Last Jedi: The Subverter

The subversion part of a Star Wars episode always tells us something definitive about the characters. By the time you're done with the subversion part of an episode you will have encountered the emotional core of all the characters, what they'll come back to time and time again. When in doubt the characters of Star Wars will always act upon what you see in the subversion part of the subversion chapter of their trilogy.  So what do we learn here?

Starting with Rey, we learn of her wish to define herself by her relationships, without having to reflect upon who she is. Unable to find an interior reference point she leans on Luke Skywalker, who obviously wasn't having anything to do with that nonsense. Ben is right to call her out on this weakness. If you can't be alone with yourself then who can you really be alone with? Well, as Rey finds out, nobody. Rey goes to the dark place in the island, which pulls her in. Since no one can teach her what she wants to know Rey reaches out to the darkness and finds.... herself. This sends her back, terrified, to Ben. She reaches out to Ben from the right, in an effort to end their loneliness, only to be stopped by Luke. Rey tries to reach through to Luke but ultimately abandons him, disgusted by her mentor's inability to move beyond his own perceptions to the need right in front of him. And, refusing to be perturbed by Luke's hatred of the Jedi, she takes the books with her.

Finn, Poe, and Rose, meanwhile, are so defined by their own compasses that they create disaster by ignoring the situation around them. They don't really care about what others say, they're going to do what they're going to do and to hell with everyone else.  While they want to step up and be heroes these three just can't imagine a world where they may have to stop, look, and listen to other people. This issue is what Finn's conversation with DJ revolves around: there is more going on than Finn would like to know about. The galaxy knew that the First Order was coming and not only didn't care but profited off of it! The galaxy does not care who is in charge by this point. But Finn doesn't seem to take this into account. Like Anakin, Finn only cares about saving those right in front of him, regardless of how others think they should be saved. It's this tragic tendency to overly rely upon one's self that leads to the destruction of all the shuttles. Most haters of TLJ complain about how pointless this particular set of arcs are, but in doing so they miss the point of what the film is trying to say. Far from being pointless it's the arc that ultimately sets up the message: we learn from our failures far more than our successes. And these protagonists have a lot to learn from, given how much they fail in this chapter!

Finn's failure in particular requires a closer look. But first:


 And then this:

These two fights play out opposite of each other, but end the same: Rey and Finn go to the right. In The Force Awakens Rey and Finn develop a strong bond quickly. Most people think of this bond as platonic, but no friend asks "Do you have a cute boyfriend?" anxiously. Sorry, but no male asks that question and, crawling behind said female, tries hard not to look at her backside in an embarrassed way. There is a reason why a couple proposed to each other dressed as Rey and Finn, because it's not platonic. The two bring out the very best in each other, and that's never a platonic thing, not on the level  they encountered in each other. They're so linked, in fact, that they wind up having mirroring journeys: both of them find out about their place in the world, not with each other (like it should have happened), but with black haired people with anger issues grieving over the death of a loved one. Finn's victory over Phasma is hollow, because he has defined himself without Rey.

Before getting to Kylo Ren and the death of Snoke I find that I have to address my least favorite part of arguing The Last Jedi: the jump into hyperspeed by Holdo. First off, let's get one thing out of the way: this was not a move done on purpose. Holdo, far as she was concerned, was going to do minimal damage to the Super Star Destroyer, assuming she did any damage at all. And that is, in fact, what happens. She bounced off the front. However, if you noticed, the Raddus's shields, when hit by turbolasers in the rest of the movie, flare differently than others. When dropping into hyperspace these experimental (and unique) shields reacted similarly to the Starkiller Base weapon, ripping hot plasma and debris through the fleet. You can see this as either the Force taking care of everyone or as an incredibly convenient plot armor. After all the other ridiculous thing that have happened in Star Wars you're only questioning the plot armor effects of the Force now? Somehow I feel it's a little late for that. That being said, the fact that this isn't better explained is really the only issue I have with The Last Jedi.

Kylo Ren's twist is one that I'd called... sorta. After recalling all the points of 2 and 5, back to back, and seeing The Last Jedi trailer I found myself knowing that Kylo Ren and Rey would team up and that maybe even Kylo would switch sides. Johnson, of course, played it out differently: Ben does kill Snoke (which checks off a promise that 2 and 5 try to fulfill and fail), but does not switch sides. His offer to Rey to destroy the Resistance and remake the galaxy comes from the left, and that's just...weird.

