#and i was like JEDI STARSHIP MOVIE NIGHT!!!!

[rubensmuse]

@sealeneee​‘s excellent post about the JKnight and JConsular’s companions cohabitating/hanging out tickled me so much that it galvanized me to 1) mentally write my JK & JC into each other’s stories 2) spend way, way too much time and effort bringing this mental image to life.

Rusk thinks it’s a cinematic masterpiece. Scourge just wanted to see what Republic propaganda looks like these days.

(He spent the entire time insisting it was asinine drivel, but he would not let Felix turn it off.)

[steampunkforever]

Looking back at the latest run of movies I've filmposted on, you might be tempted to think I'm only watching the good stuff these days. Let me dispel any thought that I've abandoned horrendous cinema as we tackle what I believe to be the reason George Lucas is the way he is: the Star Wars Holiday Special.

For the uninitiated (people who became Star Wars fans around the time the term "Reylo" was minted) let me set the stage. It's 1977, and the world has been changed by the arrival of Jedi to the silver screen. Lucas et al. can now afford more matte paintings than ever before, and are busy planning out the thrilling sequels to carry on the Star Wars saga ("Planning the Star Wars sequels" is a sentence that will not be uttered again in studio conference rooms until 2017, at which JJ Abrams will precede the sentence with the words "We will not be"). CBS approaches Lucas with a revolutionary concept: worldbuilding for the Star Wars universe by developing discrete self-contained stories through the medium of Television (the book of bobos, coming soon).

Lucas says yes, develops an allegedly solid script off his idea for an all-wookie movie, and then will not budge on his idea for a movie entirely focused on a species of alien that grunts with no subtitles. He's just put out one of the biggest movies to hit the screen ever, and furthermore is a man of great artistic vision. With Lucas at the helm this is set to be a hit.

Except Lucas needs to move studios to fit all the matte paintings he can now afford. So Lucas drops the story in the hands of the ever capable CBS and heads to the matte painting store, leaving them to find another director after the first guy quit after finishing the Jefferson Starship concert and "Bea Arthur sings at the Cantina" scenes.

Lucas' trust was, to be blunt, misplaced. CBS' finished cut was simply terrible (with the exception of a charming animated segment), and Lucas even offered to pay them to keep the abomination off air. They declined, but the Holiday Special was only aired once, at which point all copies were destroyed at Lucas' behest. At this point Lucas is at the top of his creative game and we haven't been subject to anything like Indiana Jones 4 yet, so you can imagine what a blow this is to the man who has yet to mastermind Jar Jar Binks.

Much like the preservation of HBO originals in the present day, the Holiday Special was only preserved and propagated through outright piracy, to the point that Holiday Special bootlegs became a known fandom trope. And so this week, for the second time in my life, I watched a rip of the Star Wars Holiday Special made somewhere around Baltimore on that fateful night in 1978, slotting in right before Wonder Woman. It was bad, yes, just not spectacularly so.

There is no question in my mind: The Star Wars Holiday Special killed George Lucas' directing career more so than the runaway success of the first movie.

In my writings on film, there runs a throughline (often utilizing Lucas as a prime example) that discourages sequels. I'll admit that this comes predominantly from my upbringing in a world of shared universes and IP sprawl, but it's a pretty agreed upon point that A) serialization only serves as a chance to tarnish an otherwise solid first film and B) new, discrete stories are more interesting. That said, sequels are not bad, and my analysis of Star Wars does not lay blame on the fact that we got to see what happened after the Yavin Award Ceremony.

You see, beyond being bad, The Holiday Special taught Lucas all the wrong things with its failure. Artistic control is paramount, yes, but what his experience with CBS taught Lucas was that in order to secure his legacy, he had to chain himself to the Carbonite slab that was Star Wars and micromanage it for the rest of his life to ensure the world he'd created would maintain the quality he intended for it.

Looking at the state of Star Wars in the years after Lucas cut the series loose, I don't think this was an incorrect statement, but a singular devotion to guiding his store-brand Flash Gordon empire is what led to a 22 year hiatus between directorial efforts. Even after this, as much as I personally find the prequels to be misunderstood, they lacked the same spark Lucas had, making me wonder what he could have put out in his most creatively charged years had he not lashed himself to the helm of a franchise that's abandoned most of the work he spent years tailoring to his vision in favor of Baby Yoda.

The Star Wars Holiday Special is truly what separates Lucas from Coppola. Without that harsh lesson in trusting Star Wars to someone else, Lucas might've focused on directing future projects of his own rather than managing those of people expanding his space wizard universe.

Or maybe if you'd swapped their places Coppola would have Don Corleone meet up with cheerful Gungan Jar Jar Binks.

Of course this is all conjecture. Lucas has put out some of his best work as a writer and story lead working on projects like Indiana Jones and Willow, but it's sad to see one of the most influential film workers in the world, whose work I truly admire, with only a half dozen directing credits despite having all the matte painting money he could ever desire to make passion project films. Coppola went broke, but at least 2/3rds of his filmography didn't get coopted to sell Disney streaming packages.

Then again if I'd just put out three revolutionary films in a row and then saw what CBS did with my high concept wookie script, maybe I wouldn't be seeing things so clearly.

We're about a dozen paragraphs too long for a filmpost on the Star Wars Holiday Special, so I'll wrap up now: I can't say I recommend it.

[buzzdixonwriter]

A Long But Not Pointless Ramble In Which We Discuss Sci-Fi Flicks

We’re gonna ramble around a bunch of connected topics, so pour yourself a cuppa and enjoy the ride.

. . .

I’m a big fan of 1950s sci-fi B-movies.

Years ago, when I was chatting with the late film historian Bill Warren on this, he made a pertinent observation:  1950s sci-fi B-movies tend to be more fondly remembered than most better mounted and more professionally executed sci-fi films that came afterwards.

There’s a couple of three reasons for this:

The shock of the new -- most of those films pioneered a brand new genre and style, looking far different from previous genre offerings such as Flash Gordon or Things To Come.  As such, they score branding points by being first, even if later examples are better made.

They possess a certain naïve charm -- by and large they’re not sophisticated nor exceptionally well thought out (though when they do demonstrate flashes of intellect, it’s always a delight).  One feels these films are being made up on the fly (and in a certain sense, they were; see (1) above) and in an odd manner they prove more innocent and thus more fun than those that came later.

Most of them were cheap -- this combines with points (1) & (2) to force most 1950s sci-fi B-movies to focus tightly on one idea / one image to sell the film.  As a result there’s a startling clarity of vision in even the most flimsy of productions that’s lacking in later, more elaborate movies.  The weaker examples of this genre are those films trying to cover more ground than their cheaper cousins.

. . .

Two cases in point:  Jack Arnold’s Tarantula for Universal is a technically better made movie than Bert I. Gordon’s The Spider for AIP, but Tarantula loses focus, dawdling about on character development and sub-plots instead of concentrating on the big ass spider.

The Spider is far weaker in the script / performances / production value departments, but who gives a %#@& ? -- it’s got a big ass spider tearing up the countryside for most of the picture.

Not to put down Arnold and his effects crew’s efforts; they ingeniously figured out a way to not only get their tarantula to realistically crawl over uneven landscapes but actually cast a shadow as it did so, heightening the realism.

Gordon, conversely, simple shot his spider in front of still photos; the shots look as crude as they sound.

But The Spider delivers what Tarantula only teases:  An attack by said big ass spider on a population center.  Tarantula famously ends with an uncredited Clint Eastwood napalming the monster in the desert on the outskirts of town; The Spider actually goes rampaging through its town, and features one of the most iconic shots of any sci-fi movie:  As the big ass spider bears down on her, a terrified woman slams her car door shut on her skirt and in her panic tries to tug it loose instead of simply opening the door again.

George Lucas crowds the screen with thousands of furiously dogfighting CGI starships and that lacks the gut punching impact of that one simple terrifying shot. 

. . .

An even more pertinent example can be found in the oeuvre of Irving Block and Jack Rabin (I know, you’re going “Who?”  Patience, young jedi; all will be explained below).

Block and Rabin (along with Louis DeWitt, their silent 3rd partner) ran a small special effects house in Hollywood in the late 1940s-50s with an interesting strategy for drumming up business.

They’d devise an interesting yet inexpensive (i.e., clever but cheap) special effects technique, build a story around it, then pitch that story to low budget movie producers with the proviso their firm would be hired to do the special effects for the final film.

This resulted in a number of low budget sci-fi films built around the kernel of an interesting visual, and while they night not have been great examples of the cinematic art, hey certainly created a number of memorable scenes and images from little more than scotch tape and rubber bands.

Unknown World was their take on Jules Verne’s Journey To The Center Of The Earth (no dinosaurs but then again, no Pat Boone, so they came out ahead on that one); Atomic Submarine pitted the US Navy against a UFO; Kronos featured a wholly unique alien invader; and War Of The Satellites staged an epic space opera on a bargain basement budget.

All noteworthy 1950s sci-fi B-movies, but ironically it was the film where their strategy failed -- or rather, only proved 50% successful -- that stands out.

Figuring out how to make footprints appear as if by magic, Block and Rabin devised a story about a spaceship landing on a planet of invisible monsters (as they pointed out, the great thing about invisible monsters is that even the cheapest production can afford millions of ‘em).

Their agent sent the pitch around to all the usual suspects at that time in the low budget indie film universe but, learning another studio not know for low budget sci-fi wanted to hop on the band wagon, sent it there as well.

That studio bought the idea, thanked Block and Rabin for their input, but said they’d let their own B-movie unit team handle the special effects,

And that’s how MGM made Forbidden Planet.

. . .

Today Forbidden Planet is a much beloved classic of the genre, but when released it proved a bit of a disappointment.

Oh, it made money (then and now, studios refuse to fund a production unless they already know in advance they will recoup their expenses and make a profit in advance of actual production) but it didn’t do anywhere near the business they hoped.

Part of this was timing -- it came out after dozens of lesser / cheaper films crowded the market -- but part of it is paradox:  It’s just too damn good.

No bones about it, Forbidden Planet was a B-movie for MGM.

In terms of overall quality, however, any MGM B-movie is bound to look like an A-picture from any other studio, and that’s exactly what happened here:  A literate, dynamite script; solid performances; top notch production values; bursting at the seams with ideas and incidents and details.

Sci-fi fans loved it, mainstream audiences not so much.

What sci-fi fans perceived as a groundbreaking classic, mainstream audiences viewed as:  Flying saucer something something something robot blah blah blah invisible monster.

What audiences today remember when they think of Forbidden Planet is the single most iconic element of the film.

Robby the robot.

He’s what sticks.  Robby made a big enough impression to star in his own follow up feature a few years later (The Invisible Boy) as well as guest star appearances on The Twilight Zone, Lost In Space, Columbo, and scores of other movies / TV shows / personal appearances.

Pick an iconic element. Stick with it.

. . .

The trick to doing memorable sci-fi movies is keeping the key visual elements down to as few sharply defined items as possible.

Star Wars (i.e., the unnumbered original release) is even more crowded in detail than Forbidden Planet but it holds its iconic visual elements down to a crucial handful:  Masked villain in black.  Laurel & Hardy robots.  Friendly yeti.  Glow swords.  Big bad artificial planet.

Every other visual element serves those, and while they provide detail and texture, they aren’t distractions.

Seriously, jettison the plot of the original Star Wars and reconfigure it from the ground up with those elements and it still winds up pretty much the same film, just set on different worlds.

This is why later films in the series, despite bigger and bigger revenues, lack the memorable freshness and emotional clarity of the original (getting cluttered up with superfluous characters and vehicles inserted just to sell toys doesn’t help, and I post this as one of the original writers for the G.I. Joe and Transformers series).

To reiterate: If you want to make an impression, less is more.

. . .

We’re going to amble on over to a parallel path and talk about ultra-low budget / no budget / homemade / hand-crafted / DIY film making, particularly in the sci-fi arena.

I watch a fair amount of lo-to-no budget sci-fi on Amazon Prime and YouTube.  Many of these are done for pure love of the genre and the film making process, and from that POV of producers and participants just wanting to have fun, they’re modestly enjoyable.

From the POV of actual good film making and sci-fi…not so much.  (There are exceptions and we’ll get to one of those; patience, young jedi…)

The overwhelming bulk of these films -- features and shorts -- are pretty derivative.

I don’t mean “unoriginal” the way 80-90% of professionally produced media is unoriginal, I mean “derivative” as in trying specifically to re-create something someone else did first…

...and better.

And this is in addition to the plethora of Star Trek / Star Wars / Dr. Who / superhero fan films out there; those are a separate though related phenomenon.

Rather, it’s the unmpeenth Alien ripoff / the 400th E.T. variant / the latest Mad Max clone / the most current example of last decade’s biggest hits.

They’re generally not that good taken on their own, no matter how much fun the makers are having.

For me the nadir of such films are those done by film makers imitating bad movies by deliberately making a bad movie.

Don’t do that, folks. 

Please. 

Don’t squander time and talent doing substandard work.

I’m not saying don’t make the kind of film (or draw the kind of art, or write the kind of story) you want to make; I’m just saying don’t deliberately make a piss-poor job of it.

Block and Rabin may never have made a truly good movie but not because they weren’t trying!

Cheap films?  Yes. Exploitable films?  Yes.

But films meant to be as good as they could make them.

There’s an MST3K notorious bad 1950s sci-fi movie called Teenagers From Outer Space.  Tom Graef, its writer / producer / director / editor / co-star was a former film student wanting to break into the big time so he made this cheesy movie to the utmost of his ability.

And lordie, it ain’t good…

…but by gawd, he was trying.

The folks who make deliberately bad pastiches of substandard B-movies were always a sore point for Bill Warren.

“The original film makers weren’t trying to make a bad movie!” he’d rave.

So please, don’t do deliberately shoddy work and try to explain it away by calling it a “parody”.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a parody, and everybody in it is aiming for the centerfield fence, turning in A-level performances.

I know it’s fun making models and cobbling together costumes and props and sets from junk, and recruiting friends and family to have fun making a movie, and if your audience is just going to be those friends and family, fine.

But if you want to be seen and appreciated by a wider audience, have some respect for them…and your own abilities as a film maker.

. . .

All of which brings us in a roundabout fashion to The Vast Of Night, a recent ultra-low budget sci-fi film that asks the non-musical question “What would a Twilight Zone mash-up of X-Files and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind look like?”

“Pretty impressive,” is the answer.

Let’s start with the Achilles’ heel of most lo-to-no budget DIY productions:  The cast.

The Vast Of Night enjoys impeccable casting, a;; the way down to the most minor roles.

I can’t stress enough how important this is for small productions.

Actors give you more bounce for your buck than anything else on your budget.  Good actors can make mediocre material bearable, they can bring good material to full blown life.

In The Vast Of Night’s case, the two leads -- Jake Horowitz as Everett, an all night DJ in a tiny late 1950s New Mexico town, and Sierra McCormick as Fay Crocker, the local substitute late night phone operator -- play off each other with delightful on screen chemistry.

No kidding, I’d watch these two characters go grocery shopping for an hour and a half, that’s how well Horowitz and McCormick play off each other.

Next, the story.  Obviously story and screenplay come before casting, but in the final analysis an okay story is far better served by a good cast than a good story by an okay cast.

Screenwriters James Montague and Craig W. Sanger do a good job with their script for The Vast Of Night.  As noted, it’s far from original but is fleshed out with enough distinctive elements to let the cast find plenty to work with.

For aspiring film makers, the script is typically the least expensive part of the process, and if you don’t like your draft you can always chuck it out and start afresh,

Finally, it’s okay to look inexpensive but don’t look cheap.

You can get away with a stark cinema verité style if that’s what the material calls for but you need to keep a consistent style and tone throughout.

A lot of DIY films do themselves a grave disservice by spending a lot of time / energy / money on a prop / costume / special effect that calls undo attention to itself by being so much better than everything surrounding it.

Director Andrew Patterson keeps things stylish while clamping a lid on its budget; this good pre-production planning pays off with a consistency of style and tone that helps keep the audience engaged, their disbelief suspended.

The Vast Of Night is what I refer to as a “minimum basic movie” i.e., the lowest bar you should shoot for with your own film making.

It’s far from a deathless classic, but it’s a fun ride.

And speaking of fun rides…this ramble is o-v-e-r.

  © Buzz Dixon

[wordsinthenight]

So I saw TROS last Thursday.

From here on out, TROS spoilers will be marked with #tros spoilers and #sw spoilers.

Some scattered feelings under the cut that I just wanted to get off my chest.

Full disclosure, I haven’t been doing very well the past few days.  After the showing on Thursday night, I woke up multiple times and immediately started sobbing, because remembering just hurt too much.  Last night was the first night I fell asleep without crying.  I haven’t been sleeping well, I haven’t been eating, and my co-workers are starting to worry that I’m getting sick.

I shouldn’t be this invested, yet here I am.

Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m most upset about.  Like, the fact that reylo is canon is beautiful, but I would give it up in a heartbeat if I got am ambiguous ending and a living Ben Solo.  I think I would have been okay if he had been given a good death - something that showed that he was mourned, that someone cared, instead of Rey just looking perturbed when he falls over.  Instead, he just dies, and we get no sense that his story continues on in any way other than the story of Kylo Ren.  All anyone will remember is Kylo Ren, who betrayed his teacher and killed all of the Jedi students and murdered his father in cold blood.  We never get the sense that someone’s going to pass on something more; that he didn’t do some of these things, or at the very least, that we get the story of Ben Solo told, even if Kylo Ren is vilified forever.

And it’s not even just the reylo in me that’s heartbroken - there’s so much about the movie that was so, so bad.  It was one of the most emotionally vapid things I’ve ever seen.  Ideally, a good movie should keep you emotionally invested through the whole thing, keeping you on the edge of your seat with suspense/wonder/surprise/humor/romance/whatever.  Instead, there were probably four or five times where I was legitimately moved, like the reylo kiss, or when they passed the lightsaber between them, or Poe’s conversation with that one masked lady, or when Rey thought she had killed Chewie.  Those moments were incredible when they were there, but I should have been feeling like that the whole movie.  Rey Palpatine?  Ben’s death?  Leia’s death?  There was never a pause to let us feel things.  You can’t jump from scene to scene without acknowledging the emotional consequences of important moments like that, and when they don’t do that, the movie just feels empty.

I’m not going to even get into some of the stupid “plot twists”.  Rey Palpatine was a stupid idea, and she should have stayed Rey Nobody.  Palpatine literally did nothing but be like, “Haha, I knew this was your plan the whole time!” literally every time someone changed strategy.  (Also, if Rey killing him would pass the Sith spirit into her, then why didn’t it?  And for that matter, if he can randomly clone himself with dark science, do they really think that killing him once is going to be enough?)  The twist about the ten thousand star destroyers was dumb - we’re all sick of people building Death Stars, why did they think that building ten thousand Death Stars mounted onto starships would be any different?  When Palpatine sucked the life force out of Ben and Rey, why did it kill Rey, but not Ben?  Why did he need to pass his life force into her in the first place?

I’m just so frustrated and upset.  I’ve devoted four years of my life to this stupid series, and this felt like a slap in the face.  I feel like I’m grieving the death of these movies, my ship, and my boy all in one - which I guess I kind of am.

The worst part of all this?  I think if this kind of movie had come out after TFA, I would have been okay with it.  I was prepared for no reylo.  I was prepared for Kylo/Ben to die.  I was prepared for Rey to be related to someone great, and for a standard movie formula.  I was ready for these things, I expected them out of this.  But TLJ changed everything for me - Rian Johnson is wonderful, but I also kind of hate him because he made me hope.  TLJ was subversive and interesting and wonderful - definitely not perfect, because there were some major issues with it, but I loved it.  But - it made me hope.  Hope for reylo, hope for a redeemed Ben Solo, or at least an alive one, hope that these movies would do something new and exciting and a little less, well, Hollywood, who thrives off of formula and tragedy.

To have all of those hopes killed in one movie breaks my heart.

Really, though, I’m trying to forget about this for right now.  I’m angry and upset and frustrated, but I work retail and it’s the holiday season, and I really just need to get through it before I try to figure out how to emotionally process this and move forward.

In the meantime, if anyone needs me, I’ll be buried in AU and fix-it fics.

