let go of your hate

i’m incredibly tired and not entirely sure if i want to continue engaging with this fandom anymore

as a movie, it’s decent. there are some very good, moving, meaningful parts. as the second movie in a trilogy, it’s trash; as a continuation of tfa, it’s trash; as a star wars movie, it’s trash. i went in with many preconceptions and came out with most if not all of them confirmed.

finn and rose and poe were sidelined. we all know this. i hate what the movie did with them and i’m going to have a lot of fun imagining and/or writing admiral holdo getting her comeuppance. my father’s very first thought immediately upon exiting the theater on his first viewing was “laura dern pretty much doomed the entire resistance, why didn’t she tell anyone what she was doing, that whole thing was incredibly stupid,” and then a few minutes later in the car, “the subplot with finn went nowhere and could have been cut out without changing the plot at all.” that’s pretty much all i have to say on that, because they literally didn’t even get enough meaningful content for me to talk about at length - they had their little insignificant subplot and that’s all there was to it. tlj did its characters of color so dirty and i will be angry forever.

i took issue with luke’s portrayal over the course of the movie, but i believe he redeemed himself somewhat at the end. there was a ton of symbolism to unpack in his confrontation with kylo on crait - i particularly enjoyed all those split-second shots of the ground beneath their feet as they argued. the whole “strike me down in your anger...like your father” exchange made me cry. the shot of luke watching the binary sunset on ahch-to was incredible, no complaints there - his entire death sequence was very well done. it’s really obvious that he’s going to be back as a force ghost next movie anyway, i don’t know why everybody is complaining about this.

the yoda thing was incredibly stupid and completely useless to the plot. like, i get that they wanted to do the whole “let go of the past” thing, but did they really have to introduce ~ghost force lightning~ to do it?? you know who would have been better for that sequence? literally anybody but yoda. obi-wan! anakin! qui-gon fucking jinn! his little speech there went against yoda’s entire previous onscreen ideology. nobody wanted to see him!!! leave us alone little green monster

i have to admit that i enjoyed kylo ren a lot more than i did last time. he’s even uglier and even more of an awful, awful person - but i did my best to hate his writing and his characterization, and i have to admit that (though it doesn’t make a lick of sense in light of the fact that tlj starts FIVE MINUTES after tfa) his character has undergone major development. on one level, i hate and resent the fact that everyone else was sidelined to showcase his character development, but on another level, i’m looking forward to seeing where this goes. i found a number of points delightful (hux calling him “supreme leader” in the AT-M6, and the soldiers in the background mouthing supreme leader? with bewilderment and horror), and i’m glad there’s no more of the whole “call to the light” bullshit. i think it’s pretty clear that the pro-redemption faction has been shot down, and kylo is going to be The Main Villain of the trilogy, and i’m incredibly okay with that. 

overall: rian johnson does not understand the main themes of star wars, and this is not a star wars movie, but it is a movie. the movie that it is isn’t as bad as all that. there’s the race problem, and the holdo problem, and the yoda problem, and the luke problem, and the reylo problem, but i think a very good Ep IX can be salvaged from the remains. i enjoyed what the movie did with kylo, though i would have rather had a movie without kylo development at all.