Blow that piece of junk… OUT OF THE SKY!

I recently mentioned that The Last Jedi made me feel… let’s just say… despair.

And that’s because stories aren’t “just stories” to me. They are the reasons I stay alive. Even when my brain tells me that my family and friends would be much better without me, I’m selfish enough to want to hold on for the next earth-shattering novel. Stories are my livelihood. I majored in literature, so essentially I majored in stories and storytelling. And stories can do what real life sometimes can’t – they can give me hope.

My brother first introduced me to Star Wars when I was about six years old. I was the right age to enjoy the prequels, but by the time Episode III came out I realized that they weren’t quite my style. I loved the original trilogy, and Episode VII holds my record for “most amount of tears shed during a movie” which is saying a lot. It may be in my top five movies ever? That sounds lame, but just seeing Rey take hold of the lightsaber – seeing a true female Jedi in Star Wars – changed me. And don’t fight me on this IN THE OPENING SEQUENCE SHE SHOWS THAT SHE HAS ALL THE SKILLS YOU NEED TO WIN IN A LIGHTSABER FIGHT OKAY?

I was so excited to see Episode VIII. My friend picked me up for the pre-midnight showing with John Williams blasting and I was wearing my Star Wars gear and I had tweeted intensely about it the whole day.

As early as the opening shots, I knew that I was going to be disappointed. I was less and less enthused as the story went on. I texted both of my brothers to ask what they thought. They agreed with me. Not that great. And I tumbled into a depression. If Episode VIII didn’t live up to the hype – the very strong and unrealistic hype that it would keep me alive for another two years, because I would have the desperate need to see Episode IX before I wasted away – then what hope did I have?

I talked a lot to my therapist about this disappointment. I wrote to her, and I wrote in my journal. I tried to keep an open mind. I went to go see it again with my family on Christmas. And I felt even worse about it.

I’ve also felt uncomfortable about sharing my displeasure on this front because many men have used their dislike of this film to spout off misogynistic views. Let me be clear: the reasons I did not like this film have NOTHING to do with the fact that there are so many strong women. I do, however, feel that some of the actions of the female characters are highly antifeminist, which turns me off from the way it’s been acclaimed as a film with opportunities for women. And, more than that, this isn’t in the spirit of what I see as Star Wars.

For you, my two readers, I am going to watch the whole stupid film again so I can give textual evidence for my feelings. This is partly driven by a mad desire to be nerdy as I once was and partly driven by a need to sort out my feelings, still. (Yeah yeah, it’s been a year, but I’m STILL NOT OVER IT.) Enjoy! Or I guess, hate my guts.

Okay. So I watched this with many breaks in between which made it much more digestible. I even teared up a little, but as per my last post, I am a saddie. I’m going to try not to post too much of what’s been said before, and instead work on the feminist-y aspects of it. For some of my more logistical thoughts on the film as a piece within the Star Wars universe, explore reviews by Honest Trailers, HISHE, and Mr. Plinkett. (Obviously I do not agree with everything said in these videos. Too much machismo in them.)

My brothers have also had a strong influence on how I see this film and so did the podcast Late to the Table. Some of their ideas might have weaseled their way into my own head and rooted there.

Also, I would like to say that in the publishing industry, when you send in the debut of a trilogy, you have to provide a full synopsis of the next two books. AND CLEARLY THEY DID NOT DO THAT HERE.

I wrote pages and pages of notes (nerd) so I’m going to split them up as much as I can.

CGI:

I am all about practical effects! CGI is good for sometimes but go practical when you can (á la Lord of the Rings but NOT the Hobbit.)

  • Okay, I grant you that some of the business between Chewy and the porgs is… something. But Chewy doesn’t get a second to mourn the loss of his best friend and soul mate. And they DESTROY PARTS OF THE FALCON and they are so useless during the end battle.
  • I do like the weapons and costumes of the new red guards. Kylo and Rey teaming up against them is probably one of my favorite scenes, and the moment when Rey drops her lightsaber on purpose gives me life.
  • The tracker looks like the Flux Capacitor.
  • I mean, CGI Mark Hamill was his way to let the stress out of playing a character he created against his own values. So I’m just going to leave that alone for a second. But I hate everything about the casino.
  • I would feel bad for the horse things – I didn’t bother to learn the creature names – if they looked remotely real. And I’m talking wampa or taun taun real. Like just freaking breathing, you know? This was the point of the film at which I thought, uh-oh, I don’t think it’s going to redeem itself.
  • I’m glad that Yoda came back as a puppet. I mean, thank God, right?

