My Other Ride is a Watch, or How to Write a Book, Pt. 3

Okay, so I've/you've (who am I writing this for? Who knows.) acquired the desire and idea for writing a book. Spectacular. Huzzah. Bully for me/you.

I already gave my next piece of advice - Just write.

I/you know what to do.

So why don't we do it?

Time. Oh, time. You fickle, funny frienemy, you. 

Does anyone else find they never have enough time? And then when they do have time, they just... waste it? 

It's such an easy trap to fall into. Complaining and wasting.

You need time to write a book. Of course you do. What kind of basic, obvious advice is that? Ridiculous.

Okay, but talk to any "writer," and you'll find out how difficult carving out that time, and making it productive, actually is.

One reason for this is the writer's perpetual desire to edit their own writing. When I sat down to start writing The Seed of Magic, I promised myself I would NOT stop to reread or edit. Maybe I'd have to look back over a few sentences to see where I left off, but that would be it. I would not fall into the trap of rereading, then starting to edit the few pages I had, then finding they weren't good enough, then editing some more, and then maybe writing one new page per writing session.

Raise your hand if that process is you as a writer. Your hand is probably up.

It wasn't easy to just write. Especially because I knew that at the end of it, the amount of proofreading and editing would need to be pretty tremendous. Surely I would repeat details, leave details out, write too much, reuse words until they were stale. 

But I also know that if I stopped, my forward momentum would be shot. So this time, unlike the others, I wouldn't reread until I was done.

That promise didn't solve the problem of having the time to write, though. And where did I finally find that time? I barely know. 

I do know that I used to be married to handwriting. I love the feel of a pen pressing its ink mark into paper, and so I never imagined I'd go digital with my writing. I also loved that handwriting is so portable. For this book, as for most I worked on prior to it, I liked to use loose leaf paper. I kept a few blank sheets in a folder I toted around everywhere with me. Portable. I also loved that I could hide these papers under stacks of other things while I wrote in places like meetings, and it would just look like I was taking notes. I would keep 2 or 3 previous pages with me to look back at, but the rest would accumulate in a binder. 

I worked this way for years, really thinking it was best. Until the day I looked at a clock and realized how long it take me to fill a page of writing by hand vs. how long it would take me to type a page. If I really wanted to get this thing done, typing it would be some much more efficient. Not to mention I wouldn't have to type the manuscript once it was done; it would already be saved. 

So that was time efficiency win number 1.

Another win for time was Google Docs. I do worry sometimes what will happen if the website goes down and I lose it ALL except for the first half of the book, the handwritten part (which is now so different than the typed manuscript that it's almost a different story). But the beauty of Google Docs is, again, its portability. Now the writer no longer needs paper and pen to bring their story with them. The WHOLE THING can go right onto your phone or your tablet and go along in your pocket, easy as pie. 

In fact, typing has revolutionized where I can write. There's no more process of taking out the papers and the pens, shuffling them around, finding a position I can comfortably balance my writing on my knee in, and worrying about people asking me, "Oh, what are you writing?" thus derailing the whole process. Now you just whip out your phone and look like a sheep out to pasture. Whatever. It saves. It's easy.

But even with these advancements, time. Still an issue. Getting in a few sentences here and there between classes, between meetings, while laying on the tens machine at the chiropractor, does not a book make. I worked on Seed for years and only had about half to 2/3 of it written.

So now/then what?

Enter social media, or what I consider to be the Ultimate Time Waster. How often do I open Facebook or Twitter or Instagram (and that's as modern as I intend to go, folks) for no reason and then end up scrolling thorugh it for 10+ minutes and then find the questionable political views of an acquaintence I haven't spoken to for 5 years and then worry about them, and if they think weird things I disagree with,  how many of my friends actually feel that way and what is the world coming to and oh my goodness they have young children and they're going to raise the next generation to just look the other way when public figures make facist-like statements (because we'll all be fine if we just love each other right?)...

The spiral goes ever downwards. (Maybe social media gets its own whiney blog post one of these days. We'll see.)

There is some value to social media, though. One of the most valuable things it's taught me to date is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, which is November. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the goal of NaNoWriMo is to write all of, or at least most of, a complete novel in a single month. It challenges writers to write 50,000 words in the month, which averages out to about 1,667 words per day.

In 2017, I accepted the challenge. (This is another place typing comes in handy. How could you possibly know how many words you were writing per day if you were handwriting? Like I'm going to sit there and count to 2,000 on top of writing? Talk about wasting time.)

But I took it a step further because I wanted this thing done already! So instead of 1,667 words per day, I decided to do 2,500. 

And I did it.

I found time to knock out a few hundred words during small breaks at work, but I did have to set aside an hour or so at night to dedicate to writing. I'll admit that sometimes I did it with the TV blaring in the background, and maybe my focus wasn't 125% there, but that wasn't the purpose of the quantity of words I was writing. It was merely about quantity. Quality? I'd go back and fix that later.

I also posted my word count on Facebook and Twitter every day. Once I start a project, I really like to finish it, so I felt deeply obligated to post. People were also incredibly encouraging, telling me NaNo wasn't something they could ever do. Those things kept me going.

By the end of it, not only had I met my word count goal, but I had finished my book.

And discovered that what I wrote was more like three books, based on word count.

No wonder it took so long.

But three books is good, right? Automatic series! I hear publishers are into that these days, especially with Y(oung) A(dult). Another selling point for me.

Of course, that would mean the editing process was going to be a lot more involved than I initially thought.

And I can't really tell you what I initially thought about editing. But whatever it was, it couldn't have been 100% accurate. Not once I finally knocked on the door and let the editing monster in.

Editing. Is. A. Beast.

So bottom line? Type. Bring your tech with you. Sneak in little bits of writing here and there. But at the end of the day, the only way you're going to finish is if you commit yourself to an hour or so of solid writing time as often as possible. 

And maybe put on a good playlist in the background (I like the David Benoit station on Pandora for some chill smoothe jazz) so you can zone out. And not be tempted to waste time on Facebook. Or playing Disney Emoji Blitz.

Get in the zone. Carve out the time. Make it productive.

Some big secret, huh?

The Oven Alter, or How to Be a Writer, Pt. 2

 I bent across my electric stove, put my head in my hands, and thought, I need an idea.

I thought, I can write better than (insert name of NYT Bestselling Author here, but I won't actually name the person I thought of that day, because I don't want to willingly shit on anyone else's art form or enjoyment thereof, but come on, you can all name Bestselling Authors who are supremely mediocre writers, so say whoever you want to yourself). I HAVE to be able to come up with something.

I can do this.

I just needed something to write about!

Because I decided that I was going to write one heckuva book. A big one. A bestseller with a huge following.

If you've read the previous entry, then you know I've been writing forever. And I've known for a long time that I'm good at it.

But none of that mattered because I had NOTHING TO WRITE ABOUT.

It was frustrating because I used to have ideas like CRAZY. I have pages upon pages of "books" I started as a kid where I wrote a single opening paragraph before filing the idea away in a folder and moving on to a new project.

