Stories are all about promises from the storyteller to the audience. If two cuties gaze soulfully into each other’s eyes, that’s a promise of romance. If the hero spends a whole montage learning kung fu, that’s a promise of later fight scenes. Skilled authors can subvert their promises for a surprising twist, but when the story simply doesn’t keep its word, that’s a cop-out. It’s obnoxious, and we’re not going to let them get away with it any longer! Okay, to be honest, we probably will, but at least talking about it can help storytellers avoid the mistake.
Spoiler Notice: A Master of Djinn, Moon Knight, and The Atlas Six
1. The Dark Knight Rises
Even though it was released over a decade ago, the final film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy still ranks pretty high in terms of superhero movies with unsatisfying endings.* If you haven’t seen it for a while, the film’s recurring motif is that Bruce Wayne can’t be Batman anymore. First, it’s because his years of Batmanning have given him a number of chronic health problems. Later, it’s because of the acute health problem caused by Bane’s knee to his spine.
He recovers in both cases, but the story is still heading toward a conclusion where Bruce isn’t Batman anymore. That could have meant Bruce retiring and handing the torch to a successor. Instead, the movie delivers a heroic sacrifice shortly before the movie’s end. There’s a big ol’ nuclear bomb about to go off, and the Batcopter’s autopilot is borked. That means Bruce has to fly the bomb out to sea manually. Cue a solemn farewell from Commissioner Gordon and a tearful goodbye kiss with Catwoman, plus a lot of sad music, and then the explosion. Batman dead, movie over, right?
Not quite. Instead, we get a brief montage of Robin* discovering the Batcave and presumably taking up the Dark Knight’s mantle. Then, Alfred happens to spot Bruce alive and well on a date in Florence. What the heck, Nolan? If you wanted the movie to end with Bruce retiring and passing the torch to Robin, you could have just done that!
It’s pretty obvious that Bruce’s survival doesn’t make any sense. We learn that he lied about the autopilot not working, but we also see him inside the Batcopter seconds before the four-kiloton bomb goes off. Unless he has a Bat-teleporter or a Bat-undersea-bunker to jump into, he’s radioactive toast.
Beyond the practical issues, we have the question of why. Bruce has no reason to fake his own death. The only people who know he’s Batman aren’t going to say anything. If he wants to retire, he can just stop going out to fight crime every night.
It’s pretty clear that Nolan wanted the drama of a heroic sacrifice, but I’m less clear on why he’d want Batman to live afterward. He doesn’t seem like the kind of storyteller who’s afraid of a downer ending. Maybe it was a studio mandate to keep the possibility of sequels open? If that were the case, it would have been better to change the ending rather than use a cop-out like this.
2. The City We Became
The Woman in White – later shortened to just “White” – is gonna mess up New York City something awful, and the only ones opposing her are the personifications of Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx. Staten Island misses out on account of being terrible, but the good guys are eventually joined by a lady who embodies Jersey City, so it balances out. Even so, as the final confrontation looms, it’s clear that White is too powerful for the five heroes to defeat on their own.* To win the day, they must awaken the avatar of NYC itself.
However, there’s a problem: Once NYC is awake, he’ll devour the personifications of his component parts. That’s how it happened with London, which is admittedly a sample size of one,* but the characters are all very sure. In defeating White, our heroes will have to sacrifice themselves as well.
Not only does this add some extra drama to the heroes’ choice, it opens up a whole new plot: Will they avoid being devoured, and if so, how? The rich and distinctive characters are this novel’s best feature, so this is a high-tension plotline. Will they discover some loophole in municipal magic? Will they perhaps band together and defeat NYC after defeating White? So many possibilities!
Naturally, the story goes with exactly none of them. Once NYC wakes up, everyone joins forces to defeat White, and then it cuts to a few weeks later in the epilogue. Everyone is just fine. In fact, they’ve gathered together for a cookout. Even NYC is there, considering whether or not he wants to date Manhattan. For a while, no one even brings up the fact that they were all supposed to be eaten.
