A celebration of George Lucas’ complete Star Wars series, and an ongoing tear-down of the Disney-led, made-up-as-they-go-along sequels. We vow not to invade the blogs of other fans who are enjoying these films. Of course, we can still reblog *external links* that have issues with them, but we shan't direct these the salt directly at other Tumblr users. We're not here to cause grief, but to EXPRESS grief for what the series has become and what it might've been. Oh, and the “Star Wars Story” one-offs? Eh, we can judge each on their own merits. Ambivalent for now.
What do you think about the use of semi-real-world accents among the then-new races of The Phantom Menace (i.e. Gungans, Neimoidians/Trade Federation, Watto/Toydarians)?
RL people have accents. Non-native 'Basic' speakers logically would. Don't care.
I kind of wish they hadn't done it, but it's not a big deal to me either. Eh.
They are - to ANY/SOME degree or level - racist and offensive.
One or two of them are offensive IMO, but the other one or two don't bother me.
It's not ONLY the accents; any/all of the entire characters are racist/offensive
Remaining time: 5 days 23 hours
I saw someone dredge this up recently. They were very angry about it.
To me, this has never made much sense. For 20+ years, I've fallen into the first camp: real people sometimes have accents, and races who do not speaking Galactic Basic natively should logically have accents. Basing those accents on real-world ones to some degree makes sense to me.
..............but what if I'm just ignorant and not "getting it"? What if my personal life experience is making me blind to something here?
So I wanted to check with the larger SW community.
What do YOU think about TPM's use of accents?
Please let me know. Perhaps I can learn and grow to be a kinder person from this... or perhaps I can feel somewhat vindicated.
In which I'm forced to accept that "The Mandalorian" is good
Leading up to The Mandalorian & Grogu's release, I knew I was going to theaters to see it because I had a family member who really wanted to go with me. So I took it upon myself to FINALLY watch "The Mandalorian" on Disney+.
All of it.
I tried to watch it once before. After two episodes, I had decided I didn't care and wasn't a fan. But now that I've sat through the whole series?
Yeah, okay; I must regretfully admit that "The Mandalorian" is actually really good. ESPECIALLY those first two seasons.
It took a few episodes to get me invested, sadly... the first half of the entire first season, really. Which is kind of lame, yeah. I don't blame myself for thinking the show was "meh" after I watched the first two episodes alone. But ultimately, I daresay those first two seasons — and the overall character of Din Djarin and the surrounding Mandalorian mythology — are now, IMO, one of the best things to come out of Disney Star Wars. Below "Andor" for me, but almost on the level of Rogue One. Even those first few bland episodes of The Mandalorian are, in retrospect, important groundwork that comes back in meaningful ways and ultimately have more value in retrospect. Yup; I've done a real about-face on this one.
The third season of the show is a lot slower than the first two and more hit-and-miss. It still has awesome moments, but it contains some bad decisions, too. Idk exactly how I feel about it. It's..... solid enough, but it definitely shows that they needed to do something different. I think moving the story to a film was a good shot in the arm for this branch.
(And I definitely think that they should've put the Mando-centric stuff from "The Book of Boba Fett" into season 3 of The Mandalorian and deleted some of the extraneous garbage from S3 to make room for it. It's just waaaay too important to Din's journey to leave elsewhere, and it also has literally NOTHING to do with Boba Fett's journey. So. Yeah. It's actually pretty easy: You delete the entire dead-end plotline about Imperial converts from "The Convert" episode 3. You drop the main story of "Guns for Hire" episode that—as fun as much of it was—just doesn't have any relevance to the overall storyline. And then you have the room to easily port over all of Din's story progression from the SUPPOSED Boba Fett series. And you can have Boba Fett end on a round number of episodes (6) instead of a weird 7 PLUS give more screen time to that show's leads — Boba and Fennic — with the room you have left over. BOOM.)
I am begging people to stop defending Admiral Holdo.
It's fascinating and depressing to me how Admiral Holdo became this flashpoint of "sexism! male chauvinism!" arguments when really, her storyline in The Last Jedi has nothing to do with that. It may have intended to say something about that, but it fundamentally fails because she is so spectacularly terrible as a leader.
Her many, many failings are outlined here in great detail.
A military officer even did a writeup of her awfulness.
Oh, and ANOTHER military analysis of how unfit she was to lead.
Stop carrying Admiral Holdo's water, people. She can very reasonably be directly blamed for the death of the majority of the Resistance.
I feel like The Last Jedi wanted to make a point that it completely botched... much like most of it (and the sequels in general) tried to do, I suppose.
Of course, I've written about Holdo's various issues before. I've imagined a way the attempted "mutiny" really should've gone in light of how badly she handled things. I've theorized that maybe Holdo's actions make sense if she was secretly working for the First Order. I even did a lil' script-based fanfic about the characters realizing/discussing after her death that she was terrible.
Mon Mothma is truly the noble, heroic leader that Holdo was supposed to be. Hell, she even wears a similar type of gown.
I feel confident in saying that a good 75% of what Disney made of sw is hot garbage. But like Clone Wars s7 some wasnt bad. What would you consider canon of theirs?
(Sorry in advance. My answers to asks tend to be wordy.)