[dalekofchaos]

Ways they could’ve handled Rey in the Sequel Trilogy  and what they did instead

My other Sequel trilogy wasted potential posts

Finn

Poe

Rose

Luke

Han

Leia

Kylo Ren

Captain Phasma

Hux

Snoke

Ways they could’ve handled Rey in the Sequel Trilogy

Let Rey have a character arc. Rey starts off as a mix of Han Solo and Jyn Erso. Someone who only cares about her own survival and is consumed by her own trauma but learns to overcome her trauma, start caring for other people and something bigger than herself. That would’ve been the perfect character arc for Rey.

Rey would sell BB-8 for food, then fight to get him back.   It doesn’t work that she would be selfless and was willing to pass up all that food for a droid she just met. So I think it would help if she had sold BB-8 and later after meeting Finn, she learns of the importance of the droid and she feels guilt and fights to get BB-8 back. That I think would’ve improved her arc in TFA

Show that Rey is still learning piloting a starship and have Han teaching Rey how to fly proper. Rey will mention that she flew simulations on Jakku, but realizes flying simulations is different than flying for real. This will give us a nice scene of Han mentoring Rey in flying the Falcon.

When returning to D’Qar, showing Rey going to the infirmary with Finn, while Leia hugs Chewie. Rey’s concern should be to make sure Finn is okay, we didn’t need to see an unearned hug between two characters who didn’t know each other.

Have a meaningful mentor and student relationship with Luke and Rey. Luke reaches out after R2 and seeing so much of himself in Rey. It is more important to have a Rey and Luke strong mentor-apprentice relationship than having Rey have a connection with Kylo Ren. It should be about training Rey and establishing a relationship between Luke and her. It was said their relationship would be the heart of the film, so my suggestion is do just that. Focus on Rey and Luke having an actual relationship with each other and her training. Rey needs to be trained in the force to be a believable character. Even Anakin, Ahsoka, and Luke himself were given training and time to become skilled and powerful. Instead of just copying Yoda and old man Obi’s personality into him, do something we have never seen before in a Jedi Master in the movies: make Luke humorous, lighthearted, make Luke lecture Rey ON the importance of attachments and understanding the darkness just as much is the light. It would also create a parallel to what Snoke is teaching Kylo. Have Luke show Rey how to feel the force. Even show Luke teaching Rey to craft her own Lightsaber. Rey could finally make her Saberstaff with Yellow or Purple Crystal and teach Rey that attachments can lead you to the dark side if you let them, but they won’t lead you to darkness if you control your emotions. 

Keep that Rey is related to no one, but Rey knows this. She knew who her parents were, she did not want them to be anyone special, in the end all she wanted was for them to come home. She was going to pass up adventure and being important to stay on Jakku because all she wanted was her family. She didn't want them to be important, the audience did. All we needed to hear is they died. We could get Kylo saying "When you reached out as they flew away, you destroyed their ship, Rey you killed your parents....you were never the same again and cut yourself off from the force.” The important thing about Rey is she found a new family in Luke, Leia, Han, Finn, Poe, Rose and The Resistance, a family who loves Rey for who she is, not her heritage.

Rey and Luke together go to The Supremacy after they both feel Leia and Finn in danger. Rey flies the Falcon, while Luke lifts his old X-Wing and head to the Supremacy to face Snoke. Rey will pose as bait, while Luke sneaks aboard The Supremacy.  Rey is brought before Kylo Ren and Snoke. Snoke taunts that today hope dies and The Resistance dies. But what happens next, Luke enters the throne room. “MASTER SKYWALKER! AT LAST WE MEET” Snoke will echo through his throne room. The Praetorian Guards will attack, but Luke kills them easily with the force. Luke will say he’s come to save his apprentice, his sister and the rebellion. And finally what we’ve been waiting for Luke vs Snoke. Snoke takes out the true Darksaber, while Luke takes out his Green Lightsaber. The master of the light and master of the dark. And we have the rematch between Rey and Kylo. This time Kylo appears stronger. He is dominating Rey in the fight. Kylo will tell her “you should have accepted my offer, scavenger” “Rey will say “I’ll never join you!” Kylo with the famous Solo snark will say “pity” and cuts  Rey’s hand off. Luke enraged will use the force to knock Kylo out. Finally Luke defeats Snoke. Luke will take Rey with him. As the hyperspace ramming happens, the Falcon is there to pick up Rey. Luke leaves on his X-Wing to guide Rey to safety.

Rey awakens and senses Finn nearby on Crait. As Luke is fighting Kylo, Rey knows while injured, she has to lift the rocks in order to save Finn and The Resistance. Finally Rey embraces Finn, reunited again. The movie ends with Rey getting her mechanical hand and joins Luke and Leia. Leia places her hand over her and Luke’s hands and say “we have everything we need”

What they chose to do with Rey

Rey is good natured and selfless for no reason or build up whatsoever. My issue with this it makes no sense considering that Rey grew up on Jakku, a dog eat dog world. She had no reason to be selfless on that planet. I do love Rey, but it really makes no sense that a person who was raised on a ruthless and violent planet of thieves and scavengers, abandoned and lived the life of a scavenger who barely makes enough to survive would give up all that food for a droid she just met.

Rey perfectly flies The Falcon despite not flying a ship. In the movie she says she’s never flown before and doesn’t know how she did it. In The novel she says she flew ships at night and flight simulations. That’s all well and good, but if you choose to explain things in the novel, but not in the movie. Then you deliberately chose not to explain how a scavenger who never leaves the planet knows how to fly the Millennium Falcon.

She pulls off maneuvers and mechanical tricks that not even Han Solo could think of and a scene later he is dumbfounded and astonished by Rey

Rey hugs Leia. Leia hugging Rey out of nowhere instead of Chewie just doesn’t work. Why is she hugging and grieving with someone she just met when Chewie is right there?

Daisy doesn’t think Rey should have any flaws and that’s a problem

Rey has a connection and starts to trust Kylo Ren…when only ONE DAY passes since Kylo has tortured her, killed Han Solo, and injured Finn. There’s a difference between being “forgiving” and there’s being blindly gullible. She went from wanting to kill him to believing he’s “our last hope”….for reasons.

Rey’s stupidity in TLJ. Rey’s plan. Rey has some vision of Kylo Ren deciding to help her out and locks herself in a box to fly straight to him, with no escape plan or regard for her own safety. As bad as JJ chose to develop Rey, I will admit that Rey is adaptable. Rey makes plans and strategizes. She has been raised as a scavenger, working hard for every day of survival and fighting for every item in her possession. While Luke and Anakin throw caution to the wind in order to succeed, Rey keeps a level head and fights her way through things. TLJ acts like that version of Rey doesn’t exist.

Rey has no character arc in TLJ.  Rey doesn’t learn anything and I don’t feel like she has a character arc or journey. She starts her journey in TFA and I was excited to learn where her character would go. And TLJ does nothing with Rey.  I do love Rey, but I don’t feel like it truly tests Rey and forces her to grow as a character. Rey is intriguing and we care for her, but her journey feels non existent.  Luke and Anakin had struggles and journeys.  I just don’t feel it from Rey. I am really disappointed with how TLJ handles Rey. Rey doesn’t have any struggles. Rey is all powerful and she is the same character she is from TFA. Everything TFA was building her up was instantly ignored.  How Maz got the Skywalker lightsaber? Never mentioned again. How Rey was drawn to the Skywalker lightsaber and what the force vision was meant to mean? Never addressed. Rey says that she’s classified information, “none of your business” Then her parents are revealed as junk traitors who sold her for drinking money and died in Jakku. If her parents were just junkers, how did they afford that space ship if they spent the money on booze? Rey herself told BB-8 she was classified information. All that build up for nothing. The force can come from anyone, we all feel it but you build Rey up only to do nothing with her. Whatever TFA was building up for Rey was dropped entirely.  My big issue with how TLJ handles Rey, is she does not learn anything. She was awakened by Kylo’s mind melding and has his powers transferred to her, she doesn’t even earn her powers on her own, it’s all from Kylo. Your big feminist icon has to get her powers from the man who’s been harassing her. How empowering….please kill me. She doesn’t learn anything from Luke and she feels like the same character in The Force Awakens. We see Luke showing Rey to feel the force and the Jedi’s hubris. The third lesson was deleted, but we did not really get to see Luke train her as a Jedi. Rey doesn’t learn anything. Rey even defeats Luke… In the end we see Rey has the sacred Jedi texts, but Yoda pointed out that those texts were holding back the Jedi and doesn’t teaches her what she doesn’t already know. SO in the end, Rey doesn’t learn anything and that’s the problem. And the big problem is we are expected that Rey will learn everything off screen….that’s the problem. You cannot just have a character who can do all these amazing feats, show her not being trained as a Jedi and make her even more powerful in the final movie with no build up whatsoever.

Rey in TROS teaser looks like nothing ever changed. The same type of outfit from The Force Awakens, the same Lightsaber and the same hairstyle. Like nothing ever happened or changed. Like nothing ever changed. God forbid Rey looks like a mix of a Jedi Knight and Resistance Leader, godforbid Rey builds her own lightsaber, especially a Saberstaff. It’s almost as if JJ and Lucasfilm are afraid to develop Rey as a character and let her look different at all….*sighs*

Rey has no development or arc. Rey is not allowed to have flaws or personal struggles or has a real hero’s journey.  Which is disappointing because I truly loved having Star Wars be centered around a female lead and feel like it’s a missed opportunity. It’s not Daisy’s fault, I feel like the blame lies with Disney. I’m not sure if Disney got cold feet with a female protagonist and felt they would get backlash if they made her character naturally flawed but it’s storytelling 101 to have your protagonist faced with problems that aren’t easy to overcome and correlate to said flaws. Instead we got a hero who faces no real consequences, has no real goals, and can defeat everything in her path with abysmal training. Which ultimately makes for an extremely uninteresting hero. No hard training, no real consequences, no real flaws, no struggles or not even an arc and everything is handed to her. It just makes Episode IX predictable and boring. Rey will defeat Kylo again to no one’s surprise. There is just not a reason to care to see what will happen with Rey. I’m more invested to see what happens with Finn, Poe, Rose and Jannah. I just lost any and all investment in Rey after TLJ. Rey just doesn’t feel like a reason to even want to watch Episode IX and Disney just failed Rey as a character.

[spacebeyonce]

good morning. I’m rested enough and I’ve had my coffee so now I can finally get into this.

so last night I saw tlj and it was, as previously stated, pretty underwhelming. but I’m gonna dive in and poke at shit that stuck out to me.

alright! quick and dirty let’s do it!

the good:

uhhhh fin looked beautiful as usual. and he was still so brave and ready to help the resistance out (albeit unwillingly but we’ll get into that) even though he just wanted to find rey and make sure she was okay.

finn and rose trashing the casino. it was very hard to warm up to rose, but her story about her and her sister’s childhood got to me. all that glitter and opulence and waste. the rich were like beautiful shiny parasites, and you had to look really hard past the shimmer to see all the life they were sucking out of everything. so them trashing the casino, just like rose wanted to, was a little satisfying.

I guess this is good if I thought it was hilarious but kylo killing snoke by using snoke’s shitty mind powers against him. seeing that kylo was going to use a saber and thinking it was going to be on rey when it was on him all along. that honestly took me the fuck out so I guess it’s good.

the finn vs phasma fight!!! it was beautiful and I was so glad to see finn take out one of the people who hurt him. let finn destroy all his abusers 2k17.

that finnrey reunion hug was pretty goddamn solid and wholesome and I smiled a lot when it happened. reunited and it feels fucking awesome.

and uhhhh that’s it. I had to work very hard to put at least more than two things that I liked.

so onto the bad:

lmao what wasn’t bad about this movie. but I’ll just do a few.

making rey focus on trying to redeem kylo was a fucking mess and kinda felt like character assassination. rey would’ve stayed focused on trying to kick that shitheel into a goddamn ravine, not redeeming him. I was so tired of hearing her say over and over that there was still some good in kylo, that he could still be turned. the first time she called him ben gave me an ulcer.

and since we’re on rey and kylo and their bullshit, what the fuck was that force connection shit going on. the first time it happened I felt a headache show up behind my eye and it didn’t leave. every time they connected and spoke through the force it got worse. it was honestly rather boring to endure and I definitely could’ve done without it.

finn getting sidelined was what I expected but still so fucking annoying. he barely had any part in this movie, which was jarring after going through tfa, where he played a pretty big part in everything in the movie. in here, he was just comedic relief, barely speaking anything but witty one liners with no character development to be found.

the fact that the little side mission that poe, rose, and finn had going on completely failed, and caused more harm than good. which uhhh super burned my ass but I’m gonna get into that a little more in a bit. but everything they did, trying to find a code breaker, breaking onto the FO starship, all of it failed, and so many people died because of it. it was frustrating because they were trying hard to help the resistance escape but in the end nothing really came of it.

that finnrose kiss was so dry. they barely had any good chemistry, and should just stick to being friends. they’d be better friends than lovers, and it was very hard to warm up to rose after how they introduced her to finn.

snoke as a whole was a rather underwhelming villain, which kinda sucked since they gassed him up so much in tfa. to have him be this weird lookin’ ass wrinkle in a chair that got cut in half with a quickness so we could make way for supreme leader kylo ren was uh. boring.

again, having to look at adam driver’s weirdly shaped torso was really very unfortunate. he’s a fucking weirdly shaped dude. I got nothing out of seeing his bare chest. my pussy has never been so dry. he’s a very unattractive man. please stop making me look at him. why couldn’t I see john boyega’s bare chest instead.

I could go on with the bad! but I won’t. instead let’s get into the ugly:

and GODDAMN was it ugly. major ugly points!

WOW how many times did the characters of color get hurt or degraded??? ESPECIALLY finn and poe, jesus christ.

introducing rose by having her taze finn so hard he slams into an opposite wall did not make me like her! people in my theater laughed while I flinched so hard my seat rocked a little. brutalizing the black man isn’t funny!! but every time finn got hurt people fucking laughed!!! when rose tazed him, when hux fucking slapped him, people laughed. good to know that black people in pain is hilarious to y’all! imma remember that y’all think humiliating and degrading black characters is so funny! thanks!

and speaking of finn, I’ve briefly spoken on this already, but rose saying he was a deserter and a traitor pissed me off. just ‘cause y’all think he’s a resistance hero doesn’t mean he’s signed on to be a part of the resistance. wanting to find rey and be safe doesn’t make finn a traitor.

for a moment, in tfa, finn’s interests aligned with the resistance’s, and so he helped out. he hasn’t agreed to be a part of the rebellion, a part of the war. and while finn and phasma’s fight was bitchin’, to have finn suddenly stand tall and declare he’s ‘rebel scum’, even though at the beginning of the movie he was ready to leave to try and find rey, was jarring. like they couldn’t have shown finn having thoughts about being part of the resistance or anything??? they couldn’t show finn making this choice on his own instead of being tazed or grabbed by the collar and dragged into it???

poe. jesus christ poe what did they do to you. making poe into this - this fuckin hot head who doesn’t listen to his higher ups in a shot for glory and heroism was horrific. that wasn’t who he was in tfa. poe’s not in the rebellion to get glory, he’s here to - to try and save people. to get the first order’s foot off of people’s necks so everyone can just breathe freely. to have him disrespect leia and holdo, undermining their authority at every turn was so disrespectful to watch. poe’s not some sexist firecracker but that’s what tlj made him into and it honestly hurt to look at.

watching him get stunned across the room into another wall by leia was also so ugly to look at, and made me flinch super hard once again while people in the theater laughed. so.

and SPEAKING OF CHARACTER ASSASSINATION, LET’S GET INTO THE BIGGEST ONE - LUKE FUCKING SKYWALKER. I’ve never been so bitter.

making luke out to be someone who’d murder one of his own students - his blood - at the first sign of darkness or conflict was. wow. and it was especially ugly because it took the burden of kylo’s shitty choices away from him, and placed it onto luke’s shoulders. it was luke’s fault that kylo turned to the dark, it wasn’t his choice, luke pushed him, and kylo was just a scared little boy.

which is fucked. because in the previous movie, tfa was all about choices. finn and kylo were such huge narrative foils because at the heart of them it was about choices. finn, who was raised in the heart of the dark, stolen from his family and forced to be a soldier for a cause he didn’t really believe in, made the choice to not kill for the FO, to not want anything to do with them. kylo, raised in light, trained to be a jedi and keep the skywalker legacy going, chose, as a man, not some boy, to kill his peers and join the dark side. he chose to force himself into that mold to be the next vader.

and to say that he really didn’t?? and that the reason he went dark is because of luke?? it pissed me off. it’s still pissing me off!!! it was horrible!!! it took all the choice, all the blame away from kylo, and put it all on luke. and that’s pretty ugly.

luke dying was also fucking stank and I don’t give a shit how full of peace luke was. it was stupid. it was so ridiculous. I can’t properly describe how outraged I was, and still am, at luke just.....disappearing. just going away. I wanted luke to be a part of the resistance more, to meet the rest of the new trilogy people, and now I won’t ever get that and it’s frustrating. it was a weak bitch move. there was a lot more luke could’ve done. so this was just uhhhh. shit.

I’m sure there’s more I’m missing! but that’s what stuck out to me the most. so yeah! tlj kinda sucked. it sucked pretty bad actually. underwhelming at worst, forgettable at best. a solid 3/10. and that’s being generous.

[winchester-sisters-imagines]

Imagine Watching Star Wars with Your Brothers

Author’s Note: I watch Star Wars: The Last Jedi on Wednesday and I loved it so much. I will and always be Luke Skywalker trash.

The hunt was over and now you three were back at the motel, cleaning up your guns and packing. You were internally debating if you should ask Dean if you could all just stay another night or if you should not say anything and just sleep in the backseat. The motel beds were not anything special but sometimes a lousy motel bed was better than the leather seat that you and your entire family had slept on for almost forty years.

You were sitting on the floor and scrubbing blood out of your flannel while listening to the credit of a movie. There was not anything on and the tv only got a total of five channels, so just listening to the end credits was better than listening to Dean. None of you were paying attention to what was coming on next, but as soon as you heard that loud theme, your head jerked up.

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope

The yellow rolling text or “the crawl” as Dean likes to correct you was on screen and you heard Dean reading it off. “It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire”

Sam said the second paragraph. “During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.”

And you finished off the last one, “Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy....” before dropping the blood-soaked shirt and crawling up onto the bed with your brothers.

Star Wars was something you three had grown up watching non-stopped. You had watched them so much that you could quote the movie in your sleep. You remembered on time when you, Dean, and Sam actually got a Star Wars shirt for Christmas. That was the only thing you got, but still, you wore that thing out and you still had it to this day.

“Move, you’re in the way,” Dean said to you.

You rolled your eyes but moved so Dean could see the tv as well. “If you could guess how many times we’ve seen this movie, what number would it be?” you asked them.

“Over a hundred,” Dean said.

“Yeah, probably over a hundred by now,” Sam answered.

“This movie feels like home,” you said quietly.

“How?” Sam asked.

“I dunno,” you told him. “It just does. I know every word to the original three. I’ve seen it more times than I can count. This and the impala were the only things consistent in our lives growing up.”

You glanced over at them and saw Dean nod his head. “Star Wars, baby, and us three. That’s all we need.”

[shadowsong26fic]

Index Post

This list will be updated as and when I remember to. My fanfiction is primarily hosted on AO3 (though I do have an old FFN account if you can find it), but I figured this would be a good idea/make things easier to find, especially for the content that’s Tumblr-exclusive, as well as my original fiction which is hosted elsewhere.

Stories marked with an * are complete.

My AO3

Star Wars:

Precipice

An AU in which Anakin Skywalker does not follow Mace Windu and the others to Palpatine’s office after they leave to arrest the Chancellor. As a result, he doesn’t get that final push over the edge, and doesn’t Fall.

…well, that’s where it starts, anyway. Our Heroes reunite with some old friends and pick up some new ones; Sidious find substitute apprentices…the story continues on for several years after the breakpoint, with the Rebellion gradually taking shape and the twins growing up, as well.

Content warnings for war, genocide, strongly implied child abuse (not from any of Our Heroes; Palpatine is raising a child), the Emperor is a POV character.

On AO3

Bonus Fic 1: Father’s Day; Untitled*

Bonus Fic 2: 100k; Margins*

Bonus Fic 3: One Year Anniversary; Secrets*

Bonus Fic 4: Valentine’s Day; All My Love, - A*

Bonus Fic 5: Mother’s Day; Untitled*

Meta, answered asks, deleted scenes, etc., can be found in the Precipice Verse tag

Updates (theoretically/ideally) approximately once every week/two weeks, usually somewhere between Thursday and Sunday night.

