#sequels discourse

of others) so tightly that you become attached to them. Learn to trust them and pass on what you've learned, so that there is always more and more light in the galaxy.

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree I don’t really object to spending time on the villain, per se, but I wish they had used the time better and not whittled his character focus down to very little other than Rey, despite not really having given them room to develop a relationship on-screen in more than a single weekend. Like, I love Anakin, I’m not opposed to focusing a lot of screentime on a Problematic Fave who is not exactly a great person, but has a lot of potentially sympathetic beats that you could write into the character’s arc.  But none of that came through in the movies! But also they had such a great cast of other characters that they criminally underused, like the wasting of Finn’s character’s potential was just frustrating as all get out, Rose deserved so much better, and so I’m neutral-to-agreement. I would have liked more focus on the other characters--do you know how much FUN we could have had with more Resistance characters interacting with each other? do you know how ADORABLE the Rey + Poe + Rose trio was in that one book? do you know how DELIGHTFUL Poe and Rose were in that one Adventures comic? do you know how great Poe and Finn’s chemistry was and you just wasted it? do you know how much I wanted a more coherent arc for Finn and Rey’s relationship? do you know how amazing Rey and Rose could have been together?? Or, if you’re going to devote that much time to the villain, AT LEAST MAKE GIVE ME SOME HILARITY.  Though, it’s still my favorite thing just about ever that the last spoken word any Skywalker said in the movies was, “Ow.”  Amazing, perfect, brilliant, wonderful, stupendous, nothing could have been funnier.

BEFORE I BEGIN:  I want to make it clear that this is not an argument against this video’s view of the Holdo vs Poe storyline, nor is it an attempt to say CinemaWins is wrong on the internet or whatever.  I mean, fair enough, he does kind of go at others’ arguments, so I don’t feel guilt using his comments as a jumping off point, but still.  Ultimately, this isn’t about CinemaWins’s video [x] at all, but about what this crystalized for me. But it was sort of a smack in the face moment of finally being able to articulate why this doesn’t work for me.  “Tell me why the leader needs to answer to one pilot.” BECAUSE THAT IS POE’S CHARACTER TRAJECTORY IN THIS MOVIE.  He is being set up as the next leader of the Resistance, that is made clear by the end of this movie, by the supplementary material, and, hell, even TROS follows through on that arc. Poe isn’t just some random pilot and maybe Holdo doesn’t know that (but then what kind of leader is she if she doesn’t know that Poe is being groomed for this role? she and Leia were in conversation, presumably?  Also, they have a conversation at the end about how they both like him) but the audience sure as hell does and having the character who is supposed to be learning to step up, as in that is his whole arc in this very movie, is undercut by Holdo treating him like he’s just another pilot. If the movie had made the argument that Poe should have trusted her because that’s what you do when you’re leadership material, you trust your fellow Resistance members, then that might have worked better for me.  But he’s treated as a hotshot pilot who was just demoted and nothing more. So, when Poe fucks up over the course of the movie, then is suddenly back in charge by the end of it, like nothing happened, like his mutiny didn’t just badly hurt them, but Leia is still like, “What are you looking at me for?  Follow him!” despite that he was just treated as just “one pilot” doesn’t work for me. Either Poe is being groomed for leadership, in which case you bring him in on these decisions or else tell him, “You have to trust me.  As the future of this movement, you need to learn to work with people.”, OR he’s “just a pilot” and then you have to cut out all the stuff about him being groomed to be the next leader of the Reistance. And if Holdo doesn’t have a plan at this point, if she’s still working on it, then you have to let him in on that, too, because I think it would be fair to make a case that she does owe the FUTURE OF THEIR MOVEMENT at least some answers.

It’s gut wrenching, it’s beautifully acted, but it’s an isolated moment that’s hard to put into full context (of how it would feel in the movie), so who knows how much it would have actually made a difference.I keep thinking of Leia sensing Han’s death and it was a lovely moment, but it’s so quick and you only see her face, that can only convey so much, and so ultimately there is a part of me that feels like, “Why wasn’t there more focus on that?  Why wasn’t she there, why couldn’t they write a story where she was there to see it?”  And maybe I would have felt the same way with all those TLJ deleted scenes–nice, but not enough.At the same time you’re absolutely right that one of TLJ’s biggest weaknesses imo was the lack of some better connective tissue and some of those deleted scenes–WHY THE FUCK WOULDN’T YOU GIVE LUKE TWO GODDAMNED MINUTES TO MOURN HAN’S DEATH ONCE HE OPENED HIMSELF BACK UP TO THE FORCE!?  YOU FILMED IT, WHY DIDN’T YOU KEEP IT?  IT WASN’T EVEN THAT LONG is one of the hills I’ll die on–and I think TROS suffered from the same thing, only a hundred times worse.That movie really needed to be two movies instead of one, even if I wonder if that would have actually helped, because maybe the reason I liked it(/didn’t hate it) was because it was a series of trailers strung together, rather than a slow, crawling pace.Overall, I think all the sequel movies suffered from a lack of things feeling connected aside from a handful of dynamics and supplementary material has done a nice job of filling some of those things in (Spark of the Resistance and Resistance Reborn and Alliegence and the TROS novelization have all been really good for this), but that the basic bones of what they had wasn’t terrible and the concept art and deleted scenes really reflect that.

