Onion Watch: Done; The Boot, Day 12

[pameladean]

The Onion Watch is over. Both Cassie and Saffron are fine.

I am very tired of this boot, and yet two weeks is really a very short time to be wearing one of these. It's better since I got the shoe balancer. But that can't be worn outside at this time of year. I ventured out yesterday sans shoe balancer, but with a lot of help from Eric. Fortunately, my winter boots have slightly thicker soles than my regular walking shoes, so the imbalance was less. But my hips, back, and knees set up a huge complaint all the same.

We saw "The Last Jedi" so we could stop avoiding spoilers all over; went grocery shopping; had a late dinner at Pizza Luce, splitting an order of roasted Brussels sprouts and a small spinach salad and then going our own way for the entrees; and went back to his house and conversed and cuddled the cat.

We enjoyed the movie a lot, though the sound balance was such that we missed some dialogue, including, almost certainly, some punch lines. It is thoroughly and unabashedly a "Star Wars" movie; not one of the prequels, but harking back in ways great and small to the first trilogy only with a lot more different kinds of people in it. Of course we had a lot of quibbles. I am gobsmacked, however, at the reactions of a certain group who hated the movie. What they are objecting to is so mild, so nearly anodyne, and yet they can't stand it.  If anybody is moved to discuss any aspect of the movie in the comments, please clearly mark any spoilers. And I'm very short on patience with certain lines of argument.

Being outside was fine while the temperature was above freezing, but when things started to ice up I became a paranoid mass of apprehension.

On Wednesday morning, I will get up, and I will not have to put on the boot. The clinic says that if I have no residual swelling or pain, I'm good to go; otherwise they will refer me to physical therapy.  I am hoping very hard for the former outcome. The swelling is almost gone now, but there is still some twinginess right around the ankle bone.

I'm still reading Anthony Price, and wanted to note down one place where history caught him up, through no fault of his own. In an earlier book, Our Man in Camelot, a bunch of younger agents in Price's imaginary intelligence department, Research and Development, are arguing with David Audley about, well, everything; but Frances Fitzgibbon, my single favorite character in the entire series, refers to "the rot at the top" of the Nixon Administration. Audley shuts her down by saying that it was the rot at the top that brought the boys home from Viet Nam.

This line never did sit well with me, but this time, I thought, "Wait, wait, wait, didn't Nixon act to delay the negotiations that would end the war so that his anti-war presidential campaign would not have the wind taken out of its sails, and so that he could get the credit?"  Yes. Yes he did. The tapes were released in 2013. Lyndon Johnson knew what Nixon was doing, but he figured that Hubert Humphrey would win the election, so he didn't do anything. STOP WITH THAT NONSENSE YOU SELF-SATISFIED BLUNDERING POLITICIANS; IT NEVER WORKS OUT THE WAY YOU THINK.

I want to grab David Audley through the page of the book and give him this information. More than that, I want to give it to Frances.

Pamela

Edited to make an errant sentence have some sense in it.

Comments

[kore]

....LOL, I have many opinions about angry boy-men who go online and try to trash stuff like Ghostbusters 2016, Wonder Women, TFA, TLJ....it's just so petty.

[pameladean]

And every time, I see the trashing, at least the edges of it, before I see the movie or whatever; and if I do see the movie, I always think, "This? This is what upset you?" I always expect some really radical feminist agenda -- WHICH WOULD BE FINE WITH ME -- and it's just common sense and fairness, sometimes a bit constricted. I mean, I also liked TLJ very much, but when you come down to it, the central confrontation, on the dramatic red and white sand, is between two men. [SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER]













The torch is handed to Rey, which I loved, but for this movie, that moment, it's still two men. But that's not enough, I guess.

P.

[kore]

I always expect some really radical feminist agenda -- WHICH WOULD BE FINE WITH ME -- and it's just common sense and fairness, sometimes a bit constricted

Oh dude, seriously. And absolutely fair point with the big dramatic mano-a-mano at the end being between two guys. And Rey had to share the big fight scene in the Shiny Red Room of Evil Power, too. -- All the people screaming about how they expected Luke to go back and have a big saber battle and be heroic -- that's, like, pretty much WHAT HE DOES, with the Force projection whatever twist. (At the same time I loved the little subversion that Luke isn't there to kill or save Kylo, he doesn't really win or lose -- it's all a distraction so Rey and the others can get away. "Lost Ben Solo you did. Lose Rey we must not.") I mean I loved it, but his death is a great big dramatic thing with the sunset(s) and music and cloak blowing off! Compare that to the deaths of Obi-Wan and Yoda, or even Anakin in ROTJ. It's bizarre to me how someone can read that as a defeated non-heroic diminishing castrating character arc end.