I have been on semi-hiatus for the past few months due to getting super-busy at work and then Moving, but I’m planning to get back on track for June, so we should be back to regular updates in the near future! ::...knocks on wood::

Distaff

In which Anakin Skywalker is a cis lady and the twins' gestating parent.

This story’s working title was The Crack AU That Takes Itself Too Seriously. In essence, Anakin Skywalker is a cis girl. So is Padme. Anakin still somehow gets pregnant. She is very confused. Everyone is very confused. And then ROTS happens...

Content warnings for war/violence; also, while no one is, has been, or will be assaulted, the topic of sexual assault does come up a couple times. I believe I’ve left a note on all the chapters where it comes up.

On AO3

Bonus Fic: Mother’s Day; Untitled*

Meta, answered asks, etc., can be found in the Distaff tag

Updates as and when I complete material, does not have a fixed schedule.

Masks

A near-canon AU in which Emperor Palpatine has a daughter.

An In Spite of a Nail AU, for the most part; though I tend to operate in a blended Legends/official canon. For those of you who follow Precipice, this is essentially Lavinia’s story if she existed in a canon-aligned timeline, rather than a true AU.

On AO3

Meta, answered asks, etc., can be found in the Masks Verse tag

CURRENTLY ON HIATUS

Auxiliaries

This is an AU in which Queen Amidala’s ship stopped someplace other than Tatooine for repairs. (The rest of TPM goes basically as in canon–someone else blew up the control ship, I’m sort of handwaving that detail, at least for now).

Eventual ObiAniDala; either Anakin-centered vee or full triad, I haven’t decided. There will also be at least one key OC involved, though I haven’t actually introduced her yet. This is the most divergent timeline I’ve written (or probably will write) for SW, but I have a lot of fun with it.

Auxiliaries is a little different from how my other stories are structured, in that it’ll be told as a series of short fics/vignettes in the overall AU (the title of which will be explained in later sections), not necessarily in chronological order.

General content warnings for war/violence/slavery; anything else that comes up in a specific story will be tagged accordingly.

A Day at the Races: Part One; Part Two [upcoming]; Part Three [upcoming]

                  Around three years after the Naboo Crisis, Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi is sent on a mission to Malastare, and meets a certain champion podracer for the first time…

Bout*

              Five years after meeting Anakin Skywalker on Malastare, Obi-Wan is back at the Temple, observing a senior initiate saber class.

Updates as and when I complete material, does not have a fixed schedule.

The Phoenix

About halfway between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Luke and Vader crash onto a planet that is essentially a typical fantasy world.

A crossover with my original fantasy world, The Farglass Cycle

Content warnings for some body horror, slavery, impending genocide, some mostly oblique references to previous genocide, other violence.

On AO3*

On Dreamwidth*

In theory, there are two other parts to this story, working titles The Caladrius and The Hercinia. I do intend to put them up eventually and have been poking at them off and on, but do not have an estimated completion/start date or anything at this time. So it’s less a hiatus and more a…waiting for the next season to start, I guess…?

AU Outlines

Heralds of Star Wars (Jedi of Valdemar?)

              Crossover/fusion with the Heralds of Valdemar series.

The Rabbit Hole AU: Part One; Part Two

               Temple-raised Palpatine

Bail Unfucks the Timeline

               Exactly what it says on the tin.

Distaff Variant 1a

               A Distaff AU in which Palpatine’s solution to the problems presented by Anakin’s pregnancy is to poison her and induce a miscarriage because yes I do in fact write AUs for my AUs. CW for discussion of miscarriage/abortion, as well as the same as the main/actual story.

Ventress and Her Tiny Time-Travelling Conscience: Part One; Part Two

               In which ten/twelve-year-old Luke Skywalker walks through a Magic Canyon and lands about a year/year and a half before the end of the Clone Wars.

Everyone Is Time-Travelling and No One Will Admit It

               Okay, okay, so the title is a little bit disingenuous; the entire PT trio is time-travelling (but they’re the only ones), Anakin and Obi-Wan have told each other but no one else, and Padme is keeping things entirely to herself. CW for some portions that could read as suicidal ideation (i.e., the last like ten minutes of the animated BatB movie ‘maybe it’s better this way,’ with a side of Act Five of Cyrano de Bergerac.)

               (Also, I may end up redoing/reworking this one at some point)

Distaff Variant 2

                 A distaff AU in which Anakin decides to go to Utapau with Obi-Wan. Which, if she weren’t, y’know, pregnant, would probably have been the best possible thing for her to do...

Let’s Go Steal a Crossover: Part One (Background); Part Two [Upcoming]

                 A crossover between an AU of Masks!Verse (specifically, the Lavinia Organa AU, the background for which is described in Part One above) and Leverage.

You can also check out the AU Outlines tag

One-Shots:

Sanctuary: Tumblr; AO3*

              Rey wants to find her place in all of this. When she finds a reference to Mortis in one of Luke's books, it seems as good good place as any to start looking…

To his family, send him*

                In a world where Shmi survived, Obi-Wan brings Luke to safety.

It’s Like Déjà Vu (All Over Again)*

                 Three days ago, Padme Amidala closed her eyes for the last time in a sterile white room on an asteroid at the edge of nowhere. Three days ago, she opened them again in a sleek, chrome starship, watching Dorme put the finishing touches on Corde’s headdress, her own weighted braids a comforting blanket on her back.

                Padme decides to change things, decides she can save Anakin this time. Except, as time passes, she starts to realize things aren’t happening exactly the way she remembers…

                   Content warnings for war, violence, referenced genocide, referenced murder, these two dorks and their AOTC angst…

The Magic of Midwinter*

                  A little more than a year after the start of the Clone Wars, Padme, Obi-Wan, and Anakin celebrate Naboo's Midwinter together.

                  Written for JediFest 2017 December Drabbles exchange; Prompt: ObiAniDala, Holiday

These Three Remain*

                  Immediately after the Festival of Light (and Obi-Wan's stint undercover as bounty hunter Rako Hardeen), Anakin and Padme leave Coruscant on impulse, in response to an anonymous tip sent to Padme's office about vital intelligence hidden in a cache of stolen goods. But things go terribly wrong, and they find themselves stranded and injured, with limited resources and no one knowing exactly where they are.

                  Meanwhile, back on Coruscant, when Padme and Anakin don't return as planned, Obi-Wan does everything he can to find them and bring them home.

                  Their situation, dire though it is, forces the three of them to process everything that just happened, and what it might mean for their relationship, moving forward.

                     Written for SWBB 2018.

Untitled Mother’s Day Ficlet*

                       Quick, meditative little ficlet about Shmi and Anakin and lullabyes/bedtime stories.

Original Fiction:

The Farglass Cycle

This one is very difficult to summarize. It’s a big, sprawling fantasy world with loads and loads of characters. The main plot has to do with a war with Feredar, one of the major nations on the continent. Principal characters involve certain members of the Feredar royal family, members of the royal family of the City of Glass, who are primarily fire-mages; a water-mage pirate captain and her lover and sister; a water-mage who was held captive in Feredar...The war is kicked off when a prince from Glass goes into Feredar as a spy, to find out if the situation there regarding the enslavement of mages is serious enough to justify a war.

Content warnings for war, violence, slavery, impending genocide. There’s also a serial killer subplot, and some espionage and murder.

(...I need to get better at summarizing things...)

This archive, as a note, is incredibly out of date—I think I last updated it in December of 2014.

Lux

It’s the thirtieth century, and the Biblical Apocalypse is about to begin. Translator Mariko Anders gets swept up in the action when she meets and falls in love with the titular Lux, an Alien whose species she can’t quite identify. There’s also an immortal wandering around who periodically gets his memories erased, a sprawling human Family that traces itself back a thousand years, the newly-awakened Horsemen, the Antichrist and the Second Coming are growing up in hiding, and, of course, angels—some terrifying, some warm, some a little bit of both.

Basically: the Apocalypse. In Space.

(With lesbians.)

(Archive last updated in December of 2014.)

Battlestar Galactica:

Serenissima

Joseph Adama is the Doge of Venice, which is in graceful decline from its peak of maritime economic and naval power. His younger grandson, Zak, has recently eloped to King Louis' court in France with one Kara Thrace, and a dangerous politician, Thomas Zarek, is soon to return from a twenty-year exile related to the untimely death of a previous Doge.

Between Don Zarek's imminent return and the likely imminent increase in the Serene Republic's long-standing rivalry with the Ottoman Empire, Doge Adama wants to shore up a few alliances. He arranges for Laura Roslin, a widowed noblewoman, to marry his similarly-widowed son, Commander William Adama. His elder grandson, Lee Adama, is likewise engaged to the young daughter of Cardinal Gaius Baltar. The first wedding is to take place immediately, the second in approximately a year.

In Istanbul, the Sultan, John Cavil, is indeed scheming and preparing to launch a massive attack on Venice, while internal politics within his own family and court may not be quite as clear-cut as he thinks.There are spies everywhere, and nothing is certain but that looming problems foreign and domestic promise trouble for the Serene Republic in days to come...

A Total AU set in Baroque Venice, somewhere between 1650 and 1750. One key OC is involved, because I like my OCs. Cowritten with tigerkat24.

Currently more or less on hiatus.

For Sorrow Sung

Nineteen days before Baltar's trial is set to begin, a teenage girl is shot just outside of Dogsville. Helo investigates.

CURRENTLY ON HIATUS

Nothing AO3; Livejournal*

Alternate ending to Crossroads: you never know how you'll meet the end until there's nowhere left to run.

End of Line*

Poetry; stream-of-consciousness in prison, persona poem.

[I believe that’s everything I actually posted; I may update this if I find something else digging through my archives. I know I wrote some bits that I never posted anywhere for various reasons]

Supernatural:

Note: I’ve more or less fallen out of this fandom, so pretty much everything listed here can be considered on semi-permanent hiatus; though I’m happy to discuss them if anyone’s interested.

Heaven on Their Minds

An In Spite of a Nail AU where Judas Iscariot is a key player.

Arc One: Livejournal; AO3*

                  While Castiel tracks Crowley down, looking for the Colt, Bobby finds a reference to a Weapon that can banish anything. Seeing a shot at a Plan B, Sam and Dean go to meet with a professor who might be able to help them track it down. From there, they are put on the trail of Judas Iscariot, who is not exactly what history claimed he was.

Arc Two*

                  It's been eighteen months since Lucifer and Michael were trapped in the Cage, and Sam now has his soul back at last, but things aren't going as smoothly as hoped. With the war between Raphael and Castiel heating up, Gabriel scrambling to keep his old lies from coming back to haunt him, Judas AWOL, and whispers about Purgatory floating around, it isn't going to be easy to keep things from totally falling apart at the seams. Again.

                  Then, one day, Dean gets a call from Jo about an old friend wandering back into their lives...

Arc Three*

                  Gabriel is struggling to control the chaos in Heaven in the wake of Castiel’s destruction. Meanwhile, with Castiel gone, his wall gone, Lucifer and Leviathan everywhere, Sam gets closer to Judas. After all, no one knows psychic pain, and guilt, and the long, hard road to redemption, better than the two of them.

Sidestories

                  These are bits and pieces that take place in the Heaven on Their Minds universe, but, for various reasons, didn’t make it into the main story. All of the ones up there take place either prior to or during Arc One, but reference a significant spoiler.

There were further arcs planned, but I don’t anticipate them turning up, due to the aforementioned falling out of the fandom.

The Promises of Angels: Livejournal; AO3*

Nick has never been anything more than a pawn, and he knows that--but even a pawn, strategically placed, can change the game for everyone.

It's a world full of angels, demons, and humans all fighting for control of the board. And while all he's really playing for is what he was promised in the first place--peace that never seems to come--Nick finds himself dragged back into a high-stakes game he can't afford to lose. No matter how much he wants to break free, it becomes increasingly clear that something buried deep inside him has changed, in ways he can't possibly understand; ways that just might keep him involved in the horrors that Heaven and Hell both inflict on humanity and, in the end, make things better--or worse. Along the way, there are friends and foes, wardens and protectors, and those who would try to use him to shape the future they want to see...

This is canon compliant until, depending on how you’re counting, Swan Song or Goodbye, Stranger; most of what happens up through Goodbye, Stranger could theoretically happen alongside canon events/doesn’t contradict anything we see onscreen, but sets up the significant AU from that point on.

There were originally sequels planned, but as I’ve largely fallen out of this fandom, I doubt they’ll materialize.

Cartography Verse

Named for the Seanan McGuire song.

Moving On*

                  While Dean is in Purgatory and Sam is in Texas, Jody joins a grief support group and stumbles onto a case. Canon-compliant through 10x23.

Compliance*

                  Three years after meeting Nick, Jody learns the rest of his story. Canon-compliant through 10x23.

Fragments: Livejournal; AO3*

                  In an attempt to talk Sam out of seeking Lucifer’s help with the Darkness, Dean tracks down the next best thing on Earth--Nick. As it turns out, he’s closer than they think, and the trace of Grace left in him when he was dispossessed may be vital to defeating the Darkness. Unfortunately, Sam and Dean are not the only ones chasing Archangel fragments, and at least one other person on the trail seems willing to kill Nick to get what they need...

the summers die; one by one: Livejournal; AO3*

                  The aftermath of Hammer of the Gods. CW for discussion of canonical character death.

Avatar: the Last Airbender

UNDER CONSTRUCTION. I’ve more or less fallen out of this fandom, as well, though there’s a chance I’ll get back to it at some point. Almost everything I wrote was one-shots, and they’re scattered around in several different places. I don’t expect to put out any new content in this fandom for the foreseeable future.

I’ll probably dig around and put together a specific link list at some point, but for now, a lot of it is on AO3, some of it is on my LJ, under the avatar tag 

Miscellania

Lighter than a Feather*

               Wheel of Time fanfic;  The night after Rand and Nynaeve cleanse the taint from saidin, Mazrim Taim goes to deal with an Asha'man who recently snapped. CW for murder and saidin-taint madness. Some alternate character interpretations, as well. Spoilers through Winter’s Heart.

              This was originally going to be the springoff point for a much longer AU. I don’t know if I’ll ever write it, even if I fall back into this fandom, but I may take some of the concepts/plans and file the serial numbers off for an original fantasy story.

The Epic Crossover RP OF DOOM

               (I linked the Tumblr tag because it’s easier)

               A crossover between Precipice, Marvel/MCU, BSG, The West Wing, Castle (technically), Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, The Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries, Thin Man, Thrilling Adventure Hour: Beyond Belief, and The Phantom of the Opera.

               Cowritten/RP’d with tigerkat24. OCs abound.

The Blood to be Repaid*

               A crossover between The Farglass Cycle and Pirates of the Carribean

Support of Family*

               Sequel to The Blood to be Repaid

The Hands of Cain*

               A crossover between The Farglass Cycle and Criminal Minds

[uniquequotesonlife]

13 Things We Learned About Travel by Watching Star Wars

View photos Luke yearns to get away over a binary sunset. (Video: Benguitar9000/YouTube) Are you excited yet about Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens? We sure are!  So when someone tells me they’re going to try traveling someplace soon, I give them my best Yoda impersonation: “DO or do not. There is no try.” With J.J. Abrams revving up the Star Wars hype machine again, it got us at Yahoo Travel thinking about how the original films are as much a travel guide as they are a classic mythological space opera. We see diverse lands and fascinating modes of transportation, all in a story sparked by one farm boy looking far, far away to the heavens with wanderlust. You don’t think we can come up with 10 travel lessons learned from Star Wars? As Han Solo once said, never tell me the odds! Here are 13 of them that will teach you a Jedi’s wisdom when on the road, inspired by the thousands of times I’ve watched the original trilogy (no dorks here!). One note: I’ve purged most of the prequel movies from my memory in protest to George Lucas, but I do include one romance-related reference to them here. Han Solo was the original Uber

(Video: Daniel M. Kobayashi/YouTube) Ride sharing was cool in the Star Wars films long before their geeky fans in Silicon Valley thought of it. Obi-Wan didn’t use an app to find Han, but he did go to a part of town where rent-a-pilots were known to congregate, and he arranged to ride a vehicle driven by its cocky owner. Notice any parallels? When Han found out they were running from the Empire, he even used surge pricing on them! How much more Uber can you get? Can’t you just picture Princess Leia calling CEO Travis Kalanick a “scruffy-looking nerf herder”? Related: Go Far, Far Away to See Where the New ‘Star Wars’ Was Filmed Also like Han, Uber shoots first at its critics, and it’s known to keep a secret compartment or two. We just hope Uber will follow his lead and learn that underneath that bad-boy exterior, the company has a heart of gold. (We’re not holding our breath.) One thing is for sure: Anyone would give the Millennium Falcon a five-star rating. If you must lie to customs, play it cool

(Video: Daniel M. Kobayashi/YouTube) Repeat after me: “These aren’t the Cuban cigars you’re looking for.” Maybe you shouldn’t risk it with American customs, but travel to enough countries and you’re probably going to need to employ some Jedi mind tricks against sketchy border-control people. In my case it was the officers at the Syrian airport six years ago, when I had to calmly deny my father was from Syria — had they known the truth, under law I could have been drafted in the Syrian army even though I was born in the U.S. Talk about going to the Dark Side. Pack a versatile wardrobe for any occasion

(Video: Stormcab/YouTube) We’ve got to hand it to Princess Leia — in addition to being the kick-ass, courageous leader of a rebellion against an evil government, she can really pick an outfit. When she was dodging Imperial starships in Episode IV, she was dressed in a practical white robe with that iconic hair bun; on frigid Hoth in Episode V, she wore smart layers. And when cavorting with Ewoks in Return of the Jedi? She was all about that camo look, baby. And all this was despite most of her wardrobe getting blown up on Alderaan! Preadolescent boys like me were most intrigued by Leia’s Slave Girl outfit while trapped on Jabba’s sail barge in Jedi. But we’re not going there, OK? Resist the temptation to have an unplanned wedding when you travel

(Video: Daniel Ard/YouTube) Hey, girlfriend, I understand how you feel traveling with that guy you’re dating. He’s tall, handsome, and saying super-romantic things such as, “I don’t like sand.” You’re light years from home and alone with this person, surrounded by digitally enhanced scenery. Sure, he had one bad night and slaughtered some innocent locals, and he hinted at his desire to become a galactic dictator. But just look at those eyes! And it’s like he can read your mind! Don’t jump into any big relationship decisions without getting back to reality and giving it some thought. Padme didn’t follow that advice, and she got married on the road to a future Sith Lord who knocked her up, then indirectly murdered her. Don’t go into bad neighborhoods by yourself or without telling someone

(Video: joncarr/YouTube) Luke learns this the hard way when he takes his landspeeder into the Jundland Wastes, chasing after Artoo without even telling his aunt and uncle. True, he wasn’t technically alone, but would you want C-3PO having your back in a fight? We’re not saying you should stick to tourist areas when you travel — some of the best experiences are off the beaten path — but have a sidekick and make sure you know exactly how you’d get out of a hairy situation. Luke got bailed out not once but twice when you include his kerfuffle at the Mos Eisley Cantina, but we don’t all have exiled Jedi Masters looking out for us, now do we? No, really, Luke … DON’T go into dangerous places by yourself!

