#where obi-wan is given a love interest specifically designed to be killed off so that they could compare that to anidala

[antianakin]

I recognize that this mostly happens because Obi-Wan is and always has been a direct foil for Anakin, but I am SO tired of all of Obi-Wan's more canon love interests ending up being more about making commentary on Anakin and Anidala than they are on exploring OBI-WAN. It's just sad and I'm so tired of it and I think that until people are willing to write a romance for Obi-Wan that isn't actually about Anakin at all, Obi-Wan should just be made off-limits for romance plot lines entirely. Leave the man alone, please, I am begging you.

[shenanigans-and-imagines]

Can you give me your opinions on Phasma? And I want more than just ‘she did nothing so she sucks.’ Make it nuanced. (I feel they kind of made her a damsel in distress by accident, which led to me feeling protective of her and ultimately igniting my obsession with her. I still think she’s badass, don’t get that wrong, but I feel her vulnerable side is what made me love her.)

If you’re looking for any sympathy from me when it comes to Phasma, you won’t find it. However, I will attempt to make a more nuanced argument to explain how she fails utterly as the character she was designed to be. So, buckle in.

First, let’s lay some ground rules.

I will not be discussing any of her backstory given in the books, comics, or other forms of media.  This is a discussion specifically about how her character is utilized in the movies.  Her backstory, no matter how tragic or interesting, is irrelevant.

Second, let’s define what I mean by “the character she was designed to be”. All characters are meant to serve a function in the story.  A protagonist drives the plot.  And antagonist apposes the antagonist.  Even background characters are meant to flesh out the world in some capacity.

By the director’s own definition Phasma was mean to be, “the new Boba Fett”.  Meaning, her main function was to be a minor antagonist to one of the main trio, besides the main protagonist.  Yes, there are the superficial comparisons such as having a cool character design, not having that main lines or screen time, etc, but that’s all they are, superficial.  Her job is to be a minor antagonist, specifically to Finn.  Like how Boba Fett is a minor antagonist specifically to Han Solo.

Now what fandom has skewed for many people is that Boba Fett is not a deep character in the Original Trilogy.  He shows up in The Empire Strikes back, has a cool character design, leads Vader to Han and Leia and then fucks off.  Then, in Return of the Jedi, he’s hanging out in Jabba’s palace, kinda chillin’, and is killed unceremoniously by Han Solo. 

He’s a flat character, which is not a bad thing by any means.  A story needs flat characters just as much as they need round ones.  You don’t need to know his whole backstory for him to function in the story.  Just like you don’t need to know why Greedo is hunting Han Solo in A New Hope or what Maul’s deal is in the Phantom Menace.

A flat character is there for the round characters to bounce off of while they go off on their own journey.  If everybody is a round character in your story, there would be no focus.  Flat characters are still good characters.

Now, with those definitions establish, when I say Captain Phasma fails as a character, I mean she fails at her function at being a flat minor antagonist.

She’s flat, don’t get me wrong.  All she does in the story is carry out Kylo Ren’s order to kill the villagers, berate Finn for taking off his helmet, allow Finn and Han to capture her, turn off the shield for Star Killer Base, and get shoved down the garbage shoot.  She then shows up at the very end to fight Finn and die almost immediately.

Nothing really there regarding her backstory or deeper motivation. Which is, again, completely fine.  She doesn’t need any more than that.  She’s a muscle baddy, along the lines of Jaws from the James Bond franchise.  Somebody who serves to do the main villain’s dirty work. However, the difference between her and Boba Fett, or Jaws, or even Maul, is that she never had a moment of victory that impacts the plot.  She never really has a moment of victory, period.

While Vader is the one to put Han in carbonate, it’s Boba Fett that leads Vader to him.  There is even a cool moment on the ship where Vader steps directly in from of Boba Fett, pointing to him and says, “no disintegration” implying that Boba Fett has a reputation for disintegrating people, which is just kinda bad ass. Either way, Boba Fett’s victory impacts the plot of The Empire Strikes Back.  His action causes Vader to find Han and Leia, driving the rest of the story forward.

