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[Telgin]

A lot in TLJ was just forgettable, and she unfortunately took part in all of the forgettable bits.  While I haven't seen RoS yet, I can fully understand why they don't involve her more - she's just not important.  Kind of like Finn and Poe, now that I think about it.

It feels like they squandered a lot of potential with all of these characters.

[Reelya]

They made Rey too good at everything. She's the best pilot in the trilogy, as well as the best at repairing things, and manages to do stuff like come up with the god-tier Jedi Mind Trick by herself on merely hearing that Jedi can manipulate people with the force. The problem is that since Rey can do everything there's no need for an ensemble, so they had to keep doing the "let's split up" thing to let the others have something to do.

Also if she's meant to be a role model for girls, it's an extremely flawed one.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/29/opinion/dweck-simmons-girls-confidence-failure/index.html

Basically, there are issues with how we socialize girls. Kids who are told they are great all the time tend to develop what's called a "fixed mindset": attributing success to talent more than effort, and also falling apart at the first sign of failure. This is also an aspect of girls vs boys media that we produce: boys series are full of "training arcs" where the hero starts weak but eventually, through hard work, becomes competent and able to stand against villains he couldn't face before. This much more rarely happens with girls media, where the girl hero is usually kick-ass from day one with her skills already developed due to "talent".  Rey, going head to head with trained Sith Lords from the first time she ever picked up a light saber is almost the definition of a talent-based fixed-mindset type character.

What would be more healthy for girls is to have more boy-type heroines. Start with a pretty much useless female heroine who can't even swing a stick and have her saving the day by the end. Like Luke, basically. But I think The Mary Sue would throw a fit over the first movie. They'd be upset that a "man had to save her" from being beaten up by the Sand Raiders. They miss the point however. See the article above where girls main stress is because they feel the pressure to be perfect. Role models like Rey aren't helping.

[Kagus]

Lucy Liu? I... Honestly, I've never really seen her in anything where I was particularly impressed with her acting chops. Pretty, definitely, but not my first pick for "gooder at actoring". Maybe I just missed whatever it was where she actually has, y'know... Facial expressions.


The first name that comes to mind for me is actually Awkwafina, despite only having seen her in the latest Jumanji flick... But damn if she didn't do a great job there!

[Reelya]

Lucy Liu? I... Honestly, I've never really seen her in anything where I was particularly impressed with her acting chops. Pretty, definitely, but not my first pick for "gooder at actoring". Maybe I just missed whatever it was where she actually has, y'know... Facial expressions.

i wasn't saying she's some favorite, just better, and well known. Remember I said "if you picture pretty much anyone else playing that same character" it would be better. I just pulled Lucy's name out of the air as "well known asian female who's in a lot of genre flicks". If they'd stuck Lucy Liu in that role basically everyone would have gone "oh ok" and there wouldn't have been any "we hate Rose Tico" thing going.

EDIT: also another idea here.

Instead of Rey developing close connections with Luke, Han and Leia, while basically Poe and Finn never develop a close relationship with any of them, maybe it would have made more sense if each of the three new characters developed a mentor bond with one of the old characters. For example, Han could have met Poe, Luke trained Rey and Leia been like the mother he never knew to Finn. Or something along those lines. It might have meant they got more character development. However they'd need to come up with some reason for Finn to be hanging around. He's just absolutely useless. Poe's not much better either.

[Kagus]

It's okay, at least Finn got to meet an appropriately black friend in this latest film.

[Madman198237]

Instead of Rey developing close connections with Luke, Han and Leia, while basically Poe and Finn never develop a close relationship with any of them, maybe it would have made more sense if each of the three new characters developed a mentor bond with one of the old characters. For example, Han could have met Poe, Luke trained Rey and Leia been like the mother he never knew to Finn. Or something along those lines. It might have meant they got more character development. However they'd need to come up with some reason for Finn to be hanging around. He's just absolutely useless. Poe's not much better either.

I really like this idea, and a simple way to make Finn actually useful would just be to have the other cast members not be as good at shooting things. Like, literally, he's an ex-stormtrooper, how hard would it be to make him the best shooter/infantryman in general in the group? Or maybe he's got some medical skill or whatever from his time as a trooper, or they come up with some actually reasonable reason to have them infiltrating a F.O. base in which case he'd suddenly become REALLY useful (if they ditch the "I was the janitor" joke line, anyway).

Of course, that edges into my dislike of the idea that the Resistance is for any reason separate from the Republic and everything they did to make it yet another tiny group instead of, say, pulling a trick out of the various stories in the EU where it's just some of the Republic's stretched and limited resources fighting a single warlord with, like, one powerful ship because the rest of the Republic Navy is urgently needed everywhere else, etc.

Then Poe could just be a hotshot pilot, Rey could just be the up-and-coming Force user, etc. And if you throw in the mentor characters, not only would it make a lot of sense but it'd also be a really cool touchstone to the older movies, and if they avoid the kill-the-mentor tropes better we wouldn't even have to watch most of our favorite characters unreasonably die for really poorly constructed reasons!

[Kagus]

SS13 taught me that the lethality of janitors should never be underestimated.

[Reelya]

I really like this idea, and a simple way to make Finn actually useful would just be to have the other cast members not be as good at shooting things. Like, literally, he's an ex-stormtrooper, how hard would it be to make him the best shooter/infantryman in general in the group? Or maybe he's got some medical skill or whatever from his time as a trooper, or they come up with some actually reasonable reason to have them infiltrating a F.O. base in which case he'd suddenly become REALLY useful (if they ditch the "I was the janitor" joke line, anyway).