(Video: schultzstudio/YouTube) Yup, he did it again in The Empire Strikes Back, only this time in the snow at his tauntaun’s expense. Luke gets bailed out more times than American banks. If you’re traversing any desolate, icy terrain, have someone to help you fight off Wampa creatures so Han Solo doesn’t need to rescue you. When traveling with the boss, DO NOT slack off

(Video: DRMMRI14/YouTube) It might start with sleeping in before the conference. Then you have a couple too many drinks at the hotel bar and embarrass yourself. Before you know it, you’re pulling out of hyperspace too close and letting your sworn enemies know you’re there. Then this happens, and you’ve failed your boss for the last time. And remember, the Emperor is not as forgiving as he is. Don’t crash at a friend’s house unless you’re on good terms

(Video: Canale di BenguitarBis/YouTube) We understand Han and the gang didn’t exactly have an Airbnb search at their disposal while ducking Star Destroyers in The Empire Strikes Back. But by his own admission he didn’t trust his frenemy Lando and hadn’t spoken with him lately, yet he chose to fly to Bespin anyway. All that got him was betrayal, electroshock torture, and a frozen date with Boba Fett. Lando did redeem himself by saving Han, but still. A general rule: If it’s been more than a couple of years since you talked to the person, don’t ask to crash with them if you don’t fully trust them.   Back up your photos and video as you travel … just in case you’re attacked by a Star Destroyer

(Video: QuoteTheGuy/YouTube) When most of us travel, we accumulate files that we can’t risk losing: a photo of that glorious beach sunset, a video of your kids playing in a Parisian fountain, a blueprint to destroy the same Death Star that blew up your home planet. You know, typical souvenirs. Princess Leia knows this, as demonstrated by the way she quickly reacted to Darth Vader’s boarding party by saving the Rebel plans inside the most reliable flash drive in the galaxy, R2-D2. Even if you don’t have an astromech droid handy, carry a USB memory stick with lots of space. You can find Zen in exotic places … with the right instructor

GIF11 (Video: Canale di BenguitarBis/YouTube) Luke Skywalker was not into glamping. He flew to an ugly swamp to learn how to untap his spiritual potential from a cranky old guide who was on his back all the time. But what a guide Yoda was, and despite a frustrating start and that one bad trip where he saw his evil father’s face as his own, Luke emerged a far stronger and wiser person ready to take on the universe. Plus Yoda showed him how to get your vehicle out of the mud. When you’re shopping at a mobile flea market in the desert, inspect the merchandise closely

Would you buy a droid from these guys? (Courtesy: Wookieepedia) While the pre-Jedi Luke Skywalker was trying to whine his way out of the Jawa market — “But I was going to Toshi Station to pick up some power converters!”— Uncle Owen was the one who questioned and picked out C-3P0, the most overqualified farm droid ever, because Threepio spoke the right language. This was the right call. On the other hand, Owen passed on R2-D2 for that defective red look-alike droid without a good inspection. Thankfully the droid broke down on the spot, so they were able to exchange it for Luke’s future X-Wing copilot. Related: Eye Massagers and Star Wars Toasters — Odd Gifts From SkyMall for the Holiday Season Really, Owen and Luke should have known better. It’s not like the Jawas were Amazon, with a credible return policy: They were fly-by-night merchants. When you’re traveling through a foreign town and dealing with a street vendor you’ll never see again, you need to trust but verify. Be friendly with the locals and they may help you out of a jam

The cutest secret weapons you ever saw. (Courtesy: Wookieepedia) I tried going through this article without an Ewok reference — they’re my least favorite part of the original movies, and it’s hard to believe that a family of teddy bears could take down the Empire. Still, there’s a lesson to be learned here: While the Empire threatened the Ewoks, Leia befriended them, which swung the odds in the Rebels’ favor in the Battle of Endor. A parsec is a measurement of travel time … or is it? We confess, we’re not sure what the lesson is here, but it needs to be said in any mention of Star Wars and travel. As Han Solo tries to price-gouge Obi-Wan and Luke for a ride on the Falcon, he brags that his ship is so fast, it “made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.” Only thing is, a parsec is a unit of distance, not time. It’s kind of like saying, “My car is so fast, I drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than 400 miles!” Either this was a rookie math mistake by George Lucas, a con attempt by Han, or something else: Han shortening the Kessel Run from 18 parsecs to 12 by bravely flying close to black holes. We’ll probably never know, and nerds like me will be debating it years from now in our nursing homes. source Read the full article

[arathergrimreaper]

Straightest Movies I own (Disclaimer: these are the movies with lowest gay energy to me personally. This is not to say there could not be a gay AU of them somewhere that saves them, but as they were written so they shall be):

Hocus Pocus (yes, I know but when holding it up to the rest of my movie library, it just couldn’t match up) Star Wars: The Last Jedi (no idea why I only packed one Star Wars movie, but I did only watch them out of obligation sooo) Snow Dogs The Cookout Song of the Sea Cry-Baby The Dark Knight The Polar Express Starship The Secret World of Arrietty Castle in the Sky The Tale of Princess Kaguya Diary of A Mad Black Woman Fur Aladdin Horton Hears A Who 30 Days of Night Hotel Transylvania Little Shop of Horrors A Series of Unfortunate Events (the Jim Carrey one) Wolf Children House of Flying Daggers Avatar (or as I like to call it: Blue Pocahontas) Nanny Mcphee How the Grinch Stole Christmas Good Eats with Alton Brown: All in a Day’s Eatin’ Edward Scissorhands Whisper of the Heart A Christmas Carol (also the Jim Carrey one) Rango Sleepy Hollow (The Johnny Depp one) Sweeney Todd The Benchwarmers Napoleon Dynamite

Undecided: The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs (it’s a box set) Tokyo Ghoul Seasons 1+2 Nacho Libre Fiddler on the Roof Friday 1-3 Rankin Bass Christmas Specials

[ct-hardcase]

if you’re on mobile and scrolling, there’s a read more here because of Fandom Salt

buuuuuut there are some reasons I’ll still grit my teeth while watching BB again (abbreviated so it doesn’t pop up in the tag)

“let’s just make a mess out of the shipyard where they might be delivering bombs I’m sure it’s no big deal”

the accents. holy shit, dee bradley baker, I love you, but come on now. really.

WHY IS TECH WHITE

seriously now, you make the smart clone lighter than all the others, that is verifiably Not Cool

everyone there feels sooOOoooo edgy, it’s ridiculous. again, sorry to compare this to umbara, because the feel is entirely different, but the dialogue there felt more realistic (despite having its own flavor and quirks for individual clones), while this felt like it was coming from some cheesy action movie whenever someone in CF99 spoke

“remember everyone, make a quiet entrance” and then their actions have nO consEquEnCES

listen. You probably knew a comparison between Hardcase and Wrecker was coming.

Hardcase also made a mess out of what was supposed to be a secret test of the Umbaran starships. Krell caught them. They were forced to sneak out under the cover of night, making it so Dogma had a reason to coerce Tup to tell on them, Rex had to grapple with his conscience

the reason you had to read all that is to show that when Hardcase fucked up in the umbara arc, it had serious consequences. Wrecker (and the rest of BB) fucked up the whole quiet thing and the arc could have played out the exact same had they done it quietly because they SOMEHOW managed to continue being under the radar. Ugh.

have I mentioned the stereotypical accents yet?

I love you Echo, but why’d they give you legs and how do you have enough energy to walk?

Actually the best thing this arc did was make me like Echo more

somehow, Anakin doesn’t remember how to use the Force while everyone’s balancing on that pipe. I know those droids flew, but seriously, Jedi-101 here. He also could’ve crushed them with the Force. I know he can use the choke force and it’s probably the same principle.

I love you Echo but how did you get rehabilitated that quickly, you were down and out for roughly a year and a half

Other people mentioned this already but why is Hunter only hypersensitive to surrounding stimuli when he needs to be? does he have blockers in his armor? shouldn’t this be a detriment in some cases?

also what the fuck was Wrecker holding a drumstick in that one scene, I’m just pissed on the reg clones’ behalfs that BB gets to eat actual food

milkshake

[dalekofchaos]

Sequel Trilogy, Wasted Potential and what could’ve been

This post is where I look at what could’ve been done with the characters of the Sequel Trilogy and comparing to what they chose to do. I will be doing this for Rey, Finn, Poe, Rose, Kylo, Hux, Phasma, Snoke, Luke, Han and Leia. This will be both TFA and TLJ critical, there is no holding back.

List of ways they could’ve handled Rey in the Sequel Trilogy

Give Rey a different setting. Listen, absolutely no one cared about having another desert planet. So I think if you gave Rey an aquatic planet or an Amazonian planet, I really think it would help improve the story without anyone accusing you of ripping off the original trilogy.

Let Rey have a character arc. Rey starts off as a mix of Han Solo and Jyn Erso. Someone who only cares about her own survival and is consumed by her own trauma but learns to overcome her trauma, start caring for other people and something bigger than herself. That would’ve been the perfect character arc for Rey.

Rey would sell BB-8 for food, then fight to get him back.   It doesn’t work that she would be selfless and was willing to pass up all that food for a droid she just met. So I think it would help if she had sold BB-8 and later after meeting Finn, she learns of the importance of the droid and she feels guilt and fights to get BB-8 back. That I think would’ve improved her arc in TFA

Show that Rey is still learning piloting a starship and have Han teaching Rey how to fly proper. Rey will mention that she flew simulations on Jakku, but realizes flying simulations is different than flying for real. This will give us a nice scene of Han mentoring Rey in flying the Falcon.

When returning to D’Qar, showing Rey going to the infirmary with Finn, while Leia hugs Chewie. Rey’s concern should be to make sure Finn is okay, we didn’t need to see an unearned hug between two characters who didn’t know each other.

Have a meaningful mentor and student relationship with Luke and Rey. Luke reaches out after R2 and seeing so much of himself in Rey. It is more important to have a Rey and Luke strong mentor-apprentice relationship than having Rey have a connection with Kylo Ren. It should be about training Rey and establishing a relationship between Luke and her. It was said their relationship would be the heart of the film, so my suggestion is do just that. Focus on Rey and Luke having an actual relationship with each other and her training. Rey needs to be trained in the force to be a believable character. Even Anakin, Ahsoka, and Luke himself were given training and time to become skilled and powerful. Instead of just copying Yoda and old man Obi’s personality into him, do something we have never seen before in a Jedi Master in the movies: make Luke humorous, lighthearted, make Luke lecture Rey ON the importance of attachments and understanding the darkness just as much is the light. It would also create a parallel to what Snoke is teaching Kylo. Have Luke show Rey how to feel the force. Even show Luke teaching Rey to craft her own Lightsaber. Rey could finally make her Saberstaff with Yellow or Purple Crystal and teach Rey that attachments can lead you to the dark side if you let them, but they won’t lead you to darkness if you control your emotions. 

Reveal that Rey is Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade’s daughter. After Rey falls into the dark side cave, Luke finds her and brings her near the fire and is there to comfort her. Then the revelation happens. Rey says “I’ve never felt so alone.” And we get Luke telling her “the force is strong in my family. My father had it, I have it, my sister has it and my daughter has it” “There is a reason you dreamed of this place.” “You were never meant to be left on Jakku…I thought you died the night in the academy.” “All those years. I was so alone.” “I know. I’m sorry.” “Did you ever try to find me?” “Of course. For so long I searched the galaxy for you. Everyone said that you had died that night in the temple, that I should give up searching. But through the force, I could still feel you. I knew you were still alive. Every face I seen, it was your. Every voice I heard, it was yours. It drove me crazy. I came to this island, turned away from the force because it was so hard. Feeling that you were somewhere in the galaxy and being unable to find you. Seeing you in front of me right now… I’ve never felt so lucky.” And Rey with tears in her eyes. “I waited so long for you and your finally here” they embrace, father and daughter reunited.” Rey then asks about her mother. Luke sadly says “her name was Mara Jade and she loved you very much.” Rey why she was left on Jakku. “Because of your cousin Ben, Kylo Ren.”  Luke tells her that after a decade of training Ben, and fighting to keep the dark side at bay, Ben turned to the dark side because his family kept the secret that Darth Vader was his grandfather. He still wanted to help his nephew and save him from Snoke. One night he went to him to talk to him, Ben saw this as Luke being afraid of his power and Ben was the one to strike first. And then he woke up to see the other Jedi Masters dead. His wife Mara Jade dead and even the younglings dead. Only six other Jedi left with Ben, those who would become the Knights Of Ren. Rey left with Ben because she trusted her cousin and she couldn’t find Luke or Mara.  and Ben left her on Jakku where no one would ever find her because a part of him couldn’t kill his cousin.

Rey and Luke together go to The Supremacy after they both feel Leia and Finn in danger. Rey flies the Falcon, while Luke lifts his old X-Wing and head to the Supremacy to face Snoke. Rey will pose as bait, while Luke sneaks aboard The Supremacy.  Rey is brought before Kylo Ren and Snoke. Snoke taunts that today hope dies and The Resistance dies. But what happens next, Luke enters the throne room. “MASTER SKYWALKER! AT LAST WE MEET” Snoke will echo through his throne room. The Praetorian Guards will attack, but Luke kills them easily with the force. Luke will say he’s come to save his apprentice, his sister and the rebellion. And finally what we’ve been waiting for Luke vs Snoke. Snoke takes out the true Darksaber, while Luke takes out his Green Lightsaber. The master of the light and master of the dark. And we have the rematch between Rey and Kylo. This time Kylo appears stronger. He is dominating Rey in the fight. Kylo will tell her “you should have accepted my offer, scavenger” “Rey will say “I’ll never join you!” Kylo with the famous Solo snark will say “pity” and cuts  Rey’s hand off. Luke enraged will use the force to knock Kylo out. Finally Luke defeats Snoke. Luke will take Rey with him. As the hyperspace ramming happens, the Falcon is there to pick up Rey. Luke leaves on his X-Wing to guide Rey to safety.

Rey awakens and senses Finn nearby on Crait. As Luke is fighting Kylo, Rey knows while injured, she has to lift the rocks in order to save Finn and The Resistance. Finally Rey embraces Finn, reunited again. The movie ends with Rey getting her mechanical hand and joins Luke and Leia. Leia places her hand over her and Luke’s hands and say “we have everything we need”

What They chose to do with Rey instead

Choose to have Rey on a desert planet again....for reasons

Rey is good natured and selfless for no reason or build up whatsoever. My issue with this it makes no sense considering that Rey grew up on Jakku, a dog eat dog world. She had no reason to be selfless on that planet. I do love Rey, but it really makes no sense that a person who was raised on a ruthless and violent planet of thieves and scavengers, abandoned and lived the life of a scavenger who barely makes enough to survive would give up all that food for a droid she just met.

Rey perfectly flies The Falcon despite not flying a ship. In the movie she says she’s never flown before and doesn’t know how she did it. In The novel she says she flew ships at night and flight simulations. That’s all well and good, but if you choose to explain things in the novel, but not in the movie. Then you deliberately chose not to explain how a scavenger who never leaves the planet knows how to fly the Millennium Falcon.

She pulls off maneuvers and mechanical tricks that not even Han Solo could think of and a scene later he is dumbfounded and astonished by Rey

Rey hugs Leia. Leia hugging Rey out of nowhere instead of Chewie just doesn’t work. Why is she hugging and grieving with someone she just met when Chewie is right there?

Daisy doesn’t think Rey should have any flaws and that’s a problem

Rey has a connection and starts to trust Kylo Ren...when only ONE DAY passes since Kylo has tortured her, killed Han Solo, and injured Finn. There’s a difference between being “forgiving” and there’s being blindly gullible. She went from wanting to kill him to believing he’s “our last hope”....for reasons.

Rey’s stupidity in TLJ. Rey’s plan. Rey has some vision of Kylo Ren deciding to help her out and locks herself in a box to fly straight to him, with no escape plan or regard for her own safety. As bad as JJ chose to develop Rey, I will admit that Rey is adaptable. Rey makes plans and strategizes. She has been raised as a scavenger, working hard for every day of survival and fighting for every item in her possession. While Luke and Anakin throw caution to the wind in order to succeed, Rey keeps a level head and fights her way through things. TLJ acts like that version of Rey doesn’t exist.

Rey has no character arc in TLJ.  Rey doesn’t learn anything and I don’t feel like she has a character arc or journey. She starts her journey in TFA and I was excited to learn where her character would go. And TLJ does nothing with Rey.  I do love Rey, but I don’t feel like it truly tests Rey and forces her to grow as a character. Rey is intriguing and we care for her, but her journey feels non existent.  Luke and Anakin had struggles and journeys.  I just don’t feel it from Rey. I am really disappointed with how TLJ handles Rey. Rey doesn’t have any struggles. Rey is all powerful and she is the same character she is from TFA. Everything TFA was building her up was instantly ignored.  How Maz got the Skywalker lightsaber? Never mentioned again. How Rey was drawn to the Skywalker lightsaber and what the force vision was meant to mean? Never addressed. Rey says that she’s classified information, “none of your business” Then her parents are revealed as junk traitors who sold her for drinking money and died in Jakku. If her parents were just junkers, how did they afford that space ship if they spent the money on booze? Rey herself told BB-8 she was classified information. All that build up for nothing. The force can come from anyone, we all feel it but you build Rey up only to do nothing with her. Whatever TFA was building up for Rey was dropped entirely.  My big issue with how TLJ handles Rey, is she does not learn anything. She was awakened by Kylo’s mind melding and has his powers transferred to her, she doesn’t even earn her powers on her own, it’s all from Kylo. Your big feminist icon has to get her powers from the man who’s been harassing her. How empowering....please kill me. She doesn’t learn anything from Luke and she feels like the same character in The Force Awakens. We see Luke showing Rey to feel the force and the Jedi’s hubris. The third lesson was deleted, but we did not really get to see Luke train her as a Jedi. Rey doesn’t learn anything. Rey even defeats Luke... In the end we see Rey has the sacred Jedi texts, but Yoda pointed out that those texts were holding back the Jedi and doesn’t teaches her what she doesn’t already know. SO in the end, Rey doesn’t learn anything and that’s the problem. And the big problem is we are expected that Rey will learn everything off screen....that’s the problem. You cannot just have a character who can do all these amazing feats, show her not being trained as a Jedi and make her even more powerful in the final movie with no build up whatsoever.

Rey in TROS teaser looks like nothing ever changed. The same type of outfit from The Force Awakens, the same Lightsaber and the same hairstyle. Like nothing ever happened or changed. Like nothing ever changed. God forbid Rey looks like a mix of a Jedi Knight and Resistance Leader, godforbid Rey builds her own lightsaber, especially a Saberstaff. It’s almost as if JJ and Lucasfilm are afraid to develop Rey as a character and let her look different at all....*sighs*

Rey has no development or arc. Rey is not allowed to have flaws or personal struggles or has a real hero’s journey.  Which is disappointing because I truly loved having Star Wars be centered around a female lead and feel like it’s a missed opportunity. It’s not Daisy’s fault, I feel like the blame lies with Disney. I’m not sure if Disney got cold feet with a female protagonist and felt they would get backlash if they made her character naturally flawed but it’s storytelling 101 to have your protagonist faced with problems that aren’t easy to overcome and correlate to said flaws. Instead we got a hero who faces no real consequences, has no real goals, and can defeat everything in her path with abysmal training. Which ultimately makes for an extremely uninteresting hero. No hard training, no real consequences, no real flaws, no struggles or not even an arc and everything is handed to her. It just makes Episode IX predictable and boring. Rey will defeat Kylo again to no one’s surprise. There is just not a reason to care to see what will happen with Rey. I’m more invested to see what happens with Finn, Poe, Rose and Jannah. I just lost any and all investment in Rey after TLJ. Rey just doesn’t feel like a reason to even want to watch Episode IX and Disney just failed Rey as a character.

List of ways they could’ve handled Finn in TLJ

Have Finn lead a Stormtrooper rebellion

Have Finn be fully committed to The Resistance. It is shown through cut material that Finn was in Cobalt Squadron uniform. Have Finn be with Paige, have Paige and Finn have a short friendship(this actually gives Ngo Thanh Van speaking lines), Paige being in awe that Finn, someone who escaped The First Order helped The Resistance destroy Starkiller Base is working with him and she is more than happy to show him the ropes. They are co-pilots of a Y-Wing(those bombers were stupid and we all know it) Finn was able to save Paige from dying in space and instead she dies in his arms while leaving a bloody handprint on his heart, working as a callback to when Slip died in Finn’s arms and left a bloody handprint on his helmet and her last words being “tell my sister I love her. Finn brings the bad news to Rose and gives Rose Paige’s pendant. Rose breaks down and hugs Finn. Both Finn and Rose have a good relationship at this point and there is no pointless hostility. You could even have Finn and Rose together finding the hacker and having their plan succeed and just having DJ betray them as they make it to the escape pod. And Finn and Phasma do have their fight, but keep in the deleted Phasma death scene

Finn and Poe go to Canto Bight in order to find Rose Tico, the Resistance hacker. 

Finn and Rose’s mission is to find the master codebreaker. The Master Codebreaker they are meant to find is none other than Lando Calrissian. Lando is the person Finn and Rose are meant to get help from. They leave with DJ, but Lando was expecting to meet two members from the Resistance, so he leaves Canto Bight and on his way out he gets Leia’s message and mobilizes old friends from the Rebellion(a cameo from Wedge Antilles) and goes to give the Resistance some reinforcements. We then see a little reunion with Lando, Leia and Chewbacca and Lando revealing that he was who Finn and Rose were meant to meet. 

KEEP IN THE FUCKING DELETED FINN AND PHASMA SCENE, GOOD FUCKING GOD.