So what exactly is going on here? Keep in mind that Ben is, before all other things (like mass murderer, father killer, and all around jerk), a victim of abuse and manipulation. Snoke had been manipulating him from afar for decades, possibly all of Ben's life. Imagine if someone was constantly poking into your head and twisting everything you see and feel for decades, and all of a sudden you catch him admitting to it, ala the mind  connection with Rey. Your whole life has been revealed to be a blatant manipulation by some scarred jerk in a gold robe. So you kill the dude, wanting to be free. But your attempt to be free is colored by the person you're trying to break free from, right? Your whole life has been defined as power and blood and fatalism and all things awful. So, when you try to break free, you do it the only way you know how. This is why Rey's refusal and attack of Ben comes from the right: she mistakes Ben's attempts to become free for an act of malice and, furthermore, turns Ben back to malice by her offensive effort. It's tragic and ill-done on Rey's part. But, with Ben knocked out, Rey chooses to let him live. She gives him another chance.

This is all encapsulated in Luke's conversation with Yoda. Luke, in his years of depression and trying to fight himself, had forgotten the very essence of what it means to be a hero: to be born into a situation that only you can change. It matters little what the far reaching effects of your actions are, because there's very little you  can do to affect any of that. Luke is trying to keep the Sith from coming back, because wherever the Jedi are the Sith will inevitably follow. In refusing to come to his friends' aid Luke has finally caved into the bad advice that Yoda had given to Luke so many years ago: to sit it out, to allow the fight to go on without him. But Yoda learned a valuable lesson from Luke that day, and so he reminds Luke of what he knew so many years ago: do what you can, with what you have, for whomever is closest to you. The rest of it? There is no controlling it.

For those of you who look at this scene and go "But what about him destroying the tree and claiming that the books aren't page turners and ORGANIZED RELIGION IS BAD AND HOW DARE YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THIS"..... relax. Take a deep breath. Yoda knows that Rey has already taken the books. Yoda is trying to get Luke to let go of associating himself with the Jedi Order. What, don't believe me? How many times does Luke talk of himself in the same sense he does in the Order? It's throughout the movie. Post-ROTJ Luke has, not unreasonably, conflated himself with the Jedi Order. Yoda, by torching the tree, shows Luke that he will survive without the emotional crutch. Luke, all the way back in IV, had resolved to become a Jedi as a way to avoid the trauma of losing his aunt, uncle, father, and students. Don't believe me?

Luke deals with his aunt and uncles death by resolving to become a Jedi.

Luke mourns his father's death and is comforted later by Jedi.

Luke loses his temple by thinking like a Jedi

Yoda tells Luke to let his idea of the Jedi go.

For the first time in Luke's life, someone is with him in the death of something dear to him (No, Artoo does not count. Artoo cannot help Luke process). This scene is not about destroying the Jedi Order, it's about Luke finally being able to mourn all the horrible things that happened to him. Yoda understands and  gives Luke the one thing he's craved his entire life: closure. In death Yoda has finally evolved to be what he was always meant to be. I would say that this is the most beautiful scene in Star Wars for me, but that's coming up. I can't wait to write about it.

Last Jedi: The Opener

I've been waiting for this for over 8 months now. Even though I've written about The Last Jedi before, each time I found myself having a lot of difficulty doing so. This is because The Last Jedi is the best movie of the whole saga. Nope, didn't stutter, and no, I'm not crazy. Pound for pound, The Last Jedi understands what Star Wars is better than any of the original six and does a better job at executing Lucas's vision than any other movie in the series. It is the climax of the series, where everything comes to a head. When I think of The Last Jedi I think of the entire movie series. This movie is the climax of the Skywalker Saga. I doubt that I'm wrong, not at this point. If I am I will be more than happy to eat crow. But I think what I'm writing here is accurate, more or less. Like I say to my three year old son (who seems to have more maturity than a lot of The Last Jedi haters): ONWARD! TO THE REVIEW!

After the charm of Oscar Isaac had convinced Abrams to keep Poe on, we add him to the main characters in The Last Jedi. Let's be honest: Poe is a tool. I mean, what did you think was going to happen when the guy who was hopelessly outnumbered and captured by Kylo Ren was going to do when facing down a dreadnought, be serious? But let's not kid ourselves, Poe is a man-child with massive talent, which is perfect considering that he's military. Part of what makes the military so spiritually deadening is not caring about how something is done, so long as it gets accomplished. Those of you who would splutter at my seemingly flippant take on the military and ask about military honor have either never served in the U.S. military or are the type of vet that remained naive throughout their career. Hotshots like Poe can (and do) thrive in a military setting, where their character defects are ignored because of the results they generate... until someone needs them to be a leader. If the groomer has integrity they call out the soldier on the defects of character which, up until that time, were irrelevant. But if the groomer does not... well... that's how we get the vast majority of the U.S. Air Defense Artillery leadership, isn't it? Thank God Leia isn't ADA, cause Poe would have fit in quite nicely in that ancient and venerable branch of the U.S. Army.

(And for those of you who say that Leia couldn't have survived in the vacuum of space, please do some research and leave space fantasy, which you shouldn't be nitpicking at this level anyway, alone. Thanks.)