Why not just start with one of those, you might ask?

Well.

A lot of those ideas were the fancies of an elementary or middle school child. They stemmed from little tidbits we learned in social studies or science classes. I would have an idea of grandeur and start jotting about it, but if we're being real, to fully execute said idea, I would need to do a bunch of research. 

And time is a whole other luxury that you need to be a writer, which I'll write about later (when I have time to, hahaha). 

Plus, I wrote some of those paragraphs down so long ago, I have no freaking clue what I was going to write next. Thus negating the whole point of getting ideas. 

Some book beginnings did actually go on for 20 pages or so. But when I reflected on those, I wasn't sure they held the promise of an entire book. Could I squeeze 250 pages out of them? Not sure.

And were they even things I wanted to write about anymore? Not sure if anyone else has had the same experience, but I'm not the same person at 35 that I was at 13. (Seriously. I'm rereading my old journals, and kind of yikes. Boys, boys, boys. I do not remember boys ever being the main focus of my thoughts, and maybe they weren't, but they were certainly the main focus of my journaling. Yeesh. I needed some perspective.)

So here I stood, maybe 5 or 6 years ago now (I should have recorded the date, I swear), praying over the alter my oven had become for an idea.

I'm not the most religious person you've ever met. I swing in and out of beliefs and disbeliefs. I don't live any kind of pious life.

But within minutes of praying for my idea, I actually had one. I swear. I put away a few dishes, and then, bing! Like the microwave telling me my food was ready, I had something. And it seemed like a good one.

And thus The Seed of Magic was born (planted?). Believe in divine intervention or don't, but I got what I asked for.

Now, I'm years removed from that lightbulb moment, and of course the book hasn't been published. It hasn't even been querried. 

And on top of that, I discovered that my idea is not the super most original thing you've ever heard. There are several books out there on the market that have a similar premise. 

That bugged me at first, but the more I sit with that, the more I feel like that's okay. In fact, maybe that's even to my benefit. Maybe I'll end up on one of those Barnes and Noble tables for "If you like This Young Adult Fantasy Book, You'll Love These!" Bam! Instant readers.

But if we're being real, your plot idea maybe doesn't have to be the most original thing out there. Hello, Shakespeare stole his ideas left and right. He retold age old stories and even contemporary ones.

What it's about is the writing. 

Shakespeare's style was so beautiful, classic, and original, it's lasted hundred of years. The man invented how many turns of phrase we still use? 

Not that I'm comparing myself to Shakespeare. I'm just saying. Plot = important, but so many of the best stories are retellings or simple good vs. evils.

So pray for an idea like I did. Or steal one of your favorites.

If you can write, you can write. Put your own spin on things. Tell the same story with your flare.

Just write.

How to Be a Writer, Pt. 1

You guys all like how I'm giving advice on being a writer even though I'm not one yet?

I shouldn't say that. You're supposed to say things you want to be true like they already are true, right? "I AM a writer."

Not entirely a lie, either. I write all the dang time. I'm sure you know that by now if you know me. Honestly, where do I even go without a journal? (Very, very few places. Food shopping, though when I was a kid, the journal went there, too.) And now that there are smart phones, who knows? You may think I'm checking e-mail, but I'm really touching up a chapter of my book.

I started to write "But I'm not published yet," but even that's a lie. I've been published online - on a defunct website called The Examiner, on TapInto, and on Short Fiction Break, as well as in a YA Anthology.

So do I cut the nonsense and just call myself a writer? Or do people then actually think that's my profession? 

Whatever. I get really into my own head sometimes.

I have thought, you know, someday, when I am all big and famous and do get to do this for a living (positivity at work!), I'll get asked, "Where did you get the idea for The Seed of Magic?" all the time. Why not get it down now, and catch up with myself, and get to write about the publishing process as (if/when) it happens?

I do know exactly where my idea for The Seed of Magic (my future bestselling novel) came from, but I also think it's important to go a little further back. Because not everyone is just going to have an idea, and then BAM!, a book is born. There's a tiny bit more to it than that.

So the first piece of advice I can give about being a writer is that age old, trite single word your English teacher used to tell you - READ. 

Seriously. If you want to be a writer, you first have to be a reader.

I wish I had more time to read, and not just because I do genuinely enjoy it. There is really very little better way to hone your craft than to be under the influence of other storytellers. I find I pick up writing styles from almost whatever I'm reading at the time. It's beneficial for me to know that. So if I want to infuse a little more realism into my work, I should pick up some realistic fiction. If I want to be the next She Who Must Not Be Named (because she wrote the ultimate work of love and acceptance [Harry Potter] and then went on to be overly nasty to online haters, which should have alarmed fans a little more than it did, because THEN she went on to really draw her line in the sand, to say, 'I think we should extend love and tolerance and acceptance to everyone, but oh, maybe not to THOSE people,' so, you know, she can just... yeah. My relationship with JKR is extremely, excessivly complicated. I have to separate her from Harry because it's still amazing and well written, and though it does have some problematic bits, it's got nothing on the problematic stuff that came out of JKR's twitter account), I gotta revisit those Harrys. Over and over again.

I haven't read one in awhile. Debating Prizoner of Azkaban because that end is so tightly constructed or Goblet of Fire because I feel like it's one I don't give enough attention.

The thing is, these days, I read a fair amount of work written by nonreaders. And it's so obvious that they're nonreaders. There are just certain things readers tend to pick up - grammar conventions of dialogue, turns of phrase, when to describe certain things, the fact that dialogue should even be included in the first place - that nonreaders don't. 

Reading something written by a nonreader is kind of like reading a grocery list. "This happened, then this happened, then this happened." It's like when your friend calls you to tell you about the fight she had with Verizon that day and she keeps it under 10 minutes. (By the way, that friend is not me. No way can I keep a story under 10 minutes. I need to add the details and the drama!) 

But if you read? Even if you're not on the ball with spelling, grammar, whatever, it's obvious you know how books work. 

You just have to read if you want to write.

My mom was an English teacher, too, and one who really did practice what she preached. She reads like she breathes, all the time, finishing a book every few days. I grew up with that as the norm, as something I saw. I never matched up to her pace, but that was normal for me.

I was also an only child. I remember that when we used to go out to eat, or anywhere really, I would bring no less than two books with me (because what if I finished the one I was reading) and a notebook with a few pens to write stories. Not sure where that came from - my mom writes a lot now, but I don't remember her writing frequently when I was a kid. Regardless, I remember writing a story about dinosaurs who were friends but were torn apart by the asteriod that hit earth, ending up in different places and wanting to find each other. I don't think I got further than the first page, but still.

I don't know why I wanted to write, but I did. I came up with ideas all the time . I have pages upon pages of beginnings of stories, single paragraphs that are pretty compelling but I never got far with. Too many ideas poured in. Plus I was a student, the AB Honor Roll, all honors classes kind. Finding time to write was scarce.