Then, in what feels like a response to a beta reader’s objection, one character grudgingly says:
“The other cities of the Summit are astonished. Everyone thought you would be like the tragedy of London, but perhaps that was foolish on its face. I cannot think of two cities more different than this one and that one.”
And that’s it. We get nothing more by way of explanation for why they weren’t eaten. I have questions, and the most important is: How? How are London and New York more different than any other cities the characters can think of? They’re both Anglophone centers of global commerce, so a more obvious conclusion is that they’re quite similar. At least, that they’d be less different than, say, Thimphu and Monrovia. And whatever difference they’re talking about, how did it lead to NYC not devouring the other personifications? Maybe this would make sense if I were an expert in both London and the Big Apple, but as a humble Seattleite, I’m very confused!
My second question is if these two cities are so undeniably different, why didn’t anyone realize it before? Since five lives were on the line, it seems like they’d give at least some thought as to whether any actual devouring would occur. The obvious answer is that the author wanted the extra drama, but I honestly don’t think that was even necessary. White is hardly a threatening antagonist in the early and middle chapters, but by the end, she’s got plenty of magical power on her side. That means there’s already more than enough tension. It feels like the author added a conflict they weren’t interested in and then gave it a half-assed resolution.
3. The Last Jedi
Rian Johnson’s contribution to Disney’s sequel trilogy goes full iconoclast on the Jedi Order, and it’s not messing around. A disillusioned Luke Skywalker argues that the Jedi have to end, and he wastes no time listing their failures. He even brings up how badly they were portrayed in the prequel films, which is a low blow if ever I saw one.
When Rey finally convinces him to train her anyway, she immediately reaches for the dark side in hopes of learning her parents’ identities. Afterwards, Rey is convinced that she can turn Kylo Ren back to the side of good, and Luke warns her not to try it.*
As the movie continues, Luke seems to be right. Rey tries to turn Kylo and it backfires spectacularly, leaving Team Good in just as bad a position as before. When Luke heroically arrives to help, it’s only as a distraction so everyone else can get away, which doesn’t jive with the Jedi tradition of going in with lightsabers blazing. Yoda’s Force ghost even appears to incinerate the ancient Jedi texts.* It looks like the movie’s message is that the Jedi must end so something else can take their place, no joke.
That’s a daring move for a Star Wars movie, and it opens a lot of exciting possibilities. If the Jedi are gone, what will replace them? Perhaps a new order of Force users with a different philosophy, one that doesn’t result in so many chosen ones turning evil. Even Kylo Ren seems to be getting on board with his famous line, “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.”
But then the film begins an awkward turnabout. As Luke distracts the bad guys, he proclaims that he is not the last Jedi after all. Presumably, he means that Rey is also a Jedi, though it’s always possible he meant someone else.
Okay, maybe the Jedi will continue but be forever changed. Nope! It’s then revealed that Rey actually took the ancient Jedi texts with her before Yoda destroyed the tree they were kept in. I have no idea why she did that, but it apparently happened. Rey also has additional Force powers now, which she could only have gotten from Luke’s extremely brief lessons. Finally, the movie ends with some downtrodden kids talking about how cool the Jedi are, immortalizing them as a symbol of hope.
So, hang on, are we tearing down the Jedi, reforming the Jedi, or saying the Jedi are very cool the way they are? Most of the film suggests one of the first two, but by the end, it’s clearly in camp number three. Maybe this is supposed to be a story about restoring lost faith in the Jedi Order. But to do that, it would have to address Luke’s many criticisms, which it never does. Instead, it shows that he’s absolutely right, and then it expects us to cheer for the Jedi anyway.
There’s no way to know for sure, but for my money, Johnson wanted to create a full-on, no-holds-barred takedown of the Jedi. Whatever you think of his other films, he’s certainly not afraid to challenge conventions. But however much Disney’s executives might have enjoyed working with Johnson, there’s no way they’d let him go that far. They still wanted to sell Jedi toys, and it would have been harder to do that if The Last Jedi actually stuck to its guns.