The torch is handed to Rey

LITERALLY, SHE has the sabre, mwahahaha (and given how good she was at salvaging on Jakku I have no doubt she can fix it. Maybe Rose can do it too!). And she was the one who summoned it in TFA! MY GIRL. (LOL I could just write passages of hearts and flowers bout Rey all day long)

[pameladean]

SPOILERS ALL THE WAY DOWN:


Luke IS heroic, yes indeed. He radically alters a settled state of mind that must have been very hard to get out of; he gets over himself. And yes, that Tolkienesque touch where the overt drama is just a distraction from some little people trying to sneak through and Do the Actual Thing, was so lovely. I also liked his essentially channeling Han Solo, calling Kylo Ren "kid" in a voice not quite his own. (I don't mean "channeling" literally, but I think he was quoting and imitating Han; ooof.)

And I adore Rey.

P.

[kore]

I also liked his essentially channeling Han Solo, calling Kylo Ren "kid" in a voice not quite his own. (I don't mean "channeling" literally, but I think he was quoting and imitating Han; ooof.)

That just about made me sob in the theatre (well, at that point I was just sobbing anyway....I have cried through the last 20-30 minutes 3 for 3 times so far) it was SO Han.

I thought Yoda's "failure" bit was also so Tolkien! when JRRT points out that Frodo fails at the last, and the one who gets the big "heroic" action of throwing the Ring into the fire (sorta) is the rejected Gollum. I just loved that both Rogue One and this film were so into the "the message got out, we have hope"/"we're here, we can save what we love and go on" themes. It feels like medicine sort of right now.

[graydon]

Still replete with spoilers! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

My take on it was that they'd finally got someone on the script who had at least heard of Daoism. It's all about "what's right action?" (and about how badly preferring dignity to right action messes you up.) The mirror sequence with Rey, we get the sound of one hand clapping three times. "lifting rocks" -- before enlightenment, work hard. After enlightenment, work hard. Which are more associated with Zen now but have a long history. The tremendous clarity with which you get Rey going "there isn't a light side and a dark side, there's just the Force. You can experience it different ways". The saber-tossing in the fight scene! Yeah, light side, dark side, nope, this is all on you, kiddo. What tools are you picking up to solve what problem? Humility is essential; lofty descent is something of a hindrance.

I mean, I so regret not getting Leia beheading Snoke with a red lightsaber casually extracted from a capacious sleeve, muted Vader theme music in the background; I really wish the consequences of the mutiny were going to be more significant than it looks like they are. I INTENSELY wish the director for the next one wasn't Jar Jar Abrams. But this one? This one -- to my very considerable surprise! -- had something to say. I generally expect Star Wars to be opera; very pretty, much feels, but not substantial. I thought there was something to this one.

[pameladean]

Thank you; this is very -- dare I say, enlightening? I felt there was more depth to this movie, but hadn't teased out where it was. It just held together much better thematically.

I am very dubious about Abrams. He has actually no narrative sense at all as far as I can see; he just likes to do pretty moments one after the other. And I don't feel that he respects his material. He certainly did not in the Star Trek reboots; and although he's said that he only did those so that he could go on to do Star Wars, which he loves, I'm not sure he really gets Star Wars either.

P.

[graydon]

Understanding is entirely not a requirement for love. (A conceit where it was I am pretty sure I could not make work in fiction if I had a thousand years, alas.)

I'm glad that was useful!

There's a whole other "Poe Dameron, mutinous glory-stricken cabbage/Vice Admiral Holdo, dutiful understanding of right action disdaining glory" thread to it, too, and the (much more sympathetic) thread of Finn and Rose who are too naive and ignorant to have the least idea of how you determine right action (outside of the narrow contexts in which they have training) -- but there's a unicorn riot, so we know their hearts are well-placed -- so all their (very real) heroism is futile because inappropriately directed.

I will admit to wanting Ewan McGregor to show up as Obi-Wan's force ghost to train Finn, and for Finn to wind up with the lightsaber found in Leia's effects, just so Finn can beat Kylo with his momma's lightsaber. (I mean, the planned focus on Leia for the next movie obviously isn't going to happen, so I find myself picturing a heap of robes and a "Luke gave me an idea" note and sticky notes on a whole bunch of things, and no one wants to even think about arguing with the sticky-notes, so Finn gets the lightsaber.)