Although I sometimes would do so during class. In middle school, I wrote what was fondly called among my friends The Book. In it, I used code names for me and four of my best friends, and we all hooked up with guys who happened to look like and share names with Backstreet Boys. They weren't in a boy band, they were just guys we met down the shore one summer, but it fulfilled some kind of fantasy of ours. 

I hid sheets of looseleaf under textbooks. When teachers would turn around to write something on the board, I would jot down a few sentences. I might even write when they were looking at us, look like I was taking notes. Two of my friends in particular were addicted to The Book. Instead of notes, I passed them pages, either before class, during class (especially in Mr. K's seventh grade Social Studies class where my friend S sat right behind me), or in the hall between classes. 

The Book was the first "novel" I ever finished writing. And then I wrote two sequels. I started on a fourth, but that one fell by the wayside. (That's okay; I'm not sure BSB fanfiction is what I was destined to write.) I have fond memories of laying on my stomach at a community pool one summer with my friend, E. I was furiously scribbling out new pages, passing them to her whenever I finshed. She devoured my writing feverishly. 

It was a fun time, and it was validating to have friends who enjoyed my writing.

Just before that project started, as I began sixth grade, the movie Harriet the Spy was released. This should have been the most anti-diary thing I ever saw, but for some reason, it was the opposite with me. My friend C and I started our own "Spy Notebooks," as Harriet called hers. We wrote down observations in them - license plate numbers, how many boards made up a fence in our neighbor's yard, silly answers to ridiculous questions we asked each other.

This, for me, turned into my insane journaling habit.  Though the habit took a few years to really stick, I've been writing in a journal now nearly every day of my ilfe since eighth grade, so for about 25 years. I'm onto my 84th book (because of course I number them). Sometimes they're a list of the minutia of life, and sometimes they are a bit more reflective. I've tried to be more reflective lately, record the craziness of the times. But I don't write quite as often as I once did, so this can get choppy and get away from me.

(I mean, talk about I used to write during class... The Book I wrote throughout middle school. My journals, on the other hand, went everywhere with me in high school. All over the dang place. One time, in my choir class, the choir officers decided to give out silly awards to every student in. I got the "Always Writing" award. I had to look up from writing to see what they were saying about me. Kind of one of those moments that's always stuck with me.)

Mostly I journal in front of the TV at night. But I bring my journal almost everywhere with me. Maybe a little less so these days since I'm also toting a 16 month old around, and I have to pay more attention to her than to pen and paper. But writing has always been a comfort blanket for me, is the bottom line.

So read. And write. That's the first piece (first two pieces?) of advice I can give you. That's where my book writing started. I couldn't have had my idea or actually gotten the words down if it hadn't been for the foundational knowledge and habits reading and writing have afforded.

Next up - how I prayed to a higher power over my stove...

(Disclaimer on why this might be boring (?): So apparently, a lot of writer blogs have a theme, or a point, or a message. What, you mean I can't just write when the moment strikes me? Which, as you can see, is almost never, although that's a lie, because I'm almost constantly planning what I'm going to write next, running through possible wordings in my head. But then I stop myself because, hey, I remind me, I need to get back to work on that novel I'd like to get published, HAHAHAHAHAHA. And then I usually go and do a workout or scroll aimlessly through Facebook instead of doing that. 

Discipline is definitely needed!)

Snowdrift on a Sunny Day (or, A Woman in the White House?!)

 How are the juxtapositions of the last two weeks possible?

Two weeks ago, I was doubled over in my bathroom, anxiety coursing through my veins like a poison I was waiting to succumb to, after seeing photographic evidence of modern day Nazis overrunning the United States Capital. For several seconds, I truly questioned how long my Jewish-ancestry existence would be allowed to continue. How far are we really from the extreme far right takeover that reared its ugly head on January 6, 2021? There were 10 years between the beer hall putsch and Hitler’s being named chancellor of Germany. Do I have 10 years before we put someone akin to that in power? And then what? Weeks, months before I get rounded up and sent to a death camp?

And does the same fate, or worse, await my 16 month old daughter?

The thoughts swirled around for a few days, but, like a snowdrift, they faded away - like a snowdrift, I know they may come again. 

But then last night, I nearly doubled over in tears of joy thinking, “Tomorrow there will be a woman in the White House, and not just as the First Lady.”

(Not that we haven’t had amazing first ladies who deserve recognition in their own right. But this is somewhat different, you have to admit.)

How could I be brought to such extreme terror and such extreme joy and relief in the span of just two weeks? 

How can we live in a single country that is so dual in its beliefs that both things are possible at the same time?

It’s mind boggling.

When I woke up this morning, my pearls sitting in solidarity with Kamala on my dresser, unpredicted snow blanketed the ground. I was brought back to this piece I wrote three years ago:

“There is silence in snowfall. The whole world comes down in those little white crystalline structures, all innocence and glitter. Everything else that is not a snowflake ceases to move, stands still and holds its breath while the bits of icy lace pile atop each other. They put a blanket of pure white over dark, now sodden trees and logs. Little bits of grass poke their heads out of the same comforter. The slate sky is soft in its silence. I could watch the world come to this crunching, comforting halt for days on end. Is this coverlet of white a blank slate? Does it let us start anew with a fresh palette?”

How interesting that nature gave us this blank slate this morning. America is, as my husband put it, “more divided than we have been since the Civil War.” I feel that - of course I do, I was doubled over for double reasons in two weeks. The duality we are facing is literally waging its own Civil War in my mind. 

And now, this. Like a news reporter interrupting our attention span with the next story (as useful or useless as it may be), we have been given this fresh start.

Instinctively, my thoughts said something to me about “whitewashing the last four years from existence,” and they meant it in the same way Tom Sawyer whitewashed (or didn’t) that fence all those years ago. But then another part of my thought-brain came back with, “Yikes, poor choice of thought-words, self.” We don’t want anymore of that metaphorical white washing, no siree. It’s that kind of thing that’ll end us up in the same place Germany was in 100 years ago.

In fact, it’s been almost exactly 100 years. Have we learned nothing? (That’s a question for another time.)

I find myself filled with these dual thoughts on the regular these days. I think something that would have slid through the back of my mind sans-notice a few years ago, but now it gets stopped by the new-ish part of my brain that worries I’ll offend someone accidentally. Will someone perceive what I say as racist/sexist/ageist/transphobic/homophobic? Because I don’t want that.

And screw being “too PC.” Not caring about political correctness is not caring about other people. Why shouldn’t I want to offend the least amount of people possible? (Other than fascists/racists/NeoNazis. They can go fuck themselves.) Why shouldn’t I make a conscious effort to BE A GOOD PERSON and make others feel at ease? What is wrong with that?

The answer is nothing. Nothing at all is wrong with wanting to be inclusive. (Other than of  fascists/racists/NeoNazis. They can go fuck themselves.) For so long, many of these people I am now conscious of not wanting to offend did nothing but get offended in secluded silence. Why should I NOT be willing to feel the most minor amount of discomfort by questioning my own thoughts when others have had their very existence questioned? I afford others that much camaraderie - you’ve been genuinely uncomfortable for so long; I will now share that burden, albeing minimally, with you.

