Is there any kind of non-shippy fic exploring Rey and Kylo’s Force bond? Because honestly, that whole Force bond is ripe for dramatic exploration (think Ezra Bridger and Darth Maul), but it definitely throws me off any interest in reading it if there’s a mutual romantic feelings element. (I wouldn’t even be that keen on Kylo having one-sided feelings~ for Rey, given the whole “blame her for Snoke’s death and later order her ship to be shot down and also try to kill everybody in the resistance” thing.)
Honestly, the Force bond stuff has a lot of fic potential for not-at-all-romantic Rey and Kylo. Not something I’d want to see in episode IX, but in fic it would be fascinating to explore the idea that Rey tapping into Kylo’s Force-abilities is something that can be affected and even stopped… and that Rey might have to re-learn how to do certain things in the Force for herself once the Force-bond is severed. Or that Kylo could tap into what Rey knows by using that Force-bond, and he attempts to harm the Resistance with what he learns.
People posting fic to AO3 need to learn that the & represents a non-romantic connection. In other words: there are multiple reylo fics using the tag Rey & Kylo Ren that should instead be tagged Rey/Kylo Ren.
Seriously there is not enough genfic about Rey and Kylo, and not enough genfic in general though that’s another (if related) complaint. Her becoming more powerful through the Force Bond is in fact an interesting idea that should have been shown and dealt with in the movie, and I think it also serves as a metaphor for the way people can hesitate to cut off unhealthy ties because they gain something through them–including survival itself. Like maybe Kylo threatens to cut the bond himself when Rey rejects his offer, warning her that she will lose her accelerated learning and will be defeated, giving her a real choice to make and actual suspense. She would in fact start losing, but the ship getting cut in half would save her much like the planet falling apart in TFA saved him. And then there would be other fallout later, Rey has to find harder but ultimately more lasting ways to train, Kylo uses information he gleaned from the Bond as you say. Like, give me actual consequences, choices, and tension. I did like that the idea of Kylo Ren as some poor misunderstood woobie was thoroughly trashed and Rey had one of the better arcs in the movie having to grow beyond her insecurities that he preyed on, but the execution was weak compared to the potential of the idea.
Considering Loan Tran is beautiful and looks amazing, I don’t know why Johnson stuck her in that bag and odd haircut. No matter, JJ is home.
Because Racist Johnson couldn’t have Loan outshine the skinny white girl, that’s why. Daisy was insulted in the opposite direction, incongruously and ridiculously plastered with makeup as she was.
While on the topic of Finn, it occurred to me today that he does exactly what Kylo’s family/Rey wants Benny Boy to do: reject the First Order and find his place along the “good guys.” Now, this could be completely unrelated, BUT maybe Finn rejecting the First Order and becoming a “good guy” (I honestly don’t know why I feel the need to use quotation marks for this) is foreshadowing of Kylo’s story or maybe a parallel of some sorts? Regardless, Kylo and Finn start out the trilogy in pretty similar positions and then go down very different paths from that point. I’m hoping they have some sort of interaction that highlights the similarities of their stories in Episode IX cause Finn and Kylo actually have a lot in common.
Finn and Kylo are each others’ foils, as they contrast each other in every way.
Finn is not a device for Kylo’s story, he’s a protagonist, so I highly doubt his story is meant to foreshadow Kylo becoming a “good guy.”
Kylo highlights Finn’s heroism, not the other way around. If anything, Finn’s story highlights Kylo’s lack of anything resembling heroism, because Kylo was actually handed freedom from the FO on a silver platter multiple times and refused, while Finn, who made the choice to leave all on his own, had to fight his way out, and put himself at a grave risk by leaving.
There is one sense in which Finn’s choice might be seen as a foreshadowing for Kylo’s redemption: A mistaken one, and it was done in TLJ. Rey’s goal of bringing Kylo to the Light and her belief that he would turn make a lot more sense if she was thinking of Finn and how he turned away from evil. Except Kylo yet again proved himself to be the opposite of Finn and made their contrasts all the clearer. So, in my opinion, the foreshadowing that op theorized about has already been played with and discarded.
