I'm having some kind of feelings about it being pointed out to us in-story more than once in S3 that Isaac spends the majority of his time working in his lab alone (which Lamarr seems to believe is just perfectly relatable hyperfocus but Claire gets a little worried that it's about the crew not liking him).

Add to that the scene in Tale Of Two Topas in which he expressed worry about Kelly's reputation if the crew assumed that his visit to her rooms means they are romantically/sexually involved (Isaac is no old fuddy-duddy who cares about being a "man" alone with a woman in her chambers. It's the 25th century ffs, he doesn't care about being appropriate, he once made a sex-position survey. This is about Kelly possibly being involved with a Kaylon. Sidenote: whoever said something nasty about Claire in Isaac's hearing, I like to think their synthesizer developed a "mysterious" glitch where there's a little poop in everything).

Add to those the scene later that same episode where he said he didn't do the surgery for Topa's sake. He did it to improve his standing with the crew... to improve their efficiency. Please mind how we never SAW that alleged decrease in efficiency even implicitly, but we've seen people being nice to him in public and people being openly suspicious of him in public, and how do we think those two groups get on, especially if he's in the room? Or the kids of those groups of people (just imagine what the Mom from that teacher-parent meeting would have to say about it)? It's a small ship.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi RSS FEED OF POST WRITTEN BY FOZMEADOWS

Warning: total spoilers for The Last Jedi.

After weeks of frantically speed-scrolling through my various social media feeds when anything that looked like a Star Wars spoiler appeared, I’ve finally managed to get out and see The Last Jedi. Despite my diligence, I didn’t go in completely unspoiled: I knew the general shape of the fan discourse surrounding the characterisation, which means I had some context cues and a smatter of details to work with, but not the major plot points. Now that I’ve seen the movie, however, I’m electing to write my own review before catching up on other people’s opinions, so if I touch on something that’s already been dissected at length without referencing said discussion, that’s why.

In broad-brush strokes, I enjoyed The Last Jedi. Assessing it purely on its own merits, there was a lot it did right: the cinematography, special effects and original creature creation were wonderful, I loved Rose Tico, and there was a pleasing balance of drama, emotion and humour, the requisite scenery-chewing deftly subverted by moments of self-aware comedy, especially in the opening exchange between Hux and Poe Dameron. Mostly, it was solid.

Mostly.

But.

The thing is, no Star Wars film is an island. The Last Jedi is the second film in a trilogy of trilogies, one whose core trio were clearly and intentionally mapped to the heroes of the (original by creation-date, second by internal chronology) series in The Force Awakens: Finn to Han, Rey to Luke and Poe to Leia. This being so, it was easy to mark the other narrative similarities between The Force Awakens and A New Hope – most notably, the parallels between the Death Star and Starkiller Base, both of which were destroyed in the respective finales, but not before their destructive power was unleashed. Which makes comparing The Last Jedi to The Empire Strikes Back not only reasonable, but – I would argue – necessary, if only to determine whether the decision to parallel the new with the old has continued beyond the first film.

The short answer to that is: yes, The Last Jedi is structurally akin to Empire, but not always to useful effect. The long answer, however, is rather more complex.

As a writer, there’s nothing that makes me crave a metaphorical red pen quite like a story where, for whatever reason, I can see the authorial handwave of Because Reasons gumming up the mechanics. If The Last Jedi was an original film, detached from the Star Wars universe, I’d be able to tell you that the problem stems from the poorly-forced sexist clash between Poe and Holdo, and that would be that. But because The Last Jedi has borrowed certain key narrative structures from Empire, there’s a clear template against which to measure its narrative choices, which makes it easier to infer the hows and whys of various changers.