Clone Wars S7 was really written before the Disney buyout and even got animatics finished before then; the Disney version is just a trimmed-down version of the same season with multiple episodes removed. So I can't even give that one to them. That was already part of the Lucas-era canon, really.
I see the Lucas era and the Disney era as two separate continuities at this point. They've gone hard against both Lucas' own stated canon regarding Plagueis/Sidious and Lucas' established intentions for the OT characters by now. (....though admittedly, I'm uncertain how the latter would square with his unused outline for the sequels, wherein Luke off in hiding while he researches the inner workings of the Force etc etc.) So really, in my heart, the canon is basically:
Top, Primary Tier: Episodes I-VI and all seven seasons of the Clone Wars series (the CG one). This is the stuff Lucas personally considered unassailable canon, basically.
Secondary Tier: EU books/comics/video games from the era when Lucasfilm was still owned and run independently under George Lucas (now referred to as "Legends"). Ended in early 2014.
Distant Tertiary Tier: Disney-era SW, i.e. everything (other than Clone Wars S7) that's come out since Fall 2014. This is clearly its own thing that deviates heavily from anything that would've happened under the eras of the first and second tiers; I see it as completely separate (and sadly inferior).
Blatantly-Not-Canon-to-Anything Tier: Star Wars: Visions. Not canon to anybody and not really trying to be. Just some fun experiements.
So really, I don't think ANYTHING in the Disney era is true "canon." Even so, there is still stuff I really like in there! But before I get into that...
DISCLAIMER: There's still a lot of Disney SW that I've never touched. I've never read any of their novels or comic books. I've still never seen the Solo movie—though I keep meaning to try that one, so maybe I'll do so soon. I've heard some very good things about the "Rebels" and "The Bad Batch" animated shows, but I've never tried either one. And well, nobody liked the "Resistance" show, but it... also exists. I tried to watch "The Mandalorian" once but I got so bored by the first two episodes that I turned it off and never bothered to pick it up again. I need to give it another chnace before the new movie comes out, probably? I also never tried "Ahsoka" or "The Book of Boba Fett," either... never played Battlefront II or Squadrons... you get the picture. The issue is that I've been burned so much by this Disney era that I'm often hesitant to even dip my toes into it. They sometimes get my attention and lure me back with something like bringing back Ewan MacGregor as Obi-Wan or exploring a new-to-live-action time period in The Acolyte... and then the execution ends up reminding me why I don't bother with most of what they make. They continuously disappoint.
And with that out of the way, let me get into it. What do I like from the Disney Star Wars era?
First place: "Andor." Andor S1 is just excellent. It separates neatly into various multi-episode arcs, and it's a far darker take on SW than we're typically used to. But I think this and my #2 choice really illustrate that exploring different tones within the universe can still work well. As with most of what they do, I was hesitant to try this show. Eventually, the praise I kept hearing eventually convinced me to give it a chance. I hope season 2 continues its quality.
Second place: Rogue One. Having this come out as their second movie really gave me renewed hope about what they were doing. Jyn Erso was the heroine I wanted Rey to be. I wish her story's ending was different, but I can't deny the power of the ending we got. And of course, this is where we first met Cassian Andor. This feels so much like a missing piece of the OT era... in a good way. You know, when they first talked about making this feel like a grittier war story, and then making Solo be a comedic heist caper, I really thought they were on to something with these Star Wars Story ideas. Why NOT explore totally different tones and even genres within the Star Wars universe?? Give me some SW (light) horror! Show me a SW romcom! Alas, they ultimately ended up sanding down all those edges to make everything more homogenous...
Third place: Galaxy's Edge. If you get the opportunity to visit, I definitely recommend it. As far as "theme park lands that attempt to immerse you in another world" go, I'd put this near the top. (Diagon Alley at Universal Studios is currently the peak, imo.) When you're here, you can rarely even see anything outside of Batuu and Black Spire Outpost. All the indoor shops and the restaurant each contain some animatronic creature, machine, or character to bring you into this alien world. The Disney employees consistently maintain the illusion by speaking in terms of you being off-worlders and asking for "credits." Aurebush is all over the place. The hulking, steaming, rusted Millenium Falcon is gorgeous. Yes, this is all placed within the era of the Sequel Trilogy, which definitely hurts the experience for me... but it's still impressively done.
Fourth place: "Star Wars: Visions" S1 is fun. Some really cool short stories in there. And some blah ones/misses as well, yeah, but they're all over so fast that it doesn't much matter. No, this doesn't mesh with any canon at all... but so what? That's what gives them the freedom to go absolutely nuts. Still need to try S2.
Fifth place: LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. If you've ever liked a LEGO video game, this is pretty much the best one to date. It's part of the Disney era and includes their crappy sequels, but it's a cute time.
Yes, I did watch this show. Against my better judgment, I keep hoping that Disney will put out another series that approaches the quality of Andor's first season.
So let me do a quick review.
I thought the first 4.75 episodes were fantastic. I was goddamn enthralled by the mysteries they were setting up and the characters we met along the way. I was convinced that this was going to be the BEST Star Wars we'd gotten from Disney yet—that it had the potential to be even more up my alley than Andor was. I was talking down all the naysayers. I thought the performances were great, the time period was fascinating, the mysteries were swirling in my mind all the time. Excellent, EXCELLENT setup.
