I just....wow. Rian really was like “Women’s awakening and Heroine’s Journey” and set up the most powerful and fulfilling arc for Rey...only for it to turn out that JJ thinks of Rey EXACTLY as the sexist fanboys do, as a carrier for another man’s legacy, except in some fake feminist way where women being alone and without their fulfilling love is Strength. They’re really going to try and spin this as empowering and slap “Rey Skywalker” all over the place and act like it was ever enough
It is, indeed, the Nightmare Scenario.
To me, the thing that makes this so baffling is how JJ really gave Rey exactly the life she was afraid of in TFA. He, in HIS FILM not Rian’s, has her look up at that older scavenger woman and see the face of her future- he in HIS FILM gave her that big ‘wonder’ shot and line about seeing greenery for the first time. This motherfucker sketched this character with a real edge of poignancy which gave her humanity, that moment of ‘is this all my life will be?’ and the longing of adolescence. She wants life!
And then he made that vision come true. She ended up precisely as she feared she would, alone on a dead planet with no family and no purpose. They put a fucking line in the fucking visual dictionary about her always being more comfortable in deserts.
That’s how bad this fucking movie is- they put this line in a visual dictionary to try to justify dumping their heroine in her depression dream and leaving her there with nothing but ghosts EXACTLY AS SHE WAS AT THE BEGINNING. LOCKED IN ETERNAL CHILDHOOD, HER LOVE INADEQUATE TO SAVE HER PRINCE AND HER VICTORIES ENTIRELY COMING FROM ACCIDENTAL CONNECTIONS TO MEN. She has no power, none of her decisions matter or have any consequences. And her reward for all her suffering and faith is getting to crawl back into her defensive maladapted coping mechanisms with a new set of pretend parents and some identity theft.
When WHEN did we start pretending that she wanted an important lineage or a name and not someone to love and have love her?
What is going on in the tiny minds which produced this? Super empowering how none of her choices mattered and she couldn’t save her soulmate because we wouldn’t want to imply any possibility her romantic love could be consummated. No it’s a barren, frigid thing, and she can only come down from the pedestal long enough to give him a chaste peck as he dies, snuffing out all chance of renewal and rejuvenation for the galaxy.
This broken fairy tale full of dead things. It’s so wrong.