#tlj discourse

[holdbeast]

What annoys me about Luke Skywalker fucking off like a coward because of his mistake with Ben is that... it would have been so easy NOT to do it that way. 

Like, I get it.   If you’re an author writing a sequel trilogy, you have figure out a reason why Luke Skywalker isn’t in the picture.  Otherwise why would there even be any conflict when this legendary hero is around to solve problems.

And I can forgive the whole thing where he thought about killing Ben?  There’s some poetry in having the guy that forgave Vader experience a moment of weakness where he considers putting down his own nephew before he can become the next Vader. People get old, and people get tired, and the battle against the dark side never ends. 

But ffs why not just write him out of action by saying “Luke couldn’t fight the First Order because he was protecting baby padawans at a second secret Jedi school.  He’s gone full Obi Wan and chosen to try and safeguard a new generation while the First Order spreads, rather than fight the Empire in the now.”  

That’s it!  That’s all they needed in order to preserve his character as someone who confronts the dark in himself and perseveres! 

Rey could still be the special-est girl because of her force bond with Ben or whatever, there was no need for her to be the only possible Jedi candidate around. 

[emperorren]

TLJ had like 6-7 super brief Reylo scenes and they were amazing. Of course an action movie can’t live up to fic, but Reylo scenes tend to be so compelling and full of chemistry that they suck all the attention towards them. Keep in mind, of all the “backlash” to TLJ that Disney’s trying so hard to get away from (lol), Reylo wasn’t a part of it. The Reylo complaints were just in anti circles, yet even the Fanbros were like “This part was the best/most compelling part”

I know. TLJ backlash or not, everyone with a braincell is aware that Reylo is one of the best things that came out of this trilogy. Even those who aren’t shippers or super fans of it. You gotta recognize it’s one of the few elements that have some spark and aren’t a flat ripoff of the same old formulas. And that it drives the plot and keeps the narrative together in ways that no other storytelling element does.

And I have no doubt that any amount of Reylo we’re getting in TROS will be the best part of the movie, and the most critically praised too. 

How do I know? Because Adam fucking Driver will be in the Reylo scenes. Trio stuff and fanbro-friendly shenanigans don’t have an Adam.

[mother-sauces]

Sorry to be posting about Episode VIII while everyone else is talking about IX, but Leia Poppins is good, actually.

[dameronalone]

okay

so as many problems as i have with tlj there is one (1) problem that bothers me the most

and that is the problem of luke skywalker's ooc-ness

you are trying to tell me that luke skywalker, my hero, the one person i love most in the galaxy and any other, the man that was from tatooine, a place he considered absolutely nowhere, the man that never once gave up on his evil, murserous, unapologetic father, and so totally believed there was good in him that he risked everything to prove it, that luke skywalker, the man who risked his life to save the lives of people he had met hours earlier, the lives of people he hadn't even met, the man that went to save his best friends despite the fact that what he was walking into was most certainly a trap, and went despite heavy warnings, that the man who wanted to be just like his father, a pilot, a jedi, and knew how it felt to met someone who was supposed to help you turn you down, the man that on pillio helped an imperial because that imperial asked, that man

would 1) toss the lightsaber, the heirloom that was his father's over his back with an apathetic stare 2) would tell the girl who was a desert orphan that she was from nowhere 3) refuse to help his sister, the sister he risked life and limb for 4) just think, for a split second, think about murdering his nephew when he felt darkness, when he tossed his lightsaber away from him because he refused to kill his father, who had murdered and killed and tortured, but because he could still feel the good in him and 5) refuse to help the young girl that is so much like him, when he had been in her exact place before 

and this isn't even touching on how rain jonesy ran luke and rey's obvious connection through the meat grinder and turn luke into a callous old man

it kills me that the man i admired so much was turned irrecognizable

it kills me

[starlightbisexual]

anakin is prompted, in part by a force dream with horrible implications, to make the wrong decision which in turn means he helps destroy the jedi, pretty much kills his wife, and ushers in the rule of the empire, all because he thinks it's the only chance he has.

luke, a jedi like his father before him, has a force dream with catastrophic implications, and for one small second, he considers making a horrible choice that he thinks is his only chance to save the galaxy. but no, for some reason, that's out of character

[permian-tropos]

comparing someone who doesn't like a movie to the alt-right is kinda...mean. considering those very same people might be the victims of the alt-right.

I appreciate your concern, but I’m not talking about people who don’t like a movie. Every single “here’s why TLJ was garbage” post and youtube video and twitter rant is valid (except when it’s bigotry). You watched the movie, you had an opinion, your opinion is real.

Here’s the connection to the alt-right. 1) The alt-right formed a campaign to pull people in and tell them “the things you hate about this movie are because the cultural Marxists want to kill the things you love and promote minorities and women”. People who could be swayed by this are not the bulk of the TLJ antis on tumblr! But their reasons for hating the movie diffuse into the main hate mob and that mob amplifies the alt-right agenda BECAUSE… 2) the alt-right’s tactics have been used, excused, enabled by the specific “people who didn’t like the movie” I’m criticizing. 