Around the final 10-15 minutes of episode 5, however, characters start to act really stupid. And from that point forward, things nose-dived right off a cliff.
Starting with episode 6, the entire series only continues because everyone involved is a fucking idiot. Nothing in that episode works if everyone involved doesn't do the most moronic thing possible at every opportunity given. It is the DEFINITION of an idiot plot. And although we briefly get a comprehensible sort of foolishness from some characters during parts of episode 7's flashback, episode 8 is the culmination of UTTER BATSHIT STUPIDITY. There is no reality in which the behavior and words on display make any fucking sense unless everyone involved is one of the stupidest people in the Star Wars galaxy.
Subsequently, by the end of season 1? I no longer cared.
It is the year twenty-fucking-twenty-five, and I am still being INSTANTLY called a sexist/misogynist whenever anyone finds out that I hate The Last Jedi.
In the original script and novelization for Revenge of the Sith, it's made clear that Palpatine can sense Anakin's fear of losing someone to death and therefore manipulates him by telling him a story about his old master that is a mix of truth and lies. In truth, Plagueis (and Palpatine) never how to prevent people from dying; it was just a lure to reel Anakin in.
Qui-Gon clarifies this while talking with Yoda near the end in a scene that I deeply wish had never been dropped. During this sequence, he explains his ability to continue existing within the Force as a blue Force ghost.
"Eternal life... " Yoda pondered.
"The ultimate goal of the Sith, yet they can never achieve it," Qui-Gon explained. "It comes only by the release of self, not the exaltation of self. It comes through compassion, not greed. Love is the answer to the darkness."
I bring this up because in Disney-era Star Wars, the exact OPPOSITE is true: Plagueis literally figured out the secret to immortality via the Dark Side! He succeeded! Palpatine was just telling Anakin a true story, because Plagueis is the one who figured out how to transfer your consciousness between bodies. This is a trick Palpatine used in the old "Legends" EU, sure, but now it's canonically something Plagueis taught to Palpatine, which is officially how he was alive in The Rise of Skywalker.
And I just really like the George Lucas-era concept better... the idea that only Jedi and the light side can achieve the "immortality" that Palpatine lied about. And that Palpatine was being a good manipulator via lies, not just telling Anakin the truth.
The risk/reward of just ignoring one sequel's mistakes in the next one
Ghostbusters Afterlife —
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire —
I've previously written on this blog about the unfortunate legacy of The Force Awakens and how its massive success paved the way for a veritable buttload of legacy sequels that made similar mistakes.
One example I cited was Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Among the things I hated there was the declaration that no ghosts had shown up anywhere for approximately 30 years, effectively negating any EU lore or personal imaginings of interim adventures. Instead, we're made to believe that ghosts ONLY appear when an apocalyptic threat is making them emerge.
This year's direct sequel, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, just completely ignores all that. Ghosts can appear anywhere and any time regardless of whether a major threat is coming to somehow spawn them. In fact, we even see the library ghost from the opening of the original 1984 Ghostbusters has apparently just been floating around freely EVER SINCE THEN. She's just stayed in the New York Public Library the whole friggin' time! (Which is kind of ridiculous all by itself, but whatever.)
So that's certainly ONE way to deal with dumb/bad ideas introduced in legacy sequels; just kind of pretend the idea was wrong or that you never said it, and don't bother explaining yourself when you show the opposite to be true. :P I... kind of love that??? But I feel like I probably shouldn't, because they should probably have to justify why they claimed that stuff in the first place.
But can you imagine if the Star Wars sequels pulled this kind of thing?
The Rise of Skywalker certainly does take pains to undo some of The Last Jedi, but it also feels the need to acknowledge what that movie said and did. Like "Oh Rey — it IS true that your parents were nobodies, but your grandpa is still somebody." Imagine instead if The Rise of Skywalker had just treated it like "OF COURSE Luke never thought the Jedi were a mistake, and of course he didn't run away to die! He was on that planet to build a new Jedi Academy, silly! Didn't you notice?" And then they just never explained the discrepancy.
I think I might've loved that, LOL. But like I said... I probably shouldn't. :P
I would've loved to see what George Lucas had envisioned for the Star Wars sequels, of course.
From what little we've gleaned courtesy of Mark Hamill interviews, Lucas' own vague mentions, and some references to it in Bob Iger's memoirs, Lucas' treatment for Episode VII focused on Kira, a young woman who goes questing to find her long-missing father — who turns out to be Luke Skywalker, naturally. She discovers that he left his family behind because he could sense a threat reaching into the galaxy that was drawing ever-closer to him. The threat was coming from — and could only be battled from — inside of the Force somehow (???), and his own strength with the Force made him a beacon that was luring it directly towards him, endangering the people closest to him. So he's isolated himself in order to frantically study how to somehow enter and control the Force itself, preparing for some kind of coming "inner battle."
Which all sounds super fucking weird, but at least it would have been something new.
