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dgcatanisiri · 4 years

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So. Did see Rise of Skywalker today.

“Flawed, but probably as good as we were going to get” is my two cent summary, especially given some of the whispers I’m hearing about what went on behind the scenes that, in effect, this was “the Disney shareholder’s” trilogy more than any individual, and I think you all can guess my opinion of the Disney shareholders in general... (plus the inevitable difficulty of trying to unify two movies that honestly had a lot of tonal and thematic clash to begin with).

You want more details, they’re behind the cut, because I’m going to respect the spoiler tags.

First things first, let me get this out of the way first, Kelly Marie Tran and Rose Tico DESERVED. BETTER. Like, bare minimum, I think there should have been a scene between her and Rey at the start while Rey is reading the Jedi tomes. Just a little something that connects the two. Better still, use her as a touchstone character for what’s happening at the Resistance base in the first half - yeah, sure, you can only do so much with the jiggered footage of Carrie Fisher, but SO. WHAT. Leia doesn’t have to be in those scenes.

Hell, have her and Connix talk, considering that Connix was significant enough to both be in charge of the D’Qar evacuation AND Poe’s right hand during the mutiny. Since Connix is played by Billie Lourd, Carrie Fisher’s daughter, it’d have been a fine connection there, especially if you want to include some foreshadowing of Leia’s eventual death, talk about them being concerned about the way that the General is handling everything happening, losing everyone so close to her.

Like, that’s the off the top of my head ways to enhance Rose’s part in this movie without significantly altering any of the plot. Truthfully, I think she should have been part of the group the whole time anyway.

I still don’t particularly like the return of Palpatine as the big bad, meaning that we’re pretty much completely undermining the end of the original trilogy. I mean, wasn’t that what Anakin Skywalker’s death in Return of the Jedi meant? At least when the Legends line brought him back, it was a) still during the post-RotJ war clean up, where the Empire was still fighting after Endor, still part of the same war, and b) left ambiguous enough if that was genuinely Palpatine or just a clone that claimed to be the original Palpatine.

But I can also appreciate the thematic relevance of Palpatine, the Emperor, Darth Sidious, whatever name he uses, being the overarching villain of the Skywalker Saga. So... We’ll call it even? Meh.

I will RELUCTANTLY allow the idea of Leia sacrificing herself to pull back her son from the dark side, mostly on the basis of being limited by the footage of Carrie Fisher, so using her death to have story meaning can be tolerated. Still don’t like it - I have firmly been of the believe that, given all the times he made the active choice to be evil, he could not simply return to the light, be redeemed or forgiven. But since he did, ultimately, die, I will allow it - I’m only going to be able to view his death as, effectively, him making the only effort at atonement that could be done, stopping Palpatine, before his true penance came in not being able to be a part of the galaxy he helped to save.

That said, I do NOT accept the kiss. I will only even possibly pretend it happened under the pretense of being a heat of the moment victory thing that meant nothing. Because FUCK REYLOW.

First half of the movie is HORRENDOUSLY compacted. Like, I legit feel like there was a good fifteen minutes or more hacked out of it. Too much is happening right off the bat and just doesn’t stop. It settles down eventually, but MAN could that have done with less compression.

Honestly, overall, it feels like at least two movies crammed into one, like Disney refused to split it up because “but it’s a TRILOGY!” Which, uh... Not to open the “TLJ discourse” can of worms, but... That was always going to happen, considering the massive tonal clash between Abrams and Johnson as writers and directors. Especially with Johnson having basically done nothing that would advance a core arc, by way of having the main characters of the trilogy interact - TLJ had Rey, Finn, and Poe all in different plots in separate areas, which made no sense to begin with, considering these were supposed to be the core characters, shouldn’t they have actually gotten to interact sooner?