[kore]

I find myself picturing a heap of robes and a "Luke gave me an idea" note and sticky notes on a whole bunch of things, and no one wants to even think about arguing with the sticky-notes, so Finn gets the lightsaber

OMG, I love it. They almost gave him a lightsabre in the duel with Phasma! (In fact in the trailers I thought it was one.)

[graydon]

I think a good script team could do a whole lot with not only ghostly Obi-wan and Finn, but ghostly Obi-wan and Rose, who doesn't want to be a jedi but who does want to understand what Finn is doing and makes Obi-wan explain.

[kore]

I just didn't even touch the Trek reboots (well that was largely T going "THAT IS NOT SPOCK AND KIRK," LOL). I was really pleasantly surprised by TFA. But I was there for Lost, hell, I was there for Alias, and he is just terrible at trying to wrap up endings to his "complicated puzzles" and this is the ending....

[rj_anderson]

I have not always been impressed with JJ's oeuvre by any means, and I agree with those who've pointed out that he has a problem sticking landings (although, in my experience it's usually because he starts big ambitious projects and then hands them off to other people, remaining in charge in an executive sense but not actually writing or directing: see ALIAS, LOST, etc.). However, I do think The Force Awakens was exactly the film it had to be in order to win back fans jaded by the disappointing Prequels and to bring in new fans with little or no knowledge of the OT and PT except through cultural osmosis. Every beat of TFA that seems derivative is not accidentally but consciously so -- it was a gesture of regaining trust, of proving that JJ and Lucasfilm sans George Lucas actually know what makes Star Wars work and want to respect it. I'm not sure that the same result could have been achieved with a daringly original plot and all-new characters who were nothing like Luke, Leia and Han, or at least I have a very hard time imagining it.

At the same time, though, TFA broke some pretty impressive new ground. A female main character (even if her status as the true Force-wielding protagonist was obscured until halfway through the movie, when she holds her own against Kylo's interrogation), a Stormtrooper who is not only a three-dimensional and likeable character, but a man of colour as well; and for me the most revolutionary and refreshing thing (especially since this has not always been JJ's strong point, to say the least) -- there was not a single moment in that film where a female character was sexually objectified. That's not a claim that can be made for any of the preceding films.

I think JJ does get Star Wars, that he loves it, and that he wants to do well by it. I don't think he's up to the level of what Rian Johnson pulled off with TLJ, but I don't think he's going to ruin the story either. Or at least, no more than George Lucas ruined RotJ, which was seriously flawed and derivative in a number of ways and even nonsensical in parts -- but what people remember isn't the stupidity of the Death Star Mark II or the inanity of the Ewoks so much as the powerful confrontation and reconciliation between Luke and Vader and the defeat of the Emperor. If JJ can pull off Ben's redemption and return to the Light and Rey truly coming into her own as the Last Jedi, I'll forgive him a few plot holes and absurdities along the way.

[graydon]

I will be offended if they try to redeem Kylo Ren AGAIN. I want Finn to get the hero's defeated/learn/victory arc and trisect him.

(My biggest beef with TLJ is that Leia didn't shoot Poe Dameron dead.)

The problem with JJ is their habitual confusion between complexity and nuance, and Star Wars can't survive much complexity and requires nuance. (Because the ostensible plot is right up there for nuance with A RAIN OF LARGE HAMMERS; the presentation has to sneak the nuance in.)

[rj_anderson]

Much as I love and adore Finn, he is not going to get the victory arc. The reason is that "Sam" (as he was originally called) was only ever supposed to be a sidekick to Rey in the first movie, and then largely or completely disappear afterward. (Poe, meanwhile, was supposed to die in the first film and never be seen again, only Oscar Isaac talked JJ Abrams out of it.) However, when it became clear that the fans loved Finn and Poe and were eager to see more of them, there was a fair bit of scrambling to add B-plots into the script of TLJ to accommodate them. If the Canto Bight and Poe-becoming-a-Leader subplots feel less well developed than Rey and Kylo's, that's why. (And I agree with you about Poe, although I think he should have been court-marshalled for mutiny and treason instead. He's just lucky he's pretty, I guess?)