I’m also curious, what do Finn and Kylo Ren have in common? I’ve actually tried to think of something, anything, and didn’t come up with much. For the most part I only see contrasts.
Contrasts:
Birth and background: Stolen from a family he never knew/Grew up with loving parents and uncles galore
Personality: Exceptional empathy considered to be his only problem/Showed signs of entitlement and violence
Affiliation: Left an evil organization/Voluntarily joined one
Circumstances of changing sides: Refused to kill innocents/Willingly killed innocents
Relationship with Poe: Rescue, friendship/Capture, torture
Relationship with Rey: Helping, affirming/Hurting, tearing down
Endgame with abuser: Refuted Phasma’s abusive training/tried to continue Snoke’s abuse with Rey in his old role
Commonalities:
Left family for an education–but only if we reeeeallly stretch the definition of “left” and “education” in Finn’s case
Both considered exceptional and talented in training–which is not saying much tbh, action movie heroes and villains tend to be extraordinary individuals
Went from a place of doubt to certainty: The only commonality I can really see, if we interpret Kylo Ren’s internal conflict as doubt.
So I’m not seeing “a lot” in common, personally, maybe I’m missing something.
For Finn I could imagine that he might have some issues with the top down authority of organized military even though he knows that the Republic isn’t the First Order, given that he’s been abused by such authorities his whole life. He might be siding squarely with Leia in any power struggle. (Finn as Leia’s protege? Is that what John’s line is hinting at?)
Poe is probably having a massive case of divided loyalties. He’s a Leia fanboy if there ever was one, but he’s also very much a man of the Republic. He only went against them not just because he was convinced that there had to be done something about the First Order, but because if it was Leia Organa who asked him. If it had been anyone else who led the Resistance, I’m not so sure he’d have joined them no matter his issues with the Republic. When the inevitable power struggle between whoever leads the Republic navy (Laura Dern’s character?) and Leia he might not know who to back, he’ll likely argue for joint collaboration, but given how much of the Republic feels about Leia… that might not be possible.
This leads me to Rose Tico. If @lj-writes theory is correct and Rose, Paige and Cobalt Squadron are part of the Republic navy, they’d likely fall at the other end of the conflict. I could see Rose as someone young and idealistic, who looks up to Finn because “omg a real living hero!”, but who’s also very firmly on the side of the Republic and who might see the Resistance as dangerously volatile. Not to mention resent them – openly or covertly – for “causing” the Hosnia genocide. Even though she might logically know that the only one who caused that was the First Order when they first built Starkiller Base and then fired it at a civilian system. But logic can mean little when you’re as deeply traumatized as all genocide survivors are.
Is that what Rose and Finn are talking about here?
Rose being passionate about the Republic – and maybe showing some of her pain from the destruction of her home? Finn understand her pain and objectively her position, but still holding his own?
And this scene (from the BTS video)
Is Rose and Poe agreeing on something? Maybe the Republic navy’s stance on something, while Finn is taking Leia’s position?
Thanks goes to @lj-writes for that meta and for subsequent discussion in private about Rose, Finn and Poe. Her’s is half the ideas in this.
I love how you’ve pieced together the different interviews and pics to elaborate on what TLJ might look like in case of a Republic-Resistance conflict! Yeah, the picture of Finn and Rose now that I see it again in that light could be confrontational. At the very least it looks really passionate. FinnRose feels ❤
Finn could fall squarely on Leia’s side, but my guess is she’ll have to give him a lot of freedom if she wants to keep him that way. He’ll take a long time to trust authority if he ever does, and he’s likelier to throw in with her if she offers him a path to something he wants (a plan for Stormtrooper liberation, perhaps? Breaking abducted children out of a First Order facility? Finding his family?). My guess is, she’ll need to become a partner rather than an authority figure to him if she wants his trust.
Then there’s the question of whether SHE can trust HIM after his bald-faced lie to her near the end of TFA. I mean he did it for a good cause and delivered on lowering the shields anyway so I doubt she’ll hold it against him, but she should at least know this young man is at least as ruthless and reckless as she is when it comes to doing the right thing. I wonder if she sees in him the young woman she was, with trauma the size of a planet and nothing to lose. I would not be surprised if she trains him as a leader the Resistance needs.
