Ravenya003

In "The Fellowship of the Ring" when the group is climbing the mountain and Frodo accidentally drops the Ring right in front of Boromir, and there's an awkward moment when Boromir picks it up, is instantly hypnotized by it, and then hears Aragorn say: "give the Ring to Frodo." Boromir tries to laugh it off... but then we cut to Aragorn's hand... which was on the hilt of his sword the whole time. I loved that moment, it still gives me chills every time I see it.

This is a long one, I promise to give it a rest after this! Everyone brings their own perspective, baggage and personal history to these films. Heck - ANY story we read, hear or watch will be absorbed in a different way by each individual. For me personally, I'm simply tired of being asked to care about cruel, violent people who commit murder, and in this current climate, a villain who belonged to an organization seeped in Nazi imagery, who murdered all his classmates while they were at school, and who repeatedly assaulted a much younger girl in the midst of the real world's #timesup movement, just hit WAAAAAY too close to home. Obviously not everyone felt the same (and that's fine, it's just fiction!) but after TFA I honestly thought these films were doing something incredibly clever in depicting the true nature of evil: it's not grand and awe-inspiring like Vader, it's just whiny privileged self-absorption that thinks the world owes it everything. Evil - REAL evil - is banal and pathetic. But my initial interpretation was clearly not one that was ultimately supported by the writing - we were, apparently, meant to see Kylo as a victim. The thing is, I don't want to see HIS victims as nobodies who exist only as symbols of their murderer's internal rage and suffering. I mean, I CARED about Max von Sydow's character. I was charmed by the way he said of Leia: "she'll always be a princess to me." I was impressed by the way he stared death in the face and didn't flinch when Kylo murdered him. (And apparently, the original plan was for this character to be Wedge Antilles!) I cared about Korr Sella (Amaya from Legends of Tomorrow!) Leia's aide who gets sent to Hosnian Prime, and I felt her fear and horror as she stared at incoming death while others screamed and panicked around her, unable to do anything but wait for the inevitable. I cared about Rose's sister who clutches her half of the necklace as she blows herself up for the greater good. I cared about the terrified nameless rebel soldiers in Rogue One who nevertheless held their ground against DARTH FUCKING VADER just to buy their comrades a few precious seconds to get the Death Star plans to safety so they could save countless lives. I even cared about the "many Bothans who died to bring us this information", due to the sad, venerable way Mon Mothma speaks of them. And fine, some people don't care about any of those people. About a year ago I saw a Tumblr post that argued Kylo's participation in the genocide of all those planets shouldn't get in the way of his redemption because we didn't know any of the people on those planets, so who cares? A million lives is a statistic and all that, especially in a made-up story. But what's the point of having people (even fictional ones) die tragically if we're not supposed to care about it? If people are going around saying "Ben Solo deserved better!" like he's an ACTUAL person, then my only response is: "Yeah, you know who else deserved better? All the people he killed." I just wish films would stop trying to have it both ways: for a villain to murder scores of innocent people to demonstrate how "evil" he is, and then expect the audience to root for their redemption anyway. (There's been so much debate in the last few years as to why Prince Zuko's arc in Avatar the Last Airbender is considered the absolute BEST redemption arc of all time, and a huge part of that is that he doesn't murder anyone. He had a sense of honour and purpose and integrity (even at the beginning of his story) that Kylo couldn't DREAM of possessing, and despite all his bad deeds, he never crosses the line into taking someone else's life. Can you imagine Kylo risking his life to save Hux? Because Zuko does that for his own Hux in the very first season). I don't want to dislike TROS, and in time I might be reconciled to the choices it makes regarding Kylo Ren. I mean let's face it, ultimately the guy DID run out of second chances. If he had gone with Han in TFA, he would have been fine. If he had gone with Rey in TLJ, Leia would have found a way to protect him. But he didn't, and by TROS he's lost the chance to go home: the only option he has left is to die as Ben Solo. And despite the muddle of themes and motivations in these films, there is one thoroughfare that I appreciate: in TFA Kylo spots Luke/Anakin's lightsabre and petulantly shouts: "that belongs to me!" and then is visibly shocked when it nearly whacks him in the face on its way to Rey, its rightful owner. In TLJ he tries to undermine her by saying: "you're nothing, you're no one. You have no place in this story." There's a sense here that somewhere deep down, he knows he's not as important as he thinks he is. And then finally, his redemption hinges upon the fact he finally realizes that Rey's life is more important than his, that she (on a meta level) is the main character, not him. They're not "yin-yang", they're not "the Force in balance", they're a person who deserves a second chance, and a person who has wasted all of his, and so the ONLY good thing Kylo/Ben EVER does in his life is finally put his narcissism aside and die so that she can live. The bad guy eventually understands that this girl can and should exist outside of their messed-up relationship, and so gives her that opportunity. I... don't hate that? I mean, if it's any consolation, those misogynists and fangirls are STILL furious, because the final word in this trilogy is that Rey is the protagonist, the true Skywalker heir, the saviour of the galaxy, even though they've spent the last four years convincing themselves that this whole thing was Kylo's story, that he was the main character, and that Rey was only his life coach/emotional support/"prize" for his redemption. That this isn't the case clearly does not compute with them. They're still doing mental gymnastics trying to reconcile what they thought was going to happen (Ben and Rey living happily ever after, uniting both sides of the Force, raising the next generation of Jedi) with the reality of what HER story actually conveys: that she doesn't need him; she never did. She's nineteen years old and she's gonna be fine. She's the one that gets to grow up, and find more friends, and fall in love, and have children, and travel the galaxy and have as many adventures as she likes. She has a clean slate and a found family that loves her and permanent freedom from the Force-bond that I assume was what kept compelling her to return to Kylo. And on THAT subject, my friend had an interesting theory: that the Dyad-Force-Whatever was imposed upon Kylo and Rey to ensure a favourable outcome for Rey - the Force KNEW that she would at some point have to face Palpatine, and that she wouldn't survive the experience. She would need someone of equal power to be invested enough in her safety that he would literally give up his own life to save hers, which is exactly what happened. So Kylo is redeemed for the sole purpose of saving Rey's life. His entire purpose in life (and this story) is to basically be the life insurance that the Force took out for Rey. It was never about him! Again, I don't hate that. The more I think about it, the more I kinda love it. And I'm not saying that Finn wasn't EXTREMELY ill-served from the moment Kylo knocked him out so the focus could switch to Rey/Kylo as the main protagonist/antagonist, but he's alive, he's Force Sensitive, he gets to spend the rest of his life with the no-longer-distracted girl and hot X-wing pilot he adores, and I really, really hope that one day John Boyega will return in some capacity for the story his character deserves. Whew, okay I'll shut up now.

