Seeing the last scene in TLJ again just drives home how incompetent an ass Rian is and that he truly do not know how to tone.
Why? Because everyone looks happy. And not happy in the “over ecstatic, omg I can’t believe we survived that!” way, they look celebratory in the RotJ way. And like, they just lost all their ship and their people, they’re down to less than twenty people, counting the droids, in an ancient space weed van.
And yet there’s no hint of that, no trace of grief for all the many lives who Holdo threw away in her slowest space car chase ever for… idk why she did that. No mourning for all the people who died on Crait either.
This was supposedly a somber film about failure but the end note is so damned dissonant to that.
And then there’s the weird broom boy scene that I still have no clue what to make of.
Both AotC and ESB are films with very somber themes and have somber endings as a result.
AotC ends with a marraige yes, but it’s a marriage in secret and both bride and groom looks very somber, plus Anakin is clearly injured in it. Not to mention it is preceded by the scene between Mace, Yoda and Obi-Wan where Obi-Wan is happy that they won but Yoda points out that they didn’t, they started a war and that’s nothing to celebrate. (This is the only tie I agree with the little oven mitt.)
ESB has hope in the end, that they’ll find and rescue Han. But the very last shot with Luke and Leia standing there looking out of the galaxy holds a gravitas matching the movie and its themes.
But the end of TLJ is celebratory, like what? Rian really is incompetent and doesn’t know how to tone or what point he wants to make.
And from his own words he’s also incapable of learning literally anything so this is unlikely to change in the future.
we have a terrible movie where absolutely nothing happens and i cry because i wasted $200 + some extra money in tickets and popcorn.
Star Wars is not about subverting anything, it’s just a dumb space fairy tale where everything is supposed to be good, or at least hopeful, by the end of each episode. If I want to feel bad about life and worry about how Dark and Gritty everything is, I’ll watch Game of Thrones.
Speaking of Game of Thrones, do you know what TLJ and GOT had in common? their terrible treatment of women and people of color.
Holdo, Leia and co were dumbed down as much as Poe and Finn and co (only that the Unfortunate Implications that come from those are different) because, the truth is, Rian Johnson is clearly not a bright man himself. He wrote a simple story that he tried to make deep and utterly failed at it because it just wasn’t the job for him. No estaba a la altura de las circunstancias. He fucked up, simple as that.
If you dont believe me, just look at how he overused lack of communication (with Luke and Rey, with Holdo, Leia and Poe and arguably with Finn and Rose, too) as plot devices that moved the plot forward. Look at how uncreative Kylo’s backstory was (uncle tried to kill him despite the fact that said uncle didn’t even have it in him to kill Darth Fucking Vader). Look at how “we” “needed” to have Rose and DJ turn to us and explain, word for word, that Rich People Don’t Care Who They Sell Weapons To/who lives and who dies (and I don’t mean this as an attack to Rose, but to RJ). How childish Luke and Rey’s training scene was.
He couldn’t show us what he wanted, he had to tell us. That’s what a bad, inexperienced writer does. Not someone working in a franchise as big as Star Wars. (for this, look at how he had to tell us, via Holdo, that Poe is a “hot-headed guy prone to insubordination, because there was no previous evidence supporting the contrary in TFA and only one (1) scene in TLJ).
Rose Tico is nothing but a antiblack wet dream. She thinks Finn is a bumbling idiot and is obsessed with physically assaulting him no matter what he does. She’s disgusted at him if he even shows the slightest agency lmfao. Like he can’t even talk about his friend Rey without her getting angry, demeaning him, and fantasizing about assaulting him. She’s demonic. She shouldn’t be the representation we get for the first main woc in star wars and yet thats what she is!!! It isn’t anti-Asian to say all this lmfao!!!! It’s literally facts!!! If you support this character (not the actress duh Kelly Marie Tran is an angel), you’re an antiblack piece of shit too!! That’s facts!! If your Asian Representation comes with a side of violent Antiblackness THAN FUCK YOUR REPRESENTATION!!! You should be able to ask for better representation and NOT accept a sexist, antiblack mess!!! So everyone using that stupid “this is representation” argument to act like Rose Tico is anything but a horrible character? You’re dumb af. That isn’t an excuse to have such a vile character who serves no purpose but to live out yall antiblack fantasies. Fuck Rose Tico. Fuck Rian Johnsons racist ass. And fuck all of yall who told us over and over that we were overreacting or that we were bad people for not accepting Our onscreen representation being degraded and hurt.
All. Of. This. Even before the novelization showed how horrible she was originally intended to be, Rose was terrible representation for the first Asian lead and the WOC lead in a Star Wars film. She was always abusive and demeaning toward Finn and she never had quality writing in her own right. She had arc or character growth to speak of.
Now we see the full picture of the terrible person Rose was meant to be. The worst part of her depiction is that all of her increased abusiveness and assholery aren’t meant to be flaws. We aren’t meant to see her as an awful person Finn needs to escape. No, she’s meant to be one of the heroes and her abuse of Finn is meant to be not only comical, but a sign of her supposed love for him. And that’s just sick.
The only silver lining in both the film and novel is that Finn doesn’t develop much attachment to Rose as he did with Rey and Poe. He doesn’t even have a reaction after she kisses him. It wouldn’t be at all unrealistic for him to not engage with her at all in Episode IX.
Calling this horrible character Asian or WOC representation is like serving us dung and saying we should accept it as meat because it’s an animal product. Rose is just plain abusive and violent, an awful cross of misogynistic and anti-Asian stereotypes. It makes me sick to the stomach that Johnson is hiding behind Kelly to evade the blame for his shitty writing. Asian bloggers who criticized his writing were attacked for being anti-Asian, which no we’re anti Rian Johnson’s antiblack and anti-woman ass lmao.
Like I understand a lot of people are wary about JJ coming back for the last Star Wars movie but after the TLJ, I want him back and it’s because I know he won’t screw over the trio. The one thing that will bother me forever about TLJ was how Rey, Finn and Poe all got their characters destroyed. I will forever pissed off about that. It was obvious that Rian only gave a damn about Kylo and no one else. JJ obviously cared about the new trio and I know that he’ll try his hardest to fix them.
Yeah, I know JJ has made some mistakes but I trust him so much more than I do Rian.
Cosigned. “Made some mistakes and was less than perfect” is nowhere on the same level as “destroyed beloved characters so thoroughly it doesn’t even matter if it was incompetence or malice, because the end result is the same.” Fuck, RJ even managed to ruin Rose and she was his own fucking character.
Also JJ fricking LOVES John, as all people of taste and good will do, and will do right by him. He’d better.
that single deleted scene is exponentially better than anything in the last jedi and the fact that rian johnson filmed it and then cut it is proof that his final brain cell died a very long time ago and the very reason for my being alive is to destroy him
L.J.'s Obsessions 