Star Was, but it sort of pales in comparison to what happened a few days later now that the entire saga is dead in a ditch lmao sob sob
Someone was talking about me in another post I happened across. Obliquely, but complaining and saying I was this and that. None of it true. They misunderstood me being sarcastic about something and came up with a whole soap opera in their mind about my motivations. And I commented on the post that that wasn't what happened and the OP told me off then blocked me before I could explain. Even though I was polite. Silenced and misunderstood, two of my most feared/anxiety trigger hang up OCD things.
It escalated a bit from there, but I'm too depressed now to care about it. I cried over it. I'm so pathetic and stupid. Some internet stranger waay overreacted and wouldn't listen to an explanation and that shouldn't be my problem, but I have an obsession about 'injustice' so I can't STAND people being smugly self-righteously wrong. About anything, but about me particularly I guess.
All this wank seems so moot now that JJ Franchise Ruiner Abrams has struck down the only idealistic modern myth and shit all over everything and idealism is dead.
I'm really sorry that you had to go through that with that person. *hugs*
/All this wank seems so moot now that JJ Franchise Ruiner Abrams/
...I was dreading spoilers, but I finally gave in. I can't imagine what you're feeling right now. Would you like to talk about it on this post, would you feel more comfortable discussing it through LJ Messaging, or would you prefer to not talk about it at all? Whatever's more comfortable for you.
I held on to positivity for so long, but on the 13th reyloismine on tumblr who had the first legit TLJ spoilers spoiled the last fucking line. And then I went into meltdown in between hoping maybe it could still not be true.
I was maybe doing a littttle better and then Chris fucking Terrio opened his fucking mouth. Oh my GOD.
It's honestly so devastating. Like, I was already ranting and crying about how they have destroyed our only idealistic modern myth but it KEEPS GETTING WORSE. I cannot BELIEVE this was allowed to happen. I cannot BELIEVE the sociopathic shit I'm hearing as the rationale for it. I was already doing quite badly, but this is really my 'every anxiety thought and cynical depression voice you've ever heard was 100% correct and there's nothing you can do about it'
This is literally the worst act of cultural vandalism since the fucking Hays Code era.
Yes, I was really hoping that the spoiler leaks weren't true. I was really bummed out when it turned out that they were. :(
I really don't understand the decisions that the writers made. For all that this movie was seemingly trying to please everyone, I don't know who this movie is for. Fans who hate Reylo and Kylo? Well, he gets redeemed and Reylo is canon. Rey Skywalker fans? Well, the movie does give her a famous relative, but it's not Luke. Reylo fans? Half of their ship is gone. Force-sensitive Finn fans? Okay, Finn is now Force-sensitive, but he doesn't do anything with it. Fans who didn't like Rose? Okay, she's now barely in it, but Finn is now left with nobody.
In fact, ironically, for all that this movie tries to please everyone, it now seems to vindicate every criticism from the fans who disliked this trilogy: there was no plan, it's just copying the OT for nostalgia bait, the OT trio was only brought back to lure viewers in and then be thrown away for the new cast, etc.
Right now, I'm just trying to focus on the positive instead of the negative. Rey and Ben kissed onscreen and Reylo is undeniably canon. After all the years of harassment and accusations of abuse apologia from antis, Reylo shippers at least have this, even if the movie that surrounds it is a trainwreck. It's a cold comfort, I know, but it's something.
It's a love letter to the absolute worst parts of the 'fandom' (not even fans, really, because a lot of them were trolls with an agenda who don't even care about sw). It's a completely unmotivated checklist of events, mostly pandering to redditors who hated TLJ for stupid STUPID reasons and trying for nostalgia while actually taking a giant steaming fucking dump all over the OT. It doesn't commit to a single choice it makes (except the message that you should definitely throw away your child if your bad parenting and your heavy legacy and a predator's abuse fuck him up- your legacy tainted him and now he's not worthy to carry your legacy, get a shiny new perfect child instead), and tries to please everyone. Which is the shortest path to pleasing no one.
And John Boyega has now decided to deflect from his misogyny on instagram by mocking reylo on twitter and thus opened the flood gates of harassment to full on 2015 levels.
I've never been so disgusted by the messages of a film (and Terrio actually managed to make it WORSE, which is STAGGERING), I've never seen such a fucking desecration of a cultural institution, and I've never seen a corporation shit on its fucking audience so hard. Reylos were the biggest champions of the ST and the most supportive fans, but fuck us, it's much more important we court ageing fanboys who will continue hating Disney SW forever and never spent a fucking dime on any of their merch/EU shit.
Like, the ship is canon, we're the only ones vindicated because they finally admitted Bendemption and Reylo were the only things planned all along (NO SHIT), but it doesn't matter, somehow we're still gross and delusional and should go watch Twilight and somehow we're Nazis and racist and responsible for harassing Kelly. Reylos were Kelly's biggest supporters but who needs facts. It's totally fine to shit on us and blame us for literally everything because we're stupid shippers. Right about everything, but somehow still delusional stupid shippers.
I find it so fucking reprehensible, the movie by itself was reprehensible, and it's worse EVERY DAY
/I've never seen a corporation shit on its fucking audience so hard/
And the thing is, after that TLJ fan edit came out (the one that edited out all of the female characters), Rian Johnson, etc. openly *mocked* it on Twitter. It seemed like DLF, or at least the cast, was aware of how dumb that was. Yet a couple years later, DLF decides to go along with it?
/we're the only ones vindicated because they finally admitted Bendemption and Reylo were the only things planned all along/
I read a post by an Internet commentor that said that even if that were true, Reylo was never going to have a happy ending because Hollywood is supposedly "not culturally equipped for that." That the most that it was ever going to be was a poor man's "Romeo and Juliet." That it was unrealistic for Reylo shippers to expect that Reylo would end happily because of the precedent of Vader dying immediately after being redeemed and because the whole movie was going to be Kylo fighting Rey and having a change of heart at the end, leaving no time to explore the idea of what happens after Ben redeems himself and doesn't die. That since Darth Vader didn't celebrate with the heroes in Endor at the end of ROTJ, neither would Ben celebrate with Rey, Finn, and Poe.
/but it doesn't matter, somehow we're still gross and delusional/
It's amazing that even after the movie has come out, I've still seen fans say that they wish that the movie didn't "pander" to Reylo shippers and that Rey Skywalker or Solo would've been more 'powerful.' I mean, I get that some of these fans may be Finnrey shippers and therefore must be upset that Finnrey wasn't canon. But I ship Erik x Christine and not Raoul x Christine, yet I'm not going to claim that Christine running off with Raoul and marrying him in "The Phantom of the Opera" came totally out of nowhere and that Leroux was just catering to...whomever, I don't know.
But no, the Reylo subtext is just wishful thinking, even with the shirtless Kylo scene, and Rey just finds Kylo interesting. Or she only feels sorry for him. Or something. At this point, J.J. Abrams should've just made Ben and Rey kiss in TFA, because I don't think that these fans are ever going to be convinced that Reylo was planned.
I also don't understand the persistence of the Rey Skywalker/Solo theory. None of the Solos acted like Rey was their long-lost relative in TFA and they never mentioned Luke having a daughter or even being involved with anyone. Leia popping up and saying, "Hey, you're a Palpatine" isn't any more far-fetched than saying, "Hey, you're my daughter/niece, I just never mentioned it in TFA because..."