No, Leia won’t hold a grudge, but she should be wary because Finn is a man who smashed his own idols (Jewish hero Jewish hero) and holds nothing and no one sacred except perhaps his friends. On that note, Poe could be the trusted bridge between these two formidable personalities. I mean Leia can cut some slack for her son Poe’s boyfriend, right?
Also! Speaking of planet-sized trauma, can we FINALLY have Leia grapple with being a genocide survivor as she interacts with the Republic refugees? How ironic is it that this may become a conflict between those who have survived the unimaginable, a clash of pain against pain? Will she find common ground with the Admiral and Rose and Paige? Will they find themselves clawing at each others’ bleeding wounds and doing things to each other they couldn’t have imagined? (No that is not meant to be kinky, you perverts. *is a pervert*) And can a Star Wars movie finally do more than squeak by the Bechdel test?
Finally, that last pic to me looks almost conspiratorial. Maybe this isn’t the final shot and they’re adding things like control panels and holos, but for now with that setup and lighting it looks like a clandestine meeting, with too few people and an odd composition of a new recruit, a mechanic, and a pilot to be a formal meeting. Is this where they discuss the mission to the casino planet? Is this the start of their Hail Mary pass out of the Republic-Resistance conflict?
Thanks for liking my addition and the great new thoughts! (I like how it took three tries for Tumblr to tag me.) Thanks to your find about Cobalt Squadron I am suddenly so fired up about this movie.
Reminder that this pre-TLJ speculation still makes for a MUCH better Resistance plot than the one we got. Even more frustratingly, if you squint this is the story told in TLJ except far more meaningful. This was also back when I was actually excited about Finnrose, smh.
I don’t get why people think Finn both being a military leader and having the Force is somehow strange for Star Wars. After all, we have a rather outsized example of this already.
It’s not just the combination of Force and military abilities either, but also the characters’ story positions. Finn being the “war” part of the triad gives him the position Leia should
have occupied in the OT, the character with ties to both the military
and the Force who embodies what the war is about: The human face of the
Empire’s atrocities, the survivor who chose to fight. Leia should have
been the central figure of the war and not Han’s plus-one on what
were essentially his plots and missions.
Done right Leia would have been
more like Katniss in The Hunger Games, damaged and traumatized from her
experiences, inspiring by her story and example. RO tried to shoehorn
Jynn into Katniss’s Mockingjay role except it never worked because Jynn
didn’t have the representative story. Obviously the Mockingjay figures
were Cassian and the Jedhans (Bodhi, Chirrut, Baze), but yet again SW
shied away from giving center stage to victims of wide-scale atrocities.
It shied away again with Finn in TLJ.
This refusal to have central Mockingjay figures, I believe, reflects SW’s basic ambivalence as a franchise that is more comfortable with destined saviors than with exploited and destroyed peoples saving themselves. Maybe that comes of SW being a USAmerican franchise dealing with fascism, the contradiction of a country that is fundamentally fascistic and imperialistic trying to tell itself a story of being antifascist and anti-imperialist. America can’t face the full implication of truly upending its fascist underpinnings, in fiction as in reality. Instead the brutal form of fascism is replaced by the “soft” fascism of worshipping benign supermen.
Then along comes JJ Abrams, someone in a position to know the contradictions and falsity in the story America tells about itself. He shows the New Republic’s compromise with fascism destroying it morally as well as physically, a year ahead of the 2016 election. He shows how the worship of the Skywalkers as the chosen line gave us Kylo Ren. He gives us Finn, one of the First Order’s victims, as a strong and central figure.
Finn in IX could be the character that Leia could have been–the one who ties it all together, the military plot and the Force plot, the story of war with the story of spirituality and morality. He could be the character that embodies both the evil of the First Order and the determination, on a personal, visceral level, to fight it. He could be the character that brings audiences face to face with what it means when people who are considered expendable in the quest for greatness stand up and fight back. He could solve the Star Wars dilemma and finally break the vicious cycle of destruction the galaxy far, far away has become trapped in. I certainly hope so.