Cut the battle of Crait entirely. It was a pointless copy and paste of the Battle Of Hoth, only with salt instead!! And Finn knew full well his suicide run would not work. He was familiar with First Order weaponry, so Finn would know full well it would not work. So what I would do instead is when Leia’s signal reaches her allies, we would hear Lando Calrissian. Lando brings support to Crait. If you have to copy and paste something from Empire, then copy the ending. We would see the Resistance strong and our heroes reunited and united against the common goal of burning the First Order to the ground

Change the ending to TFA and they wait till Finn is healed up and both Rey and Finn go to Ach-To. When Rey comes out of the dark side cave, Finn is the one to comfort Rey. Instead of a pointless fight between Rey and Luke. Rey and Luke both sense Leia is in danger, Rey convinces Luke to go to his sister, while Rey and Finn will go to The Supremacy to confront Snoke and Kylo Ren. Finn takes the Jedi texts to the Falcon.  Finn and Rey are captured by Kylo Ren and brings them before Snoke. If you have to have a force bond. Make it between all three of them. Finn and Kylo are obvious foils. Finn was taken from his family against his will into the First Order and realized on his own that murder was wrong. Conversely, Kylo willingly ran from his family into the First Order and consciously uses murder to gain power. As Kylo kills his father, Finn becomes a Resistance hero. Their storylines and development are inversely proportional to each other- when Finn moves toward the light, Kylo falls further toward darkness. Finn is the humanity Kylo rejected when he chose to kill his father.  Kylo is the darkness Finn could have succumbed to but ran away from. So why not have them being connected by the force. Have Kylo taunt Finn and Rey and trying to convince them to join him and turn on Luke, only for them to keep their resolve. You could even have Kylo telling Finn “you could’ve been so much more, yet you betrayed us.” Finn calling Kylo a coward and a monster. With a force connection established between Finn and Kylo, we could have Kylo wondering why Finn would desert The First Order, while Finn wonders why Kylo betrayed his family, the Jedi and joined The First Order, but despite what may have happened, Finn keeps his resolve.  Rey and Finn tell each other that they see Kylo and comfort each other. Maybe even show potential cause Kylo sees them all as abandoned children and together they could bring a new order.  Rey and Finn are asking him to turn and return home, Finn even believes there is hope, “if I could leave The First Order, you can too.” but still, Kylo brings them before Snoke. Snoke commends Kylo for bringing Rey and the traitor before him. Snoke mocks Finn from running from The First Order, but senses he could be strong in the force. “Have you never wondered what the Knights Of Ren are? They were all Stormtroopers Force Sensitive enough to be turned into a new order. Kylo Ren sensed it in you and wanted you to join him, but you left and betrayed us.” “It was weakness that drove you to leave the First Order, not strength. But today I see strength within you that can burn down the Jed!” Snoke asks Finn to take his blaster and execute Rey. Rey is pleading with Finn.  Snoke demands it. "Your compassion for her is now your weakness. Strike her down, join Kylo Ren as a Knight Of Ren and fulfill your destiny- and as we all see it, Finn uses the force to ignite Rey’s lightsaber on Snoke. Together Rey and Finn fights the Praetorian guards. Kylo wants Rey and Finn to join him. Wanting a new order, but Rey and Finn refuses. Rey fights Kylo, but Kylo cuts Rey’s hand off, so Finn fights Kylo. Finn and Kylo are on even footing, but as we see the fight reaching it’s climax, the hyperspace ramming happens. Finn and Rey escape to the Falcon. as Rey is in healing, Finn kisses her on the forehead and covers her up. Finn and Chewie blast away the Tie-Fighters on Crait and destroys the siege cannon. The end scene of both Rey and Finn lifting the rocks and saving The Resistance. Rey and Finn reunite with Poe and Leia. It ends with Leia telling Rey, Finn and Poe saying “we have everything we need.”

What they chose to do with Finn instead

A complete lack of empathy and care for Finn. He is constantly belittled and mocked throughout the movie. In The Force Awakens, Finn fights Kylo Ren. He does well, but is ultimately defeated.  He is slashed in the shoulder and the spine by Kylo Ren and falls into the snow, unconscious. Now if this were in the first 6 movies, Finn would be dead or would be paralyzed. But because it’s a Disney movie, Finn heals up. Rey continues the fight and slashes Ren across the face, leaving him with a gash. The characters all escape, but Finn has to be carried to a medical station, unconscious until TLJ. Kylo Ren seems fine, ultimately jumping in a TIE fighter to try and kill his mom before getting patched up further.  Finn, again, has to wake up before doing anything. Here’s the difference between Finn and Kylo’s injuries.  Finn awakens in a medical bed wearing a bacta suit.  His first instinct is to call out for Rey. As he jolts up, he slams his head against the medical container.  He slams against it again. Regaining awareness, he opens up the medical container to find himself alone in a cargo room.  He falls out of the bed, spraying medical fluids all over the place.  He trudges down the hallway until Poe and BB-8 find him. His injuries are never mentioned, shown, or even referenced again.  Kylo, on the other hand, is asked by Snoke how his wound is, to which he responds “it’s nothing.”  He then takes that ridiculous thing off, complete with a close-up of a sad kylo Ren face, with his sutures  framed to draw attention to them. This happens again in the elevator.  Then we get a scene of him getting patched up soberly by a medical droid.  Then we get a shirtless scene as a final showcase of his other two scars.  Throughout the film, Kylo’s scars are present and framed as a constant reminder that he went through pain.  Finn’s injuries are used as a joke once and promptly forgotten, and let’s not pretend that these injuries are  one-to-one aside from how they’re framed.  Remember Finn received injuries trying to protect Rey, while Kylo received injuries trying to murder Rey. Finn received a deep wound across his spine, which can often be fatal in the real world.  Kylo received a gash across his face.  Finn’s injuries were worse and nobly gained. Kylo’s injuries were comparatively tame and well deserved.  Yet the movie uses Finn’s pain as a joke, and Kylo’s pain as a humanizing factor.

Repeats the same character arc he already learned in The Force Awakens and is made a side character. Finn is changed from one of the main protagonists to being a side character in his own trilogy.  Finn’s character arc from The Force Awakens was dropped completely in The Last Jedi. He does want Rey to be safe, but Finn just wants to run away, despite the fact that he learned to be courageous, face his fears and stay and fight at the end of TFA. He already saw that The Resistance is worth fighting for, that The First Order needs to be fought and he stood up to his fears by facing Kylo Ren. It didn’t need a bad retelling.  

Finn is reduced to Rose’s sidekick and is made into a racist slapstick caricature. The first real problem for Finn. He is reduced to a slapstick joke in his very first scene. Finn awakens from his coma, slams his face and it is revealed that he isn’t even on the medical ship or even in the medbay on the Raddus…he is in the cargo hold and is made to be a joke. This is the Co-protagonist of the trilogy, and he’s reintroduced as a slapstick joke. Then once again he wants to runaway. I am getting a real racist vibe that Rian Johnson sees Finn as the cowardly black man troupe. That’s just downright disgusting.

The dynamic between Finn and Rose. I wanted to like Rose…Bad writing and direction prevents that. Finn wants to escape to save Rey and because The Supremacy is tracking them through hyperspace, but Rose sees this as desertion….Desertion? You taze people for desertion? How exactly am I supposed to root for either side again? This is probably the same only less lethal treatment one could expect from The First Order. And what if The Raddus took critical damage? Are you trying to tell me Rose would taze anyone going to the escape pods? I thought she was supposed to be a mechanic, not someone who prevents escape. Finn is then tazed by Rose, which is understandable, she thought he was running away and she was in mourning. He also was objectively posing absolutely no threat to her, wasn’t running away, and was even trying to explain himself. Additionally, just the threat of the taser seemed to have been enough to stop him from leaving. But Rose attacked him anyways. The difference between Rey and Rose attacking Finn is Rey subdued Finn just enough to stop and interrogate him, Rose went completely overboard by paralyzing him and knocking him unconscious. It was completely unnecessary and gratuitous and is supposed to be played for laughs. Rey and Finn have a real friendship and partnership from the last movie. Rose, on the other hand, spends the rest of the movie belittling Finn and talking down to him. The book also says that she thought about using violence against him more than once after the tasing (for annoying her) and even pushed him. This displays a really problematic pattern of violence and disrespect towards Finn so yeah,  multiple uses of violence and expressed desire to inflict violence on him as being abusive. I would argue that she is undeniably verbally abusive with Finn. In the movie and in the book (more so in the book) she often belittles him by calling him names and using other put downs. It seems she wants to make him feel bad about himself and bring him down, which is abusive. Of course, it doesn’t really matter what her intent is, even if she doesn’t “mean to be mean” it still counts as verbal abuse. So, in summary, her repeated threats and use of violence against Finn and her continual use of insults and put downs causes me to come to the conclusion that she is abusive to Finn.

Canto Bight. Rian Johnson cared more for visuals and CGI than telling a coherent story. It’s complete filler. It’s all the pointless CGI in the Special Editions of the original trilogy, only worse. Was a big boobed alien worth more than Finn and Rose completing their mission to save the Resistance?

Canto Bight continues the racist stereotype that black people would be in awe of a casino and be completely oblivious to what happens behind the scenes. The idea that Finn, someone who was raised in the violent and oppressive environment of the first order and who risked his life to rebel against it, would struggle to understand why a casino full of rich unaffected assholes wasn’t the greatest thing on earth is impossibly bad writing and demonstrates just how little of a shit rian gave about his character

Finn and Rose cared more about space horses than saving slave children. Who cares that these children are gonna be left at the mercy of their violent slave owners and face merciless abuse, because after all, it was all worth it to free the animals!!! Look at us, we’re so progressive!!!….Please kill me

The plan to disable the Hyperspace tracking is made to pointlessly fail. Finn, Rose and DJ are close to fulfilling their objective and fail for no reason whatsoever. Okay first of all, Finn and Rose are captured because neither Finn or Rose bothered to get to a legal parking spot. So instead of going to find the ACTUAL Master Codebreaker(which told a better story) we are instead shown to DJ. This is a character who is made to be untrustworthy from the beginning and even sounds like a snake. So obviously he betrays them. And instead of letting them disable their tracker and just being caught when heading towards the escape pods, their plan is made to fail, making everything they’ve been trying to do ultimately pointless. It effect the plot even in the slightest. You could remove it and nothing would change in the slightest. Nothing mattered. Apparently the people of color needed their white hero savior to show them up…..*sighs*

The only time Finn is allowed to be presented as a protagonist when finally confronting Phasma and facing his abuser. My only problem is they cut out Phasma’s better death scene. Finn reveals Phasma shut down the shields for Starkiller Base, and that gets the Stormtroopers to turn on Phasma. This is what I would hope starts a Stormtrooper Rebellion. Finn’s defection was withheld information by Hux and Phasma in fear of a full on rebellion. Humanizing Stormtroopers and having one become a hero is kind of genius, but the way they did it in Episode 7 made it seem like Finn was the ONLY good Stormtrooper, which has to be an impossibility. If one Stormtrooper can suddenly switch sides, what’s to say that others couldn’t? And since Episode IX will most likely see the fall of the First Order, I personally think that Finn should convince all (or most of) the Stormtroopers to turn against Kylo and Hux, leading to a cool final scene where the First Order is ultimately destroyed by their own henchmen, children who were abducted and indoctrinated take back their narrative. That would be cooler and more unique, I think, than another Resistance vs. First Order space shootout, or Rey and her possible Jedi apprentice army taking them down.

Finn’s suicide run. Finn was the best Stormtrooper and knows about The First Order’s weapons, he should know full well that speeder would be destroyed trying to destroy the mini death star. Finn’s attempted sacrifice was pointless as he knew that it wouldn’t work.

Rose stopping Finn. “that’s how we win, not by fighting what we hate, by saving what we love.” That makes no sense and ignores the entire narrative of Star Wars and heroism of the saga. Paige, her sister sacrificed herself to save The Resistance. Holdo sacrificed herself to save The Resistance. The Rogue One crew sacrificed themselves. Kanan Jarrus sacrificed himself to save what he loved. Finn’s entire arc in the movie was learning not to just think about running away with Rey and fight for a greater cause and when the time comes for Finn to prove that he’s grown as a character, he can’t? What was the point of Finn’s arc in the movie? And let’s talk about Poe. Shouldn’t Poe be sacrificing himself? Poe has spent the entire film watching others die and give their lives and he’s never backed down, so shouldn’t Poe be in Finn’s place? And if Rose stopped Finn who would save The Resistance? We saw after Rose stopped Finn, the bunker was blown up by the battering ram. Absolutely NO ONE knew that Luke was going to make his surprise entrance and save everyone. For all we knew, The First Order would’ve moved into the bunker and killed everyone and The Resistance.

Finn was done dirty throughout the entire movie, the only time I felt any sense of joy for his character was when he reunited with Rey. I just hope TROS treats Finn better and he isn’t Rian’d again. Finn deserved better than what he got in TLJ

List of ways they could’ve handled Poe in the sequel trilogy

Poe is on Jakku with Finn. I was not happy that Poe who was heavily advertised as one of the leads of this new trilogy and is sidelined for the majority of the movie. So what I’d have happen is Poe saves Finn and together they go to Nema outpost. Poe gives Finn his jacket because his Stormtrooper armor would draw too much attention and after he sees Finn in the jacket, Poe will tell him “you should keep it, it looks good on you” Poe will tell Finn, “if anyone asks, you’re with the Resistance.” Eventually both Poe and Finn would meet up with BB-8 and Rey. Eventually the three meet up and run for safety as The First Order attacks. Rey and Finn would blast the Tie-FIghters out of the sky as Poe flies the Falcon. The trio introduces themselves and starts to show a friendship for each other. Poe will tell Rey they need to get BB-8 to the Resistance base, it is to locate Luke Skywalker. Rey will have her “Luke Skywalker? I thought he was a myth.” Han will arrive and Poe asks for help. Han will tell the story of Luke’s disappearance and takes them to Takodana. We get to see the friendship between Poe, Finn and Rey. Poe tells Finn and Rey about his parents and how much Poe idolizes Shara and Kes. Giving the audience the knowledge that his parents are war heroes in the Rebellion and life long friends of the original trilogy characters. Both Finn and Rey feel alone but is interested in knowing about Poe’s life. Poe tells Finn he has to tell Rey, he appreciates what he has done for him but it’s best Rey find out from him and not The First Order. Maz finds out about Finn, when Poe is confronted about the lie, Poe did it to protect Finn and after that Finn and Rey have their moment like they did in the movie.  When The First Order’s attack on Takodana happens, Poe signals Black Squadron to help. The big change is having Poe go to Starkiller Base with Finn and Han. Everyone assumes that Poe will destroy Starkiller Base, but it’s his team that will do it, mainly Jessika Pava. He trusts his team to destroy Starkiller Base while Poe helps destroy it from the inside. Also Finn convinced Poe to help and because Rey is Poe’s friend. I just really think it would’ve been better to have Rey, Finn and Poe together as the Sequel trio and to have the three to have a good dynamic.  

The Resistance mobilizes with what’s left of The New Republic and Poe leads the fleet against The First Order

Poe convinces Leia that destroying the Dreadnought is a good thing.

Poe is commended and praised for saving The Resistance, but Poe feels regret for the lives that were lost. Leia sympathizes that she has delt with this guilt throughout her entire life. “Does it ever get easier General? “No Poe, it doesn’t, but we must endure.”

Poe does get in his X-Wing and gets in a dogfight with Kylo Ren in The Silencer. Poe is the one thing from keeping Kylo from destroying The Resistance fleet. As Kylo hesitates on shooting Leia, before his wingmen can fire on the bridge, Poe shoots the wingmen out of the sky and sends The Silencer flying. 

Goes on the mission with Finn to find the Resistance hacker Rose Tico

Actually letting Holdo tell Poe the plan 

Actually acknowledging that Poe saved The Resistance against The Dreadnought and acknowledge that he destroyed Starkiller Base. Not condemn him for already being a Resistance Leader who cared about saving lives

What they chose to do with Poe instead

The lack of tension between Kylo Ren and Poe. Poe Dameron just witnessed The First Order’s arrival, the death of his friend Lor San Tekka and the massacre of a village. What happens next is a complete change in tone and lack of tension. Poe decides to tell a joke. JJ decides it’s best to throw in a joke, it just undermined the seriousness of the slaughter Kylo Ren has caused and killed one of Poe and Leia’s friends. Poe should not be cracking jokes. Poe should be brave, firm and defiant to Kylo Ren. Telling a joke is the absolute last thing Poe should be doing after witnessing the murder of a friend.

Keep Poe separate from Finn and Rey for the first half of the movie

Pointlessly change Poe’s character in TLJ. Poe started out as the most levelheaded, compassionate and trusted soldier in the entire Resistance, so trusted that he was given the mission to find the map to Luke Skywalker and leading the strike force to destroy Starkiller Base, why is it that he is suddenly a hot headed fly boy who ignores orders and is getting no respect from his commanding officers? The character change for Poe Dameron was unnecessary and so out of place. Poe before TLJ would not be okay with sacrificing lives to stop one ship that can be easily replaced.  In all source material and the last movie he refused to let anyone die. Not even Finn, a man who was an enemy an hour before they met formally, even though Poe shot his squad mate before during the fight on Jakku. Everything about Poe’s portrayal in TLJ is so unnecessary.  Poe Dameron went from a caring and experienced rebel pilot to an arrogant, hotheaded latino stereotype in the span of like…a day. That’s not subversive writing, that’s racist and bad writing.

Is condemned and demoted for saving The Resistance and doing something that Han and Luke did to destroy the Death Star

Kept Poe in the dark about something that could’ve been solved with basic communication skills. Holdo’s absolute refusal to tell Poe or literally ANYONE in the Resistance the plan is baffling. Poe is a respected and highly trained, top ranking rebel fighter, who had been covert enough to execute a highly delicate and secret mission to retrieve the Map to Luke Skywalker, responsible for destroying Starkiller base and the biggest asset to the resistance and biggest threat to the first order, anything about the plan? He’s literally a war hero and is more than likely only second to Leia. Holdo didn’t just leave Poe in the dark, she left the entire Resistance in the dark. When Holdo meets Poe, she then proceeds to dress Poe down just for asking for his orders and the plan. Keep in mind that Poe isn’t just some grunt. Even with his demotion, he’s your second or third in command, and he has the respect of the entire crew, as evidenced by his later leading a majority of the crew in mutiny against Holdo. Holdo brought her personal crew from her ship and worked with them while snubbing the main rebel crew entirely. That’s a bit of a dick move, protocol or not. One of the biggest issues was not that Holdo wasn’t telling Poe the plan, but it was acting as if there was really no other plan. She was literally taking personal jabs at him when he was trying to find something out. If she said something like. “While it seems bad , we are working on a plan right now. We are not just going to stay here and have everyone die. Just have your pilots ready to go at a moment’s notice” But she didn’t even give him that. Remember up until Poe taking over, they were watching ship after ship being picked off slowly. The crew was given nothing and was told just to trust her. Blind faith in leadership is a horrible message. If that is the take away then why not just do what the First Order or the Empire wants. I mean seemingly they are in charge of stuff now. And we should follow orders blindly. Moreover they were down to < 1000 people, and from the POV of everyone else she was just watching people die. Rank be damned. Anyone who cared about their crew would do something. He was a Commander and the flight commander there is NO way he should have been left out in the cold. Then they have the nerve to touch his unconscious body and say “I like him” fuck you. How Poe was treated in TLJ was absolutely atrocious and a complete insult to Oscar Isaac, Poe deserves better.

List of ways they could’ve handled Rose in the sequel trilogy

Make Rose the Hacker. It’s not unrealistic for the Resistance to have one. She could still think her skills aren’t useful considering most Wars have been won by soldiers and Jedi, not hackers. Paige is a Resistance fighter and her sister is a hacker. The Tico sisters fight the war in their own way. Finn and Poe go to Canto Bight to get Rose. Rose is on the planet to make the war profiteers hurt, and Finn and Poe must convince her. Her character arc could be learning that the war is much bigger than just her and that her sister, and the galaxy need her.

Finn and Rose’s mission is to find the master codebreaker. The Master Codebreaker they are meant to find is none other than Lando Calrissian. Lando is the person Finn and Rose are meant to get help from. They leave with DJ, but Lando was expecting to meet two members from the Resistance, so he leaves Canto Bight and on his way out he gets Leia’s message and mobilizes old friends from the Rebellion(a cameo from Wedge Antilles) and goes to give the Resistance some reinforcements. So instead of a hopelessly outgunned Resistance at Death’s door, when all hope seems lost, Lando brings the cavalry and shows The Rebellion is alive and hope still lives. We then see a little reunion with Lando, Leia and Chewbacca and Lando revealing that he was who Finn and Rose were meant to meet. 