The R+J thing makes so angry. I got an ask on tumblr about someone's English teacher friend saying they liked the movie and it had good allusions. And I can only ask if this person has ever actually read Shakespeare. R&J is about the idealistic lovers as causalities of a pointless conflict based on pride and stubborn clinging on to hatred the source of which isn’t even remembered. The opposing sides aren’t functionally or morally different, it’s just prejudice. The avoidable and unnecessary nature of the lover’s deaths is the thematic centre of the narrative.
In SW the war is a metaphor for the conflict going on in the human spirit between selfishness and love (aka compassion, aka selflessness). Empire/Dark Side are straight up evil and there is no compromise possible with them. People on the DS/FO can be saved, but they are on the wrong side and the good guys are right to fight against it. The problem in the galaxy is selfish choices and selfish choices create evil, but love is always stronger than violence and love is productive- choosing love is choosing life. There is no punishment and sacrifice is rewarded. Love doesn’t kill you, love sets you free and allows you to live.
R&J is also a tragedy where SW is supposed to be an idealistic fairy tale. Romeo and Juliet both died. The point was the waste of their lives. Ben dying for Rey to live has NOTHING to do with that. Sad lovers =/= R&J.
It's not 'reverse anidala' for him to die, either. Anakin already performed an act of sacrificial unconditional love. He saved LUKE. Luke is their child, literally the product of their love. Saving him means that love was vindicated and it moves forward hopefully into the future because LUKE SURVIVES. What Luke (and Leia) needed to do after that is be the positive atoning presence in the galaxy Anakin isn’t because he died. To carry forward that moral victory, to heal the generational trauma of their broken family, to make Padmé's love productive.
Saying Ben must spend every second of his life suffering for Anakin’s sins and then give up every piece of his identity and legacy including his actual lifeforce without ever having something of his own as a karmic exchange for Padmé's death is denying him any agency and completely destroys SW’s idealistic ethical premise that you always have a choice. He’s cursed, none of this is his fault, he was born to die. It’s also saying Anakin’s redemption wasn’t real, his death was a punishment instead of a release, and just one death wasn’t enough punishment. None of which can be supported by the text, which is unequivocal about Anakin’s redemption and which eschews punishment entirely.
If you’re going to bring the prequels into it, you have to acknowledge the prequels are talking to the OT and are an attempt to flesh out the resolution by giving Anakin a POV and constructing a full redemption arc retroactively. Not to undermine it. The only thing the OT ending lacks is reconciliation for Leia (which is the thread the ST picked and unravelled) and post-redemption life. Rejoining society.
Ben can’t heal the legacy dead and no one can do it for him. Bringing Rey back to life is pure contrivance. It doesn’t make sense for Ben at the end of his character arc, and it provides no restitution or consolation. She was dead for no reason and now she’s alive for no reason. Her facing Palpatine is empty, ghosts rallying around her is empty- she has no organic connection to any of this.
Given how nonsensical and haphazard the decisions surrounding TROS have been, I think that the poster was suggesting that if J.J. Abrams had Reylo in mind at the start and wanted to do 'Romeo and Juliet in space', then maybe he was thinking "Montagues and Capulets = Skywalkers and Palpatines" with the 'twist' being that the Skywalker was on the Dark Side and the Palpatine was on the Light Side. Personally, I think that regardless of whether or not it was planned, the Palpatine reveal was very contrived and came out of nowhere (and I refuse to acknowledge it).
/What Luke (and Leia) needed to do after that is be the positive atoning presence in the galaxy Anakin isn’t/
If DLF was really that worried about alienating the fans, then they shouldn't have brought the OT trio back to begin with. They should've left them alone and let fans imagine how Luke could've restored the Jedi order, as the EU apparently tried to do. They should've done what the first "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" film did: make a story with new characters that takes place in a different timeframe in the world of the movies that fans loved. If Kylo had to be a Skywalker, then he could've been a descendant much later down the line. Would there still be fans who disliked him? Yes. But if his father had been [Insert New Name] Solo or Skywalker, many fans wouldn't have reacted to him as badly as they have. He wouldn't have been blamed for 'ruining' the happy ending of ROTJ. DLF should've just focused on creating new characters without the baggage of the old if they were worried about competing with nostalgia. In fact...isn't that what "The Mandalorian" is doing now? And so far, I haven't heard any major complaints?
Anakin and Padmé were Romeo and Juliet, that's actually a reasonable comparison. Because the young lovers were mutually destroyed by the folly, short-sightedness and prejudice of the generation in authority. They were star-crossed and their relationship was doomed. If one were a writer trying to actually add to the story, one would assume the purpose of reylo was to be the pair of lovers who could finally succeed and have a healthy relationship and get to raise their own children to be well-adjusted people who never need to have an identity crisis about being secretly related to an evil dude. Which, you know, the whole careful set up of reylo as equals who challenge each other and push each other forward towards healthy adulthood, who save each other spiritually and physically-- that convinced me they were doing this on purpose.
No Reypatine is the biggest fucking asspull since the Mother dying of soap opera disease on HIMYM. Maybe they could have done something interesting with 'dark' origins for Rey, like Imperial Officers or something, but TLJ was UNEQUIVOCAL about the fact that she was nobody and her parents weren't special and that was MASSIVE in her entire character arc. These fucking clowns didn't understand how to move forward from there because they are hacks. Terrio said in an interview she was 'content' with that they needed something new to make her interesting. For fuck's sake. If what you got out of TLJ was that she felt great about this- Christ. The point (which Rian explained publicly exactly for people as stupid as JJ and Terrio) is that hearing her parents weren't the heroes she'd created in her mind, that they didn't leave her for some grand purpose or to protect her etc. etc. as she's deluded herself into believing was the hardest thing she could hear. It challenged her, it upended her worldview. EXACTLY like hearing Vader was his father did for Luke. That's called CHARACTER DRIVEN WRITING.
Instead they validate her maladapted coping mechanisms and say that yes, she was right all along about her parents being heroes who never wanted to abandon her. It's the most counterproductive thing imaginable. And she has no reaction to being related to basically Satan, she INHERITED force lightning, because apparently you INHERIT that shit down. It destroys her agency completely. She's perfect and innately good, any darkness she has has nothing to do with her, it's just Palpatine sperm. Her power is Palpatine's power. She's an empty fucking vessel who makes no choices and no sacrifices and is never heroic the way a SW protagonist is supposed to be. BEN is the only character who illustrates the SW virtues. He is the last Skywalker in every fucking sense, the dying gasp of the myth before it is snuffed out and Rey becomes fucking Iron Man.
And they're retconning Ben's proposal and his honesty with her and shitting all over their entire beautiful intimacy in TLJ. The tie-in material is working overtime to retcon it all as him being a manipulator and LF can fucking burn for it.
They should never have torn down the happy ending of RotJ and made real storytelling choices with real stakes if they didn't intend to follow through. If they were fucking cowards, we should have just got fluff with the OT trio as cool mentors in cameos or whatever. Just make pure fanservice if you're going to make fanservice. I very, very reluctantly gave the ST a shot ONLY because TLJ seemed to confirm that they were definitely doing reylo and Ben's arc was in good hands.
I mean, ideally, I would like them to leave it alone entirely, but that was never going to happen. But I can't believe the fanboys were right and they really brought back the trio to kill them pointlessly one by one and ruin their fucking legacies and turn the entirely Skywalker Saga into a nihilistic shaggy dog story which is an insignificant FOOTNOTE to the rise of Rey Palpatine, Jedi Super Saiyan, Pure as the Driven Snow. The bad guy literally wins, all the bad guys were vindicated. Love is weakness, doing the right thing has no reward. Awesome.
