they seemed almost old friends
Arya and Dany in Winterfell for @mizznancywheeler <3
they seemed almost old friends
Arya and Dany in Winterfell for @mizznancywheeler <3
There is a famous story told in Chassidic literature that addresses this very question. The Master teaches the student that God created everything in the world to be appreciated, since everything is here to teach us a lesson.
One clever student asks “What lesson can we learn from atheists? Why did God create them?”
The Master responds “God created atheists to teach us the most important lesson of them all — the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs and act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that god commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his acts are based on an inner sense of morality. And look at the kindness he can bestow upon others simply because he feels it to be right.”
“This means,” the Master continued “that when someone reaches out to you for help, you should never say ‘I pray that God will help you.’ Instead for the moment, you should become an atheist, imagine that there is no God who can help, and say ‘I will help you.’”
ETA source: Tales of Hasidim Vol. 2 by Mar
I started reading this and was worried it would be something attacking atheists, or bashing religion, but this makes me really, really happy.
imagine that there is no God who can help, and say ‘I will help you.’”
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
Yes. YES.
So, as most of you are now aware, I genuinely hated The Last Jedi. It’s my least favorite Star Wars film to date and before you read on I want you all to know that if you disagree, I don’t really want to hear from you. You can think differently than me and that’s fine, I just want you to scroll away from my post and keep it to yourself. Thanks and enjoy my rant.
The thing that made me most angry about this movie was the blatant disrespect to all that was previously set up in The Force Awakens and the other Star Wars films whether it be plot or characters. We’ll discuss plot first.
JJ Abrams crafted a solid Star Wars flick in The Force Awakens. I’ll be the first one to tell you I don’t think The Force Awakens is a perfect movie, but I am a fan of Abrams and I think he did a good job capturing the spirit of Star Wars and giving it enough of a mix of new and familiar to bring the interest of fans back after the prequels.
Personally, I enjoyed the prequels. Yes there are silly things in them and George Lucas could’ve done a better job at storytelling, but I have respect for those movies. They don’t feel out of place in the Star Wars universe and they took us to new planets and let us see some backstory that I thought was worthwhile despite its flaws.
The Force Awakens gave us some beautiful set up for future films and that’s why people haven’t stopped talking about the mysteries it created up until now, when we were given, excuse me, a flaming trash heap as an answer. The Force Awakens set up several major mysteries to be answered in future films that were brutally sidelined or simply trashed by The Last Jedi.
The first of these mysteries being Rey’s parentage. When I first went to see The Force Awakens, I honestly didn’t expect there to be such an emphasis on where Rey came from. Knowing some basics about what’s now Star Wars Legends, I’d known about Jacen and Jaina Solo and had figured it would be likely that the new films borrowed that plotline and made it their own. Abrams surprised me and took things in a different direction, building mystery around the idea that Rey was dropped on Jakku for an important reason through the use of flashbacks, Rey’s unexplained power in the force, and the multiple shots and questions from characters that implied they either knew Rey was important or had a curiosity about where she’d come from.
Some examples of this would be when Kylo Ren gets angry when his officer tells him there was a girl and he asks “what girl?” implying he knew something about Rey or a girl who might rise against him as well as the scene with Maz Kanata where she asks Han “who’s the girl?” and he gives a look that appeared to imply he knew something more about her before we cut to something else.
Another mystery was built up surrounding who the character of Snoke was and where he came from. Snoke was such an enigmatic character in The Force Awakens. He seemed ancient and was spoke of as being extremely powerful to the point where he was able to turn Ben from the light and has clearly caused a lot of destruction. He is the “Supreme Leader.” That implies some level of importance and I found myself wondering how Snoke came to be in such a position of power and why Ben Solo chose to follow him and become Kylo Ren.
The other major question brought up in The Force Awakens is obviously about what really happened to Luke Skywalker that caused him to abandon all he knows for isolation and left us with the massive cliffhanger at the end of the movie where Rey comes face to face with Luke himself. It’s a dramatic moment and was a big topic of conversation after the movie ended. Did Luke recognize Rey? Why did he decide to come to the first Jedi temple?
Now to discuss The Force Awakens’s characters! The Force Awakens honestly gave us some really fun and compelling new characters. We got Rey, the caring girl from Jakku who mirrored Luke in her unabashed kindness for those she holds dear, her skill as a pilot, and her desert location. She’s also quite in tune with the force and is able to complete mind tricks and other amazing feats that most others had to have at least some level of training before they could complete. She was left alone on Jakku as a child and longs to discover who her parents are as well as find belonging in a future where Luke’s lightsaber calls to her specifically. Why? Who are Rey’s parents? What is Rey’s connection to Luke’s lightsaber and how is she able to be so strong in the force without training? All questions I was left with after the movie was over that I found compelling and hoped to see answered in a future film.