A quick refresher in Star Wars, for those who haven’t watched the original trilogy lately. The Empire Strikes back begins with the Rebel forces being ousted from Hoth in a massive battle. After fleeing the planet, Luke goes to Degobah to train with Master Yoda, while Han and Leia spend some time dealing with a broken Millennium Falcon and the pursuit of Boba Fett, kissing and bickering and generally cementing their chemistry before finally going to track down Han’s old buddy, Lando Calrissian, in Cloud City. Frustrated with Yoda, Luke has a premonition of danger and goes to rescue his friends, as Lando, who’s been strong-armed by Darth Vader, hands Han and Leia over to the Empire. Han is frozen in carbonite after Leia declares her love for him, Luke loses a hand and learns Vader is his father, and the film ends with the pair them, plus Lando, escaping as they resolve to rescue Han.

By comparison, The Last Jedi follows a fairly similar arc. The film opens with the Rebellion being ousted from its base and pursued in a space battle. Rey attempts to persuade Luke to help her, while Poe and Finn are left dealing with a fleet that’s low on fuel as they try to outrun Hux and the First Order. As Leia lies injured, Poe clashes with Holdo over command, which results in him sending Finn and Rose on a secret mission to find a codebreaker who can help sabotage the First Order’s ship. Unable to the codebreaker, Rose and Finn return instead with DJ, a stranger who claims he can help them, but who ends up betraying them to the First Order. Unaware of this, Poe mounts a short-lived mutiny against Holdo. Meanwhile, frustrated with Luke and experiencing an odd connection to Kylo Ren, Rey goes to try and turn him to back to the light, only to find that Snoke was the source of their connection. Kylo kills Snoke and his guards with Rey’s help, reveals the truth about her lost parents, then betrays her in turn. In the final battle, Rose is injured and declares her feelings for Finn, and the film ends with the rebellion united but still fleeing.

Based on this, it seems clear that The Last Jedi is intended to parallel The Empire Strikes Back, both structurally and thematically. All the same elements are in play, albeit recontextualised by their place in a new story; but where Empire is a tight, sleek film, The Last Jedi is middle-heavy. The major difference between the two is Poe’s tension-and-mutiny arc, which doesn’t map to anything in Empire.

And this is the part where things get prickly. As stated, I really love Rose Tico, not only because she’s a brilliant, engaging character superbly acted by Kelly Marie Tran, but because she represents another crucial foray into diverse representation, both in Star Wars and on the big screen generally. There’s a lot to recommend Vice-Admiral Holdo, too, especially her touching final scene with Leia: I still want to know more about their relationship. I am not for a moment saying that either character – that either woman – doesn’t belong in the film, or in Star Wars, or that their roles were miscast or badly acted or anything like that. But there is, I suspect, a truly maddening reason why they were paired onscreen with Finn and Poe, and that this logic in turn adversely affected both the deeper plot implications and the film’s overall structure.

Given how closely The Last Jedi parallels the main arc of Empire, it’s narratively incongruous that, rather than Finn and Poe heading out to find the codebreaker together, the pair of them are instead split up, decreasing their screen-time while extending the length of the film. But as was firmly established in The Force Awakens, Finn and Poe map to Han and Leia – which is to say, to a canonical straight couple. Even without the phenomenal on-screen chemistry between John Boyega and Oscar Isaac, that parallel is clear in the writing; and in Empire, Han and Leia’s time alone is what catalyses their on-screen romance.

That being so, I find it impossible to believe that Finn and Poe were split up and paired with new female characters for anything other than a clumsy, godawful attempt to No Homo the narrative. Rose and Finn’s scenes are delightful, and their actors, too, have chemistry, but every time we cut back to Poe and Holdo, the story flounders. Everything that happens during Finn’s absence is demonstrably redundant: not only does it fail to move the plot forward, but in trying to justify the time-split, writer/director Rian Johnson has foisted a truly terrible mini-arc on Poe Dameron.

Specifically: after Leia is incapacitated, Holdo is given command of the rebellion. Seeing Holdo for the first time, Poe looks startled and states that she’s not what he was expecting. When Poe, recently demoted by Leia for ignoring orders, asks Holdo what her plan is, Holdo dismisses him as a hot-headed “flyboy” who isn’t what they need right now. Not only doesn’t she tell him where they’re headed, she apparently doesn’t tell anyone else, either. This failure to communicate her plan to her people is, firstly, why Finn feels he has to light out on his own, which is how he meets Rose, and is secondly why, once Finn and Rose come up with a plan to infiltrate the First Order, Poe decides that they can’t risk involving Holdo.