Like, kicking George Lucas in the nuts would have been cheaper.
/Maybe they could have done something interesting with 'dark' origins for Rey, like Imperial Officers/
Yes, that was a common theory that I saw from fans. They thought that maybe the ship that we see in the flashback was a First Order ship.
/didn't understand how to move forward from there/
I saw so many suggestions from Reylo fans on how to continue the story after TLJ: a coup from Hux, a stormtrooper rebellion, fall-out from Snoke's death, etc. But apparently the best thing that Terrio could come up with was bringing back a long-dead character from the OT for no reason and making him related to Rey. I wonder if Rian Johnson made a mistake in killing off Snoke, because it's clear that Terrio and Abrams had no idea what to do if there wasn't a Big Bad Villain in the movie.
/she was 'content' with that they needed something new to make her interesting/
In other words: "Rey is unrealistic and boring if she's not related to an OT character." Which is exactly what many fans have been saying all along.
You know who else wasn't related to any OT characters? Han Solo. He didn't turn out to be Luke's brother or cousin, and he's still one of the most popular characters. Boba Fett barely got any lines in the OT, and fandom fell in love with him for some reason. So, why couldn't Rey be allowed to stand on her own two feet? Why did she have to be related to someone for fans to like her?
/If what you got out of TLJ was that she felt great about this/
How did Rey 'feel great' about it? She was crying when she admitted that they were nobodies. What, is it because she was smiling at the end when she greeted Poe?
/she has no reaction to being related to basically Satan/
Because who cared about Luke's reaction in ESB? All that mattered was the reveal, not its effect on the character.
/And they're retconning Ben's proposal and his honesty with her/
Even though he was redeemed in TROS...dear Lord. It's the Loki situation all over again: they really don't know what to do with him, do they?
/the OT trio as cool mentors in cameos/
Or, if they wanted to continue the themes of legacy, they could've just made the OT characters role models that all of the new characters initially misunderstood. Rey looks up to Luke Skywalker because he was a Jedi from a desert planet that he couldn't wait to get off of, just like her. Kylo looks up to Vader because he wants to be like him. Even though she's falling for him, Rey thinks that she must kill Kylo to do what's right because that's surely what Luke did to Vader, right? Ben thinks that he has to banish the Light from himself to emulate Vader, etc. And then you could have parallel moments where they each find out that they were wrong. Vader wasn't an emotionless killing machine; the Dark Side brought him no joy or happiness. Luke didn't kill Vader; Vader died to save Luke because they were father and son and they loved each other. It wasn't about superior fighting or Force powers, it was about love. Rey and Ben are trying to emulate their role models, but misunderstand what those people were actually like, which could be a meta-commentary on fans, if they wanted to go that route. If Kylo's parents had been other people and if Rey had stayed Rey Nobody, they still would've had an interesting story on their hands.
/I wonder if Rian Johnson made a mistake in killing off Snoke, because it's clear that Terrio and Abrams had no idea what to do if there wasn't a Big Bad Villain in the movie/
Well, it's really not his fault that they suck and have no imagination whatsoever, but even then, they could have just brought Snoke back. They brought back the long-dead Palpatine with no explanation, there's no reason they couldn't have done that with Snoke. A lot of fanboys actually theorised he wasn't dead or that his physical body was some kind of golem or something. Less stupid than physically resurrecting the Emperor and not even trying to explain it.
/You know who else wasn't related to any OT characters? Han Solo./
Yep. Neither was Lando, also really popular. But they're men. They're allowed to just be cool and powerful on their own. Fucking hell. Like, the sibling ass-pull is one of the worst things about the OT; it makes no sense and it makes the universe shrink instantly, it's a huge glaring flaw. And they're like- yeah, let's replicate THAT terrible idea energy.
Like, I was born and raised watching the OT on a loop and I still don't really think of Luke and Leia as siblings. I've always known they 'are', but it just doesn't fit with 2/3s of the story so it remains kinda over there as a piece of information I don't really 'take on board'.
/Even though he was redeemed in TROS...dear Lord. It's the Loki situation all over again: they really don't know what to do with him, do they?/
It's funny now how many people theorised that they developed and styled Ben the way they did partly because they saw how popular Loki was and decided to do that archetype right and give that audience the kind of story he should have had. I was like, this time it's on purpose, they won't sabotage his character and kill him to try to get us to like him less, they have deliberately set this up and know what they're doing. But nope. It's the same. They have learned literally nothing from Loki whatsoever.
They made him the only son of Han and Leia, Luke's nephew and student, they hounded a really serious actor who specifically said he didn't want to do a soulless blockbuster and didn't want to be party to ruining SW's legacy with hollow cash-grab sequels until they convinced him it wasn't going to be that, they spent years making him super identifiable to kids and woobieising him relentlessly and wrote essentially a fucking whump fic where he's done nothing wrong ever in his life and everyone is OOC in order to be awful to him and then he dies.
How do these sociopaths not see the problem with this? And Adam said it was his most personal character because of private family stuff he related to. I'm sure we'll never hear an openly critical word from him about any of this, but they really really fucked him and he'll probably never do a movie anything like this ever again.
/Less stupid than physically resurrecting the Emperor and not even trying to explain it/
I really don't know how they expected people to buy that. It's like something out of a bad fanfic. Or, again, they were applying the same rules for SW as they did for Marvel: "Hey, Coulson and Loki came back, even though they died in previous films! So, the Emperor's now back too!"
/They're allowed to just be cool and powerful on their own/
It's the same thing with Boba Fett, Obi-Wan, and Yoda. People don't even know what Yoda's species is. But, no, Rey's the one who needs the CV, birth certificate, and ancestry tree before we'll let her beat Ben in a fight.
/I still don't really think of Luke and Leia as siblings/
Even though fanfics and the EU have tried to fill in the blanks when it comes to Leia's relationship with Vader, there's still the feeling that she's on the outside looking in. If you wanted to ignore the reveal in a fanfic, the dynamics could be the same: Luke and Vader bond while Han, Leia, Chewie, and Lando are Luke's confused and concerned friends who don't get it. I'm sure that the Leia/Luke shippers who were bitterly disappointed by the retcon are happy to ignore it. :P
And Vader and Luke's relationship is another reason why Leia wasn't going to end up with Luke, even if she never became his sister. When you find out that the father that you idolized growing up is actually your enemy, then who cares anymore that the hotshot pilot is dating the princess? Leia was never going to be able to compete with Vader in terms of narrative importance to Luke.
/it just doesn't fit with 2/3s of the story so it remains kinda over there as a piece of information I don't really 'take on board'/
That's kind of like me with the prequels. Anakin's wife is named Padme and she was from Naboo? Okay. Anakin and Owen were stepbrothers? Sure. Anakin was a slave? Okay. Anakin met Obi-Wan when he was nine and his father was the Force? Uh, no, let me see what this fan's reimagining of Anakin's backstory says.
/making him super identifiable to kids/
I remember reading somewhere that DLF nixed an idea by SNL (or was it MTV?) that would turn Ben into a joke. So, they were protective of him then in that sense, but apparently they're now fine with getting rid of him. What was the point of all that media about him, then? Baby Ben? The MTV movie awards skit with Tiffany Haddish? Matt the Radar Technician?