Like I said in the summary, TFA and TLJ have little that actually connects them. In the sense of creating a coherent narrative, it’s not unreasonable that Abrams downplayed a lot of Johnson’s elements, considering that Johnson did the same with elements Abrams included in TFA - Finn’s potential Force affinity (I’ll get to that), the Knights of Ren (suddenly back with no explanation), the conscription of child soldiers as stormtroopers (which really SHOULD have been a core part of TLJ, instead of the child slavery on Canto Bight, considering it mattered to Finn’s character as already established), the idea that Luke had been searching for something (because why would he have left a map to where he was going in TFA if, as TLJ said, he went to Ach-to to wait for death?)... TRoS was always going to be in a bind on these things, and, really, considering that neither film prior was written with an ending in mind, there was no real solution but to just dance around the subject.

Let’s talk briefly about the Poe background stuff, which... *sigh* It was so POINTLESS to introduce the idea that he was a drug dealer. Like, first of all, RACIST AS FUCK to make the Latino man a drug dealer. Secondly, when and how, considering his canon back story is that he is the son of minor Rebel heroes, how did he have the time for this to happen? Third and not least, the guy’s an ace pilot, why WOULDN’T he know about hotwiring vehicles? He should know them inside and out!

Zorii is... There. That’s about all I really can say about her. Same with Jannah. Both of these felt like characters who SHOULD have had more relevance, had they been introduced sooner (and in which case, I’d toss Zorii and swap in Rose anyway). Considering they’re dropped in at the last second as they are, they honestly end up just feeling like props meant to portray Poe and Finn as straight, which...

Okay, Disney overlords are homophobic cowards. Let’s just acknowledge that right off. Finn/Poe was a ship that was never going to be allowed off the ground. We all knew it going in. So make Finn/Rey a thing and let Poe be read as gay, even if it’s not said. It would have been that simple. TFA laid the foundation, and that hug in TLJ was a good building block as well. But no. You have to be cowards and not “rock the boat” by both not having an interracial relationship AND trying to appease the Reylows. Ugh.

Anyway, any and all flirtation between Poe and Zorii is PURE mlm/wlw joking with one another. Stormpilot is endgame. Rey/Rose is real. Fuck Disney and fuck canon. MOVING ON.

Also on that note, FINN IS FORCE SENSITIVE, GODDAMMIT. The adamant refusal to acknowledge this REALLY pisses me off, because Finn is a PERFECT mirror to Kylo Ren and should have been his counterpart throughout this trilogy - Finn was a nameless stormtrooper with no past, Kylo was the heir to legacies, Finn refused to slaughter innocents, Kylo gave that order. Finn embraced the Resistance, Kylo led the First Order. THIS is the duality of characters that should have driven this trilogy. I’m not trying to take away Rey’s significance, but...

When people complain about Rey’s lineage, I’m just not all that big on this matter. First of all, I was neutral on the subject from day one. As time has gone on, however, I have reached a point where I’m just ‘...well, yeah, of course she’s got an important lineage.’ Because TFA made a big deal of this fact. This was her driving motivation. On top of that, TLJ trying the “they were nobodies” thing actually legit pisses me off, because what abandoned child just casually accepts “they were nobodies”? Even if they weren’t significant (which, again, by way of Maz and the lightsaber calling to her in TFA, there was a strong implication of them being significant, particularly with the stage directions in the script for Luke and Leia when interacting with Rey), they weren’t nobodies FOR HER. But TLJ basically has her discard the search casually.

So you want a hero who comes from nothing? Again, may I present FINN, the stormtrooper who came from nothing, who should have been leading a stormtrooper uprising, who should have gotten to be a Jedi, who DESERVED BETTER THAN THIS TRILOGY GAVE HIM...

Gah. Okay. I’m tired of ranting about the things that I didn’t like. There ARE positives, I swear!

Chewie’s breakdown over Leia’s death about broke me. Like, the moment he collapses... God, that was choking me up an hour later, too. How much it must hurt Chewie and Lando to be the only ones left... Honestly, I was half afraid that the Falcon would be destroyed during that final conflict.

Honestly, I know the idea was that Han’s appearance was just a figment, a manifestation of the inner thoughts, but I’m going to call it confirmation of Han being Force sensitive. Mostly because I picture Han losing his shit at the idea. And, honestly, I can’t help but wish that, at the least, we could have had Leia appear there, but we weren’t going to get that either way.