As we eventually learn, Holdo does have a plan – and a good one. There is literally no reason why, given the steadily escalating fear and anxiety of her crew, who are watching their companion ships get picked off one by one, she doesn’t share the full details with the rebellion. Instead, she leaves it to Poe to figure out that she’s refuelling the transport ships to evacuate – and when he panics, pointing out (correctly) that the transports are neither shielded nor armed, she likewise doesn’t elaborate on the fact that they’ll have a cloaking device to shield them and a destination close by, one where they can land and take shelter while the main ship acts as a decoy.

Because of Holdo’s decision to withhold this information, Poe thinks that she’s given up and is leading them blithely to their deaths, and so stages a mutiny – one in which he’s supported by a number of other, equally worried crewmembers. Happily, Leia recovers from her injuries in time to reclaim control, and only then does she let Poe in on Holdo’s plan. Poe suffers no further consequences for his actions, and even when they talk privately, both Holdo and Leia seem more amused by his mutiny than angry at what he’s done, rendering the whole arc moot. Except, of course, for the fact that Finn and Rose, on their mission from Poe, bring DJ into the mix – and DJ, who knows about the cloaking device, betrays this secret to the First Order, who promptly open fire on the transport ships.

Hundreds of rebellion soldiers die because Poe and Holdo so disliked each other on sight that neither one trusted the other with vital information – and for the rest of the film, this is never addressed. But of course, Johnson can’t address it, not even to hang a fucking lampshade on it, because the entire scenario is manufactured as a way to justify Poe’s protagonist-level screentime while Finn is away – which is also why, contextually, their antagonism doesn’t even make sense. The film begins with the premise that the entire rebellion, who’ve just been flushed out of their single remaining base, is on the run together – so why the fuck haven’t Poe and Holdo met before now? Especially as both are shown to have a close, personal relationship with Leia, it rings utterly false that they’d not only be in the dark about one another, but start out instantly on the wrong foot.

As such, the coding around Poe’s surprise at Holdo – that she’s not what he expected – is a lazy misstep. Traditionally, when hotshot male characters say this about a new female commander, it’s a sexist dogwhistle: oh, I didn’t know we’d be getting a woman. But why would Poe Dameron, son of Shara Bey and devotee of General Leia Organa, be surprised by Holdo’s gender? He wouldn’t, is the answer. Flatly, canonically, he wouldn’t. But if there’s some other aspect of Holdo that’s meant to ping as unusual besides her being female, it’s not obvious. It would’ve made far more sense to write the two as having a pre-existing antagonistic relationship for whatever reason: instead, we get Poe cast as an impatient, know-it-all James Bond to Holdo as Judi Dench’s M, who doesn’t have time for his nonsense when they first meet, but who ends up forgiving it anyway.

It’s like Rian Johnson looked at the Poe Dameron of The Force Awakens – a character universally beloved for being vulnerable, funny, charming, honest, loyal and openly affectionate – and decided, Hey, that guy’s an awesome pilot, which means he’s a COOL GUY, and COOL GUYS don’t play by the RULES, man, especially if it means listening to WOMEN – they just A-Team that shit in secret and to HELL with the bodycount! And anyway he’s HOT, so he’s ALWAYS forgiven.

Dear Rian Johnson, if you’re reading this: I like a lot of what you did with this film, but FUCK YOU FOREVER for making Poe Dameron the kind of guy who gets a bunch of his friends killed, then has a mutiny, then indirectly gets even MORE people killed, and never shows any grief about or cognisance of his actions, all because you wanted to avoid fuelling a homoerotic parallel that you openly queerbaited in promo but never intended to fulfil anyway. GIVE US OUR GODDAMN GAYS IN SPACE, YOU COWARD.

Anyway. 