But Poe is in for a nasty surprise. Vice Admiral Holdo has no time for someone who lost her an entire bombing squad. So she lays it on him, giving him a speech that's incredibly common to hear in the military: shut up and do your job. Hell, as a vet I found her incredibly restrained, not once giving him the tongue-lashing that anyone with five second's time in bootcamp would have been expecting. I mean, I get it's PG-13, but the fact that there wasn't a single F-Bomb dropped along with a hardcore rant about Poe's clear ineptitude actually shows Holdo's charity to someone who just lost his rank for being a shitbag officer. But Poe is egotistical and when he gets the chance to help Finn go off on a half-assed horrific idea of a mission... he does. I'm going to say it again: the movie makes no effort to say that what they're doing is a good idea. No Star Wars plan is, by and large.

For his part, Finn is confronted by his own doppelganger: Rose. Like him, she was someone who worked behind the scenes. Unlike him, however, she's actually got a set of principles and is, contrary to first appearances, not naive. Rose genuinely believes in the cause of the Resistance, something that Finn has never had the luxury of having. The death of her sister Paige unlocked heroism within Rose, in direct contrast to Finn, who just became a runner. It's through her that we find out that The First Order has been preparing for this assault for at least twenty years. But their idiocy and haste gets them jailed, away from the master code breaker and they find themselves trusting DJ, who initially comes in from the right.... and of course they trust him! Because they're far more concerned about results than doing it right Finn and Rose show the callow of youth, begining a chain reaction that no one could have seen coming. Well, except for Maz. She probably would have. Too bad she's too busy being shot at right now.

Ben, for his part, finally encounters the truth that Han tried to tell him first hand: Snoke doesn't give one solitary crap about him and is only using him for his power.  Snoke belittles Ben and refuses to help him achieve any peace at all. Ben, enraged, finally sees that he's been living a lie the last few years. The manipulation that Snoke has been doing to Ben becomes obvious and he wants out of the trap that is his life. But does that mean killing his own mother? No, Ben can't, and that moment of self-questioning will hopefully grow in time. But, for the moment, he thinks that killing the past is a literal thing, as shown by his destruction of his own helmet. For those of you who think that Ben's killing of Snoke is out of left field I present the destruction of that helmet, which was his way of identifying with The First Order. It's not out of left field. Ben is looking for a way out, starting right then and there.

Rey's encounters with Luke are even worse off than I'd anticipated in my prediction of who Luke was. Luke is past despondent, he's ready to die....right? We'll get to Luke's motivations in a minute.With Rey and R2 Luke finds his old self coming back, bit by bit. He teaches Rey while belittling her idealism and shows, once and for all, that Yoda was right: he is afraid and he did succumb. This is where Luke has always been headed, to the point where he lost faith and needed someone's help to get back to the fight. The film does tell us in typical right to left fashion that Luke did fail Ben, and that Rey will also let Luke down, but that's coming up in the subversion, isn't it?

The Force Bond between Rey and Ben is not a new concept. Anakin and Padme had one, as did Anakin and Luke. So no, Force Bond is not a new thing. What's new is the suddenness and strength that it sets on here. Ben is taken aback by it because he knows enough to know this is beyond unusual; this is a one in a million occurrence. Rey, for her part, is too naive to get that she's walked into a situation that she doesn't have all the information for, and Ben is too bitter to do anything other than pretend he's still a monster. He even lies to her face about where he's at. Monsters don't experience doubt. And Ben definitely has more than a little doubt bouncing around in his heart.

Luke Skywalker is the key to The Last Jedi's narrative. The story of Star Wars has always been about how the real enemy is not the Trade Federation, or the Empire, or the Sith, or anyone else; the protagonist must discover that they are their own worst enemy. No one can stop you but you. It doesn't matter what is going on outside of you, if you are your own enemy you will never win at anything.  But sometimes you wonder if you can actually defeat yourself. Sometimes, looking at the interior battle that lies before you, you start to think that the best way to win (and thus help everyone) is not to battle yourself at all. Sometimes, when you face an aspect of yourself that's much darker than expected, you hang up your sword and call it quits, convinced you can't win. Cowed by your own darkness you sequester yourself away emotionally, trying to count down the days until you draw your last breath. You can't kill yourself, because there's still something good in you and you can't kill that. In fact, it's the good in you that comes to the conclusion that only by suffering alone can you help anyone else. In a really screwed up way this is a courageous move.

That is exactly what Luke has done. No, he didn't do the right thing. But he did the next best thing he could think of.

Force Awakens: The Closer

I'm really happy with Rey's motif being a hug. Be it with Finn or Leia, Rey's symbol is always a hug. Someone finally coming back for her. Finn may not have much of a center yet but there is something really good inside of him. The death of his friend (whoever it was) at the beginning of this movie had woken something that Finn had never felt before, a tiny spark of goodness. Journeying around with Rey has made that spark into a small flame. But he hugs her from the right. This isn't what Finn is looking for. His friend died right there in front of him, and he could do nothing about it.This is not the catharsis Finn is looking for, even though he'd really like it to be.