FEMINISM: 

Here we go!

  • I’m happy to see Billie Lourd in a bigger role, and lots of other women in bigger roles, too! I was very happy when there was a woman of color pilot in Force Awakens and I’m glad that they expanded on that in this one! STILL a lot of them are used for exposition, which was initially 3PO’s job. I am displeased with this.
  • Okay. Poe’s arc. This is tough. I think that Poe demonstrates toxic masculinity quite well. He thinks he knows best even though clearly Admiral Holdo has seen a lot more than him??? And he doesn’t listen to his general’s orders, so he very well should be demoted. However, his arc depends on him not knowing Holdo’s plan. Honestly, in many cases, women should not have to explain themselves to men. HOWEVER, in a WAR SITUATION, it’s important for women to use our communication skills!!! It’s nice that he honors her by repeating (stealing) her line about the spark of rebellion (Hunger Games anyone?) and that he tells Finn to back off because he’s realized that lives are more important than ideals, but it comes at a huge, huge cost. Do you realize how many people are dead because of Poe???
  • Paige’s sacrifice is obviously amazing and important but I keep thinking that she’d still be in the mix were it not for Poe. And lots of men I’ve seen in social media think Poe was in the right for ignoring Leia’s command because they’re “at an advantage” and can take out a dreadnought, but truly, at their numbers, they are not at an advantage and again, I CARE MORE ABOUT INDIVIDUALS THAN IDEALS.
  • It pisses me off that what could have been Poe’s second-in-command is killed in a fire blast.
  • Bringing Leia’s voice in to help Luke see that he needs to help is a good idea for me. He needs to remember he has stakes in this. And it also resonates in today’s political climate: Leia is a beacon for many women today.
  • Okay. I LOVE ROSE. (And would like to erase all the men who went after Kelly Marie Tran from existence.) I love that she’s a representation of the Star Wars fandom, and yet she still knows what’s right. She geeks out over Finn, but doesn’t hesitate to bring him down when she realizes he’s deserting. (Also, the scene during which Finn “comedically” talks over her is painful.) She also works against gender constructs as a tech-savvy person, which is WHY I was ANNOYED that she needed to find a MAN to do TECH THINGS for her. My brother-in-law pointed this out to me: she should have been the codebreaker! Benicio del Toro is useless and his stutter is ableist, but also we don’t need him or the casino to see that there are people working both sides for money and profiting on war. Hello! Jabba the Hutt, Boba Fett, even Lando Calrission. WE KNOW THE DRILL.
  • I think I’d make many of the same decisions as Rey. That being said, having her hair down for so long is super impractical.
  • Holdo not knowing everyone’s names on such a small ship – “a stormtrooper and a who now?” – really undermines her authority as a leader.
  • Phasma gets ten minutes of screen time if that??? And I was happy to see that she was keeping her helmet on, but then we got a glimpse of her eye! Oh, gosh! She’s human under there! I didn’t figure that from the fact that FINN IS ALSO A HUMAN! Also she doesn’t have a good enough death. WE WERE PROMISED MORE PHASMA. JUSTICE FOR PHASMA.
  • Leia slapping and stunning Poe is great.
  • This film passes the Bechdel test many times over, and I have to admit, that I wasn’t as bothered with the scene between Holdo and Leia as many others were – Carrie Fisher doctored that scene, and in it, she’s clearly passing on the torch. “You say it, I’ve said it enough.” So we women can take up Leia’s mantle.
  • I’m fine with Holdo’s lightspeed attack??? I can be convinced otherwise.
  • I really, really, really, really, really did not want Finn and Rey to end up together. So their bromance was great. And it’s fine that he might be with Rose although CLEARLY HE BELONGS WITH POE.

THE FORCE: 

I have opinions on this that people disagree with. BUT THERE SHOULD BE RULES, DAMMIT!