Next we have Finn. Finn is a great character. He’s funny and compassionate. He sees that what is going around him is wrong and has the courage to step away from it in order to chase the light. The Force Awakens gives Finn a great arc as he is able to realize that he needs to fight for what he knows is right and do what he can to protect his friends. Finn is given a lot of great material and a lot of focus in The Force Awakens. It’s well deserved and after he is hurt near the end of the film it left me concerned! What would happen to Finn in the next movie? Would he go after Rey? Would him and Poe get closer and perhaps have to work together again in the next film?
Poe Dameron is one of the first new characters we see in the Force Awakens. He’s brave and skilled as a pilot and loves BB-8. Even after he is tortured by Kylo Ren he will not give up information on The Resistance because he cares about their safety and always tries to do what he feels is right even if it puts him at risk. He’s one of the first people to see Finn for who he truly is and treats him well. He respects General Organa and follows orders when he knows he must.
Lastly, Kylo Ren. He is presented to us as the son of Leia and Han and that his true name is Ben Solo. We know that Snoke seduced him to the dark side and that he was training under his uncle Luke when he destroyed everything in order to join the dark side. There is obvious conflict in what he wants. He wants to be like Darth Vader, but he also is unsure whether he has enough strength to cut his familiar ties to the light. When he kills his father, he seems to regret it, but then commits to the dark side when he chases down Rey and Finn and……quite literally attempts to murder them until he sees Rey’s power and tries to get her to join him. What made Ben Solo become Kylo Ren? What happened with Luke that caused Ben to turn to the darkness? Why does he have an obsession with Darth Vader? Did no one tell him that Vader regretted his actions in the end? How did Snoke seduce Ben?
Ok………so here comes the Last Jedi and……..ok, I’m going to say it. It was an awful movie. It didn’t work as a sequel to The Force Awakens at all and created more questions than answers.
We’ll start with the plot. First off……apparently star ships or whatever need fuel now and the ship is stuck trying to get away from the first order because of its lack of fuel. I’m sorry, but that’s boring. Maybe if this was a tv show and that was the plot of one episode? Ok, that’s fine, but this is a Star Wars film that I waited two years for and that’s what Rian Johnson came up with? It’s boring.
Immediately a character that I was excited to see was killed off. As soon as Paige Tico came onscreen I was excited! She was hyped up and it was nice to see some more diverse characters! But then she dies. Immediately. Yes she was doing something heroic, but…….ok then.
We see Poe take a risky action that could potentially cause a lot of deaths, but he does it anyway against orders. I have a problem with this. The Last Jedi made Poe a jerk. Poe was one of my favorites in The Force Awakens because while he was the best of the best, he still was humble and cared about the well being of others. This…..was not the Poe that I came to care about in The Force Awakens. This Poe is rude. He risks the lives of others for what he wants. He’s cocky, he’s arrogant, and he’s straight up annoying. I see what they were trying to do. They wanted to give Poe an arc, but was this all they could come up with? It directly contradicted the character they had created for him in the past film.
Vice Admiral Holdo also just seemed like a jerk. She looked like Effie Trinket and she literally had no reason to keep her plan from the rest of the rebels. That was just irresponsible, bad leadership as a way to keep her plan from the audience. Bad storytelling. Bad, bad writing.
Next we have Finn. I was so excited to see Finn again and they literally gave him nothing of importance to do in the film. Finn was given no further character growth in the Last Jedi and was sidelined for a mission that ended up being completely pointless and made the film drag. We then have to witness him getting slapped in the face by General Hux for literally no reason. Ok on a side note……what was with the slapping in this movie? is it Rian Johnson’s fetish? I’m?????? It didn’t work and it was gross. Finn fights Phasma for two seconds before she dies (?)
Phasma is even more underused than in the Force Awakens. Why did they even bring her back unless they were going to give her something more interesting to do? They brought her back to kill her again. A huge waste of what could’ve been an interesting character.
Back to Finn! Finn has one moment of bravery in the film that actually began to get to me. He was going to sacrifice himself to save everyone by flying into a cannon thing, but before he could Rose saves him by knocking his ship out of the air. She awkwardly kisses him and then passes out. Was…….was I supposed to believe for one second that there was a romance between them? Because I didn’t. There was no romantic chemistry at all and last time I checked Finn really liked Rey? I don’t…….why didn’t they give Finn better stuff to do in this movie??????