"My son is alive". This comes from the left. Kylo Ren is a mask, a shell, for a hurting and abandoned Ben Solo, who was going to respond to his father... until the light goes away. I'm not sure Snoke had anything to do with Ben's sudden change of heart, but I'm willing to bet that, even if Snoke wasn't directly involved, Snoke's brainwashing was too strong this time around. Ben is hoping that if he can remove his connections he can be free of the pain that he feels, but Leia's pain stuns him and he gets shot in the gut.

Ben is coming from the left, again. So what's he up to? Clearly he's angry at Finn for leaving The First Order (and this completes the loop of them staring at each other over a battlefield), but the film portrays this pain as legitimate. There's something happening inside of Ben with his father's death and no one is catching it. Instead of realizing "Hey, this guy still has something inside of him and we might be able to turn him" they're (understandably) overwhelmed by their emotions and turn on Ben.

This is the key tragedy: Ben can be turned but nobody seems to understand how to do it. Rey calls him a monster and she's wrong. And it becomes obvious that Ben's intentions towards Rey are not lethal: he wants to teach her! She looks inside... and comes back with the Dark Side of the Force. Make no mistake, she's falling here, overwhelmed by her emotions and by reaching into Kylo Ren's memories so she can be...somewhat of a match for Ben? Cause make no mistake, Rey is no match for Ben, on any level. She has a lot of raw power and is learning to access the powers from Ben's memories, but this is not a fight between equals, by any means. He's not trying to kill her here, he wants to teach her and he's nursing a wound that should have scooped out his insides. But fortunately she's spared from her fall and goes off to find Luke so that way she can figure out how to control this power that accidentally became hers. What could go wrong?

Again, this movie makes the case that Rey is no Luke. All of Luke's biggest moments stand in sharp contradiction to Anakin's. Whereas Anakin started naive and became more and more spiritually insensitive, complaining about his lack of power (the only way he had of saying "Something's wrong"!), Luke, by becoming more spiritually sensitive, realizes that there is a great deal wrong in the galaxy. Rey, on the other hand, becomes aware that something is wrong because she fails. Going to Luke is her way of trying to become better, in the face of her failure with Ben, which she doesn't understand.

And this shot sums up what's coming...

Force Awakens: The Subverter

Well, this is different. Lightsaber crystals have been revealed to be semi-sentient things in new canon, but one calling out to someone? That's totally unprecedented. Whereas Luke was handed his father's lightsaber and pretty much ignored it Rey actually bonds with the darn thing. However Maz got it is irrelevant, she has it and that's all that matters. What matters is that crystals don't just go and bond with new people. In fact, Sith usually break a crystal of this bond and forge a new, perverse, bond with it, which is why it bleeds red. Ahsoka Tano has lightsabers without color because she undid the damage, but there's no evidence that the crystals actually chose this. With Rey, however, the crystal calls out and bonds to her, even after having been bonded to Anakin. Rey, to her credit, is as puzzled as we are, although a good deal more scared. She runs off, vowing to never touch that bloody lightsaber ever again. Can't say I blame her.

And with this, she starts the beginning of the end of the New Republic, undoing Luke's affirmation of who he is. Most of this movie is about Rey not being Luke and everyone suffering on account of it. Analogically she denies her calling and the world suffers on account of it. With the New Republic gone the First Order can now have a field day with the rest of the galaxy. Good job Rey, this is all your fault. Get used to it, too. The Sequel trilogy brings back the tragedy of the Prequels: personal failures lead to galactic failures. Or, as the Emerald Tablet of Hermes says: "As it is above so it is below and as it is below so is it above". Rey doesn't yet understand this principle. Unlike Luke and Anakin she has no guide and the narrative is propelled forward, without their guidance. I may have ragged on Obi-Wan and Yoda for being bad mentors but the Sequel Trilogy makes a powerful case for the superiority of a bad mentor over none at all.

But it's not just Rey's failure that makes things worse, but Finn's. Finn, who can't see any way to beat The First Order, abandoned Rey, who was left alone and defenseless against Kylo Ren, who easily takes the scared and confused Rey. Finn pays for his cowardice by losing the connection that made his turn from The First Order mean anything at all. Finn had found meaning with Rey and in losing her rediscovers it. But it's too little too late. Finn is forced to re-live the loss he had faced at the beginning of this movie. By failing Rey Finn has failed his friend.

Han and Leia's reunion is sad but informative. Like I'd said in the previous post, we know what the issue is and everyone but Rey and Finn have known for a long time what happened and why it did. Leia tells Han he can reach their son. It's from the right. We know she's wrong, and so does Han, sadly, but he doesn't want to believe it. It's at this point where Han knows he's going to die and, if we're being honest, so does the audience. But Han knows he has to try, as does Luke in RotJ. This subverts that conversation, undoing it by the knowledge that Han is destined to fail where Luke succeeded. Each and every stroke of this movie has been designed to take RotJ and cut it apart, revealing that the people were of the previous trilogy are just that, people. Heroism is not an inborn trait, it's a gift, and when that gift leaves you there's no faking it. Heroism left with Luke and nobody (and I do mean nobody) else in this entire series has had it so far. It's a hard pill to swallow.

