#And giving her a Canto ability is probably one of the most useful side effects I've ever had on an infantry unit

[childofaura]

I am bored and overloaded on fodder from arena tickets and pity breaks, so any suggestions for other projects while I get grails for baby Azura?

<3

I'm probably gonna be super biased towards some units, just because they're my favorites, lol.

Big one I can think of is Python. If you have a spare Summer Elincia lying around, her bow works really well for Python, and since he's a cavalry bow, he has good reach. Mine has a bit of an outdated build, but I run him with Whitecap Bow, Swift Sparrow, Desperation (it has saved my ass and I can't wait for Desperation 4), and Threaten Def (which you can just substitute for some other C-skill). Plus Deadeye.

Luthier is a good green mage unit if you need someone with speed and attack power. Not a whole lot of 4 star green mages are super fast that I know of, but he's a good one. I've considered foddering Tailtiu's Teacake Tower on him, but we'll see if he gets a Refine soon. Holding off until then.

M!Morgan is a big one for me, I have him dual-function as an offensive and supportive unit with Inf. Null Follow 3 (so he can support his mom Robin and dad Priam in the Arena). His weapon with the refine is really good and it makes him a pretty hardcore demote Red Tome.

Benny's a fantastic Far Save unit for me, most people run him near save but that satisfactory Res stat makes him optimal for far save. Only thing is that I run him with Arcane Qiang which is hard to get, so go for it if you have one on hand, but hold off if not. Not a lot of lance weapons that help boost the Res stat. My Benny is run with Distant Stance, Mystic Boost 4, A/R far save, and Def/Res Ideal S seal. I'm considering nabbing an extra Armored Beacon fodder, but the Armored Beacon/Armored Floe fodder I have right now is being saved for if Miklan gets added to the game. So yeah, Benny's a sweetheart of a defender if you run a Far Save on him. I love Henriette but I've never pulled more than one copy of her, and Benny works best.

This one is weird, but Azama is also an interesting staff unit; he's not flawless, but I have him in Aether Raids and he tends to fuck up people who ignore him in favor of taking out other units first. Serpentine Staff deals less damage than Pain does (7 HP as opposed to Pain's 10), but it also has built in Deep Wounds. So I run him with Fort. Def/Res 3, Renewal 3 (which probably should be replaced with Poison Strike, or Poetic Justice if you need him to attack better), and two counts of Savage Blow 3. Problem is you gotta invest a LOT of Dragon Flowers into him. But to me, he's still worth the build. If you have a Holy Panic, slap that on him. His Attack stat is absolutely abysmal, but he's more of the "Death by a Thousand Papercuts" type of unit.

This one is only a suggestion if you have an Arcane Downfall, but Mustafa definitely is a solid axe unit. He virtually has Ganglot's kit (Distant Stance and Quick Riposte 4) plus Def/Res Menace and Fort. Def/Res 2 as an S seal. If you have good support units behind him, he's a monster. The unit showcase video I did of him has him taking down Ninja Camilla, though I'm like... 95% sure it was unmerged (or only had one or two merges), but STILL. He's an enemy phase slaughterhouse.

This one goes without saying, but one of my most utilized units is Silas. The only thing that sucks is the constant influx of sword units that are starting to outclass him (LOOKING AT YOU, B!SELIPH), but if you play to his weapon refine, he's incredibly reliable. Just needs a Far Save unit to cover him, lmao. I run him as an enemy phase unit: Sturdy Stance (prevents cooldown charge in most cases, very useful to prevent him from getting wiped out by a Special), Quick Riposte 4, Atk/Def Menace (which I may replace someday if we get a better Atk/Def C-skill), and Atk/Def Form 3. His refine weapon, Sworn lance, requires a support partner, but it prevents most units from making follow up attacks; which means sometimes he can tank hits from dragon units (but not all the time) because he prevents their follow up attack. So most of the time in combat, he's getting at least 20+ Atk and Def. And his support partner is OG Kinshi Hinoka (since I paired them in my Fates game), so with her Atk/Spd Oath 4, she can usually get around to where he is if she's close enough to him or another unit. He's not as destructive as Geralt or Petrine, but he's my buddy and that's all that counts.

Sorry for the long list, I started going down my barracks and realized I have a lot of units that I just have fun using, lmao. There's a couple I left out but I didn't wanna drag out the list.

[smokeybrandreviews]

The Tragedy of Rey Palpatine

I really, really, like Rey Skywalker, in concept. I think she could have been an amazing character and the perfect torch-bearer for the mythos going forward. After The Force Awakens, i was all in with this new trio of characters. Say what you will about Abrams, dude knows how to build a character. He knows how to write a story and Rey’s began wonderfully. She had all of the potential to be held in the same esteem as Mara Jade, Leia Organa, and Ahsoka Tano. Hell, Disney even introduced Chelli Aphra in the Vader comics, another brilliant, female character of Asian descent. Each of these characters were fleshed out, nuanced, and felt real. There is a humanity to them and, i imagine that’s where Abrams wanted to take Rey. Then The Last Jedi happened and ruined almost everything. I think it did a great service for Kylo Ren, overall, but everything else got a big fat Rian Johnson/Kathleen Kennedy sh*t all over it.

Abrams set up a ton of intriguing plots to explore going forward. The hints that Finn may be Force sensitive, the mystery of how Mas got a hold of Anakin’s lightsaber after Vader cut Luke’s hand off in Empire, who the f*ck was Snoke; All threads that could have been elaborated upon to embellish the new characters and give an opportunity to pass the torch on with the new characters. More than anything, the enigma of Rey Skywalker could have driven this trilogy of films in a direction for the ages. The seeds were there for greatness. Why did she hear Obi Wan in that flashback? Why was she spared by the Knights of Ren? Why did Ren know exactly what girl that trooper reported about? The only answer we got was that Rey was the spawn of a Palpatine clone and it was stupid.That reveal was the dumbest sh*t in Rise of Skywalker and there was a lot of dumb sh*t in that movie. Rise spent way too much time apologizing for what Last Jedi did to the mythos and had literally no time to fix the characters going forward. That’s how bad Kathleen Kennedy let Rian Johnson f*ck up.

I like the Last Jedi as a space opera. Hell, i even like it as a Star Wars side story in the vein of Solo or Rogue One. If those events happened in between VII and VIII, cool. But to be a mainline entry? Are you kidding? It just gets so much wrong about the overall lore while simultaneously sabotaging all of the character development and good will fostered by it’s predecessor. The level of f*ckery in The Last Jedi is ind of amazing. At it’s core, The Last Jedi s a fanfic, filled with OC characters, trying to “subvert” expectation to be more than it can or has any right to be. Rian Johnson wanted to make his movie, mythos be damned. Trilogy be damned. Kathleen Kennedy was okay with all of that as long as Johnson pushed her agenda and virtue signaled for all the “Girl Bosses” out there, which he did. The end result was a usual cool, collected, Resistance Ace, Poe Dameron, literally committing treason. We got a regression in the character of Finn, a former Stormtrooper turned rebel scum, a traitor to the First Order who literally got into a lightsaber duel with Vader’s grandson to protect his maybe-love interest, try to runaway like a f*cking coward, only to be tasered into a drooling mess by Rian Johnson’s Jar Jar binx. And the sh*t they did to Luke? That mess is criminal and an entire essay for another time. The Last Jedi f*cked everything up, forcing Abrams to course correct for two and half hours. This sh*t killed any momentum the Disney films had, it killed any semblance of a cohesive narrative going forward, and, worst of all, it murdered any semblance of Rey being more than a poorly written Mary-sue.

These new trilogies had every opportunity to be great. If they had someone with a reverence, a respect, for the source material helming Lucasfilm, they would have been. Look what Filoni has done with The Clone Wars and Rebels. Look what Favreau is doing with Mando. This might be a little glib but, considering Disney is bringing him in for a Star Wars trilogy on their own, look what Feige has done with the MCU? Hell, all things Marvel at this point. When you focus on dope stories and compelling characters, the narrative takes care of itself. When you focus on agenda and pushing divisive material, you can’t help but destroy what you hope to build. Kennedy is letting her ego cut her off at the knees when, if she just reined that sh*t in a bit, she could have been standing tall and walking into the future with her OCs intact. Instead, she has people in her own organization apologizing for her f*ck ups as the value of the legacy property you were gifted, tanks at a hilariously exponential rate. So how do we fix Rey and, effectively fix this entire trilogy?

First off, she needs to be a Skywalker. That is an absolute necessity. I would make her Luke’s kid. That would explain away her proficiency with the Force, the fact she pilots like a champ, and has that hole Force Dyad bullsh*t with Ren, like her dad and aunt kind of have. Rey would be an organic growth of the Skywalker legacy while simultaneously bringing a refreshing conclusion to it with Episode IX. I would build the familial relationship between Kylo and Rey, one representing either side of the Force, both fighting to discover something about themselves within, over the course of this trilogy. I would have made Rey Luke’s kid; A proper Skywalker. I would have made her mother Mara Jade, opening up a whole situation that could have been embellished into at least two spin-off tales with a ton of ramifications going forward. I mean, imagine a story where Luke had to fight off the Knights of Ren AND his nephew before Ben donned the mask, as his pregnant wife ran off into space to avoid the overall destruction of the New Jedi Order. That sh*t writes itself.

