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!“

Object Writing: Fudgie the Whale

The following piece is one of those object writings I wrote about in the last entry. This was the first one I did. It started off being about a stuffed animal I've had in one form or another since I was about five and spun off into something slightly different. But that's the beauty of object writing. It's not supposed to make perfect sense; it's just supposed to be about writing from your heart and getting some nice turns of phrase. So here goes something real personal.


The brown fur has faded and warn. Who ever heard of a brown furry whale anyway? Stitches can be seen, Frankenstein-like. A gaping hole(s) where white stuffing leaks out. Black shark eyes once painted with crescents of white, but no longer.

You'd swear this childhood was dead by the sound of it. But it's not - just well worn.

I still run the rough, grooved fabric across the skin of under-my-nose, and I can smell. I can smell a sharp tang of age - 28 years or so of existence. I can smell my cats and cuddling on the couch. Can feel putting my feet into my mom's lap to "tickle" them while shared TV, ideas, conversation blared in the background.

A well-worn childhood. Is there dirt pressed into those cracks? There's a smile pressed onto my face, sealed with a ray of sunshine and swinging on a swing set with friends who have scattered to the winds these days. And they have new childhoods to rear. Am I still struggling to let go of mine?

Is that why I struggle to start a new childhood now? I stand on the brink of that, yes, but at great toil and pain and sacrifice. I have worked to have this fun. Is it because I can still smell my own childhood each night in my sleep? Because it lives with me until I drift off and is the first thing I smell when I awaken again in the morning?

What (Not) to Write About

I promise, I do live up to the title of this blog, even if the amount of entries doesn't seem like it.

Anyone who knows me knows this is true. If you've spend more than an hour or so in my company, chances are you've seen me whip out my journal and a pen more awesome than any you own and have at it. My journal is like my comfort blanket. (I might have mentioned this previously?) It's everywhere with me - staff meetings, friends' houses, the couch at night. It used to even go to restaurants with me. It keeps me from boredom and lets me feel that beautiful sensation of ballpoint pressing down on stacks of creamy pages, imprinting my words and thoughts for posterity.

(A friend and I had a discussion about pen preference recently. He's gotten into fountain pens; other than a brief stint with their antiquatedness as a child, I've always been a ballpoint person. He couldn't understand, but he's a gel pen man, anyway. They scratch against the paper - I prefer a soft flow. And yes, you're reading this correctly, I'm waxing poetic about pens.)

The thing about writing, about "being a writer," is you're always writing. About everything. Even if it's just internal monologue or planning for your next piece. Really. When I need to not obsess about what I'm going to eat next or get negative thoughts out of my head, I think about the book(s) I'm working on, the editing I need to do, how to solve a writing problem, what metaphor I could use to describe what I'm seeing/feeling/hearing/smelling, making a list of names that sound story worthy.

That's not even to mention the actual physical writing. As previously mentioned, I've been working on a (several) novel(s) for five or so years. I haven't dedicated the time or effort I should to it (I know I shouldn't judge myself, but it's severely hard not to). Finally "finished" it about a year and a half ago during a NaNoWriMo by doubling the NaNo standards. The "book" is over 300,000 words unedited. So yeah. That's a trilogy, easily. It needs so much work. I never stopped to edit as I wrote, afraid if I did I'd get caught up in the quagmire of details that needed work. I ploughed through.

Halfway through the book, I added a main character. I knew I'd have to rewrite the first half to insert him in, but I kept going. I'd get there.

And now it's been a solid year and a half of pulling my hair out with things that just aren't working. Trying to get friends to read what I've written, having them volunteer to do so, and then never doing it/not giving me feedback. (I mean, like, 3 of you did read, and thanks to you, but the rest of you, I'm calling you out on it! Ambiguously!) Finding a place where I can post my writing online and have other amateurs - and some actual real life authors - proof and edit my stuff. That's been exciting, but that's added an extra layer of work in itself. I've learned a lot through that process - like how I use way too many adverbs, how cumbersome the word "that" can be, and how awkward even some of my phrasing can come off. I've also learned that not everyone's feedback is valuable. I'm writing a young adult fantasy novel, and it's not everyone's cup of tea. Not everyone understands how young adults behave. Not everyone respects choices you make as a writer in how your characters speak or the voice of your narration. And certainly not everyone knows where commas go. (Angry face emoji here)

I have gained some great reading partners, don't get me wrong. I was in a group for awhile with three others, novel swapping, until they all petered out on me. Because the thing about aspiring writers is we all have lives outside of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), and that can get in the way of things.

During the time, I also took some time to explore writing competitions (as previously mentioned). I know I wrote about winning two out of three writing contests I entered; having one short story published online and another in a book. (The one in the book is actually an alternative take on the novel I've been writing, so that was really rewarding. These characters I've been fleshing out for five years finally coming to life? What could be more fulfilling?) And today I just found out I placed third in a 300 word sprint contest, that short writing also springing from my novel. (Go me. I'm so awesome.)