They wanted to siphon Ben’s narrative weight as the legacy into her. Which is in aid of them mowing down everything specific and individual about Star Wars so they can launch the SWCU without needing to worry about mythic grandeur or challenging themes about the nature of heroism. The Skywalkers and their divine mandate as the galactic royal family of beautiful disasters whose defiance shakes the stars refuse to be static superheroes, so they had to go. But we wanna keep the cool name, that name sells merch.
And we’re ignoring that if you take the ST by itself as a stand-alone fairy tale, this is completely stripping Rey of her power as a fairy tale heroine. Her love should be able to save Ben, she should be rewarded for her suffering. She should be productive and full of life, her love should herald a new generation- it doesn’t, she and Ben are barren. Their love is barren. Instead we’re just supposed to forget she ever wanted life and love and pretend she wanted lineage and adventure.
She kisses the prince and he DIES. Her feminine power is STRIPPED COMPLETELY to make her a masculine blank slate eternal child Gary Stu. JJ really gave Rey exactly the life she was afraid of in TFA. He, in HIS FILM not Rian’s, has her look up at that older scavenger woman and see the face of her future- he in HIS FILM gave her that big ‘wonder’ shot and line about seeing greenery for the first time. This motherfucker sketched this character with a real edge of poignancy which gave her humanity, that moment of ‘is this all my life will be?’ and the longing of adolescence. She wants life!
And then he made that vision come true. She ended up precisely as she feared she would, alone on a dead planet with no family and no purpose. They put a fucking line in the fucking visual dictionary about her always being more comfortable in deserts.
That’s how bad this fucking movie is- they put this line in a visual dictionary to try to justify dumping their heroine in her depression dream and leaving her there with nothing but ghosts EXACTLY AS SHE WAS AT THE BEGINNING. LOCKED IN ETERNAL CHILDHOOD, HER LOVE INADEQUATE TO SAVE HER PRINCE AND HER VICTORIES ENTIRELY COMING FROM ACCIDENTAL CONNECTIONS TO MEN. She has no power, none of her decisions matter or have any consequences. And her reward for all her suffering and faith is getting to crawl back into her defensive maladapted coping mechanisms with a new set of pretend parents and some identity theft.
When WHEN did we start pretending that she wanted an important lineage or a name and not someone to love and have love her?
What is going on in the tiny minds which produced this? Super empowering how none of her choices mattered and she couldn’t save her soulmate because we wouldn’t want to imply any possibility her romantic love could be consummated. No it’s a barren, frigid thing, and she can only come down from the pedestal long enough to give him a chaste peck as he dies, snuffing out all chance of renewal and rejuvenation for the galaxy.
This broken fairy tale full of dead things. It’s so wrong.
Except they're not a royal family. This is something that I thought was off-putting about the films and fandom to begin with. Luke was just a farm boy. Yes, his sister ended up being a princess, but that was only because she was adopted. Before the prequels, we knew nothing about Anakin's background other than he was a Jedi and a pilot and we knew nothing about his wife. Yet throughout this whole trilogy, people have been talking about the 'mighty Skywalker' blood or the Skywalker lineage and whatnot. This whole thing started with the fall of the hero's father. It's not like there's a long dynasty of Skywalkers throughout the ages. So, TROS acting like Rey taking on the surname is empowering is nonsense. It's not a title. It's a surname. And there's no reason for her to take the surname other than to try to placate the fans who were upset that she wasn't a Skywalker to begin with.
/he in HIS FILM gave her that big ‘wonder’ shot and line about seeing greenery for the first time/
J.J. Abrams contradicted so many things from his own movie that I really wonder what was going on behind the scenes. Did he always plan for Rey to have important parents, but then Rian Johnson scrapped that idea in TLJ? Did he always plan for Reylo to be a tragic love story? How much stuff in TROS was done to appease fans vs. Abrams trying to squeeze the movie back into the box that he'd planned for it before TLJ happened?
/her always being more comfortable in deserts/
Okay, what about being more comfortable being alone? Are they going to retcon that too? Say that she never had problems being alone, so she'll just wander around in the desert with a droid?
/EXACTLY AS SHE WAS AT THE BEGINNING/
I remember reading a review of "Jupiter Ascending" that criticized this decision as well: the heroine begins the movie as a janitor and hates her job, and yet at the end of the movie, after her big adventure, she's back to scrubbing toilets for no reason. But at least in that movie, she got to keep her boyfriend.
/WHEN did we start pretending that she wanted an important lineage or a name and not someone to love and have love her?/
When we started projecting the fans' expectations onto her. They were chomping at the bit to find out who her parents were, so obviously all that Rey cared about was her lineage, right? I mean, that's all that certain fans cared about. Rey Nobody was an underwhelming and disappointing anticlimax for them, so TROS had to correct that by throwing her at another OT character.
I mean it in a metaphorical sense. The Skywalkers are mythic Fisherkings in that the Skywalker of each trilogy mirrors the state of the galaxy itself. The war is always set dressing, just a big metaphor for what's really going on, which is in the souls of the characters. Saving Anakin saved the galaxy, in the prequels his fall allowed the rise of the Empire. Ben's fall coincides with the rise of the First Order. Rey's job as the protagonist should have been to save him with unconditional love and through saving him defeat evil and save the galaxy- that's what Luke did. The Skywalkers ask the Saga's biggest questions about identity and destiny- and before the answer was always that fatalism was wrong. Your destiny was your own, there's always a choice it's never too late. TROS says fatalism is correct- it was too late for Ben when he was still in the womb. He was right that he couldn't go home- all he could do was die.
But yes- I agree. There's no famous legacy of Skywalkers in-universe. In-universe the name is obscure and where known, has only bad associations. People finding out about Anakin ruined Leia's life. Luke was a weird Jedi hermit people didn't trust and who probably wasn't highly thought of outside the rebellion. He was an urban legend by the time of TFA. But 'the Force is strong with [the] family'. Anakin was the chosen one, conceived by the Force itself. They are special, but it's the family that's special, not the fucking name. The legacy is a burden which comes from the literal blood and that blood being targeted by dark forces, it's not a fucking superhero identity. Ben was a victim because of his bloodline and for no other reason- that's what the legacy means. His parents and Luke failed him because they fell prey to fatalism again, to the 'too much Vader' thing. And then this fucking movie has them all hunky dory with training Palpatine's granddaughter because they 'sense her heart' or something. Right because Ben as a ten year old child was just so scary, I'm sure. It's SO DISGUSTING. He's tainted because of his blood, abused because of his blood an their bad parenting, so they should throw him away and get a new child they didn't fuck up whose ~worthy~ to carry the legacy.
JJ never planned for her to have important parents. Daisy Ridley was consistently adamant that it never changed between TFA and TLJ. JJ also let it slip and the story group were all consistent about it. The tie-in material was consistent about it. This retcon is in response to the TLJ wank.
JJ also had a shot of her looking at an old scavenger woman and clearly having a moment of existential dread about her future if she kept going in her current path. Then he made that her ending. The character's worst nightmare.
He never had a vision, he just threw stuff in. Kasdan was the one who developed the Force bond, Harrison Ford came up with Han's forgiveness in the bridge scene, the idea of reylo was already a concept before JJ even joined the team. This shitshow was a checklist to try to please the Fandom Menace crowd.