Rose was another character that was hyped up, but she was literally as bland as possible. Her sister dies two minutes into the movie and that’s all they give you. A dead sibling doesn’t make a character interesting. I wished they’d given her more personality or something because she was just so dang boring! I love Kelly Marie Tran and I wished they’d given her a better character. The entire casino subplot felt so out of place. It felt like something that I would’ve seen in The Captiol of The Hunger Games, not Star Wars and the weirdly forced animal cruelty sub-subplot was just……very forced and bizarre. Like, clearly I’m not for animal cruelty or anything, but it didn’t work and took us away from the more interesting parts of the film.
Finn and Rose don’t even speak to the master codebreaker dude they were supposed to find. Instead they find Benicio Del Toro and are like “well good enough I guess” and then he randomly betrays them. Literally….WHAT WAS THIS CHARACTER?! He literally did nothing interesting and was just there to be….weird. Like, come on. Benicio Del Toro is a great actor and this is what you gave him???? Really?! It was awful. He didn’t get any characterization besides being “weird” so when he betrayed Finn and Rose I felt nothing. I didn’t even realize what happened at first that’s how confused I was. Stop hiring great actors to play underwritten, boring roles that have zero significance to the plot. Seriously.
We got like…..zero closure on Han’s death. I expected something, anything about that in this movie and all we got was one line of dialogue from Luke and he….really didn’t seem to care that much? I heard that Leia was supposed to have an important role in this movie, but all she got was to nearly be blown up, fly back to the ship in an extremely awkward and cheesy scene, and then stay in a coma for a while until she came back and yelled at Poe a few times. Like……you made Leia a general. Let Leia be a general. She’s one of the best characters in all of Star Wars and yet she has less to do here than in The Force Awakens.
Now to Kylo Ren. Honestly………he was the most interesting character in the movie. It’s all well and good to have interesting villains, but the heroes were so bland in comparison that I found myself actually genuinely hoping for more Kylo Ren screen time just so I didn’t have to watch any more of the horrible character assassination going on with literally anyone else. Adam Driver is undeniably a talented actor and he does a good job in the movie, but again, his character doesn’t even really get to go anywhere significant. He continues his fascination with Rey and does the same thing he does in the Force Awakens where he tries to waver between the light and dark, which…..doesn’t really work anymore even after you see his backstory (however briefly) because we already saw him kill his father. He killed Han Solo. He killed one of the most beloved characters in the franchise. I think it’s pretty safe to say that JJ Abrams set up Kylo Ren for a fairly specific path and now Rian is like “la la la I wanted to do something new and edgy!” well fuck off Rian!
Rey is reduced to be boring and bland as well. She was a fun protagonist in The Force Awakens and I hoped to see her grow in The Last Jedi, but she didn’t. In fact, she regressed! We watched Rey see her only father figure murdered in The Force Awakens by Kylo Ren who she proceeded to fight and try to kill because he’s a murderer. In this movie she seems to forgive him? And I don’t get it. It’s all well and good to have a forgiving character, but that’s not who Rey was set up to be before and that’s what gave her something interesting. She had an anger that could potentially take her to the dark side and yet we never see her truly tempted to join the darkness despite them telling us several times in this movie that she’s tempted.
The instant I knew there was something majorly wrong with this movie was when the dramatic and honestly very beautiful scene where Rey hands the lightsaber to Luke was butchered as Luke literally takes the lightsaber and chucks it off a cliff. Like, WHAT?! You cannot convince me that Luke would EVER do that. That was the lightsaber of his father, given to him by Obi-Wan Kenobi. He likely thought he wouldn’t see that lightsaber again and now a girl showed up to hand it to him where he thought no one would find him? You can’t tell me that he’d do that.
Luke was straight up mean to Rey this entire movie. The Luke Skywalker I know was never intentionally cruel. He was unabashedly kind and that was what made him a unique character. He saw the good in everyone, even Darth Vader, when no one else did. We find out that Luke considered murdering his nephew because he saw him thinking about the dark side and horrible things. I literally was speechless. Why on earth would Luke Skywalker even have the passing thought of killing the son of his sister and best friend let alone take out his frickin lightsaber and ignite it getting ready to murder a teenage boy?! Has Rian Johnson ever seen Star Wars?! Did we see different versions of the original trilogy?! I’m at a loss of how this was ever approved.
Instead of the kind Luke everyone fell in love with, we get a mean old man who teases poor Rey, drinks alien tit milk, and lives with a bunch of ugly ass bird things that are annoying and only exist to sell toys. Chewbacca, R2D2, and C3PO barely appear in the movie at all and don’t even get to do anything worthwhile. Maz Kanata skypes in for a quick 30 seconds and does nothing. She was an awesome character and I hoped to hear how she got possession of Luke’s lightsaber. Guess that gets pushed aside as well. Also……literally Rey’s force vision from the Force Awakens is ignored completely.