"Why The Last Jedi Isn't Just Bad - It's Toxic" by M. Krasava
DISCLAIMER: This editorial was originally published on Scavenger's Holocron, a sadly-now-defunct Star Wars news site. I feel like it's a tragedy to have it deleted from the Internet and only accessible to dedicated parties who know about it via the Wayback Machine, so I'm reposting it here as a form of greater preservation/availability.
Currently being regarded as the most controversial Star Wars film to date, fans of the popular franchise seem to have settled into two groups: this is either the best Star Wars film ever made, or the worst. Cinematically speaking, the movie has stunning visuals and a great cast of actors, but that’s not the problem.
The problem is that while The Last Jedi is being branded as the most feminist Star Wars film to date, its “feminism” seems like a cheap marketing ploy to appeal to a wiser audience and downplays some of the key problems within the film itself: it’s built on a foundation of sexism, misogyny, and racism. In other words, if you’re anything other than a white male, this film isn’t made for you.
And director Rian Johnson hasn’t exactly been shy about his opinion regarding the film’s white male villain, Kylo Ren. Rian told Empire Magazine that, “We can all relate to Kylo: to that anger of being in the turmoil of adolescence and figuring out who he’s going to be as a man.”
The only problem is that we can’t. Despite Rian’s insistence that this film is about the “transition from adolescence into adulthood,” Kylo Ren is already a well-established adult with a history of bad choices. We know from the canon Star Wars novel Bloodline, written by Claudia Gray, that Kylo Ren was at least 23 years old when he destroyed Luke’s Academy. At this point, he’s already an adult capable of making his own choices.
The film reveals that the final push towards the “dark side” was when Ben Solo awoke to see Luke standing over him with his lightsaber while he was sleeping. Without considering the possibility of a miscommunication, Ben Solo brought the roof down on the last Jedi, and then systemically went about converting or eliminating the rest of the students in Luke’s school before burning it to the ground. From there it can be presumed that he officially took on the role of Snoke’s apprentice, dubbing himself Kylo Ren as he joined the ranks of the First Order.
The problem is that it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing relateable about being a white adult male who decides to sign up with a Nazi organization and the very premise that we should try to have sympathy for such a character is chilling, especially when you consider that he murdered Han Solo not more than a week prior in film time.
(PUTTING THE REST UNDER A CUT)
But there’s another element to Kylo Ren that makes him harder to relate to. He comes from a place of privilege in society. Ben Solo was born to two war heroes, and while those might be big shoes to fill, there’s nothing that would indicate that Han and Leia were terrible parents to their son. In The Force Awakens, Leia admits that she sent Ben to train with Luke because she feared Snoke’s growing influence on her son (turns out, she had a right to be concerned). In Chuck Wendig’s canon novel, Empire’s End, from the Star Wars: Aftermath series, we see Han excited, if not a little daunted, about the possibility of becoming a father.
In other words, there’s nothing relateable when you think about a wealthy white male growing up sure of his place in the world and deciding to leave it all behind to join a fascist organization.
Compounding on this, there is someone who is relateable: Finn. Finn was not born from a place of privilege. If anything, we still know very little about Finn’s origins aside from the fact that he was abducted from his parents and raised to be a Stormtrooper. Despite years of conditioning and being ranked as the top cadet in his class, Finn was able to maintain his sense of self and when it came down to his first battle, he decided not to shoot and kill an unarmed villager.
This is the character that most people should be able to relate to. Finn is a character that isn’t sure of his place in the world. He grew up with the First Order and left everything that he knew behind him in order to try to do what he thought was right. Although he initially planned to seek a quick exit from the conflict at Maz’s castle, he didn’t hesitate to rejoin the struggle when he discovered that Rey was in danger. Finn spent most of his time in The Force Awakens running away from something – the First Order, from Jakku, from delivering BB-8 to the Resistance, but we see his progression throughout the movie to the point where he risks his life for Rey and helps the Resistance destroy the Starkiller base. At this point, Finn has rightfully earned his status as a hero.
Until The Last Jedi where Finn is again painted as selfish and cowardly, and the film does not shy away from this fact. Initially branded as a traitor by Rose when he tries to get the beacon as far away as possible to prevent Rey from falling into a trap, he is consistently belittled by Rose throughout the film. She consistently calls him cowardly and self-centered, and Finn’s characterization seems to shift in order to fit this description. When Finn is explaining his plan on hyperspace tracking to Poe, he is excited and confident: he can do this. When he gets to Canto Bight, he suddenly regresses, becoming immature and distracted by the glitz and glamour all around him. Finn knows what’s on the line. Rey is on the line. Poe is on the line. The Resistance has less than 24 hours, and yet he suddenly becomes bumbling and distracted.
This becomes Finn’s character throughout the rest of the film. Brash, impulsive, and worse, being frequently portrayed as the butt of everyone’s jokes. When we first see Finn, he is wandering about the halls of the Resistance in nothing but a bacta suit, as if Finn has suddenly forgotten how to care for himself. The film plays into the stereotypes that many people have about black male individuals. Instead of being treated as the hero of the Resistance, Finn is relegated to a comedic side role based on slapstick humor and unfunny comedy that ultimately doesn’t contribute anything to the plot.
