star wars 9 spoilers and postmortem shit talk

"The kiss is the one moment where I said "oh come on". Because i never felt her connection to Ben was romantic"

are you this bad at reading signs in real life? because if so you may have missed a lot of opportunities.

fuck you

that escalated quickly

well, you're being a dick, so

without making it personal I'd agree that their sexual tension is pretty heavily foregrounded throughout TLJ

I don't really agree with that at all. it seems grounded in them having a personal connection based on prior traumas and they find solace in talking to each other about it. people can have a strong bond without wanting to fuck.

I feel most of the sexual tension came from fans who wanted to ship the two of them together

has nobody ever held the hand of someone from the opposite sex as a show of solidarity without ripping their clothes off five minutes later?

usually a pretty good sign I'm trapped in a PG-13 sci-fi tentpole

if anything Finn and Rey seemed the ones to have *that* chemistry, but that got abandoned after TFA

Finn's real chemistry is w/Poe.

Well, but I mean they also have their final climactic fight amidst a raging sea which is often kinda symbolic.

xpost hah, touche!

xpost maybe they both had to pee?

I'm not suggesting they're strangers, they clearly have some bond and I could see that turning into a romantic one (or some people reading it as such, though Neanderthal largely OTM there). But "her heart's desire" is a singular thing, I saw no sign at all that it's The Most Important Thing in her life.

she didn't exactly mourn him afterwards

so apologies for getting heated, I don't object THAT angrily to people who disagree w/ me on that, just put off by akm's snotty post.

GhostLuke says it explicitly, that they both knew.

Huh, I missed (or forgot) this!

Agree strongly w/Neanderthal & Andrew’s take here. FYI, some weirdo in the theatre yelled “Now go make Force babies!” when they kissed.

xp when she thinks he's dead on the Death Star she is definitely instantly grieving and regretful (in part because she's also felt Leia's death, surely, but still).

Another indication a different ending may have been planned: Leia hanging around instead of disappearing into the Force instantly makes no narrative sense if she did what she had to do during the Death Star battle.

How would that even work? "Hi Poe, this is my boyfriend, the guy that killed most of your friends."

Rey aside, this is a key point for me — narratively, I think Ben had to die to “redeem himself.” As I mentioned earlier, I almost thought he was going to commit suicide in the scene w/Han (and was like, “whoa!”)... but giving his life for Rey’s was a perfect way to make it happen.

(I haven't even brought up the fact that Ben arrives on Exogol on an Empire-era TIE Fighter -- that he somehow found intact on the Death Star, I guess? -- that isn't capable of lightspeed travel.)

I swear, I did *like* the movie, but I think Abrams was just a little too Abrams-y this time around.

I haven't even brought up the fact that Ben arrives on Exogol on an Empire-era TIE Fighter

I thought this was just the same ship he's had in all three films. I think the film opening on it ship emerging from lightspeed would've been the better start rather than this coming after the open over Mustafar and swift cut away from space just to show Kylo retrieving the wayfinder from under Vader's bed or whatever it was.

Rey destroys the one ship of his on the desert planet, then steals the other one when she leaves him behind on the Death Star and burns it on Ach-To. (Unless he managed to get that ship somehow completely rebuilt in, like, a couple of hours.) (Also the wayfinder should have been in the first ship, not the second, but w/e.) When he arrives on Exogol, it's in a plain old straight winged TIE Fighter from the OT era.

I took Exogol for a hangover once, with water.

it's weird to care about any of the fake-ass characters in this bloodless collection of "story beats"

this was good! enjoyed it a lot more than the last jedi. i did feel kind of bored and disoriented by a lot of of the shoot-em-up scenes, but this is probably more my issue than the movie's -- i can't play modern video games either.

there is something a little redundant about the new trilogy, so i do kind of wonder how much anyone will care about them in a decade or two. i think rey is great but i couldn't really make myself care about any of the other new characters. i don't think any of the films compares all that well to their equivalent in the original three -- ppl criticize the corny stuff in ROTJ and they're not wrong but the faceoff there between luke and vader and palpatine feels genuinely mythic and intense in a way that the more violent showdown at the end of this movie doesn't.