This was my experience as well! I had watched the OT as a kid, but had no real emotional connection to it, until TFA came out and suddenly I was a mega-fan. I went back and watched the OT and PT, I tracked down The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, I loved Rogue One... and then TLJ happened and it was like cold water getting poured over me. And then I COULD have learned to love that movie if TROS had actually committed to the plot-points it made: namely that Rey was a nobody and Kylo had definitely chosen the Dark Side, but of course these are immediately walked back again. From a plot perspective, TLJ has no real value, and you can skip it completely without losing anything except the particulars of Luke's death. It's definitely been around longer than this: my first run-in with white male "himpathy" came with the BBC's Robin Hood about ten years ago: Guy of Gisbourne was played by Richard Armitage (white? check. brooding? check. handsome? check) who was also creepily obsessed with Maid Marian and ends up STABBING HER TO DEATH when she finally has enough of his bullshit and tells him she loves Robin Hood. The reaction from fandom was that she was a cruel stupid bitch who should have married poor sad Guy when she had the chance. This was my first fandom, and seeing where the audience's sympathy lay was pretty disconcerting. (And yes, he eventually gets a redemption arc). And I remember being SO EXCITED when Rey snatched the lightsabre from Kylo in TFA and proceeded to beat the snot out of him with it. Because after Snape and Loki and Moriarty, I thought finally - FINALLY! - we would get a story where the white dude really isn't worth redeeming, and the future belongs to teenage girls and black Stormtroopers and Latino X-fighter pilots. But nope, it's just white dude redemption arc #578,984,089, and everyone else gets shortchanged in service of that. (I mean, we could have had Finn organize a Stormtrooper uprising, working under the assumption that if he could break his conditioning, so could others. How cool would that have been, PLUS something that's never happened in a Star Wars film before. Instead SO MUCH real estate is wasted on Kylo Ren, when the two directors were clearly at odds about who he was and whether redemption was on the table - because you can bet your ass it wouldn't have happened if Johnson had directed 9).

