of when, in The Raven Cycle books, the driving desire of the main character Blue to leave Henrietta and see the world is eventually attributed to................ her dad being a tree spirit, because trees reach for the sky. OK. Maybe instead characters could be kind of like people with relatable human psychology?

Relatedly, Finn’s discovery of other FO defectors was a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s cool that Finn wasn’t the only one. On the other, it’s never really explained why some defected and others didn’t, except the “feeling” of the Force. I was struck by how weirdly Calvinistic this was. I think a lot of people misunderstand and thus misuse the term “Calvinistic” (mostly to describe stories in which characters are essentially good or evil, which is definitely not a Calvinistic approach to character at all, and also to refer to predestination, which is related to Calvinism but doesn’t really encompass it fully)--but the way the Force was portrayed for Finn and other defectors was weirdly real-deal Calvinistic, minus the actual Christian elements. In a Calvinistic worldview, everyone is equally, hopelessly tainted by sin, but God in his infinite wisdom has elected some for salvation and others for damnation not according to their own characters but to play out a cosmic drama in which he ultimately wins in order to further his glory. So some defectors being chosen to be saved (and unnamed and innumerable other brainwashed child soldiers, I guess, not to be so touched) by the Force in order for the Light Side to win is just bizarre and even disturbing. Force sensitivity doesn’t really explain that. Also, as a side note, it seemed like at some point someone was going to address the fact that they were fighting a brainwashed child soldier army and then they just... didn’t.

I know a big portion of the Finn fandom was upset with TLJ but TROS was far worse and sidelined him way more. Who cares about Force sensitivity? Couldn’t they have done something with his actual character? And Rose, poor Rose....

I know that a big part of R/eylo fandom is upset (along with ALL the other factions of the fandom, lol) but honestly this movie was THE R/eyloest. More Force bond visions, her running him through and then saving him, that charming scene where Ben’s running to her and Palpatine all Han-like, the moment where she transfers one of the lightsabers to Ben (clearly meant to be delightful and it was!), when Palpatine drew a new life force from their bond and it was ~as strong as life itself~ or whatever he actually said, the kiss obviously, Ben bringing her back to life.... I can’t believe I’m going to have R/eylo feelings in 2020 but here we are!

I went in pretty spoiled, but even if I hadn’t I was fully expecting Ben to die, so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It’s not that I’m not bored and frustrated by Redemption Equals Death, I just didn’t expect anything different.

I will say I was generally not emotionally affected at all by TROS--not sure how much that is related to having been spoiled, to the quality of the movie itself (though I did cry at the live-action Power Rangers a few years ago--twice!), or to having cried my eyes out at Little Women yesterday. (I’ve become a horrible movie-crier the last couple of years. I even cried during that ad where the kids are using a tablet to present a tribute to their dead grandma. It’s so bad it’s humiliating to see movies with other people.)

I was glad we got a callback to Ben and Han’s scene in TFA and that it was tender and full of forgiveness. Also that we did get Leia reaching out to Ben before passing.

The final scene on Tattoine was pretty bizarre. The choice to take the Skywalker name was weird and distasteful, and Ben should have appeared as a Force Ghost for sure.

#tros spoilers #sw spoilers #star wars sequel trilogy #rise of skywalker

[dyadsaber]

Part 6 of A New Reylo Reads TFA: In Which a Dyad In the Force Has One of the Neatest Looking Lightsaber Battles I’ve Ever Seen and I Finally Get to the End of This Novelization

Previous parts in my dyadsaber text posts tag. 

I came out of the theater the first time LOVING the Rey and Finn vs Kylo in the snow as Starkiller Base falls apart around them scene.  Unless I’m completely forgetting something, we’d never seen a red vs blue lightsaber fight in SNOW before, and I thought it was GORGEOUS. (I know Luke uses his on Hoth, but the Wampa doesn’t have one too, so it doesn’t count.) I just watched the whole sequence again on youtube, you know, for research reasons, and I still love it just as much as I did the first time. (Maybe more?) 

Anyway… here’s my rundown of that scene from the novel: 

First of all, I HAVE QUESTIONS about which side of the Force Rey is drawing on here. TLJ kind of touches on the fact that Rey doesn’t have the “OMG the dark side is ALWAYS EVIL” indoctrination that kids at the Jedi temple (and Luke) would have gotten, and the number of times she’s described as drawing on anger and fury here made sit up and pay attention.