The point being, the entire plot of The Last Jedi suffers because of a single, seemingly homophobic decision – unnecessarily splitting up Poe and Finn to avoid further Han/Leia comparisons – and the knock-on consequences thereof. Which is where I bring out my metaphorical Red Pen of Plot-Fixing and say, here is what should’ve happened. Namely: Poe and Holdo should’ve had a pre-existing antagonistic relationship, but one that didn’t prevent them from sharing information like grown-ups. Rather than Rose being part of the rebellion, she should’ve been the codebreaker they were sent to retrieve on Holdo’s orders (because two plans are better than one, and why not try both gambits?). This voids the need for DJ, who barely appears before disappearing again, so that Rose-as-codebreaker retains her status as an important, well-fleshed character who interacts with both Finn and Poe, and whose introduction works to map her onto Lando Calrissian. If you really must keep DJ because Benicio del Toro and thematic betrayal parallels (more of which shortly), he can be the dubious guy with First Order secrets that Rose has been trying to recruit for the rebellion, which explains why she’s with him on the casino planet in the first place, and how he’s so easily able to cut a deal with Phasma. BOOM! You’ve just saved a solid 20 minutes of redundant screen-time without degrading Poe’s character or undermining Holdo’s for no good reason and without dumb sexism creeping in. You’re welcome. 

(Also. ALSO. Not to take away from how lovely that Finn/Rose kiss was, but let’s just take a moment to peek into the other timeline, the one where Stormpilot gets to go canon the same way Han and Leia did in Empire. Let’s imagine Finn and Poe bickering in the casino, getting all rumpled during the escape while Rose and BB8 exchange Meaningful Looks and scathing droid-beeps about the two of them. Let’s imagine, during that final battle on Krait, that it’s Poe, not Rose, who stays behind to forcibly knock Finn out of that self-sacrificing dive towards the enemy gun; Poe who grabs Finn and kisses him because they should fight for what they love, not against what they hate, before passing out injured, thus completing the parallel of Han going into carbonite after kissing Leia. Let us gaze upon that world, that glorious thematic act of completion, subversion and queer recontextualisation, and then quietly wish a pox on everything in our cruddy Darkest Timeline that conspired to make it unhappen.)

And now, with all that out of the way, let’s address the Rey/Kylo issue.

As I said at the outset of this piece, I tried my best to avoid spoilers before watching the film, but no matter how quickly I scrolled through feeds or closed my tabs, I still knew that a lot of people had come away rejoicing in the idea that Rey and Kylo were being set up romantically, while an equal number had not.

And I just. Look. While I’m not going to stand here and tell people what to ship or on what basis, both generally and at this historical moment in particular, I find myself with an intense personal dislike of narratives, canonical or otherwise, which take it upon themselves to woobify Nazis, neo-Nazis, or the clearly signposted fictional counterparts thereof, into which category Kylo Ren and the whole First Order falls squarely. I don’t care about how sad he feels that he killed his dad: he still fucking killed his dad, and that’s before you account for the fact that he demonstrably doesn’t give a shit about committing genocide. In the immortal words of Brooklyn Nine Nine’s Jake Peralta: cool motive, still murder. Except for how the motive isn’t actually cool at all, because, you know, actual literal genocide.

From my viewing of the film, I honestly can’t tell if Rian Johnson wants us to think of Kylo as a genuinely sympathetic, redeemable figure, or if he’s just trying to improve on the jarring, horrible botch the prequels made of Anakin’s trip to the Dark Side by showing us his complexity without negating his monstrousness. Or, well: let me rephrase that. In terms of the actual script and what takes place, I’d argue that, even if Kylo is given a final shot at redemption in Episode IX, he’s still not being primed as Rey’s love interest. It’s just that the question of how much Johnson wants us to care about Kylo as a person, regardless of anything that happens with Rey, is a different question, for all that the two are easily conflated.