Also he ordered his troops to open fire on villagers on Jakku that clearly included children, even though he had what he wanted and they posed no threat to him. I just... if you're going to plan to redeem a character, then why have them commit crimes that are so heinous that only the usual White Dude Apologist Committee are capable of the mental gymnastics required to gloss over it all? The second he hacked Max von Sydow to death with his lightsabre I knew that he wasn't going to survive the trilogy because you DON'T come back from cold-blooded murder without having to pay with your own life. And weirdly, the films seemed to consider Han's murder the worst thing he ever did. It really, really wasn't. On another note, it's interesting that Trevorrow's script has Kylo murdering Rey's parents, which is something I theorized on this thread way before the film opened. I wonder if that was his answer to the scene in Rey's vision in which Kylo and the Knights of Ren killed that man in the rain. It seemed important, and I imagined it was probably her father, though now it's just another dangling thread.

Lol. You wrote this in 2016 and GUESS WHAT.

This franchise has always been impossibly contradictory as to whether the Dark Side is a corruption of the Force (like fallen angels becoming demons) or whether Light and Dark are two equal powers in perpetual balance (like yin-yang). Blame Lucas's mushing of Western religious beliefs with Eastern ideologies and everyone else trying to stick their oar in. It's like mixing oil and water.

Mercifully Kylo died immediately afterwards, and by the time Rey got back to Finn and Poe she seemed pretty much over him. I honestly read the kiss as less romantic and more of an acknowledgement of what he had just done - like Kiera Knightley kissing Andrew Lincoln after his declaration of love in Love Actually. It was a thank you and goodbye kiss, and I don't believe for a second she would have done it if she hadn't known he was about to die. (But let's face it, this franchise is full of TERRIBLE kisses, whether it's a queen kissing her bodyguard after he drops the line "I hate sand", a twin brother and sister kissing in order to make a third party jealous, the vaguely non-consensual kiss between a smuggler and a princess who keeps saying "no",* a random chemistry-free kiss from a (probably) concussed girl and a baffled ex-Stormtrooper that got dropped like a hot potato in the next movie, and (if you watched Star Wars Rebels) a drugged-up pregnant woman and her baby-daddy seconds before he dies. Oof. Honestly, the best Star Wars kiss is the one that never happens between Jyn and Cassian). I was also in the Finn/Rey corner, as they were incredibly cute and clearly what the first movie was setting up. Unfortunately, I think by the time TROS rolled around there were too many ship-related balls in the air and Abrams was too afraid to commit to any of them. A part of me kinda liked the fact that all surviving characters were still single by the end of it, with an emphasis on friends and found family... but I'm going to hold out hope that we might one day see a Finn/Rey limited series on Disney+ that gives them the love story they deserve. Heck. if it takes another thirty years maybe the world will be ready for a polyamorous relationship between Finn/Rey/Poe. * I love Leia/Han, but that first kiss will always be just a TAD dodgy, which is infuriating since there WAS a cut line from Leia in which she verbally consents:

Indeed. Also the subtle implication that Obi Wan ever-so-slightly resented Anakin for taking up all of Qui-Gonn's attention before his death. There's a beautiful moment from Ewan McGregor when Qui-Gonn announces to the council that he wants to drop Obi Wan as his apprentice and take on Anakin instead: a look of pure hurt betrayal.

Perhaps we'll get lucky and Daisy and John can be coaxed into returning in about five or so years time for a standalone low-stakes spin-off film which has them finally balancing the scales: freeing slaves, fighting crime, finding Force-sensitive children, encouraging people to use the Force without sacrificing their emotions, etc. And heck, let them have the love story both characters deserved: one based on friendship, respect and kindness, of the kind the two actors were clearly gunning for across the last four years.