In other words, Finn’s side plot reflects the film’s stance of diversity: we’ll wave it in your face for a few minutes before we wave it aside to make way for the two white protagonists. It’s a bold statement, but not untrue. Rian Johnson first joked that it would be “funny” to leave Finn in a coma for the entire film: “We did at some point joke that it would be great to just have him be in a coma for the whole movie and keep cutting back to him.” He explains that each of these cuts back to Finn would have him uttering some nonsense in his unconscious state, and at no point in the entire run time of the movie would the former Stormtrooper wake up.
When John Boyega first accepted the role of Finn, JJ Abrams told him that he was going to be the new star of Star Wars. Rian Johnson blatantly admitted that it would be “funny” to simply delegate the black lead to the sidelines, where he doesn’t have more than a few scenes of incoherent babbling to serve as comic relief.
Not to mention, it’s Rose who ultimately has to teach Finn about the seedy belly of Canto Bight and how it operates: through slave labor. Another character shouldn’t have to explain to Finn, of all characters, the tortures and ills of slavery. After all, that’s the only life Finn’s known, taken as his family and raised in a life of servitude as a Stormtrooper to the First Order.
The underlying racism in The Last Jedi does not, unfortunately, stop with Finn’s character. We know a lot more about Poe Dameron’s character from the popular Poe Dameron comic series that highlights Poe’s adventures with Black Squadron before they find Lor San Tekka.
In fact, Poe’s arc is highlighted by its racism, as Poe’s character is reduced to a mere stereotype of his ethnicity. From the Before the Awakening, piloting flight logs, and comic series, we have a complete picture of who Poe is as a character. He tells L’ulo, “I’m the best. But you’re the best too” which highlights who he is as a person. He is a gentle soul that sees the best in people, trusting Finn not only to help him escape, but to lower the shields on the Starkiller Base when he said he could. Poe is a genuine nice guy who would give the shirt, er, jacket off their back to help a stranger.
And we see absolutely none of this in The Last Jedi.
Poe is described as rash, dangerous, and aggressive by Vice Admiral Holdo, played by veteran actress Laura Dern. She’s dismissive of him, and while a part of it does play into more harmful stereotypes that I’ll get into later, in this instance, it’s hard not to. In the opening first scene, Poe is prepared to let everyone, everyone die just to take out a First Order Dreadnought. Even though successful, Poe seems more focused on the success of his mission than the countless deaths of his fellow Resistance fighters.
And that is not who Poe Dameron is. To say so makes a complete mockery of a fantastic character whose character has already been set and esteemed by fans. Changing his character to comply with stereotypes in order to try to advance the plot isn’t “moral ambiguity” or “challenging the character” – it’s just bad writing.
In short, Poe becomes aggressive, dangerous and hotheaded, all to fulfill the stereotypical role that the narrative wants him to play. His character attitudes are changed in order to fulfill a plot device, and that’s the conflict set up between himself and Vice Admiral Holdo.
This conflict is disappointing. It focuses on a female leader putting an aggressive, chauvinistic male in his place. It’s supposed to be empowering, but it’s not, especially when you have to have one character act so differently in order to get to that point. The problem is that the kind of feminism this movie is preaching is white feminism, which is dangerous in and of itself.
But what does white feminism mean in this case? Vice Admiral Holdo, and even Rose, both undermine and belittle Finn and Poe, treating them like children. This concept of infantalization upholds racist stereotypes of black and Latino men being both incompetent and irrational. In Poe’s case, it works to also uplift the alleged moral superiority of white women over people of color. And it’s not feminism.
It’s just disgusting.
Holdo is held up as someone that people in the Resistance are supposed to respect as a leader, and yet she refuses to tell the very people she’s leading what their plan is, citing Poe’s earlier reckless actions as an excuse. Even according to the Navy’s Leadership Principles, keeping your people informed is the second principle on the list. In other words? It’s pretty important. Vice Admiral Holdo’s refusal to do so is driven by petty motives, and while Poe is painted as ridiculous and childish the entire movie, he’s actually proven right when the First Order does the very thing he was afraid they would do.
One of the “lessons” from Poe’s story line is you should always blindly trust authority figures even when they provide no valid reason for doing so, and this is an extremely dangerous and topic example to set, especially in today’s society when people of color are so often made targets of police brutality, which again feeds back into the movie’s underlying theme of systematic racism.
Holdo herself seeks redemption from her mistakes by turning around and ramming her ship through theirs – an admittedly cool move, although it would be cooler had we not seen Admiral Raddus suggest the idea of plowing through a ship no more than a year earlier – and dies so that Leia can explain to Poe that Holdo was a good leader (without really stating how) because she was more concerned with fulfilling the mission without getting credit for it.
The problem with this? It means that Holdo had to die in order for Poe to “understand” what it meant to be a leader. This doesn’t work for two reasons. For one, Poe is a decorated Commander who had already served as a leader in the Republic Navy before joining the Resistance. Painting him as a cocky flyboy with a chip on his shoulder just doesn’t work when it goes against everything we’ve been told about his character. The “lesson” Poe was supposed to learn was one he already knew.