You get a side story of Mara Jade and a young Rey on the run, being chased by the Knights over the years, until she leaves Rey on Jakku, ultimately meeting her fate in a last stand battle, like her nephew, at the hands of several Knights on some nameless planet. Or Tatooine, i dunno. That’s an entire film. That’s a brand new, female lead you can explore. It’s organic. It homages the lore. It’s respectful of the overall mythos. It’s literally better than anything Disney has done with the mainline titles so far. Hell, you can even explore how Luke met Mara. Maybe she was one of the reformed Knights. Maybe she was one of the surviving Force Sensitives after Order 66. Maybe she used to be an Inquisitor but turned on Paps once Vader saw the light. Personally, i would skew more toward her being a former Inquisitor, seeking out Luke for revenge but, upon finding him, falls in love after several clashes. That gives Mara depth and allows for her to grow over a novel or two. Maybe a stand alone film. Luke would self-exile after losing to Ren but not because of the L, more because he thinks his wife and unborn kid are long dead. He’s heartbroken and knows he isn’t strong enough to fell his own nephew so Luke runs away. He goes into exile, like Yoda and Obi Wan before him, all the way to Ahch-to, searching for some killer app to finish Snoke before he can really get started. Imagine how much emotional resonance the ending of Episode VII could of held, going this route. Luke staring at Rey with such apprehension and regret. He immediately knows this is his daughter. That she's live. That she's here to ask him to do what he can't.

You'd spend the a good chunk of Episode VIII building that relationship. Showing Luke being cold and stand-offish because he knows Rey is his kid and he regrets his choice to run. He knows that Mara survived for years without him, probably dogged by First Order assassins. That the woman he loved, died alone after abandoning her child to strangers on a backwater planet somewhere in the galaxy. He knows this adult woman standing before him, is his and Mara’s living legacy and he doesn’t want her anywhere near the conflict to come. She’s demanding to be trained. He’s dismissive and curt, until the Dyad with Ren kicks in. Just being on the Force rich planet of Ahch-to increases Rey’s sensitivity, allowing Snoke to tether her to her cousin. When she goes straight to the dark, that’s Ren’s influence. When she cracks the rock and wigs Luke out, that’s Ren’s influence. In order to combat that growing corruption, Luke decides to train Rey to combat the dark. We actually show look acting like a master, teaching Rey sh*t instead of just, you know, “go cut that rock”. We show her learning from Luke, growing in confidence with her abilities. This entire sequence can take the place of literally all of the Canto Bight nonsense. No one liked any of that and it kills the momentum of the entire narrative going forward. Replace it with Rey actually being trained and you not only give her an opportunity for much needed character development, but you give Luke so much more of an arc and a means to have him bow out with substantial grace. If you decide to go the “Luke Dies at the end” route. Personally, i would have nixed Leia in VIII considering things and moved forward with Luke as the survivor but that's another story. I'd have to rework all of VIII and I don't feel like doing that right now. Leia’s death would devastate Ren, flooding him with a boost in the Dark Side, enough to slay Snoke and raise him to Supreme Leader without the need of Rey’s help. This would lead into a version of Colin Trevorrow’s version of Episode IX, which i think is a superior narrative overall but we’ll get there when we get there. Maybe.

The climax of the Last Jedi could be exactly the same but now it has so much more depth. It has so much more resonance for the trilogy going forward. Luke’s sacrifice would mean something  as we watched him slowly come to terms with his daughter being the hope going forward, effectively replacing him in the narrative. Most fans would be okay with this as, even though he never tells Rey he’s her father outright, the audience kind of knows. It’s hinted at. The reveal can come in IX somehow or in his last regards to Leia. He apologizes for Kylo but reassures her that, even if he passes, her niece will carry on the fight. Luke tells Leia of Rey's parontagem she says “I know” like her husband, and promises to continue Rey's training to best of her abilities. Kylo gets his shadows chase. Luke’s last words have so much more impact. We have an emotional investment in Rey because the torch had been properly passed. I, personally, would rework the majority of the plot while i’m at it. I’d fix Poe, continue exploring Finn and his connection to the force, and find a way to make Rose Tico relevant without being trite. I mean, you can have the Canto Bight stuff but draw it back considerably. It doesn’t need to be an entire third of the whole f*cking movie.

I like the character of Amilyn Holdo, too, but her arc was stifled by nonsense politics and shallow development. All of that mediocrity kind of made her an easy target to hate, a lot like Rose. In my story, she’d still take the helm from Leia in Last Jedi but would have had an appearance in Force Awakens. She didn’t need to have a ton of facetime, maybe a shout out at the round table toward the end of VII or getting off the ship at Mas’ bar with Leia. Hell, a f*cking holo transmission would be enough of a mention, Holdo just needed a presence in that movie to be legitimized for the next. Rose was fine as is, she just needs more agency and not that bullsh*t, half-assed, love triangle that was literally dropped like a hot track on Soundcloud in the middle of a chase movie. That sh*t was stupid and it doomed Rose before she had a chance to even get started.

Episode IX would start like Rise, Kylo slaughtering his way toward the wayfinder, but revealing that planet was Mustafar instead of whatever planet he was on originally. Ren has been planetside for weeks, searching for the wayfinder dealy and the planets dark side alignment is taking it's toll on him.  The mcguffin is deep in the wreckage of Vader's demolished castle, the deep subdivision and what not. Kylo makes his way to it, fighting dark side shades of his grandfather in Anakin form, goading him about his weakness, feeding into Ren's inadequacies about being weaker than his pap-pap. Kylo finds the mcguffin and takes off toward the Outer reaches in an effort to unlock more power. After the climax to VIII, Rey returns to Ahck-to to find Luke gone and the growing pull to the dark within her as the Dyad is wide open and Ren's spiral is pulling Rey along toward the drain, too. She feels him getting closer to full Sith, all of that pain and rage, multiplied considerably by his anger toward his grandfather's shades. Kylo basically flies to the outer reaches to find a Lost sage of the Darkside. It's not a Jedi or a Sith, but a being that thrives in the Dark, like whatever Maul is, but gigantic and monstrous. He learns from that creature, all the while leaving Hux to command the Last Order in his stead, second by General Pryde. The two of these cats have a battle for power, Pryde suspecting Hux of being a traitor, Hux trying to stave of attempts for his seat at the head, all the while pounding the Rebels as they continue to fight. The Knights of Ren are off, clashing with Finn, Poe, Chewie, and Rose as they search for another means to find a way to Rey, as she has the map and R2 with her on Ahck-to where she is training for the final battle. The majority of the film continues to follow the basic plot of IX, mcguffin chasing and what not, with Finn, finally adept enough in the force, to adequately take Rey’s place in those narrative spots.

We have the whole montage of training on both worlds; Force ghost Luke showing Rey more advanced techniques and Ren taking on a full-on, Vader shade, like Luke, in the Outer Regions or whatever. Eventually, the remaining main characters decide to split up as the pressure of the Last Order continues to deplete their resources. Finn fixes Anakin’s lightsaber and begins to train with it under the tutelage of Mas, who is all in with the Rebels now, as they go after the other mcgiffin on Endor. He still meets the other former stormtroopers or whatever and they still help in the final battle but, instead of Rey and Kylo, it Finn and a few Knights of Ren. Maybe two, I dunno. Anyway, he beats them with Anakin's saber, gets the mcgissin and returns to the Rebel base, stormtrooper backup in hand. Poe and Lando try to drum up support for a final strike on the Last Order’s base and you get that whole shtick with Keri Russell's character. I'd take her helmet off, too. Why the f*ck  would you hide Keri's face? Shes adorable! Finn and Lando try their best, but it seems like a no-go so Lando stays to work his magic as he and Chewie return to the Rebel planet. Rose can return to the Rebel planet and take charge of strategy or whatever as Leia secludes herself within the base. I dunno. Rose is kind of hard to place because she has no discernible talents but I imagine anything is better than what they did to her originally. Anyway, Rey is able to develop enough self-control to force the Dyad closed, cutting Ren's influence off from her but, at the same time, her influence off from Ren, completely. That's gonna have big ramifications later.

Around the end of the second act, Ren sees a force projection from his mother pleading with him to turn back to the light but he waves her off. Like her brother, Leia uses the last of her strength in this effort and she dies, pushing Ren over the edge, forcing him into full Sith. Since Rey closed the Dyad, Ren has no semblance of Light to keep the Dark at bay and he just absorbs SO much of it. It multiplies his strength in the Force and Ren is able to slay the Dark Sage, take it's power, and return to his fleet. Sh*t, the sage might be an actual Sith, Like, the people Sith and Ren kills him, effectively exterminated the race. Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. Anyway, Ren arrives to find Hux is the traitor so he allows Pryde to kill him. Pryde takes command and they raise their newly constructed, massive, fleet along with a brand new flag ship. Mobile, lightspeed ready, and far more deadly than any planet cannon, Ren is ready to begin his march of devastation. Our heroes arrive on the First Order hideaway and the battle ensues. Finn boards the flagship, clashing with the remaining Knights of Ren, his hit squad of former Stormtroopers at his side, as Rose uses her tech skills to drop the shields or whatever they were doing with horses on that spaceship at he end of IX. Rey arrives on the planet, Ren sensing her returns to the surface, to face off with each other. Ren is brimming with the dark, Rey knows he;s too far gone to save and she resolved to do what is necessary to end his tyranny. She ignites Lukes green lightsber, which upsets Ren and then Leia's  yellow saber, which sends Ren into a legit rage. Yeah, Rey dual-wields now because it's cool. Poe does his whole lone ranger whatever as he's the last of the vanguard and sh*t. All is lost.