Yes, Rey and Kylo touched hands. They did! And Kylo killed Snoke instead of Rey! This is what we might call a low fucking bar for romantic compatibility, but hey: it’s not like white dudes in cinema are ever really called upon to jump anything higher. More salient in terms of the Star Wars universe is the fact that, after they defeat Snoke’s guards, Kylo’s appeal to Rey to join him and rule the galaxy together is an almost word-for-word callback to the offer Anakin makes Padme in Revenge of the Sith, right before he force-chokes her into unconsciousness, leaves her pregnant ass for dead and turns into Darth Vader. The fact that Anakin and Padme are also sold as a tragic romance prior to this moment is not, I would contend, the salient hook on which to hang the hopes of canon Reylo. Aside from anything else, Rey is mapped to Luke and Kylo, very clearly, to Darth Vader: with clear precedent, Rey’s desire to turn Kylo back from the Dark Side can be heartfelt without being romantic.

(Also, I mean. The connection that Rey and Kylo had was deliberately forged by Snoke to exploit their weaknesses, which is why they each had a vision of converting the other. Though we’re given a hint that the link remains in the final scenes, it ends with Rey shutting the door – both literally and figuratively – in Kylo’s face. I’m hard-pressed to view that as destiny.)

As for Kylo himself, his characterisation reads to me as deliberate, selfish nihilism. Kylo is conflicted over his murder of Han Solo because it impacts him, but at no point does he hesitate to reign down destruction and death on strangers. His desire to turn Rey to the Dark Side is likewise covetous, possessive: she is powerful, and he wants a powerful companion in the Force, but one who, by virtue of being his apprentice, will be subordinate to him – not a judgemental superior, as Snoke was. This is reflected in the way DJ’s betrayal of Rose and Finn is paralleled with Kylo’s decision to first help Rey when it benefits him, and then to turn on her afterwards. Like DJ, Kylo is mercenary in his allegiances, helping whoever helps him in the moment, then discarding them when the relationship is no longer useful.

The death of Snoke itself, however, is rather anticlimactic. He was a looming, distant figure in The Force Awakens, and while there’s an established tradition of Star Wars villains showing up and looking cool without their origins ever being satisfactorily explained at the time, this is vastly more annoying in Snoke’s case. Unlike General Greivous, Darth Maul or Boba Fett, Snoke isn’t just the random antagonist of a single film, plucked from obscurity to thwart the heroes: he’s the reason Ben Solo turned to the Dark Side and become Kylo Ren. Presumably, the hows and whys of Snoke manipulating the young Ben could still come out in Episode IX, but if it never gets addressed onscreen, I’m going to be deeply irritated.

On a more positive note, I enjoyed what the film did with Luke’s arc, for all that it’s not what I’d expected. To me, one of the most fascinating arguments in Star Wars discourse is the question of the Jedi, their morality, and how it all set Anakin up for failure. The Jedi ideology put forth in the prequels is the kind of thing that sounds superficially deep and meaningful, but which looks increasingly toxic the more closely it’s examined. The ban on children, marriage and close relationships outside the Order; the extreme youth of those taken for training combined with a forcible, protracted separation from their families; the idea that fear necessarily leads to anger, and so on. Luke describing the Force to Rey as something that existed beyond the Jedi, an innate aspect of the world, felt both refreshing and intuitively right, even given the necessity of respecting the balance between light and dark. The appearance of force-ghost Yoda felt a little pat, as did his ability to call lightning, but he still had one of my favourite lines in the whole film, delivered in support of Luke’s choice to step away from the Jedi teachings: as masters, we become the thing they surpass.

There were other, smaller niggles throughout than my issues with Poe and the no-homo restructuring of the plot: the handwaving of distances between Luke’s world and the main fight in a story that hinged on fuel supply; the sudden appearance of trenches and tunnels into the caves on Krait when everyone was meant to be trapped inside; the random appearance of an Evil Ball Droid to play momentary nemesis to BB8; the on-the-nose decision to show a random white slave boy, holding a broom he Force-summoned like a lightsaber, at the very end of the film. And as wonderful as it was to see Billie Lourd on screen, the knowledge that Carrie Fisher will be absent from Episode IX – the film that was meant to have been her movie, just as Harrison Ford had the The Force Awakens and Mark Hamill had The Last Jedi – rendered both her presence and her mother’s all the more bittersweet.

