#Palpatine blew up whole planets and murdered billions

[cptsd-skywalker]

@ those people who consider Anakin to be just as bad or worse than Palpatine, are you ok? Like is everything alright up there? Got to be one of the most out there takes I’ve ever heard.

[wrender]

(from the back of the auditorium) give us the rant!

OKAY. So. Here is the issue with how the star wars sequels deal with the destruction of entire planets, which is they don't treat them with any gravity at all. I'm gonna put this under a readmore

In the original trilogy/rogue one, the death star is, terrible. It's horrible. In rogue one it kills our remaining protagonists, and in the og trilogy it kills the adoptive parents of leia, along with her entire home. A lot of the comics delve into leia's grief, how she cannot accept darth vader as her father, how her real parents died on alderaan, along with many heartbreaking scenes were leia talks about how if they're far enough away, she can still see alderaan in the sky. It's terrible. It's something that is absolutely irredeemable

We don't have any planets that blow up in the prequels, but to replace it we have order 66, which I feel is still a good parallel to draw. An entire culture murdered in cold blood, their temples dismantled, or taken over and changed completely. The few survivors can never go home. In the animated series rebels, we see the aftermath of a sith death weapon. On malachor 5 we see a sith temple with the bodies of both sith and jedi littered everywhere. When the weapon went off the first (and last) time, it was incomplete, and fired on its own planet rather than somewhere else. The entire malachor system now is cursed, the disturbance the weapon's use left in the force caused gravity wells making it so ships might just crash on the planet's side (like the Bermuda triangle). The consequences of using a weapon of this caliber are still echoed, over a thousand years later.

Now, with all this, where does that put the sequel trilogy with how it treats the destruction of planets? Well, let's talk about our three main ones. The entire hosnian system (tfa), Kijimi (tros), and ilum (tfa).

The one that's probably handled with the most care is the destruction of the hosnian system. The characters are seen effected by this, the resistance takes a hit with the loss of a keystone system, and it shows off how bad starkiller base is. My main issue, is that in the movies this event is never mentioned again. Ever. Not even in a passing line. "Oh look, kylo ren blew up a whole system. Oh well, let's never bring that up again." We don't know any characters there, this is the first time this system is brought up, and it has no lasting effect on the story or the characters, and this was the one that was handled the "best".

Kijimi, was handled with significantly less taste. Palpatine wants to, do palpatine stuff so he sends one of his new star destroyers that can destroy planets now, to Kijimi, knowing that our protagonists have friends there. The ship goes, blows up the planet, and then, nothing. Our characters are sad that their friends died. But wait! They didn't! They're fine! Everyone is happy that our friends got away, but.... Nobody is bringing up the fact that an entire planet is dead. Gone. Our friends survived, okay, but billions of people are dead and it's never brought up again. The destruction of Kijimi was nothing more than a fakeout trying to pull emotion out of the audience.

And now, for the worst offence. Ilum. For context, ilum is the main planet that's the source of kyber crystals, which power lightsabers. In current canon, there is only one other temple that has them, which is lothal. Ilum is a sacred site, an important temple, and the right of passage for every jedi youngling to get their own kyber crystal, so they can eventually build their own lightsaber. And what did they do to it in the force awakens?

They blew it up. Starkiller base is built around and inside an entire planet, and for some fucking reason, the writers decided to make that planet ilum. The planet that's still one of the remaining sacred sites to the jedi. The planet in which, for generations, jedi have gone to undergo a ritual that would give them a weapon that they'd have for life. And they blew it up.

To me, this is what really makes me realize that the star wars writers, for the sequel trilogy, don't care about the history of the world. They don't care about the cultures, they don't care about the characters, they don't care about the impact that an entire planet blipping out of existence has. They care about making a death star because they know fans liked it. They care about making a big explosion because they know it'll look cool. They care about copying a beat from the original trilogy because they know it was impactful, but they didn't put in the work to make it so theirs would leave any lasting impact. They don't want to put in the effort. They just want you to be reminded of a movie you once liked, and hope that that's enough for you to give them all your money.