The reinforcements show up in the nick of time and sh*t happens. Big ass sky battle with spaceships and explosions and sh*t, while Finn, Rose, and that black chick accomplish their task on the flagship. Shields dow, sh*t stats blowing up, fun times. Rey gets wrecked by Kylo, who is all the way Dark, no redemption, yellow rage eyes and everything. She’s getting dumped on until she forces the dyad open, allowing Ren to see the Force ghosts of Jedi Masters of old, as they all appear behind Rey, including Leia, Luke, and Mara Jade. They speak that bullsh*t, lay hands on Rei's lightsabers giving her a jump in power, and Rey defeats Ren in a harrowing duel. It has to end in a lightsaber clash. How can it not? Finn wrecks the remaining Knights and the flagship falls as the Rebel fleet overcomes the last of the Last Order. Ren is defeated, dying slowly, lamenting his choices. In his last moments, as the Force ghosts fade, the last few left are his mother, uncle, and grandpa. The last thing Ben sees as he dies is the face of the man he’s chased for so long. Poetic. Tragic. Requisite celebration on a jungle planet ensues while Rey is off, giving Ben a proper Jedi bonfire. Finn approaches, objecting to the respect shown, but she tells him that, in the end, Ren was still a Skywalker. If Vader can be forgiven, so could Ben. The two watch as the flames rise into the night sky. We get a scene of a shadow tracing the insides of Uncle Owen’s joint on Tatooine, generators firing on, mechanics coming to life. Rey is seen, all by her lonesome, igniting her new, personal, lightsabers; Gold, I guess? Is that what color they were supposed to be? A young kid arrives, inquiring about why the old Lars place is lit up for the first time in decades. He asks her name. She hesitates, looking over her shoulder to see the force ghosts of Anakin, Leia, Luke, Mara, and Ben; Her entire family. She gives a knowing smile and answers, “Rey. Rey Skywalker.”

This is just a rough outline of how i would have written this trilogy. I might embellish a little bit, maybe write it up as a proper fan fiction, but i don’t know. There’s a lot to unpack and i don’t really want to spend the time actually fleshing out this narrative but, i believe this is far superior to anything Disney has done. It fixes Rey, sets up Ren as a actual antagonistic force, kills anything resembling a Reylo romance, returns agency to Finn and Poe, fixes Rose, makes Mas a factor, and wraps everything up nicely. You get answers to the questions from before, the Knights of Ren have a presence throughout the entirety of the trilogy, and even divisive characters like Holdo get a shot at relevance outside of agenda. More than anything Rey being a Skywalker feels earned. It feels organic. It feels right. This is the bookend the Skywalker story deserved, not the rushed, politic laden, ego trip we got.

[smokeybrand]

The Tragedy of Rey Palpatine

I really, really, like Rey Skywalker, in concept. I think she could have been an amazing character and the perfect torch-bearer for the mythos going forward. After The Force Awakens, i was all in with this new trio of characters. Say what you will about Abrams, dude knows how to build a character. He knows how to write a story and Rey’s began wonderfully. She had all of the potential to be held in the same esteem as Mara Jade, Leia Organa, and Ahsoka Tano. Hell, Disney even introduced Chelli Aphra in the Vader comics, another brilliant, female character of Asian descent. Each of these characters were fleshed out, nuanced, and felt real. There is a humanity to them and, i imagine that’s where Abrams wanted to take Rey. Then The Last Jedi happened and ruined almost everything. I think it did a great service for Kylo Ren, overall, but everything else got a big fat Rian Johnson/Kathleen Kennedy sh*t all over it.

Abrams set up a ton of intriguing plots to explore going forward. The hints that Finn may be Force sensitive, the mystery of how Mas got a hold of Anakin’s lightsaber after Vader cut Luke’s hand off in Empire, who the f*ck was Snoke; All threads that could have been elaborated upon to embellish the new characters and give an opportunity to pass the torch on with the new characters. More than anything, the enigma of Rey Skywalker could have driven this trilogy of films in a direction for the ages. The seeds were there for greatness. Why did she hear Obi Wan in that flashback? Why was she spared by the Knights of Ren? Why did Ren know exactly what girl that trooper reported about? The only answer we got was that Rey was the spawn of a Palpatine clone and it was stupid.That reveal was the dumbest sh*t in Rise of Skywalker and there was a lot of dumb sh*t in that movie. Rise spent way too much time apologizing for what Last Jedi did to the mythos and had literally no time to fix the characters going forward. That’s how bad Kathleen Kennedy let Rian Johnson f*ck up.

I like the Last Jedi as a space opera. Hell, i even like it as a Star Wars side story in the vein of Solo or Rogue One. If those events happened in between VII and VIII, cool. But to be a mainline entry? Are you kidding? It just gets so much wrong about the overall lore while simultaneously sabotaging all of the character development and good will fostered by it’s predecessor. The level of f*ckery in The Last Jedi is ind of amazing. At it’s core, The Last Jedi s a fanfic, filled with OC characters, trying to “subvert” expectation to be more than it can or has any right to be. Rian Johnson wanted to make his movie, mythos be damned. Trilogy be damned. Kathleen Kennedy was okay with all of that as long as Johnson pushed her agenda and virtue signaled for all the “Girl Bosses” out there, which he did. The end result was a usual cool, collected, Resistance Ace, Poe Dameron, literally committing treason. We got a regression in the character of Finn, a former Stormtrooper turned rebel scum, a traitor to the First Order who literally got into a lightsaber duel with Vader’s grandson to protect his maybe-love interest, try to runaway like a f*cking coward, only to be tasered into a drooling mess by Rian Johnson’s Jar Jar binx. And the sh*t they did to Luke? That mess is criminal and an entire essay for another time. The Last Jedi f*cked everything up, forcing Abrams to course correct for two and half hours. This sh*t killed any momentum the Disney films had, it killed any semblance of a cohesive narrative going forward, and, worst of all, it murdered any semblance of Rey being more than a poorly written Mary-sue.

These new trilogies had every opportunity to be great. If they had someone with a reverence, a respect, for the source material helming Lucasfilm, they would have been. Look what Filoni has done with The Clone Wars and Rebels. Look what Favreau is doing with Mando. This might be a little glib but, considering Disney is bringing him in for a Star Wars trilogy on their own, look what Feige has done with the MCU? Hell, all things Marvel at this point. When you focus on dope stories and compelling characters, the narrative takes care of itself. When you focus on agenda and pushing divisive material, you can’t help but destroy what you hope to build. Kennedy is letting her ego cut her off at the knees when, if she just reined that sh*t in a bit, she could have been standing tall and walking into the future with her OCs intact. Instead, she has people in her own organization apologizing for her f*ck ups as the value of the legacy property you were gifted, tanks at a hilariously exponential rate. So how do we fix Rey and, effectively fix this entire trilogy?

First off, she needs to be a Skywalker. That is an absolute necessity. I would make her Luke’s kid. That would explain away her proficiency with the Force, the fact she pilots like a champ, and has that hole Force Dyad bullsh*t with Ren, like her dad and aunt kind of have. Rey would be an organic growth of the Skywalker legacy while simultaneously bringing a refreshing conclusion to it with Episode IX. I would build the familial relationship between Kylo and Rey, one representing either side of the Force, both fighting to discover something about themselves within, over the course of this trilogy. I would have made Rey Luke’s kid; A proper Skywalker. I would have made her mother Mara Jade, opening up a whole situation that could have been embellished into at least two spin-off tales with a ton of ramifications going forward. I mean, imagine a story where Luke had to fight off the Knights of Ren AND his nephew before Ben donned the mask, as his pregnant wife ran off into space to avoid the overall destruction of the New Jedi Order. That sh*t writes itself.

You get a side story of Mara Jade and a young Rey on the run, being chased by the Knights over the years, until she leaves Rey on Jakku, ultimately meeting her fate in a last stand battle, like her nephew, at the hands of several Knights on some nameless planet. Or Tatooine, i dunno. That’s an entire film. That’s a brand new, female lead you can explore. It’s organic. It homages the lore. It’s respectful of the overall mythos. It’s literally better than anything Disney has done with the mainline titles so far. Hell, you can even explore how Luke met Mara. Maybe she was one of the reformed Knights. Maybe she was one of the surviving Force Sensitives after Order 66. Maybe she used to be an Inquisitor but turned on Paps once Vader saw the light. Personally, i would skew more toward her being a former Inquisitor, seeking out Luke for revenge but, upon finding him, falls in love after several clashes. That gives Mara depth and allows for her to grow over a novel or two. Maybe a stand alone film. Luke would self-exile after losing to Ren but not because of the L, more because he thinks his wife and unborn kid are long dead. He’s heartbroken and knows he isn’t strong enough to fell his own nephew so Luke runs away. He goes into exile, like Yoda and Obi Wan before him, all the way to Ahch-to, searching for some killer app to finish Snoke before he can really get started. Imagine how much emotional resonance the ending of Episode VII could of held, going this route. Luke staring at Rey with such apprehension and regret. He immediately knows this is his daughter. That she's live. That she's here to ask him to do what he can't.

You'd spend the a good chunk of Episode VIII building that relationship. Showing Luke being cold and stand-offish because he knows Rey is his kid and he regrets his choice to run. He knows that Mara survived for years without him, probably dogged by First Order assassins. That the woman he loved, died alone after abandoning her child to strangers on a backwater planet somewhere in the galaxy. He knows this adult woman standing before him, is his and Mara’s living legacy and he doesn’t want her anywhere near the conflict to come. She’s demanding to be trained. He’s dismissive and curt, until the Dyad with Ren kicks in. Just being on the Force rich planet of Ahch-to increases Rey’s sensitivity, allowing Snoke to tether her to her cousin. When she goes straight to the dark, that’s Ren’s influence. When she cracks the rock and wigs Luke out, that’s Ren’s influence. In order to combat that growing corruption, Luke decides to train Rey to combat the dark. We actually show look acting like a master, teaching Rey sh*t instead of just, you know, “go cut that rock”. We show her learning from Luke, growing in confidence with her abilities. This entire sequence can take the place of literally all of the Canto Bight nonsense. No one liked any of that and it kills the momentum of the entire narrative going forward. Replace it with Rey actually being trained and you not only give her an opportunity for much needed character development, but you give Luke so much more of an arc and a means to have him bow out with substantial grace. If you decide to go the “Luke Dies at the end” route. Personally, i would have nixed Leia in VIII considering things and moved forward with Luke as the survivor but that's another story. I'd have to rework all of VIII and I don't feel like doing that right now. Leia’s death would devastate Ren, flooding him with a boost in the Dark Side, enough to slay Snoke and raise him to Supreme Leader without the need of Rey’s help. This would lead into a version of Colin Trevorrow’s version of Episode IX, which i think is a superior narrative overall but we’ll get there when we get there. Maybe.