One of my favourite lines from the prequels is Mace Windu's "we're keepers of the peace, not soldiers." It's so drenched in irony and tragedy, both in illuminating the Jedis' refusal to proactively help people in need (like the slaves on Tatooine), to the fact that they're soon to be thoroughly compromised by their decision to become generals in charge of a Clone Army, which in turn leads to their doom. They were the good guys, but they were intrinsically flawed in many ways. This was Palpatine's greatest triumph: using their own doctrines against them, casting them as hypocrites and traitors to their own cause. It's why my head-canon is that Rey and Finn go on to establish a new order of Force-users, ones that are neither Jedi nor Sith, but normal people with deep loving relationships that use their powers to help those in need; people who follow the "Living Force" like Qui-Gonn tried to do all those years ago; the man who (if only he was listen to) could have prevented everything from going wrong.

I forgot that they said Lyra was going to make the betrayal, I thought they were saying she would be betrayed... If she is supposed to betray someone, yeah, it had better be later on (I read the books as a child and don't remember all the details) because she acted in good faith all the way and it's not just inaccurate but cruel to blame the poor girl for her parents being a pair of fucking monsters. I'm a book reader, and the betrayal is definitely still to come. That said, when I read the first book for the first time, I definitely assumed that Lyra unwittingly leading Roger to his doom was the betrayal that the Jordan Master spoke of, and the show itself seemed to go with that interpretation by having his words echoed in the "previously on" segment of the episode. So either the screenwriter got confused, or it's a deliberate red herring. Extremely vague spoiler:

As a Star Wars fan, I don't really like either of them, though (as said above) there's a big difference for me between a father/son dynamic and one of a teenage girl and the grown man/complete stranger who keeps violently assaulting her. I also struggle to understand WHERE these feelings Rey apparently had for Kylo/Ben came from. Was it when he kidnapped her, strapped her to a gurney and painfully extracted information from her brain? When he threw her into a tree so hard she lost consciousness? When he beat Finn into a coma? Tortured Poe? Murdered Han Solo? Ordered his troops to open fire on civilians? Told her: "you're no one, you're nothing"? I don't judge or harass people for their fictional ships, but that so many viewers saw all this happen and thought "this is the start of a beautiful love story!" is a pretty sad indictment of what we've all been conditioned to think of as "romantic." It's as bizarre as Padme deciding she's hot for Anakin a few minutes after he told her he's just murdered a bunch of people, including children, and I'd hoped that by the year 2019 we'd be past this sort of thing. Despite it's faults, I was actually impressed by TLJ's message that "some people aren't interested in being good, and it's not the responsibility of teenage girls to fix that", and felt a huge wave of weariness come over me when TROS decided upon yet another reiteration of "shitty men aren't that bad deep down, and deserve endless second chances". I am so profoundly tired of hearing this, in fiction and in real life. Edit: I was however grateful that Rey was depicted as happy and fulfilled in the scenes after Kylo's death, which at least made it clear that she's got a long and rewarding life ahead of her that isn't going to waste one more second on him.

My dream is for a (animated?) series or live-action mini-movie about Rey teaching Finn how to use the Force, and then the two of them (accompanied by Poe and BB8) going in search of Force-sensitive children across the galaxy and building a new order that's not about Jedi and Sith, but one that takes the best and discards the worst from both sides. No restrictions on falling in love, no taking children away from the parents, no monastic lifestyle - just an emphasis on helping people and having fun. Most of the conflict in this entire saga could have been avoided if the Jedi had just done this in the first place. That said, I can read the subtext in the actors' interviews, and they do seem ready to move on.

Maybe, but it's not going to stop the trolls from assuming it was down to their influence that she was so minimized, and it does feel like her role was cut short. I mean, there is nothing whatsoever on the fact that Rose kissed Finn at the end of TLJ. Granted, I thought it was weird and random, and Finn definitely wasn't into it, but it still happened, and the fact nothing was said of it here suggests JJ just wanted to forget it ever happened at all. Was this scene even included?

