#and i can't believe it made it through to production and premiere untouched

[dgcatanisiri]

*sigh*

I’m complaining here and just need to vent.

I will NEVER understand how people can cite TLJ as flawless, the best of the trilogy, the best Star Wars period... Absolutely NEVER.

Well, I can understand SOME audiences, given how it refocuses its time, focus, and attention on the white boy they can woobify, rather than the women or people of color in its cast, but... The people I often hear this from are people who supposedly are conscious of the issues of representation. Who argue against the rise of fascists and authoritarians, but then turn around and call Kylie Ron a character who deserved better.

Maybe it’s who you think is the main character of the trilogy - I came out of TFA, and I saw Finn and Rey as the central characters, and, really, in that order. FINN was the character that the plot hinged on. His choices drove the plot advancements - he chose not to fire, he chose to escape, he chose to go back for Rey, he chose to take up that lightsaber, he was making active choices through the plot, so that while it was Rey who had the climactic final fight of the movie, it was still sparked because of Finn’s actions. Rey mattered to the story, but Finn advanced it with his choices.

So to have TLJ sideline him, knock him down from his position as the leading man of this trilogy to a comedic C-plot that even those who LIKED TLJ say was a bit of a plot tumor... That’s an unforgiveable sin. To do that WHILE elevating Kylie Ron to the position it kicked him out of, to make HIM the leading man, after introducing him to us with mass slaughter and the murder of Han Solo? That is, in my view, unconscionable. That is saying we reward being a neo-natsee. Based on his actions in TLJ and TRoS, that is saying that a last second change of heart is all it takes to become a hero, even after years of evil and fascism, without actually TRYING to make a genuine difference or owning what had been done.

Like, yeah, I’m a fan of Anakin Skywalker, but I am fully aware that, once he submits to Palpatine, he has crossed the line and cannot just casually come back from what he’s done. It’s not that his redemption came at the cost of his life, it’s that redemption IN LUKE’S EYES came at the cost of his life. Luke believed in that good, but to the galaxy at large? To LEIA, his daughter? He will always be Vader. Luke may make a distinction, but he’s probably the only one who would. And yet, when I look at how much TLJ wants us to sympathize with Kylie, it is trying to present him as teetering between light and dark - when the climax of the last movie was him making a decision between them.

Unfortunately, we in general have this habit of not just believing that villainous, antagonistic characters can and should be redeemed, we also want to justify the sunk cost we have put into these ideas. Some people do deserve redemption. But the other side to that coin is that some DON’T. Some people make their choices and must live with them. More importantly, even if they say that they want to change, their victims are NEVER under any obligation to accept their redemption. 

But that’s what TLJ wants us to do - to believe in the idea of redemption, even as it makes it clear that Kylie doesn’t even WANT it. He MAKES his choices. But, because those among THE AUDIENCE want his redemption, that ends up being guaranteed by the narrative itself. Of course we’ll redeem him by the end of the trilogy, don’t worry. You can downplay everything he’s done, you can reinterpret his actions as self-defense or consented to, you can ignore the damage he does to the actual heroes, you can reframe everything to believe he was always the true hero of this trilogy, don’t concern yourself with all the things we’ve established that he did knowingly and intentionally that are evil, we’re just going to pretend that the things that happened on screen didn’t happen.

And I haven’t even started on the logistical issues - I’ve been over before how the First Order of TFA and the First Order of TLJ are two different organizations in terms of scope, scale, and power, how Holdo is a bad leader who Poe was right to act against, how the “Rey Nobody” “reveal” was done more to subvert the audiences expectations rather than give this character a genuine arc and emotional catharsis... I’ve made this post long enough as is, look through my “the last jedi critical” tag for more details on my problems with all of that.

TLJ is a mess. It’s a standalone film shoved into a trilogy, and any problems someone may have with The Rise of Skywalker? Can be traced back to the way that this movie left things. I can only hope time will be more and more unforgiving with it, because it is the place this trilogy derails.

#dg rambles #dg gets pissed #the last jedi critical #i'm really starting to think i need a 'dg is exhausted' tag #because i'm really getting tired of repeating this #and yet i keep seeing all these takes on tlj that it's good #when as a writer myself #i would call this AT BEST a first draft script #and would demand that it be rewritten before anything else #and i can't believe it made it through to production and premiere untouched