The climax of the Last Jedi could be exactly the same but now it has so much more depth. It has so much more resonance for the trilogy going forward. Luke’s sacrifice would mean something  as we watched him slowly come to terms with his daughter being the hope going forward, effectively replacing him in the narrative. Most fans would be okay with this as, even though he never tells Rey he’s her father outright, the audience kind of knows. It’s hinted at. The reveal can come in IX somehow or in his last regards to Leia. He apologizes for Kylo but reassures her that, even if he passes, her niece will carry on the fight. Luke tells Leia of Rey's parontagem she says “I know” like her husband, and promises to continue Rey's training to best of her abilities. Kylo gets his shadows chase. Luke’s last words have so much more impact. We have an emotional investment in Rey because the torch had been properly passed. I, personally, would rework the majority of the plot while i’m at it. I’d fix Poe, continue exploring Finn and his connection to the force, and find a way to make Rose Tico relevant without being trite. I mean, you can have the Canto Bight stuff but draw it back considerably. It doesn’t need to be an entire third of the whole f*cking movie.

I like the character of Amilyn Holdo, too, but her arc was stifled by nonsense politics and shallow development. All of that mediocrity kind of made her an easy target to hate, a lot like Rose. In my story, she’d still take the helm from Leia in Last Jedi but would have had an appearance in Force Awakens. She didn’t need to have a ton of facetime, maybe a shout out at the round table toward the end of VII or getting off the ship at Mas’ bar with Leia. Hell, a f*cking holo transmission would be enough of a mention, Holdo just needed a presence in that movie to be legitimized for the next. Rose was fine as is, she just needs more agency and not that bullsh*t, half-assed, love triangle that was literally dropped like a hot track on Soundcloud in the middle of a chase movie. That sh*t was stupid and it doomed Rose before she had a chance to even get started.

Episode IX would start like Rise, Kylo slaughtering his way toward the wayfinder, but revealing that planet was Mustafar instead of whatever planet he was on originally. Ren has been planetside for weeks, searching for the wayfinder dealy and the planets dark side alignment is taking it's toll on him.  The mcguffin is deep in the wreckage of Vader's demolished castle, the deep subdivision and what not. Kylo makes his way to it, fighting dark side shades of his grandfather in Anakin form, goading him about his weakness, feeding into Ren's inadequacies about being weaker than his pap-pap. Kylo finds the mcguffin and takes off toward the Outer reaches in an effort to unlock more power. After the climax to VIII, Rey returns to Ahck-to to find Luke gone and the growing pull to the dark within her as the Dyad is wide open and Ren's spiral is pulling Rey along toward the drain, too. She feels him getting closer to full Sith, all of that pain and rage, multiplied considerably by his anger toward his grandfather's shades. Kylo basically flies to the outer reaches to find a Lost sage of the Darkside. It's not a Jedi or a Sith, but a being that thrives in the Dark, like whatever Maul is, but gigantic and monstrous. He learns from that creature, all the while leaving Hux to command the Last Order in his stead, second by General Pryde. The two of these cats have a battle for power, Pryde suspecting Hux of being a traitor, Hux trying to stave of attempts for his seat at the head, all the while pounding the Rebels as they continue to fight. The Knights of Ren are off, clashing with Finn, Poe, Chewie, and Rose as they search for another means to find a way to Rey, as she has the map and R2 with her on Ahck-to where she is training for the final battle. The majority of the film continues to follow the basic plot of IX, mcguffin chasing and what not, with Finn, finally adept enough in the force, to adequately take Rey’s place in those narrative spots.

We have the whole montage of training on both worlds; Force ghost Luke showing Rey more advanced techniques and Ren taking on a full-on, Vader shade, like Luke, in the Outer Regions or whatever. Eventually, the remaining main characters decide to split up as the pressure of the Last Order continues to deplete their resources. Finn fixes Anakin’s lightsaber and begins to train with it under the tutelage of Mas, who is all in with the Rebels now, as they go after the other mcgiffin on Endor. He still meets the other former stormtroopers or whatever and they still help in the final battle but, instead of Rey and Kylo, it Finn and a few Knights of Ren. Maybe two, I dunno. Anyway, he beats them with Anakin's saber, gets the mcgissin and returns to the Rebel base, stormtrooper backup in hand. Poe and Lando try to drum up support for a final strike on the Last Order’s base and you get that whole shtick with Keri Russell's character. I'd take her helmet off, too. Why the f*ck  would you hide Keri's face? Shes adorable! Finn and Lando try their best, but it seems like a no-go so Lando stays to work his magic as he and Chewie return to the Rebel planet. Rose can return to the Rebel planet and take charge of strategy or whatever as Leia secludes herself within the base. I dunno. Rose is kind of hard to place because she has no discernible talents but I imagine anything is better than what they did to her originally. Anyway, Rey is able to develop enough self-control to force the Dyad closed, cutting Ren's influence off from her but, at the same time, her influence off from Ren, completely. That's gonna have big ramifications later.

Around the end of the second act, Ren sees a force projection from his mother pleading with him to turn back to the light but he waves her off. Like her brother, Leia uses the last of her strength in this effort and she dies, pushing Ren over the edge, forcing him into full Sith. Since Rey closed the Dyad, Ren has no semblance of Light to keep the Dark at bay and he just absorbs SO much of it. It multiplies his strength in the Force and Ren is able to slay the Dark Sage, take it's power, and return to his fleet. Sh*t, the sage might be an actual Sith, Like, the people Sith and Ren kills him, effectively exterminated the race. Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. Anyway, Ren arrives to find Hux is the traitor so he allows Pryde to kill him. Pryde takes command and they raise their newly constructed, massive, fleet along with a brand new flag ship. Mobile, lightspeed ready, and far more deadly than any planet cannon, Ren is ready to begin his march of devastation. Our heroes arrive on the First Order hideaway and the battle ensues. Finn boards the flagship, clashing with the remaining Knights of Ren, his hit squad of former Stormtroopers at his side, as Rose uses her tech skills to drop the shields or whatever they were doing with horses on that spaceship at he end of IX. Rey arrives on the planet, Ren sensing her returns to the surface, to face off with each other. Ren is brimming with the dark, Rey knows he;s too far gone to save and she resolved to do what is necessary to end his tyranny. She ignites Lukes green lightsber, which upsets Ren and then Leia's  yellow saber, which sends Ren into a legit rage. Yeah, Rey dual-wields now because it's cool. Poe does his whole lone ranger whatever as he's the last of the vanguard and sh*t. All is lost.

The reinforcements show up in the nick of time and sh*t happens. Big ass sky battle with spaceships and explosions and sh*t, while Finn, Rose, and that black chick accomplish their task on the flagship. Shields dow, sh*t stats blowing up, fun times. Rey gets wrecked by Kylo, who is all the way Dark, no redemption, yellow rage eyes and everything. She’s getting dumped on until she forces the dyad open, allowing Ren to see the Force ghosts of Jedi Masters of old, as they all appear behind Rey, including Leia, Luke, and Mara Jade. They speak that bullsh*t, lay hands on Rei's lightsabers giving her a jump in power, and Rey defeats Ren in a harrowing duel. It has to end in a lightsaber clash. How can it not? Finn wrecks the remaining Knights and the flagship falls as the Rebel fleet overcomes the last of the Last Order. Ren is defeated, dying slowly, lamenting his choices. In his last moments, as the Force ghosts fade, the last few left are his mother, uncle, and grandpa. The last thing Ben sees as he dies is the face of the man he’s chased for so long. Poetic. Tragic. Requisite celebration on a jungle planet ensues while Rey is off, giving Ben a proper Jedi bonfire. Finn approaches, objecting to the respect shown, but she tells him that, in the end, Ren was still a Skywalker. If Vader can be forgiven, so could Ben. The two watch as the flames rise into the night sky. We get a scene of a shadow tracing the insides of Uncle Owen’s joint on Tatooine, generators firing on, mechanics coming to life. Rey is seen, all by her lonesome, igniting her new, personal, lightsabers; Gold, I guess? Is that what color they were supposed to be? A young kid arrives, inquiring about why the old Lars place is lit up for the first time in decades. He asks her name. She hesitates, looking over her shoulder to see the force ghosts of Anakin, Leia, Luke, Mara, and Ben; Her entire family. She gives a knowing smile and answers, “Rey. Rey Skywalker.”

This is just a rough outline of how i would have written this trilogy. I might embellish a little bit, maybe write it up as a proper fan fiction, but i don’t know. There’s a lot to unpack and i don’t really want to spend the time actually fleshing out this narrative but, i believe this is far superior to anything Disney has done. It fixes Rey, sets up Ren as a actual antagonistic force, kills anything resembling a Reylo romance, returns agency to Finn and Poe, fixes Rose, makes Mas a factor, and wraps everything up nicely. You get answers to the questions from before, the Knights of Ren have a presence throughout the entirety of the trilogy, and even divisive characters like Holdo get a shot at relevance outside of agenda. More than anything Rey being a Skywalker feels earned. It feels organic. It feels right. This is the bookend the Skywalker story deserved, not the rushed, politic laden, ego trip we got.

