Tag: original trilogy

Half of me is like, JJ who’s jewish would never let kylo ren the space nazi have a redemption arc, he prolly only approved RJ’s shitshow bc he saw that kylo’s arc in it was to go from reichsführer to führer, ep ix is safe. Other half of me is like, KK’s not just gonna let her white het romance fantasy die though. Then the first half of me is back like, KK rehired JJ tho. And all of me is now, like, so who actually gave in here, JJ or KK?? I hate that I still have hope, I wish I could abandon SW.

I wouldn’t mind if it were a true redemption, as in the price is comparable with the deed. The only reason Vader’s “redemption” was palatable to the audience was because he paid with his life, but many both in-universe and out don’t think it was enough. Vader was still so hated that the revelation that he was Leia’s biological father derailed her political career (Bloodline), and George Lucas himself said Vader wasn’t redeemed but only stopped the horror. It’s questionable that anyone can truly come back from the depths of the crimes committed by characters like Vader or Ren.

So I’m not sure Ren could be redeemed, but if he did have a true change of heart and survived he would live the rest of his life in unspeakable torment at the things he did and likely in a jail cell. I’d be actually okay with that, though it would have to be a hell of a convincing character arc. But the kind of get-out-of-jail-free card his stans advocate? That’s no longer Star Wars to me and I highly doubt JJ would go that route after explicitly modeling the first crime by Ren we see on screen, the massacre of Tuanul, after the Nazis’ slaughter of Jewish and Romani villages during the Holocaust.

I’m also inclined to think JJ has some leverage in the story he wants to tell, because he really didn’t have a reason to come back unless he was given some level of creative freedom. Disney could have gone with Rain for Episode IX if they were happy with him, which they… really shouldn’t be if they’re able to read numbers. With the mess Solo is likely to be JJ has his work cut out to reestablish the SW brand, especially in major foreign markets like China, and it would make no sense for him not to ask for at least the level of creative control RJ enjoyed.

Making Decisions in “Star Wars”

ljones41:

In “A New Hope”, Luke Skywalker tried to convince Han Solo to join the Rebel Alliance following their escape from the Death Star.  Leia Organa told him that would be a mistake.  She also pointed out that Han had to follow his own path and make his own decisions. Apparently, this was something that Rian Johnson failed to learn when it came to Finn.  Or perhaps as a black man, Finn was not allowed to make his own decisions.

The way fans bend over backward trying to justify Finn being assaulted and forced to stay is honestly terrifying.

finnspoes:

do you ever think about how han and luke got married by leia at the end of a new hope and then han suddenly remembered he was married to lando 

“you slimy, double-crossing, no-good swindler, you’ve got a lot of guts coming here after what you pulled” is obviously referring to han’s bigamy open ur eyes people

Hey I know it’s kinda soon, but did you get a peek at that stormtrooper book? Is it good?

diversehighfantasy:

It’s a cool book. I haven’t read through it yet, but it’s got a lot of Stormtrooper behind the scenes history.

One part I did read is the section on a Star Wars comic from 1983 called “The Stormtrooper Alliance” that had stayed with me as a kid and is one of the reasons I was excited to have an ex Stormtrooper hero in the sequels. In it, Leia is rescued by a Stormtrooper from Alderaan who had once been a servant to The Organas. This was when Stormtroopers signed up or were conscripts. It brought up class issues and showed that for some troopers, the Imperial Army meant they could take care of their families. I was stunned by the realization that they weren’t just mindless minions, and that it took a certain level of privilege to be able to fight for The Rebellion, which was volunteer in every sense.

Point being, it explores a lot of interesting stories across all Star Wars media.

The character reminds me of Bodhi, who also probably started working for the Empire for economic reasons. Stormtroopers, like other rank-and-file people in the Empire and later FO, raise a whole bunch of interesting issues like class, agency, responsibility, and complicity.

I wonder if defections like these were why the FO opted for abduction and brainwashing over hiring/conscription. Joke was on them, though…

defenders-of-the-salt:

lj-writes:

Remember the time Leia electrocuted Han for leaving the Rebellion in A New Hope? God, that scene was so funny. Remember also how she punched Han across the room as he was recovering from being frozen in Return of the Jedi? A total laugh riot. What a wacky, endearing character!

These things didn’t happen, of course, because it would have been completely off in tone and made Leia look like a weirdo. It would have cheapened Han’s character and the story as a whole.

So why is it okay for Finn, and why are viewers falling over themselves trying to find excuses for Rose? “She lost her sister-” Leia lost her planet. Next excuse.

I’m not saying you’re a Bad Racist Person if you liked The Last Jedi. I hope you enjoyed it and it rekindled your love of the franchise. That’s what we’re all here for, the fun and joy of loving these adventures.

I’m saying that Hollywood and audiences alike have a bias when it comes to whose pain is given respect and whose pain can be played for a laugh. And that bias is not only hurtful to fans caught on the wrong side of the empathy gap, it also hurts the quality and integrity of the works themselves.

It’s possible to love a work and also see how others might not feel the same way about it. Being a fan doesn’t mean you have to be a dismissive jerk or wilfully deny a work’s flaws. It’s fun to be a fan, but it’s imperative to be a person.

You know, it’s amazing how bad things can sound when you take the context out of them. It’s amazing how you talk about being critical about things you like, similar to how a rational person would, when you’ve been on an Anti-Rose-Tico tirade since before you even saw the movie – if you’ve even seen it at all at this point.

