captaingondolin | The Rise of Skywalker thoughts SPOILERS (Reply)

Scattered thoughts in random order.

I had a shitton of fun watching this film. The tension throughout kept me on the edge of my seat and it was just such a good Star Wars experience!

Not only do I love it, but it is also the one that makes me want to be more fannish about this whole trilogy - it might just be that the trilogy it’s over. I don’t read or write canon compliant fics, but I have deep need to have All The Facts and All The Lore before I get more deeply into something (at least to have them on Wookiepedia, if I haven’t finished a tv or book series myself). But I have been sitting here wanting AO3 to magically manifest all of the TRoS related fics even though it’s not even out everywhere yet. And I don’t even know what I want exactly, just… more of that!

This whole film keeps replaying in my brain and I can’t wait to actually watch it again.

I went in without any spoilers at all, it was intense and it aged me by about 10 years, the two friends sitting on both my sides gripped my hands so tight we probably left each other bruised. We did the entire sequel trilogy marathon, it was The Best. (These are people I’ve been friends with and have lived with for years, so sometimes there will be a scene and we just nudge each other and We Know what we mean, it’s a great experience. The shared meme culture in our house is just /chef’s kiss)

The very first bit was OT3 material deluxe for Finn/Rey/Poe. With the other two films, I was very distracted by the shiny and wasn’t hit by the strong shippy vibes (both for FinnRey and FinnPoe) until a second watch, but with this one it was a whole shipfest (another friend, who isn’t even in the OT fandom, the first thing she said was “so did Luke and Lando fuck? Because they did, right” and I am just… yes! But of all the things to take from this film… amazing, though. Amazing. And I do want All The Lando Content now, and also I’ve been told Luke and Lando do indeed have cool adventures in Legends, so I’m looking forward to that!). Anyway, the Fighty Trio was so good! Rey and Poe butting heads was surprisingly good? Fandom, give me a 100k slow burn in which they keep trying to one up each other trying to impress Finn without realising that the true balance in the Force is archived through the OT3.

And speaking of the Force: FORCE SENSITIVE FINN!! …….sadly, not explicitly stated, but come oooooon, it was implied, right? Please tell me it was as heavily implied as I thought it was? And the thing Finn tried to tell Rey when he thought he’d die was absolutely that he can feel the Force too. I have spoken.

It could also be that he loves her, obviously, but then… idk, the idea of Pining Finn makes me sad. Also makes me sad: how weird this franchise was about FinnRey. I said I loved this movie, and I do, and I don’t hate anything, not even TLJ, which seems to be a requirement for being online, but… when I watched TFA and it felt like they were setting up Finn and Rey to be the Romantic Couple, I was not very into it. Mostly because I was more into FinnPoe instead (I went the obianidala route in this trilogy too. From: “give my my first choice slash ship, please, do not want 3some” to “oh, no, I have invested too many feelings in the poly option again”) and because I was worried about romance handled poorly. But then they pretended it never happened? And I do see what some people in fandom have been saying re: racism in the treatment of Finn. I don’t really have any serious additional commentary here, just that I see that.

(a lot of people seem to hate the fact that the thing Finn was about to tell Rey was never resolved, and I’m not defending it as good storytelling, but… I liked it)

The beginning tensions also felt like a good reminder of the fact that they are fighting a losing war against a giant power and they are all stressed as fuck, even Rose had that moment with Snap at the beginning, everyone is on edge.

I loved the flashing lights. Is it an odd thing to point out? If I could, I would literally install strobe in my room, they just look so cool. Although… not the best thing in term of accessibility. Is there a workaround for this?

What the fuck is up with destroying whole planets?? Sheev, my dude, if you literally destroy the galaxy, what the fuck are going to rule on?

The pacing worked very well for me. Maybe it’s that I have less and less patience for extra long films, or maybe that I rely on fanfiction a lot to do the emotional work for me/for me to process the emotional parts? The beginning especially was pretty great, the Finn and Poe mission retrieving information about a FO spy…

And speaking of said spy? My cinema erupted when Hux said “I am the spy”.

And Hux’s death was exactly what he deserved. I have enjoyed the shit out of his extra evil, scenery-chewing villainy from the start, I am more fond of this little shit than he deserves (and even dragged one of my Stormpilot shipping friends down with me in my Kylux pit), but he did a single good thing (for the wrong reasons) in his entire life, and they did not give him a hero’s death, which I appreciate. (And now I need to go find that long fic about him deserting and working with General Organa to defeat the First Order, I’ve been putting off reading it for literal years.)

I have been punished for not taking Reylo or Kylo seriously all these years and now it’s been two days and I can’t stop thinking about Ben’s smile before he dies, or that little nod he gives Rey while he’s still fighting the Knights of Ren. If someone had told me a few days ago that there was going to be a Reylo kiss, I would have said “no, unnecessary, why”… and now I love it.