[anonarat]

Part 2 of my final thoughts on the Black Eagles route of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. This time covering the Black Eagles characters, I was going to include Shamir, but then remembered the church route existed.

Edelgard: She is one of my favourite characters, and with this game there is some stiff competition. Her drive and confidence are both believable and incredible. Certainly they are traits of hers that I envy a bit. She also has a well hidden cute side that helps to humanise her a bit. I was a bit saddened that she’s afraid of rats though. Further to this, that drive and confidence are what will doubtless help to make her a compelling villain in the other routes. It feels as though without Byleth to help temper these traits, she will go down more and more extreme paths. Her supports are also good at showing how she cares for those under her command.

I prefer her academy design to the post time-skip for two reasons, first is that I find loose, long hair attractive, the second is that post time-skip, she has far too much red. As a design, it could have stood to have a bit more black in to help the red pop some more and to break up the design a bit.

As expected from a lord, she is an absolute beast of a unit. Giving her the March Ring was definitely the best choice that I made. She was, by far, my best defensive unit except against really nasty axes where Petra could speed tank them more effectively.

Hubert: Probably my favourite male character. There is a good bit of comedy milked from his general demeanour and appearance, but it doesn’t detract from his seriousness as a character.

I do like both of his designs, though I think the post time-skip one is slightly better. It gives a bit more maturity to him, making his threats seem that much more credible.

Hubert ended up as my dancer. I wanted a ranged unit who had good defences and speed and wasn’t Linhardt. Also, it was hilarious. He turned out to be a good dancer too, though I did have to make the decision from time to time whether to have him attack with his strong magic or dance. But having to make choices in a tactical game is no bad thing.

Ferdinand: I found Ferdinand a little irritating at first, but his supports really helped out. The real turning point was when I realised how sincere he was about wanting to be better than Edelgard so that he was good enough to help guide her.

Not much to say design wise. They are both solid, but nothing that really stands out.

As a unit, Ferdinand ended up probably being the weakest of my core team. Not sure whether it was RNG cursed or just bad growths. Still, at least he was in the core team.

Caspar: Probably the least developed character, he has two main settings ‘I will fight for what’s right’ and ‘I feel bad about my dad killing your people’. For all that, I do think that both of these aspects were very well written for what they were, so he doesn’t fall as flat as, say, Arthur.

I feel as though Caspar’s designs work well in concert. At first, he looks like a typical brash anime youth, but the time-skip adds a level of maturity to that. It helps to highlight how the character has changed when thrown into a world at war.

Caspar ended up as one of my Wyvern Lords. As ever, fliers are extremely useful, and he was probably my best offensive unit. It was rare to come across a non-monster enemy that he didn’t one round.

Bernadetta: Of all the characters, Bernadetta is the one the time-skip benefited the most. It showed growth through a negative trait. As with Hubert, she has some funny supports which help, although these feel a bit more stale. Where Hubert’s comedy trait is proactive, getting different comedic reactions, Bernadetta’s trait is reactive. But yeah, post time-skip really helps her grow a lot.

In a similar vein, I prefer her post time-skip design. The way she’s gotten her bangs cut down really helps to show how she’s changed in those five years.

She ended up as a Bow Knight. Having Bow Range +2 combined with Canto makes Bow Knights extremely good, especially in the early-to-mid late game. She didn’t quite have the strength or speed to make it into the upper echelons in the last few chapters. Having said this, Bernadetta provided valuable ranged physical damage, because magic immune monsters are rubbish.

Petra: While Petra started as my favourite, she fell down the ranks a bit due to having some primary character traits that were good at first, but never really paid off. It would have been nice if, after five years, she had actually mastered speaking the language of Fodlan. It would have showed how her dedication had actually paid off. That said, there are enough smaller bits to her that add up to help make her much more rounded. I was also surprised to learn that she has a joint ending with Dorothea, which I didn’t expect.

I definitely prefer her pre-time-skip design. Post time-skip, her clothes feel out of place among the much more armoured clothes of some of her peers. The fact that she isn’t a fan of the cold really isn’t borne out either.

As a unit, she ended up as a Mortal Savant, and a good jack-of-all-trades. Now, I love me some speed tanking, and but she couldn’t do it too reliably except against axes with Axe Breaker. But the ability to have moderate, mixed damage, good crit rates and good hit meant that she always had a use.

Linhardt: Usually I find the lazy, but skilled archetype dull at best, but this is one time where the writing really helps the character. The fact that Linhardt will go out of his way to give tips to the other characters along with, after some cajoling, fully explaining them helps. I’ll be honest, after reading one of his supports, I was sorely tempted to try and have him go full pacifist, but magic damage is too useful in the late game. I genuinely like Linhardt quite a bit, showing the power of good writing.

Design-wise, he’s solid, both pre and post time-skip. It’s not too flashy, and it feels very in character for him.

As a unit, well, he’s your primary healer, so you gotta love him. He also has enough magic to make his Reason magic hit hard enough to make an impact. I think he came along to most, if not all maps purely for these reasons.

Dorothea: She is, by turns, witty, charming, cutting, flirty and caring. Her supports are excellent, being funny or shedding more light on her or other characters. Basically, she is my favourite character.

She is also the only character whose change in victory quotes post time-skip actually felt like they added to the character. Notably going from ‘Even roses have thorns’ to ‘Only thorns left on this rose’. It’s a badass line, it shows development and is just good writing.

Honestly, the colour of her hair and eyes reminded me of Four, which automatically predisposed me towards liking her. I also really like the hat she has pre-time-skip, which edges out the later outfit as my favourite.

Early game, she’s a great off-healer with her passive. Mid-game, she has enough magic to really blast enemies, though not as high or fast as some other units. Late game, she was my only siege magic using with Meteor. Throughout she is always useful and always strong, though never quite hitting that top tier. The fact that she learns Physic is one of the reasons why she’s so potent.

[hansoloschubbybrother]

My Opinion On The Last Jedi...For What It’s Worth

Having just watched The Last Jedi again and having seen way too many YouTube videos from people who hated the movie, I just had to write down my thoughts on it because I disagree with so many of the things that people hated about it.

It wasn’t perfect but, on the whole, I still think it is a great movie, mostly because of the choices made regarding the story arcs for the main characters.

But before I get into that though, I’m going to confirm some of the things where I can agree with the haters.  Firstly, Mary Poppins Leia.  It’s a nice idea that, by being blown into space, Leia’s survival instinct kicks in and enables her to use the force in a way she hadn’t before but I thought it looked awful and by just not having her blown into space in the first place would have been better.  The moment with Kylo Ren deciding not to shoot would have been more poignant and instead of Holdo being needed, Leia could have remained in charge and Admiiral Ackbar could have been the one to sacrifice himself by using light speed to obliterate the First Order fleet, giving him the noble death such a character deserved.

Just on that whole using light speed as a weapon thing, I’ve listened to people using it as another reason to put down the film, saying that if it was a plausible weapon it would have been used already so having it in TLJ doesn’t make sense.  Rian Johnson or someone had a cool idea that looked great in the movie and if other people involved in previous movies had thought of the idea then I’m sure they would have used it too.  It was a great moment in the film and people need to stop trying to find reasons to dislike the movie that aren’t there.

Next up is some of the humour.  Whilst I enjoyed some it, overall it felt a little out of place in a good Star Wars movie and harked back more to the prequels.  It may have been an attempt to appeal to children, but I felt the same way about Luke milking that animal and going fishing and the way BB-8 is used. In the original trilogy, R2-D2 would never actually ride a AT-ST, he may have found a way to control something by interfacing with a computer terminal but not actually driven something himself. This step toward children’s comedy was just one of the reasons I mostly disliked the prequel trilogy and wasn’t necessary here either.  The original trilogy didn’t have that and it didn’t stop those films from becoming an obsession for most children at the time.

My final gripe about TLJ is the over arching story of the slow chase.  Not only does it seem silly that the First Order would need to wait to destroy them, it created the need for the whole Canto Bight scene.  I enjoyed Finn and Rose’s scenes when they were on Snoke’s ship and I also enjoyed DJ as a character, but they needed to find a better way to make that all play out.  I really enjoyed the film’s opening battle with the dreadnought and the end battle on Crait but the story they created to get them from one place to the next was very underwhelming.

In spite of these issues, I still really enjoyed the film and that was mostly because of how they developed the story of each of the main characters.  On the whole, I thought they got this spot on and is generally where I seem to differ hugely from many of the online posting star wars fanbase.

I will leave Luke until last as I think his treatment in the film is what has caused the most hate from the fanbase, not least from Mark Hamill himself.  Instead, I’ll start with Rey as she is probably the character where there is the most common ground.  Undoubtedly for me, Rey is far too much of a Mary Sue.  As the central character of this new trilogy, this is not great film making.  If they needed her to have these abilities/skills from the get go, they shouldn’t have made her an orphaned desert girl at the start.  The journey they needed her to make was too far, too soon.  I know they are trying to explain how this is possible by saying that she basically downloaded Kylo Ren’s skills but it’s not very believable.  This said, I don’t actually believe that TLJ is what makes her a Mary Sue.  This problem is one created by TFA.  In TLJ, she doesn’t actually advance her skills set a great deal, other than to move a bunch of rocks, which is Jedi Training 1.1. Therefore, this is not a problem with TLJ, it’s the knock on effect from a big failure with TFA…which is not the last time I’ll say that.