Speaking of Leia, honestly, I think they did the best they could with what they had of her, and, truthfully, I think it was a fine tribute to Carrie, to have Leia there, die within the context of this movie, and not just die off between films. Yes, it bound their hands some, but... It wouldn’t have been right without her, either.

Though I do reiterate that the binding with the footage is no excuse for hacking Rose practically out of the film entirely.

I focused on the issues I had against the movie, mostly because I feel like they stood out more than the things that I liked. The problem this trilogy has had since day one is that they went into this without a plan. This trilogy never knew where it was going until this movie came along. So two movies of basically throwing everything at the wall, leading to one movie having to tie it all up. This movie was always going to struggle, but in the end, I think it probably came out as best as it could.

If you want to call that damning with faint praise... I suppose it sort of is, but, more truthfully, it’s seeing it for what it is and judging it as such. This movie was hobbled before it could walk, that it managed what it did as well as it did is really a tribute to those who tried to make it work.

I feel like that’s all the major things I have to bring up right now. Though I will add... Yeah, let’s be real. They call this the end of the Skywalker Saga, but in twenty years or so, we’re going to get a fourth trilogy. Because we’re basically at the point of “every generation’s going to have their own Star Wars trilogy.”

#dg rambles #star wars #the rise of skywalker #tros spoilers #star wars spoilers #i'm gonna regret the public tags on this aren't i?#ah well...

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just-slide · 4 years

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Rise of Skywalker - Finn is the Light Side

ALRIGHT buckle up here’s meta literally none of y’all asked for. Spoilers under the cut.

Precis: I don’t think Finn was as hard done by as some do (but still deserved better). Cards on the table of my various opinions, because this is Tumblr and people need to know my biases so they can skip out if they don’t approve: I liked the movie, I always adored Rey and Finn as a duo in any form, and I always appreciated Kylo Ren as a villain.

So let’s get some shit out the way: I did not care for That Kiss. I did not care for TLJ deciding that 90% of Rey’s arc was her suddenly trying to redeem sad white boy Kylo Ren. The fact that Finn and Rey’s stories had been heavily intertwined in TFA only for them to be dropped as a Main Duo always vexed me. I felt TROS tried to recapture some of that but the die had already been cast that the trilogy was now about Rey and Kylo, and no longer Rey and Finn vs Evil. Thanks to Rian Johnson for benching his black male lead.

However, I’ve read criticisms saying all Finn did in TROS was run around, yell Rey’s name, and remain sidelined as a supporting character. Did he deserve more than that? Yes. Was I disappointed that, while his Force Sensitivity was proven, it didn’t really culminate in anything? Yes.

But the guy walked around all movie as the physical representation of the Light Side, especially for Rey and her conflict - which was the movie’s conflict of Light vs Dark. So I have opinions on why Finn wasn’t quite as screwed over as people think and the internet needs to know them.

Let’s break this down: Rey only ever spoke about her visions of temptation to him, where he issued repeated assurances of her strength and goodness (and yes, she was Emo in response about ‘nobody knowing her’ but let’s not forget that the narrative of the story held out that 1: Finn was right about her and 2: Ergo Finn did know her).

It becomes more overtly symbolic in all 3 of her confrontations with Kylo. When they’re fighting over Chewie’s transport, Rey is physically positioned between Kylo and Finn, one driving her to the Dark, one calling her back to the Light (could Finn have not, like, shot Kylo? I feel he should have at least tried. It would have made me feel better). On the Star Destroyer above Kijimi, when Kylo offers her his hand the second time and she refuses him, she leaps to the Falcon, away from the offer of the Dark Side and literally into Finn’s waiting grasp. And on Endor, even when Finn chasing her onto the Death Star is plot-wise completely meaningless. Its meaning comes in when Rey, in her fury, Force Pushes him back. Because he’s the bloody representation of the Light Side, her Light, and she didn’t want any of that getting in the way of her vengeful lashing out.