/When we started projecting the fans' expectations onto her./
Yeah, exactly. She's on Tatooine looking a binary sunset which means absolutely nothing to her, living her worst nightmare with no belonging and no family, but she HAS A SURNAME NOW and she's ready to have ADVENTURES totally unfettered by desires or character of any kind. We got rid of that icky romance and she's regressed to childhood with a pretend family of ghosts exactly like she had in TFA. She's become a sexless stand in for the audience, stepping into Luke's moment from ANH. But Luke wanted a bigger life, more meaning and purpose, so FOR LUKE seeing the binary sunset again in TLJ MEANT SOMETHING. It was about finally being in the moment and understanding his purpose, mirroring his original scene which was about longing and staring off at the horizon. Luke wanted adventures and identity, REY WANTED A FAMILY.
/JJ never planned for her to have important parents./
When TROS trailers came out, I did see one fanboy say that he called it that Rey was planned to be a Skywalker from the beginning once the title was revealed, but then Rian Johnson 'messed it up', so now JJ Abrams was going to 'correct' it. I wonder how he feels now.
/the idea of reylo was already a concept before JJ even joined the team/
Oh, wow, I didn't know that. I thought that he had originated it.
/she HAS A SURNAME NOW/
Right because everyone hates Yoda and Chewbacca for not having surnames. Wait...
/she's ready to have ADVENTURES/
So, this entire trilogy was just an origin story for a character? At least when the "Clone Wars" movie came out to advertise for the TV show, it was just one movie.
/We got rid of that icky romance/
The romance that was the only consistent thing in the entire trilogy (and fans are still calling it a contrived sop to Reylo shippers), that was joked about in the MTV movie awards, that the cast was frequently asked about. Luke didn't end up with anyone, so neither can Rey. Even though her love interest didn't end up dating someone else (Han x Leia) and even though she has no parental figure who dominated her emotional journey (Vader). Because we can't write adventures with a couple in love (even though in the past, Disney has). Once a couple gets together and/or married, the story's over.
Someone was talking about me in another post I happened across. Obliquely, but complaining and saying I was this and that. None of it true. They misunderstood me being sarcastic about something and came up with a whole soap opera in their mind about my motivations. And I commented on the post that that wasn't what happened and the OP told me off then blocked me before I could explain. Even though I was polite. Silenced and misunderstood, two of my most feared/anxiety trigger hang up OCD things.
It escalated a bit from there, but I'm too depressed now to care about it. I cried over it. I'm so pathetic and stupid. Some internet stranger waay overreacted and wouldn't listen to an explanation and that shouldn't be my problem, but I have an obsession about 'injustice' so I can't STAND people being smugly self-righteously wrong. About anything, but about me particularly I guess.
All this wank seems so moot now that JJ Franchise Ruiner Abrams has struck down the only idealistic modern myth and shit all over everything and idealism is dead.
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/All this wank seems so moot now that JJ Franchise Ruiner Abrams/
...I was dreading spoilers, but I finally gave in. I can't imagine what you're feeling right now. Would you like to talk about it on this post, would you feel more comfortable discussing it through LJ Messaging, or would you prefer to not talk about it at all? Whatever's more comfortable for you.
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I was maybe doing a littttle better and then Chris fucking Terrio opened his fucking mouth. Oh my GOD.
It's honestly so devastating. Like, I was already ranting and crying about how they have destroyed our only idealistic modern myth but it KEEPS GETTING WORSE. I cannot BELIEVE this was allowed to happen. I cannot BELIEVE the sociopathic shit I'm hearing as the rationale for it. I was already doing quite badly, but this is really my 'every anxiety thought and cynical depression voice you've ever heard was 100% correct and there's nothing you can do about it'
This is literally the worst act of cultural vandalism since the fucking Hays Code era.
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I really don't understand the decisions that the writers made. For all that this movie was seemingly trying to please everyone, I don't know who this movie is for. Fans who hate Reylo and Kylo? Well, he gets redeemed and Reylo is canon. Rey Skywalker fans? Well, the movie does give her a famous relative, but it's not Luke. Reylo fans? Half of their ship is gone. Force-sensitive Finn fans? Okay, Finn is now Force-sensitive, but he doesn't do anything with it. Fans who didn't like Rose? Okay, she's now barely in it, but Finn is now left with nobody.
In fact, ironically, for all that this movie tries to please everyone, it now seems to vindicate every criticism from the fans who disliked this trilogy: there was no plan, it's just copying the OT for nostalgia bait, the OT trio was only brought back to lure viewers in and then be thrown away for the new cast, etc.
Right now, I'm just trying to focus on the positive instead of the negative. Rey and Ben kissed onscreen and Reylo is undeniably canon. After all the years of harassment and accusations of abuse apologia from antis, Reylo shippers at least have this, even if the movie that surrounds it is a trainwreck. It's a cold comfort, I know, but it's something.
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And John Boyega has now decided to deflect from his misogyny on instagram by mocking reylo on twitter and thus opened the flood gates of harassment to full on 2015 levels.
I've never been so disgusted by the messages of a film (and Terrio actually managed to make it WORSE, which is STAGGERING), I've never seen such a fucking desecration of a cultural institution, and I've never seen a corporation shit on its fucking audience so hard. Reylos were the biggest champions of the ST and the most supportive fans, but fuck us, it's much more important we court ageing fanboys who will continue hating Disney SW forever and never spent a fucking dime on any of their merch/EU shit.
Like, the ship is canon, we're the only ones vindicated because they finally admitted Bendemption and Reylo were the only things planned all along (NO SHIT), but it doesn't matter, somehow we're still gross and delusional and should go watch Twilight and somehow we're Nazis and racist and responsible for harassing Kelly. Reylos were Kelly's biggest supporters but who needs facts. It's totally fine to shit on us and blame us for literally everything because we're stupid shippers. Right about everything, but somehow still delusional stupid shippers.
I find it so fucking reprehensible, the movie by itself was reprehensible, and it's worse EVERY DAY
HOW
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And the thing is, after that TLJ fan edit came out (the one that edited out all of the female characters), Rian Johnson, etc. openly *mocked* it on Twitter. It seemed like DLF, or at least the cast, was aware of how dumb that was. Yet a couple years later, DLF decides to go along with it?
/we're the only ones vindicated because they finally admitted Bendemption and Reylo were the only things planned all along/
I read a post by an Internet commentor that said that even if that were true, Reylo was never going to have a happy ending because Hollywood is supposedly "not culturally equipped for that." That the most that it was ever going to be was a poor man's "Romeo and Juliet." That it was unrealistic for Reylo shippers to expect that Reylo would end happily because of the precedent of Vader dying immediately after being redeemed and because the whole movie was going to be Kylo fighting Rey and having a change of heart at the end, leaving no time to explore the idea of what happens after Ben redeems himself and doesn't die. That since Darth Vader didn't celebrate with the heroes in Endor at the end of ROTJ, neither would Ben celebrate with Rey, Finn, and Poe.
/but it doesn't matter, somehow we're still gross and delusional/
It's amazing that even after the movie has come out, I've still seen fans say that they wish that the movie didn't "pander" to Reylo shippers and that Rey Skywalker or Solo would've been more 'powerful.' I mean, I get that some of these fans may be Finnrey shippers and therefore must be upset that Finnrey wasn't canon. But I ship Erik x Christine and not Raoul x Christine, yet I'm not going to claim that Christine running off with Raoul and marrying him in "The Phantom of the Opera" came totally out of nowhere and that Leroux was just catering to...whomever, I don't know.