That antis and reylos are united in their hatred of this movie is actually kinda sweet. It's a Christmas miracle! To this day I have no idea what motivated Kylo/Ben or what he was trying to achieve at any given point. And no, I'm not going to track down a dozen comic books and tie-in novels to find out. It would have taken balls of steel for Disney to keep Kylo on the Dark Side, but after the choices he made in the first two movies, a part of me feels it would have been the right creative decision - except they didn't have to kill him off, just find a way to remove his Force powers and imprison him. There he would have been visited by Leia, and whatever "redemption" he could have achieved could have taken place over the course of several years, and been mitigated with justice for all the people he killed and maimed. People are constantly saying that Vader got redeemed, so therefore Kylo deserved it too, but I don't personally find Vader's redemption any more deserving or satisfying than Kylo's - I buy it mostly because I grew up with it (and so internalized it long before I had the chance to start thinking critically about the implications of it) and because it's more about Luke than Vader. (Also what works in 1983 doesn't necessarily work in 2019). I can understand why Luke was invested in wanting to save his father, but there's very little reason to understand why Rey was even remotely interested in helping a complete stranger who kidnapped her, assaulted her, tortured her, murdered his father in front of her, and beat her only friend into a coma. I know the existence of Reylos undermines what I'm about to say, but... women AREN'T attracted to men who do these things. Honest! Watching her scramble after him in TLJ took me completely out of the film, though it was ultimately done in service of Rian Johnson's GOTCHA moment when she realizes he had no intention of ever turning back to the Light. Which was then walked back by JJ in this film. Oy, where was the master plan?? There were mitigating factors in TRoS when it came to Kylo's redemption - that Rey nearly falls to the Dark Side in her hatred of him, that his decision to turn is more about himself than her - but there's still an icky quality of the old "if you're nice and loving enough, a man will change for you." All that said, I'm going with message of this tweet: I don't necessarily disagree with you, but if a film decides to be deliberately ambiguous in the attempt to please everyone, then it becomes an open invitation for viewers to take what they want from it (let's face it, everyone's got their shipping goggles!) In this case, I honestly think JJ told the actors to go with their instincts regarding their characters, which explains a lot of what appeared on screen, in a script that kept all options open. (We know from interviews that Oscar Isaac supported Stormpilot, that John Boyega was more into Finnrey, and that Daisy Ridley was a little hesitant about Reylo, all of which meshes perfectly with how the dynamics played out here). For better or worse, it really was designed to be a free-for-all, and given the drama that's going on in the wider fandom, I really wish viewers would stop worrying about what's "canon" or "official" and just take what they want from it all. Three more things: 1) It strikes me as funny that of the trilogy of trilogies, the most popular installments in each arc are completely different: for the prequels it was the third movie, for the originals it was the second, and for these sequels it was the first. 2) I was deeply disappointed that they never did anything more with Finn and Kylo. They were perfect foils (much more so than Kylo/Rey) considering one grew up with a loving family and left them for the Dark Side, and the other was raised by the Dark Side and yet had the moral certitude to recognize it was wrong and leave. Their little moments of interaction across the course of TFA were some of my favourite moments in that film. In fact, Finn is part of the reason I could never really get invested in the idea of Kylo's redemption. Finn had a tragic backstory Kylo could only dream of, and yet never used it as an excuse to hurt innocent people. 3) Someone did the math, and apparently Kelly Marie Tran had only one minute and sixteen seconds of screentime. That's appalling. At the end of the day, I wanted three things from this film: for Rey to be the Skywalker of the title, for Kylo to pay for his crimes through death or imprisonment, and for the movie not to shut the door on the possibility of FinnRey as a potential couple. I was not expecting to get all three, and judging from the wider reactions across the internet, I was lucky to get off so lightly.

It seemed pretty obvious to me that Finn was going to tell Rey he loved her, since it's a pretty well-established trope that any attempt by a character to declare one's love for another will constantly get interrupted. According to a post on Tumblr (so take with a pinch of salt) the leaker who accurately spilled details about the storyline months ago said that the movie originally ended with Rey AND Finn on Tattooine, Finn finally trying to spit out his confession, and Rey interrupting him for the last time, saying: "I know," and taking his hand. There's even a picture of it: But like I said in my above post, this movie was designed to NOT commit to anything. A scene like the one described above would have been too explicitly in favour of FinnRey, and that would have upset fans of other ships, so it was left ambiguous. Cast and crew are currently saying that Finn was trying to tell Rey he was Force Sensitive, which is so blatantly untrue and utterly at odds with the way those scenes were staged, timed and performed that I'm just going to avoid any and all interviews from now on. They're still making this stuff up as they go.

