Tumblr crosspost (17 January 2020)
Aug. 27th, 2021 07:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineAn anon asked:
What were your thoughts on the Skywalkers in TROS? Personally I found it all kind of underwhelming but a lot of that stems from my baseline issues with how the Skywalkers were set up in the ST (the waffling on Leia's Jedi training for instance) and the absence of any proper scenes between Ben and Leia (obviously not 100% the filmmakers' fault)
I replied:
My thoughts are fairly negative and definitely rambling, so I’ll put them under a cut!
I’m torn, because I think that a) the Skywalker stuff was the best part of the movie, and b) it was kind of underwhelming.
I feel like my issues are sort of epitomized in the whole “Rey Skywalker” thing. I saw someone on Twitter saying that “Skywalker” essentially stands in for “protagonist” in the movies, and that by taking the name, Rey is claiming a central position in her/the story. And I feel that it’s pretty much intended that way.
Buuuut I don’t see “Skywalker” that way at all in the OT or PT or TLJ? It’s a specific family with its own history and dynamics, for good and evil. Rey barely knew Luke and is (vaguely) a protégée but hardly an adoptive daughter to Leia (who is Leia Organa in any case). Ben is her LI, which is fine, but it’s still a pretty weird stretch for her to take his grandfather’s/uncle’s name because of that (esp given how destructive his ties to both of them are). She just doesn’t have that much to do with their history as a family, particularly the ones who are actually named Skywalker.
I think part of that is that so much of the family legacy revolves around Anakin, who is this weird and completely unexplained absence in the ST. I’ve heard people saying that TROS is basically JJ undoing TLJ, but I actually feel that it does a lot more to undo ROTJ and the prequels.
Like, Anakin as Chosen One is just confusing at this point. And we’re apparently supposed to believe that Obi-Wan and Yoda would be more involved with Anakin’s family than Anakin himself (????). His redemption, something monumental for Luke, might almost as well not have happened. We have no idea how Leia has related to him since ROTJ (which managed to convey some complexity to her feelings in the space of about a minute) or how Ben was raised to think of him or how Luke feels about/deals with his legacy (and I don’t care about the shifting explanations in the EU; if it’s necessary for the film, it should be in the film). I ended up feeling like the filmmakers mostly just … didn’t care about him apart from the Vader paraphernalia.
I’ll admit I was pretty happy with Leia as a Jedi, just because I’ve found theexcuses reasons not to follow up on ROTJ’s implication that she’d be one so completely unpersuasive. Young Leia and Luke training together was a welcome surprise, too! OTOH, the reason she stopped being one and the very belated introduction of her lightsaber is … meh. It’d be better if that whole arc had been introduced in TFA, even if very very briefly.
I agree that the limitations on Leia’s role, while not wholly the filmmakers’ fault for obvious reasons, is pretty messy. Especially wrt Ben. If Leia simply reaching out was enough to knock Kylo back into Ben, and followed up by imaginary Han telling him to fight for what Leia cared about (which is essentially him talking to himself), then—I just would like a stronger sense of her impact. I mean, he has literally no lines after his redemption, so it’s not like there isn’t room for him to say something.
(Honestly, in some ways, I think it might have worked better if they just killed Leia off right away and dealt with her legacy from that point, instead of railroading themselves with the footage, even though I think they did about as good a job of integrating it as anyone could have. I am curious about what the original plan was before Carrie died, though.)
I also regretted that there was no reconciliation or… anything between Luke and Ben. It was clearly set up in TLJ and it’s not like Luke isn’t capable of appearing, so that’s just kind of hanging.
A lot of this is about what’s not there. I did like what was! I think we got a pretty clear sense of Luke and Leia’s bond, which is one of my favourite relationships in SW. I liked that Leia was an inspiring figure to pretty much everyone with the least reason to be inspired, including her son. I liked Luke showing up. I liked Bendemption, of course (*fistbumps 2016 Elizabeth*). And at least hearing Anakin! It just felt kind of disconnected, and I think that disconnected is the last thing the Skywalkers should be.
What were your thoughts on the Skywalkers in TROS? Personally I found it all kind of underwhelming but a lot of that stems from my baseline issues with how the Skywalkers were set up in the ST (the waffling on Leia's Jedi training for instance) and the absence of any proper scenes between Ben and Leia (obviously not 100% the filmmakers' fault)
I replied:
My thoughts are fairly negative and definitely rambling, so I’ll put them under a cut!
I’m torn, because I think that a) the Skywalker stuff was the best part of the movie, and b) it was kind of underwhelming.
I feel like my issues are sort of epitomized in the whole “Rey Skywalker” thing. I saw someone on Twitter saying that “Skywalker” essentially stands in for “protagonist” in the movies, and that by taking the name, Rey is claiming a central position in her/the story. And I feel that it’s pretty much intended that way.
Buuuut I don’t see “Skywalker” that way at all in the OT or PT or TLJ? It’s a specific family with its own history and dynamics, for good and evil. Rey barely knew Luke and is (vaguely) a protégée but hardly an adoptive daughter to Leia (who is Leia Organa in any case). Ben is her LI, which is fine, but it’s still a pretty weird stretch for her to take his grandfather’s/uncle’s name because of that (esp given how destructive his ties to both of them are). She just doesn’t have that much to do with their history as a family, particularly the ones who are actually named Skywalker.
I think part of that is that so much of the family legacy revolves around Anakin, who is this weird and completely unexplained absence in the ST. I’ve heard people saying that TROS is basically JJ undoing TLJ, but I actually feel that it does a lot more to undo ROTJ and the prequels.
Like, Anakin as Chosen One is just confusing at this point. And we’re apparently supposed to believe that Obi-Wan and Yoda would be more involved with Anakin’s family than Anakin himself (????). His redemption, something monumental for Luke, might almost as well not have happened. We have no idea how Leia has related to him since ROTJ (which managed to convey some complexity to her feelings in the space of about a minute) or how Ben was raised to think of him or how Luke feels about/deals with his legacy (and I don’t care about the shifting explanations in the EU; if it’s necessary for the film, it should be in the film). I ended up feeling like the filmmakers mostly just … didn’t care about him apart from the Vader paraphernalia.
I’ll admit I was pretty happy with Leia as a Jedi, just because I’ve found the
I agree that the limitations on Leia’s role, while not wholly the filmmakers’ fault for obvious reasons, is pretty messy. Especially wrt Ben. If Leia simply reaching out was enough to knock Kylo back into Ben, and followed up by imaginary Han telling him to fight for what Leia cared about (which is essentially him talking to himself), then—I just would like a stronger sense of her impact. I mean, he has literally no lines after his redemption, so it’s not like there isn’t room for him to say something.
(Honestly, in some ways, I think it might have worked better if they just killed Leia off right away and dealt with her legacy from that point, instead of railroading themselves with the footage, even though I think they did about as good a job of integrating it as anyone could have. I am curious about what the original plan was before Carrie died, though.)
I also regretted that there was no reconciliation or… anything between Luke and Ben. It was clearly set up in TLJ and it’s not like Luke isn’t capable of appearing, so that’s just kind of hanging.
A lot of this is about what’s not there. I did like what was! I think we got a pretty clear sense of Luke and Leia’s bond, which is one of my favourite relationships in SW. I liked that Leia was an inspiring figure to pretty much everyone with the least reason to be inspired, including her son. I liked Luke showing up. I liked Bendemption, of course (*fistbumps 2016 Elizabeth*). And at least hearing Anakin! It just felt kind of disconnected, and I think that disconnected is the last thing the Skywalkers should be.