[ SECRET POST #4512 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4512 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 27 secrets from Secret Submission Post #646.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

What's edgy about it, and what precisely about it is "high school"

[meadowphoenix]

1) complicating Luke is a perfectly fine impulse. complicating Luke without doing the film work to get knowledgable audience from "there is good in him i know it" to "maybe i should kill him?" and then killing Luke speaks to someone tried to fit Luke into an arc of someone else without doing justice to the characters people know. Since luke is SO beloved, not only for being a great character but for being a moral character? That's about edgyness. And it's the sort of edgyness a filmmaker with one film does.

2) Poe can def be a impulsive and a hothead, but there's no reason to make capable generals be completely ridiculous about how they manage their armies to get Poe to behave like an idiot. Again, this speaks to wanting to complicated characters by diminishing others.

3)I don't mind Rey's arc at all, and but I do mind Kylo's. I think it's plenty believable that Rey would take Luke's distance and meanness and be drawn to Kylo, even though he tortured her. I think it's completely understandable for Kylo to be drawn to the only other person who seems to have his type of power, and to justify his own darkness by trying to diminish Rey.

I think it's completely about audience subversion to make Snoke/Kylo into nothing. If you're going to make a fantasy film and then go "you thought!" to wanting to learn more about a character or a character's relationship you have to know you're going to alienate your audience. it's not crazy for them to read the genre's language and expect certain things from it. Kylo killing Snoke doesn't tell me anything useful about Kylo and it just makes the whole "Snoke was very ~persusive~ when Kylo was a kid" annoying as hell. If they had a relationship that RUINED AN ENTIRE FAMILY, then i need more of it. I don't understand Snoke's draw, and I don't understand how Kylo went from yea or nay on him or nay to yea on having power for himself, and I don't see how Rey matters to that at all. And why? Because nothing about any of these has told me shit about Kylo as a character. I can handle that in the first film, because shadowy villain who's going to keep showing up in two other films? Fine. But this film should have given me SOMETHING. I should know about Kylo and his motivations more than "struggles with darkness" and "wants power and a sympathetic ear." I knew that before. At least with Rey "i want a family" has been clarified through her relationships with Luke and Kylo. She wants it enough to seek it out, but not enough to change who she it for either of those people. But killing off a major influence on Kylo to like subvert shit? Edgy. It's high school to not deepen the character in process of making something edgy.

HTH.

[(Anonymous)]

1 - that Luke would struggle with precisely the same kind of temptation that his father struggled with is completely unsurprising. And I fail to see how Luke struggling with similar issues to his father, but dealing with them in a better and more morally upright way than his father, is "edgy" or "high school". And Luke then overcomes those doubts and has an ending that I, personally, found really satisfying. If you didn't like it because it didn't match your vision for the character, OK! But that's not the same thing as it being objectively shitty!

2 - I think pretty much all of the problems with the Poe storyline were down to bad pacing and the decision to have the low-speed chase. I agree that these are flaws with the movie, but I dont think they're edgy. And even if you don't attribute the issues to the pacing, it's not like there's not lots of movies with character motivation problems and Idiot Ball plots.

3 - I agree that the Snoke stuff was a subversion. I don't think that the movie relied on the subversive-ness of it, though. The point is that Snoke was not a major character, ever. You may not find that satisfying, and that's your right - I think the sequels as a whole would have benefited from providing more background on Kylo's dark side turn (i think it's actually more of a TFA problem than a TLJ problem but it's certainly an issue for both films).

But it's not a twist that Kylo's character turns on, and it's not a twist that the movie relies on. The point is that Kylo has gotten to a place where he's trapped himself on the dark side, where he can't see a way out of it, where he's committed to it himself, not just because Snoke is tricking him into it. And, presumably, the next movie is where he's going to get his way out of it. That absolutely does deepen the character and complocate what's going on with him, because how he initially fell to the dark side is not the only significant or interesting thing about his character. Where he is now, and why he's on the Dark Side now, is also important. And the Rey and Snoke scenes, I think, do a good job of getting at those elements.

In conclusion, I don't think you have to like any of those things, but I don't think any of them are edgy or high school, and the idea that people only like them because they have bad, simplistic taste is stupid.

[meadowphoenix]

1) That's not Luke struggling with the same temptation as his father, lmao. His father struggled with what he wanted personally v. what it was possible to achieve as a Jedi. That's not what Luke was struggling with Kylo. If you're going to say Luke makes a different choice re: Kylo than his dad, then I'm gonna need some more information. Luke actually struggling with actual darkness (which he absolutely did in the first trilogy), like if Snoke had been working on BOTH of them? That's fantastic. But that wasn't what happened so....i'm left with edgy motivations.

2)Okay, that's fine if you believe that but I just said I don't think that's what all the problems with Poe's storyline came down to. It's also in the very construction of the characters. I'm not sure what other movies have to do with this. I'm not nominating other movies for cult classic status.

3)I didn't say the movie relied on it, I said that the decision affected the depth of a major part of the movie, and a major character. I don't disagree about TFA, but TLJ can't exacerbate that and call itself good. To your point about Kylo. Okay why? Why is he trapped there? Why is he trapped there now? I don't know because I have no idea where he was, so I haven't the faintest idea what's stopping him from any movement now. You can say this deepened the character all you want, but unlike what i gave you about Rey, you clearly can't explain how any of Kylo's character beats have gained range or you would have. So yeah, that's film maker edginess.

You don't agree with me and you don't have to find any of this edgy, but you also don't have pretend I'm just being stupid.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think you're being stupid for disliking the movie. I think you're being stupid for saying that people who like the movie only like it because they like edgy high school bullshit.

Wrt Luke, I'm thinking of Luke struggling with the question of how do you use the power that you have as a Jedi? Anakin (influenced no doubt by Sidious) used his power to inflict indiscriminate violence in the service of what he thought was good. Luke was faced with that temptation. In response, he pulled back from the brink, and then went into exile, and then ultimately was inspired to return to try to act in ways that meaningfully improved the galaxy. That's sort of the high level version of what I'm talking about.

The thing with Poe is probably too involved to get into, but my basic point is that I think Poe's and Holdo's respectice motivations actually make sense on their own but they don't give the storyline time to breath and all of their motivations get reflected in actions that are stupid and frustrating because of that.

Kylo - to me - is trapped in the dark side because he thinks he's condemned to it by his heritage and by his choice to kill his father and symbolic father (and there's a consistent theme there where he's obviously trying to kill his own doubts about his own path by killing them), because he thinks that those choices mean that he is committed to it and because he can't imagine an alternative to it, even though emotionally and spiritually he's really not committed to it. So even when Rey offers him a way out, he doesn't understand what it means to take a way out even though he wants to, because he's unable to abandon those commitments that he made in his mind. He hates himself for it but he can't get out of it either. And that's what the setup is for ep 9. It's not about Snoke making him a puppet. It's about the legacy of the choices and mistakes he's made.

Imo!