  Ultimately, The Last Jedi is a successful-but-frustrating mess, which is kind of how you know it’s a Star Wars movie. I’ll be forever angry at the carelessness with which Rian Johnson treated Poe Dameron and Vice-Admiral Holdo, but even if I could’ve wished for a different plot structure, I’m always going to stan hard for Rose Tico, who was warm and kind and intelligent and who stole every scene she was in. LESS REN, MORE ROSE – that’s my new motto.

Here’s hoping that Episode IX delivers.

  from shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows http://ift.tt/2CThaaG via IFTTT

TLJ spoilers :

The thing with The Last Jedi is that it did not steer the story in the direction I would have chosen... but ultimately I think that was for the best (and it’s not something I usually admit). I’m putting a few of my thoughts under a cut, mostly to put them somewhere.

The things I didn’t like : - The conflict between Holdo and Poe felt incredily artificial. I feel like they were trying to offer a storyline where no side was entirely right nor entirely wrong, and that’s laudable, but as most of it relied on “miscommunication for the sake of the plot”, it felt more frustrating than anything else.

-Still about the Poe vs Holdo thing : Holdo not sharing her plan with her exhausted and panicking troupes did not make her very sympathetic (and Leïa justifying it with “she doesn’t feel the need to be seen as a hero” was dumb, that’s not the point !), and Poe talking to Holdo like that in their first scene was extremely grating and unprofessional. Seing him lose his cool could have been interesting if it had been gradual ! But that was not the case here. I wish both sides had been made more sympathetic than irritating.

-Third point about Poe : dude leads a mutiny and basically keeps being in charge after that like that was no big deal ? I mean, yes they weren’t enough officers left and yes, I think Holdo fucked up and I understand the actions of the crewmembers but they still should have faced consequences ! Not because I want my Star Wars movies to be realistic, but because without consequences that particular plot segment feels even more unnecessary.  - Actually, I would just have done away with the entire mutiny sequence.

-Who decided that DJ should stutter ? It was bad and, I felt, slightly offensive.

-It was kind of unavoidable, what with the necessity to establish all those storylines, but the begining of the movie felt all at once too fast (individual scenes were too short) and too slow (too much exposition). - I really, really wish all the characters didn’t constantly call Leïa, well, “Leïa”. She’s their general ! - “We will not win by killing the things we hate but by saving the things we love” was way too cheesy (and silly) for my taste. Things I whish had been done differently : - I wish the Finn/Phasma fight had been longer (I also hope, against all logic, that Phasma will come back). I was so hyped for it ! And while it was a great sequence, it was so important on a symbolic level that its relatively short length made it kind of underwhelming.

- Poe felt... well, I will not say “ooc” because I don’t think the Poe we were shown in TFA and his comics could never act like he did in TLJ, especially exhausted, a few day after having been tortured by the First Order and right after seeing many of his friends die. But he did felt so much less hopeful and loving, it was a bit of a bummer. I get why they made those choices, but I would have loved it more if they had wrote him differently.