I am as baffled in 2019 as I was in 2015 that so many people honestly thought Kylo and Rey were going to live happily ever after together. No way in hell was Disney going to give a fairy tale romance to the franchise's first female protagonist and a mass murderer (even going as far as they did with them seems to be what's causing the most controversy in and out of fandom). Like you said: even if he had survived, there was one of only two options for him: imprisonment or life-long solitary exile. Whatever path they chose for Kylo, Rey was always going to end up exactly where she did: in the arms of Finn and Poe, the men who loved her without violence, manipulation or agenda. But that's kinda what struck me about this movie: it was so clearly designed to try and appease as many segments of the fandom as possible. Do you stan for Kylo Ren? He gets redeemed. Do you hate his guts? He dies. Do you ship Rey/Kylo? Here's a kiss. Do you hate that ship? It's a pretty chaste "thanks and goodbye" kiss, and Rey is over him by the time she joins the party that's literally celebrating his death. Did you ship Finn with Rey or Poe? There's plenty of ship bait between both to let you imagine he hooks up with your person of choice five minutes after the credits roll. Heck, there's a reading for it being a polyamorous relationship given that three-way hug. Pretty much every controversial/interesting idea in The Last Jedi is walked back to appease the internet trolls: Rey Nobody is retconned to explain her proficiency in the Force and quiet the misogynists who complained she was a Mary Sue. Kylo Ren's clear and deliberate choice to plant his flag on the Dark Side is dialed back and he gets a THIRD chance to do the right thing. Rose is severely minimized. Finn is Force Sensitive, a wildly popular internet theory is made true, even though it has no real part to play in the story itself. I honestly feel like JJ trawled the internet message boards in search of what audiences wanted, only to realize that everyone wanted VASTLY different things, and cast the net wide in a bid to please everyone. So many narrative choices are so obviously an attempt to cater to every dissenting faction of fandom on the internet, that the only sensible thing for people to do is take the piece of the pie designed for them, and go eat it in their respective corners.

Aw man, this would have been much better. Episode One: They meet and work together platonically and part ways (and are the SAME AGE) though there's a little bit of a spark there. Episode Two: They meet again, and because Padme's stoicism, self-control and self-denial is more clearly emphasized, it's obvious why she might be attracted to a (as described above) daring but reckless knight. They keep getting thrown into life-or-death situations, he's obviously interested, and the forbidden fruit aspect of it all makes the red flags easier to ignore. (Also, no Anakin confessing to Padme that he'd just killed a bunch of kids. Any sane woman would have run a mile). Episode Three: Demonstrate that although the two of them are still passionate about each other, there are serious cracks in the marriage (which has probably only survived this long because of the war - absence makes the heart grow fonder and so on). Padme starts to notice things seriously wrong with Anakin, but the time she gets around to real action, it's too late.

Saw it last night and it was exactly what I thought it would be: light and fluffy with slightly dark edge and a "twist" that was telegraphed all throughout the trailers. I can't help but feel Emilia Clarke chose this role to wash away the nightmare of what happened to her character on Game of Thrones. Heck, if you squint you can almost see this as a coda to Daenerys's story: kind but selfish girl with a "heart problem" gets a second chance to clean up her act, help others and embrace life on her own terms. Henry Golding is gorgeous, but I don't think the "love story" was particularly moving. I mean, the big reveal was played so casually that it was almost funny, and we don't get inside his head at all. The most interesting dynamic in the film was Emilia Clarke and Michelle Yeoh, and I liked the running joke of the hideous ornaments she manages to stock. Also, at my theatre there were some old ladies who were rather talkative, but in an amusing way. When Emilia dressed up in front of the homeless shelter I heard one of them say: "oh, she's going to sing, isn't that lovely?"

Princess Anne is a hoot. "I do hope that wasn't too emotional for you all." Also, quite a sneaky little line they slid in there with Anne commenting that there would be "three in the marriage." Hmm, who else famously uttered that phrase? There's been a bit of a retcon with Wallis and the Duke suddenly coming across as this great, tragic love story - I would have liked to have seen them trying to get that image across (especially to Charles, for the sake of shit-stirring) while being more like a normal, squabbling couple in private. Surely Wallis's comments to Charles at the wake ("don't ever turn your back on true love") were designed to mess with the royals, right? I got a big laugh out of the scene at the wake when Charles looks at his extended family staring back and him, and later at the giant painting of his mother on the office wall, accompanied by that grim musical cue. It played like something out of a horror movie! Also, when the family debated over who would be the one to tell Charles about Camilla's love affair with Andrew PB, I found myself thinking: "what a bunch of weirdos." Truly, what strange lives they lead.