When Rey’s about to shoot Kylo and he freezes her with the Force, we get this: 

“She strained against him, HER ANGER GIVING HER STRENGTH. But she couldn’t fire. He was struggling also, against her newly discovered ability” 

Sure, she’s not able to break free, but he’s been using the Dark Side for a touch longer than she has. Not saying she is for sure, here, but I think it’s one possible reading supported by the text. (Hi I teach English just in case I haven’t said that yet). Personally, I think she was. I also think BOTH of the “sides of the Force” are both amoral and necessary, and drawing on the Dark Side out of anger and desperation isn’t always a sure path to Sith-dom.  

Finn igniting Anakin’s lightsaber is still a moment that makes me love him… he’s ready to defend his knocked-against-a-tree friend with WHATEVER HE HAS, even if it’s a weapon he’s never used before and doesn’t quite understand, and that is sweet and good and loyal, and it endeared Finn to me A LOT.  I remember that when Finn turned it on and stood there in that blue glow in the theater, we ALL gasped.  I don’t remember if it had been in promo material or not, but seeing it on the big screen was… An Experience.

ANYWAY, after Finn does the awesome thing he does, Kylo has a line I’m really glad they cut. After the “That weapon is mine” exchange, we get…

Drawing himself up, a towering figure in the snow, Ren did not even bother to gesture. “I’m going to kill you for it.” 

I mean… he almost DOES (kill Finn, that is) but announcing it is a little too MWAHAHAHA villain for my taste, and I’m glad they let him speak with actions rather than words here in the film. 

So… one of the fun things about all of a sudden caring a WHOLE lot more about Kylo Ren is that I’ve gotten to fully appreciate how incredibly good Adam Driver is at the physicality of this character.  (And by that I mean “I’ve watched a lot of behind the scenes clips and stared at gifs a lot.) It’s just FUN to watch him fight, so this description from Finn’s PoV made me smile. 

The longer the contest continued, the stronger Ren seemed to become. It was as if he was enjoying the challenge. Feeding upon it.

Upon reflection, I know exactly why I love this. It reminded me SO HARD of Jaime Lannister, another pretty terrible (and just plain pretty) fictional character I would get in fights defending. I just like secretly morally conflicted dudes who swing swords, know how good they are, and are kind of assholes about it, ok? 

Give me ALL of the confident, arrogant, Kylo Ren fights.  (Fic recs always welcome. Like I said, I’m new here.) 

This next bit made me wonder about how the “fighting over an object with the Force” thing works. Because this is the FIRST time we see the dyad both try to summon that lightsaber at the same time: 

Ren extended an arm toward the device lying in the snow. It twitched and then began to vibrate as the Force called to it.

But… it doesn’t explode. And this made me wonder, “Why NOT? What was different?” 

Here’s what I’ve got. 

Maybe it went to Rey because she started trying to call it first. So even if he had more experience and wouldn’t have had to try as hard as she (probably) did since it was her first time, the Force… recognized her prior claim? Also I think what happens in TLJ is that the two of them “reach” for the lightsaber at the exact same moment, and so there IS no prior claim, and so they have to duke it out with raw strength, which goes about how you’d expect when they’re equals.  

That still doesn’t explain what happens with the ship in the desert in TRoS though…  Rey definitely reached for it first.  But also, unlike a lightsaber, the ship had ENGINES that were trying to work against her. That might be an explanation.  I wonder exactly what Kylo was trying to do there, anyway… help it break atmosphere like it was trying to do anyway, I’ve always assumed.  So if I’m right, that would make the scene make more sense, and it would mean the rules are: (I’m sure I’m proved wrong a million times in media I haven’t seen yet, but here we go)

A stationary object will usually go to the first Force user who calls it. 

A stationary object will go to the Force user who is “stronger” in the moment if they call it at the same time, (and in the absence of a clear winner, explode?).

A moving object that whose direction the Force user is trying to change will be more resistant and tends to negate #1. 

The confidence/willpower of a Force user (and size of an object only insofar as that affect confidence) is a variable that probably throws a wrench in all three of these. 

Dyads facing off probably screw with the normal course of things, too.

Thank you for coming to this episode of “I need my media to make sense and spend way too much time trying to make it do so.” 

And then… Kylo Ren sees Rey….

“It is you,” Ren murmured. His words unsettled her: Not for the first time, he seemed to know more about her than she did about herself.