And finally we get the conversation between Rey and Ben. What's important to note here is that Rey has been dreaming of Ach-To for years, probably since before Luke went there. Ben picks up on this odd dream and tries to address it, but his attempts at empathy are limited by his role in The First Order. But something wakes up inside of Rey. As she fights back against Ben they both realize that they share a connection that they do not understand and that is most unwelcome. But connections come with knowledge of the other, including their methods. And Rey is a fast learner. She takes the knowledge she begins to glean from Kylo Ren and turns it back on him. In a similar move from Empire Rey learns about the Force by connecting to Ben and adapting to it. This is not someone who's a virtuoso, but a desperate attempt to fight off mental invasion. And the thing is that Ben, on some level, knows it as well. He doesn't ask how she does it, Ben knows full well how she learned how to fight back against him! And, with this new connection, Rey questions Ben's ability to live up to his idol, Darth Vader, thoroughly shaking him to the core. Now Ben doubts in a completely different way. He doubts his own identity and needs to find a way to prove to himself that he is who he says he is.

Force Awakens: The Opener

Caveat: These last six posts are going to be a bit tricky. We don't have IX yet, so we don't have the full scope of the story. And, since Lucas doesn't have direct influence here, it's going to be a bit hard to see if the same conventions such as the right to left and left to right rule that I've been forging my entire thesis of Star Wars on applies here. However, looking at this trilogy in the same way as I've looked at the first six films has revealed that they CAN be looked at in this way and provide a coherent message. So, for the moment, we'll go with the same conventions. I may have to re-write these reviews come 2020 but, somehow, I doubt it. We'll see.

The structure of The Force Awakens is not just from A New Hope, but from The Phantom Menace primarily.

-Two characters attempt a negotiation, but get split up. A character in black makes evil plans
- A hair-brained rescue attempt leads to going through a dangerous underbelly with horrific creatures and jerk locals.
- The mentor figure takes a chance on a previously unknown Force user in a seedy underbelly
-  The man in black comes for the woman. She leaves for a fake world.
- A surprise journey to the place of final showdown (which involves woods) becomes successful because of the locals
-The man in black kills the mentor
- A battle rages above the planet as the good guys engage in a suicide mission while on the ground the good guys confront the man in black. The mentor dies but the man in black is defeated by a Force user, with a chasm involved.
- After a brief celebration it is assumed that all will be well.

What we are seeing with TFA is the merging of TPM with ANH to create a different thing altogether. But that's not as urgent as the below picture:

What. The. Flaming. Hell. Is THIS??

Oh man, I may need to rethink that. The man in black is coming from the left, right out the gate. Kylo Ren is a protagonist??? What is this? What am I looking at? The guy who kills villagers without a second's thought as well as family friends is a hero? Since when, Disney? Black may be the color of purpose but it's also the color of hell and the abyss! What the heck is this??

Am I going crazy?

But Rey and Finn are both portrayed as heroes as well. This is weird, maybe Abrams screwed it up. Nope, Ren is showed from left to right in almost every single scene in this movie, regardless of what he's doing. It's like the movie keeps telling us that no, it means what it says: Kylo Ren is the good guy here! And it keeps the logic of the previous six films. The biggest takeaway for Kylo Ren is that something else is going on each of these scenes that makes him a good guy, regardless of how reprehensible his actions are. It's a tantalizing nugget of information that makes me question exactly what point they're trying to make.

Rey continues the WTFery. She's a slave, like Anakin, and she's sheltered and ignorant, like Luke, but unlike them she's a hardened warrior already. Don't believe me? Let me ask an awful question: what happens to women in environments where might makes right? Well, they don't wind up having their own place to live, unmolested, whole and healthy, I'll say that much. For all you SJWers out there who are raging saying "Women can be more than just sex-slaves!": I admire your innocence, if not outright naivety. Someone as pretty and with as much spunk as Rey would have been broken and used up well before nineteen and hooked up on drugs to keep them subservient, probably by the age of thirteen, and that's late, as far as sex-slaves go. By nineteen their fates are tragically sealed in a cycle of drug addiction and rape. And that's in the United States, a first-world country where you don't necessarily want to think of those sorts of things are happening. What's going to happen to someone on a backwater place as Jakku?? One would think that Rey, who was enslaved to Plutt at a very early age, would have been long gone. She should be broken, addicted to drugs, self-loathing, and almost past the point of saving in this environment.

Rey is none of these things.

