the scene immediately following galen’s death is so important to me because it lays bare all the very deep ways in which jyn and cassian are flawed, and more importantly it demonstrates the way that their struggles are so similar but happen for opposite reasons.
jyn’s in shock because she literally just watched her father die in her arms, but she says some things that are very, very indicative of the fact that she has trouble seeing past her own self-preservation. it’s about cassian killing her father. it’s about his lying to her. and she’s selfish to a fault. when cassian says “you’re not the only one who’s lost everything,” he is calling jyn out, because she’s unable to see past the gun and recognize that the trigger wasn’t pulled. she doesn’t recognize the way her life as a drifter has privileged her with the luxury of deciding who and what to care for and about. she may have lost everything, but all she lost was hers to begin with. and that’s why she cares about losing it.
on the other hand, in this same scene, we see that if cassian has one flaw, it’s selflessness. because it is possible to be selfless to a fault, to give of yourself so completely that you lose the ability to stare in the mirror and recognize what you see. that’s cassian. he’s imprisoned by his selflessness. he gave himself to the fight for the majority of his life, and in doing so, he surrendered a lot of his agency. jyn suggests he’s “no better than a stormtrooper,” which again is harsh because he didn’t pull the trigger and she’s too absorbed in the magnitude of her self-righteousness to realize the gravity of that, but it says a lot about who he has become. he follows every order even if it makes him so angry he can barely handle himself. he can’t afford to be selfish because his survival is defined by his ability to give what is demanded of him.
AND THE BEST PART, the reason why this is THE BEST STAR WARS MOVIE OF ALL TIME, is that these are people who do not fall by virtue of their flaws, but by the correction of them in each other. this is a story about the broken mending the broken. the rebellion – you could even argue cassian himself, in that iconique “i couldn’t face myself if i gave up now” scene during which i cried approximately 3 gallons of tears – teaches jyn the possibility of finding a home in a cause. and jyn, simultaneously, convinces him to be selfish, for once, to go against orders, to take what he has known all along is right.
they absolutely destroy the idea that heroism is about some great honorable sacrifice. it’s not. it’s about giving and taking.
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