And with camaraderie in mind, why is the phrase “liberal snowflake” hurled around like it’s a bloody insult when all it really does is acknowledge the truth of humanity? Snowflakes are, by their very nature, by the same nature that binds all reality together (don’t correct my metaphysics here, okay?), all made up of the same stuff despite their looking entirely different. 

(Although even saying they’re “made up of the same stuff” is misleading because even though they may be made up of the same types of atoms with the same numbers of subatomic particles, obviously those subatomic particles exist multiple times to make up the atoms, so even though they’re the same type, even if they were carbon copies, they would exist twice, and then they would have different experiences [yes, even snowflakes can have experiences, like how they get blown up and down through the atmosphere and what happens to them once they hit the ground and shit], so they would still be different. In fact, even if they had the same exact experiences, they would exist twice, so you see, it wouldn’t be the same exact material making them up…)

Hmm. I went a little off the rails there. I hope you catch my “drift.”

The point is, all humans AND all snowflakes are made up of the same basic subatomic material but are still unique. We are simultaneously the same and different. Why is it an insult to acknowledge that? To be clear and refute a point some people try to make, no one is asking for special treatment because of these differences. Most people want us to not only acknowledge the differences, but acknowledge the similarities.

Just acknowledge. We look different, we have different opinions and experiences, but at the molecular level, we’re all pretty damn similar.

(Not that fascists/racists/NeoNazis feel that way, but they can go fuck themselves.)

So I hope those snowflakes that fell this morning had a touch of the liberal about them. Liberal in the sense of its original definition: “willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas.” I hope the liberality they may have washed over our land leaves us all open - to discussion, to ideas, to work together towards positive change. I hope the next four years can more than begin to undo the worst parts of the last four.

That blank slate was a beautiful new perspective to awaken to.

  

The Problems With Episode 9, Part 3

Act 3

So emotionless point number one of the last act of this movie: the space battle. The biggest problem for me here was there was no one left in the First Order that I cared about. No feeling of jubilation lurked in the inevitable defeat of the baddies because there was no one left there I was invested in anymore. Had Hux been at the helm, I would have been excited to see him fall. (Or Phasma! Where was the chrome trooper in all this? I heard JJ was mad she was killed off in 8 because he wanted to use her again, but that “death” was pretty ambiguous. It would have been so easy to bring her back! You brought back the Emperor for fuck’s sake!) But Pryde? Meh. Whatever. 

The ground crew launching an assault on top of a star destroyer was pretty freaking awesome. Again, I needed more of Jannah. More badass women of color in the galaxy, please and thank you! I would’ve liked to have seen more of her relationship with Finn, and she trusts him so much at the end to stay with him and march towards their untimely death. Other than one previous conversation, there was no reason they should be this connected. I wanted one! 

Oh, right. The Force again. Of course. 

So Rey finally meets Palpatine, and he reveals that he’s never wanted to kill her. The spirits of every Sith ever live in him (why? How? Because this is the last movie and that sounds appropriately epic? Okay.), and he wants her to kill him so these spirits all transfer to her, and she can rule the galaxy as Empress Palpatine. 

Wait a minute. If he’s still alive, why doesn’t he want to rule? He’s always proven to be one hell of a selfish mofo. Is he more of a reanimated corpse than he would have us believe? Come on, throw us a line here about how he can’t keep up with the decay his body is going through. Just a throwaway line would have explained this better! We had enough pointless throwaway lines in this movie, how about one that means something?

Rey resists, but when the Emperor explains how her friends will lose if she doesn’t claim her birthright, she concedes. In one of my least favorite lines in the movie, the Emperor cries, “Begin the ritual!“ He then narrates the steps of the “ritual,“ which is just Rey killing him with a lightsaber. Nothing ritualistic about that. Other than the weird black robes servants surrounding them in some kind of stadium seating. I mean, what were these - the servants that worked to keep the Emperor alive? Were they the Sith of the past? Does it even matter anymore at this point?

Meanwhile, Ben parks a TIE fighter (where did he get this TIE? Maybe it was left on the Death Star ruins, but we’re left to do mental gymnastics to figure that out) next to Rey’s X Wing - we get a lingering shot of the two opposing ships parked next to each other in another example of beat you over the head symbolism. Ben drops down into the Emperor’s lair only to be confronted by the dreaded Knights of Ren. They have somehow gotten the memo that Ben is no longer Ren, and they attack. See Ben? Told you you should’ve still had your lightsaber with you. 

But then, in a cool dramatic turn, using their Force connection, Rey is able to pass Ben the lightsaber she’s been using up until now – Luke’s. Ben uses it to defeat the Knights of Ren and joins Rey to confront Palpatine. 

Palpatine brings up that force dyad thing again and says their bond is as strong as its own life force, something that hasn’t been seen for generations. But that’s as much info as we get about what could have been the most interesting part of this new saga. Then a reanimated corpse zombie dude is able to suck this incredibly powerful force out of the duo and sort of almost kill them. But after it appears the two are dead for a while, Ben opens his eyes and stands up, only to be blasted down a pit by the emperor. Then Rey cracks her eyes open, rolls over, looks to the sky, and asks the spirit of all the Jedi of the past to be with her. (She did this in meditation at the beginning of the movie as well, and it didn’t work. So I guess this is supposed to be a full circle moment that feels more clumsy than clever.) It’s cool that she hears the voices of so many Jedi of the past here, like Anakin and Qui-Gon and even Ahsoka Tano and Kanaan Jarus. Probably would’ve been more fun if she had seen some actual Force ghosts though. With the strength of her new dead friends, Rey stands up and faces the Emperor with Leia‘s lightsaber. The Emperor throws some force lightning at her that she is able to deflect with the blades. He nearly overpowers her while screaming, “I am all the Sith!“ And then in another of my least favorite lines in the movie, Rey says back, “And I am all the Jedi.“ This should have felt epic and kick ass, but it fell flat for me, and I can’t put my finger on why. Although my husband pointed out how much more awesome it would’ve been if Rey could have said, “And I am nobody.“ Oh yeah. That would’ve given me chills.

Using two sabers to deflect the Emperor’s force lightning back at him, she burns the skin off his face. He dies, and the huge underground layer begins collapsing in on itself. Rey falls down, apparently dead, I guess because she wasn’t really fit to channel all that energy. I took issue with this. Again, she and Ben were supposed to be some kind of crazy powerful force that hadn’t been seen in generations, so why wouldn’t they have been able to overcome the Emperor? In the last two movies, we’ve seen both Rey and Ben do crazy things with the Force, way more than Palpatine was ever seen doing. I did not think his death should have also resulted in their’s. I guess the Dark side really is stronger? What a message to send us home with.

But then, close up on the pit Ben fell down and his hand rising up. (Oh, was this the actual rise of Skywalker?) then stumbles over to Rey and cradles her in his arms. As she healed him earlier, he now uses some of his life force to heal her. She opens her eyes, sits up, and looks deeply into his eyes. “Ben,” she whispers.