Maul, in The Phantom Menace does the same thing.  He just shows up to wreck Qui Gon’s and Obi Wan’s day.  Yes, he gets more development in The Clone Wars, but in the films, all we know about him is that he’s a Sith and is following the orders of his master.  He then gets one of the most bad ass introductions in cinematic history and proceeds to kill Qui Gon Jinn.  Qui Gon’s death literal changes the fate of every character in the franchise.  Even though Obi Wan kills him a few minutes later, Maul’s victor impacts the story.

Phasma never gets a moment like this.  Her being captured by Finn and Han is not her, “showing vulnerability”, it’s failing to do her job.  She then proceeds to do what they ask her to do, rather than do the more impactful thing like refusing to tell them.  Literally she could have been replaced with any lackey in The First Order and it would make no difference.  And in The Last Jedi, she does even less, ultimately losing to Finn with no really moment of true victory before to make it impactful.

All the posturing in the world doesn’t make up for the fact that she does nothing on screen.  Her one function as a character was to prove herself a viable threat to at least one of the protagonist, and she literally never does. 

So, in conclusion; she does nothing, so she sucks.

[briangroth27]

Rogue One Review

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story wasn’t a tale that needed to be told—we already knew the original Death Star plans were stolen by Rebel spies—but it was definitely told very well! My favorite characters were Jyn (Felicity Jones), who provided a strong grounding force and emotional through-line, K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), who was excellent comic relief without being a buffoon, and Chirrut (Donnie Yen), whose belief in the Force despite not being Force-sensitive was an interesting addition to the mythology. And Darth Vader (James Earl Jones)…Vader unleashed was terrifying! Forget Boba Fett, I’d like a Vader solo movie. Rogue One had a wealth of well-choreographed and varied action, the scope was as epic and wide-reaching as it needed to be while keeping the story focused, and the additions to the Star Wars canon didn’t needlessly complicate or overwrite anything (though some lines and moments are certainly re-contextualized).

If nothing else, these standalone films should explore different sides of the Star Wars universe; show us new points of view rather than rehash all the same circumstances and belief systems we’re already getting from the main trilogies, and Rogue One did just that. Jyn felt totally different from fellow “plucked from obscurity” leads Luke, Anakin, and Rey. I enjoyed seeing a more morally gray side of the Rebellion through Cassian (Diego Luna). War can make things murky, even when you’re fighting on the right side, and Rogue One definitely showed that. Riz Ahmed’s Bodhi gave us a different flavor of defector than we saw from Finn in Force Awakens, so it’s good to see they aren’t resting on familiar characterizations when introducing people of similar backgrounds. Chirrut’s belief in the Force despite not being a Jedi displayed a new way of thinking about how the “common man” relates to it, which was cool. Since the Force flows through all living things, it makes sense that different people can tap into it—or at least be affected by it—in different ways (much like the Night Sisters on Clone Wars). I definitely want to see more Force “denominations” that challenge the Jedi and Sith “all or nothing” approaches. I’m hoping to see similar variation in Force-use in Rey from Luke’s training, since he wasn’t raised or trained with a strict Jedi upbringing. 

I love that this series is giving us more female leads! While the women of Star Wars have generally been great characters, there are too few of them. I’m glad Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) got to speak more than in the original trilogy, but I would’ve liked to see more than four women in the movie (and then, only Jyn had a major role). It wouldn’t have been hard to make one or two other members of Rogue One women. Still, good on them for such a diverse cast otherwise! I’ve gone back and forth on this, but ultimately I felt we got enough personality from all the characters to understand and care about them. The possible exception is Baze (Jiang Wen), who I didn’t get a great feel for outside of his relationship with Chirrut (which I read as romantic, but that wasn’t confirmed). Saw Gerrera (Forrest Whitaker) didn’t get much screentime either, but he’s been/will be fleshed out more on Clone Wars and Rebels. His inclusion here was a neat bridge from the animated shows to the films; if only Marvel Studios would do the same with their television and movie sides.