He doesn’t say this in the movie. He doesn’t say anything when he sees her, I don’t think.  But when I read this… my heart stopped a little. 

This isn’t what you say to the random girl you met in the woods and who you think has the map to Uncle Luke, even if she is Force Sensitive as Hell.  

This is what you say to a girl you suddenly realize you’ve seen in that place between asleep and awake for most of your life, a girl that you’ve always been subconsciously aware of. This is what you say because you’re beginning to understand that the scavenger you brought on board and this girl you’re just now remembering clearly for the fist time are THE SAME PERSON and she is VERY connected to you.  

What I’m saying is… Ben has been aware of Rey for YEARS without realizing it, and this line FITS THAT THEORY. 

And then they fight. And it gets REALLY interesting. 

Expecting weakness, he encountered only strength. Her skill with the device was raw at best, but it was backed by a fury that was as new to his experience as it was unexpected.

Example #2 of Rey’s maybe-Dark-Side-Use.  The paragraph leading up to this talks about her being “consumed with rage,” and I can hear every (ok, almost every) Jedi master in history talking about how letting anger fuel your use of the Force is a no-no, so I don’t think I’m grasping at straws here. Poor Kylo. He didn’t stand a chance. Angry, “possibly using the Dark side without knowing it” Rey is unexpected and kinda hot, OK???

Flipping away from the Starkilling Snow Fight for a moment, there’s a line of Snoke’s that he does NOT get to say in the movie when he tells Hux to abandon ship and come to him with Kylo Ren. 

He added grimly, “It appears that he may have been right about the girl.”

I. Have. Questions. Did Snoke not BELIEVE Kylo when he flat out said she was a REALLY STRONG untrained Force User? Did he not know who Rey was (Palpatine’s granddaughter)? What does this tell us about Snoke’s independence from Palpatine? (Something I’m still not clear on.) The easiest answer is, “You’re thinking about this too much, Dyadsaber.  No one at DLF knew that Palpatine was going to come back yet when TFA was written, so no one worried about it.” 

BUT I NEED IT TO MAKE SENSE. SO, I’ve decided that Snoke didn’t understand how much of a pawn he was. He probably thought he was Palpatine’s heir or disciple or whatever Grandpa Palps convinced him he was.  Anyway, this would mean that Palpatine could give him a lot of autonomy and agency, especially when it came to corrupting Ben, while still keeping a close eye on Snoke through the Force so he could intervene when he had to. If anything in official material contradicts me, I’d love to know. 

And now for a bit that made me scream a Shakespeare line at my kindle. At one point, the narrator observes,  

What she lacked in mass, she made up for in ferocity.

This is basically a less poetic "Though she be but little, she is fierce," AND I LOVE IT. Someone who’s crafty needs to cross stitch this under Rey’s silhouette or something. 

More lines they probably cut for time, but are really telling.  When he’s got her backed up to that cliff: 

Ren held his lightsaber, poised to strike. “I could kill you right now. But there is another way.” Breathing hard, Rey looked up in disgust at the man looming above her. “You’re a monster.”

Again with the threatening to kill people.  Jeez, Kylo. WE KNOW. Seriously, though, I love this. It’s so HIM that he wants her to know he had the advantage and chose not to press it. It says a lot about how he wants to present himself and his intentions to her. As he does in the throne room later, he wants her to give her a choice, and for her to CHOOSE him. 

Also, I can feel TLJ Rey’s MURDEROUS SNAKE energy radiating off of that “you’re a monster” line. 

And instead of being DETERRED by her insult, he comes back with THIS… 

“No. You need a teacher.” He was beseeching and insistent all at once. “I can show you the ways of the Force!”

“Yeah, I know you just called me a monster, but wanna be my student instead?” The arrogance and presumption of this bit of novel-Kylo is SO VERY HIM. Also, “Beseeching but insistent” is so on brand for him when it comes to her.

And the last thing I marked from the fight was THIS bombshell that doesn’t quite come across as obviously (if at all) on screen. Rey has him on the ground, face bleeding, and…

Kill him, a voice inside her head said. It was amorphous, unidentifiable, raw. Pure vengeful emotion. So easy, she told herself. So quick. She recoiled from it. From the dark side.

I mean, if you read between the lines, Rey’s been drawing on the Dark Side without realizing it for a while now. It’s understandable.  She’s seething with pain and anger and a desire to avenge Han, but there’s a difference between using that anger to defend herself or try to just GET AWAY from Kylo, which one could argue is mostly what she’s been doing, and killing him when he’s bleeding on the ground.   