Rose is a highly valued Resistance Mechanic fighting for The Resistance her own way as Paige was a bomber

Actually letting Paige live and actually giving us the sisterly bond between Rose and Paige and you know, GIVING  Ngô Thanh Vân SPEAKING LINES

Letting Rose empathize with Finn’s trauma and acknowledge that they are both cut from the same cloth. Rose and Paige lost their family and home and Finn lost his family and home, they have something in common and a reason to fight for The Resistance

Have Finn tell Rose about Rey and Rose being in awe of the Jedi and hopes to someday meet her and understands why Finn loves her

Letting Finn and Rose’s plan to disable the tracker succeed and only be captured upon reaching the escape pods.

What they chose to do with Rose instead

Poorly written. I wanted to like Rose…Bad writing and direction prevents that. The Supremacy is tracking them through hyperspace, but Rose sees this as desertion….Desertion? You taze people for desertion? How exactly am I supposed to root for either side again? This is probably the same only less lethal treatment one could expect from The First Order. And what if The Raddus took critical damage? Are you trying to tell me Rose would taze anyone going to the escape pods? I thought she was supposed to be a mechanic, not someone who prevents escape. Finn is then tazed by Rose, which is understandable, she thought he was running away and she was in mourning. He also was objectively posing absolutely no threat to her, wasn’t running away, and was even trying to explain himself. Additionally, just the threat of the taser seemed to have been enough to stop him from leaving. But Rose attacked him anyways. The difference between Rey and Rose attacking Finn is Rey subdued Finn just enough to stop and interrogate him, Rose went completely overboard by paralyzing him and knocking him unconscious. It was completely unnecessary and gratuitous and is supposed to be played for laughs. Rey and Finn have a real friendship and partnership from the last movie. Rose, on the other hand, spends the rest of the movie belittling Finn and talking down to him. The book also says that she thought about using violence against him more than once after the tasing (for annoying her) and even pushed him. This displays a really problematic pattern of violence and disrespect towards Finn so yeah,  multiple uses of violence and expressed desire to inflict violence on him as being abusive. I would argue that she is undeniably verbally abusive with Finn. In the movie and in the book (more so in the book) she often belittles him by calling him names and using other put downs. It seems she wants to make him feel bad about himself and bring him down, which is abusive. Of course, it doesn’t really matter what her intent is, even if she doesn’t “mean to be mean” it still counts as verbal abuse. So, in summary, her repeated threats and use of violence against Finn and her continual use of insults and put downs causes me to come to the conclusion that she is abusive to Finn. And I am supposed to root for them to be in a relationship?

Cared more about space horses than saving slave children. Who cares that these children are gonna be left at the mercy of their violent slave owners and face merciless abuse, because after all, it was all worth it to free the animals!!! Look at us, we’re so progressive!!!….Please kill me

The plan to disable the Hyperspace tracking is made to pointlessly fail. Finn, Rose and DJ are close to fulfilling their objective and fail for no reason whatsoever. Okay first of all, Finn and Rose are captured because neither Finn or Rose bothered to get to a parking spot. So instead of going to find the ACTUAL Master Codebreaker(which told a better story) we are instead shown to DJ. This is a character who is made to be untrustworthy from the beginning and even sounds like a snake. So obviously he betrays them. And instead of letting them disable their tracker and just being caught when heading towards the escape pods, their plan is made to fail, making everything they’ve been trying to do ultimately pointless. It effect the plot even in the slightest. You could remove it and nothing would change in the slightest. Nothing mattered. Apparently the people of color needed their white hero savior to show them up…..*sighs*

Rose stopping Finn. “that’s how we win, not by fighting what we hate, by saving what we love.” That makes no sense and ignores the entire narrative of Star Wars and heroism of the saga. Paige, her sister sacrificed herself to save The Resistance. Holdo sacrificed herself to save The Resistance. The Rogue One crew sacrificed themselves. Kanan Jarrus sacrificed himself to save what he loved. Finn’s entire arc in the movie was learning not to just think about running away with Rey and fight for a greater cause and when the time comes for Finn to prove that he’s grown as a character, he can’t? What was the point of Finn’s arc in the movie? And let’s talk about Poe. Shouldn’t Poe be sacrificing himself? Poe has spent the entire film watching others die and give their lives and he’s never backed down, so shouldn’t Poe be in Finn’s place? And if Rose stopped Finn who would save The Resistance? We saw after Rose stopped Finn, the bunker was blown up by the battering ram. Absolutely NO ONE knew that Luke was going to make his surprise entrance and save everyone. For all we knew, The First Order would’ve moved into the bunker and killed everyone and The Resistance.

in TLJ novel she is made bitter and jealous of Rey when Rey is trying to save them....great, we are actually putting the only two main female characters of the sequel trilogy against each other because Jason Fry and Rian Johnson are misogynists and complete and utter fucking morons

Rose Tico could’ve been a great character, but because she was in the hands of Rian Johnson, she had no chance of succeeding. I can only hope she is handled better and by someone competent. Rose Tico and Kelly Marie Tran deserved better 

List of ways they could’ve handled Kylo Ren in the sequel trilogy

Make Kylo handle the Lor San Tekka situation better. The man who has or had the map to Skywalker is right there. Show Kylo’s villainy and ruthlessness by forcing  Lor San Tekka to comply. Order the village massacre right there and force Lor San Tekka to watch until he tells you what you want or just use the force probe right then and there, Poe’s interference causes Kylo to lose focus and causes Kylo to lobotomize Lor San Tekka which brings us to Kylo getting Poe. It would show how far in the dark side Kylo Ren is and what he will do to get what he wants 

Instead of the tantrums, have Kylo Ren kill FO officers right then and there with his Lightsaber, it shows that he has no regard for human life and his only focus is to fulfill his mission.

Keep the mask on until Kylo faces Han Solo. 

Reveal that Ben Solo fell to the dark side and became Kylo Ren because his family did not tell him the truth that Darth Vader was his grandfather. Leia chose to hid the fact that Darth Vader was his grandfather and did not tell him that Vader redeemed himself. The New Republic publicly spread the news that Darth Vader was Leia’s true father, so Ben could have seen that at Luke’s Jedi Temple. It could’ve been a similar situation after Luke found out the truth. “Ben, why didn’t you tell me.” “Mother…you lied to me….” this can be seen as a darker mirror of Luke and Obi-Wan’s relationship. Luke did feel a little betrayed by Obi-Wan and Yoda, but did not let the truth consume him. Ben Solo would let this consume him. He feels betrayed by his family and those feelings of resentment lead Snoke to Ben Solo. He promises a place where he would never be lied to again and valued and where he can learn more of his grandfather. So Ben betrays his family, kills the Jedi and becomes Kylo Ren because the truth of Anakin was kept from him and because of that Snoke twisted the view of Vader’s fall being compassion and Kylo idolized Vader and viewed Anakin as weakness. He wants to destroy everything his family built out of spite and finish what Vader started, which was kill his master, the Jedi and rule the galaxy.

Have Kylo Ren be sent to Darth Vader’s castle on Mustafar to complete his training. Allowing the dark side energies within Vader’s castle and what remains of Vader to strengthen the dark side within him to snuff out the light. We would later see Snoke teaching him the flaws of the Jedi and Sith and why they must destroy the Jedi and Sith. Their goal isn’t to do over Palpatine and Vader. Their goal is to end both orders and to serve the dark side to let it and The First Order reign supreme. Snoke teaching him the ways of the dark side, using torture and force lightning to draw Kylo’s rage to bring out his full potential in the dark side of the force. We needed to see Sith training. We never once got to see it, so we needed to see it with Snoke and Kylo Ren. And Snoke gives his apprentice one final test. Killing his mother General Leia Organa and drawing out Luke Skywalker.

Have The Supremacy board The Raddus and Kylo leads an attack to kill everyone aboard. Leia offers herself to be taken hostage, Kylo Ren takes his mother as hostage while The Resistance is spared.

Actually give us scenes of Kylo and Leia instead of force bond scenes with Kylo and Rey. It bothers me that there is not a single scene with Kylo Ren and Leia. No scene with mother and son and because Carrie is no longer with us, we will never get to see Carrie and Adam act together. So we desperately need to see Kylo Ren interacting with Leia aboard The Supremacy. Unlike a force connection with Rey, this provides an endless amount of interesting scenes and dialogue between two characters who have no screen time relationship whatsoever but are probably the closest people in the movie. Plus Star Wars has had no mother and son relationship since Anakin and Shmi Skywalker. We could have Kylo raging at his mother for leaving him and abandoning him, and  Leia breaking down about Han and Kylo vowing to destroy everything that his family has built. Kylo will rip off his mask to show his scar and the dark side corruption. “LOOK AT MY FACE MOTHER, IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED TO SEE? AS I TOLD HAN SOLO, YOUR SON IS GONE, HE WAS WEAK AND FOOLISH!” With his eyes pitch Sith Yellow, a single tear leaves his eye and Leia wipes it. Even in his darkest days, Leia is there for her son, as a mother should be. Leia will tell her son  "Your father loved you to the very end, he never stopped searching or believing in you he was finally there for you in the end. We were so caught up with our work we couldn’t be with you as much as we would have wanted, as much as you needed. And sending you away with your uncle, when you needed us the most, was the biggest mistake of our lives. I’m sorry.” Kylo will scream and lash out at equipment after failing to go through with it.

Kylo fighting Rey while Luke fights Snoke. Kylo gets the upperhand and cuts Rey’s hand off

An actual Lightsaber duel between Luke and Kylo Ren. Luke has his green lightsaber. Their blades clash. Their dialogue remains the same, but Luke is there. Luke is toying with Kylo, similar to how Vader toyed with him on Bespin.  When Kylo makes his dramatic slut ™ lunge at Luke, but Luke dodges and cuts Kylo’s hand off. And finally Luke gives his “see you around kid” but Luke does not die

Cut the battle of Crait entirely. After Kylo Ren awakens. Kylo will order Hux to pullback their fleet. They needed to regroup on Mustafar with the other Knights of Ren. General Hux explodes in rage, stating that he does not take orders from the supreme leader’s dog. Hux then feels his throat closing and grabs his neck. The Imperial March plays as Kylo Ren declares himself supreme leader of the First Order. Hux barely manages to take out his blaster and shoots Ren in order to free himself. Hux threatens Kylo that if he were to die, then Kylo will never make it off of the ship alive. They will either work together or both die. Kylo releases the general and says from here on out the First Order will focus on their true mission. Kylo declares Hux as the Grand Marshal of the First Order. Hux orders his fleet to pull back, and says that Kylo better pray the force isn’t leading him astray. The Grand Marshal then leaves. The new Supreme Leader casts one last look at the planet, then turns away. Picking up half of the destroyed lightsaber that had belonged to his grandfather.

What they chose to do with Kylo instead

Stupidly kill Lor San Tekka when he could’ve forced him to comply or take the information out of his head

Kylo Ren knows the map is on Jakku. He chooses to let the Stormtroopers get the droid when he does not have faith in them.

How am I supposed to feel that a villain is a threat when he is throwing tantrums and destroying expensive equipment? Vader force choked Imperial Officers who failed him. Rather than do that, Kylo lashes out and destroys equipment on the ship. I’m honestly surprised Kylo has not bankrupted the First Order by now.

Kylo keeps taking his mask off. This is not an insult to Adam Driver, he is a handsome man. But it just cheapens the reveal if he shows it to Rey. It would mean a whole lot more if Kylo was masked throughout the entire movie and only takes his mask off to Han Solo. We would see through Han’s eyes, a father’s eyes that his son has been twisted into something he doesn’t recognize, but still tries to reach out to his son. I honestly feel like Kylo taking his mask off earlier cheapens the reveal. I know unmasking is supposed to showcase that he turned to the dark side at a young age....but Adam Driver is in his 30′s.

No training between Kylo Ren and Snoke. Snoke does not train Kylo. Snoke said that he would complete Kylo’s training when he told Hux to bring Kylo Ren to him at the end of TFA. Yes, he did fail him and he sensed his father in him, but I really thought we’d see Snoke sending Kylo to Vader’s castle on Mustafar to allow the dark side energies in the castle and what remains of Vader to strengthen the dark side within him to snuff out the light. Killing Han broke his spirit, but he could use the castle to complete Kylo Ren’s training. Then we would see Snoke personally train Kylo himself. Snoke begins by telling Kylo the Sith code ” Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.” teaching him the ways of the dark side, using torture and force lightning to draw Kylo’s rage to bring out his full potential in the dark side of the force. We needed to see Sith training. We never once got to see it, so we needed to see it with Snoke and Kylo Ren. 

That pointless and laughable shirtless scene. 

The laughable and terrible Throne Room fight scene. There is no tension in the scene and it is pointless. Kylo Ren and Rey are fighting a faceless a group of guards that we know absolutely nothing about and have literally no purpose in the entire story except for this one fight. We know neither of the characters are going to die because these are just faceless red shirts and there is still like 30 to 40 minutes left of the movie. There are times where you can tell that some of the guards are just waiting their turn to fight and in one shot the editor literally digitally removed a knife from one of the guard’s hands because it would make no sense why he didn’t just stab Rey. There are multiple times where Rey, Kylo and the guards are just doing motions and actions because they look cool but serve no purpose but to look cool. Kylo stabbing the ground? Pointless. Rey twirling her rave stick around while someone falls behind her, pointless. Another annoying thing is that both of the characters are acting like they don’t have monumentally strong force powers. Hell, both of them get into a force tug of war right after the fight. Kylo can freeze people in place and stop blaster fire in mid air. Not even  once do we see them displaying their powers is what cheapens the fight. Kylo Ren is powerful enough to freeze a blaster and a person in place and Rey herself unlocked Kylo’s powers, so the two of them could have easily ended the fight sooner than it was dragged out. Kylo is powerful in the force but he SERIOUSLY could not stop a Praetorian Guard choke holding him and Rey struggled with a guard? Rey and Kylo were stronger in TFA and are just made weaker in the duel with the Praetorian Guards. Kylo could have frozen half of the guards and Rey could have mind tricked the other half into killing the frozen guards and Kylo and Rey could have finished them. They are masters of light and darkness, but they are made weaker.

A force connection between Kylo Ren and Rey. None of these characters have a reason to trust one another. Kylo should be furious. He has been humiliated and defeated by this random Scavenger from Jakku, especially after being berated and humiliated by Snoke about said defeat. Kylo has done nothing but hurt Rey. It’s obvious Kylo has been manipulating Rey all movie, but it’s just so poorly executed. If anyone honestly believed Kylo about calling Rey’s parents filthy junk traders, they are gullible. Kylo was not being sincere or truthful about calling Rey’s parents nobodies. He’s attacking her biggest insecurity, her greatest fear, that her parents were nobodies. “They were filthy junk traders who died on Jakku” we see visibly in TFA that her parents were flying away from Jakku. And if anyone actually find Kylo’s “You’re nobody, but not to me” romantic, I honestly hope you never find yourself in a relationship with someone who would say something like that. That is text book abuse 101. That is a clear example of psychological manipulation. He’s attacking her biggest insecurity, her greatest fear, that she’s alone in the universe, and using the classic abuser’s tactic of “no one else but me loves you, so you should be with me. Aren’t you grateful?” He’s trying to cut her off from the people who love her, who made her feel worthwhile, and who helped to give her purpose in life, by saying they don’t care about the “real her.” But he apparently “sees” the real her and knows who she is and that doesn’t matter to him. That is STRAIGHT out of the How to Be an Abusive Asshole Handbook! It is very clear that he is obsessed with her, but he is also not worthy of her because he’s using such dirty means to drag her down to his level of self-deprecation and self-loathing. Thankfully, our girl Rey is tougher and smarter than that and reunited with the people who DO love her and think she is everything, regardless of her roots.  

The worst offense about what they did with Kylo Ren is how horribly and lazily written his actual reason or lack there of for choosing the dark side. Okay by all canon sources, the reason Ben Solo turned to the dark side is he turned to the dark side, killed The Jedi, betrayed his family and joined The First Order because his family was trying to build a better galaxy for him…… Because Han and Leia chose to put their life into the rebellion and not enough time into him, that’s why he fell. “My loving parents who doted on me and gave me the best in life also wanted to help other people and rebuild a wartorn galaxy. It makes me so mad just thinking of it!” And Rian Johnson in his “sUbVeRt ExPeCTaTiOnS” edgelord philosophy decided it would be best if Luke Skywalker, a man who thought Darth Vader, the most evil man in the galaxy who has 20 years of war crimes in his life, believed the good man he used to be was alive, was willing to die for his father and was able to save his father, yet somehow Johnson thought it would be better to make Luke Skywalker, the most hopeful character to try and kill his nephew in his sleep instead of ACTUALLY TALKING TO HIM LIKE LUKE SKYWALKER WOULD ACTUALLY DO. Luke, Han and Leia are not responsible for Kylo Ren’s actions and their characters did not need to be broken down for his development, or lack there of. The lesson apparently is spend more time with your child instead of building a better world for him otherwise he’ll shoot up a school, join a fascist organization and blame his every action on his family and constantly harass and gaslight the one girl who peaks his interest.  

Kylo Ren is a terrible villain. When written well, Kylo Ren is a well-rounded antagonist that broke the clichés of most of modern villains. Kylo Ren was a complex and layered character who wasn’t glorified or idealized for his morally wrong actions and chose to embrace his darker side than to chose redemption. He is the Skywalker who chose to burn down everything his family built. However the problem is Kylo merely an illusion of depth, just like the rest of this trilogy. This becomes evident when you put him up against other, better villains. When compared to great villains like Loki, Darth Vader and Eric Killmonger, it just feels like Kylo is a terrible and bland villain. We understand what launched these characters into their villainy, and it builds sympathy for their situation. Over the course of the films, we learn their plan, what they believe in, and see how they carry out their vision. No such thing has happened for Kylo; he’s largely inconsistent and really we don’t know why he or the First Order are attacking the protagonists other than “Hope” or something. Even when compared to Anakin, he’s far less of a character, regardless of how you feel about his dialogue or acting. Anakin had a legitimately crappy childhood, and was told to let go of the people he loved. He does bad things, but it’s clear he doesn’t want to. Especially in RotS he tries his absolute hardest to do the right thing, but when faced with losing Padme, he changed his mind at the last minute. He shows true conflict in his actions, whereas with Kylo Ren, we have to be told that he was sad after killing Han Solo. With TLJ there is more damage done. Kylo has been so “moody” it’s difficult to take him seriously. When Snoke died, it made me feel like there was no longer an antagonist. TLJ castrated Hux, the FO is incompetent, and Kylo is a moody teenager. There’s no serious tension left. Kylo is just a whiny psychopath who has no reason to be evil, but decides to be evil anyway, but we’re supposed to believe that he’s “conflicted” about his psychotic actions because he’s teary eyed every time he slaughters innocent people, and loses his temper like a child whenever someone offends him. And what really blows my mind is how some that want redemption for him believe he will make a total 180 on a dime and suddenly become a wise, benevolent leader whom the galaxy respects. This dude hasn’t shown an ounce of political savvy, charisma, or even self-restraint, I’d be shocked if he manages to run anything properly as Supreme Leader. JJ will have my respect if he can turn Kylo Ren into an unhinged monster worthy of being afraid of  

List of ways they could’ve handled Hux in TLJ

Have it featured in the crawl that Hux has been responsible for masterminding the invasions of New Republic worlds after the destruction of the Hoznian Prime. The First Order Reigns Supreme because of Hux

Keep Hux as he was in TFA. a competent military leader that came up with plans and made necessary risks in order to destroy The Resistance, talked back to Kylo Ren and didn’t fear him or his power and Hux has the populations of 5 planets to his body count.

Keep the foil dynamic between Hux and Kylo Ren. Kylo being intimidating and Hux having none of it with no sign of fear. Give it a clear sign that both Kylo Ren and Hux want to become the Supreme Leader and both are willing to kill Snoke and the other to do so.

Keep Hux composed and in control not falling for Poe’s attempts at humor and ordering the fighters to be scrambled to annihilate Poe and his squadron  and cuts them off from the main fleet, establishing that Poe is clearly outnumbered. Just as the evacuation is complete, the dreadnought cannons are working again and aiming at the Raddus. Just as it’s about to fire, Paige launches the bombers. The Dreadnought is destroyed but Hux is presented as a cold, ruthless and calculating general. Hux gets punished and nearly killed by Snoke for that but can insure that they can follow the resistance cruiser.