I liked that there was no opening crawl; it helped set this apart from the main story films, though I do wonder if people new to the saga were thrown off as to where this takes place in the timeline. I didn’t think I’d like a story about complete strangers whose fates were all but revealed in the opening of A New Hope, but Rogue One really won me over! I’ve seen it discussed elsewhere that doing these prequel stories could lead the Star Wars braintrust to always play it safe and tell tales about familiar mythology rather than truly expanding the universe; Han Solo could easily be about winning the Millennium Falcon from Lando and doing the Kessel Run rather than some totally new adventure from Solo’s past, and I hope they don’t fall into that trap. I don’t need every bit of world-building trivia in the original trilogy to be its own movie; that’d make these characters’ lives very small. Instead, they should think outside the Episode 4-6 box and invent new legends and adventures. Just because looking back worked for Rogue One doesn’t mean they should box themselves in completely.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Rogue One is definitely worth seeing before it leaves theaters!

4/5

Major Spoilers…

I really thought Jyn was going to be revealed as Rey’s mother, but obviously that’s not the case. I’m OK with things going this way; I enjoyed her arc through the film and the way she ended up inspiring the Rebellion into real action and getting them their first win. Galen (Madds Mikkelson) giving Jyn a Kyber Crystal necklace was a nice touch given their use as a Death Star power source, even if it seemed set up as something important that wasn’t quite paid off later on. I was surprised she didn’t get to kill Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn); that definitely felt like where her arc was going, but having Cassian do it instead didn’t rob Jyn of her agency or the dramatic weight of avenging her father. Jyn still got to complete her father’s mission, after all. Vader’s castle being located on Mustafar was a nice touch, since Palpatine will want him constantly angry and unfocused. I wonder if the reason for his bacta tank dip in his first scene will be revealed at some point; routine maintenance or the result of something like his battle at the end of Rebels season 2?

I didn’t expect them to fire the Death Star at all, so seeing minor attacks from it were surprising, effective and impressive. The whole Battle of Scarif was really well-paced and intense, while the dogfight above the shield was especially well-choreographed. Almost everyone had a mini-mission too, which was cool. Even though everyone went out fighting, the movie didn’t feel grim or depressing. I don’t know if it’s because we know they’ve helped strike the death blow against the Death Star, that they all went out fighting in honorable/meaningful deaths, or some combination of the two, but I didn’t walk out of the theater thinking things were pointless or hopeless. It’s entirely possible Carrie Fisher’s cameo specifically calling out the hope they’d won played into that, too.

Thinking back on the film, I really like how it re-contextualized and justified parts of A New Hope. If Leia’s lie about being on a diplomatic mission (to peaceful, weaponless Alderaan, no less) were supposed to be taken as a believable facade, why would they be firing on a Star Destroyer and fighting the Stormtroopers through the entire ship? They wouldn’t, but if they’re in the middle of a running chase and Vader has her dead to rights (he already knows there’s no ambassador on board), it makes more sense and makes her lie that much more brazen and gutsy. That Leia was intentionally going to Tatooine to pick up Obi-Wan for Bail also makes more sense than her randomly coming across the planet he was hiding on (and how, with the whole planet at their disposal, the droids “happened” to land right near where Ben was living). The Death Star’s massive design flaw being an intentional addition also works better than Imperial incompetence IMO. Technically, the transmissions were beamed to the “mother ship” and then given to the crew of the Tantive IV before it disconnected, but I don’t mind that bit of narrative flexibility in Vader’s Episode 4 line.

I don’t have a problem with fan service and character cameos—it can be a lot of fun if done right—but I do think Dr. Evazan and Ponda Baba being on Jedha was too much. They added nothing to the movie. Beyond that, I was happy with all the shout-outs to the canon (Here’s a handy guide to all the other cameos and Easter eggs!). For example, learning just why the Rogue Five position was open for Luke was a nice touch. It also makes sense for characters like the team in Rebels to have been present for the Scarif fight, given the Rebellion was very small at this point. I wonder if we’ll see the Battle of Scarif from the Ghost crew’s point of view at some point. Especially after Carrie Fisher’s tragic death, I’d love for Leia to become a recurring character on Rebels to detail her other early adventures with the Rebellion; it didn’t seem like this was the first time Bail sent her on a mission.

Here’s an interesting look at the large wealth of footage from the trailers that didn’t make it into the final film. I’d definitely be interested in seeing how that version went down! I also find the method of editing this film—cutting together scenes from other movies to gauge how long they typically are—a little bizarre. Those scenes should be however long you want them to be in your movie; there’s no need to look to other’s films. Visualizing the movie this way could lead to a lack of originality in basic film composition, and that’s something we definitely need to avoid.