Instead, we get a scrappy survivor, who has taught herself everything she needs to keep herself useful and relatively free. Instead of being thrown into a chainmail bikin Rey proves to Plutt that she can be useful in other ways, and is thus spared from the fate of girls her age in a place as awful as Jakku. She's the exception to the rule, that one in a million diamond in the rough that proves that sheer willpower can get you to wherever you want to go. But the problem is that Rey's mind is made up: she's going to stay on Jakku and wait for her family, who had left her there. Despite her clear aptitude for the Force, which we'll cover in subsequent posts, she still wants that connection to her parents. This attachment to her parents is her source of strength. She wants to be whole and intact for them when they get back. Making an image of who she wants her parents to see when they get back she clings to it, fighting with a ferocity that only the truly desperate can appreciate. She's strong and independent because, on some level, she thinks this will bring her parents back. It's the same with all abuse victims: maybe if I'm what the abuser would have wanted in the first place they'll come back and love me. Maybe, just maybe, if I can be good enough, strong enough, smart enough, I'll be someone worth coming back to and loving.

Finn is another example of the diamond in the rough. Finally(!) the kidnapping of children is flipped on its head and we can see how ugly the Jedi Order had gotten by taking children from their families. The First Order does it now and the context for the ailing Jedi Order's ghoulish ways has been exposed. Finn has been a slave since birth. The death of his friend, however, shocks him, and he can't unsee the blood and anguish that The First Order commits. The thing that I don't see a lot of people commenting on is how the rest of Finn's arc in TFA and TLJ is him mourning the loss of his friend. The shock of losing this person, whoever he was, causes Finn to do something that he had never even thought of before: to rebel. He resolves to get away as fast he can and so he frees Poe. Everything Finn does in TFA and TLJ is in done while mourning his friend. He sees Kylo Ren, the source of all this tragedy, and does nothing about it.

And this is where the tragedy starts to mix in. We meet Han Solo and learn a few things: every single member of the previous trilogy has met tragedy. Luke is gone, having lost hope after the destruction of his school. General Leia and Han are estranged after the turning of their son to the Dark Side, which they're very aware of. They know Snoke is the problem.

Waitaminute, we know what the problem is right off the bat?

Yes, we actually do. Unlike in the first two trilogies, where half the problem is the ignorance of the protagonists about what's actually going on, in this trilogy we know immediately what the problem is. Han, Maz Kanata, and Ben together clue us in that this time will be different. Knowledge is power and, even though the heroes of the Alliance had failed in the long run, they can pass on the knowledge they have... assuming they want to. Han is broken down by the loss of his son and marriage, but this tragedy has turned him into a softer, kinder human being. His speech about the Force and Luke is a testament as to how far Han, the eternal skeptic of the original trilogy, has come. He has seen enough to know that the Force not only exists but that he is a part of it. Many people who complain about the "stagnation" of the original trilogy characters seem to miss that these people are actually very different from when we last saw them. All of them have evolved into completely different people. They're sadder, wiser, and approach life completely differently from the subverter trilogy. But that's what 30 years does to you: you change. Did they stick to their stereotypical roles? Yeah, and that's what changed them. Once in a while you have the opportunity to individuate and become more yourself. Sometimes you take this chance and sometimes you don't. Han, Leia, and Luke didn't and their characters suffered the consequences of sticking with what they knew. But we'll develop that more in The Last Jedi.

We end this post with the reveal that Snoke is actively manipulating Ben with Force visions of his grandfather. With the right to left view we know that what Ben is seeing is not real. It's just an old helmet with no real power behind it. But Ben, confused and angry, clings to it with all his might. He needs purpose and the fake visions provide it. He wants a place in the world and the memory of Darth Vader provides a place for him to put his anger and hurt in a place where he thinks he may actually do something of meaning. I cannot understate it enough: Ben Solo places his entire worth in his resemblance to his grandfather. Snoke has convinced him that this is the only way for him to have worth.

Return of the Jedi: The Closer

It's important to know that Episode 1 and 6 share the same plot. The subverter trilogy and the opening trilogy must sync up in order for the subversion to be complete. The sequel trilogy, while necessary, doesn't have to subvert the first trilogy in entirety because it's been already done by the subverter trilogy. And, as has been pointed out by men far smarter than I, RoTJ subverts TPM. Like in TPM two Force users face a Darkside user. What does this tell us about Vader? Luke is right about him. But... they're coming from the right. Luke's wrong about what he thinks is going to go down and so is Vader. Only the Emperor seems to have a clue about what's going on. He holds all the cards and he knows it and so does the camera. Luke can't hold up under pressure and so he attacks the Emperor. Yes, he's making a mistake here. But... can we really blame him?

And this is where the Ewoks and Han come in, both of which were saved or recruited by Leia and Luke. There's no way Palpatine could have seen this coming. While he learned from Padme's compassion he never thought of the Ewoks as worthy of thought and I doubt he knows that Han Solo even exists. But it's Han who blows up the shield generator and it's the Ewoks who made it possible. All the chickens have come to roost and Palpatine, who thinks he saw all this coming in the Force, is proven to be completely wrong. While Palpatine may be a genius and stupidly powerful in the Force his ability to see into the future is completely discounted here. Palpatine is no Qui-Gon.