No, no, no, I found myself chanting internally. Please don’t do this.

But they did. Rey leans forward and kisses Ben, a guy she doesn’t even really know. She’s only known him as Kylo, someone who treated her like absolute garbage for the last two movies, torturing her mentally and physically. If I hadn’t already written this movie off, this would have been the moment. The second time we saw it, there was an eight-year-old boy sitting diagonally in front of me. In the lead up to the act, he started chanting, “Kiss, kiss, kiss!“ So that’s who this was for. Eight-year-olds. I mean, I am the first to constantly remind people that Star Wars is a kids’ movie at heart, but it’s always been a kids’ movie that could transcend its genre. A movie that could be enjoyed by people of all ages. You shouldn’t just cater to kids and give them crap because they don’t care about quality as much as older viewers.

When the kiss ends, Ben looks at Rey with a big grin on his face – and then dies. Again, not sure why. He had had his redemption arc, which in my book should mean he should be able to walk out of this. After doing some soul-searching, I guess when the Emperor sucked the life out of Ben and Rey the first time, he actually sucked out their dyad bond. So when Ben gave Rey his life force at the end, their strength had diminished to that of normal Jedi. Even though that doesn’t really work for me. I had to justify it somehow.

Anyway, now all the bad guys are defeated and everyone regroups at the rebel base camp for hugs and dancing. It was clear that Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, and Daisy Ridley‘s tears were genuine in their final hug. Again, I felt like something was missing though. It might’ve been a sweeping, grand anthem from John Williams. The music kind of petered out here and wasn’t as dramatic as it could have been.

The screen fades to black, but it fades back in to Rey on Tatooine at Lars’ Homestead. She pokes around a little before taking Luke and Leia‘s lightsabers and burying them on the property. I wondered at this point if she was giving up the force entirely, until she took out her stunningly beautiful leather wrapped saber and switched it on, revealing a glowing yellow orange blade. 

The star of these movies? Clearly the two new saber designs. I can’t wait to own replicas of these!

Then an old woman happens by and asks Rey her name. When Rey gives only her first name, the woman asks, “Rey what?“

Rey looks into the distance and sees the force ghosts of Luke and Leia smiling at her. She turns back to the woman and says, “Rey Skywalker.” UGH. Ueah, I get it, they were like parents to you. It just again felt very blunt.

The movie ends with Rey and BB-8 staring into the twin sunned distance as Binary Sunset Blairs over the speakers. A great piece of music, and a nice shot to end, but not enough to make up for the gigantic mess I had just sat through.

Other random notes: 

More than once in the movie, and one of the characters said, “we go together.” Every time, in my head I saying, “like Ramalama Lama kading a dading a dong.”

JJ must really love holochess, since this is the second time in two movies he has included it. At least this appearance of it was done better than the first.

Maz Kanata is a really intriguing character. I wanted more of her after the force awakens, but in this movie she was just thrown in for no apparent reason. How she knew things where you had to do with the force? I don’t know. Why did you never explain why she had Luke’s white saver? And why in the holy hell did she give chewy cons metal at the end? That was a big giant look at the audience and wink moment. “Hey! Here’s some thing little fan boys have been complaining about for 42 years! Let’s make it right completely inorganically and take everyone out of the scene while we are doing it!“

The characters were basically murdered in this movie. I guess Finn seemed to have settled in with being a full resistance guy. But he had no real plot here, other than alluding to Force sensitivity. Poe was more of a curmudgeon than ever before, I guess because no one came to help at the Battle of Craig, even though at the end of that there were heat members in the resistance, and at the beginning of this they have way more than eight. Rey just… I don’t even know. She vacillates so much, doing whatever the plot demands. There’s not much motivation for her character, but I guess there wasn’t much plot either. I really liked these three characters, and I didn’t know what was going on with them at the end. They felt flat, static, unchanging. It felt like the end of Revenge of the Sith, where things happened just because you knew they had to. There was very little motivation for any character to do anything in that movie other than, “Well, Darth Vader has to be evil by the end of this, so let’s have him kill a bunch of kids!“

I wish there was more. I wish this story wasn’t over. I wish somebody would get on TV and declare, “April fools!” And in another year, they would release the real episode nine that wasn’t some lazy piece of dumpster fire trash. I can’t believe how many people I’ve spoken to who claim to enjoy this movie at this point. I wonder if time will dull that for anyone.

It could just be that my expectations were so high. A lot of people I’ve spoken to have said, “Well, you can’t please everyone.“ I’m not saying you can, and I wasn’t expecting a perfect movie, but I felt like this was just… Beyond what I could have not hoped for.

It could also be that my husband and I have seen episode seven and eight probably more than most people. I had just realized this week that I love them as much as the original trilogy, as blasphemous as that may sound. And you know what mRreturn of the Jedi did? It ended a trilogy well. So sue me for hoping The Rise of Skywalker would do the same. I must be such a horrible person for wanting something satisfying, for not wanting to settle for this trash.

Thank God for The Mandalorian and the promise of a visit to Galaxy’s Edge.

The Problems With Episode 9, Part 2

Act 2

Now off to Kajimi, which was another part of the movie I had no issue with. I enjoyed seeing the First order terrorize the town to make them seem more threatening. More good trio banter.  “Poe Dameron, spice runner. Runner of spice.“) I even liked Zorri Bliss, who I thought would be a giant waste of time. She had good chemistry with Poe in their short time together, and she provided some comic relief with him. And her smoky eye make up look really great underneath that helmet. Good use of an eye pencil for a two second shot. Babu Frik is absolutely adorable. 

Due to the previews, I was convinced I would be a sobbing mess when 3-PO gets his mind wiped. I cried every time I saw 3-PO saying he’s taking one last look at his friends. I’m sure a huge part of that is the wonderful under scoring and the shock of seeing it for the first few times. But in the actual movie? Because of Babu Frik’s adorable babbling, the scene is played almost more as a comedy than something sad. Not how I would’ve played it. No tears shed for me, and I cry at most things. 

Next up – a daring rescue from the Star Destroyer when the trio finds out Chewie is still alive. Another overall positive sequence. The stormtroopers Rey was able to brainwash were pretty funny. The Rey/Kylo duel that took place in two locations was beautifully edited. 

But then the entire thing fell apart at the seams. It went from my thinking “this couldn’t get worse“ to what Harrison Ford said in a trash compactor that one time – “It’s worse.“ Kylo comes back to the Star Destroyer and delivers the news of Rey’s lineage to her – she is Palpatine‘s granddaughter.

What?! WHAT?! How on any planet does this make any sense? Spoiler alert for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which I also hated – but this felt an awful lot like the big reveal in that, the one where Voldemort had a daughter. That didn’t make a lick of sense either, but at least you could understand Bellatrix as the girl’s mother. Who the holy hell was Palpatine banging? If you do the math, his son would probably have had to be born around the time of Episode Three. So his son’s mother should’ve been visible somewhere. But Palpatine exudes no sexuality ever, and there’s no one I could even identify as a potential partner for him. So randomly he just had a kid who had a kid? This is another major fan fiction moment for me. Why did Ray have to be related to someone powerful? It takes away her agency and her own power. This is not an “I am your father“ moment. This is a cheap rip off. Because of Palpatine’s allusion to this in the beginning of the movie, I was pretty cautious up to this point. This is where I bowed out. This is where this ended for me.