4. A Master of Djinn
This steampunk mystery novel opens in an alternate-history Egypt that’s thrown off the yoke of both British and Ottoman rule, thanks primarily to magic. However, not all is rosy. Even though Egypt’s situation has improved, the common people still have a lot of grievances, either from the legacy of imperialism or the country’s own rapid industrialization.
Into this minefield of inequality steps our villain, a murderer who claims to be a returned hero named al-Jahiz. In addition to committing murders, this guy is also a revolutionary, gathering big crowds whenever he gives a speech. Naturally, those speeches are filled with legitimate points about how unfair the current system is and how the mass accumulation of wealth at the top is impoverishing everyone else.
Initially, al-Jahiz’s audience is a bit skeptical, both of his political ideas and of his identity. But pretty soon they’re fully on board, and when the police come to arrest al-Jahiz for all those murders he did, it starts a riot. Later, al-Jahiz even brings his case to a summit of world leaders, though they aren’t especially sympathetic.
Now, I know it’s getting a bit cliche for the story’s revolutionary character to be a villain. Often, this is used to discredit the need for change, by painting those calling for change as unreasonable and extreme. Sure, a villain might make some good points about the need for low-cost housing, but they also punch babies while working out, so we probably shouldn’t take them too seriously.
But it really seems like Master of Djinn isn’t going that way, at least not fully. Even the protagonist recognizes that al-Jahiz makes some good points, though she doesn’t believe that’s actually who he is.
Unfortunately, this entire plotline fizzles out after about the two-thirds mark. From there, the entire story is focused on the supernatural plot, with al-Jahiz trying to build an army of djinn to take over the world. Oh, and he’s not really al-Jahiz. He’s actually an English woman named Abigail, and she was pretending to be al-Jahiz for… reasons. A lot of her actions don’t make much sense after the reveal, but that’s another article entirely.
The more relevant issue is that the political plotline disappears completely. No longer is anyone concerned by petty problems like unsafe working conditions, lack of housing, or low wages. Instead, the story focuses on really high-magic stuff like scheming angels and a ring that grants ultimate power. That’s quite a jump, and it leaves us wondering why all those political problems were brought up in the first place.
There’s exactly one mention of them after the story switches gears, and it’s a side character saying that her feminist society will now look at poverty as well. I guess the society wasn’t at all intersectional before. More importantly, this is effectively doing nothing. Black Panther sometimes gets criticized for a similar ending, but at least in that film we saw T’Challa doing something to help. In this book, we have a character talking about how she plans to talk about helping.
It’s completely reasonable if the author didn’t want to write a story about revolution or socio-economic change. Sometimes you just want a fun steampunk adventure in an industrialized Egypt. But if that’s the case, don’t have your villain spend more than half the story agitating for change!
5. Moon Knight
This next entry is also set primarily in Egypt. Our main character is a plural system made up of the posh and highly educated Steven and the badass and gritty Marc, which obviously leads to hijinks. Early in the show, Steven often blacks out to find himself in the middle of a fight that Marc got him into, which is great for tension. Later on, the two of them get the hang of sharing a body, and the story solidifies around their primary objective: stopping a rude guy named Harrow from waking up the goddess Ammit and killing a bunch of people.
Sounds simple enough, and after gathering a few MacGuffins, it’s time for the big confrontation. Steven and Marc can summon the powers of Moon Knight, giving them super strength and near-invincibility, so they’re ready to rock. But Harrow has purple lasers and a powerful hammer/staff/thing,* so it’s an even match!
Then Harrow gains the upper hand, oh no! He’s got Marc and Steven pinned with a purple laser and is slowly draining their powers away. This is it, the pivotal moment of the whole show. How will our heroes break free and defeat the villain, thus saving the world from Ammit’s wrath?*
Surprise, I don’t know! No one knows, because at that point, Steven and Marc both black out, and the show cuts to after Harrow has already been defeated. The main bad guy is defeated offscreen, which I thought was a joke at first, but in fact is what actually happens.