(also I want a new ship name, I am extremely into Ben/Rey and much less into the Kylo/Rey dynamic. No judgement if that’s what you like more, I am just a disgustingly soft mushy, fluff-craving creature)

But then I made the mistake of going to the Reylo tag, and everyone seems very angry and upset?? I do not understand. The ship became canon? Ben had his redemption arc? Ship or no ship, I would never have expected him to survive. Don’t people like tragic love stories? Idk, maybe it’s just over a decade of shipping mostly non-canon m/m (or f/f or m/m/m or m/m/f or, well, you get the gist), but at this point half of my otp dying is just no big deal anymore? Unless I get lucky and they both die together! Like Baze/Chirrut or Jyn/Cassian!

No, but seriously, I have a lot of thoughts about redemption and forgiveness and how doing the right thing once at the end doesn’t undo all the evil done before. This doesn’t mean characters (or people) don’t ever deserve second chances! But neither they are owed them, or owed forgiveness. While I don’t need a “moral” of the story, I think letting him live would have been a bit much for me. (With the caveat that if these were not films, but a longer form, books, comics, tv… it could have been interesting seeing Ben surviving and dedicating the rest of his life to fixing what he’d helped bring onto the galaxy, making amends and learning and maybe eventually finding some peace and happiness too. But making him survive in a final film and then, what?, sending him to celebrate with the Resistance? would not have worked.)

Anyway, I am in love with Ben's soft I Am A Good Person Now sweater look.

Leia being Rey’s Master, Rey doing floating meditation, all of the Force things! Even Rey shooting Force lightning (yes, I was worried about Chewie, but the lightning was still really fucking cool).

Speaking of The Force. I was not really surprised or thrown by Force healing at all? Not just because of The Mandalorian, but because I always assumed it to be a thing, although maybe not quite as immediate. Jedi putting themselves in healing trances and Jedi Healers using healing crystals were all things I’ve seen in older stuff (not that you need to justify a 2019 movie plot with 40 years of novels and comics, but that felt like precedent enough), and crystals aren’t just magic themselves, they channel a Jedi’s abilities, so yeah, in my mind this was already a thing. Another possible explanation is Force dyad magic, which is also cool.

Having seen Solo, I thought Threepio was going to go the way of Elthree, that they had to do something even more drastic to get the information about the Sith planet. And I was ready to cry like a baby (I did cry watching that scene in the trailer), but then it was actually not that tragic? Artoo and Threepio confirmed extra super married, though. The fact that Threepio trusts all his memories to Artoo <3 (despite his protestations about astromechs. Shut up, Threepio)

A friend of mine was mad about what she perceived as Poe’s No Homo Ex-Girlfriend, whereas my clueless bisexual ass just… accidentally forgot that we don’t exist according to Hollywood. I worked on myself to try to never assume people’s sexuality in real life, which sometimes backfires in media: for me obviously an ex-gf doesn’t preclude the FinnPoe we all want… but yeah, a minor character introduced in the very last film could actually have been meant as a Poe Is Straight thing. Which would bother me, but then, I did like her, and I can’t spend my life guessing writers/directors/producers’ intentions to figure out what to be mad at. So.

What didn’t make sense was the spice runner backstory. When would this have happened, exactly? Both his parents were rebellion and then New Republic military and in what little I’ve read of the comics, Poe’s been running around doing missions against the First Order for ages?

Rey Palpatine made me laugh, but not in a bad way. Friends, I haven’t been able to take “Luke, I am your father” seriously ever in my whole life and I still love that entire movie more than I love most of my relatives. Star Wars is cheesy. Embrace the cheesy.

(I was originally very on board with Rey “Nobody”, but re-watching all three films together there was always an emphasis on her past that called for a resolution of sorts.)

That whole final battle??? ICONIC, MAGNIFICENT. The giant, terrifying Sith fleet, and the good guys showing up at the last moment in force… Poe’s sense of responsibility, his crushing despair right before help arrived, everything about it made me emotional.

Also SNAP IS ALIVE, I DON’T CARE WHAT I SAW……… my asshole friend just went “think about Wedge having to go back to Snap’s mom to tell her her son is dead” and I NEED NEW FRIENDS

Lando and Jannah. Is Lando going to organise transition into civilian life for former stormtroopers? Help the New Republic 2.0 with family reunification? Do I have to wait for comic/book spinoffs?? (Or fic. Send me all the fic.)

The Gay Kiss At The End. Look. If they hadn’t said anything? I would have been happy noticing that, probably looked for fics about them, end of it. But they made a big stink about LGBT+ representation and… nope, that’s not quite it… But this has already been talked about to death, so yeah, a bit of a cop out, but at least I was prepared.

At the very end, when Rey said “Rey Skywalker”, at first I thought that if she had said something like “just Rey” it would have been cooler. “the belonging you seek is not behind you” and all that. But a friend pointed out that her picking Skywalker was not about legacy, but about the people who had adopted her/been her chosen family. And you all know I can’t resist chosen family. And it’s a good reading of this, especially with the Force ghosts looking at her.

(I still wanted Aaaaanaaakiiin. Do you think you’ll get Prequel cooties if you give me Anakin??? /end whining)