[counterspelling]

okay i have regained the energy to articulate exactly why and how tros was so fucking stupid

a non-exhaustive list of things they just didn't bother to explain unless i blacked out with rage or the sheer mediocrity

HOW palapatine fucking survived, other than that it's literally impossible for men in star wars to die and not get resurrected

why leia is so weak all of a sudden that reaching out to her son kills her

rey's parents NAMES?????????

how rey constructed her new saber from the end scene

who finn or jana's parents are

if palpatine was controlling everything the whole time why did snoke want kyle ron to kill rey

WHY DO THEY HAVE A FUCKING FORCE BOND IF THEY'RE NOT COUSINS WHEN ALL HE EVER DID WAS ABUSE AND TORTURE HER

a non-exhaustive list of things that this series irrevocably fucked up

by keeping the original trio apart and expecting them each to ~get their own focus~ in a movie instead of letting them BE TOGETHER, THE MAIN DRAW OF THE OT, they completely wasted leia. so we know she trained as a jedi with luke, but we NEVER GOT TO SEE IT. i waited my entire life to fucking see jedi leia and got nothing. and her stopping, just because she saw the death of her son? "ALWAYS IN MOTION, THE FUTURE IS" that's......... that's so dumb!!!!!!!!!!

will never be over luke abandoning the jedi order!!! of never getting to see him and leia stand side by side, lightsabers in hand, to defeat evil!

rey, again getting completely undermined and turning her story into the redemption of fucking kyle ron, when it's NOT HER RESPONSIBILITY TO SAVE HIM. HE DOESN'T DESERVE REDEMPTION. you don't get to slaughter millions and be a literal nazi and then decide at the last minute, actually, i inexplicably fell in love with this girl i've only ever tortured and abused so now i get a half-assed redemption

rey KISSING HER ABUSER bc the narrative will never let us see him as what he is!!! a nazi who continually, for years and years and years, CHOSE to be evil, to murder people who were fighting for freedom from tyranny, for no fucking reason

rey palpatine??????????? really??????????? they scavenged the internet crack theories for that????????? and decided to canonize it?????

palpatine fucks????????????????

the fact that they brought palpatine back at all, instead of letting kyle ron be the ultimate villain as he should have been. that they were too cowardly to let the nazi be a nazi and die unrepentantly

i was never invested either way in force-sensitive finn but the fact that they confirmed and yet did nothing with it

in general this entire trilogy continually setting up expectations for things that NEVER HAVE A PAYOFF, just dropped storyline after dropped storyline. it’s almost like if you’re gonna make a trilogy for a billion dollar franchise you should have some oversight and overarching plan from the beginning instead of deciding that letting three separate straight white men come in one after the other with no input or collaboration between them

finn and poe in general not having storylines??? because we just had to keep giving scenes to kyle ron! gotta waste a third movie on will or will he not finally decide to not be a piece of shit!

every skywalker is dead.............. if rey is not luke’s daughter, the skywalker line is gone forever and we did not live through 6 movies of watching skywalkers for it to end this way

the st trio not even being a trio. rey and poe didn’t even MEET until the end of the second movie. i just. never giving us a reunion scene between the ot trio. how does disney so fundamentally misunderstand the biggest draw of the star wars universe, THE BOND BETWEEN THE MAIN CHARACTERS, and how they pull together in the face of impossible odds to triumph together

it took 23 years to half-finish two death stars and now every star destroyer can have a planet destroying weapon??? really???

the things i needed from this movie were for rey to be luke's daughter, since narratively that is still the ONLY satisfying resolution for this trilogy, for her to kill kyle ron and NOT INEXPLICABLY HEAL HIM. WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT. ALL HE EVER DID WAS LIE AND TORTURE AND MURDER, THERE IS NO FUCKING REASON FOR HER TO HEAL HIM, and for rey and finn to get together and......... none of those things happened

even if i never would have forgiven tfa and abrams for the complete fuckup of the galaxy at large, invalidating everything the ot was about, keeping the original trio apart, there was SO MUCH POTENTIAL for rey and finn and poe in tfa. and then they just so completely dropped the ball. fucked all their characterizations, never gave them bonding as a team, weren’t even consistent across movies. there was still HOPE after tfa, but tlj came in with johnson’s arrogance and ~subversion~~~~~~ and blew every possible good ending out of the water. we could have had a trilogy for the first time not about a white dude, but about women and poc, about rey discovering her skywalker heritage and struggling with the legacy and responsibility that comes with it, of finding her blood family and forming a new one with her companions, of seeing her growth as a jedi and determination to make the galaxy a better place as her loved ones did, of finn discovering his force sensitivity and seeing them train together, seeing them join with luke and leia to rebuild the jedi order. and instead we got this. a woman who spends two movies inexplicably wasting her life and time trying to redeem an angry white man who only ever worked for tyranny and oppression and trying to call that love. fuck disney.