It’s pretty obvious what they’re doing, as the show has already hinted several times that there’s a third alter in Marc and Steven’s plural system.* We’re supposed to be intrigued and wonder who this new alter is, but it’s just frustrating. Defeating Harrow is the big dramatic payoff of the first season: it wasn’t worth giving that up just to have some extra foreshadowing about another character who won’t even be important until later.
What’s really striking about this cop-out is how unnecessary it is. Usually, an author writes themself into a corner by making promises they can’t keep, and the only way out is to deploy a high-grade contrivance. But here, Marc and Steven could have easily won the battle on their own. There was no reason to bring a new character into it! It’s also confusing since Marc is already a skilled fighter, so it’s difficult to imagine why he failed when this third alter succeeded.
Adding insult to injury, there’s even a mid-credits scene where we actually meet the third alter as he kills a few people. This is all that was necessary to introduce the new character; he didn’t also have to kill-steal the boss!
6. The Atlas Six
In this urban fantasy novel, six talented mages are recruited to work at a secret magical library. Okay, it’s not really a library since it hoards books rather than making them available, but we can let that slide. The six protagonists are told that after a year, they’ll have to eliminate one of their number, and the remaining five will be initiated as full members.
At first, the characters assume “eliminate” means getting fired, but it’s quickly revealed to mean murder. This is something they can’t avoid, at least according to the people who hired them. Without a sacrifice, the library’s magic will fail and the hoarded knowledge will be lost. The protagonists all accept this as true, even if it’s horrible, and they’re some of the most skilled mages in the world. If they say a sacrifice is needed, I believe them.
It’s good that the sacrifice point is revealed early, because for most of the book, it is the only source of tension. Only one of the protagonists has any other goal worth mentioning, and it rarely comes up. No one else has anything on the line, so the worry over which of them will die is the only thing keeping the plot moving.
The characters themselves seem to know this. When they aren’t summarizing how cool and special the library is, most of their time is spent either agonizing over the coming sacrifice or forming alliances to make sure they aren’t the one to get sacrificed. They also spend a lot of time psychoanalyzing each other and philosophizing about the meaning of life, but the only reason any of it matters is that they need support to avoid being brutally murdered.
And if you’re attached to the characters, this is a pretty effective strategy. Any of them could be the one chosen, especially those with the roughest social skills. They need to squeeze every bit of knowledge from the library that they can, both to defend themselves and to make sure they’re too useful to be picked. It’s grim, but effective.
Then, with the final chapter approaching, one of the protagonists is kidnapped as part of a side character’s secret plan. At first, the other five think it was a murder, but they soon see through the illusionary corpse left behind. After that, the sacrifice plot simply falls out of the book. It’s barely mentioned again, except for one brief exchange where the library’s caretaker confirms that since there are only five of them now, they don’t have to sacrifice anyone.
Confession time: I listened to the rest of the book convinced that this was a fakeout. I could not believe that after leaning on this thread for 98% of the story’s tension, the author would just abandon it without any resolution. I was wrong: that really is the end. The only other time it comes up is when we learn that a previous group of initiates also skipped their sacrifice and nothing happened. So… was all that talk about the library’s magic failing just a lie? And if so, why wouldn’t six of the world’s most skilled mages have been able to figure it out?
I’ve had a few weeks to mull it over, and I’m still absolutely baffled. The only explanation I can conjure is that the sacrifice plot was never that important to the author in the first place. It was just something to keep readers coming back to hear more and more about how awesome this library is. Since the book ends without any resolution whatsoever, just a teaser for the next book, that hypothesis feels increasingly likely.