In the end all we get is a holographic Luke fighting (?) his nephew and then dying? Did Luke’s force juice get used up? Did he need to fuel up on more tit milk? I’m so confused! It was all so unnecessary and I’m so angry that they ruined Luke Skywalker. Luke Skywalker was literally the first crush I ever had as a kid and now……..they did this. I’m very disappointed.
Snoke was killed in two seconds without any explanation of his character or how he apparently managed to connect Kylo Ren and Rey through the force? I have no idea what the intention there was. Rey’s parentage was explained away after Rey tries to look in this weird ass mirror thing to find her parents and instead Kylo Ren tells Rey her parents were quite literally no one and sold her for drinking water. There’s no explanation for how Rey is so strong in the force or knows Jedi mind tricks. Yoda appears and sets the Jedi temple on fire. Can all force ghosts just set shit on fire? In that case why can’t we have Obi-Wan or Anakin come and set Kylo Ren or Snoke on fire? I’m—–what?????
Regardless of all that, I’m just not excited for Star Wars anymore. Most of the humor in The Last Jedi didn’t land. A lot of it took away from what could’ve been nice, serious scenes and most of it felt too modern and used too much slang from our own world. The theater I was in honestly barely laughed and many seemed to be fairly disappointed when the movie ended. I don’t know how JJ is gonna clean this mess up, but I’m not looking forward to Rian’s random trilogy at all. I could go on about more things I didn’t like. Like, how we didn’t even get a real lightsaber fight. Every intriguing mystery or character set up in The Force Awakens was given a shrug and a push aside in The Last Jedi. I don’t dislike the movie because it was “too new” or “showed us things we didn’t see in past Star Wars films.” I didn’t like it because it wasn’t a good sequel and didn’t keep any continuity with the characters the films had already built up. It was boring and didn’t feel like it belonged in the same universe as the other films. Thanks for reading.
I agree with absolutely everything you said.
Me before seeing The Last Jedi:
Me after The Last Jedi:
this is gospel (piano version) layered 3 times: left ear, right ear, and middle
headphones are strongly recommended!
I AM SCREAMING THIS IS BEAUTIFUL
I CAN NOW DIE HAPPY. THANK YOU GOD AND ALSO JESUS FOR THIS WONDERFUL PIECE OF HEAVEN
OHMY G O D
I AM CRYING OH MY GOODNESS
Gilly just solved Westeros biggest mystery and all she gets is a grumpy boyfriend and a road trip
This is so true though 😂😂😂
💀 Basically
I TRIED TO EDIT BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS AND I FUCKED UP
DO YOU THINK ANYONE WILL NOTICE THAT THE VOCALS ARE NOT AS THEY SHOULD BE
i WALK a LONlee ROaD, Thr ONlEE ONE ThAt I HAV EvA KnOWN.
BuT itS Onlee Mee aND I WAalK AloNE
I had to see/hear this, so now you do too
This is a kind of pain which demands others experience it.
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS IM
this is my fucking anthem bitches
ItS BACK
I'm dying
Me went Barry was figuring out who was Savitar
current mood
spicer said this shit during passover. like don’t believe for a second he made an innocent mistake, that he wasn’t aware of what he was saying.
like this is explicitly antisemitic and he clearly doesn’t understand why
he straight up doesn’t believe that German Jews were people
“he never used them on fellow Germans” the implication that german jewish ppl were somehow “not truly german” was quite literally at the core of nazi ideology, this is so incredibly mind-numbingly transparent.
By saying that he never used chemical weapons on “fellow Germans” (sean spicer’s words, not mine) he is basically saying that Jews/Romanis/gays/every other group targeted in the Holocaust weren’t German. Which is what Hitler was literally saying. He was saying that those people (even if they were German and their families had lived in Germany since…ever) weren’t German. And Sean Spicer is repeating that hateful ideology. That’s what was most offensive to me about this entire chemical weapons/Hitler saga. Not that he got the facts wrong about Nazi use of chemical weapons. That he validated and repeated Nazi ideology. Fuck this guy and this entire anti-Semitic administration.
Non-Jews please reblog, we need your support
Jed Whedon : Back on tonight. Things are a little different… #pןǝıɥsɟosʇuǝbɐ #agentsofhydra ABC 10/9c
HE SANG TO IRIS.
BARTHOLOMEW HENRY ALLEN SANG HIS HEART OUT TO IRIS WEST
“IRIS WEST, WILL YOU MARRY ME?”
“YES.”
WE GOT THAT 2ND PROPOSAL Y’ALL!!!