Keep my idea of the Supremacy boarding The Raddus. Before this happens, a confrontation between Hux and Kylo happens. Hux just wants to swarm The Raddus with Tie Fighters fire it enough to destroy their shields and finally destroy The Resistance once and for all. but Ren stops him. He has to face his mother and kill his mother. Hux says his training is ridiculous and stands in the way of a quick victory. But Ren states that when they blow up the Raddus now, every one of them will die a martyr spreading the resistance lies further but if they can puplicly execute them, there won’t be another resistance. When Leia is captured, Hux is overjoyed that General Organa will be granted a quick and public execution and execute hope itself. 

Instead of slapping Finn it would have been way better if Hux had wanted to turn Finn back into a Stormtrooper since you know the Stormtrooper program was designed by Hux and his father and he took it as a personal insult that Finn deserted. But Finn would inspire the Stormtroopers who captured him to rebel. And then the fight between Finn and Phasma happens.

Show that Hux absolutely has no chill or fear in the face of Kylo Ren. He gets force choked but Hux is able to fire his blaster at Ren in order to free himself. The general refuses to submit. Hux threatens Kylo that if he were to die, then Kylo will never make it off of the ship alive. They will either work together or both die. Kylo releases the general and says from here on out the First Order will focus on their true mission. Kylo declares Hux as the Grand Marshal of the First Order.

What they chose to do with Hux instead

Hux is made into a joke. General Hux, the man who caused the destruction of the Hosnian system and is shown to be a younger angrier version of Tarkin in TFA, is shown to be an incompetent bumbling fool and Captain Canady is the only intelligent officer in The First Order. He does not deploy the Tie Fighters, order the fleet to move in when The Resistance are evacuating D'Qar and vulnerable, instead orders the Dreadnought to move in, and instead of ordering the Dreadnought with it’s devastating canon to fire on the cruiser thus giving the transports nowhere to go, he orders an orbital bombardment to an almost empty planet. But does not fire because he sees Poe’s X-Wing When Poe arrives in his X-Wing, the only X-Wing in view. Hux does not order deploying the Tie Fighters or even ordering the Dreadnought to fire on Poe. They do absolutely NOTHING. How is Hux a general again? Did he just want to hear himself talk? The turrets are being destroyed by Poe and Hux tells Captain Canady to fire the Dreadnought, Canady responds it’s too small and too close of range to fire their turbolasers and orders the Tie Fighters to be scrambled which should have been done 5 minutes ago. Canady knows Poe is not aiming to penetrate their armor, he knows Poe is clearing out their surface cannons. Here we have it. The only intelligent officer in The First Order, everyone else including Hux are incompetent. How exactly is Hux a general again?

The Evacuation of D’Qar. Hux is goaded into allowing a Starfighter into point blank range with one of their fleet’s more valuable assets, he doesn’t launch a fighter screen to keep that fighter at bay, and when a real danger is detected, still does nothing. Captain Canady is left to launch his own fighters from Fulminatrix, and gets no support from Hux or the rest of the First Order fleet. Hux doesn’t launch support fighters, direct their batteries to put up defensive fire covering the dreadnought, nothing, no he’s too busy massaging his bruised ego because some flyboy put him on tilt with what amounts to a practical joke, and an 8km long warship pays the price for their incompetence. Now onto said Dreadnought. They have this weapon that is capable of dealing planetary bombardment and chooses to fire on a nearly abandoned planet instead of targeting the Resistance ship that is used to carry The Resistance fleet. Destroy The Raddus and you can easily pick a part The Resistance easily. Instead of doing the most intelligent thing, they chose to do the stupid thing.  

The lowsped chase. Now onto the chase, or as I like to call it “the dumbest bit of military nonsense since the Emu war.” You have the First Order Fleet chasing the Resistance flotilla, supposedly the Resistance fleet is “faster” but they aren’t opening the gap between them and the First Order because… it would burn more fuel (because inertia isn’t a thing in Star Wars Space)? So they stay just at the extreme range of the First Order’s guns, and the Raddus has to be on the receiving end of a potshot every once in a while. Meanwhile said Resistance ships are flying in a straight line, direct away from the First Order fleet, so why not just set course past them and Hyperspace in front of them and catch them in the middle? Are interdictors at play here? Are they content to just think the fleet will run out of fuel and they can just catch them? It bothers me to understand that the heroes are only alive because of the gross incompetence of the First Order, because it doesn’t speak well to the capabilities of the heroes.

Hux is a ragdoll for dark side users apparently. Hux is slapped around with the force by Snoke, okay understandable, it’s for failure. Vader did the same. But god it is done in almost every scene by Snoke and Kylo. 

Hux stupidly tells Kylo Ren to pull back. When the Silencer pretty much destroyed all the X-Wing fighters, and The Resistance command is jettisoned in space, Hux just orders Kylo back. They have the opportunity to end The Resistance, just calls him back, a scene later Hux complains he let them go. Sure they can still track them, but the fact that they let them goes shows that Hux is a fool. 

The only time Hux is allowed to be villainous in the movie is when he is prepared to take out his blaster and kill Kylo Ren. Everything else he is either an idiot or someone’s toy to be slapped around. And you expect me and the general audience to believe Hux is going to be the villain in Episode IX?      

So now the Resistance is stuck on Crait, the First Order knows they are there, we know implicitly that the First Order has more than one dreadnought in their fleet, we also know the Resistance is fresh out of bombers. Maybe instead of calling for a costly ground invasion just call in another dreadnought and finish the job once and for all. This isn’t next level thinking, this isn’t superior tactics. This is using a rock to smash a bug levels of thinking. But they don’t, they land a ground invasion bigger than Hoth and bring a mini Death Star with them. Note again, that while Hoth was defended by more men with better equipment, Crait is defended by a quarter as many with rusting, dilapidated equipment… but it was enough to keep the Order stalled for Luke Skywalker to video-conference in.

List of ways they could’ve handled Phasma in the sequel trilogy

Have Phasma visibly shown slaughtering villagers on Tuanul

Show Phasma leading the strike team on Takodana

Have Phasma making it her prime duty to bring the traitorous FN-2187 to justice.

Have Phasma being involved with the meetings with Snoke. Phasma is part of the First Order triumvirate, there is no reason whatsoever why Phasma CANNOT be involved with the scenes with Snoke.

Captain Phasma is the one who fights Finn on Takodana, not FN-2199. It makes sense. It gives Finn an enemy to fight, his former Captain and leader who ordered atrocities that Finn could not commit and had compassion for his team members and Phasma wanting to show no mercy to traitors. Phasma would be winning the fight and nearly delivers the killing blow, but Han shoots her with the bowcaster

Phasma recovers and returns to Starkiller Base and is captured by Finn and Han. However, Phasma does not comply with Finn and Han, she sounds the security alarm/intruder alert and Chewie knocks her out and throws her down the trash compactor. Finn and Han figure out on disabling the shields themselves. This is the obvious thing she would do. She is a villain and smart, she would not comply or cower, so Finn, Han and Chewie are left by themselves to disabled the shields on their own.

Make Phasma a deranged individual obsessed with capturing and executing Finn. Phasma is basically Captain Ahab and Finn is her great white whale to chase. She is hunting Finn to the ends of the galaxy. Each battle they face she is there ready for him, every time he isn’t there, she kills every Resistance soldier there. Phasma is losing it, Hux is worried, but both Snoke and Kylo believe this will be beneficial in destroying The Resistance. And finally she finds him on The Supremacy. Finn and Phasma go head to head. finally on equal levels and in this moment it happens. Finn’s old comrades come, Finn believes this is the end, but to his surprise they shoot Phasma down. Phasma is knocked down in the ruins of the Star Destroyer. But Phasma makes her escape with Hux.

What they chose to do with Phasma instead

Just stands there doing nothing

Has to be told by Kylo Ren to lead a massacre on Tuanul

Is not even acknowledged by Snoke

Is easily coerced into lowering the shields of Starkiller Base. Is thrown into the trash compactor and makes me wonder why would Gwendoline Christie even agree to star in these movies

Stupidly decides to execute Finn and Rose as a spectacle instead of just shooting Finn and Rose right then and there.

Phasma has a hidden blaster and doesn’t use it against Finn

Phasma is only brought back for toys to sell and for Phasma to pointlessly die....again.

Only lets Phasma to be a character in her novel. In her novel she is a completely different and better character. In the novel  which is a fascinating study of how utterly ruthless and selfish she is, how completely dedicated to her own survival at the expense of others, and how there is no one and nothing she would not betray to further herself. It’s about peeling back the layers of a seemingly perfect First Order warrior to show her morally empty core, and with it the rottenness of the First Order itself. The novel shows with unsettling clarity that, under all the pretty words about the ideals of justice and order, the First Order is a place where actual idealistic soldiers are used and then thrown away (see: Finn, Cardinal) while backstabbers, abusers, and murderers like the two Huxes and Phasma are actively shielded and rise to the top. Phasma is a survivor. She will always align herself with the most powerful force. Phasma is extremely intelligent and a brilliant battlefield commander. Outside of the movies, she’s lost approximately one fight. Ever. the movies portray her as a minor annoyance but in the book she is the most badass human to ever live and I’m upset with how they’ve treated her. But really, what would’ve helped Phasma is her deleted death scene. I will never understand why this was deleted. Finn calls her out about her betrayal of lowering the shields and when this information is revealed, the Stormtroopers near her look suspicious and it looks as if they are going to turn on her. Phasma like the ultimate survivalist she is kills them with no hesitation. Finn cuts her hand off and blasts her into the abyss, giving Phasma a more deserving and better send off. Seriously, this is way better than their actual confrontation.  What I really like about this scene is its direct connection to The Force Awakens plot point and that it acknowledges Phasma’s survivalist attitude which was introduced into her novel.

List of ways they could’ve handled Snoke in TLJ

Show Snoke completing Kylo Ren’s training

Make Snoke the darkness Palpatine was sensing in the Endgame novels

Have Snoke give Kylo Ren one final test, killing his mother General Organa

Order Kylo Ren and the Knights Of Ren to Ach-To to kill Luke Skywalker and bring Rey to him

Have Snoke force Rey to kill Kylo and turn Rey to the dark side. Snoke knows who Rey truly is. Snoke will reveal that Rey was an experiment by Palpatine on his lab on Jakku. The people who she thought were her parents were just random junkers who sold her for a ship. Snoke manipulates Rey into joining him. “The belonging you always sought all your life, was by my side. Strike Kylo Ren, as you should have on Starkiller Base and take your place as my apprentice.” We have a fight that feels real and a fight we care about because we know these characters and not faceless guards who do not just die. But as we believe it’s going to go down as it was in ROTJ by having Rey be the strong heroine who throws her lightsaber away, instead Rey kills Kylo Ren and becomes Snoke’s new apprentice. “You have done well, my apprentice, heir to Palpatine, daughter of darkness. Hence forth, you shall be known as Darth Solitudis” Rey will make the Galaxy feel the loneliness and despair she felt all her life. Only Finn can bring her back to the light or stop her if he must.

Show Snoke using Battle Meditation against The Resistance, while Leia uses BM against Snoke. Leia’s will against Snoke’s might over Ach-To, while Snoke is trying to kill Luke, Leia is trying to save her brother. 

Make Snoke Darth Plagueis. It ties everything together. Darth Plagueis supposedly figured out the secret to immortal life, basically. Imagine if J.J. went with this  - Darth Plagueis trained Darth Sidious - also shared his dream of galactic conquest with his young pupil. When Sidious was strong enough, he 'killed' his master, as Sith tend to do... (or so he thought - more on this later). - Believing himself the one true powerful Sith Lord, Darth Sidious puts into motion his plan to take down the Republic and more importantly, the Jedi Order. He uses the power that Darth Plagueis taught him and creates Anakin (this has all but been confirmed) putting into motion the eventual destruction of the Jedi via 'the Chosen One' prophecy. - Fast forward, Darth Sidious goes ahead and does all the very hard work in building the Galactic Empire, taking over more and more systems... his reign over all of the galaxy was near complete when Luke Skywalker joined the rebellion and threw a lightsaber in his plans. - Meanwhile, Darth Plageuis (who has all the time in the galaxy, being able to transfer his essance when needed - nothing new in Star Wars when it comes to Sith) is watching from afar. HE is the TRUE puppet master, manipulating even Palpatine - he sits back while his puppet unifies the galaxy under one rule, only to one day return and take it. - Seeing what Skywalker did puts fear into Darth Plagueis' heart -- "SKYWALKER MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO LIVE". -He manipulates young Ben, hoping to one day turn Ben against Luke... However, Kylo seems to be a constant disappointment to 'Snoke'. Perhaps he creates Rey with the intention of turning her and making her his new powerful apprentice - Kylo Ren is given the task of finding the girl and bringing her before him. -His plan was to transfer his essence into Kylo and turn Rey to the dark side and destroy Skywalker and The Resistance

What they chose to do with Snoke instead

Snoke died pointlessly without doing anything with him. Supreme Leader Snoke is wasted and there is no reason to care now that the villain you’ve been building your trilogy around is dead. Snoke’s death was too soon. Snoke is a dark side user. Calm and collected. Old enough to see the rise and fall of the empire. He takes no risks and does what it takes to win. He was different from Palpatine and I dare say he even had potential to rival Kreia. He was a mastermind and did not allow himself to be a slave to the dark side. He did not want his apprentice to die like the Sith masters of old. He did not want to keep power until his dying breath. Snoke was not the average Sith Lord, he was different.  He was respectful, he was very powerful, and watching his scenes, even when faced with failure, he remained calm and collected because he was playing the long game and was not a slave to the Darkside like the Sith. He was invested in turning Kylo Ren into Vader’s heir and even has a ring from the catacombs of Vader’s castle. Snoke was so interesting, so many unanswered questions and this well thought out villain. And then TLJ turned him into a dumbed down Palpatine rip off. The claim that Snoke and his backstory is not important is dumb, considering that we know nothing on why this war is even happening or even why The First Order is doing ANYTHING! We want to know who Snoke is because we want to know how this random evil guy was able to destroy the lives of the entire original trio, corrupted Ben Solo and override the happy ending the entire original trilogy and prequels were fighting for. The struggles of the prequels, the clone wars, rebels, original trilogy, all of these stories and struggles were undone because of Snoke, so of course we have questions. Why do the remnants of the Empire follow Snoke and where did he come from? Not wanting to know the motivation of the villains is just plain ignorant. They completely wasted Snoke. Snoke is a power from the unknown regions. He was SO powerful that Palpatine sensed him, Palpatine was so focused and invested in Jakku in hopes of getting closer to the Unknown regions and he wanted to meet what he believed was the source of the dark side of the force. And they just kill him off so easy? Now there is no reason to care. Kylo Ren is not an intimidating villain and it’s pretty obvious he’s turning to the light in Episode IX. Hux is a bumbling incompetent fool and I’m pretty sure they already confirmed he will be more comedic in Episode IX instead of being a threat. There is a villain problem for the Sequel Trilogy. There is no menace in The First Order anymore and I really feel there is no reason to care.

Pointlessly tried to kill Rey instead of trying to turn her

“Your Snoke theory sucks” card is patronizing and insulting. God fucking forbid your audience is fucking invested in the story. God forbid we actually care about learning about the big bad of the sequel trilogy. God forbid we put more thought into Snoke than you did. “Your Snoke theory sucks” no Rian, your Snoke card sucks, your inability to do ANYTHING with Snoke sucks and talking down to us for caring about the direction of the big bad and killing him for no reason sucks. You arrogant piece of fucking shit.

Because Snoke was killed, they copped out and lied out their asses that it was always the plan to bring back Palpatine....bullshit. “oh but wait Snoke was a host body for Palpatine” BULLFUCKINGSHIT. Not originally. Snoke was someone who was supposed to be the darkness Palpatine was trying to get closer. Snoke was the man who destroyed 30 years of peace. He could’ve been anyone, hell even Darth Plagueis. But no, why create interesting characters when you can bring Palpatine back because it’s obvious you have no original ideas.

List of ways they could’ve handled Luke in the sequel trilogy

Actually use Luke in The Force Awakens. Don’t waste Mark Hamill. Don’t exclude him from marketing. Don’t force him to be on a mountain and say no lines whatsoever.

Have Luke’s big reveal be on Starkiller Base. Use Mark Hamill’s suggestion. ‘You can still have me come in at the very end, but how about this. How about Leia’s trying to contact me telepathically, she gets frustrated because there’s no answers, so she rushes to the new Death Star’–that’s three, so far.”He continued, “‘And she almost gets there but she gets stopped by two Stormtroopers and, just before she’s abducted, one Stormtrooper turns to the other one, blows him away, pulls off his helmet and says “Hi, sis, I’m here to rescue you.”‘ I say, ‘It’ll blow the roof off the joint, I’m still in it at the very end.‘”“I think it’s more effective to have people that really have a history with Han Solo witness his death and be unable to stop it,” the actor claimed. “His wife, the mother of his child, his best friend, instead of two characters that have known him, what, 20 minutes?”

Use Mark’s other suggestion. After Finn is knocked unconscious, have the person who lifts the Skywalker Lightsaber be Luke. Luke duels Kylo and defeats his nephew and saves Rey and Finn. I know Jedi and force sensitives are more durable than normal people, but if you are thrown into a tree, you are going to be unconscious for at least an hour. So yes Luke being the one to lift the lightsaber would’ve been much better. It would’ve been a great entrance. The entire audience would have been cheering as they witness Luke’s return. Luke helps Chewie getting Rey and Finn aboard the Falcon and returns to D’Qar. Reunites with Leia and ends with Luke, Rey and Finn flying to the Ancient Jedi Temple on Ach-To preparing to train the new Jedi.

Luke grieves for Han

Luke actually trying to help Ben as a Padawan, but it is in vain as he already turned to the dark side and made his choice.

Luke will tell Rey why he left the map behind. He wanted Leia to come and find him. It is revealed that Luke  did not run away, did not even consider running away, but rather went looking for the Jedi’s beginnings find the balance of dark and light–Luke Skywalker felt Rey and Finn awaken across half the galaxy, and settled on Ach-To, and waited.

Let Luke and Rey have a meaningful mentor and student relationship. Luke trains Rey, Rey develops her skills and Rey has a father figure that shows her place in the galaxy

Reveal that Luke is Rey’s father. After Rey falls into the dark side cave, Luke finds her and brings her near the fire and is there to comfort her. Then the revelation happens. Rey says “I’ve never felt so alone.” And we get Luke telling her “the force is strong in my family. My father had it, I have it, my sister has it and my daughter has it” “There is a reason you dreamed of this place.” “You were never meant to be left on Jakku…I thought you died the night in the academy.” “All those years. I was so alone.” “I know. I’m sorry.” “Did you ever try to find me?” “Of course. For so long I searched the galaxy for you. Everyone said that you had died that night in the temple, that I should give up searching. But through the force, I could still feel you. I knew you were still alive. Every face I seen, it was your. Every voice I heard, it was yours. It drove me crazy. I came to this island, turned away from the force because it was so hard. Feeling that you were somewhere in the galaxy and being unable to find you. Seeing you in front of me right now… I’ve never felt so lucky.” And Rey with tears in her eyes. “I waited so long for you and your finally here” they embrace, father and daughter reunited.” Rey then asks about her mother. Luke sadly says “her name was Mara Jade and she loved you very much.” Rey why she was left on Jakku. “Because of your cousin Ben, Kylo Ren.”  Luke tells her that after a decade of training Ben, and fighting to keep the dark side at bay, Ben turned to the dark side because his family kept the secret that Darth Vader was his grandfather. He still wanted to help his nephew and save him from Snoke. One night he went to him to talk to him, Ben saw this as Luke being afraid of his power and Ben was the one to strike first. And then he woke up to see the other Jedi Masters dead. His wife Mara Jade dead and even the younglings dead. Only six other Jedi left with Ben, those who would become the Knights Of Ren. Rey left with Ben because she trusted her cousin and she couldn’t find Luke or Mara.  and Ben left her on Jakku where no one would ever find her because a part of him couldn’t kill his cousin.

If we had to have a broken Luke, what would bring him back, is his father. Basically have a Lion King moment with Anakin and Luke. "You have forgotten who you are and so have forgotten me. Look inside yourself Luke, you are more than what you have become.“ would’ve meant more in my opinion if it were Anakin who reached out to Luke than Yoda.