It is intriguing to think what Rian Johnson might be able to do with his own trilogy (if he really ends up doing it), when he’s freed from the constraints of the Resistance/First Order conflict — which led to the weakest parts of TLJ, IMO (which is not to “let him off the hook” for the weakness of those parts!).

Sad that they recycled a bunch of Emperor lines but failed to have him scream “UNLIMITED POWER!”

movie made half a billion dollars already so despite the tepid reviews (most of which I disagree with) I doubt that anyone on the business side is considering this a disappointment.

I expected Sidious to yell UNLIMITED POWER when blasting the ships tbh

for all the time and energy that ppl have dedicated to the star wars universe, watching this movie reminded me anew that so much of the shit that happens in these movies makes no sense. when palpatine picks up the unconscious kylo ren and throws him down a cliff i kinda went, "wow, that's a hell of a way to kill that character." and of course he comes crawling back in the next scene, none the worse for wear. probably just as well they didn't even try to explain how palpatine could come back after literally exploding.

xpost: he should've said "i am the emperor of these united galaxies, clothed with immense power!"

"so much of the shit that happens in these movies makes no sense" I kept wondering why they didn't just shoot and kill our heroes multiple times.

Alfred, same!

pic.twitter.com/4cEFGEf26G

— Obi-Shawn Kenohmygodshutup (@neddamnwahs) December 26, 2019

Since I have been so contentious, I should say that:

- This movie coaxed one of Anthony Daniels's best performances in any of them, using him at least as well as Kersh did in Empire. Every word out of his mouth was gold, and if anything he pushes Poe's buttons even more than Han's.

- Chewbacca's "WHY DOES EVERYONE I LOVE DIE?!" breakdown was actually really affecting. All he's got left in his life from the last 40 years are two droids, one of which he doesn't really like very much. (Although it's weird that nobody ever acknowledges his relationship with Ben.)

- I did like the move from the very simple effect in TLJ of water droplets appearing on Kylo's glove after their one Forcetime session where Rey is in the rain; to full-on transfer of physical objects and then, essentially, bilocation.

- It took me a second viewing to realize that Rey's lightsaber at the end is made of her old staff, which is pretty cool.

reminded me of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
“this is... the weapon of a scavenger”

Yeah Chewie's little breakdown was pretty sad... isnt he supposed to be many hundreds of years old? Youd think he'd be used to all his friends dying over & over by now

I’ve always related to C-3PO: whiny, effete, barely tolerated by friends, constantly falling apart

i liked that when they completely wiped C3PO, he continued to act in the same insufferable manner, only now he didn't know who anyone was.

lol i am in the doghouse w/my niece (12)* for loudly hissing "FOR FvCK's SAKE" when ren's hand poked back up from the abyss, after he had been so casually (=satisfactorily) dispatched there by emperor p

also: woah and indeed yikes lando claiming central role in all previous victories then putting the middle-aged moves on jannah

*i asked her what the best and worst bits were, she said "worst is when you SWORE uncle, and there is no best bcz they were all as good"

kylo ren and throws him down a cliff i kinda went, "wow, that's a hell of a way to kill that character." and of course he comes crawling back in the next scene, none the worse for wear.

This was dumb, but to be fair, he died minutes later

"he's good now"

he is pretty near death at that point, which is why him transferring the life force essentially takes the last of his life away.

this is also a universe where a Darth Maul who had been bisected came back to life, and Darth Vader basically got turned into origami paper on a volcano before miraculously being turned into Robocop, so I just kind of view death as not final in this universe now as a default

lol when ren and rey kissed i was like "aren't they brother and sister?" having already decided that ren is the child of leia and luke (also borther and sister): all this goofy pharaonic shit makes sense to me in ref this franchise even tho not quite technically correct (bcz i don't really care i guess)

also they show him not getting blown over by the Falcon exhaust while his Stormtroopers are falling 700 feet back from the thrusters, so perhaps he had some weird Sith/Jedi floaty mechanism

being that the Original Trilogy was a fairly on-the-nose allegory for Christianity, having everybody related to each other and possibly fucking kinda makes sense in a way

all the films need is Aslan.

no one fucks in narnia, this is canon