The Ending: Beautiful, but problematic

In TFA I saw Kylo Ren as, conceptually at least, a kind of continuation of Anakin from ROTS. He basically picks up from where Anakin was left off in the previously made film - as somebody who has 'recently' turned to the Dark Side, with much to still learn from his Palpatine-like 'Sith' master.

 

This was kind of my read too. The 'Kylo Ren' we get in the ST is sort of a 'Darth Vader, year 5' (as it were). Still figuring out who/what he is. Not fully committed yet as he might think and struggling with this new persona he's adopted.

It's still an extension of the Anakin archetype, but a version we never got to see (cinematically anyhow).

 

Right.
I should be more clear. When I say that list of films, I'm referring to the thematic refrain they're doing for Kylo and Rey. So, you're right about his narrative arc launch point, but if you watch what kinds of thematic moments happen, you'll see mirrors for Kylo in Anakin in AOTC, ROTS, and the OT.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

It's hard sometimes to explain or justify a subjective reaction to art. I mean, we all react to art differently. I can show you a painting that totally rocks my world, but would bore you within 5 seconds.

That said, I think ultimately my problem with many of the character arcs is they weren't planned or mapped across all three films. Finn is a great study in this. What was Disney's plan for Finn? Whatever the plan was, it never really manifests. He's incomplete. I mean he gets PROMOTED at the end of the film, but where is his real progression? What does he really learn about himself? What was his arc exactly, other than to be a sidekick of a bunch of quests?

This doesn't mean your interpretations and reactions are less valid, there's just so definitive way to react to art, that's what makes it art.

That said, if I had to summarize my main beefs with character/story in EPI 9, this video says it best (posted before, but so worth posting again):

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 12, 2020, Original Post Date: Feb 12, 2020 ---

Thanks, and yes I see your point, given the really stupid, insolent and hostile decisions Poe makes, it might have been a good move to kill him off. Poe was very poorly written in Episode 8, so was Finn, that film is not without flaws. I just happen to prefer it to Episode 9.

 

Poe's decisions in 8 are the kind of decisions that work in every movie ever because he's the good guy.
Star Wars even made an entire movie about a "Poe decision" called Rogue One. Going off half-cocked to save the day against the advice of the superior officers.

Poe essentially pulls a Rogue One. Except, it fails.

Everyone in these movies has to make a dumb decision at some point or there would be no drama. It'd be boring.
Poe is a cocky flyboy who thinks blowing things up is the best course of action. He is hostile. He is insolent. Because he's cocky.
He doesn't like that he's not allowed to do what he wants. He'd lead the rebellion to destruction. The whole point of his arc is learning to lead. Some times, the better choice is to run. To plan. You blow up one ship but at what cost? He wasn't weighing the costs. He was just go-go-go. Then he realizes the costs and calls off the attack while on Crait. He's learning to lead.

Now of course this is all lost in the weeds because TROS basically ignores all of it and puts him back where he was at the end of TFA.
Poe should have been the defacto leader of the Resistance in TROS. Not an errand boy.

 

He starts the trilogy off as someone running from danger out of concern for his own wellbeing. He ends the trilogy as someone running toward danger out of concern and care for others. That might not be a super flashy arc, but it is one. He’s an entirely different character at the end than where he began and it’s due to the tangible experiences he had in-between.

 

The biggest issue I have with Finn and Poe's arc is TROS sort of skips what TLJ did with them and just retells the same thing so they end up in the same spot as the end of TLJ rather than somewhere different after everything that happens. Essentially they are entirely unchanged by TROS.

 

I don't know that I see that.
Poe in TLJ struggled with responsibility/leadership and that governed his arc.
Finn struggled with solidarity and that governed his arc.

In TROS...
Poe doesn't struggle with responsibility. He struggles with hope.
Finn doesn't struggle with solidarity. He struggles with purpose, or faith.

These are different arcs to me. Finn isn't hopelessly trying to find a way out, and Poe isn't recklessly causing deaths being an impatient hot shot.

It's almost the case, not quite, that they flipped each other's issues. Finn struggled with hope (lack of solidarity through doubt and fear), now Poe does (worries for the preservation of the whole, and fears defeat from a lack of solidarity). Poe struggled with leadership (through carelessness cause by a lack of faith in other's leadership), and now Finn does (by being uncertain of his footing through most of the film until the end where he makes strong leading decisions in firm faith).

