Soooooo, about "The Rise of Skywalker"....

[yvannairie]

Taking a day away from people being angry and disappointed about TROS and I feel like I can finally put my own thoughts about it down. It's been really stressful thinking about this movie, because I went into it sort of... dreading, as a lot of people whose opinions I respect had found it miserably disappointing, and there seemed to not even be any statements to the effect of "well it was Good For A Star Wars Movie".

So, to avoid sounding like a corparete ass-kisser -- let's be clear that the script of TROS? Actually a mess on multiple levels. The two major plot threads (Finn&Poe and Rey&Kylo) do not intersect at any point except during the denouement, and both bear the scars of being hacked apart and put together -- the Resistance plot more than the Jedi plot. Overall the A plot with Finn&Poe starts out weak and gets stronger as it goes along, while the Rey&Kylo plot starts out strong, peaks at the midpoint of the film and gets weaker from there, but it manages to build up enough momentum that you'll forgive that if you're not put off by the plot twists.

There's also a lot of messy obvious rewrite stuff in there like Poe's retconned backstory, Zorii and Jannah... existing, as very obvious Innocuous Different-Gender But Conveniently Same Ethnicity Potential Love Interest (if it turns out that romance plots for the two of them and Poe and Finn were edited out, I will not be even a bit surprised) as well as Maz and Rose having massively reduced roles, many of the important revelations happening on top of fancy flashback footage.

It is really obvious that this movie went not only through multiple rewrites, but probably at least a few dramatic editing passes. It is a mess. It is entirely a mess.

And yet, it is exactly the kind of mess that I expected out of a Star Wars film. TROS was never gonna be as good as TLJ, and once I'd set my expectations to "lots of stuff getting Jossed, with vigour, or at least retooled b/c the backlash was so dramatic" I liked what I got a lot. Overall, the most angry I got was waiting on the characters I liked so much emerging from all the stuff that was put on top of them from the previous movie. All the stuff that annoyed me, could have just been cut. It was written in to appeal to who knows who, not me, and overall distracted from what the movie actually was going for.

Which was visiting consequences on Kylo Ren for his choice to take over the First Order.

I really enjoyed the first half of the Rey&Kylo plot, with him trying to assert himself as above and beyond the environment that created him -- one of being above the fear that made him turn to the Dark Side, to the point of taking one look at Palpatine and seeing an opportunity to prove to Rey they both were above the influences that shaped them into being -- and how that dovetailed with Rey trying to find connection, trying to learn from Luke's mistake of isolating himself by reaching out, while constantly still slipping into isolating herself and trying to be The Whole Solution(tm) as the last Jedi.

Pivoting from Rey From Nowhere to Rey The Lonely worked really well for me. The energy she took away from TLJ, of shaping her own destiny, was so obviously eating at her that she was becoming short-tempered, obsessive and reckless, which then dovetailed nicely with her general fear of her power because her only reference point to power like hers was Kylo Ren, her "match". Them being revealed to be powerful because of that duality also went a nice way into explaining why their relationship was shaping both of them so powerfully. I could absolutely buy that her fear of becoming Kylo Ren was driving much of her obsession behind her being validated by the Jedi before her by finding her connection to them rather than just. Indiscriminately reaching out, and grabbing onto anything that met her halfway.

She was shown having standards, including the ones she held Ben to, during the film. She was reaching out in the Force to form positive bonds as a way to check her own raw destructive potential -- and it wasn't quite working out for her, because being so connected to Ren, having that bad relationship still in her life, was making her more aware of her own flaws. Did she feel such kinship with Kylo Ren because she, too, was capable of that?

Well, no -- but she did feel kinship with Ben, and acknowledging that just as she had seen potential in him to turn good, she had to keep believing in the potential in herself to be good. She wasn't Palpatine's child, what she knew of her power came from the Skywalkers.

I think, overall, Rey's story and Finn's Force-sensitivity paired well with the idea that the Force was "opening up" to a new generation across the galaxy -- especially the ones who had been abused, isolated or otherwise mistreated by their environment. That is also how I took the end of TLJ, really, the young generation who had these powers but was hard-pressed than ever to just... survive, were much more likely to start showing exceptional potential. The idea that pain and trauma makes you stronger in the Force is perhaps not the most wholesome message, but this trilogy has been spending a lot of time on the social aspect of the Force, of Force as extension of your relationship, both toxic ones and healthy ones, and, well. To say that negative relationships can make our responses to all relationships more dramatic and uncontrollable hopefully isn't a controversial statement.

