The Reylo Ship and the new Star Wars

[igenlode]

I've just worked out why I'm so instinctively opposed to the 'Reylo' movement in "Star Wars" -- not because it's a 'problematic ship', not because it's not canon, but because it's a case of turning everything into sex.
It's taking two characters who have a complex antagonistic relationship as part of canon events, and reading this as yet another 'they hate each other because they love each other' Mills & Boon trope :-(

And all right, there's precedent for that in the Leia/Han relationship (which is pretty much classic belligerent sexual tension), but those two weren't actually trying to kill each other...

I'm perfectly happy to see Kylo redeemed, and given the precedents of this series I assume he will be, even if only in death (but more likely in life). But I sincerely hope the writers don't decide to do it by having Rey realise that she Has Been In Love With Him All Along (or Really Loves Him). She has a lot of legitimate reasons to hate him, and if she is going to forgive the actions of someone who has behaved like a psychotic toddler then I'd really prefer it not to be because of the irresistable call of sex.

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I never got round to writing my thoughts on "The Force Awakens", which were basically that it reads like fan-fic... escept that fanfic would have been more original. In particular, the Death Star trench-run at the end was really, really unnecessary. The film had a lot of good points of its own -- and Harrison Ford pretty much stole the show; I admire him doubly for not only stepping back into stereotype, but doing it with such a good grace and so successfully -- so why try to insert so many laboured parallels with the original "Star Wars"?

Kylo Ren appears to be far too young to be the son of his supposed parents, unless he was born very late in their marriage: his mother has to be pushing sixty and he appears to be in his early twenties (and behaves like a teenager...)

Why on earth would anyone construct an elaborate join-the-dots map to a person (hint: people move), and why wouldn't you be able to identify and use just the relevant end section of it (the galaxy has computerised maps; surely someone can locate the star names/patterns?) rather than having to follow the route on the missing sections all the way from the beginning?

And I didn't really understand how the New Order (who have no official status at all, so far as I could gather) get away with behaving like Darth Vader's galaxy-spanning Empire when they are the rebels and the erstwhile Rebellion is now the government. Again, it felt like fan-fic where these things were just happening because the authors wanted to see their favourite bits revived/repeated, without any particular justification plot-wise :-(
Possibly if you had read and watched all the tie-in material over the last thirty years some deep-laid rationale would have been revealed, but I'm afraid a mass-market 'reboot' needs to be able to stand on its own two feet for a casual audience; people like me, who saw the first films in the cinema and haven't seen them again since.

All in all, I quite enjoyed the film. I enjoyed it more than the rebooted "Star Trek", which I found actively annoying in many ways. I loved it when the crashed pilot turned out to have survived after all (because, like the characters, I'd genuinely assumed that he had died in that escape). I loved Han; Leia was a bit lacklustre for someone who is supposedly a commanding general. I'd be inteerested to watch the sequel, but I thought it fell a long way short of the stellar reviews that recommended it to me :-(

Comments

[igenlode]

Twins are in the family... but really, that's taking lack of originality too far :-( Surely they can't do that one again?

(I find it hard to believe that Leia or the impulsive Han would deliberately abandon a daughter of theirs to such an existence, as well: at least Luke and Leia both ended up with loving foster-parents, rather than scavenging for starvation rations since childhood and believing themselves deserted...)

[pedanther]

Personally, I'm hoping very hard that Rey doesn't turn out to be any kind of Skywalker. I want for her to be important for her own self and her own decisions, not who her parents were or what some mystic years ago foresaw her doing. When Maz tells her that there's no point looking back to Jakku for her answers and that she should look forward instead, I know some people think that means she's going to run into the truth about her parentage somewhere else, but what I want it to mean that where she comes from isn't as important as where she goes from here.

(Possibly I'm influenced by my childhood reading having included things like Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, where the hero is an orphan who, despite at one point spending an entire book looking, never does find out a single thing about who his parents were.)

[butterflydreaming]

I have this idea that Luke put jedi-whammy on Han, and that Rey was originally put into the care of foster parents. Then something went wrong, such as being chased by villains, leaving Rey behind on Jakool while the guardians tried to draw off the scent. They're dead, while Leia thinks Rey is safely hidden still.

Remember the old guy from the beginning, who has Luke's map? I think he (like Ben Kenobi) was watching over Rey, and her condition was withing parameters. (It's a big stretch, but a lot of the good guys seem not very good at being good guys. Such as the all Jedi, in the prequels.)

I'm sure I've thought about this 1)too much at all and 2)not enough in depth.

[igenlode]

Personally, I think I'm with pedanther; I'd rather that Ray turned out to be no relation at all to any of the Skywalkers. (There must be other Force-sensitive families in the galaxy!)