That speculation was not baseless at all, given that John was saying in July 2017 that Finn would be in “another form of training” alongside Leia (link). This is so wildly out of line with what we saw in TLJ that I have to wonder if John was led to believe TLJ was going to be a different movie altogether. Or maybe it’s the way his answer was edited and the “alongside General Leia” comment wasn’t meant to go together with the training comment at all. It’s still really weird and yeah, either way a big opportunity was lost to have Finn interact with and learn from Leia.
TLJ in of itself is a failure for the reasons that it is a movie with only themes and no cohesive story or plot that warrants the claim of originality
And it just… speaks those themes (generally through the characters of Rose and Holdo) instead of showing them organically through story. That is terrible and preachy writing.
Whenever I hear that writers should “take risks” these days I’m like “how about NO!” because what most people perceive as risks are elements not natural to the story that exist JUST to forcefully write something “different” or refuse to ever let characters be happy or functional. These “risks” have just become annoying and at this point it’s surprising and refreshing if writers DON’T do this.
Seriously. Truly risky and fresh writing doesn’t arise out of trying to be risky, but rather out of going where the story organically takes you without stepping back from the edge out of discomfort. Finn in his original conception is a risky character for SW because he is new for the movies and raises so many questions about humanity and morality. Stepping back from the implications of his character and borking a Stormtrooper uprising like RJ did in TLJ was cowardice. The titty milk alien or Luke’s momentarily-contemplated murder of Ben Solo, on the other hand, are examples of trying way too hard to be clever and subversive.
Honestly, I think the people mad at The Last Jedifor being “not like Star Wars” are missing the point of the movie.
At its core, the The Last Jedi is a film learning to move on from the past, and accepting that you can’t go back to the way things were. It’s not even particularly subtle about it. It’s not even subtext, the message is literally stated by at least two different characters in the film.
Heck, every plot twist and subversion of Star Wars tropes is done with the intent of sticking to this central message. The mystery of Rey’s parents is solved in the most anticlimactic manner possible. Snoke is killed before the trilogy even ends. Finn’s heroic rescue mission is given major focus, only for it to end in a failure that forces a change in tactics. All of this might seem dissatisfying, but it’s actually there for a reason. These plot points are set up in a way such that they appear similar to plot threads in the original trilogy. A mystery of the main character’s lineage, a powerful wielder of the Dark Side who commands a massive empire, a rescue mission against seemingly impossible odds. And in the end, they’re subverted, and they’re subverted specifically for the purpose of emphasizing that you can’t always cling to the past, that the Galaxy Far Away of today is not the same as it was forty years ago.
And keeping in line with this central theme? The primary villains, the First Order, are intentionally structured in-universe to evoke the Galactic Empire, which had been defeated decades ago. They want to re-create the past as they imagined it to exist, and are willing to commit any number of atrocities to do so. The villains are explicitly built around nostalgia for an idealized Old Days that disregards a history of brutal oppression, and that’s a part of what makes their fascist dogma so frighteningly close to actual fascists today.
Even putting aside the political commentary, on an even deeper level it’s a commentary on Star Wars as a cultural institution in itself. Star Wars as an icon of pop culture is one that is built on nostalgia, on the fond memories of the original trilogy that skyrocketed it to worldwide popularity in the first place. But at the same time, that nostalgia has also been hugely limiting, as anything new that comes out of it has to live within the shadow of its own legacy. The Prequel Trilogy has far and away suffered the most for this, as even if they weren’t bad films on their own merits, they couldn’t have been the films people wanted them to be. Both LucasFilm and fans of Star Wars built Episode I up as something that could fully recapture the magic of seeing Star Wars in theaters for the first time. But no matter how good Episode I was or could have been, it couldn’t have recreated that experience, because there is nothing in the world that could.
Rian Johnson recognized the problem, and chose to address it in a unique way: by writing a film that’s fundamentally about learning to accept that things aren’t going to be the same as they were, while simultaneously creating something new in the same spirit. Just as Yoda burned down the last of the ancient Jedi texts so that a new generation can build something better, The Last Jedi itself discards the old series conventions, while simultaneously building a movie that retains the central Star Wars spirit of finding hope against seemingly impossible odds.
The Last Jedi tells us that nostalgia is overrated. That’s why it’s such a brilliant film.
