Thread by @ellardent

Let’s do #tweetnotes on #StarWars: The Rise of Skywalker.

MUTE FOR SPOILERS

In short: Flaws too plentiful to call it a success, entertainment too plentiful to call a failure. Mostly it’s just a shame the debate has become about fandom and author intention rather than the film.

SW-TROS: A generation of kids who didn’t live through the wars have been struggling to find their place in the world.

Taking advantage of this, old dudes with resources to spare are revealed to have been using young fash idiots to put themselves back on top.

Yup. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: We can talk about the flaws, and will. We can talk about the mess of the subtexts. And we can about fan service. And feeble plotting. And space battles that feel lightweight. All that stuff.

But this wasn’t about nothing.
#tweetnotes

SW-TROS: Kylo has always been the angry fan. We all talked about it in TFA. A hurt boy who lashes out and seeks power rather than deal with his issues.

That came from JJ’s first movie. Redemption is baked in. But so’s the need to face the history he’s been emulating. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: We can talk about who that symbol needs to be and how that should have gone.

But if you dismiss Palpatine’s return as fan service or lazy, I can’t help you. Alt-right youth needed to face space Hitler and realise he’s being used.
#tweetnotes

SW-TROS: There’s a definite choice here - it’s why Richard E Grant shows up as an Empire-era leader.

The Empire is coming up through the First Order because…well Jesus, what else did you think would happen? #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: I am TOTALLY FINE with finding this repetitive or obvious. It is.

It doesn’t have to satisfy you, but let’s not miss that it’s *there*. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: With that out the way, let’s talk about JJ Abrams.

Not the monster who wanted to kill Rian’s Johnson’s movie (seriously?), or the genius who can do anything (seriously?), but the guy who directed Super 8, M:I3, Star Trek, Into Darkness and the Lost pilot. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: I’m indebted to @HelenLOHara here, who unlocked a simple fact:

JJ made Star Trek, which confidently made all the old Trek tropes fun for a new audience.

Then made Into Darkness. Which plundered any *other* tropes Trek had - KAHN! - and annoyed everyone. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: This is his Star Wars: Into Darkness. ”What else did the old sequels do that I can do with a twist?”

Not for JJ the urge to push forward, instead it’s “Do that thing you like more”.

That’s Super 8’s Amblin homage, or M:I3 showing *how* masks are made.
#tweetnotes

SW-TROS: Within that, note how JJ sucks at conclusions. The Starkiller attack was airless, tensionless. The way Super 8 came together was….well, it didn’t.

He makes homage engines that turn over decently. Not things that are made to climax and conclude. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: I loved The Force Awakens. A prequel palate cleanser that ran through every cool bit from the original trilogy in one movie:
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But we all knew it was the Star Wars we knew, rather than a new take. The fresh characters were the big win. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: Now Abrams tries to do the same thing again - give you the things Star Wars sequels have.

Romances. New planets and creatures. Ancestry hassles. Redemption. Etc. Etc.

It’s a limited approach, is all. And at least it’s done with colour and glee. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: But of *course* “I’m your grandfather” is going play limp. Every variant of that can only be ‘a bit like Luke and his dad’. It can’t be what it was to Empire Strikes Back: a whole new thing Star Wars never did before. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: So, I’m mad keen on The Last Jedi, as you can see. But also keen on Force Awakens.

But more, I’m bothered by the flaws of both. The reduxes of one, the perfunctory plot of the other.

Which means I might be the person TROS is for.
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#tweetnotes

SW-TROS: See, I’m besotted with the idea that Force users don’t have to have a lineage. That needed saying, and was said well.

Yet I’m fine with Rey’s retcon. Cos it gives this film some heft.

The character remains who she is. Changing *what* she is? I’m fine with. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: Working it backwards, this movie needed a villain.

Kylo is too deeply understood to simply be reduced to that. This is Star Wars, a black and white universe, we’re not going to make a sympathetic character irredeemable.

No Snoke, so sure, Palpatine, fine. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: But you make that happen, you’re trapped with this becoming a movie about Kylo Ren. Rey needs a better story than “Show up and stop what’s happening to Kylo”.

That’s how you get to ’granddaughter’. By wanting Rey to be the lead in this movie. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: Again, you’re not required to like the idea just because it solves a tricky problem.

But to hell with the “JJ wanted to undo Johnson”. Both guys are trying to solve their stories, they just have very different tastes and methods.

This isn’t news. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: Whatever finale-saga stuff we don’t care for, this is the story of a woman who learns an old, pale, male evil forced her into a crap, powerless life and intends to use her for his power.

And she stops the mutherfucker.