The second problem is that it meant that Holdo had to die in order for Poe to learn this lesson. In other words, we’re back to that age-old trope: a woman had to die in order to advance the plot/characterization of a male character.
And that’s where we get to our final topic: sexism. For a movie that preaches itself as so overtly feminist, it is rich with sexist undertones that are immediately apparent on the surface. Most of these are notably in the interactions between Rey and Kylo Ren, but there’s another character that I wanted to touch upon first. Rose Tico.
Despite Kelly Marie Tran’s boundless enthusiasm for her role, Rose Tico is ultimately underwhelming as a character. Despite mourning the death of her sister, her ultimate presence in the film seemed to be reduced to a girl with a bad crush on Finn.
I’ve already touched upon how poorly Rose treats Finn, but Rose herself seems to have gotten the short end of the stick in terms of the plot. Her character exists only to serve Rian’s image that your heroes aren’t what they seem, tazing Finn when she sees him trying to escape. From then on, Rose’s status seems to be downgraded to “Finn’s crush” as seen in the description of this deleted scene:
Originally, the film spent some more time clarifying the dynamic between Rey and Finn, and further setting up Rose’s crush on the Resistance “hero.” Rose chastises Finn for “pining for Rey,” which Finn quickly denies, claiming that he was “raised to fight” and that he finally found something to fight for in his friend, Rey. “Whatever,” responds Rose with a hint of jealousy.
Rose’s constant nagging of Finn and being catty about Rey enforces a negative female stereotype that has no business in a Hollywood blockbuster that claims to be catered to young girls, especially when it seems that Rose’s role has been reduced to working the love triangle dynamic between Finn and Rey. This seems like it could only lead to a destructive end for the character, especially considering how she attempts to save Finn’s life by almost sacrificing her own at the end of the film. Rose presents us once again with the trope that a female character must sacrifice herself in order to advance the plot of the male character, in this case, to prove her love for him. It’s a frustrating trope, made all the more exhausting when you consider what her role might be in the next film.
If you focus on the look Rey gives Finn putting a blanket over the unconscious Rose, it sets up tension for the next film: assuming Rey and Rose engage in competition for Finn’s attention, putting the two girls at odds with one another.
Because if the sexism in this movie wasn’t blatant enough, that’s just what Star Wars needs: two girls fighting over a guy. While frustrating to watch, it’s also extremely degrading to both characters and reduces both of their arcs into nothing more than instruments to direct the story of a male character.
Hopefully JJ will take the next episode in a different direction, but the damage that has already occurred in this film cannot be understated. There is, unfortunately, a lot of ground to cover regarding Rey’s story, so I’m going to start with the most visually striking one: Rey’s costume.
In The Last Jedi, Rey adopts what has been dubbed her “Jedi Training” outfit, trading out her three signature buns for a simpler hairstyle and trading out her light Jedi garb for a bit of a darker color. It’s a way for Rey to separate herself from the girl we saw crying desperately over her parent’s retreating ship on Jakku, keeping the same appearance a decade later in the hopes that they would come back to recognize her.
Many who speculated that Rey would undergo this physical transition after she discovered the true origin of her parents and worked to free herself of that disappointment found themselves disappointed. Rey didn’t change her clothes and her hair after she learned about her parentage from Kylo Ren, she learned about it after.
Despite being wet from the rain, another reason for this change is that she was shipping herself off in a box to see Kylo Ren, prompting those who want them to be romantically involved to start citing the Snow White parallels. It’s not hard to believe that the reason for this change was to make Rey appear more feminine. With her hair down, she looks more like a girl and less like the hardened warrior who had to fend for herself back on Jakku.
But wait, wouldn’t that mean that Rey’s entire role in the movie basically focused on developing Kylo Ren as a character? It does, and you wouldn’t be wrong to think that way. Even during Rey’s training sessions with Luke, the conversation is always geared back to Kylo Ren in some way, whether it’s Luke talking about his past or Rey assuring Luke that she won’t end up like Kylo. Either way, we hear Kylo’s name spoken more times between them than we actually hear anything about the Jedi or the things that Luke learned about the Force on his travels (say, Pillio, perhaps?)
It becomes clear early on that despite Rian Johnson saying that the film isn’t about what the fans want, that certain scenes were added in to appeal to a certain demographic. For example, Adam Driver’s uncomfortable shirtless scene?
Rian himself says that the scene had a “specific purpose” of creating an increasing feeling of “uncomfortable intimacy.” In other words, Kylo Ren’s shirtless scene is basically synonymous with a dick pic: no one asked for it, but there it is, one of the most subtle forms of sexual harassment. Think about this another way: if Rey’s character was really a boy, would the shirtless scene still be present? Or necessary?
Hint: it’s not.
The fact that Rey’s character only seems to exist to play a role in Kylo’s story is concerning, considering that she is touted as the protagonist of the sequel trilogy. Even though she witnessed him murder Han Solo no more than a few days prior, she becomes emotionally intimate with him pretty quickly, opening up to him about the strange experiences she had in the “dark place” beneath the island.
And therein lies the problem. When they touched hands, Snoke gave her a vision of Kylo Ren turning back to the light side to compel her to rush off to the Supremacy in the hopes that she could turn Kylo Ren back to the light and turn the tide of the war.