But no, the Reylo subtext is just wishful thinking, even with the shirtless Kylo scene, and Rey just finds Kylo interesting. Or she only feels sorry for him. Or something. At this point, J.J. Abrams should've just made Ben and Rey kiss in TFA, because I don't think that these fans are ever going to be convinced that Reylo was planned.
I also don't understand the persistence of the Rey Skywalker/Solo theory. None of the Solos acted like Rey was their long-lost relative in TFA and they never mentioned Luke having a daughter or even being involved with anyone. Leia popping up and saying, "Hey, you're a Palpatine" isn't any more far-fetched than saying, "Hey, you're my daughter/niece, I just never mentioned it in TFA because..."
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In SW the war is a metaphor for the conflict going on in the human spirit between selfishness and love (aka compassion, aka selflessness). Empire/Dark Side are straight up evil and there is no compromise possible with them. People on the DS/FO can be saved, but they are on the wrong side and the good guys are right to fight against it. The problem in the galaxy is selfish choices and selfish choices create evil, but love is always stronger than violence and love is productive- choosing love is choosing life. There is no punishment and sacrifice is rewarded. Love doesn’t kill you, love sets you free and allows you to live.
R&J is also a tragedy where SW is supposed to be an idealistic fairy tale. Romeo and Juliet both died. The point was the waste of their lives. Ben dying for Rey to live has NOTHING to do with that. Sad lovers =/= R&J.
It's not 'reverse anidala' for him to die, either. Anakin already performed an act of sacrificial unconditional love. He saved LUKE. Luke is their child, literally the product of their love. Saving him means that love was vindicated and it moves forward hopefully into the future because LUKE SURVIVES. What Luke (and Leia) needed to do after that is be the positive atoning presence in the galaxy Anakin isn’t because he died. To carry forward that moral victory, to heal the generational trauma of their broken family, to make Padmé's love productive.
Saying Ben must spend every second of his life suffering for Anakin’s sins and then give up every piece of his identity and legacy including his actual lifeforce without ever having something of his own as a karmic exchange for Padmé's death is denying him any agency and completely destroys SW’s idealistic ethical premise that you always have a choice. He’s cursed, none of this is his fault, he was born to die. It’s also saying Anakin’s redemption wasn’t real, his death was a punishment instead of a release, and just one death wasn’t enough punishment. None of which can be supported by the text, which is unequivocal about Anakin’s redemption and which eschews punishment entirely.
If you’re going to bring the prequels into it, you have to acknowledge the prequels are talking to the OT and are an attempt to flesh out the resolution by giving Anakin a POV and constructing a full redemption arc retroactively. Not to undermine it. The only thing the OT ending lacks is reconciliation for Leia (which is the thread the ST picked and unravelled) and post-redemption life. Rejoining society.
Ben can’t heal the legacy dead and no one can do it for him. Bringing Rey back to life is pure contrivance. It doesn’t make sense for Ben at the end of his character arc, and it provides no restitution or consolation. She was dead for no reason and now she’s alive for no reason. Her facing Palpatine is empty, ghosts rallying around her is empty- she has no organic connection to any of this.
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Given how nonsensical and haphazard the decisions surrounding TROS have been, I think that the poster was suggesting that if J.J. Abrams had Reylo in mind at the start and wanted to do 'Romeo and Juliet in space', then maybe he was thinking "Montagues and Capulets = Skywalkers and Palpatines" with the 'twist' being that the Skywalker was on the Dark Side and the Palpatine was on the Light Side. Personally, I think that regardless of whether or not it was planned, the Palpatine reveal was very contrived and came out of nowhere (and I refuse to acknowledge it).
/What Luke (and Leia) needed to do after that is be the positive atoning presence in the galaxy Anakin isn’t/
If DLF was really that worried about alienating the fans, then they shouldn't have brought the OT trio back to begin with. They should've left them alone and let fans imagine how Luke could've restored the Jedi order, as the EU apparently tried to do. They should've done what the first "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" film did: make a story with new characters that takes place in a different timeframe in the world of the movies that fans loved. If Kylo had to be a Skywalker, then he could've been a descendant much later down the line. Would there still be fans who disliked him? Yes. But if his father had been [Insert New Name] Solo or Skywalker, many fans wouldn't have reacted to him as badly as they have. He wouldn't have been blamed for 'ruining' the happy ending of ROTJ. DLF should've just focused on creating new characters without the baggage of the old if they were worried about competing with nostalgia. In fact...isn't that what "The Mandalorian" is doing now? And so far, I haven't heard any major complaints?
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No Reypatine is the biggest fucking asspull since the Mother dying of soap opera disease on HIMYM. Maybe they could have done something interesting with 'dark' origins for Rey, like Imperial Officers or something, but TLJ was UNEQUIVOCAL about the fact that she was nobody and her parents weren't special and that was MASSIVE in her entire character arc. These fucking clowns didn't understand how to move forward from there because they are hacks. Terrio said in an interview she was 'content' with that they needed something new to make her interesting. For fuck's sake. If what you got out of TLJ was that she felt great about this- Christ. The point (which Rian explained publicly exactly for people as stupid as JJ and Terrio) is that hearing her parents weren't the heroes she'd created in her mind, that they didn't leave her for some grand purpose or to protect her etc. etc. as she's deluded herself into believing was the hardest thing she could hear. It challenged her, it upended her worldview. EXACTLY like hearing Vader was his father did for Luke. That's called CHARACTER DRIVEN WRITING.
Instead they validate her maladapted coping mechanisms and say that yes, she was right all along about her parents being heroes who never wanted to abandon her. It's the most counterproductive thing imaginable. And she has no reaction to being related to basically Satan, she INHERITED force lightning, because apparently you INHERIT that shit down. It destroys her agency completely. She's perfect and innately good, any darkness she has has nothing to do with her, it's just Palpatine sperm. Her power is Palpatine's power. She's an empty fucking vessel who makes no choices and no sacrifices and is never heroic the way a SW protagonist is supposed to be. BEN is the only character who illustrates the SW virtues. He is the last Skywalker in every fucking sense, the dying gasp of the myth before it is snuffed out and Rey becomes fucking Iron Man.
And they're retconning Ben's proposal and his honesty with her and shitting all over their entire beautiful intimacy in TLJ. The tie-in material is working overtime to retcon it all as him being a manipulator and LF can fucking burn for it.
They should never have torn down the happy ending of RotJ and made real storytelling choices with real stakes if they didn't intend to follow through. If they were fucking cowards, we should have just got fluff with the OT trio as cool mentors in cameos or whatever. Just make pure fanservice if you're going to make fanservice. I very, very reluctantly gave the ST a shot ONLY because TLJ seemed to confirm that they were definitely doing reylo and Ben's arc was in good hands.
I mean, ideally, I would like them to leave it alone entirely, but that was never going to happen. But I can't believe the fanboys were right and they really brought back the trio to kill them pointlessly one by one and ruin their fucking legacies and turn the entirely Skywalker Saga into a nihilistic shaggy dog story which is an insignificant FOOTNOTE to the rise of Rey Palpatine, Jedi Super Saiyan, Pure as the Driven Snow. The bad guy literally wins, all the bad guys were vindicated. Love is weakness, doing the right thing has no reward. Awesome.
Like, kicking George Lucas in the nuts would have been cheaper.
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Yes, that was a common theory that I saw from fans. They thought that maybe the ship that we see in the flashback was a First Order ship.