This lightsaber fight is my favorite in the saga. Luke completely surprises Vader. Gone is the foolish young man who Vader has to pull his swings with. In his place is someone who can let the Force flow through him in a way that Vader hasn't done in years. Luke is every bit of what his father was before the dip in the lava. He has a power so raw and overpowering that even Vader can't match it, getting kicked down the stairs headlong because Luke's genuinely better than Vader. And Vader knows it. He doesn't rush at Luke after that kick, but stalks back up, trying to intimidate Luke with raw, overflowing  hatred and darkness.


Instead of being intimidated Luke intentionally drops his guard, calling the bluff, and Vader is faced with a choice: to kill his son or to let him live. And, whether he likes it or not, Vader winds up doing something he never thought he'd do: let Luke live. The man who butchered children spares his child. Luke catches that second and rubs it in Vader's face, trying to get him to wake up to what he is. Vader, unable to believe what he just did, denies it and lashes out, angry at Luke for getting through. Palpatine mistakes that anger for killing intent and chuckles. But Vader's emotional armor is permanently cracked and it surprised him. And hopefully we all get to the point where our Shadows get surprised as well, where we are surprised by our own goodness and, even if we resent it, we realize there's more to us than we ourselves can see. And this can piss us off. How dare someone see us better than we see ourselves! How dare they! And sometimes, instead of giving in, we get even angrier, desperate to get our power and control back. So we push and push and push at those who see us better than we see ourselves, trying to get them to back off.

Sometimes we push them too hard, though.
(FROM LEFT TO FRICKIN' RIGHT! YEAH!)

That moment of Luke screaming is my favorite moment of all Star Wars, hands down. All the pain and horror of the Skywalker Saga (so far) just EXPLODES onto the screen. Luke lets fly and Vader finds himself hopelessly outmatched. For all of you who think that Vader was holding back, I present the fight between Obi-Wan and Grievous:

 Notice anything? Grievous is ridiculously stronger than Kenobi. His fists literally make imprints upon metal with a punch. And Kenobi cannot, for the life of him, exchange blows with Grievous, not straight up. Ben, not once, is able to overcome Grievous through brute force, defeating him by his trademark "find the weak spot and blow it up" approach.

There is no moment in ROTJ's fight where that is the case. Not. One. Single. Frickin'. Moment. Luke drives Vader to the ground, he wears out a cyborg. No one previous to this point has ever overpowered Anakin, nevermind driven him back. Once Anakin got going there was no stopping him. Luke is, by all counts in the Skywalker Saga, the strongest saber combatant, blow for blow. 

The Emperor sees every bit of this. And he offers Luke a job.

I'm not going to lie, this picture is here because it's the fulfillment of Luke looking at his face in Vader's helmet. He looks down, and sees that he's becoming Vader. Luke's actions, while damaging to Vader, has made him like Vader. This is an analogical truth to Luke. It's not that he literally stole Vader's hand, but he did steal Vader's hand.

Analogically it makes sense and you KNOW IT!

This is the secret of Star Wars, right here. Throw away your weapon when going against yourself, it won't work. And, what's more, what you do to  others you do to yourself. Luke, looking down at his own hand, finally sees what his wanderings for a year, on his own, have done. Others did not fail him, only Luke can fail Luke. And so he tosses the lightsaber aside, proclaiming the ultimate the truth: he has become everything his father ever wanted to be. He's fulfilled his father's dream: he's freed the slaves, fought for the downtrodden, and realized a level of compassion that no one in the entirety of the Jedi Order had done in probably over a thousand years. It's such a momentous occasion that the base on the moon blows up right after his declaration. As we'd covered in TPM, the smushing of these scenes means that one does indeed cause the other.

Many people are convinced that Anakin is the Chosen One. That's complete and total hogwash, because to bring balance to the Force is to find balance within yourself. And that's not something that Anakin ever managed on his own. So far in the series Luke is the only one to have done it, without help. Regardless of where he goes later Luke was, is, and always will be the Chosen One. The entirety of the series hangs its hat on him. Right here, at the end of RoTJ, Luke becomes the gold standard for what a person should be, Jedi or not. It's no small wonder Vader defends his son at this point, even if it means his death.

One of the things that Star Wars emphasizes is that people in epic events do not understand what it is that they're doing. They do things that happen to be huge and don't understand the personal and sociological implications of said actions. And that becomes the clearest here, with Luke and Vader. Luke doesn't understand that there's a lot more to life than, well, being alive. How you live is incredibly important and Luke, who is 23 at the time, has no real idea of just how true that is. But Anakin finally understands and he passes on in peace. And for the first time in the whole trilogy Luke, the man who never shed a tear over those that he lost, finally cries.