Meanwhile, I've gone through a lot in my personal life. For the past three years, my husband and I have struggled to conceive. Thanks to the emotional roller coaster of hormones, biological clocks, and in vetro fertilization, I am now in my 24th week of pregnancy, and I'm finally enjoying it. But that was it's own emotional toil. In order to tell people about my struggles, I started a blog about that particular topic. Visit it here if you're at all interested.

My insatiable love of Harry Potter also led me to take a "job" with MuggleNet, one of HP's leading fan websites. I've listened to their podcasts for years, even guest hosting twice, and I fell in love with a lot of the people who work on those (in an internet friend kind of way). I wanted to be a journalist with them, though those jobs are ridiculously hard to obtain. Just to get a foot in the door, I took a position on their content team, touching up HTML issues across the site. (Full disclosure: I don't actually know what I'm doing. I've used what others have built, docs with shortcuts, Google, and asking around to figure it out.) Though most of those jobs are small, some of them are larger and require a little bit of writing. (Longest projects with them so far: a name origins page for Fantastic Beasts, and that's not even close to done yet, I just got it started, and some work on a Cursed Child soundtrack page; click on score and composer to see what I've done there.) I tend to look at those jobs once a week or so to just keep on top of that.

Doing that work has also led to my being able to review books for MuggleNet. That means I've received FREE BOOKS! Is there much better? (Other than getting your own works published, of course.) This also means I've had to carve out reading time, which is great as I don't always do that. The actual reviews are pretty short, but reading the books and writing those reviews does take time. So far, I've reviewed a cute YA fantasy book called Order of the Majestic and an amazing book on journaling (really writing in general) called Heart, Sass, and Soul.

Actually, Heart, Sass, and Soul gave me some great writing tips and techniques that got me pumped about writing in ways I haven't been for years. I partook for five days in an activity called "object writing," where you write about something you absolutely love for 10 minutes (or less, but I don't know why anyone would elect to do it for less time; I had to keep going each time I set my timer) without stopping, even if you go off topic. I ended up with some interesting pieces that have some artistic merit. More importantly, at times I felt like I had plugged into a cosmic steam of writing consciousness. I was absolutely buzzing by the time I finished. Once I even used that feeling to do an emotional bit of writing for my novel, tapping into the main character's feelings in a way I never had before. And all that in only 10 minutes a day! It made me feel super accomplished, and I told myself if I could even do that tiny little bit every day, I'd stop having writers' guilt.

Any other writers out there experience the guilt? It comes from not spending two hours a day on the novel you want so badly to get published. Spent time writing in my journal? Prepping thank you notes? Blogging? Only worked for 10 - 20 minutes? Sorry. Not good enough.

It's silly and puts an inordinate amount of pressure on the writer (me). It saps a lot of the fun out of actual writing. Writing is writing. Any little bit of it counts and helps. I need to remember that.

And if all of that wasn't enough, I started writing a new book this week, one I'm pretty excited about. I only have about 1,000 words of it written, though, because I wouldn't let myself do much more than that. The one day this week that I sat down to exclusively write, I forced myself to do some editing on The Seed of Magic, the long-term book. A huge part of me feels that needs to be done way before I let myself indulge in a silly chick-lit book that I still think has a lot of emotional potential.

Which is also ridiculous. I know from the shorter pieces I've done in the last year that sometimes writers need to work on something different to keep things fresh, to stay excited about their writing.

Besides, writing is only a million times more fun than editing. Editing sucks. A lot.

At least I got my husband to sit down and give a cursory glance over my most recently edited chapter. When you're writing/editing, it's hard to know if you've overused phrases or if certain wording is awkward or if your continuity is clear. Especially the way I write and edit, often in 10 minute bursts or while doing something else, so the flow isn't always there. Either way, having a touch of immediate feedback made a huge difference and was encouraging.

As is the fact that I started to share my book with some of my students, who are young adults themselves, thus the perfect target age for reading. When adults read/critique my work, they see through a lot of my ruses immediately. They can predict where plot points are going even with a super cursory mention of something. Younger readers? Not so much. Meaning my plot twists will come through a lot more twistily to them. Also encouraging.

On top of all of that, there's this blog. Severely neglected, I know. But what kind of writer wants to write about writing when they could be writing about not the real world? Again, this thing feels like an indulgence, like something frivolous or unnecessary. I was going to write over my spring break about four weeks ago, but I got side tracked going out to lunch with my mom. I've been sidetracked by all my various other writing projects. By starting a baby registry and unpacking in our new house (we've been in since Valentine's Day, but of course there are still little things to get out of boxes). By a million other little things.

Because even when you love to write, there are so many reasons to procrastinate. Sometimes you just get intimidated or overwhelmed by the amount of writing projects you have going and you end up working on none of them.

The struggle, my friends and dear readers, is far too real.