/didn't understand how to move forward from there/
I saw so many suggestions from Reylo fans on how to continue the story after TLJ: a coup from Hux, a stormtrooper rebellion, fall-out from Snoke's death, etc. But apparently the best thing that Terrio could come up with was bringing back a long-dead character from the OT for no reason and making him related to Rey. I wonder if Rian Johnson made a mistake in killing off Snoke, because it's clear that Terrio and Abrams had no idea what to do if there wasn't a Big Bad Villain in the movie.
/she was 'content' with that they needed something new to make her interesting/
In other words: "Rey is unrealistic and boring if she's not related to an OT character." Which is exactly what many fans have been saying all along.
You know who else wasn't related to any OT characters? Han Solo. He didn't turn out to be Luke's brother or cousin, and he's still one of the most popular characters. Boba Fett barely got any lines in the OT, and fandom fell in love with him for some reason. So, why couldn't Rey be allowed to stand on her own two feet? Why did she have to be related to someone for fans to like her?
/If what you got out of TLJ was that she felt great about this/
How did Rey 'feel great' about it? She was crying when she admitted that they were nobodies. What, is it because she was smiling at the end when she greeted Poe?
/she has no reaction to being related to basically Satan/
Because who cared about Luke's reaction in ESB? All that mattered was the reveal, not its effect on the character.
/And they're retconning Ben's proposal and his honesty with her/
Even though he was redeemed in TROS...dear Lord. It's the Loki situation all over again: they really don't know what to do with him, do they?
/the OT trio as cool mentors in cameos/
Or, if they wanted to continue the themes of legacy, they could've just made the OT characters role models that all of the new characters initially misunderstood. Rey looks up to Luke Skywalker because he was a Jedi from a desert planet that he couldn't wait to get off of, just like her. Kylo looks up to Vader because he wants to be like him. Even though she's falling for him, Rey thinks that she must kill Kylo to do what's right because that's surely what Luke did to Vader, right? Ben thinks that he has to banish the Light from himself to emulate Vader, etc. And then you could have parallel moments where they each find out that they were wrong. Vader wasn't an emotionless killing machine; the Dark Side brought him no joy or happiness. Luke didn't kill Vader; Vader died to save Luke because they were father and son and they loved each other. It wasn't about superior fighting or Force powers, it was about love. Rey and Ben are trying to emulate their role models, but misunderstand what those people were actually like, which could be a meta-commentary on fans, if they wanted to go that route. If Kylo's parents had been other people and if Rey had stayed Rey Nobody, they still would've had an interesting story on their hands.
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Well, it's really not his fault that they suck and have no imagination whatsoever, but even then, they could have just brought Snoke back. They brought back the long-dead Palpatine with no explanation, there's no reason they couldn't have done that with Snoke. A lot of fanboys actually theorised he wasn't dead or that his physical body was some kind of golem or something. Less stupid than physically resurrecting the Emperor and not even trying to explain it.
/You know who else wasn't related to any OT characters? Han Solo./
Yep. Neither was Lando, also really popular. But they're men. They're allowed to just be cool and powerful on their own. Fucking hell. Like, the sibling ass-pull is one of the worst things about the OT; it makes no sense and it makes the universe shrink instantly, it's a huge glaring flaw. And they're like- yeah, let's replicate THAT terrible idea energy.
Like, I was born and raised watching the OT on a loop and I still don't really think of Luke and Leia as siblings. I've always known they 'are', but it just doesn't fit with 2/3s of the story so it remains kinda over there as a piece of information I don't really 'take on board'.
/Even though he was redeemed in TROS...dear Lord. It's the Loki situation all over again: they really don't know what to do with him, do they?/
It's funny now how many people theorised that they developed and styled Ben the way they did partly because they saw how popular Loki was and decided to do that archetype right and give that audience the kind of story he should have had. I was like, this time it's on purpose, they won't sabotage his character and kill him to try to get us to like him less, they have deliberately set this up and know what they're doing. But nope. It's the same. They have learned literally nothing from Loki whatsoever.
They made him the only son of Han and Leia, Luke's nephew and student, they hounded a really serious actor who specifically said he didn't want to do a soulless blockbuster and didn't want to be party to ruining SW's legacy with hollow cash-grab sequels until they convinced him it wasn't going to be that, they spent years making him super identifiable to kids and woobieising him relentlessly and wrote essentially a fucking whump fic where he's done nothing wrong ever in his life and everyone is OOC in order to be awful to him and then he dies.
How do these sociopaths not see the problem with this? And Adam said it was his most personal character because of private family stuff he related to. I'm sure we'll never hear an openly critical word from him about any of this, but they really really fucked him and he'll probably never do a movie anything like this ever again.
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I really don't know how they expected people to buy that. It's like something out of a bad fanfic. Or, again, they were applying the same rules for SW as they did for Marvel: "Hey, Coulson and Loki came back, even though they died in previous films! So, the Emperor's now back too!"
/They're allowed to just be cool and powerful on their own/
It's the same thing with Boba Fett, Obi-Wan, and Yoda. People don't even know what Yoda's species is. But, no, Rey's the one who needs the CV, birth certificate, and ancestry tree before we'll let her beat Ben in a fight.
/I still don't really think of Luke and Leia as siblings/
Even though fanfics and the EU have tried to fill in the blanks when it comes to Leia's relationship with Vader, there's still the feeling that she's on the outside looking in. If you wanted to ignore the reveal in a fanfic, the dynamics could be the same: Luke and Vader bond while Han, Leia, Chewie, and Lando are Luke's confused and concerned friends who don't get it. I'm sure that the Leia/Luke shippers who were bitterly disappointed by the retcon are happy to ignore it. :P
And Vader and Luke's relationship is another reason why Leia wasn't going to end up with Luke, even if she never became his sister. When you find out that the father that you idolized growing up is actually your enemy, then who cares anymore that the hotshot pilot is dating the princess? Leia was never going to be able to compete with Vader in terms of narrative importance to Luke.
/it just doesn't fit with 2/3s of the story so it remains kinda over there as a piece of information I don't really 'take on board'/
That's kind of like me with the prequels. Anakin's wife is named Padme and she was from Naboo? Okay. Anakin and Owen were stepbrothers? Sure. Anakin was a slave? Okay. Anakin met Obi-Wan when he was nine and his father was the Force? Uh, no, let me see what this fan's reimagining of Anakin's backstory says.
/making him super identifiable to kids/
I remember reading somewhere that DLF nixed an idea by SNL (or was it MTV?) that would turn Ben into a joke. So, they were protective of him then in that sense, but apparently they're now fine with getting rid of him. What was the point of all that media about him, then? Baby Ben? The MTV movie awards skit with Tiffany Haddish? Matt the Radar Technician?
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And we’re ignoring that if you take the ST by itself as a stand-alone fairy tale, this is completely stripping Rey of her power as a fairy tale heroine. Her love should be able to save Ben, she should be rewarded for her suffering. She should be productive and full of life, her love should herald a new generation- it doesn’t, she and Ben are barren. Their love is barren. Instead we’re just supposed to forget she ever wanted life and love and pretend she wanted lineage and adventure.