And she doesn’t do it.  TAKE THAT, TLJ LUKE (Note: I love TLJ Luke. I just also love yelling at him).  Rey has a CLASSIC opportunity to make a choice that would send her down a truly Dark Side path - striking down an unarmed enemy in anger - AND SHE DOESN’T DO IT. She RECOILS. (And then Starkiller takes the choice away from both of them by literally crumbling away and leaving a chasm between them.  If I believed the Force was sentient, this would be a moment where it was saying, “You children are not ready to play nice, and I don’t want to kill each other, so you I’m going to separate you.”) 

And that’s that. The next time they see each other, they’re Forcetiming, and I cannot WAIT to read how that goes in the TLJ novel. 

Some last thoughts: 

Because it would have been hilarious, I’m sad we didn’t the fact that Hux...

followed the troopers carrying Ren into the nearby shuttle.

CARRYING. REN. We were robbed of two (four?) poor storm troopers trying to carry gangly, bleeding, passed out Kylo. I am OFFENDED.

Right before Rey leaves for Ahch-to, she and Leia have THIS fascinating exchange…

“I’m proud of what you’re about to do,” she told the girl. 

Rey replied in all seriousness. “But you’re also afraid. In sending me away, you’re—reminded.” 

Leia straightened. “You won’t share the fate of our son.” 

“I know what we’re doing is right. This is how it has to be. This is how it should be.”

I REALLY wish they’d left this in.  I like that it makes explicit that this is the second time Leia has sent a Force user she cares about to Luke, and that choice WEIGHS on her.  (And this shows how much she already cares about Rey, too… MY HEART.) 

The fact that Rey is perceptive enough to PICK UP ON Leia’s concern, and that Leia reassures BOTH OF THEM that what Ben won’t happen to Rey just makes me love both of these characters so much. Also, I think Leia’s worry and Rey’s conviction sets up the conflict Rey has within herself and her own journey with coming to understand balance in TLJ nicely. She’s just… so confident and cheerful in that last line, and I know what’s coming, and it hurts so good. 

And finally, the last line of this book made me laugh out loud. She’s standing in front of Luke, holding out the lightsaber, and....

She wondered what would happen next.

Luke's gonna yeet that lightsaber.  That’s what.

If you read all of these, thank you.  I’d love to know what you think. I never meant for this to get so long, but I’m wordy and newly shippy, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.  Stay tuned for hopefully shorter posts as I dive into Last Jedi in a day or two.

#dyadsaber text posts #reylo #tfa novelization #the force awakens novelization

[we-are-what-they-grow-beyond]

some seriously self indulgent TROS thoughts that no one asked for: spoilers ahead!

(i’m gonna try tag every spoiler tag I can think of just in case anyone out there does care, but tbh this is really just for me lol)

the following is going to be a very ‘off the cuff’ series of ramblings so I apologise if it’s all over the place 

Overall.. I think I liked it? I left the cinema feeling euphoric, which is honestly all I wanted from ix. While there were very few immediate things that I took offence to as I was watching it [unlike TLJ] I have a bad feeling that some doubts about certain scenes and character choices are gonna creep into my brain in the next few days. Like the longer I think about it, the worse it’s gonna get.

The beginning was a mess. I think every single person who has seen it can agree on that much. There was so much exposition and heavy handed course correction from TLJ that it felt laboured and disjointed. The pacing was at this crazy breakneck speed.. we must have visited at least six different planets in the first fifteen minutes. I think that Poe’s ‘hyperdrive jumping’ [?] sequence really set the tone for the first act - just a constant barrage of different locations and characters.

And I understand that they had to do this. The events of TLJ left them no choice, they needed to establish every main character’s position [both physically and mentally], portray the current state of the war as well as rebuild a believable rapport between our core trio all within the first fifteen minutes if they wanted to give the last act any chance of sticking the landing. And to some extent I think they achieved this. In all that running around on different planets, bickering amongst the trio and the funny asides from Threepio - it really felt like something straight out of the OT. For the first time since TFA I cared about these characters. 