Meanwhile, Poe and Finn get caught after rescuing Chewbacca. Their execution is ordered, but they are saved by… General Hux?! Prior to this, General Hux had only been present in one scene. There was some minor confrontation, and when I say minor, I mean super minor and joking, between him and Ren, and then he saves the heroes. He loudly and bluntly pronounces, “I’m the spy!“ Yup. What a well written line. Soon afterwards, he informs Finn that he is only a spy because he wants Kylo Ren to lose.

I get it. I get that he and Kylo hate each other. That much has been super obvious in the last two movies. But wouldn’t have been more interesting if Kylo had been actually in charge of the First Order but was constantly distracted by his obsession with Rey, and then Hux had to confidently lead the First Order and snatch control out from under Ren when he was off searching for the scavenger? And then there was more tension between the two? Instead, he reports that the prisoners have escaped to some new guy no one gives a crap about, General Pryde, another god-awful name. Pryde sees right through Hux and blows him away. Another waste of an interesting character! I feel so bad for Domnhall Gleeson. What did he have, three lines in this movie? After being built up as a pretty evil dude? And Kylo doesn’t even get to kill him? He doesn’t even get to be present in the final battle between the Resistance and the First Order? This was another move that felt sudden and cheap and disappointing.

So the heroes escape (again) and go to Endor, which is where the Sith dagger tells them the next Sith triangle can be found. There’s a really dumb sequence where there’s a piece that pulls out of the dagger and Rey lines it up with the remains of the second Death Star, and the pattern on the dagger lines up with where the Sith triangle is? 

So even though the Sith are thousands of years in the making, this dagger has probably only been around for 30 or so years, and Palpatine brought a Sith triangle onto the death star with him and then made the dagger look like the remains of the Death Star? If he knew the Death Star was going to blow up, why was he on it? How did he know exactly what the remains would look like? Why wasn’t the Sith triangle hiding on somewhere that makes sense, like Coruscant? Like in his throne room that was made out of the remains of the Jedi Temple? Or maybe he had the Sith triangle brought to him after he was resurrected? And Ochi was hiding the Sith triangle, not looking for it? 

Oh, I know what the answer is. The Force. The end. (That’s not how the Force works!)

There’s another good scene here where Finn bonds with Jannah, a new character who is also a former stormtrooper. She tells this really great story of how her entire battalion laid down their weapons rather than kill civilians at some battle, and they all ran away to Endor. Finn implies that the Force helped them come together in a group mentality, which is a really interesting concept. A bunch of stormtroopers who probably should’ve been trained as Jedi instead? There’s some potential for a follow up here. I would have enjoyed more time with Jannah than we got.

Rey travels to the Death Star remains and uses her scavenger jumping powers to get to the place where the Sith triangle is just floating in thin air. Then she has a Force vision of herself as a Sith, with perfectly porcelain skin, a badass double bladed swinging lightsaber, and pointy teeth. After she duels herself, Ren shows up and crushes the Sith triangle, telling her she’ll never get to Exegol without him. 

Now ensues an attempt at an epic lightsaber battle between these two that felt devoid of any emotion. I’ve felt this since the prequels - when there’s too much going on in the background - literally, like there’s spewing lava or crashing waves - it serves as a distraction to the duel. A good duel should be clashing sabers and emotions. Rey showed a little anger, but I wasn’t sure what Kylo was feeling. And by this point, I felt these two should be teaming up. They both want to kill the Emperor, albeit for different reasons, but there’s not much reason for Rey to be angry with Ren. Yes, he destroyed her triangle, but wouldn’t they also stand a better chance at defeating the Emperor together? And then Rey could still refuse to turn evil after that... it was just lack of logic. I had no real idea why they were fighting. 

After jumping through some waves and pushing Finn backwards, Rey actually kills Kylo. Stabs him right in the gut. Granted, Leia helped by reaching out with the Force and distracting her son. And then dropping dead. All she did was say, “Ben,” across the miles, and it immediately killed her. And him. I was pretty shocked at this as the movie was only halfway over. But then, drawing on the power established with the giant snake earlier, Rey healed Kylo’s wound and brought him back to life. Because of their previously established bond, I absolutely would have bought this without the snake scene. (Plus Baby Yoda just did it on The Mandalorian the day before the movie’s release, sooooooo...)

Presumably horrified by actually killing someone, Rey hops in Kylo’s TIE fighter and flies away. Ben stands up, and we hear the voice of Harrison Ford say from behind him, “Hey, kid.” He turns around, and there’s daddy Han Solo. Okay. This was pretty bad fan service, but I did love it, probably more because Ford maintained for years he never wanted to do another Star Wars and still came back in the end. There was something heartwarming about him returning to a franchise that really launched his career for its ending.

Of course, had princess Carrie still been with us, this probably would’ve been her showing up as a Force projection. In fact, Leia’s death seemed a bit abrupt - one word did it? That didn’t take much. However, if they had saved her death for after Ben’s vision of Han, it would have looked like Leia was able to trigger this vision. This would’ve made more sense, particularly as Ren showed soft spots for his mother in episode eight, but he never showed much remorse for killing his father. So why would he be feeling that now? 

There was a lot of depiction of Ren’s back-and-forth nature in episodes seven and eight, but in nine he only seemed hell-bent on ruling the galaxy. The tortured soul element wasn’t present, so this vision of Han and his immediate turn to the light was extremely abrupt. He and Han have the same conversation they had in The Force Awakens, another clear example of the writers thinking they’re being clever by reusing dialogue but really just being immature. Then Ben throws his lightsaber into the choppy ocean, which is kind of a dumb move when you figure he’s still going to try to take on the Emperor. What weapon is he going to use? Why couldn’t he just use his lightsaber no matter what color it was? 

Although I did like the fan servicey line where Han cuts Ben off with an “I know,“ anticipating his I love you without having to say it. A lot of things in this movie didn’t need to be said but were – this was a nice touch.

Rey now shows up on Ahch-to, presumably so afraid of herself that she wants to go into exile rather than destroy the ultimate evil in the galaxy. Force ghost Luke shows up to chat some sense back into her, and we find out that he and Leia have known who Rey was this whole time. (How? Whatever.) Luke describes that Rey must confront her fear, and she goes along with it. Then Luke gifts Rey Leia’s lightsaber, which she gave up on her last night of Jedi training after having a vision of her son’s death. (Oh, so she’s basically been a fully fledged Jedi this entire time? That’s why she could train Rey? OK. Glad we didn’t know that until 2/3 of the way through the movie.) When Rey wonders what ship she can use to leave seeing as she burned Ren’s, Luke pulls some more fans service out of the ocean in the form of his X Wing. No more trying here, folks. He has done. Not done not. This was again a bit much for me. Like, “Hey, remember that big thing I couldn’t do before? Well now, even though I’m dead, I can do it! Yay for me! Clearly everyone can see that my character has now come full circle. That’s what it took. Lifting a ship. Not the end of the last movie where I realized I was wrong and came back to save the Resistance, sacrificing myself while using a super awesome new Force power. No. That wasn’t it. Lifting rocks.“

Ray collects the Sith triangle from the wreckage of Ben’s ship and takes off in the X Wing. Back on the rebel base, our two is able to detect the signal of the X Wing, thus allowing the rebel fleet to follow her to Exegol. 