There’s only one problem with that.
It’s not her problem.
Rey was a civilian. As Kylo Ren himself told her, “You have no place in this story.” She has no part in the conflict between the First Order and the Resistance, and yet she was swept up in it all the same. It shouldn’t be necessary for her to rush off and turn the tide of the war, and while it fits with the Star Wars theme of how one person can make a difference, the trope that a woman must rush off and sacrifice herself in order to progress a man’s character and offer him redemption has been a long-running frustrating trope. If Rey wants to help the Resistance, that’s her choice, but it shouldn’t be necessary to rush off and try to save the person who kidnapped and abused her.
It’s one of the things that makes any sort of Kylo Ren and Rey team-up so off-putting. In The Force Awakens, he kidnaps her and invades her mind in order to try to find the location of the map. After she escapes, he confronts her in the forest, throwing her into a tree several feet up in the air in a move that could have potentially killed her. Then she wakes up just in time to watch him slice through Finn in a move that could have killed him.
Oh, and did I forget to mention how she watched him murder a defenseless Han Solo right before her eyes only moments before? The man who, as Kylo himself taunted, presented a father figure that she never had?
In other words, Rey has absolutely no reason to trust Kylo Ren. She has no reason to even want him to get redemption. For all of Rian’s talk about how he wanted to keep this film “morally grey,” trying to make a genocidal murderer relateable, or even redeemable, was not a step in the right direction. Wouldn’t it have been more compelling to watch Rey wrestle with the ramifications of eliminating Kylo Ren once and for all? Instead of trying to find redemption for the dark side, wouldn’t it have been far more interesting to explore a situation in which Rey realizes that good people must sometimes do bad things for an overall good to result?
Perhaps, but that’s not the film we got. Instead we got a team-up between Kylo Ren and Rey where, moments after they work together, their alliance is quickly severed. Rey asks Kylo to call off the attack that is sure to eliminate the Resistance, including Finn. Kylo, however, refuses and tells her to move on and join him in ruling. He tells her, “You come from nothing. You’re nothing. But not to me.”
Fortunately Rey grabs the lightsaber and rejects his offer, and the final scene of her closing the Millennium Falcon doors on him seems to confirm that she has severed her connection for good. The problem? The damage has already been done.
Rian Johnson has already set up the Kylo Ren and Rey dynamic to be potentially romantic, between the shirtless scene, the hand touching scene, to be filled with an uncomfortable kind of sexual tension between the girl that declared to Maz, “I don’t want a part of any of this” and the man that murdered his father.
As troubling as that notion is, it does get worse. Kylo Ren tells Rey, “You come from nothing. You are nothing. But not to me.”
The problem is that Kylo Ren’s frequent gaslighting and emotional manipulation throughout the two films reaches its climax: he has discarded Snoke and wants to use the powerful, yet naive Rey, to further his own power. Still, the sexual if not romantic implications are there, pushed along by a group of shippers that call themselves “Reylos,” who desperately seek for Rey to redeem Kylo through, well, you get the idea.
There are several problems with this. One of the first ones is the fact that Kylo Ren is 32 years old, whereas Rey is only 19. While many are quick to claim that age is just a number, Rey is emotionally immature, having been isolated on Jakku for most of her life. There is absolutely no good reason to try to push her into any sort of relationship with someone who is so destructive, especially when the sole reason for doing so is to help Kylo Ren find redemption.
The line, “You’re nothing…but not to me” is a quote that unfortunately most women have heard far too often. It’s an emotional manipulation tactic in order to try to isolate a woman from her friends and family until she only relies on her abuser for support, and this is exactly what Kylo Ren is trying to do here. With Luke unwilling to teach her, Kylo wants Rey to rely on him, and solely him, so that he can use her power and manipulate her to further his own goals (which is to lead the First Order to…conquer the galaxy? It’s not quite clear.)
It’s a frightening message, especially when you think about who this movie is supposedly marketed to. Think about how many children dressed up as Rey for Halloween. How do we explain to girls that the man who killed Han Solo, the man who emotionally manipulated her and tried to use her just to validate himself, is the person that she should ultimately fall in love with? It paints a dangerous picture that girls internalize before they have enough experience to make their own decisions regarding their own relationships.
Remember Edward Cullen’s creepy manipulation in Twilight? Apparently that’s crept into Star Wars as well.
And this gets to the heart of the overall problem. The Last Jedi is ultimately soaked in sexism, misogyny and racism, and yet Kathleen Kennedy and Bob Iger widely praised the film before its release. How can Kathleen Kennedy, who said that she was proud to have a feminist icon in Rey, be willing to reduce Rey’s entire story to “the love interest?” If the executives and storygroup approved such blatant racism and actively worked to rewrite characters in order to fit their stereotypical narrative, what hope do we have that the next trilogy will be better, especially when they gave Rian Johnson full control over its content?
Rian himself believes that Darth Vader was worse than Kylo Ren, and while that is probably a conversation as controversial as the movie itself, Rian still wholeheartedly believes that despite what happened in The Last Jedi, that Kylo Ren can be redeemed. It shows that the storyline that JJ Abrams set up has been reduced to simply furthering the narrative of the white villain, and the rest of the characters are simply players in his story, which is why they exist as nothing more than stereotypes in Rian Johnson’s version of Star Wars.