Ad hominem attacks on creators, standing by while these attacks happen because they give vicarious pleasure or because one can’t bring oneself to care, victim-blaming (saying Jason Fry and Pablo Hidalgo, who did not write TLJ, “brought it on themselves” for simply being there when the evil Rian Johnson made reylo ambiguous), and not trying to find any good things in the film like

*clears throat* 

the casting of a Vietnamese-American actress to play a character whose backstory reflects the Vietnam War, identifying the capitalist war machine as the real enemy, giving an arc for every POC that wasn’t about them supporting a white character (white characters were supporting their arcs), criticizing elitism and the idea your bloodline makes you special, never sexually objectifying Rey or any other female character don’t argue this okay being in a sexually charged situation is not the same as objectification there are subjects as well as objects and if you forgot what eyecandy for men looks like please refer to Emilia Clarke’s character in Solo, having a female character who isn’t white and also isn’t thin…

You see, none of these individual things deserve to be swept under the hate rug because no movie will replicate everything TLJ did good and everything TLJ did bad. No one has to express any overall love for the movie to make it known that these elements are good and should be repeated elsewhere! 

People think that if they hate the movie loud enough, Lucasfilm will listen to them re: POC, queer rep, depicting healthy romantic relationships, etc. But they are not the loudest detractors, and if LF takes criticism into account, they’ll start with the reactionaries, not with the progressives. They’ll remove the women and POC and push right-wing messages. 

This idea of “you can’t compare them to the alt-right” comes from false equivalency about the morality of people’s causes. It comes from people using allegations of hypocrisy to discredit the oppressed standing up to oppressors. I’m not thinking of this as hypocrisy, and I’m not trying to discredit the cause of social justice. And I will defend victims of the alt-right against the alt-right! Good thing Star Wars Episode 8 The Last Jedi isn’t alt-right. When the alt-right tried to co-opt Marvel’s Black Panther, claiming it was pro-ethnostate, they were obviously full of shit, but it tells me that they see Marvel’s politics as a better entry point. They don’t want to disown Marvel, they want to co-opt it. But they want to disown Star Wars. Disney owns both Marvel and SW so I wouldn’t be surprised if they let one be more overall conservative and one be more overall liberal to rake in both audiences. It’s all a machine, partner. But at the very least we don’t have to get confused about which is left and which is right. 

I spent a lot of time listening to TLJ critical opinions because I thought there must be something I’m missing. But something I could not deny was happening as I revisited the film over and over:

- The movie was making me sympathize with Kylo less, and take less interest in the villains overall. 

- The movie made me more actively appreciative of the Resistance side. 

- I was more intrigued by every character who was “sidelined” or “not treated right”. 

- I was becoming fascinated over and over by ideas the movie seemed to be conveying, and the more I looked for meaning, the more I found it.

- Literally every agenda that the detractors claimed the movie was pushing was the opposite of what the movie was doing to me. Either the movie was having this effect on me accidentally, or it was a good movie that richly conveyed its point. 

No, I don’t intend to be mean to anyone. I intend to critique actions I think are self-defeating. 

None of us should ever assume that all our actions are rational self interest. And besides the fact that the comparisons to the alt-right seem apt here, how else am I suppose to communicate “I think you’re unintentionally doing something wrong here” if I don’t say “people who mean you harm do this thing on purpose”?

You’re basically telling me, and I understand this point, “don’t assume you know better than them, maybe they’re right and you’re wrong”. And you know what, I would hate to act against my own interests here! My interests and most of the liberal TLJ detractors’ interests are aligned. I’m going to assume, though, that I’m not presenting manipulative or well-poisoning or truth-obscuring ideas. Since you’ve come with concerns that my statements have been harmful (ie. that they disparage victims of bigotry as “the same” as their oppressors), I hope this longer post addresses that.

I also think the mentality on tumblr that “victims can’t be victimizers” or “victims can’t make mistakes” is deeply flawed. I think we should all respect and pay attention to what marginalized groups say about their own experiences. But when it comes to solutions, I look to people of marginalized groups who have expertise. I will consider the opinions of random tumblr users but I won’t adhere to them as superior insight. I can’t assume they’re experts because I’m not an expert in things that victimize me!

And I don’t look to Star Wars fan discourse for the most complete picture on systemic oppression.

Call this a wild conclusion but if victimizing groups of people didn’t disrupt their ability to advocate for themselves and have solidarity with each other, and instead made them extremely good at those things, would systemic oppression ever work? 

[porgsandewoks]

Before you say Rian disrespected Carrie Fisher with The Last Jedi, just remember that she was actively helping him write the script and he went to her for advice: https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1647389/how-involved-carrie-fisher-was-in-the-star-wars-the-last-jedi-script

[caesarianconfection]

Can't believe we're still talking about this in March but since when is luke flirting momentarily with the dark side OOC? It's twice mentioned he has too much of his father in him and then he goes into a berserker rage and chops vaders hand right off