Anyway, so, Rose is positioned – presumably by a superior – to guard the escape pods from deserters. These deserters could likely be trained fighters, so they give the mechanic Rose – who probably isn’t that good at hand-to-hand combat – a weapon: a stun gun. Harmless in the long run, it knocks out its victims for a brief period of time, enough time for Rose to get any would-be deserters to superiors to be dealt with. Makes sense, right?

So this guy – Finn – comes by near the pods. Rose has had to stun several people by this point, but she’s cool with Finn. She doesn’t know him, but, after all, he’s a Resistance hero, who bravely risked his life to fight against his former captors, and was quite skilled at it too, and – is that a bag?

She stuns him after pitiful excuses, like “it’s not what it looks like!”, and “i mean, i was planning on leaving, but not deserting, i swear!”. She’s heard it all before, presumably. And this Finn character – she doesn’t know him, and has no reason to trust that he was actually trying to help the Resistance. 

She did her job and stopped who, to the best of her knowledge, was a deserter, and, somehow, she’s a villain for that? Anti-black? Extremely violent? That’s a pitiful claim, too.

And she punched him across the room – when, how? I may have just forgotten, and, if that, please explain to me when that happened. But somehow, the description seems unlikely.

There’s one more claim to address, though – your claim that her crashing into Finn to stop him from committing a pointless heroic sacrifice was violent. What else was she supposed to do – watch Finn kill himself in a pointless endeavor that had more loss than gain; wave her arms and hope he stopped; or take charge of the situation to save her friend? You chose!

There’s being critical of a franchise, and then there’s downright being hateful, hypocritical and mocking people who hold a different opinion on your blog. Hint: you’re not the former.

Oh hey, everyone, criticizing the way Rose is written is now being anti Rose! Like, don’t think I can’t see you using a female Asian character to shield a white dude’s writing decisions from criticism.

You know what you sound iike? You sound like one of those dudebros who get suuuuper defensive about sexual objectification in video games and comics, saying shit like, “Of course her tits were hanging out, she was in hand-to-hand combat against a claw monster with a lactation fetish! Do you expect her clothes to be all pristine and intact after that?!”

News flash: The context does not grow out of the earth. Rian Johnson wrote it and specifically cooked up a situation that “justified” Rose tasing Finn. Even worse, he played it for a laugh. That answers the speeder crash part, too. Johnson also made it so that Rose “had” to crash her vehicle into Finn’s.

And even in the situation you mention the tasing doesn’t hold up because Finn is–guess what? Not a Resistance member. Hence, he can’t be a deserter. He was a free agent who did more for the Resistance than anyone could be expected to, and was receiving medical care from them as a result.

This is  specifically why I compared him to Han at the end of ANH because Han, too, was an outsider. Unlike Han Finn wasn’t even trying to leave the Resistance for good, he was trying to protect two of its major allies, Rey and by extension Luke.

And like, thanks for making your own racism crystal clear by calling Finn’s reasons “pitiful excuses.” I’m sure you’ll sound so much braver and more coherent when someone’s menacingly waving a weapon at you that causes excruciating pain.

You also directly contradict yourself by saying that Rose was cool with Finn because of the way he bravely risked his life and then, in the next breath, saying she doesn’t know him and has no reason to trust him. Like, even to listen for half a fucking second?

And yes, it’s antiblack as fuck to contrive a situation to make a Black character suffer and pass out for no good story and character reason, and to play his pain for laughs. It cheapens Finn’s character arc because he didn’t get to make a choice to stay the way Han came back of his own free choice. Finn spent his entire life being controlled by pain and fear, and at Rose’s hands he gets more of the same.

By Leia punching a recovering Han I was referring to Rose making Finn, who had just recovered from a life-threatening injury, fly backward with the taser.

The op was like literally the mildest possible critique of the tasing incident yet here you are on my post, choosing to be hyperdefensive and fragile about it. I guess the exhortation to have some empathy really does sound like a threat to some people.

kyberfox:

lj-writes replied to your post:
Okay, I can see I need to unfollow and block…

RO itself majorly shafted its one visible Black and physically disabled character, and the whole first act suffered for it. It had redeeming qualities but I don’t trust fans who are completely uncritical of the movie.

See, that was my major disappointment with these people. Because none of them have been uncritical of RO and the treatment all of the characters of color received including Saw.

But with TLJ it seems something in their brains shut down or something. We’re back to the “let people just have fun” and literally someone comparing the critique of TLJ coming from fans of color to people whining about the wooden acting and bad dialogue in ANH.

Really? Really!

Heck, if they’d been uncritical of RO I wouldn’t have followed them in the first place. So I’m just in the “I thought you could be partially trusted, but I guess not. More fool me then.”

Maybe it’s a case of low expectations. I remember that when I first saw ESB and RotJ in the late 90′s or so my apprehension was simply that Lando not be killed as narrative punishment for his “betrayal” or as cheap motivation for Han. I didn’t actually enjoy my first views of these movies very much because I was so afraid for him. When he made it through the trilogy alive that was a huge relief for me and I didn’t think of much past that because the bar was that low for me at the time. Tbh I didn’t have much hope that a Black character with the least bit of moral complexity would survive to the end of a Hollywood movie made in the 70′s and 80′s.

I bring this up because it’s possible these bloggers’ bar for a Black character in Star Wars is as low as mine was. Finn is a more prominent character than Saw was, and he didn’t die to further any other character’s arc, so it may be okay in their minds. I disagree with them if this is the case because Finn has different weight in the sequel trilogy than Saw or Lando (and also can we stop holding the bar ridiculously low for the treatment of Black characters in general), but this may explain the inconsistency.