And that’s the disappointment. While The Force Awakens received criticism for being too similar to its predecessor, A New Hope, JJ did set up some interesting and mysterious characters. While Captain Phasma’s role was ultimately underwhelming, fans were assured that she would have a much bigger role to play in Rian Johnson’s world.
Unfortunately, we all know how that turned out.
Phasma’s quick dismissal wasn’t the only disappointment. Snoke was killed off without any satisfying explanation to who he was or even what he wanted the First Order to do. The Knights of Ren, which were mentioned in The Force Awakens and played a role in Rey’s vision, disappeared from the narrative entirely, instead being replaced by Rian’s Praetorian Guards.
For many, Luke Skywalker’s return was the biggest disappointment. Mark has made no secret in recent weeks citing how he didn’t agree with Rian Johnson’s vision of Luke and how he wished George Lucas had directed the sequel trilogy instead, a mere three days before The Last Jedi hit theatres. It fits into Rian Johnson’s grim version of reality: our heroes can be defeated, and idolizing legends is ultimately unsettling and disappointing when faced with reality.
But by disappearing into the Force, did Luke not himself become a legend, the very thing that Rian seems to chide against? The film’s “message” seems to give audiences such mixed signals, it’s not surprising that audiences claim that the film seemed better after a second viewing: basic elements of the plot just doesn’t make sense, like how the First Order has suddenly developed hyperspace tracking despite the film only taking place a few days after the events of The Force Awakens.
There are other plot holes that point out the flaws in logic in the story: where did Rey learn to swim on Jakku? How can bombers drop bombs in space when there’s no gravity for the bombs to fall? Since space exists in three dimensions, why didn’t the First Order just have a ship drop out into hyperspace in front of the Resistance Star Cruiser and blow it to bits? And why was General Hux, a serious, straight-faced villain in The Force Awakens, who ordered the destruction of the Hosnian System, delegated to a comedic side role who’s only function was to serve as a cheap laugh and be the butt of an awkward your mom joke? Instead of using the antagonism between Kylo Ren and General Hux to show the crumbling of the First Order and how the small band of Resistance heroes we’re left with at the end of the movie might stand a chance against them, it seems that the First Order’s army, which was flowing with Nazi imagery in The Force Awakens has just been reduced to campy slapstick humor.
Despite these obvious problems, the most glaring ones still remain in the fact that Star Wars is a film that claims to market itself to the people it exploits and ultimately rejects. It’s no wonder that merchandise and ticket sales have dropped when the movie is back to focusing on a white male lead, like so many other before it. Kylo Ren tells Rey that you have no part in this story, that she doesn’t belong – something that minorities, women, and the LGBTQ+ community have been hearing their whole lives.
But if this movie isn’t made for these people, then why does Disney keep trying to insist that it is? Most people who have been critical of the film have been met with the chorus of, “You’re just upset that you didn’t get what you wanted” as if it’s somehow wrong to expect more from what you receive. The story was set up so that we would get answers. How someone as powerful as Snoke managed to manipulate Kylo Ren from the womb and grow the First Order from the seeds of the Empire, Phasma’s increased involvement, and especially the question of Rey’s parentage, has been dangled in front of us like a carrot on a stick for the past two years, and it’s ultimately unsatisfying to see all those threads being clipped off and brushed aside with a, “Oh! It didn’t even matter!”
If it didn’t matter, then why feel the need to keep up the secrecy and suspense for two years, when the final product is ultimately disappointing? (Point not withstanding, Kylo Ren tells Rey that Snoke showed him that her parents were buried in a pauper’s grave on Jakku. Why her parents would actually return to Jakku, or whether Snoke was actually telling the truth, is a matter that JJ has yet to resolve.)
It’s not wrong to be a critical consumer of the media that we consume. It’s not wrong to say that we deserve something better. Minorities and women can and should demand to be treated with more respect than they were shown in this film, and the overwhelming amount of racism and misogyny in this film is something that most avid fans of the film have not provided an answer for.
People who claim that The Last Jedi is a good movie, while at the same time acknowledging how deeply misogynistic and racist it is, are contributing to the larger problem we have as a society. It’s saying, “I know it’s racist and misogynistic, but it entertained me, so I’m okay with it.”
It might just be fiction. It might just be a story. But all media we consume influences us, subconsciously or not, in ways that we may not even be aware of. Star Wars may not be real. These characters may not be real.
But it still affects how you feel, and that seems pretty real to me.
I was having dinner with my sister yesterday when we started talking about Star Wars and I mentioned that ANH was no.4 in the OT.
Then, my sister, who is a professor of film, told me that one of her students informed her that ANH was now no. 5 because the series Obi-Wan Kenobi is now no.4 in the saga.
I couldn't believe that one.
...........by that insane logic, A New Hope would be Episode 12. Because it comes after The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, The Clone Wars movie, The Clone Wars animated series, Revenge of the Sith, The Bad Batch, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, Rebels, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story!
...or maybe it's Episode friggin' 13 if you count Tartakovsky's Clone Wars. :P