I agree the movie should have done a better job of demonstrating Rey’s reciprocated affection for Finn, in that he chased her a lot and she didn’t much respond to these efforts. For Finn, we get his spoken affection - for Rey, we have to go to the subtext. That he was the only one she voiced her fears and visions to. All of my above points, which are deliberate film-making choices and position Finn as more than just ‘one of her friends’ among the found family Palpatine confirms she’s made. The final Trio Hug was, yes, a Trio, but the framing emphasised Rey and Finn more. It felt like the movie really wanted them to be a majorly important dynamic but couldn’t quite stick the landing. An actual scene between just the two of them at the end, even if it had been them getting their own hug before Poe showed up (Trio Hug very important), considering they hadn’t seen each other since Rey rejected Finn on Endor (not Poe), would have gone a long way to resolving their somewhat aborted arc. This didn’t need to be romantic, so much as if they had Finn being this champion of Rey’s Light Side that she pushed away, we really needed something of them coming back together. Especially after he sensed her death. That was the bare minimum the movie should have done if they weren’t going to take further steps to develop their dynamic as less one-sided.

And who am I kidding; it was outright racism that Finn was sidelined after TFA and Finnrey was never canon. Many people of my acquaintance keep lamenting how Stormpilot never happened, and that is a crying shame. But Stormpilot arose out of excellent chemistry and acting from Boyega and Isaac. The Force Awakens, on the other hand, pretty much explicitly set up the romantic beats between Rey and Finn, and while we’ll never know for sure, I would bet my house that if Finn were white, we’d have got that. But they refused to deliver an interracial romance in Star Wars between a male black major character and a white female lead (much better for it to be between two white people even when one of them’s a mass murderer, huh?). Stormpilot was a grassroots effort which never took off because Disney are cowards. Finnrey was specifically set up in their own movies and never paid off also because Disney are cowards. I hate making it seem like I’m competing these two issues, but people can be mad about two things and should be mad about the racism as well as the homophobia that impacted these choices by Disney.

I guess I never thought Disney would ever make two of their major characters gay on screen. I thought first that they would, then that they could, keep centering a black man in Star Wars in an interracial romance with a white woman (which is, for many reasons, more subversive and challenging than white men in romances with black women in media). Oh look, I was unable to get through this screed about Light and Dark and how much I liked a particular element of this movie without descending into ‘fuck you and your racism, Disney.’ I still liked this movie, and despite having just gone on a rant supporting Finn’s role in TROS, it is unavoidable that the way the trilogy has treated Finn and John Boyega since TFA has been utterly shameful. TROS should have done a better job of fixing the damage of TLJ.

But Finn still got the be the Light Side made Manifest for our protagonist in her internal conflict between good and evil, and that’s not nothing.

#star wars #star wars spoilers #rise of skywalker #rise of skywalker spoilers #finn #rey #anti reylo #finnrey #not that this is about the shipping but I guess I EXPRESS OPINIONS which are positive about one and negative about the other so here you go

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ibibibi · 6 years

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the last jedi spoilers behind the cut because i have some thoughts

why the fuck didn’t purple hair lady (whose look i LOVED) just TELL HER FUCKING BRIDGE CREW THE PLAN? JUST TELL EVERYONE THE PLAN IT’S NOT A COMPLICATED PLAN

“YO, POE, WE’RE GONNA STAY AHEAD OF THE BAD GUYS AS LONG AS WE CAN AND THEN WE’RE GONNA GO TO THIS OLD REBEL BASE AND HOLE UP WE LOSE THE FLEET BUT WE SAVE THE PEOPLE, SOUND GOOD TO EVERYONE? GREAT.”