Hey, by the way, there’s another droid in this movie that I haven’t talked about because that’s how much of a point he serves. D-0 is really cute, but he just says words in English to tell you the emotions you’re supposed to be feeling at any given time. He almost had a purpose here, as he apparently knew where Exegol was. But once R2 could pick up on raise signal, they didn’t need him anymore. Yeah seems like an excuse for JJ to guest star in his own movie.

The Problems With Episode 9, Part 1

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, STAR WARS?!

I hate this feeling. I feel empty and heartbroken. Betrayed by a series that I loved for 22 years. I hate that a movie could make me feel this sad. It’s just a movie, right?

Except it feels like more than that. It’s something I’ve loved deeply for so long. The characterization has always been enough to deepen the sometimes shallow stories, particularly in the original trilogy. And in episodes seven and eight. God, did I love episodes seven and eight. We rewatch them this week, and I came to terms with the fact that I love them as much as the original trilogy. Sure, there are some minor flaws, but that’s true of every Star Wars movie. The Dianoga in the trash compactor? A lot of Han and Leia floating in space in Empire? Jabba’s Palace to some extent in Jedi? 

But those things are all forgivable. The Rise of Skywalker is not.

(Random grammar note- I apologize now for my bouncing back and forth between tenses. It’s not a problem I usually have, but I’m still coming to terms with much of this, so I’m distracted. I have bigger fish to fry than my verb tense inconsistency. )

The short version – the plot is absolutely absurd, with reveals coming out of nowhere. It tries to be clever, and its tries were extremely obvious and clumsy, reducing it to the level of writing I see in middle school. It didn’t address the vast majority of things I hoped it would.

The characterization is nearly nonexistent. Characters who felt fleshed out and rounded in seven and eight changed basically because the plot required it in this movie. They didn’t do much to earn their changes if they even had any. To me, bad plot and bad characters equal a bad movie. I’m not sure how so many I’ve spoken to agree with me on that front but still enjoyed the show.

A much, much, much more detailed description of my feelings:

Let’s start at the very beginning.

The opening crawl. “The dead speak!” Um, yeah, no shit. This is Star Wars. Force ghosts have been a thing since the first movie in 1977! (Or at least the voice of Obi Wan Kenobi.) Why is this news? Why is this how it started?

The crawl then went on to talk about how Emperor Palpatine was back from the dead and his voice has been broadcast across the galaxy. Um, why didn’t we see this happen? Why did this movie start with just telling us it had happened? It took away what could have been a very dramatic moment. There was almost no tension, and I know we heard the Emperor’s voice in the trailers so ewe knew he’d be in this, but still. When you teach writing, you always tell your students, “Show, don’t tell.” In other words, this movie started with a major rookie mistake. It put a bad taste in my mouth before any act or even appeared on the screen. I leaned over to my husband and asked, “Are we going to need episode 8 1/2 to flesh this out?” (It might have helped some things, but it wouldn’t saved us from the ridiculous plot moves ahead.)

And another thing – why was the Emperor in this at all? He was defeated at the end of episode six, and I was OK with that. My husband pointed out that by having him in this movie, Anaken’s story was completely negated. His redemption at the end of Jedi? Totally undone.

And how did Palpatine even come back? Something something dark side. (“Clones. Dark science. Things only the Sith no.“ Except people besides the Sith can create clones so…) No real explanation. I will give it this – Ian McDiarmid did look pretty awesome, and I enjoyed his acting. I wasn’t sure what was up with the big Matrix style robot arm that was holding him up. But otherwise it was interesting aesthetically.

One of the things I was most looking forward to in this movie was seeing that punk ass bitch Kylo Ren doing a terrible job of being in charge of the first order. However, we barely saw him interact with anyone besides Rey. In fact, he didn’t even have that many lines! It just started with the crawl telling us he was looking for Palpatine to kill him so he could be even more in charge than he already was? And he was looking for a “Sith Wayfinder,“ which is a terrible name for something, and is something we have never heard of. Why would you introduce something stupid and new in the last act of a nine part series? There were enough loose ends to be tied up at the end of episode eight. Why? Just why?

Once the crawl is over, Kylo Ren is on a planet killing a bunch of people, and he finds a prism in a box. (Hey, did anyone know this planet was Mustafar? It says so in the Visual dictionary for this movie. Might have been fun to actually know. Seems like a logical place to hide a prism.) Then he makes his way to Palpatine, who tells him who Rey really is. I can’t lie, I loved Rey being no one. It had a beautiful message that you can rise up from nothing to become good and powerful and important. And now that was about to be undone.

Oh, and we got a fleeting shot of a bunch of Snokes in a tank, implying he was a clone of… Someone? OK, the Emperor created him and put him in charge, but I wasn’t sure why there had to be clones of him? All of whom had scars on their faces? Unlike a lot of people, I had no problem not knowing his background when he died in episode eight. He was the bad guy, end of. We didn’t know much about the Emperor when we saw the original trilogy. He was just a guy in charge. And, as I said before, I thought by Kylo killing him, the movie left us in a much more interesting place for the next one. But no. Just a clone in a tube.

Then Palpatine gives Kylo a giant fleet of star destroyers that were just hanging out beneath the surface of the Sith planet. Sith planet equals stupid. It feels like something a 14-year-old boy wrote on the Internet. And why did the First Order need a bunch of star destroyers? They already outnumber the resistance about 1,000,000 to 1. Unnecessary. I guess it was supposed to look cool, but it just felt over the top big for no apparent reason. I don’t mind some great special effects, but I would like them to be warranted. Everything on the Planet Sith (I know, Exegol, but even that name is terrible) was just navy blue and lightning. No real atmosphere. Just, “Ooooh, this place is bad.”

It Hass to be said that I thought to myself, this movie can’t get any worse than this, right? This absurdity distracted me for the rest of the movie until it actually did get worse. I found it hard to enjoy anything on the first viewing.

Then we got a pointless action scene with Finn and Poe. I like Finn and Poe. They are my favorite couple in the new Star Wars universe! And their Bromance was stronger than ever in this film. So that was one positive. But the only point of this scene was to establish a mole in the first order, which was established a little later when they got back to the resistance base. I mean, I get it – there should be some good action in Star Wars. But I would’ve rather seen it somewhere else that had actual meaning rather than for no reason off the bat. A lot of things in this movie were under developed or unexplained, which means the pacing was just not right.