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Their respective handlings in TROS do come off as slightly repetitive, but they are pushed forward with where they were in TLJ (for better or worse).

The idea behind Poe in TLJ is that Leia sees that there’s a leader in him. But he hasn’t lived up to that potential yet, not until the end. TROS has Poe attempting to assert himself in a leadership role, but he’s unconfident - unsure of himself. Just because he wants it now doesn’t mean he knows what to do with it. He’s acting like a leader, but hasn’t totally figured out how to BE a leader. That’s his transformation in the story: truly becoming this figure Leia had wanted him to be.

Finn in TLJ makes the growth from protecting and defending Rey specifically to applying that same sense of guardianship to others. TROS does a lot to narrow that focus back to Rey, but his nascent development in the Force* flirts with the idea of him evolving a greater unselfish compassion for others. It brings his motivations into a more spiritual perspective. Sort of Jedi-like.

*I’m really conflicted about Force sensitive Finn. It seemed to me the point of his character in TFA was that someone doesn’t need a super power to recognize evil when they see it. Simply being a decent person is good enough. But TROS flat out says ‘nope, having a basic conscience is the product of magic’. But is the Force supposed to represent that innate morality? Is it symbolic? Ugh, bothers me.

 

Finn is carrying that same message, but it's mixing in with TLJ's 'the Force can arrise in anyone' message.
Given his message in TFA, he's a natural pick to carry on the TLJ 'anybody' message in TROS.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

That's whyI'm baffled by your statement. All 3 characters had a character arcs that covered their growth and development. Almost as one reviewer put it, from child hood to adulthood. All of their arcs and evolution might not have been pronounced as Rey's and Kylo's. But that is to be expected given the fact that the ST is Rey's story. It was never about Finn or Poe. They are supporting characters but they are not the main thrust.

Finn started off in TFA as being little more than the white girls side kick. In TLJ he not so much wants to run from danger as to save his friend, and ends up leading a mission for help the Resistance escape. And in TROS he becomes the sober member of the group whom is able to guide his friends from doing stupid things and comes up with a strategy to take down the ships. It's all contained in the film.

 

I guess if I view it as not necessarily producing that ‘goodness’, but rather allowing him to override his ‘programming’ in order to be who he genuinely is - that works for me. And Jannah’s crew . . . I guess . . . the same? Sure, why not?

 

I never got much leadership from him. Mostly just chasing down other people. And it's never really paid off.
It flirts with being a real story but always hedges it's bets.

That's kind of my crux of dislike with TROS. It hedges it's bets on everything. EXCEPT magical special bloodlines being the single most important thing in this galaxy. That, it slams home.

Wonder why.....

 

Because magical blood is at the heart of the entire saga in every trilogy...

As to the hedging...

Maybe it felt that way, but have you listened to Abrams, Terrio, Trevorrow, and Brandon talk about what it took to make this film?

It's absolutely insane!
That they got a billion out of this thing is just amazing. The only film that reminds me of this one in terms of production challenges is ANH.

If you listen to these folks talk (and Maryann Brandon did a nearly hour long podcast interview), then it is overwhelmingly clear that they didn't hold back on anything. They gave every bit of their creative ability and figuratively murdered their bodies to do it.

Brandon, specifically, pointed out that Abrams was "exhausted" after every day, and Terrio described the writing process as starting with every white board in Bad Robot's studio being covered with notes of all prior films, and what had to be done because of the previous 8, which turned into a 124 page list of "to-do" items before they even got to writing, and they had to write it around recovered footage of Fisher.

Brandon and Abrams invented a whole new method of editing on this film which absolutely changes the game going forward.

I'm not saying you can't hate the film or have issues with it, hell, Abrams has issues with it (as he does with every film he's made), but it's another thing entirely to suggest they didn't give this film everything they had to give and didn't earnestly put the best story forward they could achieve....because they really did.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

OK, I've gone back and forth a few times on this each time I (try to) hear it! I think the line is actually “There were always whispers [mumble mumble] to cheat death”. It kind of jives nicely with the name of the new TIE Whispers too... Maybe next time I hear it I'll think it's 'rumours' again lol.

