IF U CAN’T HANDLE ME AT MY TITTY MILK DRINKING-EST YOU DON’T DESERVE ME AT MY JEDI-EST:
I always was kind of lukewarm (HA!) on Luke as a kid (obviously Han Solo was cooler and also got to smooch the Princess in a not-weird way) but man this movie made me fucking love Luke Skywalker.
It was an amazing and beautiful scene that was somewhat ruined in my theater by THAT GUY who in the silence of the theater, saw fit to say quite loudly, “Well, that’s my new screen-saver!”
I think the film is presenting that Kylo lying to himself, Rey, and the audience that he’s really going to leave the Sith or the First Order behind.
The Jedi books through a kink in the film’s arguments that the Jedi order was flawed and needs to be modified/adapted if any of their teachings are going to survive.
I felt that Rey’s arc in the movie is learning that lesson. I hope we get to see a less monastic Jedi order going forward.
What did everyone think of the Dark Side hole/Mirror of Erised sequence?
I haven’t seen as much discussion about this scene and I’m curious on some ideas. My second viewing has given me a thought that i’m going to put together this afternoon.
I wasn’t really sure what to make of that scene in it’s entirety, but one of the things I really liked about it was how Rey finds herself in that place and immediately starts testing the borders of it. She snaps her fingers to see how far the sound carries, raises her arms to check how delayed the reaction of her other selves are, etc. It’s a really cool look into her character imo.
I loved the Dark Side hole experience. It did several things at once: it showed the audience the sort of person Rey is - she’s curious, but not necessarily seduced by the Dark Side. The whole point is balance - she can look at the dark and not fall in completely.
Along with that, it lets her face her fear re: her parents by confirming for her that she is, in fact, alone. No parents of consequence. It’s just her.
She faces that fear and comes out the other end to ForceTime with Ben about it, and in the end is able to accept it and decide that fuck it, she can be a hero without being tied to some famous bloodline or whatever. Which is sort of the point of the whole movie, as far as I can tell.
This was more or less my reaction as well.
I was getting some commentary on the “balance of the Force” aspect and it makes me think the Jedi & Sith have misinterpreted the idea. They tended to think of it in macro terms; light rises to meet dark etc.
I think this scene, among others, is trying to convey that the balance of the Force requires accepting both the light and dark within us. The scene shows Rey facing her fear and inner turmoil and walking out better for it.
I see this notion echoed in Luke & Yoda’s conversation. Yoda reminds Luke that, as a teacher, he should convey the fear, mistakes, and failures along with the knowledge and wisdom. This seems like Yoda is telling Luke that proper instruction requires coming to terms with the dark side within us.
Just come out of this here. Well into what it’s putting down. Definately my fave Star Wars. Felt like binge-watching a series rather than just watching a movie, and I mean that in the best possible way. It absolutely refuses to be controlled by the previous installments and expectations. It also got unabashedly anime as fuck towards the end, which felt at once super refreshing and wonderfully in keeping with the original trillogy’s own indirect anime influences. An absolute joy to watch.
Reminded me of Wolfenstein 2 of all things with the way it switches tones so well. I’m hoping the next film follows up on that and goes with Wolfensteiner’s “banding together various resistance groups for a Big Punch” setup.
One nit-picky thing I want to complain about is Rey’s make-up. She’s all dolled up! Lipstick, eyeshadow, the whole shebang. This super poor lady who’s always running around being busy in whatever wilderness. Where exactly did she find this stuff, or the time to apply it?
Most other characters look appropriately dirty and sweaty considering what is going on. I wonder why it’s different for Rey. Hmmmmm…
I mean if Luke can use the force to look young again while also astral projecting his entire being across the galaxy then I can buy into Rey being able to subconsciously clean her face up a bit.
Leia gave her some space make-up between films.
But yeah, that was a noticeable deviation from the norm.
The mirror scene gave Rei a “4D” image of herself, with instances of herself extending infinitely into the past and (at first glance) the future. If memory serves, though, “present” Rei isn’t in the middle of the line, but actually at the front, indicating that while her past is set in stone, her future is hers to determine.
And her past isn’t represented by the parents she expected to see in the mirror, but rather an endless chain of her past selves, again reinforcing the message of self-determination.
I’m a little confused by the repeat use of “heteronormative” to criticize Rose’s final actions in the film. It was admittedly cheesey and logistically implausible, but to say that it promoted a worldview where heterosexuality is the preferred,
or right orientation is pretty absurd.
I don’t have much to add to this other than the Red Guards’ weapons and fighting styles were Soul Calibur as hell.
Not sure I understand your confusion. The only romantic relationship in this film is a heterosexual one. It continues to normalize heterosexuality as the only/dominant orientation (just as the rest of the franchise has) - that’s heteronormative.
When she started clicking I half expected it to break into a musical number judging how the rest of the film was going…
Being serious, I thought the sequence was really interesting and I really liked how it segued into her telling Kylo (not Luke ! !) about her experience in the Dark Side hole. Kylo and Rey’s relationship was one of the most interesting things in this movie and it was interesting to see how, by the end, they had completely misunderstood each-other. Kylo expected her to come with him and Rey expected him to go with her. It will be very interesting to see where episode 9 is going to take their relationship forward without just being “oh they hate each other now”.
You could say she was self-reflecting.
That seems like an extremely broad definition of heteronormative. Every piece of media that has a subplot in which two heterosexual characters have romantic feelings for each other without also having a gay, transgender, or otherwise romantic subplot is heteronormative? I’m all for progress and more representation in media, but that seems like a pretty extreme position to have.
Just to put it in perspective: You have a strong female character that has spent the majority of the movie acting heroically with plenty of agency (Rose stuns Finn when she thinks he’s trying to desert, she knows more about the universe than he does and spends time explaining it to him, and she’s a core component to formulating their big plan). And in the end she rescues him from making a futile gesture towards traditional macho heroism. On top of that it is a romance between two people of color AND she is presented as attractive without being blatantly sexualized.
… And yet she’s a woman and he’s a man so it’s a surprisingly heteronormative film.
I guess I would say that I think a movie that takes place over about 36 hours, mostly in a war zone, with a limited cast of developed characters, and has one relationship that really only hits upon romance in the last 10 minutes or so could kind of technically be called heteronormative. But man, that’s pretty pedantic.
Oh yeah, anybody else kind of feel for the Knights of Ren?
They were presumably the padawans that Kylo convinced to leave the academy with him, so they trusted/feared the dude pretty hardcore, go off to join the space nazis largely on his advice, and than get killed by Kylo and some random girl while just doing the job that Kylo talked them into taking. What the hell, Ben?
I actually don’t think those were the Knights of Ren, or else Snoke would have mentioned them by name in one of those scenes. Plus if they were willing to help Kylo destroy the burgeoning Jedi order, I have a hunch they would feel more loyalty to him than Snoke. We’ll probably see them in IX.