And then Rey was training with Leia. She looked kind of weird sitting crosslegged floating in mid air to be honest. And if Leia was never actually a fully trained Jedi, how could she be training Rey? (There’s an answer to this later.) I liked the training course that Rey ran. I liked that Kylo Ren could still connect with her. But did he have to touch his effed up Darth Vader mask to do it? He didn’t need that in the last movie. I was glad that Snoke lied about being the reason they could connect, though. I felt there was a deep connection between these two, not a romantic one, but something we had never seen before in the Force. I was glad the writers of this thought so, too.

I really liked the scene where Poe and Finn returned to the resistance base and had that great banter with Rey. Snarky back-and-forth is one of the things I’ve always loved about Star Wars, so this might have actually been my favorite scene in the entire movie.

Anyway, Poe and Finn relay the information about the Sith prism, and Ray decides she needs to go looking for it. (I swear every time Oscar Isaac had to say something about the Emperor or the Sith, a clouded look of, “I can’t believe I’m saying this shit,“ came over his face. Also, I always find it weird when characters who aren’t Sith or Jedi mention the Sith. Weren’t they gone from the galaxy for millennia by the time of the prequels? So a lot of people thought they were just a myth? I can’t imagine the Emperor going around claiming to everyone, “Hey, not only am I the big cheese around here, but I’m also a Sith Lord!“ So why did everyone in this movie know he was a Sith? It doesn’t seem like it would’ve come up at any point.) Poe and Finn decide they are coming with her, along with C-3PO and BB-8. And for some reason R2-D2 can’t go. Shrug. OK. Oh, and neither can Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose Tico. I think JJ just didn’t care about her since he didn’t create her as a character. So she was left around to do pretty much nothing. What a waste. her sense of pure joy and fun livened up the last movie for me.

Not to mention every time she was in a scene, so was Dominic Monaghan, playing Beaumont. Anyone hear his name used in the movie? No, but you heard his voice an awful lot because he had a lot of weird exposition lines. Why couldn’t Rose have just had those lines? Or Lieutenant Connix for that matter? Connix was in all three new movies, and yet her name is never used, either. And she’s Carrie Fisher’s daughter for goodness sake! Using her more would have been a lovely tribute.

The trio arrive on Pasaana (a much better name for a planet than Exegol) in the middle of a cool looking festival, which kind of felt like some cultural appropriation of India, but Star Wars has never been particularly sensitive towards other cultures. Not that I’m making excuses for it, it just shouldn’t be a surprise. Turns out Luke knew about the Sith triangles and had gone looking for them once himself. (When I don’t know… Maybe before he went to Ahch-To feeling like a failure? That doesn’t seem like the right time. Nor does it seem like the right time before he started training Jedi because he probably would’ve felt like a failure after not finding a Sith triangle.) Rey read about it in his notebooks (which I thought were the sacred Jedi texts, but whatever - I guess they were the texts he made notes in), so they followed his trail.

While at the festival, stormtroopers arrive to capture them, and they are saved by a man in a mysterious mask who was obviously Lando. I thought the way he was brought in was pretty organic. I didn’t really understand why he of all people would have been looking for the Sith triangle with Luke, but somebody had to be able to fill our heroes in on some info.

Then off the heroes went in search of Ochi’s ship. Who was Ochi? Lando mentioned him being a Jedi hunter, but he was in possession of a Sith dagger… And later, the crew finds a speeder with a Sith symbol on it that they assume was Ochi’s… So was he a Sith? Was he just tooling around with these things because Palpatine give them to him? Extremely unclear.

Also note: there has been a Sith symbol in Star Wars canon for quite some time now. And this is not the symbol they chose to use in this movie. They designed a whole new one, and I’m not sure why. Yay for consistency.

The stormtroopers chasing the heroes through the desert was another decent part of the movie. It felt relatively Star Warsy. It should be mentioned that Anthony Daniels really got a chance to shine as C-3PO in this movie in a way he hasn’t in about 35 years. His humor started when the crew landed on Pasaana, and it continued wonderfully throughout. 

While this was occurring, Kylo Ren and Rey had one of their joint force visions, which I appreciated continuing, and Ren was able to figure out where Rey was. So off he and the Knights of Ren went to find the rebels.

Oh, the Knights of Ren. When they were mentioned in Episode 7, they peaked my interest. I was so excited to see them in this movie! Except they turned out to be a big, fat nothing! No explanation, nothing special about them, and then they all got dead in the end. That was a waste of my wondering.

After being chased by flying stormtroopers, our heroes end up falling through sinking fields into some underground tunnels. Just before sinking through the sand, Finn starts to tell Rey something. He doesn’t get to finish before they are silenced. Later, he won’t tell her what it was in front of Poe. Even later, Poe asks Finn about it again, and he still won’t tell him. AND WE NEVER FIND OUT WHAT IT IS!!! WHY SET THIS UP TWICE WITH NO PAY OFF?!

(Yeah, I know. Finn is Force sensitive. This become slightly apparent without his not telling Rey. JJ has now come out and said this is what fin was going to tell Ray, but how did this get left out of the movie? What a major oversight by editors! Star Wars is supposed to have an entire story group to focus on continuity. Major sloppy mistake.)

There is some more fun banter here. Then Ochi’s speeder is found, and they know it was Ochi’s speeder because there is a Sith symbol on it. Nothing like advertising your evil...

Near the speeder is a Sith dagger on which is inscribed the location of the Sith triangle. Why? Why put that on a dagger? Because it looks cool? Which it did, but it was again pointless. (I mean, except it had a point because it was a dagger… Ha ha…) 

Before they can escape from the tunnels, the heroes encounter a giant snake. Suddenly, Rey can speak Parseltongue and communicates with the snake. She finds a giant wound on him that she’s able to heal using the Force. This was a cool new power, but giant snake? It didn’t read right to me. Yes, Star Wars always has bizarre creatures, and some of them are really awesome, and some of them are really stupid. This one kind of fell in the stupid category at least for me. A snake is not a space creature. Ewoks? Space creature. Dianoga? Space creature. All those stupid things in the arena in episode two? They looked like space creatures to me. Giant snake? No.

Back in daylight, the heroes board Ochi’s ship, but Rey feels Ren’s presence and wanders off to confront him. When she doesn’t get back to the ship in a timely fashion, Finn sends Chewie out to get her. He is subsequently captured by those dastardly Knights of Ren.

Cue a cool scene from the trailer with Rey back flipping over Kylo Ren‘s TIE fighter and cutting off a wing. OK, that looked cool. I had no issue with that or the subsequent Ren/Rey force fight over the transport which resulted in Rey using force lightning and blowing it up. For the few minutes I did think Chewie was dead though, I was amazed I didn’t feel anything. I guess the action rushed on so quickly I didn’t have time to digest the loss of a major beloved character. Oscar Isaac literally came out of the ship to hurry the plot along, waving frantically to the other two to get on board. “Don’t stop to think about your dead friend! This movie doesn’t have time for that!“