In this way, I also really like the ending the two new Skywalkers got. I'm very take-it-or-leave-it about the kiss, really, and I never "shipped" it romantically or really ever parsed it as romantic as much as I always had that vibe of "you know my trauma and that's why we're circling each other like this". I've had relationships like that, where you feel inexplicably tied b/c hey, who else gets it? I think, in that way, it's stronger that we got to see Force Sensitive Finn, showing us that Rey wasn't alone with her experiences even when she thought she was, because you can become myopic towards your other relationships, trying to struggle with a difficult and taxing one. I interpreted "Rey Skywalker" to be more of an acknowledgement that Ben lived on in her, that functionally she was both Rey and Ben. After struggling the whole movie feeling like she was entirely alone, an ending that confirmed that she would never have to be alone felt good.

Similarly, I felt like as much as the script was trying to sabotage the rest of the characters, the actors did a hell of a job recovering the situation. Rey's and Poe's sniping could have on paper seemed really hostile and kind of... bickering-over-Finn-esque but Oscar Isaac and Daisy Ridley had just such good chemistry and a clear understanding of how their characters felt about each other. Same could be said for John Boyega who was given absolutely nothing to work with (fun fact -- I had this same problem with TLJ, he was consistently wasted in that movie until the third act and even then... Y'all :|) but still managed to give Finn a very believable sense of affection towards both Poe and Rey. He continues to be the MVP of these films for me, always having the best performance while he's given jack shit to do.

Poe was probably given the worst lot out of the trio, but then again he was also put through the most nonsensical script revision, was pushed into having scenes with characters he had no relationships with, but even then, the bad details were all similarly take-it-or-leave-it(-but-propably-leave-it). Honestly, him scrambling to build the Resistance, doing all the risking himself and being short with everyone, suspicious and stressed made a lot of sense to me considering the last time they'd been cornered, they'd been saved by an in-universe version of an act of god. There was no second Luke Skywalker waiting in the wings to save them again, and he couldn't just passively wait for the universe to support him, because they sure as shit had not done that on Crait. Him being afraid people weren't gonna be there for him when shit went down (because, remember, he hadn't been there for them in the last movie) is palpable, and I enjoy how that dovetailed with Rey's need for context for herself outside of herself and Kylo Ren.

(It's too bad that Finn was left out of this... almost entirely, outside of the one scene where he bonded with Jannah over their similar pasts. This would have been a great opportunity to make him the rock of the team, the one with absolute faith, because hey. Rose got him where he was. He just needed the foundation. He's good at improvising.)

(A shame that Disney are fucking cowards.)

To turn this into a proper reverse compliment sandwich, I gotta mention that I absolutely couldn't stand the humour. There was literally no moment that was meant to be comical that made me even smile, and most of them made me actively cringe at the screen. But then again, the only movie out of this trilogy I thought had funny moments was TFA -- TLJ wasn't this bad, it may have been less offensively in-your-face bad and more a well-I-can-ignore-that bad -- and I've pretty much hated the humour in big blockbuster films since. IDK, probably the original Avengers. Yeah, I didn't even think Thor:Ragnarök was that funny. Sue me.

Overall, I think TROS was. Fine. Like, it wasn't great and it definitely felt fanficcy at times, but it was saved by the cast having very good grasp of their characters (I didn't mention it but Adam Driver's performance was as impressive as always -- literally the only bad part of it was his hair becoming flooffy and luscious the moment he turned good and that's on costuming, not him) and doing what people in the prequels did and forcing the bad script to sound tolerable. I was very satisfied with what I saw, and I'm excited to watch it again.

I still don't get where the fandom is coming from with their vicious disappointment, though. I understand the people who found the ending thematically unsatisfying, or were disappointed by what happened to their favourite characters, but there's just this... overriding narrative of a broken narrative promise that I just for the life of me do not get. Literally the only retcon I found it in me to be kinda frustrated about made sense and led into material that I found entirely thematically satisfying, and I find the way Rose's role was cut down an outrage against Kelly Marie Tran and her treatment, but it wasn't a debilitating plot issue, either.

IDK, man. To me, it just feels like a bunch of good ideas that people had, coming out of TLJ got Jossed, and all I can say to that is "well, yeah -- y'all didn't expect that?" We know the fandom is way more clever than the creators, we all know our theories will always speak to us more strongly and the ability for a creator to beat out their fandom in theory-crafting happens so rarely as to not be statistically significant.

I can't bring myself to hate TROS for not being the version of it that was in my head (this is the biggest reason I don't really write for series' that aren't finished, I have no interest in competing with the source material on who is more cleverer) because the version I got... was fine. I liked it.