We then have the issue of Rey’s parents, the source of much speculation between the two films.  I mentioned in a post I wrote after the film came out that I’m glad that her parents are nobodies.  Star Wars is a vast galaxy, why does she have to be some blood relative of an existing character.  It would be difficult to realistically explain that she is a relative of one of the key characters from the original trilogy and very unimaginative.  It is far better that her heritage broadens the Star Wars landscape, not enclose it furthermore.  For those that wanted her to be a Kenobi or a Solo or whatever, there is always the possibility that Kylo was lying.  Rian Johnson did, after all, include the mysterious but unresolved scene with Rey and the mirror thing on Ahch-To.  So for me, it was a positive that Rey’s parents were nobodies.

Finally for Rey, there is her connection with Kylo Ren, which brings me to another aside.  Many people are up in arms that Rian Johnson would use the force in a way that they have never seen before but for me this is just ridiculous.  It’s a sci-fi fantasy film.  If you can extend your disbelief in the originals then why not now?  The Jedi’s are supposed to have kept peace for thousands of years and we have only followed a handful for a few years but somehow we have seen the force used to its fullest extent.  Come on now.  You wouldn’t have worried about this as a child, so why now?  It’s totally not important and totally possible.

Anyway, back to Rey and Kylo.  For me, their connection is the most interesting arc of the new trilogy and using the force as a way to further develop this relationship was an important reason as to why I enjoyed the film.  Without that, they would not get the chance to interact as frequently as they do, thus removing important character development.  Many people, have said that it is not realistic that they would feel some kind of connection after knowing each other for such a short space of time but I see it completely differently.  Maybe it’s linked to personal experiences when it comes to relationships but, to me, it is perfectly plausible that two people with so much in common and who both share the same insecurities would feel an immediate connection.  They are in the same position as each other just on different sides of the force.  It’s natural to feel drawn to someone who is going through a similar experience to yourself, so that you don’t feel alone and for support.  For me, their relationship is an intriguing way to consider the force and how idea of light and dark sides exist.

This leads us nicely onto Kylo Ren.  Many people disliked the fact that in TFA he was basically a power brat.  For me, I was immediately drawn to this idea that we are seeing the proper development of the main bad guy.  His journey in this trilogy is much more what I was hoping to see for Anakin’s journey in the prequel trilogy.  Unfortunately, in the prequels, we a got a few brattish comments and then he basically became a full on bad guy after a short conversation with Palpatine/Sidious.  Kylo Ren’s character development is far more considered than Anakin’s.  He is a powerful brat but, especially because Adam Driver is as good an actor as Hayden Christensen is bad, you can understand why. You can also see that has not completely turned to the dark side, that it isn’t a switch.  This is developed even further in TLJ and, as I said before, I have enjoyed his development and how his character has mirrored Rey.  Kylo Ren has become my second favourite character in the Star Wars universe after his father.  I enjoyed how he first appears to be a Darth Vader clone, evening looking up to his Grandfather, but then falls way short.  I enjoyed the line TLJ when Snoke reminds him of this and tells him to remove his helmet.  I suppose some people don’t want to see their bad guy go through some dark coming of age story but I think it makes it much more interesting.

It is the same reason why I thoroughly enjoyed that Rian Johnson just killed off Snoke.  No back story, no big bad, just everything opposite to what people might have been expecting.  For me he was Sidious 2.0.  A powerful bad guy who we thought was going to be defeated at the end of the third film. To me he was unoriginal and another reason why TFA was described as a love letter to the original trilogy.  He felt very “Star Wars” but that was it.  People felt short changed after Snoke’s back story was ignored and became insignificant but thought it was exactly the right decision.  He played his part and moved aside for Kylo Ren to become the main bad guy for the second half of the trilogy.  On the subject of his back story, I just don’t get this obsession with needing to know everything about every character’s back story.  We never got that in the original trilogy.  We didn’t get told a single thing about Darth Sidious.  He was just the powerful bad guy that ruled the Empire.  We didn’t need to know more and we didn’t care.  That we got to learn more via the prequel films was great but it wasn’t a vital part of the story that was missing from the original films. This is the same with a whole host of other characters from Jabba, Boba Fett, Lando and even Han and Chewie.  Why do people now suggest that the new films lack characterisation or some shit because we don’t know the back story of every character?  It’s just not necessary.

Poe was another character whose story arc has been criticised.  When I first watch TLJ, I also thought that having Leia and Holdo hold back their plan from him seemed like a stupid decision but this felt more and more reasonable with each watch.  In order to avoid him being just another boring hero pilot character that destroys lots of enemy ships and always survives, Rian Johnson clearly wanted him to have some kind of journey to help develop his character.  It makes total sense to me that a hero pilot would have an ego that is too big and gets in the way of strong leadership decisions, so Rian Johnson develops this through the film, from Poe unnecessarily sacrificing lives and ships to destroy the dreadnought at the start, to his demotion and subsequent exclusion from leadership decision and then redemption at the end by choosing to pull the Resistance fighters back when they’re being picked off easily on Crait.  I can’t help but think that having two women leaders decide not to let the male hero pilot in on the plan goes against male sensibilities in this situation.  He’s the hero, the man and, in all previous eras, would be the one who knows what the right thing to do is.  The truth is, that if it were two male leaders and a female hero pilot who was denied knowledge of the plan, we probably wouldn’t bat an eye-lid.  Is it feminist politics unnecessarily introduced to Star Wars?  I don’t think so.  It’s not forced down our throats, just used to help develop what could easily become a boring character.

The final character I’ll focus on before Luke is Finn.  As mentioned before, I enjoyed his scenes on Snoke’s ship with Rose and Captain Phasma but really didn’t like how they got him there.  It’s a shame that it made his character seem marginalised.  The only part I did enjoy was how DJ made him question his defection from the First Order and whether there is a good or a bad side in war.  This is quite deep stuff for a Star Wars film and quite political but I liked that they asked these questions and it seemed fitting that Finn’s character be the one to contemplate these ideas.  Again, it’s a shame they couldn’t have found a better way to do it, that made him more integral to the story.

Finally, we come to Luke. More than anything else, it’s people’s comments about Luke that get me shouting at my screen.  Maybe it is because I was never drawn to Luke as my favourite character as a child but, for some reason, I just don’t see things the same way as all the haters.  For me, Luke’s story through TLJ needed to follow on from what we were told in TFA, in a manner that is both realistic to how you might think someone would react having been through that experience and also realistic to how Luke, the character, would react.

So, what were we told in TFA?  We learnt that Luke is in hiding and has cut himself off completely from his family and friends as a result of the part he played in the failure of his Jedi Academy and turning his nephew into Kylo Ren.

This leads me to the first of the things that annoy me about some of the arguments laid at the door of TLJ and Rian Johnson.  People claim that Luke would never abandon his friends and cowardly hide away and cut himself off from everything.  This idea is played out in TLJ but this story was clearly set in motion in TFA.  If people can’t believe Luke would act in this way then be angry at JJ Abrams because it was his idea.  Rian Johnson continued Luke’s story from this situation because it’s the only place he could have started from.

Next is to decide whether Luke’s reaction to what has happened is a realistic way for someone to respond.  This is obviously subjective but his failings have led to the creation of a potential new Sith Lord, the death of many young fledgling Jedis, the estrangement of his nephew from his family and the break up of his sister’s marriage to his best friend.  This is quite a heavy burden bare, considering this is on top of how someone would naturally feel after failing so badly.  Imagine someone is revered as a hero around the galaxy, a new Jedi Knight to help bring peace.  Your self-esteem would be sky high.  You would be pretty happy with how your life is panning out. It is clearly absolutely plausible that someone could react to what happened the way Luke does in TLJ.  If people were happy to believe Luke’s set up in TFA, then they have to accept that someone could react the way Luke does. I believe that this is a far more likely way that someone would react than to remain positive and not question your beliefs and the part they played in what happened.

Therefore the question is whether Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight and hero of the galaxy, would react this way.  Clearly many fans and Mark Hamill say he wouldn’t.  I just don’t see how they can come to this conclusion based on his actions in the original trilogy.  The main argument I hear is that he was a great Jedi who saw the good in Darth Vader and defeated Sidious.  This just doesn’t stack up I’m afraid.  How do we know Luke is a great Jedi?  He was only taught by Yoda for a little while and clearly never finished his training. In fact, choosing to be so loyal to his friends was against his Jedi training.  Additionally, he beat Darth Vader, not by being a great Jedi but by turning to the dark side and using anger to fuel his fight with him.  Vader threatened Leia and he threw anything Jedi out the window and got plain mad.  This made him a hero but certainly not some grand Jedi.  Then we come to Sidious.  Luke didn’t defeat Sidious at all.  Seeing the good in Vader pulled him back from killing his father but he was about to be killed by Sidious.  It was Vader/Anakin who killed Sidious.  So, Luke was a hero, a bastian of hope but he was not some infallible human or a Jedi dedicated to their code.  If anything, he was the first grey Jedi.  For me, the fact that he felt so strongly for his family and friends is a reason why he would have reacted the way he did when he caused it all to go to shit.

People have also suggested that Luke would never think, even for a second, about killing his nephew. Again, I just don’t have this picture of Luke as all things light and good.  He is not so squeaky clean that when faced with the prospect of a new Sidious or Vader and acknowledging that he is not able to control him, that, for a second, he wouldn’t think that right thing to do is kill him.  Everyone has thoughts they shouldn’t have for just a split second.  Again, why is Luke any different?

It seems to me that people who loved Luke in the originals can’t face the idea that he is somehow a flawed human being and a flawed Jedi.  This character that they idolised as a child is actually a human and not some unrealistic hero type.  For me, it gave Luke something interesting to contribute to this trilogy.  Did people who hated it just want Johnson to forget what was set up for him in TFA, something he is criticised for in other areas, and suddenly have Luke forget all about why he was where he was?  Was he supposed to return to the Luke from the original trilogy just because some girl he doesn’t know turns up with his old lightsabre?  That would have been bad film making in my eyes, not good.