  • Okay, with no background whatsoever, I DO NOT BELIEVE pretty much anything Snoke does “with the force.” Yes, Jedi can sense things across planets, but that is for huge disturbances, familial and emotional connections, and power similarities. (Ben and Leia feeling each other out in the opening attacks is a GOOD example of long-distance force.) SO, the way he drags Hux around through a hologram and the lightning (is he a Darth Sidious clone or not?) and most of all, connecting Rey and Kylo, seems ludicrous to me. I would have been much happier with the force connecting Kylo and Rey because they have such strong attachments to neutral. I see them both with orange lightsabers, if you know what I mean.
  • LUKE THROWING HIS LIGHTSABER OVER HIS SHOULDER. YES. PLEASE RUIN ALL OF OUR CHILDHOODS.
  • Thanks, exposition Rey, clearly Luke UNDERSTANDS WHAT CHEWY IS SAYING TO HIM.
  • Admiral Ackbar was my brother’s favorite character. May he rest in peace. HE would have told everyone that there was a plan. It would involve some sort of trap.
  • Carrie Poppins. Okay. This kind of ties in with all the feminism stuff. I see Leia as a real third-wave feminist. She is force sensitive, and she can still use it to her advantage in certain ways (sensing Luke, Ben, and otherwise having heightened senses) but she actively chooses not to be trained because she wants to have a son. And that’s her choice! She still has it all – she has a force sensitivity, a family, and the command of a whole army – but she definitely did not do enough training to do that flying stunt. Not only does space not work like that (???) but we do not see Leia training – Rey practices a sort of mindfulness before she knows she’s force sensitive – and I just don’t believe it??? I don’t believe it. Leia is awesome, but she is awesome BECAUSE there’s no way she could have done that.
  • Stop throwing “may the force be with you” around. None of y’all are practicing the religion! Calm down! Also, Holdo saying “may the force be with us” puts me off. It’s like saying “bless me” after you sneeze.
  • Right, so I’ll talk more about the kids later, but being able to telekinetically move a broom is not the best way to show that you’re force sensitive??? It’s not. Okay? This isn’t Harry Potter. You can’t do this by accident.
  • Darth Vader’s / Luke’s / Ben’s / Rey’s original lightsaber splitting = no.
  • I am weirdly fine with Luke’s astral projection. Much like with Han’s death, I can’t really picture him going another way. (And we all knew what was happening before the shoe dropped – my brother when Luke showed up with short hair and I when Luke pulled out a lightsaber that had been split in half. I’m glad that Luke and Leia got a little scene before Luke’s end, and it’s fitting that she should be the survivor of the original three although obviously something’s going to happen to her in the next movie, and Luke will probably come back as a ghostie – “strike me down in anger” and all that. I don’t know, it’s nice that he died a true hero’s death like Obi Wan and Yoda. Also, A+ for the wink at 3PO and the shoulder touch. He also rallies against toxic masculinity by (almost) apologizing to Ben for failing him rather than being all hermit-y and whiny. However, when he said that the resistance is just beginning all I could hear in my head was “the battle for Middle Earth is about to begin.” But yeah, seeing Luke look at the sunrise and have hope again was pretty cool.
  • Okay. The lifting rocks gag is actually a cool religion thing? I won’t explain this well enough, but the omnipotence paradox is something explored in Islam and I think it’s cool that Rey can only lift them after like figuring herself out?

HUMOR: 

Star Wars is about campy humor. A good example of this is BB8’s “thumbs up” in Force Awakens. 

  • The conversation between Hux and Poe at the very beginning is way too long and not funny. The “yo mama” joke is not in line with the camp.
  • There are silly rehab suits in many Star Wars movies. But they are really claustrophobic and sad. Finn walking around leaking and naked is not funny.
  • Yes, yes. It’s a callback to the blue/green milk at Uncle Owen’s house. It’s too much.
  • Luke hitting Rey with a palm is more what I was looking for. And Yoda hitting Luke with a stick and cackling.
  • BB8 in a chicken walker??? I’m torn.

KYLO REN: 

Everyone knows that I love Kylo Ren. I have a bobble head of him. He’s my fave.