However. In doing this, they continually broke the cardinal rule of screenwriting; show don’t tell. While watching the first act I felt weighed down with information, like every five seconds another character would pop in with a monologue that sent them on another wild goose chase in which they had to find another hundred things that I would inevitably struggle to remember. ‘So now they need to go here, to see where Luke went, because he wanted to find this guy, who has this object, that will bring them to this other place, so that they can see Palpatine?’ It was so heavily reliant on dialogue alone that it ultimately lead to this sense of utter messiness. 

Where the film thrived was in it’s action set pieces. I adored the way the force was portrayed in this film. The scene in the desert in which Ben [yes Ben, but more on that later] and Rey pulled that First Order Transport out of the sky sent shivers down my spine. We have never seen the force used like this before and the amount of power Rey held was absolutely staggering. I loved it.

The saber battle on top of the Death Star was a visual highlight. Even though I felt like I’d seen most of it in TV Spots the urgency never went away. The moodiness of the water and mist cut through by the blue and red light was beautiful. 

The one shot of Poe, Finn and Chewie running through the Destroyer hallway felt like an echo back to everything that lies at the heart and soul of this saga.

We’ve been begging for more space battles and boy did we get a good one. When Lando and Chewie sauntered in on the Falcon with their thousands of rebel support ships set to the theme I was sobbing. There were so many little references in that one shot, from Rebels to Resistance to even Wedge Antilles - My heart swelled. 

But where I really broke was on Ahch-To. One of my biggest gripes with TLJ was its treatment of Luke. Every time I watch it again that shot of his submerged X wing infuriates me beyond measure as Johnson never chose to do anything with it [despite there being an obvious answer]. We finally got that scene in this film, the scene I was so desperate for; a callback to perhaps my favourite moment in the whole skywalker saga entangled with an apology for TLJ’s treatment of our favourite jedi master. Set to Yoda’s Theme, I felt like for a split second like I was watching Empire, and that meant the world to me. Thank you J.J.

The characterisation is perhaps the most divisive part of the film for me. It took so many risks, it’s going to take quite some time for me to properly digest them all. 

I want to start with our beloved Leia. The CGI, although perhaps not quite as seamless as some reviewers are making it out to be, worked well enough. With the knowledge of Carrie’s passing, it’s easy to poke holes in the performance - I found the beginning of her screen time particularly jarring, with her mostly addressing Rey with one word answers. I knew that there was supposed to be an emotional weight to all her scenes, as there she was, our princess, somehow miraculously on our screens for one final time. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel as if she was truly there in body or soul, and the emotional power of her scenes suffered as a result. Maybe in time, as we forget about the circumstances under which this film had to be made, this obvious detachment might fade away. And I sincerely hope it does, because the backstory they gave her is what truly deserves to be remembered about Leia in this film. The flashback scene of her training with Luke was glorious, the cgi really worked well here, and for the first time we saw Leia as a fully fledged jedi. This is something I could never ever have even imagined and I’m so pleased they did it, it would have meant so much to me as a young girl. As for her death, I believe they did the best they could with it. She ultimately died saving her son, protecting both the light and her family - two themes that have been so central to this entire forty two year saga. I don’t think they could have done much more. 

I was shocked to see Harrison in this, surprised isn't even the right word. But this bewilderment that I felt thankfully didn’t overshadow his integral role in the so called ‘Bendemption’ arc, in fact I think it really tied the whole thing together nicely. I have hated the idea of Kylo’s possible redemption since the moment we found out his true heritage during TFA, I thought it was too simple, too obvious. But the way in which it was dealt with here was wonderful. It showed Kylo to be entirely complex and ambiguous, and at the end of it we saw Ben for what he was, a young and vulnerable young man who ultimately made some terrible choices, the conflict in him was brilliantly acted. It was ultimately his parents that pulled him back to the light, not just Rey, and that fact alone saved this story arc for me. 

[I refuse to talk about the kiss. I hated it. It didn’t need to happen.]

Rey is a difficult one. Was the Palpatine bloodline convenient? Yes. Terribly so. Did it make sense story wise? Only kind of. But, I think it drew a definitive line under the nine film conflict which was ultimately at its core just Skywalker vs Palpatine, so in that sense I’m happy it happened in the way it did. 

[Sheev on an aesthetic level looked dreadful I thought. Proper rubbery. And the logistics of how he survived/who all those chanting followers were/where he got all those Imperial star destroyers from is extremely questionable. I try not to dwell on it.]