Another criticism is that he died a coward.  I just don’t see it that way.  Was it cowardly to hide away? Possibly but, as mentioned, this wasn’t Rian Johnson’s fault and also not an unrealistic way for him to react to what happened. Having been put in this position, you then want Luke to redeem himself and I thought he did that.  As the film progressed, he slowly became his old self. First he saw Chewie, then the falcon and news of Han’s death, he then agreed to help Rey a bit, then he saw R2-D2 who played him Leia’s recording for Obi-Wan and finally Yoda’s force ghost helped him come around.  There was a progression to his arc and, in the end, his actions were both brave and saved the day.  He would have known that using the force to project his image for all that time would lead to his death but that it was necessary to save the rebellion.  His death gave hope, renewed the idea of Luke the idolised hero, and then echoed the death of both Obi-Wan and Yoda, so was more than fitting, especially with the twin suns setting.  I thought it was a great way for him to “die” and not at all cowardly.  He will almost certainly be back as force ghost in IX as well.

As before, anyone moaning that force projection has never been done by a Jedi in any other material, needs to open up their imagination a little.  Also, if Luke is supposed to be such an amazing Jedi then surely he could find ways to use the force that others before him hadn’t.

My final point about Luke, and of this ridiculously long essay about a film, relates to how people have criticised the idea that Luke could ever feel that the Jedi order needed to end, the idea that an order that kept peace for thousands of years could ever need to move on or evolve.  I can’t believe people even say this without thinking about our own history. Religion, the British Empire, slavery, etc have all been institutions used over 100s of years to keep peace and maintain the powerful but there always comes a time when life and people learn and move forward.  They find better ways to live.  The Jedi might have kept peace for 1000s of years but in the recent past, and Luke’s understanding, they have not kept the peace, they have only been one side of a conflict.  Luke would be absolutely right to reflect on his Jedi beliefs and could easily be correct in his new found stance that the Jedi need to end.  He comes round again at the end of the film, when he corrects Kylo that he is not the last Jedi, but in my eyes his questioning of the Jedi order is not only right but interesting and made for a great film.

[zcbp5]

Early Thoughts on The Last Jedi

Like a pretty sizable chunk of humanity, I love Star Wars. I love the stories, I love the characters, I love the mythic overtones even when they occasionally slide into nonsensical mumbo-jumbo, I love the visuals, I love the way my heart always skips the moment John Williams’ iconic fanfare explodes over the opening crawl. I even love the much maligned prequels, movies that both diehard fans and more casual viewers seem to wish had never happened. Even though it was slightly reactionary in its storytelling, I really enjoyed The Force Awakens. So it pretty well goes without saying that I was extremely excited for The Last Jedi and rushed to see it on its opening weekend.

The critical reception was largely ebullient. As is becoming increasingly clear, fan response has been far more divided. So what did I think? 

Read no further if you haven’t seen the film, because spoilers abound.

My first thought is that I have considerable admiration for what Rian Johnson is trying to do. People aren’t kidding when they say that he is taking Star Wars in some new directions. After the hammering George Lucas took for taking risks with the prequels, it takes some balls for a director to fuck around with Star Wars tropes in the way that Johnson does. I genuinely admire his willingness to tweak and subvert the formula.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure I admire the actual results as much as the ideas underlying them, and I think that in more than one place, he strayed too far from the established lore with too little motivation. Put bluntly, at least on an initial impression, The Last Jedi is probably my *least* favorite Star Wars movie, and yes, the ranking includes The Phantom Menace.

Recycling the framing of The Empire Strikes Back, The Last Jedi opens with the new Rebel Alliance (the Resistance) on the ropes in their face off with the new Empire (the First Order). Probably one of the weakest elements of The Force Awakens was the total lack of clarity about the power dynamics in the galaxy, and The Last Jedi does nothing to improve matters. Unless you read a lot of supplementary material, there is very little context: at the end of the original trilogy, we saw the Rebel Alliance triumph over the evil Empire. The Emperor and his most powerful subordinate were dead, their super-weapon destroyed, and their fleet in shambles. At the start of The Force Awakens, it feels almost as though we’re back at square one: although the Alliance has nominally restored the Republic, the military advantage in the galaxy appears to lie with First Order which, in all but name, is the Empire. It has its own star destroyers, its own stormtroopers, its own dark-side-of-the-Force-wielding leader (Supreme Leader Snoke) and its own Vader-like enforcer (Kylo Ren). It even has its own Death Star (Starkiller Base) which is summarily dispatched…to apparently no effect whatsoever. The chief impact of the First Order’s most powerful weapon (and a slew of associated personnel and hardware) being blown to smithereens seems to be that the First Order is now the undisputed power in the galaxy. Talk about “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!”

This trope worked in The Empire Strikes Back. The Empire was the Empire, after all, and even without explanation, it made a reasonable amount of sense that a powerful galactic empire with vast resources could quickly rebound from the destruction of a super-weapon. Without further development than we’ve seen in either movie, the First Order’s mere existence makes less sense, and their sudden total galactic hegemony following hard upon the loss of Starkiller base makes even less sense—even factoring in their destruction of the Republic’s core worlds and fleet. Furthermore, the Resistance’s resources seem vastly diminished. In The Force Awakens, they were able to intervene when the First Order tracked BB-8 to Maz Kanata’s castle, not to mention mount a large-scale attack on Starkiller base. Here, they’re down to their last couple of ships by the time the movie starts, which is a bit of a problem since the movie seems to start within hours or days of the end of The Force Awakens.

Despite the increasingly compounded problems with the overarching narrative framing, things get off to a bang, with fighter ace Poe Dameron trolling the hell out of the First Order’s prissy military commander, General Hux and a desperate Resistance attack on a powerful First Order vessel that is bombarding the Resistance base and its escaping fleet. After that, things start to flag a little bit as the rag-tag Resistance fleet is tracked through hyperspace and then begins to run low on fuel as the First Order pursues, the latter being a rather forced plot device, since fuel has never before been an issue in a Star Wars movie. Worse, the Resistance ships are just enough faster than their First Order pursuers to lie outside of effective weapons range which again seems more convenient to the plot than particularly plausible.

As Leia and her small remnant of Resistance fighters remain in their plot-mandated stalemate with the First Order fleet, our Force-savant heroine Rey, seeks the assistance and guidance of Luke Skywalker. Just as Yoda initially refused to train Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, Luke initially refuses to train—or even talk to—Rey here. Like his old master, Luke gets some laughs with his curmudgeonly trolling of his would-be apprentice, as when he blithely chucks the lightsaber that once belonged to him (and his father before him) over his shoulder and into a porg’s nest. Alas, despite some enjoyable and funny moments and Mark Hamill’s finest performance to date as Luke, the “training” doesn’t play out as well as its forbear in “Empire”.

First of all, in The Force Awakens, Rey was presented as the most naturally powerful Force user we’ve ever seen, able to use Jedi mind tricks and go toe-to-toe with the powerful Kylo Ren without any training at all. She’s far more powerful than Luke was before he was trained, and she even shows more natural aptitude than Anakin, who was a sort of messiah. So it’s not really clear that she even needs training so much as she needs answers—a sense of context or, in her words, a sense of “my place in all this”. When Luke inevitably comes around to helping Rey, she gets very little of either training or context. We could use a little more exposition from Luke on the nature of the Force, his own tangled history with it, and perhaps at least a brief montage of Rey further developing her already formidable skills.

Instead, Kylo Ren keeps butting in. The Last Jedi elects to introduce a radical new Force ability—Force Skype! From his quarters aboard a First Order star destroyer, Kylo can commune with Rey as she stares into the windswept waters around Luke’s island hideaway, giving them the opportunity to develop their antagonistic and faintly erotic connection from The Force Awakens. This is a clever plot device for advancing Rey’s and Kylo’s ambiguous relationship and for further fleshing out Kylo’s motivations. It’s also a previously unmentioned new superpower, a distraction from Rey’s interaction with Luke, and a cheap plot trick to cram important, perception-changing revelations into the space of around one-third of the movie. In The Force Awakens, Rey’s previous experiences with Kylo were not positive (unless she’s the kind of girl who had a well-worn copy of 50 Shades of Grey stashed in her AT-AT desert home): he kidnapped her, tortured her for information, murdered his father—and her mentor—as she looked on, and finally tried to kill her. In her first Force Skype with him, she calls him a monster. A few Skype calls later, and Rey is optimistic that she can set the brooding Vader wannabe formerly known as Ben Solo back on the right path. It’s silly. I understand that Adam Driver exudes a peculiar sort of sex appeal as Kylo. I understand that the internet is filled with legions of “Reylo” shippers. And I understand that even in The Force Awakens, the relationship was played with some noticeable—if muted—sparks. But the rapidity of Rey’s reversal on Kylo in The Last Jedi frankly plays even worse than Padme’s sudden discovery that she truly, deeply loves Anakin after repeatedly rebuffing him in Attack of the Clones, and using a brand new Force ability to sell it makes the plot creak mightily.