Luke wants to save Leia. He  lifts his X-Wing and heads towards The Supremacy. Boards the ship and confronts Snoke. Luke will reveal his Green Lightsaber and Snoke’s own Black Lightsaber. They fight, while Rey and Kylo fights. Luke defeats Snoke, but Kylo cuts Rey’s hand off. Enraged, Luke knocks Kylo out with a force repulse. So Luke gives Chewie the signal and gets Rey to safety, while Luke heads back to his X-Wing.

On Crait as Finn is about to make his sacrifice, we see Luke’s X-Wing firing and destroying the mini death star.

Luke is actually there with his moment with Leia. He is there in person, not a force projection, he. is. there.

A true fight between Luke and Kylo. Kylo Ren orders every ship to fire on Luke AT-M6’s all firing but to everyone’s surprise, all blasts stop frozen in midair. Luke wipes the salt off his robes and sends the turbolasers right back at the AT-M6s and TIE-Fighters. Brings down the transports and Kylo’s shuttle and the Star Destroyers in orbit. Kylo descends from his crushed shuttle, preparing to kill his uncle. We have a real lightsaber battle between Luke and Kylo. Luke has his green lightsaber. Their blades clash. Their dialogue remains the same, but Luke is there. Luke is toying with Kylo, similar to how Vader toyed with him on Bespin.  When Kylo makes his dramatic slut ™ lunge at Luke, but Luke dodges and cuts Kylo’s hand off. And finally Luke gives his “see you around kid” but Luke does not die, he leaves to board his X-Wing

It ends with Rey, Luke and Leia together, brother and sister holding onto Rey’s hand. A father and his daughter and her aunt. “We have everything we need

What they chose to do with Luke instead

Luke is not marketed at all in The Force Awakens and is on a mountain and is only there as a cameo with no lines whatsoever

The Force Awakens established that Luke left a map to be found. It is never brought up. Han said he left to find the Temple to the First Jedi. It is never brought up. Funny how what was established is never brought up in the movie whatsoever

Luke, Han and Leia do not reunite at all.

Luke gives up. Luke Skywalker is a beacon of hope and optimism and love against all odds, and the fact that that was twisted into being depicted as some foolish youth naivety, and that the only way to make him “human” was to retract all that and make him a bitter, jaded man is so fucking disgusting. Even more disgusting is in TLJ novelization had him dreaming of never leaving Tatooine and having him live under the Empire’s dominance. He does not even care that his sister’s life and the Resistance she is leading is in danger. Jedi do not give up. You might say that Yoda and Obi-Wan also gave up. But for those two, the Sith took over the galaxy, they had to go into hiding to protect and guide Luke and Leia. Obi-Wan wanted to save Leia and guide Luke. Yoda always wanted to train Leia as a Jedi and bring Anakin back to the light. He was reluctant to train Luke but he still did his duty as a Jedi Master. They did not just give up and wanted to die and they did not betray their characters at all. Luke spends most of Last Jedi on a windswept island, brooding in solemn silence and frozen by indecision. He doesn’t connect with Rey on any meaningful level, doesn’t impart wisdom or knowledge, and never reasserts himself as the powerful Jedi he once was. A brief physical duel against Rey ends with her as the undisputed victor, completely killing his deserved mythos and her potential character arc in one fell swoop. It’s clear in that moment that he has nothing to teach her, and nothing to contribute to the overall narrative. The boundless potential that seemed poised to explode at the end of The Force Awakens fizzles here but never ignites.  And without any training at all, Rey defeats Luke Skywalker and Luke acts all cowardly and begs her to leave. He does buy The Resistance time and saves his sister, but it was ultimately pointless. He wasn’t even there and he dies pointlessly. What we got was not Luke Skywalker. Luke Skywalker is hope and optimism. Luke Skywalker is showing that no matter what, compassion, faith and love will always prevail. Luke is the hero that inspired an entire generations to aspire to be better, aspire to be heroes. Luke is what we wanted to see and what we got was not Luke Skywalker. Luke is someone who thought Doctor Aphra was a good person, she proves him wrong but he still had that hope for her. Luke believed that Darth Vader of all people still had good in him and was willing to die and he was able to reach his father. In Battlefront II’s Story, Luke saves Del Meeko because he asked and he offered Del a better life, a choice. Inferno Squad has committed atrocities in the name of the Empire, yet Luke still gave Del Meeko a chance. Canon Luke Skywalker is a kind hearted hero who will never run from a fight or knowingly leave a loved one in danger and will even save his enemy. This is Luke Skywalker. Luke is compassionate, adores his family, would never leave them. The Luke Skywalker I knew would never even think about killing his nephew in his sleep when there is always another way. Luke believes in the light and was willing to die to save his father. Darth Vader committed atrocities for decades, Luke still believed there was good in him. He would never give up on his family nor would he even consider killing his own nephew in his sleep just because he sensed darkness there. He would never abandon his sister at death’s door when she needed him most. The Hero’s Journey that he was following was ignored completely and he just gave up and wanted to die. And he dies instead of reuniting with Leia properly. Mark Hamill wanted Luke to live until Episode IX where he would pass on what he learned to Rey. No big battle with Snoke, no passing on, instead Luke dies and all we’re getting is force ghost Luke. Luke Skywalker was a hero to an entire generation.  Luke was the true heart of Star Wars. His was the journey we followed from idealistic farm boy dreaming of adventure, to reluctant warrior, and finally to savior of the entire galaxy. The original trilogy built him up, and The Last Jedi finally broke him down. I for one mourn my hero’s passing.  

Luke Skywalker tries to murder his nephew in his sleep and  is blamed for Ben Solo’s fall and Kylo Ren. Luke would not even think of trying to kill his nephew in his sleep. He would try to talk to him and try to pull him back to the light. His sister brought Ben there for protection and guidance. Even if that did fail, you did not need to make Luke attempt to murder him. You did not need to make Luke, Leia and Han at fault for Kylo Ren. Kylo is a grown ass man, he is responsible for his own actions. Kylo was going to murder the Jedi and younglings regardless, he already fell to the dark side. No one is responsible for Kylo’s actions but Kylo Ren. Boy, I sure do miss Legends Luke and Jacen Solo

Rey and Luke have no meaningful relationship. There is no teacher and student relationship. Luke teaches her nothing. Rey is already all powerful for…..reasons. He doesn’t even impart any sort of wisdom, guidance or a semblance that they even had a relationship or that he taught her anything. All he was towards Rey was a bitter old man trying to get the girl to leave her lawn. And all of a sudden “we passed on all we know” SINCE FUCKING WHEN??? Rey learned nothing all movie and we are to expect she learns everything off screen. We were deprived of a positive Rey and Luke mentor and student relationship and we were given complete garbage. What we should’ve gotten was Luke teaching Rey to feel the force, to build her own lightsaber and that attachments can lead you to the dark side if you let them, but they won’t lead you to darkness if you control your emotions. A battle between Rey and Luke against Kylo and the Knights Of Ren. Rey abducted and Luke has to lift his X-Wing and board the Supremacy to save Rey. Luke fighting Snoke and Rey against Kylo. Rey loses her fight and loses a hand. Luke stops Snoke and takes Rey to escape. Luke blasts away the battering laser. Fights Kylo on Crait with his green lightsaber. Escapes and reunites with Leia and Rey. Instead we are given nothing.

Luke doesn’t grieve for Han. Han Solo is Luke’s best friend. They have been together for decades. We are not allowed to see Luke react to Han’s death or Luke to grieve that his best friend is dead. Han was a big influence and friend it was dismissed as if he barely knew him. To quote Mark Hamill on the matter “They had time for me to milk that big alien but to show any human emotion? Nah”

Luke’s last moment with Leia is ultimately pointless. He was there as a projection. His last moment with Leia was made meaningless. He wasn’t even there. It was a great moment with Mark and Carrie, but it was ultimately a giant fuck you to everyone who loved Luke and Leia and wanted to see them reunite.

Luke’s confrontation with Kylo is ultimately meaningless. We are not allowed to see Luke Skywalker as a powerful Jedi Master. He does not wield his Green Lightsaber, he does not bring down all the AT-ATs, the transports, shuttles or bring down the star destroyers in orbit. He’s not even there thus making the confrontation with Kylo ultimately pointless. He toys with Kylo, but we don’t see a lightsaber fight between them.

Luke is only coming back as a force ghost and from the sound of it, it will only be a cameo.

Mark Hamill was ultimately disgusted with the direction they took with Luke. He is heartbroken that he never got to reunite with his friends and that Carrie is no longer with us. He now wishes that he’s done with Star Wars. He went from being excited to returning to the role that made his career and the character that he loves so much to being broken and apathetic. Crying on set and just being absolutely miserable throughout the whole affair. Mark did not return to play Luke Skywalker, he returned to play Jake Soywalker. It’s like Mark said “should’ve left well enough alone” Should’ve left the original trilogy alone and made your own story, but no, you had to break down Han, Luke and Leia to pointlessly build up these new characters. Mark Hamill and Luke Skywalker deserved better

List of ways they could’ve handled Han in the sequel trilogy

Make Han Solo a joint General with Leia in The Resistance.  Both Han and Leia lead the Resistance. When Poe hasn’t reported in, Leia sends Han to Jakku. Han has the Falcon. They find Rey, Finn and Poe under attack on Jakku, which leads to Han saving our heroes. “We’ve been looking for you kid.” Han chooses to go to Takodana so he doesn’t lead The First Order to D’Qar. We can see Han mentoring Rey about the Falcon and being a father figure to Rey and Finn. Instead of Maz’s talk of “Han, go home” Maz will simply tell Han. “Han, let him go. Your son is gone.” Han will simply say. “My son is still alive” When he sees Kylo abducting Rey, he knows it’s Ben. When he returns to Leia, keep in the “I found our son” Instead of giving the vibe that they split up, make it clear that Han and Leia have been married for over 30 years. They stood strong together despite the tragedy of their son. Han inspired Leia to form The Resistance after The New Republic abandoned her. Together they lead The Resistance in the hopes of finding Luke and their son. Their goodbye is pretty much the same, but Han kisses Leia goodbye. Han’s death remains the same because it was beautifully well done.

Have Han mention he spent years with Chewie and Lando searching the galaxy for his son and when he finally sees him, he is filled with  dread but still reaches out to his son.  

What they chose to do with Han instead

Pointlessly regress Han’s character. The Force Awakens undoes everything about Han’s character arc in the original trilogy.  Han starts out as a selfish smuggler who is COMPLETELY fine with letting other people die if it meant his own survival and goes through an internal and external journey to not only give a damn about his fellow person but also grow as an individual to be a hero that is willing to risk his own safety for a much larger cause than himself. And all that character development is thrown out the window.  The new canon is dead set on making Han a bad father. They made it so that Han goes back to smuggling. Han learned that there is something more than smuggling and Han and Leia breaking up because their son turns to the dark side? Han would never leave Leia or abandon his child. It is simply bad writing to redo his entire arc from the original trilogy again and to make him a bad parent when it is out of his character to do so. Legends understood Han and Leia better. Han and Leia stood strong in their marriage for 3 decades despite a hostile extra Galactic invading species killing both Chewbacca and their 14 year old son Anakin, their other son Jacen becoming a Sith, him killing Luke’s wife Mara, and having to be killed by his twin, their daughter Jaina. And they both still kept up their roles as a General and Chief of State/Ambassador.

Not giving Han Solo, an iconic hero a funeral or even a memorial. 

No one is allowed to grieve for Han Solo. Not his wife and mother of his son, not his best friend for decades and had a life debt to Han or even his brother Luke. I doubt they will even let Lando grieve for Han

Not really about Han...but the treatment of Chewbacca. Chewie is not allowed to mourn the death of his decades-long companion to whom he owed a life debt nor is he allowed a moment of forgiveness and reconciliation with Luke. Nor is he given a scene mourning the deaths of Han and Luke with Leia. What does Chewie get? Barely any screen time, Rey has to translate Chewie to Luke WHEN LUKE KNOWS HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH CHEWIE and instead of just letting him eat in peace, he is made to feel guilty of his predator nature and is used as a bad “eating animals is bad” message. He doesn’t even try to talk Rey out of her dumbass plan and is used as a matchmaker tool for her and Finn. His biggest moment is a fucking comic relief scene with Porgs. In this new trilogy they don’t treat Chewie like a person. I was pretty appalled in TFA too, when Chewie and General Organa literally ignore each other, walk past each other without so much as a glance and then Rey gets a hug? Chewie was Han Solo’s companion and best friend for at least a half-century, stuck with him when Han and Leia broke up, and he’s not even allowed to mourn onscreen? Chewie and Leia don’t even interact during the end of TLJ at all. Chewie is not allowed to mourn for any of his best friends at all nor is he allowed to try and talk Rey out of her obvious dangerous plan by going to the man WHO KILLED HIS BEST FRIEND, in what way would Chewie even be okay with that? This is a day later, a single day and the wounds are still fresh. And he is mainly used as comic relief and is not used as a character and hero of the rebellion nor is he allowed to grieve. Chewbacca deserved so much better.

List of ways they could’ve handled Leia in the sequel trilogy

Leia is Chancellor of The New Republic and Jedi Master who leads The New Republic against The First Order

Leia using Battle Meditation to lead The Resistance to victory in battles against The First Order

Leia taking up her old Yellow Lightsaber one last time to fight Snoke and face her son

Leia actually being warm, understanding and loving, but firm when it comes to Poe. Leia openly slapping and stunning Poe was nothing like Leia in the OT. It just made her extremely unlikable. Poe saw the bigger picture, Leia did not.

The Supremacy boards The Raddus and Leia surrenders and offers herself to become a hostage to save The Resistance. This gives us the opportunity to see Leia confront Snoke and Leia actually having screen time with her son. Snoke’s plan is to use Leia to draw Luke and Rey out of hiding. It would’ve been more meaningful if we got to see scenes with Leia and Kylo, who actually have a connection. Rey and Kylo was not meaningful. We needed to see Leia and her son interact. We needed to see Leia trying to reach her son but falling on deaf ears as her son has truly fallen to the dark side, yet despite all this, Leia forgives him and Kylo would just break down and have his famous tantrum attack. The scenes with Kylo and Leia could have been the most heartbreaking thing to witness. This will also give us Luke sensing his sister is in danger and allowing himself to feel the force, free his X-Wing and save his sister. This will also give Poe and Finn the mission to find Rose(this time a Resistance Hacker) and to disable The Supremacy so The Resistance can mount a rescue operation. Everything comes full circle. Save Leia, Luke rescues his sister, Luke confronts Snoke and Kylo confronts his mother and then Rey. There you go I single-handedly made The Last Jedi a better movie.

Leia actually affecting the plot of TLJ and isn’t in a coma for 90% of the movie.

What they chose to do with Leia instead

Not making Leia a Jedi. The new trilogy was DEAD SET on not making Leia a Jedi. Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi said Leia has the potential to become a Jedi. “That boy is our last hope. “No there is another.” “The force is strong in my family, my father has it, I have it and my sister has that power.” Apparently JJ saw all that and thought “I think that all meant was to not make Leia a Jedi and just have spout off expository dialogue, break up the most iconic relationship in Star Wars for no reason and have her sit there and do nothing all movie” The last two movies were setting Leia up to be a Jedi and they did nothing with her. She could’ve been a Jedi Master and a politician but chose not to. For whatever stupid reason they did not want Leia to be a Jedi.  Leia could have used Battle Meditation to ensure the destruction of Starkiller Base was a success. and then used it to ensure the safety of the Resistance in TLJ, but they thought turning Leia into a Mary Poppins meme was the best possible use to give Carrie a swansong.

Spout expository dialogue and do nothing

Making facial expressions and doing nothing

Carrie FIsher was forced by Lucasfilm to lose weight in order to return and it costed her, her health. Carrie was perfectly healthy before that diet was forced on her and she did little to nothing all sequel trilogy, so she was told to lose weight at the cost of her own health so she can do nothing all movie, have no emotional connection with her son, grieve for Luke or Han or actually be significant to the Rebellion she has been leading all her life

Not mourning her husband or showing her grieve AT ALL

Leia does not grieve with Chewie, she even hugs Rey instead of Chewie

Leia does not mourn for Luke or Han

Becoming a Mary Poppins meme, unconscious for 90% of the movie, be unlikable and slap and stun your second in command and do nothing all movie. TLJ does absolutely nothing with Leia. Carrie Fisher is gone. The character herself does nothing to affect the plot. We all knew that Leia was strong and powerful with the force, but the way they decided to have it be shown is baffling. Instead of showing Leia using  the force to send the missiles flying at Kylo’s wing men or use Battle Meditation to inspire the Resistance to fight, instead we see the most impressive, and stupid looking, display of force powers, nothing follows from that. Leia goes into a coma for most the movie and then just hangs around. Isn’t it weird that Leia, one of the most important characters in the entire franchise only sees her brother for a moment, never mentions her husband, shares no screen time with her own son and isn’t even the focus in the very rebellion she’s been fighting for her entire life. In the end, all of her loved ones are dead, her son wants to destroy her legacy, her allies abandoned her, her soldiers were almost all killed, and due to Carrie Fisher’s passing, TLJ is her swan song and curtain call. One of the most iconic and empowering women in all of cinema gets to go out as a supporting character and Mary Poppins meme.

[mindctrlaltdel]

124 Days of Empire: Minute 26:00 of 124:00

A Star Wars Countdown

During the 124 days before the release of The Last Jedi, I’m reviewing all 124 minutes of the theatrical version of The Empire Strikes Back. Join me and together we will watch Star Wars…. 

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In today's minute, an Imperial ship turns into a nightclub and the Rebels have gun envy.

The Rebels finally reveal the full firepower of that Ion Cannon. It still looks like it was slapped together with foraged scrap metal, but damn - when they open the shields, this laser is strong enough to disable a Star Destroyer. If you saw this outside a prepper's house, you'd say they were compensating for something. Seeing this at the Rebel base, you have to wonder why they didn't just strap this baby to any one of their ships. Well, someone was smart enough to ask this question on Quora - "If ion cannons are strong enough to take out star destroyers, why didn't the rebels have one on their battle cruisers?" 

The short answer: that would make things less dramatically interesting.

The long answer, thanks to Quora guru Jeffrey J. Stables, chronic thinker:

"The ion cannon on Echo Base was far too large and consumed too much power to be of use on any of the ships the Rebel Alliance had available to it. Some Rebel ships did, in fact, have ion cannons; but none was large enough to disable a Star Destroyer like the one on Hoth did. An extremely large ship and large power source (roughly twice the size of the largest Rebel battlecruiser) would be required to deploy an ion cannon of such power in a starship..."

--Thanks, Jeffrey!            

When the cannon hits it marks, it performs one of the few laser light shows in Star Wars history. We usually see red or green laserbolts; red, green or blue lightsabers; but a rainbow malfunction? That's different.

Let's just say that Captain Xamuel Lennox didn't know what hit him. You know, Xamuel. Of course you do, he's the "our first catch of the day" guy - and yes, they named him Xamuel because "X's" make everything more science fiction-like.

Anyway the Star Destroyer, the Tyrant, sinks like an interstellar Titanic and since it's 1980, it goes all disco and turns into a Saturday Night Fever-dream fit for John Travolta to dance all over.

"Gentlemen, it's been a privilege playing with you tonight. How about one more song while we go down - perhaps 'Last Dance' by Donna Summer?"

Rebel extras cheer, wives of Imperial officers receive holograms informing that their husbands have been lost at space and pilots ready for battle.

Then we catch up with Luke amid all the Rebel troopers running to their stations - he joins Dack his gunner. I get that this makes the flying situation of the Battle of Hoth similar to the vehicles you'd see in a World War 2-era skirmish, but it seems a little backward to confine two perfectly good fighters to one speeder. Especially since the men of Rogue Squadron fly and shoot all the time in their X-Wings. Well, maybe Dack is all thumbs when he flies, so they need to let him down easy and just have him point and shoot.

They also do a straightforward job of setting Dack up for big things in the future. Dack is a person we've never met, has no unique traits to speak of and is super optimistic about the battle ahead? Oh, shell out the big bucks for that action figure, folks, he's definitely the breakout character of this movie!

Awww, Dack... you dead.

Following the exchange between battle partners, we get reminded of the threat ahead. They're not too threatening... yet.

Easiest special effects shot.... ever.

Best Performance by a Human: Dack, soon to be deceased.

Best Performance by a Non-human: Ion Cannon.

Best Line: Dack’s fatally optimistic – “Right now I feel like I can take on the whole Empire myself.”

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 AT-AT Walkers in the distance.

{Richie Pepio is a writer and performer in New York City who tumbls @mindctrlaltdel and tweets @RichiePepio.}