In most cases, storytelling cop-outs occur because the storyteller starts something that they can’t follow through on. This is worse than simply not starting it in the first place. A boring story isn’t any fun, but if an author tries to fix the boredom by making promises they can’t deliver, that’s just going to mean a lot of pain and heartbreak down the road.
P.S. Our bills are paid by our wonderful patrons. Could you chip in?
The point that the Jedi must end is a bad one here in this analysis because Yoda himself chided Luke for being so pessimistic and said that the books cannot teach her the most important lessons she can gain from experience and failure, with failure being the best teacher. He wanted to say that knowledge gained is better than knowledge given. If that is bad message, then so be it, but none of it encourages the Jedi’s end far from it, Yoda accepts the failings of his order and gives us the main message of the movie, as flawed as it is, ironically.
Qlso as a final note, Rey does offer criticism towards Luke and said that in the end the Jedi defeated the Emperor(and they did it so again), so it’s not like as if the movie wants us to hate the Jedi, far from it, it actually reconstructs the Jedi, more so than the Old republic games which were needlessly mean towards them.
Anyway I find some plot points a bit stupid in the new trilogy, but this point that it is anti-Jedi, it just rings not true. That is all.
Why is it whenever I see a Star Wars example on places like this I allow myself to be distracted from whatever the actual point of the article is as I wind up drawn into thinking too much about the metaphysics of the Jedi vs Sith and the eternal recurrence of conflict caused by the duality of the Force?
Essentially the problem is that the way the metaphysics are portrayed, the Jedi are both correct and awful. Jedi orthodoxy refuses to embrace the chaos of truly living because feeling emotions and having connections to others will inevitably draw one to the Dark Side. At the same time, the Dark Side is inherently corrupting, as Sith become consumed by a lust for power at any cost and lose the original motivation that caused them to turn in the process. The trouble is that attempts to find a middle ground all fail, as Grey Jedi or alternative Force traditions are either corrupted by the Dark Side themselves or incapable of fighting the agents of it because they focus on a more passive connection. Reforming the Jedi might help somewhat, but it can’t overcome this fundamental dichotomy.
Anyway, what I think the real problem with The Last Jedi is is that it lead to many Star Wars fans having hold a microscope up to their favorite setting, both in terms of the metaphysics of the Jedi/Sith and in terms of the technological worldbuilding not really making any sense. I suspect this is why a lot of casual fans liked the movie but most die hard fans hated it.
Well, this mostly proves that Lucas didn’t think much about the force. It was his replacement for magic in a space opera, nothing special or deep. Of course, as the Star Wars universe came into being, that changed.
The whole Dark Side/Light Side dichonomy isn’t the worst, the way the Jedi are characterised later on is.
In the OT, we have two Jedi left (three, if you count Luke) and there’s no organisation to speak of. How did the Jedi live? What rules did they have to follow? We don’t know. Yoda doesn’t get around to that, he has other lessons to give to Luke. Before he could go that deep, he dies, leaving Luke as the last Jedi in the galaxy (at that point, it’s retconned in the EU later). The only suggestion we have about the order’s policies is Yoda complaining that Luke is too old to start training at 20+. That’s a far cry from saying the same about a boy as young as Annakin in “The Phantom Menace” and closer to claiming you can’t start training to become, say, a ballerina at that age (well, you can, but you probably won’t get far).
Lucas is the one who came up with the rules of the order later on when doing the PT – he’s the one who wanted more tension by disallowing the Jedi to have relationships or marry. In the EU before the PT, there’s married Jedi – in Knights of the Old Republic (the comics, not the video games), there’s even a woman who becomes a Jedi after her Jedi husband was killed by a Sith Lord (and later on hands that lord his ass on a silver platter). Clearly, at that time Jedi could just get married and have a large group of friends, it was fine. The PT did away with it.
That is not true, Lucas though a lot about the force (maybe too much for the liking of many), hence why Midichlorians and the prophecy. He put a lot of work for these concepts to make us understand them, it’s just his way of handling things was bad (and not that well-thought-out) and the Midichlorians stuff was not needed. Everything else are solid ideas, mostly the execution falls flat.