I’m fine with that story being told. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: More than fine, I’m keen on building to an ending that takes two kids who have been used by the last generation and left uncertain, that shows that cooperation against old evils is the way to progress. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: TLJ’s “You don’t have a destiny, you only have choices” is wholly compatible with TROS’s “Someone else says you have a destiny due to your bloodline”.

Defeating what your elders tell you should be is fine by me. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: Rey’s fate reconciles ideas from Last Jedi, it doesn’t stomp over them. She’s no less self-made for fighting past a blood legacy than for not having one.

Kylo’s punished in standard movie terms. Too many crimes to live. Be good and begone. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: And so Rey buries the past. Thanks for all you did, Luke and Leia, but it’s time to not define ourselves by Jedi colours.

Yellow lightsaber. A torch to carry forward as a person, not a Jedi of the old, dusty kind.

And I name myself. I get to do that. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: You think Rey’s not going back to her friends? Never going to love? Fuck that.

Nor is she starting a Jedi academy, ruled over by old books.

Johnson made it clear, this doesn’t contradict: You don’t burn books. You just don’t have to live by them literally. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: But bah, I know, this is just one reading. One I like, one the film allows.

But some people thought she was moving to Tatooine. Which is weak film craft on the makers’ part.

And there’s LOADS of that weak craft going on. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: Because yes, good lord is there some lousy recycling here.

“Let’s look for a map again” - also the plot of the last JJ film - is a rotten choice. It wasn’t good then, it’s not better here. No better done, not for a better reason, nor better resolved. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: And holy cow do we crap out on life and death stakes. FOUR character deaths get undone. Four!

Two shoved in semi-romances. Fan hopes aside, neither works on its own terms either.

Finn realising other troopers desert means little, too. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: But I’m going to give mad points to one bit of JJ recycling - and this is his remix technique at its very best.

TLJ joins Rey and Run through the Force, makes it physical with the raindrops.

TROS grabs that and makes it a SF-magic power. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: If this film *only* did that, I’d like it.

A falling mask gives away Rey’s location at a crucial moment.

A fight across two planes of reality.

And that FUCKING LIGHTSABER HANDOVER. Woo!
#tweetnotes

SW-TROS: The counter to that is JJ throwing in ‘healing’ powers - like how Time Lords sometimes do in modern Doctor Who.

I’m fine with it, but it’s just sort of there. It’s not ‘wrong for Star Wars’ but it’s not interesting. It’s just a gadget, set up and paid off. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: Yet…

Rey is about to cut herself off and do what Luke did. That was wonderful, human. too much pain, too big a nightmare.

Luke was wrong to do it (people seem to forget Last Jedi is about that), so he’s the perfect Force Ghost to show up and prevent it. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: So sure, you can tell Leia’s old footage.

You can tell Ford’s been given a huge payday to show up and do the thing that Carrie was supposed to do.

You can tell JJ and Johnson have different sensibilities. (Like you didn’t see Empire and Jedi clash tones!) #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: I know, I know. Snoke’s a clone - yep, yawn, banal. I know the quest is drab. I know your personal hopes weren’t what this film did. Mine either.

We can do this all day. Hell, the culture will do it forever.

But I’m gonna enjoy some of this stuff. That OK? #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: Rey ends up - subtextual - the child of Luke and Leia.

And given the incest that defined their early relationship, hating on that seems to be an active rejection of a bloody good wheeze. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: And honestly, sadly, I’m not sure JJ would have known how to use Rose in the main story, except as another body.

Her job in TLJ was to be Finn’s conscience. And that’s done now. (Arguably it was done in TFA, but Johnson wanted to do it deeper.) #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: There’s no room for JJ’s own new characters either. I’m betting everyone was whittled back from the 3hr cut this was likely to be.

I dunno that the job of sequels is to include a turn for everyone from the last movie. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: Bottom line, I enjoyed this movie.

I did not enjoy it more than my top four Star Wars movies.

Loads of things people are mad about are fine by me. They serve story worth telling. A text worth reading. #tweetnotes

SW-TROS: Loads of things are the absolute worst of JJ’s technique.

A couple are the best of it.

I honestly don’t know how you solve this messy series, and I like the attempt.

All I know for sure is that *nobody* is going to be happy with these #tweetnotes.

Still, if the #tweetnotes gave you anything to think about, do consider tipping me for the work here. Cheers.

ko-fi.com/ellardent

Oh, one thing I really liked in The Rise of Skywalker: the utter bonkerness of Palpatine’s lair.

All those chanting hooded guys, gathered to...watch him in his life support rig?

Utterly unexplained and all the better for it. The only time JJ reached for true oddness.

It was a bit Prisoner-like. Or something. In my head that’s where Siths end up.

You go good, you get an afterlife, and even the chance to return as a Force Ghost. You go bad, you end up like a weak Ringwraith. Shuffling ghouls, stuck in a shitty cold cave hating things en masse.