You are also not likely to see Kylo trisected by Finn, or indeed any significant clash between them, because the tension between the Last Jedi aka Rey and the "Jedi Killer" aka Ben Solo has always been the intended A-plot of the movies. Indeed it's likely that in Kylo we're seeing Anakin's story in reverse: from Darth Vader-wannabe to tortured antihero to true hero in the final film. The reason Kylo is still positioned as the villain who has rejected every chance given to him is because no one can save Ben until he recognizes the hollowness of the Dark Side and chooses the Light for himself, instead of merely being torn apart by his inability to commit and his obsession with his own family legacy. Getting rid of Snoke, who has been manipulating and bullying Ben Solo literally since before he was born (that's not in the movies, but it's hinted at in Leia's dialogue in TFA and confirmed in the Aftermath novels) is a good start, but there's still a way to go.

I know that doesn't make a lot of people happy because they believe Kylo is irredeemable and deserves nothing but death, but I think TLJ was pretty blatant that a guy who slippy-slides down the corridor in his socks and gets shy being caught with his shirt off is not someone the filmmakers want us to regard as a hardened villain. Even at the end when he's unhinged by Rey's rejection and Luke's Force-appearance on Crait, he comes off as pathetic and hysterical, more like a teenaged boy having a tantrum than a cold-blooded killer who's going to be the Big Bad of the third film.

It's still possible that Kylo will die, I guess, but if so it will probably be sacrificial in some way and won't be painted as anything to cheer about. We've spent far too much time being reminded of who Ben Solo was and could have been for that.

[graydon]

Thing is, I don't believe in redemption. I think there's a general possibility of atonement, but not arbitrarily many such moments in which it can be grasped. Even granting the implausible case that Kylo could yet atone, there isn't any atonement for the patricide, would-be matricide, and genocide that leaves them with a name or fame. I cannot imagine any movie in the Star Wars franchise doing that, so I wind up hoping that Kylo Ren gets trisected by someone of humble origins.

It's not like they don't have to seriously rethink the whole narrative arc; let them have a rush of sense to the head and push the whole humility and deeds-as-the-basis-of-judgement thing.

[rj_anderson]

The patricide definitely happened: Kylo straight-up murdered Han, and there are going to be consequences to that, some of which we're already beginning to see ("The deed split your soul to the bone," etc.).

Not sure about the "would-be matricide" as TLJ showed us Kylo didn't take the shot on Leia because he'd sensed her in the Force and couldn't do it, teary eyes and trembling lips and all. And up to the point where he sensed her, it's most likely that Kylo believed Leia was already dead -- that she'd died in the destruction of Hosnian Prime by Starkiller, a move which the script tells us Kylo didn't want at all and tried to talk Snoke and Hux out of. (That's why he wasn't at the big First Order rally when Hux gave his speech and fired the weapon, and why we see him watching the beam streak toward Hosnian Prime from the bridge of the Finalizer instead.) It was the TIE fighters behind Kylo that fired on Leia -- and Kylo then turned on them and shot them down in return, which is hardly the reaction of a guy who thinks killing his mom is a fine idea. But that incident left Kylo once again believing his mother dead, so his order to take no prisoners on Crait wasn't attempted matricide either.

"Genocide" would be either the Hosnian system or Tuanul, I suppose? The former wasn't Kylo's decision and he had no power to stop it, but the latter was definitely at his command. The destruction of a religious enclave inhabited solely by adults, all of whom belonged to the Church of the Force (i.e. pro-Jedi freedom fighters), were well armed and had just killed a number of Stormtroopers during the battle. Ordering them executed after they'd been subdued and captured was certainly ruthless, but it wasn't a case of wiping out an undefended village full of families and children either.

I'd still like to see some consequences and fallout from the Tuanul incident for Kylo, over and above Finn's defection. Even if he repents he'll never be able to join the Resistance as though nothing happened, or at least it would ring hollow and false if he did; he is a murderer and a war criminal, after all. But even with Han and Tuanul to account for, Kylo's a long way from the kinds of cold-blooded mass murders that Darth Vader committed over his decades of service to the Emperor. I suspect that if Ben turns he's going to be spending the rest of his life in some kind of exile doing penance, rather than being touted as a hero while everybody pretends Kylo Ren never happened. But I don't think he's so far gone that death by execution is the only possible outcome.

[graydon]

Kylo didn't take the shot, but didn't do anything about it ahead of time, either. If Kylo can get away with blue-on-bluing wingmen after, certainly before is an option. So is the Force, and so is the space radio. All of the subsequent "kill it if you have to" about your past, well, I think the distress is at his own weakness for not being able to do it.