The dichotomy between light and dark has always existed within Star Wars and was made more apparent in the series later on, hence we got in the Clone wars the physical manifestation of the two forces.
How people perceived the Jedi order and the clone wars before the release of the PT isn’t relevant to how they ended up in the actual canon, because those were fanfics and headcanons people had about something that wasn’t explored at all. Kinda like those fanfics about Avatar after the end of the show or now the trending Legend of Ginji.
That Jedis couldn’t get married during the middle republic is more due to Lucas wanting to portray an order that is on the decline and very much under the influence and manipulation of a Sith lord, which is due to them concerning too much with Warfare and fighting, which weakens their senses considerably and only the badass Qui gon jinn was the last true Jedi, even more so than Yoda, who was in his youth and even here sort of a troublemaker, hence why he cannot enter Mandalore. Qui gon Jinn was the only true Jedi left at the time of Episode 1 and after him, everything got worse. Lucas never portrayed the Jedi in the PT as purely good and even made them flawed enough to not help Anakin with his selfish desires of keeping his loved ones under his control.
Personally, it was a great plot point and it showed us why control is not true love and that shaped me into becoming a better person after I understood the message and for that, I am grateful towards Lucas.
The overthinking came with the prequels, though. There’s little about the force and the Jedi in the original trilogy. In the original trilogy, the force was simply a stand-in for magic. The Jedi were that order of space wizards who were extinct now, due to the Empire, the Emperor, and Vader. He didn’t need any details. There were good and bad ones, hence the light side and the dark side. Many books with magic in them portray good and bad magic the same way – light magic is what you get when you control yourself and use rituals, dark magic is what you get when you use your emotions. It gives you more power, but at a cost – sounds familiar?
By the argument ‘Jedi shouldn’t marry because they’re in war’ you also suggest that regular soldiers shouldn’t marry. As a matter of fact, people are usually more motivated to fight well when they’re fighting for someone (such as the spouse and kids back home). Not to mention that Jedi should have a higher likelihood of having force-sensitive children, so especially in war you want them to propagate.
I wouldn’t say Qui Gon was the last true Jedi. There are several others in the stories surrounding the prequels who definitely are still doing the Jedi’s work. The problem is the structure as a such – too conservative, to restrictive, too much focused on ‘one true way’ which not everyone fits with. The extended universe before the prequels does a better job with it.
When Lucas went for the prequels, he had to put in that order he’d mentioned. He thought he had to explain the force (hence the midiclorians). That was dropped right after “The Phantom Menace”, no other movie mentions them. He overthought everything in the PT, that is why the movies aren’t as good as they could be (but I’m not going on a rant about that).
It would actually have helped Annakin much more to have friend he could trust in who would promise him to help keep Padmé safe. That would have eased his fears about her death and made him less easily manipulated by the Emperor.
You should never try to control your loved ones because that’s not love, that is true – but I don’t really see where Annakin does. He tries to change fate to keep Padmé safe, but he never outright locks her in, manipulates her into doing or not doing something, or tells her what to do. It’s great that you took this message away from the prequels, but that is not what everyone gets.
Regardless on how little the force needed exposition, I think that thinking about how your magic works isn’t all too bad and in many cases, it can enhance the setting like how they did with Bending in Avatar or Hamon and later Stands in JoJo. What the problem was is that Lucas added too much stuff that wasn’t needed or was able to enhance something. Only the prophecy, the rule of the 2 and the decline of the Jedi were good enough, not the bloodlines with high concentration of Midichlorians, which wasn’t needed.