While Rey is learning to love Kylo, Poe Dameron has come up with an ingenious plan to save the last 25 Resistance fighters in the galaxy. After a rather less Force-y Skype call with Maz Kanata (the First Order can track you and outgun you, but they can’t overtake you or jam your communications), he sends ex-stormtrooper Finn and newcomer Rose Tico on a top secret mission to the casino world of Canto Bight to track down a hacker who can help them get aboard Snoke’s flagship and disable the hyperspace tracking device, thus allowing the Resistance to safely retreat and regroup. It’s here that the movie inserts its most incisive and politically relevant messages—the rich get rich off the backs of poor children, brutalized animals, and conflict (no matter which side wins the war, the arms manufacturer always does). They play baccarat in posh casinos while the galaxy burns, the people suffer, and both the First Order and the Resistance indiscriminately buy their wares and line their pockets. Further, it gives Johnson a chance to introduce the sort of down-trodden and overlooked young’ins whom he clearly wants us to believe are the future of both the Resistance, and of the Jedi order. But to the plot of the movie, the whole sequence still comes off feeling both too long and not long enough, essential to some larger story but entirely tangential to the one at hand. This is especially true since the entire mission yields no result in the overall story: Rose and Finn fail to contact the hacker they were sent to find and instead settle on a stuttering, cynical Benicio del Toro. While they succeed in getting aboard Snoke’s ship and getting near the tracking device, Benicio betrays them to the First Order and they are very nearly executed before a very well-timed, deus ex Holdo attack on the ship saves them. Johnson wants to make point about the importance of failure, and if this particular lesson on that front hadn’t come at the expense of other storylines, or if he had been unable to weave it into other aspects of the movie, it would be fine enough. Alas, even at two and a half hours, the film feels weirdly rushed and the lesson about failure is boldly underlined elsewhere, meaning that the diversion on Canto Bight comes at the expense of richer development of Luke’s misgivings, Rey’s and Kylo’s connection, and huge unanswered questions about who the hell Snoke is and how the First Order has so completely demolished all resistance (both with and without a capital ‘r’). This brings me to yet another problem: Snoke.

Rey becomes frustrated with Luke’s reticence and sets off to return to the Resistance and persuade Kylo Ren to turn against Snoke and turn back toward the light. Just as Vader did with Luke, Ren seizes her and escorts her to his master. Just like the late great Palpatine/Darth Sidious, Snoke sits in a grandiose throne room with a good view of the Resistance fleet getting wiped out and a contingent of red-robed guards. Just like Palpatine in Return of the Jedi, Snoke can’t seem to stop with overconfident sneering about his impending total victory, his utter power with the Force, and Rey’s imminent demise at the hands of his apprentice Kylo Ren. And just as Darth Vader turned on the emperor at the last moment, right as it appears that Kylo is going to carry out his master’s command and kill Rey, he instead ignites her lightsaber (which Snoke has set on the armrest of his throne), impaling and then bisecting the Supreme Leader. Snoke’s bodyguards leap into action and, fighting side by side, Rey and Kylo defeat them. But here Kylo’s path diverges from his grandfather’s: this isn’t an act of redemption, this is the classic instance of a figure powerful with the dark side betraying his master for his own aggrandizement. Kylo wants to be Supreme Leader, and he wants Rey to join him. Along the way, he even manages to reveal that the mystery around Rey’s parentage is one big fat nothingburger.

Watching the scene, I expected that sometime later we’d see Snoke putting himself back together and rising from the dead. Nope. Unless he has a comeback in the next film, Snoke is dead. My first reaction to this was consternation: what kind of story kills off its “big bad” well before the last act? Snoke doesn’t even make it to the end of the movie, and he was set up to be the overarching baddie for this entire cycle of Star Wars films. On reflection, I think that killing him off is actually pretty clever and pretty gutsy. It’s surprising just in and of itself. It makes Kylo Ren’s arc that much more interesting. And it actually fits *extremely* well with the lore around the Sith, where sooner or later the Sith apprentice always ended up murdering the Sith master in the quest for ever more power. That said, Snoke still needed more explanation. Who was this powerful figure who managed to essentially rebuild the Empire and turn Luke’s fledgling Jedi against him? Explaining that would do a lot more to put the big picture (that is, how did we get to Rebels v. Empire 2.0 in mere decades after Return of the Jedi), and it would also make his murder at the hands of Kylo Ren that much more impactful.

Like much of the rest of the film, the final big scene in which the First Order ground forces attack all 10 remaining Resistance fighters on Crait felt oddly truncated and choppy. Oh, here are some cannon fodder guys manning some trenches. Oh my, here come some walkers across the salt flat! Send out the speeders! Oh goodness, not only do they have walkers, they have a mini-Death Star (another one! Jesus!) Is Finn going to die? No, it can’t be! Oh, thanks Rose! Oh man, is Rose going to die? And suddenly a wild Luke Skywalker appeared! I never realized he was so vain—looks like he stopped by the salon for a trim and a dye job. My, I guess Luke *has* gotten really powerful what with withstanding all that blaster fire! Oh, Kylo’s pissed. Look at Luke trolling the fuck out of Kylo. Oh shit, Luke is a hologram! Oh shit, Luke is using the Force in some really crazy ways! Shit, now he’s tripping hard and seeing Tatooine. Oh damn, he’s dead. Oh well, no time to mourn, there’s Rey picking up rocks, getting hit on by Poe, and wondering why Finn doesn’t love her anymore. It’s not a bad scene, but like a lot of the movie, it feels like Rian Johnson needed to piss really bad while he was editing it.

I’ve never seen a Star Wars movie that I really didn’t like, and The Last Jedi is no exception. But at least on a first watch, it is getting a lot closer than I would have thought possible.

There’s still a lot of stuff I liked.

It looked good (the marvelous salt-encrusted red-velvet cake landscape of Crait, Snoke’s throne room, the aftermath of Holdo ramming Snoke’s flagship) and there were some really exciting sequences (the opening space battle, Kylo and Rey fighting Snoke’s guards).

One of my favorite things about The Force Awakens was a welcome dose of diversity: the lead character was a girl who didn’t need rescuing. Another main character was a black man, another a Hispanic man, and they were surrounded by a background of diversity in both the First Order and the Resistance. The Last Jedi carries on this noble tradition, and even adds to it, introducing an Asian woman in a major role (and showing her sister nobly sacrificing herself), a heroic, middle-aged female admiral, and more background diversity. I absolutely love this about these new Star Wars movies.

There were any number of moments where the film was really funny, and that was a good thing. Hux is a great straight-man: Poe prank calling him in the opening was genuinely funny. Pretty much all of his interactions with Kylo Ren are funny. Snoke sneeringly telling Kylo to take off his “ridiculous” mask was funny. Luke chucking his family heirloom lightsaber over his shoulder was funny. Finn’s foot crashing through the floor of his speeder in the midst of an otherwise tense scene was a welcome moment of levity.

I liked the addition of two prominent female characters. Vice-Admiral Holdo was, alas, not around for very long, but she stood out while she was there, rightly scolding Poe for his recklessness. And when it mattered, she showed that her more cautious style wasn’t lack of courage. Rose Tico was a nice addition as well: a character with a humble background and a humble job who shows a lot of heart and rises to the occasion, not to mention giving voice to perhaps the single most important line in the movie, when she explains to Finn that the good guys don’t win by killing what they hate, but by saving what they love.

Speaking of Admiral Holdo, Poe Dameron’s arc was also well-handled. He’s a really likable character, but he’s also a cocky, arrogant, hotshot with rather poor judgement. Most of the ideas he has throughout the movie are really bad ideas--either too risky, too costly, or both. In the final battle on Crait, Poe seems to have finally absorbed some of these lessons as he calls off what would amount to a suicide attack on the advancing First Order forces--something that he almost certainly wouldn’t have done earlier in the film.

Finally, even though it was clumsily handled, I liked what Johnson was doing in showing the spark of heroism and resistance in the stable hands. It’s good to be reminded that the fate of the galaxy--and even the fate of the Jedi--doesn’t rest solely with the Skywalker family.

Still--and again, this is only a first impression--The Last Jedi made too much of a hash of its main story lines. My biggest problems:

Since I enjoy the interconnectedness of key characters and threads in the main Star Wars saga (the ones that get episode numbers), I couldn’t help but hope that Rey had some intriguing connection to something we’d seen before. I was particularly keen on a popular fan theory that she was related to Palpatine, but that was just me. However, I don’t really mind if she really is--as The Last Jedi indicates--essentially a nobody from nowhere. But if that is truly going to be the case, some big-time explanation is needed that either plausibly explains that most of what the previous two trilogies told us about Force users was bunk or plausibly explains that the Force itself has changed and adapted to a galaxy without organized Force users.

Killing Snoke relatively early in the game is fine, and even an ingenious bit of storytelling. Doing so with zero explanation of who he is and how he managed to successfully plunge the galaxy back into darkness so quickly is really bad storytelling. It would be fine if there were no previous Star Wars movies, or if the new trilogy were completely unrelated to the others, but that isn’t the case. Anyone watching these new films *knows* that the Empire and the Sith were destroyed. The complete reversal of fortunes--not only do we have a new Empire in the form of the First Order, but we have something like new Sith in the form of Snoke and Kylo Ren--trivializes the hard-won victories of the original trilogy and leaves a gaping narrative hole in the absence of any explanation.

There are plenty of smaller questions that aren’t quite as important but that rankle nonetheless: who the hell are/were the Knights of Ren? Were they Snoke’s bodyguards, and if so, why did they turn so immediately on their purported leader, Kylo Ren? If they are something else, who--and where!--the hell are they? How did the Resistance go from mounting a massive and successful attack on Starkiller base to scrambling aboard a handful of mid-sized cruisers? Why can’t the First Order just call in some other ships to intercept the fleeing Resistance ships?

At the end of the day, The Last Jedi has some really exciting moments and shows a laudable desire to try a few new things, and put a new spin on some old things. But despite its two and a half hour runtime, it felt rushed and too short. Too many questions, large and small, from The Force Awakens, remained unanswered and there were no satisfying reveals or truly unexpected twists to make up for that. And too often the subversion of Star Wars tropes seemed to exist for their own sake, rather than arising organically from the narrative.