Let's just talk about Star Wars forever (Part 1)

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yeah i like the scene where they fight jeremy irons and his gynecologists

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That sure is a 4th date senior prom picture.

So I watched last jedi again with my broken, distant family in order to facilitate halfhearted holiday bonding. I liked it more. Even with all of its narrative clumsiness, some of the sentimentality genuinely works, the red room fight is still cool as fuck and i want a jedi knight game/movie (re-retcon kyle katarn). episode IX should just be rey wandering around like ogami itto, fulfilling assassination contracts to build up the capital to rebuild the rebel army and fighting off pursuing yagyu imperial ninjas.

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finally saw this after skimming the thread for the past couple weeks

I agree that Rey is a wonderfully straightforward character even if they got there basically by accident, I’m not sure what her arc can realistically be in a next chapter but she’s not the only one to have that problem.

I also agree that Kylo is a vastly less stupid version of what they were going for with Anakin in the prequels, I like the tiny bit of romantic tension there, it really stands out how novel it is for a character in star wars to actually have this many of their own motivations.

honestly all the characterizations were pretty well done, probably better than they needed to be for star wars. except for snoke who was dumb and who is now gone. fine exits all around really.

I wish they’d be like, marginally more discursive about the factors that led to the downfall of the extremely short lived Weimar Space Republic because that’s now a fairly unique narrative history for a big budget action franchise even if it was scripted that way purely because they initially wanted to retread the story beats of the original trilogy, and I think they’ve been avoiding drawing attention to how derivative they were (or how continually Leia has been disappointed by everyone else in her movement, which is a weird undercurrent) when there’s actually interesting stuff there.

it’s nice that for once they got someone to write one of these who wasn’t obsessed with setting up the next part of the franchise. it has such a decent ending!

it also, I think, does the most of any officially sanctioned star wars product to imply that there are regions of the world that don’t feel the conflict between the first order and the rebels too strongly, which is something else I wish they’d articulate more. these new fascists clearly have some wealth and organizing power behind them – the evil Ron Weasley kid feels like someone’s heir who’s been put in charge of something for no reason, except he doesn’t seem to have come from anywhere – but it’s also not quite plausible that they’d somehow have the same credibility or organizing power as the old empire. which is also a clever way to position resurgent fascism! but… it all seems very accidental.

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I guess canonically this has all been addressed as straightforwardly as you’d imagine:

as expected it’s a bunch of very literal Nazi callbacks. which is funny for a franchise that originally had such obvious Nazi aesthetics for its villains but none of the Nazi rise to power narrative.

I was hoping they’d blow up the millenium falcon but I’m sure that thing will still be going in Star Wars CLXXII

after seeing this again I feel like I’ve already begun more in depth canon wankery that will surely overflow into this thread eventually

But for now I want to say that the whole plot with Holdo is a pretty strident “Fuck you!” to the subversion of the chain of command glorified in Rogue One, which is itself a pretty strident “Fuck you!” to the “Trust in the wisdom of the senate, even if they are slow to act” and now Holdo is good to me

Also even though Kylo Ren’s actions are somewhat shocking in this movie they are pretty much straight out of the How To Be A Sith handbook step one: Betray your Master at the earliest possible moment

And I really like the mild retconning that suggests that the Skywalker legacy is pretty much exclusively about being very bad at impulse control, with consequences that are pretty much always disastrous

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seriously I don’t care if she was raised in one of the only aristocratic families who were nominally against fascism for the first 20-plus years of her life or whatever, I really think we should get the story of when, after 30 years of hard-won piece, Leia decides she has to go lead another resistance army.

like, fuck.

I did like that dad got upset when he walked in on the kids holding hands

they got a pretty darn clean explanation of the Luke / Kylo conflict out of this! I feel like Luke had been a non-character for so long that you forget that, oh yeah, he probably wouldn’t be the best at handling this sort of thing, and his fucking up is pretty easy to believe in context

also for a movie that had so many suicide missions they were awfully restrained with the direction, the closest thing to a triumphant surprise they got was when the millennium falcon showed up at the end to kind of bail them out

also while I still agree with everyone else that they produced an unusually good ending for what’s intended to be a middle chapter, I am slightly uncomfortable at the implication that the natural state of star wars that we’ve reverted to in doing so is well-intentioned “resistance” against a dominant fascist power

I’m also thrilled that while I had already heard about most of the major plot beats nobody spoiled the Carrie Fisher scenes for me because they all ruled (and they got a way better performance out of her than in the last one)

a thing I didn’t like was snoke was just a typical asshole boss villain yelling at all his underlings. in force awakens he seemed actually concerned about kylo being ready to fight his father and just seemed more interesting

i would just like to take a moment here and express my gratitude for this article teaching me the term “rump state”

When I was little I once took a summer course to learn Java and HTML at some college but I spent a lot of time playing Sabacc on some Star Wars fansite.

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man when she got sucked out of that window, there was this palpable feeling of resigned shock in the theater, like “well, i guess this is how they write her out of the series” but as she started to freeze out in space, i got DEEPLY uncomfortable, wondering if this movie was going to make me actually watch Carrie Fischer, an actress who i’m still sad about her passing to this day, straight up die in space…which then made her sudden use of deep Force powers to fly back onto the ship like a goddamn Actual Space Wizard all the more surprising and incredible.

i know a lot of people i talked to hated that part or thought it was corny (which it sort of was), but i kind of really loved it?? I can’t help but feel like, “well, you got me movie. wasn’t expecting that”. a true genuine surprise.

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she looked like the fucking flying nun! it was so great! I sincerely hope she insisted on that scene herself. she so rarely got to have that much fun as a character.

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I saw this for a second time with my mom earlier today. She’s great to watch movies with. She saw Holdo’s maneuver coming a mile off and leaned over in the theater to whisper “This is just like Independence Day!”

And somehow I forgot about the space nurses that keep up Luke’s island and boy was I delighted to be reminded.

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