And it kind of bothers me that I feel so defensive saying that, because me not not liking a movie is such an insignificant issue. But when even the spaces where I'd go to share in my enjoyment of a thing instead want to commisserate about how it burned their crops down... That's pretty alienating. I don't feel safe in spaces united in their hatred of a thing, anymore, and there seems to be nothing but those kinds of spaces for SW, right now.

So I'm at least glad that it's over, because now with all the unresolved potential is out of the air, we can build communities of concord over the space magic movies, and maybe start getting along, again.

Comments

[autobotscoutriella]

Now that I've actually seen TROS (a few hours ago, so I still haven't properly sorted out my thoughts on it, but I'll get to that eventually!), this is a fantastic analysis of the movie. It was a fun rollercoaster! Like, it's not a Great Movie by any means, it's kind of a mess, but I had an absolute blast watching it and I'll definitely watch it again. I do really, REALLY want to write some of the missing scenes that the movie desperately needed, once I have time to process my feelings/rewatch TFA and TLJ, since the plot was...yeah. Not good. But the acting is fantastic, I genuinely loved a lot of the themes even if the execution was clunky, and it made me happy and want to watch all the other movies immediately. (The humor also doesn't bother me, but that's such a subjective thing--I can totally see why it came off as over-the-top for other people.)

I really don't get the fandom reaction, and it's made me super hesitant to engage with the fandom at all, tbh--which is sad, because Star Wars was my gateway to internet fandom and I was super excited to get back into it. The fandom's always had a tendency toward The Newest Thing Sucks, but this one's really...offputting. (Not to get too serious about it, but I do kind of wonder how much of this is the result of people spending two years passionately defending TLJ, and building TROS up into something it was never going to be because they didn't feel like they could say "look, I don't CARE what canon does with this, I ship it and that's that".)

[yvannairie]

Not to get too serious about it, but I do kind of wonder how much of this is the result of people spending two years passionately defending TLJ, and building TROS up into something it was never going to be

Well! That puts it into words, doesn't it? Although yeah, I'm equally hesitant to start blaming fandom environment for the reaction because so much of the reaction revolves around not the text of the movie, but rather the makers of it and how it holds up to the previous one. It all feels very "THIS one writer and THIS director RUINED EVERYTHING" and... like, y'all. We did this with the last movie, too, I don't think I can take the Fandom Mood going forward being "arguing with the creators over the thing they made" instead of doing the thing where we snatch the source material out of the hands of the makers and go "thank youu y'all done enough, we can take it from here!!"

I just... don't see why it matters for the movie if the people making it weren't terribly into it and just turned in a Whatever performance. I don't see why it matters if romances were shoved in or cropped out -- even while I acknowledge that that was obviously done -- just like I didn't understand how any of that mattered when it was TLJ being argued over. Not to mention, there's a lot of blame statements going around that I can only goggle at before going "BASED ON WHAT???" even while I recognise that it doesn't even matter if the statement is true. It is incredibly frustrating, the theorycrafting around the artistic process for big blockbuster movies tires me out and sucks the enjoyment out of them. Why a creative decision was made is an interesting question maybe ten years from now, not when the series has just landed.

IDK, it's just... I guess this was kind of. Inevitable, based on how fandom has been getting more and more interested and integrated into the creative process, so people feel more attached and more ownership over their ideas, which leads to Absolute Bizarrobonkers Wank when that thing doesn't do what they "wanted" from it. And even while saying that I cringe at how dismissive it sounds because being emotionally invested in fiction is good, I just think that if your investment and disappointment are so great you feel the need to cuss out the creators for "betraying" that potential, you need to maybe chill.

[autobotscoutriella]

Yeah, there's a lot going on there, and I don't want to entirely discount the real-world issues around the movie. I avoided the pre-movie press as much as possible because I wanted to go into it without knowing what the writers/director/producers thought they did (because with Star Wars, there's an unfortunate tendency for the movie they thought they made to not be the actual movie that people saw), and I do wonder how many of the overhyped fan expectations were coming from that rather than just fandom drama.

It does seem related to the recent wave of needing headcanons to be CANON, though--there seems to be an unsettling shift toward "fanon ideas only count if they become canon", which gets wrapped up in ship wars and people insisting that diverse headcanons count as representation. (Some of that was always there, especially with ship wars, but I'm seeing it a LOT more now.) I don't know where it's coming from, but I feel like the ability to say "welp, that wasn't what I wanted and now I'm sad, HEY I'M GONNA WRITE A FIX-IT UNIVERSE WHO WANTS TO JOIN ME" would be a lot easier on everyone's emotions than cussing out the creators on twitter.