I never made the claim that the Jedi were right with banning romantic relations nor did it Lucas or any other Star Wars writer I know, in fact David Flioni himself made it quite clear that only Qui Gon Jinn understood the importance of attachments as long as they don’t cloud you, which leads me to my second point:
Aside from Qui Gon Jinn, there was no one who really understood what it means to be a Jedi, every other one we knew were too strict and rigid to qualify. It’s often stated that the Jedi were losing themselves in this war and that was also the reasons why they couldn’t defeat Palpatine before his rise to power as Emperor. It was clear that this order was corrupt and Lucas never endorsed that, hence why Luke won against the Sith in the OT by being always there for his loved ones and thus freeing his father from Palpatine’s control. No one says the Jedi are perfect, they are their own biggest critics, as we see with Luke and Yoda.
Also, wasn’t the point of the PT to explain how Anakin became Darth Vader? I don’t think it would do the story any good to erase character flaws within Anakin that preconditions him into becoming a Sith Lord, his lack of selfless love and ability to accept loss is what drives his darker side and that is why he ultimately became Darth Vader and not bad writing. That was very clear and consistent with him.
And Finally, Anakin wasn’t acting out of selfless love and need to protect him. He wanted to protect Padme from a possibility that COULD happen and didn’t need to happen, and worrying too much about the future made him lose sight of what was: A Happy and healthy Wife, who is about to birth their children. But he couldn’t deal with the idea that death would come to claim his loved ones, a natural part of life and he had that same inability to let go when it came to his mother; Instead of trying to move on from her loss, he took his anger on an entire village, killing innocent people all because of his selfish need for revenge, something his mother wouldn’t even support in her wildest of dreams. This is the reason why he even turned out this bad and why he later is, ironically, responsible for the vision to unfold. His love for Padme wasn’t genuine, and it was tainted by his need to control her, which is why he ended up hurting her and accusing her of betraying him, because she disagreed with him and that would lead to him losing her, and you know what happened to her afterwards.
The Trilogy made it quite clear that the fear of losing your loved ones can cloud your judgment and make you do terrible things, because you are unable to accept death. I thought it was clear, but maybe not everyone, and they are within their right to think the prequels are flawed, they could have for instance made the message much clearer and have there be more Jedi other than Qui Gon Jinn(I love this name so much, we need to name a drink after him, who is with me!?) who gives good advices like Yoda. But oh well, we got the Prequels and no ones has to like them, I also find the dialogues a bit too cheesy and even stupid, like the sand talk, that could have been cut out.
Anyway, what’s your take on the politics? Was it a bad idea to have both sides be led by Sith lords? I find that a bit too unprecedented to be honest, and that weakens the cause of the Separatists. Dooku should have just been a renegade Jedi and that would have made it quite clear that the Jedi lost their way much more apparent than anything else, what do you say to that?
First of all, given that not all Jedi have the same talents and skills, I don’t think there’s only one way of being a Jedi. Qui Gon certainly was true to his own way of being a Jedi and carrying out the tasks he was entrusted with as a Jedi. I doubt, though, that he was the only person in the whole order who was true to what they could be as a Jedi. There are extra stories around the PT which show other Jedi (like several members of the council) who do also have a clear idea of what they are and can do for the galaxy. As an order, the Jedi were failing, no doubt about that. As an order, the Jedi had gotten to calcified and immobile. That doesn’t mean, however, that only one of them still was following the right way. The council as a such was too rigid and too rooted in the traditions and the rules (although all of that is essentially what you’d expect from an order’s ruling body). Looking at characters in the council less prominent in the movies, you can see that they are still true to what it means to be a Jedi.
Yes, the PT was all about how Anakin became Darth Vader. My problem with it is not that he ends up behind the mask, it’s the way it’s done. Palpatine/the Emperor is a master manipulator and Anakin has grown up in the outer areas of the republic. It wouldn’t be too hard to slowly lure him over, show him how using the Dark Side makes things easier, turning him against the immobile structure of the order. Instead, they decided on ‘he is in a secret relationship and has dreams about his wife dying, so he goes to Palpatine who promised it won’t happen if they join forces.’