It all ends the same way that TPM did: in fire, tears, and celebration. But this time the Empire is finished, Palpatine is dead, and there will be peace.

Right?

The Legacy of 4e DnD and FALL IN!

Let the edition wars end: 4th was, and continues to be, superior.

I was on board with 4th edition before it even came out. From the very first preview I knew it was the edition I wanted to play. And when the game came out it did not disappoint. What most people saw as "samey classes" I saw as "good player shorthand". Everyone knew what everyone else had. Someone saying "I spent my encounter power" at level one signified that a resource had been used and everyone had to be more careful; busting out a Daily Power  signaled to everyone else that they had to step it up to cover the loss of resources.  The fact that it was so easy to get what other classes did because of the similarity of structure is a sign of good design, and the negative reactions strike me as more of a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome over bad mechanics than a legitimate critique. The encounter design continues to be the best of the editions, hand's down. A 1st level encounter was, indeed, actually manageable by 1st level characters. There were no surprises when it came to the vast majori

Not that the game was perfect, mind you; 4th was a seriously flawed game. The math was bad but at least it was fixable. Several classes were permanently broken by multiple attribute confusion, but again, that was nothing a few house rules couldn't fix. But the real issue with 4th was that it's really a combat only game. The rest of the mechanics weren't very good, despite the solid ideas that were behind them, and the lack of actual RP for the system meant it was, at best, a glorified combat simulator. Not that 3.5/Pathfinder/5th aren't, but 4th was the most honest about its intent of design since Dungeons and Dragons Basic. Either you liked the fact that 4th's niche was combat or you didn't.

Eventually I stopped playing 4th. I wanted more than just combat from my mechanics. I wanted a story game and 4th could not deliver. Fortunately, Andy had already suggested Burning Wheel, a game that has since become my favorite RPG of all time and is my go-to. This sparked a huge investigation of what else the RPG world had to it, and the stable of games that I flit between at earliest opportunity (Burning Wheel, MouseGuard, World of Darkness, Dungeon World, Torchbearer, Tenra Bansho Zero, and Misspent Youth) were from this period of joyful exploration. But 4th has remained in the back of my mind.  Apparently I'm not alone; a number of my friends who were there to play 4th with me are still trying to design their own games that ape what 4th did. Talk about playing 4th itself is out of the question at this point. Our tastes have evolved and we don't want to play a game that fumbled its own core message in the way it did.

But what was 4th's message? What was its interior reason to exist? The funny thing is that it's not combat. I've played and read through many a game that has better combat than 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons, and have found that it lacks something... unique. 4th's take on combat, with its resource management and group combo's, is a unique animal in the RPG world. Ultimately, 4th's combat facilitated squad play, similar to games like World of Warcraft and MOBA's like League of Legends. These games have limited singular resources that are useful to the group in combat, and require everyone to be in sync in a way that one is not normally with people at your table. 4th aped this gameplay quite well, but forgot to add in an element that only TTRPGs can do: interpersonal interaction. TTRPG's superiority over computer MOBA games lies in the fact that the characters you are playing can interact with each other, thanks to the players. Training and bonding can continue past the battle and you can play the whole process out. And, while a good number of players did this sort of play with 4th, they did it without the help of the rules. But this type of game-play is what TTRPGs do best: turning the interpersonal into a game.

So it's here I'd like to throw my hat in to the task of making a game to fill a void that's been curiously absent since 4th's premature demise, with a game called FALL IN! FALL IN! is a game that will feature tactical combat in the spirit of 4th edition DnD, with systems for squad building such as training, downtime, upgrading equipment, infiltration, speeches, and ultimatums. Classes will probably work off of a series of proficiencies, skills,  bonds, and abilities, along with a mechanic called States, which are how you access your abilities and give you a bunch of raw material to roleplay with.

The following classes will be in the game. More may be in the game, but these definitely will be:

- Knight (a warrior with allegiance sworn to the local lord)
- Brigand (without attachment or care but hated by everyone)
- Paladin (a holy warrior sworn to God, but not necessarily the law)
- Ranger (the supreme guide in the wild)
- Monk (an ascetic who has learned spells from the esoteric writings)
- Sorcerer (someone in whom magic bubbles up, without restraint)
- Warlock (unable to find power any other way, this one has struck up deals with dark things)
- Swordsage (magic and swordplay are the same thing)
- Rogue (sneaky and daring, with a dash of improvisation)

There will not be a Monster Manual for this game; monsters should be unique to your campaign setting and I have no interest in telling you about the same boring orcs and goblins. Instead, tools will be provided to make monsters on the fly, with very little prep work involved. Also included will be rules for making NPCs and themes to be attached to NPCs or monsters. Also included will be rules for little to no prep-work in making encounters of all kinds; if you are spending more than an a half-hour to prep a game session in this game you are doing it wrong.

More in the coming weeks.