Actually that got me thinking. With Finn's military background, they could have said he was engineer grade. So he wouldn't have to be a crack shot or pilot then, but they could have him be the explosives guy and him jury-rigging stuff up Mr-T / MacGuyver style could be a running joke but actually with plot relevance.

BTW here's another thought about Abrams killing of Rose Tico:

Rian Johnson killed off Abram's character Captain Phasma, giving Gwendolyn Christie almost zero airtime in that movie. Then, Abrams does the same to Rose Tico in the next movie. Haha, payback maybe?

[Madman198237]

Yeah the latter two movies seem to be a mess of "well I don't like this piece of your movie, so I'm getting rid of it anticlimactically good bye" and it's just kinda silly.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Was reading some stuff on TheMarySue, who hate the recent Star Wars and love The Last Jedi (in fact, loving the last movie was mandatory according to them).

A lot of their grievances revolve around the sidelining of Rose Tico in the latest movie, and they were talking about all the things she represents: race, gender, progressive politics, and saying she was the best thing in The Last Jedi, and claiming that sidelining her was Abrams throwing a bone to the Neo-Nazis basically.

It occurred to me that nowhere in the defense of Rose Tico did they really talk about her having delivered a great performance or having a scintillating on screen persona. I found her just plain boring and wooden and not a very good actress. I mean, the most stand out bit is the bit where she kisses Finn and it's pretty much the lamest kiss in screen history.  This is probably why JJ sidelined here: he has an unfavorable view of the actor's ability. If he thought he could do anything with her he would have worked something out.

Maybe she'd be good in some drama film set in the present day but if you picture pretty much anyone else playing that same character you'd just imagine it being cooler, even if the same lines were delivered. Imagine if Lucy Liu was Rose Tico instead. So, bullshit on it being about her being female or asian, there are even other female asian actors who the fans would totally lap it up if they'd be cast instead of whats-her-face.

Rose was a bad character. There ISN'T enough representation in the new Star Wars movies, every POC got sidelined, and latent sexuality is either quickly brushed over or pushed back beneath the tide of terrible storytelling. BUT, Disney is so fucking awful for pandering. If you shove characters into a plotline just to virtue signal, you're gonna have a bad time.

Is there a universe where the Rose - Finn spinoff is fucking amazing? Hell yea there is. Is it produced by Disney? No way.

In terms of the technical details of the representation of the universe, and the story organization (and the choices behind the story) there are literally infinite criticisms. It's all just... so bad. I mean, I really do believe TLJ and ROS are two of the worst movies ever made--conceptually, methodically, and creatively bankrupt.

[Dunamisdeos]

I like her character concept in the sense that a peppy idealistic rebel is a good thing to have in a Star Wars Rebellion group. I like the actress insofar as she can portray that.

Almost everything they had her character do was basically drawn from an adolescent's understanding of virtue signaling. It was cringeworthy every time.

But yeah I enjoyed many moments of cinematography in RoS, Abrams at least knows how to nail that.

[itisnotlogical]

If the movies weren't in such a hurry to cancel eachother out and whack off to OT nostalgia, we might have had some interesting character arcs.

Remember that part where Finn was about to ditch the Resistance? Would have been interesting to see another Han Solo-esque character trying to put their own interests first. Instead we got Brave Hero Man #3.

Still on Finn, remember when he did a bunch of Jedi shit at the end of TFA? How bonkers would it be if Rey was a normal person, and Finn--sensitive to emotional trauma and a talented amateur with lightsabers--is a Jedi instead?

I think a more personal conflict between Rey and Kylo would have been perfectly fine for Rise of Skywalker. Snoke really could have really been an unimportant decoy for the much more interesting conflict between Rey and Kylo set up throughout TLJ. But no, have to stay on brand, so we get another Jedi messiah beating the Emperor and losing their evil counterpart in a final act of redemption.

Most of what I dislike about the Disney trilogy is how little confidence it has in its own ideas, paltry as they are. It backpedals all over itself constantly, trying to make OT 2.0 instead of telling its own story. I'm surprised R2 didn't kill BB-8 and push the remains off a cliff, then draw a limited edition "R2 kills BB-8" Funko Pop from a hidden compartment.

[Iduno]

I realized today how surprised I am that somehow, George Lucas isn't the Brian Herbert of the Star Wars.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I realized today how surprised I am that somehow, George Lucas isn't the Brian Herbert of the Star Wars.

Well he's the Frank Herbert of Star Wars, so.

EDIT: @itsnotlogical, I was actually hoping beyond hope that Kylo would actually succeed in his quest to sever all ties to the past and kind of force the galaxy down the road to a more EU-friendly timeline with something like a resurgent Fel Empire, New Republic, and various baddies like the Hutts, Killiks, and Yuuzhan Vong trying to muscle their way onto the local galactic stage.

[itisnotlogical]

Don't worry, I'm sure 10 thru 12 will have some newcomers! Perhaps an empire of soldiers in white armor, with a Sith leader with a mask and deep voice, that has a planet-destroying weapon, and is backed by a scarred old man in a robe. Then the Contras or the Insurgency or the Counterculture or something will form a scrappy band of unlikely heroes to take them on.