-The chase scene with the fathiers was the one action scene I didn’t really like. It was narratively important but felt a bit too videogame-y. - Keeping Finn and Rey appart for the whole movie was, I think, a smart move. Their reunion and hug was that much more satisfying. However I wish we had seen them together a bit more after that hug. For exemple, I would really have loved it if Finn had been standing beside her. EDIT : beside her when she severed the Force bond. I fogot to finish my sentence. - I don’t think the movie should have ended with only the white boy ? Having the two other kids in the shot would have felt more powerful to me. Things I loved : - Finn and Rose’s storyline was amazing, and pretty much all I want from Star Wars. It was the part that truly remembered that the Star Wars movies are, first and foremost, kids movie, and truly reveled in it. The casino scene was a breath of fresh air (I almost wish it had been longer), and the rest of their adventure was simple and efficient. Boyega and Tran had excellent chemistry, and I was at the same time anxious when they were in danger and excited to see how they would overcome the obstacles in their way. Plus it was nice to see another brand of Star Wars vilainy, in the form of the arms dealers. DJ was not exactly a memorable character, but I thought it was nice to see a character who has no problem being kind and “doing the right thing” (giving Rose her necklace back) when it’s easy, but is still fundamentally selfish. - I also found interesting that Finn and Rose’s view of heroism and “doing what is right” kind of swapp, during the movie ? At the begining Finn mostly wants to protect Rey (at the possible cost of other lives) and Rose is disbeleving that people would be willing to abandon ship rather than face a heroic death, while at the end Finn chose the heroic death and Rose chose to protect one live at the possible cost of many. It’s kinda mirrored in the fact that Holdo condemns Poe’s suicide attack, but ultimately sacrifice herself in a (really impressive) suicide attack, while Poe is very much against the idea of running away and end up (rightly) pushing for it at the end. I don’t entirely know what to make of it, but i do like it. - Luke ! I had been spoiled about him trying to kill Ben Solo when he was his pupil and I was very worried about that plot point going in. I did not see how they could make it work, but they did ! Furthemore I think TFA had backed Luke’s character into a corner with this idea of self-imposed exile, and that TLJ worked with that in the best possible way. It was still Luke,my Luke, the one who’s conflicted and a bit impulsive and always trying to be a good person. Sure his desire to do the right thing had crippled him and led him to do nothing (I can relate), and sure, his goodness did not shine through as brightly as it did when he was young, but it was there and I loved it so much. I was also worried they would make him too serious but he was often genuinly funny. (and nothing contradicted my gay!Luke headcanon, which is always a plus)

- The bad guys. Star Wars vilain are not my thing. I don’t even care for Dark Vader that much. But Hux was delightful as a sniveling, self-important chewtoy and Kylo Ren finally transcended the “interesting concept of a bad guy” category, right into the “I finally see why you’re such a threat and I want you to die in the most epic way possible” category. He’s still pathetic and a complete human disaster, but his vilainy feels now more personnal than generic. I loved this transformation, and I loved that his ultimate fall to the dark side is so clearly treated as a choice. I really, really hope they don’t give him a redemption arc, it would make his arc in this movie feels entirely pointless.

- Finn and Rey truly, uh, self-actualize, in this movie ? I don’t know how to say it but you can see them becomming who they’re meant to be and I loved that. - My feelings about Rey are a bit more mixed. Ridley’s performance didn’t always convince me and I felt like Rey’s absolute conviction that she could turn Kylo came too fast ? But I loved that she makes that mistake because she, like Luke, is trying so hard to be a good person, and because she does not yet believe that she can be the hero of this story (something Kylo plays on really well). The scene in the dark place on the island, where she ask who her parents are and only see herself ? I had chills. Yes it’s heavy handed, but the mirror is more or less telling Rey that she made herself, and i really think it’s powerful.  - I’m also quite happy that she’s not a Skywalker. I have no problem with the Skywalker saga ending tragically (with their last heir succombing to the dark side and dying a vilain) as long as the Star Wars saga ends happily. I love that Rey is important simply because she’s Rey. - I think it was a bold move to make “failure” one of the most important theme of the movie. Not just because “failure is the best teacher” is a pretty cool message, but also because for once we feel like the Resistance is heroic not because of what they accomplish, but because they absolutely never give up their fight against space!fascism. I loved that. - “We are what they grow beyond”... if anyone had told me that Yoda would one day make me so emo, I would have laughed at them. But I did sob at the line (it made me feel 15 again). - I also cried at Luke and Leïa reunion’s scene. They had me at “I know what you’re going to say, I changed my hair.” which is pretty much the first exchange they have.

- The whole movie was gorgeous ? I love the action sequences and I particularly loved just how big the red salt planet felt. The galaxy truly felt gigantic. - “The Rebellion is reborn today. The war is just begining. And I will not be the last Jedi”. Yes please. - Rey and Finn’s hug was amazing. - b i n a r y  s u n s e t

- Leïa and Holdo absolutely had a an affair when Han left the Resistance and I think that’s beautiful.