I'm surprised (in a good way) of how prevalent she is in the promotional material. Now fingers crossed she doesn't go the way of Val and die pointlessly fifteen minutes in. (Not to be the person who assumes all black people are related, but she's GOT to be Lando's daughter, right? That fact might guarantee her safety). That article also had an interesting tidbit from Daisy Ridley, in that Rey spends more screen-time with than any other character. Does that sound right to you guys?

That was excruciating, I've no idea who I felt worse for, Charles for the fact he has no life or the Welsh teacher they roped into tutoring him. Absolutely no one wanted to be in that situation. I felt the narrative arc, in which the tutor eventually shows sympathy for Charles's lot in life was a bit of a cliche (God forbid oppressed/mistreated people not eventually learn to *understand* the struggles of those in the gilded cage) but then, I don't want to sneer at basic human decency either. I have such mixed feelings about Charles in real life; on the one hand I don't doubt he had an extremely difficult childhood, on the other (as someone mentioned above) the self-pitying sad-sack routine gets tiresome. I laughed when Anne called him an Eeyore - it's so true! That was an incredible performance from Josh O'Connor, he captured that sense of utter unease that Charles has, right down to the hunched shoulders and the constant fiddling with his sleeves because he doesn't know where to put his hands. He's a man who always seems so uncomfortable in his own skin, so he tries to be invisible even on the public stage. There I go, feeling sorry for him again. Edit: It's funny that I wrote this just a few days before he and Camilla visited Christchurch IRL. Such is my ignorance, I didn't even know they were in my city till I watched it on the evening news last night.

Good to know that while Merlin was waiting for Arthur's return, he occupied himself by dissing other members of the British monarchy in print.

This was tough to watch - I had no idea going in what Aberfan was, but right from the start you could tell something terrible was going to happen to those children. I sided with the Queen when she pointed out it was a terrible idea to immediately go to Aberfan, considering it would only add to the chaos - even the Wikipedia article on Aberfan pointed out that the influx of volunteers who turned up to help only complicated the rescue effort. I'm reminded of the earthquakes here in Christchurch when an idiot nearly got arrested for crossing the safety barriers to try and "help", thereby wasting precious time and energy when the professionals had to forcibly escort him away from danger. Then he rang up talkback radio to whine about how his choice to risk his own life had been taken away. Man, I'll never forget that asshole. I understand the urge to help, but too often it curdles into wanting to be a hero or needing to be part of the drama. Special kudos to Richard Harrington as one of the grieving parents (the father who had the little girl with the glasses) - he's a character actor who's been around for a while now (usually in period pieces). The way his voice cracked at the meeting with the coal board... Unpopular opinion, but I think the single tear at the end was a bit much. It would have been more powerful to end on that shot of her from behind, face unseen, leaving us to wonder whether or not she was moved by the hymn.

Mary continues to be my favourite character, and I hope we can get her in on the secret regarding Batwoman soon, particularly since there's some juicy material to be mined from the fact Alice won't enjoy the stepsisters being more sisterly than the twins. That was a devastating backstory for Alice/Beth though, and is especially harrowing with so many true crime stories out there of children (especially girls) that are held captive against their will in the houses of their kidnappers. And sadly, I can grasp her psychosis: you expect nothing from your captors, and therefore grasp any tiny bit of kindness you can eke from them (thus her considering Mouse to be her brother; this is the very essence of Stockholm Syndrome), while you feel that your family will always be there for you, and so feel profoundly disappointed when they fail you (another good example of this is Nebula's feelings towards Gamora in the GotG films: they were both victims of Thanos, but it's easy to project grievances onto those you think SHOULD be helping you). As illogical as it was, Beth kept quiet out of love for her sister, and so felt betrayed when Kate couldn't/didn't save her. There's no doubt that evil father would have been telling her: "if your family loved you, they would have rescued you by now", and kids are helpless against that sort of psychological manipulation. All that aside, she's an adult now and murdering people in cold blood. There's only so far a tragic backstory can excuse you, though I hope this story ends with Beth in a facility rather than prison.