the last jedi spoilers – Pass Through Fire

contevent:

lesbianrey:

the thing that really bothers me about tlj is that it tries to have it both ways on so many levels. all of its messages contradict themselves and cancel each other out. it wants to deliver the standard beats of a Star Wars™ movie but then it also wants to ~not go the way you think~. it says its about ‘letting the past die’ but spends most of the narrative rehashing the past and also acknowledging the cyclical nature of life and history. it tries to say that the skywalkers are menaces while also glorifying their power in the end, especially the ending shot. its like ryan literally could not decide between debunking myths or continuing them so he just blended them all together and hoped it would work. but it just ends up saying nothing at all

This is but my opinion, but I think it did chose which message was the right one.

Everyone who glorified the past, like Poe with his maverick tactics, Finn and Rose with their infiltration ploy, or Rey with her trying to copy how Luke turned Vader, utterly fails.

Everyone who reject the past, like Luke who decided to let the Jedi die, or Kylo Ren who want to burn everything to the ground, is shown to be wrong by having their actions ultimately futile.

Those who wins are those who finds balance, who accept the past, but also accept the present. In the end,
Rey abandon Kylo Ren rather than persist in the fantasy that she can redeem someone who actively chose the Dark, and go help the resistance.
Luke decides to play on his legend to inspire people, milking the best out of the past to save the present, rather than wallowing on the worse part of his life.
Poe finally understand that suicide runs and heroics only get you so far, and decides to retreat rather than go out in a blaze of glory.

There is even a nice metaphor by the end, as Yoda destroys the tree that holds the books, but Rey kept the books. The past is not to be worshipped or romanticized. Rey took the essential, and the film let the rest burns in order to make room for a future without the hindrance of tradition.

artoo:

luke thinking about murdering an unarmed and sleeping human being is not luke skywalker. bye

Yeah that’s what I felt the most iffy about.

I think the idea of Luke’s doubt about Ben being the thing that pushed Ben over to the dark side is awesome but the way it was executed in the movie was way out of character.

If any of you have seen the BBC show Merlin, the same thing happens to Mordred. Merlin is convinced Mordred will kill Arthur in the future cause of some vision or whatever and thus he treats Mordred like a villain from the get-go when in the beginning Mordred is really just a kid eager to be a knight. It’s being antagonised without having done anything that poisons him, it’s Merlin’s fear of the evil in Mordred that brings that evil out of him and you’re left wondering whether the same thing would’ve happened if Merlin gives him a chance.

It’s an amazing study of what our perception of someone and how we treat them based on that perception can do to them. This is what the movie was trying to do from two perspectives but the execution was ugly and out of character. If it was more subtly told, over a longer time, it would’ve been so much smoother and still effective. It also would’ve lined up with the question whether someone’s doomed from the beginning if they have more darkness inside them or whatever, or if they still have a choice, and whether anybody has the right to decide if they’re doomed.

You could’ve had Luke’s perspective where he feels the darkness in Ben and thus starts to treat him differently. He wouldn’t outright abuse him, obviously, but he would be more closed off, like Dumbledore with Harry in the fifth book, sort of, kind of passive aggressive or unintentionally dismissive maybe. And you could have young Ben, teenaged, hotheaded, passionate Ben Solo seeing this as the legendary Luke Skywalker abandoning and neglecting him.

Then have a scene where this climaxes in a confrontation that is the same from both sides but because of their different perception of each other turns out differently. You could still have Luke’s shame and Ben’s fear, except you could skip the part where Luke Skywalker, the Luke Skywalker who stood in front of the Emperor himself for the longest fucking time before he struck him down in anger only when he realised all his friends were about to die, reads Ben’s mind one night and then immediately draws his sword to murder him when his first thought should’ve been consulting Ben’s parents, Luke’s sister and his best friend about it.