Hi! My biggest problems with it were:- The idea that the light and the dark were meant to be balanced together and Rey was onto something with that, which is explicitly against what George Lucas says about how the Force works- Coruscant being some sort of wasteland after the fall of the Empire, like, you expect me to believe a planet that important would fall into that deep of ruin in only a couple of decades?  No thanks- Everything with Mortis felt completely wrong to me and not understanding why it wasn’t just an awesome Force-related spectacle, but actually meant something, there was nothing to do with the Overlords of the Force, just that it was a Force-heavy planet to namedrop, nothing of meaning really happened in Duel of the Fates- Finn in chains, NO FUCKING THANKS- Hux secretly wanting to be Force-sensitive just felt like it came out of nowhere and had no impact or connection to anything elseIt just felt like it was trying to namedrop things that were big deals in previous Star Wars stories, without understanding what gave them meaning, and had a fundamental misunderstanding of the Force.  The concept art was really cool, but the concept art is always really cool for pretty much every single thing in Star Wars, but the script just felt terrible to me.It did, however, give us the most amazing line, when Hux realizes he’s been beaten:  “He lost the star war.”  L O L AMAZING THANK YOU.

I never really know where to put myself re: the sequels, because there’s a lot I feel could have been so much better in easy to fix ways, but then I have to wonder how much of that is my own bias because one could say the same about the prequels, except could they, because I never really see a lot of, “if they had just tweaked this one thing here, then this one thing over here, the prequels could have been great!”, that a lot of the criticisms against the prequels are that they didn’t like what they did, but don’t really have ideas for what they would have liked, while the sequels I see a lot more, “I liked the basic set-up, but here’s what needed to be addressed”.Which is assuming it’s even fair to pit the prequels and the sequels (or the originals) against each other, because they each stand on their own, they can be taken on their own merits, BUT I keep navel gazing about why I’m so easy on the prequels when I’m harsher on the sequels.I think a lot of it, for all that TROS is actually my favorite of the sequel movies, that the prequel trilogy absolutely nailed its ending for me, that Revenge of the Sith is my all-time favorite Star Wars movie, and I thought that it really showed that George Lucas had a strong sense of who these characters were and where they were going and why they did what they did.The sequels have a ton of charm and I really do love the set-up, there’s been some really excellent worldbuilding (especially re: the political situation) in the supplementary material and they’ve worked to put more aliens back in the galaxy, and I’m softer on the sequels in that regard because I live in the supplementary materials much more than I do in just the movies (setting aside the whole aspect of how I do consider the movies to be the “foundation” of SW, at the very least for I through VI) and I’m willing to give them time to integrate TROS into things, just as I was willing to give them time to integrate TFA and then TLJ into the bigger tapestry of SW.It’s hard because I don’t want to be negative about the sequels so much, but I’ve been slipping into that mindset a lot because I see all these things that could have made the story stronger, could have used the pieces that were there better, could have widened up the scope of these movies so they don’t feel like they have such a narrow focus, how they could have better incorporated the worldbuilding (planets and aliens alike) to actually make this feel like the GFFA, but the more I focus on that, the more I get ensnared in that mindset.  The more I vent, the more frustration I feel.I think, too, part of the problem is that I’m not terribly enamored with the creators of these movies and it’s very hard to get enthused about interviews or insights when I’m so annoyed by both sides of the JJ/Terrio vs Rian Johnson thing and want both sides of this entire thing to just chill out already.  Not that it’s up to me, people do what they want on their own twitters, but sometimes I do feel like every tweet made about it saps a little more good will from me re: the sequels.  Also, you know, my fault for being on twitter to rubberneck the wank, fair enough! XDWhich means I keep trying to get back to a more positive place about the sequels, but it’s hard when it doesn’t feel like I’m finding the right corners of fandom who are just chilling out and enjoying the movies and characters and stories.  It feels like I’m constantly seeing everything pitted against each other and it wears my enthusiasm thin, especially when I have a lot of problems with the movies, but I want to be charitable towards them yet not ignore them.Nobody really seems to be having fun with the sequels and it’s hard for me to generate my own when it’s not the era of my heart, so I wind up being kind of more negative than usual, despite that I ACTUALLY REALLY LIKE THE SEQUELS ERA AND THE CHARACTERS.  *wistful*  I miss that time when the Phasma novel or Cobalt Squadron came out and I was just BURSTING WITH FEELINGS about the sequels and their amazing characters.Because I think another book like Spark of the Resistance would do a lot to jump start my positive feelings on the movies again.  Or a novel that better explains Ben Solo and his relationships with his family to me, to actually show us what’s going on in his head, to help me connect to the movie version better.I AM READY TO LOVE, STAR WARS, PLEASE GIVE ME MORE TO READ OR WATCH WITH THEM, I WILL YELL HAPPILY ABOUT IT IF YOU DO, I’M PRETTY SURE.