She kisses the prince and he DIES. Her feminine power is STRIPPED COMPLETELY to make her a masculine blank slate eternal child Gary Stu. JJ really gave Rey exactly the life she was afraid of in TFA. He, in HIS FILM not Rian’s, has her look up at that older scavenger woman and see the face of her future- he in HIS FILM gave her that big ‘wonder’ shot and line about seeing greenery for the first time. This motherfucker sketched this character with a real edge of poignancy which gave her humanity, that moment of ‘is this all my life will be?’ and the longing of adolescence. She wants life!
And then he made that vision come true. She ended up precisely as she feared she would, alone on a dead planet with no family and no purpose. They put a fucking line in the fucking visual dictionary about her always being more comfortable in deserts.
That’s how bad this fucking movie is- they put this line in a visual dictionary to try to justify dumping their heroine in her depression dream and leaving her there with nothing but ghosts EXACTLY AS SHE WAS AT THE BEGINNING. LOCKED IN ETERNAL CHILDHOOD, HER LOVE INADEQUATE TO SAVE HER PRINCE AND HER VICTORIES ENTIRELY COMING FROM ACCIDENTAL CONNECTIONS TO MEN. She has no power, none of her decisions matter or have any consequences. And her reward for all her suffering and faith is getting to crawl back into her defensive maladapted coping mechanisms with a new set of pretend parents and some identity theft.
When WHEN did we start pretending that she wanted an important lineage or a name and not someone to love and have love her?
What is going on in the tiny minds which produced this? Super empowering how none of her choices mattered and she couldn’t save her soulmate because we wouldn’t want to imply any possibility her romantic love could be consummated. No it’s a barren, frigid thing, and she can only come down from the pedestal long enough to give him a chaste peck as he dies, snuffing out all chance of renewal and rejuvenation for the galaxy.
This broken fairy tale full of dead things. It’s so wrong.
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Except they're not a royal family. This is something that I thought was off-putting about the films and fandom to begin with. Luke was just a farm boy. Yes, his sister ended up being a princess, but that was only because she was adopted. Before the prequels, we knew nothing about Anakin's background other than he was a Jedi and a pilot and we knew nothing about his wife. Yet throughout this whole trilogy, people have been talking about the 'mighty Skywalker' blood or the Skywalker lineage and whatnot. This whole thing started with the fall of the hero's father. It's not like there's a long dynasty of Skywalkers throughout the ages. So, TROS acting like Rey taking on the surname is empowering is nonsense. It's not a title. It's a surname. And there's no reason for her to take the surname other than to try to placate the fans who were upset that she wasn't a Skywalker to begin with.
/he in HIS FILM gave her that big ‘wonder’ shot and line about seeing greenery for the first time/
J.J. Abrams contradicted so many things from his own movie that I really wonder what was going on behind the scenes. Did he always plan for Rey to have important parents, but then Rian Johnson scrapped that idea in TLJ? Did he always plan for Reylo to be a tragic love story? How much stuff in TROS was done to appease fans vs. Abrams trying to squeeze the movie back into the box that he'd planned for it before TLJ happened?
/her always being more comfortable in deserts/
Okay, what about being more comfortable being alone? Are they going to retcon that too? Say that she never had problems being alone, so she'll just wander around in the desert with a droid?
/EXACTLY AS SHE WAS AT THE BEGINNING/
I remember reading a review of "Jupiter Ascending" that criticized this decision as well: the heroine begins the movie as a janitor and hates her job, and yet at the end of the movie, after her big adventure, she's back to scrubbing toilets for no reason. But at least in that movie, she got to keep her boyfriend.
/WHEN did we start pretending that she wanted an important lineage or a name and not someone to love and have love her?/
When we started projecting the fans' expectations onto her. They were chomping at the bit to find out who her parents were, so obviously all that Rey cared about was her lineage, right? I mean, that's all that certain fans cared about. Rey Nobody was an underwhelming and disappointing anticlimax for them, so TROS had to correct that by throwing her at another OT character.
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But yes- I agree. There's no famous legacy of Skywalkers in-universe. In-universe the name is obscure and where known, has only bad associations. People finding out about Anakin ruined Leia's life. Luke was a weird Jedi hermit people didn't trust and who probably wasn't highly thought of outside the rebellion. He was an urban legend by the time of TFA. But 'the Force is strong with [the] family'. Anakin was the chosen one, conceived by the Force itself. They are special, but it's the family that's special, not the fucking name. The legacy is a burden which comes from the literal blood and that blood being targeted by dark forces, it's not a fucking superhero identity. Ben was a victim because of his bloodline and for no other reason- that's what the legacy means. His parents and Luke failed him because they fell prey to fatalism again, to the 'too much Vader' thing. And then this fucking movie has them all hunky dory with training Palpatine's granddaughter because they 'sense her heart' or something. Right because Ben as a ten year old child was just so scary, I'm sure. It's SO DISGUSTING. He's tainted because of his blood, abused because of his blood an their bad parenting, so they should throw him away and get a new child they didn't fuck up whose ~worthy~ to carry the legacy.
JJ never planned for her to have important parents. Daisy Ridley was consistently adamant that it never changed between TFA and TLJ. JJ also let it slip and the story group were all consistent about it. The tie-in material was consistent about it. This retcon is in response to the TLJ wank.
JJ also had a shot of her looking at an old scavenger woman and clearly having a moment of existential dread about her future if she kept going in her current path. Then he made that her ending. The character's worst nightmare.
He never had a vision, he just threw stuff in. Kasdan was the one who developed the Force bond, Harrison Ford came up with Han's forgiveness in the bridge scene, the idea of reylo was already a concept before JJ even joined the team. This shitshow was a checklist to try to please the Fandom Menace crowd.
/When we started projecting the fans' expectations onto her./
Yeah, exactly. She's on Tatooine looking a binary sunset which means absolutely nothing to her, living her worst nightmare with no belonging and no family, but she HAS A SURNAME NOW and she's ready to have ADVENTURES totally unfettered by desires or character of any kind. We got rid of that icky romance and she's regressed to childhood with a pretend family of ghosts exactly like she had in TFA. She's become a sexless stand in for the audience, stepping into Luke's moment from ANH. But Luke wanted a bigger life, more meaning and purpose, so FOR LUKE seeing the binary sunset again in TLJ MEANT SOMETHING. It was about finally being in the moment and understanding his purpose, mirroring his original scene which was about longing and staring off at the horizon. Luke wanted adventures and identity, REY WANTED A FAMILY.
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When TROS trailers came out, I did see one fanboy say that he called it that Rey was planned to be a Skywalker from the beginning once the title was revealed, but then Rian Johnson 'messed it up', so now JJ Abrams was going to 'correct' it. I wonder how he feels now.
/the idea of reylo was already a concept before JJ even joined the team/
Oh, wow, I didn't know that. I thought that he had originated it.
/she HAS A SURNAME NOW/
Right because everyone hates Yoda and Chewbacca for not having surnames. Wait...
/she's ready to have ADVENTURES/
So, this entire trilogy was just an origin story for a character? At least when the "Clone Wars" movie came out to advertise for the TV show, it was just one movie.
/We got rid of that icky romance/
The romance that was the only consistent thing in the entire trilogy (and fans are still calling it a contrived sop to Reylo shippers), that was joked about in the MTV movie awards, that the cast was frequently asked about. Luke didn't end up with anyone, so neither can Rey. Even though her love interest didn't end up dating someone else (Han x Leia) and even though she has no parental figure who dominated her emotional journey (Vader). Because we can't write adventures with a couple in love (even though in the past, Disney has). Once a couple gets together and/or married, the story's over.
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