"I was so upset" is not exculpatory about planetary scale genocide, and Kylo perfectly well could have killed Snoke and Hux and prevented the order from being given. (And even if I'm wrong about the "perfectly well", it's the sort of occasion where one might legitimately be expected to try. Especially if you think you have family at the target.) (Any view of Tuanul other than "blatant atrocity" supposes that the First Order has legitimacy as a governing power. Which they clearly don't themselves believe.)

I think there's a very basic error in thinking that it's appropriate to structure any story about this one special person and it doesn't really matter who dies, it matters how Special Person feels about it. It's just possible that The Last Jedi is a recognition that the Star Wars franchise has figured this out. I hope so.

[rj_anderson]

He couldn't have killed Snoke because Snoke wasn't physically present when the decision was made to fire the weapon, he was only there as a hologram. And the order to fire Starkiller came not on Hux's authority but from Snoke as the Supreme Leader, so if Kylo had killed Hux then some other First Order officer would have taken over and fired the weapon on Snoke's orders instead. Given that it took the Resistance's best pilot and several X-Wing squadrons to destroy Starkiller, and that they could only do that because Han and Chewie and Finn had infiltrated the base to take down the shields and plant bombs everywhere, I'm finding it hard to imagine any scenario in which Kylo working independently could have stopped the weapon.

And Kylo does believe the First Order has legitimacy as a governing power. He's wrong, of course, and entirely deluded to think that they can bring peace to the galaxy by military force, but he bangs on at tedious length about his political views in Alan Dean Foster's novelization (although those clunky bits of dialogue were mercifully excised from the movie). He's a twisted idealist and a religious fanatic, not a cynic.

We both agree he's on the wrong side and has done a lot of horrible things that can't (and shouldn't) be swept under the carpet. But I believe the filmmakers have left way too much questions open about Kylo's agency and culpability and spent too much time showing his inner struggles and doubts for the third movie to simply go, "Oh, he's really just a stock villain that Rey's going to chop in half so we can all cheer and go home." Like I said, he may still die but it's not going to be treated as a ding-dong-the-Sith-is-dead moment. (Especially since Kylo isn't a Sith. Even at his most rage-filled moments we've never seen so much of a flash of the yellow Dark Side eyes we saw on Palpatine and Anakin, which I find interesting.)

[graydon]

I think "Sith" and "Jedi" are customary labels for preferences in interacting with the Force, they're not really things-as-things even as much as a concept like "Earth tones" can be said to be. Someone like Mace Windu was pretty obviously sith by inclination, even though serving as a cultural-institution jedi. (Leia, too, is pretty obviously much more sith than not in their approach to the Force; passion, intuition, and honesty, rather than composure, perception, and compassion.) The historical jedi were hopelessly corrupt through expediency; right-action turned into "what does the Senate want?", rather than what your perception and intuition show you from a state of detachment. The historical sith were hopelessly corrupt through ambition toward control; right-action turns into "my passion is of supreme importance". I don't think that makes being a sith-inclined Force user inherently corrupt; there's presumably a lot of ways to be passionate, honest, and intuitive and an OK space wizard.

Kylo is totally making the "my passion is of supreme importance" error, which is an interesting parallel to Luke (who is doing the same thing, only the passion is self-loathing about error and the possibility of further error). (I think that's an intentional parallel.) So, no, no "turning to the Dark Side" eye-effects, but I think it's legitimately being coded as a Sith way to fail. It's certainly not the jedi error of trying to generalize compassion to the statistical mass.

[kore]

.......OMG, that's awesome. I had not even twigged on the "one hand clapping" bit and lifting rocks. I did observe to my husband the first time we saw it that Rey sleeping before Luke's closed door reminded me of the students at temple gates trying to prove they were worthy of being let in. Great insight!

[graydon]

I think sometimes something is both so blatant and so unexpected that it's effectively invisible. I suspect a bunch of film studies types are going to be having a lot of fun with this particular movie for a long while.

[kore]

Yes! I thought I watched it pretty closely the first time, but saw a lot of details the second and even third times. It's a film that really rewards seeing it multiple times, and thinking about it.

[pameladean]

Yes, it was a perfect Han moment. I've never had a really high opinion of Mark Hamill's acting ability, but he did a very good job indeed in this movie.

And yes, of course, the failure bit is also very reminiscent of Tolkien!

I think it was meant as medicine, too. I love Rose. "I saved you... dummy."

P.

[kore]

Rose getting the Big Thematic "we're gonna win by saving what we love" was absolutely marvelous. Especially since she was another character who'd lost the person she loved most.