‘cause i fucking guarantee that if head-buns girl and the others had known there was an actual destination in mind they wouldn’t have gone along with poe’s little mini-mutiny, and if fucking POE had just been included in the planning he wouldn’t have been such a dummy about it. give that man a task and he’ll stay out of your way, the resistance is his LIFE and he is WORRIED because you have TOLD HIM NOTHING. HE THINKS THERE IS NO PLAN OH NO TIME TO PANIC AND COME UP WITH A DIFFERENT PLAN WITH BFF FINN AND NEW BFF ROSE

i did end up liking how they humanized kyle (and i say this as someone who was strongly anti- kyle going in) but i also like that the boy’s NOT gonna get the redemption arc everyone was pushing for. i just like that he’s more dimensional than whiny boy who turned dark side because mommy didn’t pay enough attention to him.

if reylo happened i was walking out of the theater like i love rey and i love that she tried so hard and i think her development in this one was great i love that she flirts with darkside stuff but in the least angsty way possible just like “i want answers! are they in the black pit maybe? guess not....” but every interaction between them felt more “sibling” than romantic thank fucking god)

(on that note my friends think the “your parents were nobodies” thing is bullshit, like either kyle was lying or he was pulling that out of anxieties rey has been harboring and it isn’t really true. i think that might be a stretch, but part of me is still holding out for her to be a secret solo. maybe they thought she was dead or some shit i don’t know....)

the finn/rose kiss was poorly timed and unnecessary (i feel that way about most movie kisses BUT

ROSE DID THE RIGHT THING. MY IDIOT FRIENDS WERE ALL CALLING HER A MORON ALL “SHE DOOMED THE RESISTANCE TO SAVE ONE GUY THAT STUPID BITCH!!” BUT ROSE DID! THE RIGHT! THING!

1. FINN WASN’T GOING TO MAKE IT TO THE CANON IN TIME TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. WE WERE ALL HAVING NEW HOPE FLASHBACKS I KNOW BUT THE CANON WAS ALREADY FIRING AND HE WAS JUST GOING TO BE INCINERATED WITHOUT MAKING A DIFFERENCE. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A POINTLESS DEATH AND I WOULD HAVE STARTED A ONE WOMAN RIOT RIGHT THERE IN THE ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE. POE WAS THE EXPERIENCED PILOT (AND HAD ALREADY SHOWN HIMSELF TO BE WILLING TO DIE OR RISK LIVES TO COMPLETE A MISSION IF HE THOUGHT IT WAS IMPORTANT ENOUGH, WHICH THIS OBVIOUSLY WAS) AND HE KNEW IT WASN’T GOING TO WORK-- HE TOLD FINN TO PULL OUT. ROSE, WHO KNOWS MACHINES, KNEW IT WAS TOO LATE FOR WHAT FINN WAS TRYING TO DO, AND SO SHE DID. THE. RIGHT. THING.

2. MY IDIOT FRIENDS WERE TRYING TO MAKE THE POINT THAT HE THOUGHT THEY WERE ALL DOOMED ANYWAY SO AT LEAST HE COULD GO OUT TRYING, WHICH: NO! (see point one, but also) YOU! KEEP! FIGHTING! HOPE IS NOT LOST UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD, THROWING YOUR LIFE AWAY ON A SUICIDE RUN IS JUST LEAVING THE BATTLEFIELD EARLY. DO NOT DO YOUR ENEMY’S WORK FOR THEM. FINN HAD LOST HOPE. ROSE STILL HAD SOME, AND SO SHE DID THE RIGHT THING. HOLDING ON TO HOPE WHEN ALL SEEMS LOST IS A CENTRAL THEME OF THE FUCKING MOVIE OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

3. IF IT HAD BEEN POE FUCKING DAMERION TO PUSH FINN OUT OF THE WAY OF THE BLAST, NONE OF THOSE SONS OF BITCHES WOULD HAVE SAID A WORD AGAINST IT (my idiot friends are all stormpilot trash and it is their one redeeming quality in this instance) BUT I SEE YOU, YOU HYPOCRITES. YOU COWARDS. I SEE YOU.

ROSE. DID. THE. RIGHT. THING.

(that being said, i’m not 100% sure what she and finn were doing out there in the first place, they’re not pilots. i guess there just weren’t many left....)

when the thing happened to leia i thought my heart was going to stop

(absolutely teared up a little at a few of carrie’s scenes)

those fuckers made me watch luke skywalker die with my own two eyes. but it was ok the way it happened, so i guess i’ll cancel the riot.

#the last jedi #star wars #spoilers #ibi goes to the movies

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