  • I love Adam Driver and I think he did great in this. Every time he looks at Domhnall Gleeson it’s brilliant.
  • The facial scar is ableist and unnecessary. There are other ways to show that Rey has bested and shamed him, like the fact that he always looks like he’s going to cry. (I have a thing about people taking off masks – see Phasma above – but I guess he has to be vulnerable and stuff, and he’s making a transition away from Darth Vader.)
  • I liked that the “you need a teacher” line delivered so passionately by Kylo in the last film was repeated by Luke here.
  • All right: the relationship between Kylo and Rey. I’ve touched on this briefly on twitter, but I liked this whole thing (aside from Snoke creating it) because I have had a relationship like this. Hopeful and intense, but toxic. I’ve gone all savior complex and he’s gone all “I will crush you.” The line that kills me in this film is “You’re nothing… But not to me.” Because of all the unhealthy relationships I have been in (many) that sums up why I stayed with them and still am friends with most of them. Anyway, Rey gets away from him, and she is stronger for it. I love when she closes the door of the Falcon on him. So what I get out of it is not romance, but the empowerment of ladies getting out of bad relationships and coming out better on the other side. Also, I like that Rey uses his real name. It’s like Harry calling Voldemort Tom.
  • There’s some nice Apocalypse Now lighting during which Kylo’s face is half light, half dark, showing his struggle.
  • The theory of Rey turning to the dark side was really compelling to me, and I was so afraid that Kylo would turn light instead. When he killed Snoke, I was like shoot, they’re going to take on the First Order together now. But I was SO HAPPY that he turned out to just be neutral. I think his plan is just to get rid of the resistance first because it’s an easier target, and then he’ll kill the dead past or whatever. The choking was a lot but eh, Adam Driver was good.

NARRATIVE: 

This is where I let my English major show.

  • Say it with me. Too. Many. Needless. Deaths. Too. Many. Sacrifices. The whole point is to let everyone have a better life! We can’t have y’all dying! There are like twenty people left!!! How??? How!!! See more above re: Poe.
  • Again: the casino is stupid. We already know about scum and war profiteers. And the whole scene was useless because WE DON’T NEED BENICIO DEL TORO. More on children and where else we could mee them below.
  • Things I was happy with: the use of the term “Jedi religion.”
  • When Rey sees visual representations of the force, I think that’s too, too much. I think that misses the point of the force. The force is like the Dao. You can’t see the damn thing.
  • Rey turns into a YA character in the weird hole which I guess is a physical manifestation of the dark side? Again, you miss the point of the force. Not saying YA characters are bad, saying that there’s a time and a place, and that that scene didn’t work particularly well for Divergent. 
  • Okay, children. I do like that the children are quite literally our future in this. At the moment, it’s what I’m hanging onto myself. But we didn’t need to go to the casino to see them. The First Order are evil enough to have child labor on the ship, so that’s a possibility. And they can be empathetic and force sensitive, but this, as many other things were, was too much.
  • What happened to the other Jedi students that Kylo took with him off the island? Did we have another child genocide here? Also, why does Kylo not just go back to the island where he was trained to find Luke???
  • Even Luke thinking for half a second that he should kill Ben = no.
  • Yes, Rian Johnson. We know you want to let the past die. We have seen from your fanfiction.
  • Okay, I WANTED Rey’s parents to be nobodies, because I didn’t want the source of Rey’s power to be from a man. BUT the buildup from Force Awakens means that this wasn’t planned very effing well. And on that note, who the heck is Snoke?
  • Snoke is also a good example of why I think the writing was kind of bad? His monologue about Kylo killing his “true enemy” made it VERY CLEAR what was about to happen. I was truly surprised by nothing as there was a lot of telling rather than showing.
  • I guess we were lucky that all the most important people were on the one transporter that happened to survive.
  • I wrote down: how can they breathe??? I don’t know to what specific moment I was referring. But there was a lot of space exposure.
  • There was a nice callback to the “never tell me the odds” line.
  • The Millennium Falcon arriving anywhere will always make me cry with little effort on the writer’s part.
  • At least there was an attempt at continuity when Rey and Poe introduced themselves to each other. And it least it ended on a Bechdel-approved conversation about hope.

RACISM:

I am not going to go too much into this because obviously I am a white girl and don’t know much. But some things sat with me the wrong way.

  • Maz Kanata: Lupita Nyong’o is amazing, but this is another woman of color who has been covered up by CGI and or fluorescent-colored paint.
  • The amphibian-like “island natives” are, Luke LITERALLY SAYS, born to take care of the Jedi island. (As we know, Jedi is mostly synonymous with WHITE MEN.)

Wow. I had a lot of thoughts. Maybe I can let a little of this go now?