I also kind of wonder if being into Transformers has more or less made me immune to Bad Movie Problems--because while I did see the plot issues with TROS, I've also seen a couple of Hot Takes (TM) that made me go "wait, that's clearly not what they were implying" and then once I stopped to think about it, I realized I'd just kind of automatically filled in the logical missing scene and taken the implications as canon. Of course there's SUPPOSED to be an emotional reunion/forgiveness moment between Leia and Ben, it's just that they couldn't film it for tragic real-life reasons, so they heavily implied it instead and it's canon enough. Which is...probably giving the movie more credit than it deserves, but at the same time, I had fun watching this movie and the person delivering the Hot Take in question didn't, so I'm inclined to say my method works :D

[yvannairie]

man I came into these messages right after a very long conversation about certain parts of the TF fandom losing their mind over certain WIndblade-related content and What Can I Say Except Yyyyyyikes

EDIT: quip aside, I genuinely just don't know what else to say to this other than "true", "yeah", and "that sounds about right" but I'm also kinda burned out on talking about fandom reactions to things atm, so don't take that as some kind of dismissal of what you wrote. I def agree.

[autobotscoutriella]

...Ah, I see I've missed the TF-fandom's drama XD

No worries, fandom reactions are depressing. I'm off to write All The Fic and blacklist some tags, tbh.

[yvannairie]

PRIMUS I genuinely didn't see the TF drama coming b/c like. Holy shit from a distance TF is just this great old leviathan of a fandom, if you mention being into it you will randomly find out like fifty people around who are quietly into it and you just get the feeling that if there's drama it's probably at the underbelly.

IDK man Tumblr and Twitter just bring out the worst in everyone. I'm so tired. I just wanna write meta.

[autobotscoutriella]

TF is the sleeping dragon that once in a while rears its head for Tumblr posts about particularly kinky porn, universal absurdities, and occasionally weird drama. (It's always fun when I try to explain it to other fandom people who aren't into TF. "Well, see, there's this one piece of fanon that people are fighting over" and it's something unbelievably specific that nobody outside the fandom even knew existed.)

I'm hiding from both Tumblr and Twitter at the moment. They're exhausting. Currently I've gone down the rabbit hole of "writing an AU of an AU that I haven't actually posted any of yet", but I might get something postable out of it eventually? It's...well, it makes my head hurt if I try to make the timelines remotely coherent, but the only drama is in-universe! (Mostly because about three people even know it exists, but still.)

[yvannairie]

Yeah, lmao, I'm currently onboarding a new friend into TF and sometimes the things I say with my own mouth makes me do a double take. This fandom is scary and unknowable and I (mostly) love.

Also oh my god that's relatable, you may have noticed me slowly struggling through some physics lately. Being endlessly up our own butts about our ideas is honestly an underappreciated fannish experience.

[autobotscoutriella]

A friend who's otherwise familiar with fandom stuff but not with TF asked me for fic recs the other day, and I had to go "UHHHHHH" because so much fic uses stuff that's just...super weird by non-TF standards. (I have yet to figure out how to explain the robot sex headcanons without writing an essay. "So there's three primary variations...")

It's so much fun and absolute torture at the same time. How many layers of inter-universe crossover can I pile on top of one AU to create another AU before it collapses under its own backstory? MORE, I SAY, MORE. (You know it's going to be a roller-coaster when the backstory explanation is four single-spaced pages long and starts with "So Ghost Starscream was hanging around an interdimensional bar...")

Also I'm very much looking forward to the results when the physics work out, because those posts have been fascinating so far.

[yvannairie]

Lmaaooo I think I may have actually written an essay like that. The holy grail of a fan getting into things is someone who knows how to ask questions but the majority of people are Not Like That. People like us are always gonna be necessary :'DD

Also I want to know what Ghost Starscream was hanging around in an interdimensional bar. Please write this. I am a sucker for storycrafting.

[autobotscoutriella]

I had a flowchart at one point. I wish I hadn't lost it with an old computer, because it was glorious in a very 2007 sort of way.

Well, to be fair, the Ghost Starscream part was mostly just because a TF roleplay server I'm in had a "bring in a drastically AU character" event; one person had a Ghost Starscream, and the framing device was "interdimensional bar". I'm going to have to work it into this fic, though, because I desperately want the OC in question to have to explain "so there was this bar and this ghost..." as her reasoning for why she's trying to dethrone Tyran Optimus Prime. (No, really, that's the plot. OC is convinced by Ghost Starscream that the best way to end the war is to arrange for Optimus Prime's death. It's a glorious trainwreck, or will be if I ever manage to get more than six paragraphs on paper.)