If anyone wonders what I'm referring to and why this has any relevance to anything concerning the ending and Palpatine(!?), it's a line I Beaumont (I think, or maybe Poe) says but it's quietly in the background when Rey rushes off to check the Jedi texts about Exegol right after it's announced Palpatine has somehow returned. I still can't make out the middle bit, but contextually I think it must be something like '...whispers he [discovered how] to cheat death'.

 

Or it's because JJ himself is from a very "magical" blood line that stems from his parents being producers and getting him in the door in his chosen profession to him getting his teenage son a writing gig on SPIDER-MAN of all things without any experience writing comic books, and he just really likes the confirmation of special lineages being the good guy thing.

 

I do think that was the intent of his portrayal at the final battle at any rate. It was his direction the Resistance was following. He took ownership of the attack and assumed the blame when it seemed like they’d failed. That’s not nothing. I didn’t personally find it all that rousing, but the pieces for development are there. They were assembled competently I think.

I truly deeply loved ‘Rey Nobody’. It was such an incredibly uplifting premise to me. I was really excited to see where that idea would go. But I’ve made my peace with ‘Rey Palpatine’. The ST protagonist, like the PT and OT, was forced to confront the darkside head-on in the conclusion. To make that abstract concept easier to grasp previously, George put a face to it - The Emperor. JJ kept with that motif and then turned Rey’s desire for familial belonging against her with it. Not my preference, but I can accept it well enough. It fits the pattern (checks the box) anyway.

I wouldn’t say I dislike TROS. I think it’s fine. It did its job. My main misgiving is that it left me largely unaffected. I simply didn’t feel the emotions that each scene was clearly constructed to make me feel. Joy, humor, excitement, dread, sadness, triumph - I saw it playing out on the screen, but I wasn’t with it. It felt empty to me. The motion was there, but the emotion was missing. I just didn’t feel it.

It was the same way I felt after watching the finale for ‘Game of Thrones’. All the pieces fit together for me. On paper, it was a satisfactory conclusion. Everybody got to a place that made sense for the ‘idea’ of their character, but I didn’t buy it. It all just sort of happened - getting to the destination without much contemplation on the journey to that destination. Basically, unearned.

As an ending, it works fine. It met the requirements. I was a little underwhelmed though. That’ll probably change in time the more familiar I get with it I think.

 

I think a lot of the pieces are there, but they just feel like pieces to me. They never felt cohesive or "real", more like "Oh well, this is what has to happen so here" type stuff.

I agree about Rey Nobody. It felt like the breath of fresh air Star Wars needed to continue forward. What better way for SW to pass the torch to the next generation than to have the series end as a beginning for more stories outside of the saga. But hey....

I don't hate it. I just feel so very whelmed by a movie that felt so mind-numbingly safe in almost every regard. Even if I don't like aspects of it, they still trigger my "aww nostalgia" centers in my brain. Yes I didn't like bring back Palpatine. But hey Palpatine ya know? I feel cheated of something special in a way more than I hate any of it. Like JJ had a chance to change the narrative, but instead did JJ things.

Right, anything can work on paper when you're in a fantasy world like the GFFA or Westeros. Because fantasy. So yes, Arya killing the NK can work because she's a super cool assassin. But overall her story and his story doesn't really fit together. There's no connection other than proximity. (Rey being a Palpatine doesn't really fit to me other than the proximity of GFFA)

 

That is a strange meta-view of meaning.

It doesn't account for magical blood being in the prequel and the original.
Part of the backlash of ESB when it first came out from some of the fans was that it removed ANH's message of standing up for right by choice making someone rise to greatness, and replaced Luke with being a destined hero by lineage of a magical family.

The prequels literally have magical blood to the point of measuring a microscopic life form inside of cells in the blood, and Anakin has enough in his blood to be higher than anything seen before.

I'm not seeing where a non-magical-blood Star Wars Skywalker saga exists....

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Did I say it had to have none? No. I didn't.

But TLJ set it up perfectly to move BEYOND that. TROS pulls the reigns and dives headfirst into doubling down on it. She has a genetic special lineage AND she adopts the moniker of the hero of old.

She no longer stands as her own. She's a Palpatine and a Skywalker.

Ben Solo was your magical space blood connection. His redemption could have been the last act in this for the magic space blood. Now when the next Star Wars movies come out, we get to play the parentage game more! Woo. So exciting.