My mixed feelings about Finn and Poe cannot be overstated. The film did a good job at giving them more to do, we really got to see John and Oscar bounce off each other and at the end of the day, that is my kryptonite. However, Finn had little to no character development throughout the whole trilogy. All he did was figure out that he didn’t want to be aligned with the First Order anymore, deciding he wanted to fight for what is right. But the thing is, we saw him make that decision about ten minutes into TFA. It didn’t need to be rehashed again and again in every film. We wanted more - we wanted him to be force sensitive, we wanted him to form meaningful connections with others. On some level they delivered on that, we saw a little force sensitivity, he got his own back with Hux, he found his tribe in Jannah and the other deserters.. but it felt like an afterthought. Nothing was ever dwelled upon- even his confession to Rey [whatever it was] was completely forgotten about in the end. Finn as a whole felt like an afterthought. 

[Don’t even get me started on Rose, Kelly deserved so much more. I was embarrassed by the amount of screen time she had.]

As for Poe.. Oscar did a brilliant job in this, he successfully harkened back to our favourite scoundrel Han Solo stereotype and I felt that gave the trio’s dynamic a clear anchor. His interactions with both Finn, Threepio and Chewie as he kept crashing the falcon really made me laugh, it was nice to have some actual humour littered throughout, unlike the goofy slapstick stuff in TLJ. But.. the Zorii love interest and backstory made zero sense canonically. Zero. Aside from the ‘can i kiss you’ stuff being extremely contrived, there is physically no actual way Poe could have ever been a spice runner on this new planet that I can’t remember the name of. He lived on Yavin his whole life until he came of age to join the New Republic Navy, and from there Leia recruited him into the Resistance. This much has been documented in countless books and comics. J.J really decided to throw that all away so that they could what.. get that universal key thing? Did they even use it? Was there any other point of Zorii’s character other than that key? Not really. Don’t try to tell me that Kes and Shara’s son ran away from home to become a criminal for no reason. Just don’t. [He was still wearing Shara’s ring throughout and they didn’t do anything with it.. I wonder will we get more of an answer to this in the novelisation?]

[While I’m on the subject of the comics and novels, the decision to kill off Snap was brave. I really loved him in the comics and I’m sad he’s now gone and Karé is now alone. Not that any of that was mentioned but-]

Lando was used just the correct amount. I’m happy he got the ‘I have a bad feeling about this’ line, and I think any more screen time and we could have seen some holes in Billy’s performance. [sorry Billy]

Chewie had some great moments in this surprisingly. He was essentially just an extra in TLJ so it was quite refreshing to have him be a key player again. [I had forgotten about the clips from the trailer that showed him aboard the Destroyer, so when he ‘died’ I really thought he was dead for a moment and I was so angry that that was how he went lol.] But his reaction to Leia’s death was so touching and although it was a tad fan-servicey, I loved the fact that he finally got the medal he missed out on in ANH. It made me chuckle.

The same can be said of Anthony Daniels as C3PO and all of the other droids. I felt as though they really clawed them back into the mix this time - Threepio’s worrisome queries were wonderfully nostalgic and not to mention hilarious, and D-0 was a great new addition. The droids always brought a levity to star wars, it was their job, and they did this to great effect in this film. There was some questionable switching around of R2 and BB8 which I didn’t appreciate - there is absolutely no way that BB8 wouldn’t be Poe’s astromech for the battle against the Final Order but I’m willing to let it slide.. [also why was he on Tatooine with Rey at the end?]

It really sounds like I had more problems with this film than highlights, and I promise that’s not the case. In the end, it made me feel happy, like I was watching something akin to the OT again, and yes some parts of it were clumsy, but the heart of it was there. It all really comes down to whether or not you believe a film must be ‘good’ in order to be.. good. With something as big and sentimental as star wars I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. Return of the Jedi was an utter mess- but yet we all still worship it and the characters it gave us. Why can’t the same thing be said for TROS? It was clunky, but it was surprising, and powerful and fun. It gave us the characters we loved and some interesting new ones, some top-tier lightsaber battles and a conclusive ending to the saga that has defined so many lives. At the end of the day I think that’s all it needed to be. 

#star wars tros #tros #tros spoilers #star wars spoilers #the rise of skywalker spoilers #spoilers #star wars the rise of skywalker #sw #sw spoilers #star wars the rise of skywalker spoilers #do you think i have enough tags lmao #i just really don't want to spoil it for people #rey #kylo #finn #poe #idk i feel like i have enough now