But this doesn’t stop Finn from being a wasted character, Luke’s characterization from being poorly handled, or the First Order’s swift conquest of the Galaxy, to the point that only one tiny faction of no political relevance is fighting them, from being absurd.
Star Wars is a serialized narrative. Ignoring basic in-universe logic and dropping story/character threads because they don’t suit your vision as a writer/director is something that’s difficult to overlook. It’s not that TLJ ‘doesn’t feel like Star Wars’, but that it feels almost entirely disconnected from the long-standing universe and serialized narrative of Star Wars.
Also, I disagree that the message is one of telling us nostalgia is overrated. Not when Luke’s final act it to perpetuate the legend of Luke Skywalker, and it is underlined as the most important sacrifice he could make – his self and his life for the legend. That is not disowning nostalgia. It is not a refutation of legends or of heroes. It is the deification at the price of humanity. If nostalgia is a toxic impulse, TLJ wholeheartedly embraces it in order to strip Luke and Leia of humanity and recreate them as walking gods.
TLJ’s story is one of passing of the torch, with the full intent of showing the growth of our heroes as they learn noble lessons from the Never Wrong Leia and Redeemed Redeemer Luke.The only problem is that Johnson has left a narrative so shattered and characters so gutted that I can only ask why the fuck I should care.
The Last Jedi subverted the entire idea of a movie having entertainment value why are you haters so mad
I’ve seen it suggested that without Bendemption and Reylo, IX will be nothing but a moral-conflict-free romp for our heroes. And seriously, wtf?
Finn is a walking moral dilemma all on his own. Because for him and everyone who loves him he raises a terrible question about every enemy Stormtrooper they kill – could they have been another Finn in the making?
The First Order is an organisation run by powerful people who made terrible choices. But its wars are fought by child soldiers who were never given any choice at all.
That’s what makes the battle we’re set to see happen in IX so fascinating. It’s not that the causes themselves are morally grey. The Resistance are clearly fighting for good and the First Order is unquestionably evil. And yet good can’t fight its cause without slaughtering innocents, and I think that’s the most interesting possible dilemma we could be asked to see play out.
And hell yeah I want to see Finn try to resolve it by leading a Stormtrooper revolt. And I want conflict among our heroes too. I want Rey, with her absolutist morality, to oppose Finn. I want Rey to show her love for Finn *through* her opposition – it’s because she believes Finn is so very special, so brave and so good-hearted that she doesn’t think any other Stormtroopers can live up to his example.
And I want Finn to want to believe that what she thinks about him is true – while doing everything he can to prove her wrong. And in succeeding, in leading his fellow Stormtroopers to freedom, he’ll show what *is* special about him as well as what’s special in everyone, if you can find a way of calling it out.
I want IX to explore every crack and fault line in Finn and Rey’s relationship so they can discover together how strong its foundations are.
This makes perfect sense because you know what else would have hardened Rey against the idea of redemption for fascist killers?
The incident with “Ben” would have only confirmed in Rey’s mind that Finn is one of a kind, and that expecting others to follow Finn’s example would only end in heartbreak and destruction. She was burned badly when she trusted in Kylo Ren’s goodness and wouldn’t want Finn to risk his emotions and life in the same way, on a far greater scale with potentially deadly consequences at that. She barely made it out herself and can’t bear the thought of losing him.
If the story went this way it would be yet another parallel to Anidala, except much more robust. As seen in a clip from AotC (link), Padmé believed steadfastly in democracy–for some people anyway, Clones, Tuskens and other undesirables need not apply–while Anakin did not shy away from advocating a dictatorship in the face of democratic dysfunction. Similarly, we would get to see Finn believe in ordinary people’s ability to make choices for the good, with his vision being actually democratic and not just thinly-disguised aristocratic rule like the Senate that Padmé believed in. Rey’s healthy skepticism in the idea that non-Finn people brought up to evil could turn away from it would be sympathetic and rational under the circumstances.
Under this scenario it’s interesting that Finn and Rey are confirmed to be together for all or most of IX. Depending on how early this conflict starts we could watch them in truly interesting arguments yet still bound together by the mission and mutual affection. And man would I love it.
L.J.'s Obsessions 