What do you think of the Sequel Trilogy? - a general discussion thread — Page 14

Dagenspear said:

daveybjones999 said:

but even if you agree that Last Jedi did abandon what was setup by Force Awakens, at least most of the runtime of the 8th movie isn’t devoted to undoing what the previous movie did. There’s also a lot of things that aren’t properly setup that just happened hear, the film feels more like a series of video game fetch quests instead of a cohesive narrative, and it lazily brings back Palpatine. I actually used to like the movie but the more I rewatched it the more I grew to hate the movie.

I’d disagree, as I think reylo being a romance existing in TLJ alone undoes TFA, which I think set up a straightforward antagonistic relationship and I think TLJ undoes that and undoes the potential relationship dynamic between Finn and Rey in pursuit of it, which was a lot of TFA. I think reylo is a solid amount of that movie. That, plus, just shrugging and going the first order rules the galaxy now. While TFA was open ended on the galaxy, I find it out of nowhere that the first order rule the galaxy.

As far as bringing back Palpatine, well, I think that’s poor writing construction, but also Kylo is a complete black hole of a character and a villain (anything you could do is basically soft rebooting him, which I think both DOTF, if it’s legit, and TROS both do, in different ways), so I don’t care enough. I think Kylo has basically nothing to offer. At least Palpatine is entertaining to me. I’ve had a stance for some time that I’d have preferred if Kylo had just been killed by Snoke. They’re already wrecking the whole family of Skywalkers/Solos, so who cares if that garbage pail of a character Kylo survives. That’d have been actually surprising to me. At least Snoke has gravitas to me.

Except that while yes in The Last Jedi there’s an emotional connection between them that you could read as being romantic, but the film ends with Rey literally rejecting him she actually rejects him twice. The last scene of Kylo Ren in the movie is him looking up and seeing Rey in one of their force connection moments, while she stares at him and closes the door. She literally closing the door on there even being a romance between them. It’s Rise of Skywalker that decides, actually no there is romantic connection between them, not Last Jedi. Sure you could argue that Last Jedi is undoing the potential romance between Rey and Finn, but it’s not undoing the antagonistic relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren. The start the movie as foes and end the movie as foes. Sure they make their relationship more complex and hint that there could be something between them, but Rey rejects it and they and the movie as foes.

As far as Kylo goes, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. Snoke is an incredibly boring and dull villain with literally nothing to him. Ren is way more interesting of a character given his past and his character motivations. Sure a complex character isn’t necessarily better than a simple character but I think Kylo Ren is the best thing about the entire trilogy and one of only things that’s consistently good through all 3 movies.

daveybjones999 said:

Except that while yes in The Last Jedi there’s an emotional connection between them that you could read as being romantic, but the film ends with Rey literally rejecting him she actually rejects him twice. The last scene of Kylo Ren in the movie is him looking up and seeing Rey in one of their force connection moments, while she stares at him and closes the door. She literally closing the door on there even being a romance between them. It’s Rise of Skywalker that decides, actually no there is romantic connection between them, not Last Jedi. Sure you could argue that Last Jedi is undoing the potential romance between Rey and Finn, but it’s not undoing the antagonistic relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren. The start the movie as foes and end the movie as foes. Sure they make their relationship more complex and hint that there could be something between them, but Rey rejects it and they and the movie as foes.

What you just argued is that the movie wastes an entire film setting up a romance that it then seeks to shirk away from, making it’s own story pointless. That the romance exists at all is what I criticize, not whether or not the end of the movie tries to hide it. It came out of nowhere, was trash written and then Kylo is dumb and a psycho so Rey rejects being with him, being used to sideline Rey in her own story and make her subservient to Kylo’s agency and what he wants and needs for his story. I think that’s just undoing it and then doing it again at best, which I think renders it pointless.

It does undo the antagonism, because it strips away all of Rey’s anger and issues with Kylo and then shrugs at just them still being enemies, because Rey’s not a psycho and Kylo is. That means nothing to them as characters. I think that the romance happened at all was nonsense. There was no point. Them being foes is just Rey being a hero and Kylo being a villain. By shirking away all of Rey’s reasons to hate Kylo, based on her personal experiences with him, in putting them in a romance, the movie strips Rey of all her emotional agency in being against for her personal experiences with him and what he did to her, instead making her against him because he’s the bad guy and she’s the hero, not because of anything he did to her or anyone she cares about.

I think there’s no real complexity to ‘Rey fell for Kylo out of nowhere and she hates him again’.

As far as Kylo goes, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. Snoke is an incredibly boring and dull villain with literally nothing to him. Ren is way more interesting of a character given his past and his character motivations. Sure a complex character isn’t necessarily better than a simple character but I think Kylo Ren is the best thing about the entire trilogy and one of only things that’s consistently good through all 3 movies.

I think Kylo has no real past or real motivations in TLJ. The closest thing is Luke went psycho once, so Kylo murdered every single person in his jedi school and joined Snoke. Why does he want to rule the galaxy? Why did he join Snoke? Why does he want power? Who was Kylo before he became a maniac? The movie has nothing. My goodness by the time we reveal that Vader is Luke’s dad in the OT in TESB, we’ve learned more about him as a whole. We get no information about Kylo beyond the vague notion of Kylo being turned by Snoke and having too much Vader in him, and then Luke’s mental breakdown in the tent and then Kylo just a psycho now who wants to assist the first order into blowing up planets, kisses Snoke’s behind and is willing to murder his dad. Why? I dunno. Something something power, something something Vader maybe? For some reason?