Anakin was plunged into a trauma when he found his dead mother. No, it wasn’t the right reaction to kill a village full of people who for the most part had no hand in her death. Yes, that can leave a mark on someone (both her death and the killing). Yet, that doesn’t make him controlling Padmé, which is what most controlling relationships are about. He tried to control fate, to control what happened, and he failed, because this is a battle nobody can win. He made his nightmares, which might very well have been born of the trauma, a controlling force in his life and, ultimately, a self-fulfilling prophecy, because he is the one who kills his wife, not the pregnancy or the birth (and I still stand by my opinion that the whole ‘dying of a broken heart’ is not how it would go with a person like Padmé who would fight to stay with her children and not just give in).
I’m generally not into the politics of the PT. It would have been great if they’d been the focus (but then the Jedi would have been superfluous), but not the way they were used. Having the Separatists as a threat (which they clearly are in the first movie) is one thing. Having Dokuu, either as a threat of his own, a replacement of Darth Maul (whom they really wasted in my opinion) would have worked with that, too.
I’m aware that Lucas wanted the political side to explain how the Republic turned Empire, but I wasn’t convinced of it in general terms. It was good for showing off the manipulation skills of Palpatine (see above), but I wasn’t a fan of how much space it took. It took time from parts that should have had more of it.
It’s easy to blame the prequels for this problem because they weren’t nearly as good as movies, but Obi-Wan and Yoda gave advice in the OT that is extremely consistent with the way the Jedi Order wound up being portrayed in the prequels.
When Luke learns that his friends are being held in Cloud City, Yoda suggests that he should just let them die rather than risk running off to face Vader half-trained, claiming that Luke taking the risk would destroy all that they fight for. When Luke deduces that Leia is his sister, Obi-Wan’s advice is that he should bury his feelings for her deep down, as those feelings could be made to serve the Emperor. They also didn’t tell Luke or Leia that they were siblings because they didn’t want to corrupt either of them with an attachment. They also sort of have a point, because Luke was teetering over the line, as he drew upon the Dark Side out of anger anger when Vader threatened Leia.
The problem is that while Luke was ultimately a good enough person to resist the Dark Side even after using it, many Jedi are not. Luke’s attempts to rebuild the Jedi both largely suffer from this problem in both Legends and Disney canon. In Legends several of his Jedi students played hopscotch with the Dark Side, while in canon Ben Solo fully turned and wiped out the rest.
The Jedi detachment policy also really about marriage or love as it is so often assumed. It is actually that a true Jedi should never be fully attached to anything. The irony is that virtually all Jedi fail to varying degrees, even members of the Jedi Council. Mace Windu was attached to the Republic itself and so didn’t see the corruption until it was too late, Obi-Wan was attached to Anakin and so failed to see the warning signs, and Yoda was attached to his own Order to the point that he failed to see its increasingly obvious failures. Qui-Gon was the last example that actually managed this in the movies, though Ahsoka and Kanan also probably count as successful if you accept the animated series.
It’s also not really an issue of age directly, it’s just that someone raised at an older age outside of the Order will naturally form bonds with others that can then become a source of attachment and corruption. An older Jedi could develop the right mindset in theory, it would just be harder. Ezra(again from the animated series) qualifies as an example who made it in the end despite his existing attachment to his parents.
I would point out that Yoda telling Luke not to follow that call was more focused on ‘you’re not ready yet’. Don’t forget he’s the only one who can still be trained to oppose Vader and the Emperor (and, yes, that’s actually sexist because Leia has the same force powers and would possibly do better than him, but again Lucas might not have seen her as Luke’s sister then, who knows?).
Obi-Wan says ‘bury your knowledge of your sister deep inside’ because Vader and the Emperor might actually get that knowledge from him and use it (as they later on try). It’s not about ‘bury all your feelings,’ but about ‘make sure nobody learns about your sister.’
That Luke and Leia are not told about their relationship has two reasons, I think, one in-universe and one outside of the story. In-universe, the paths of Leia and Obi-Wan never cross – he never meets up with her, she and the others only see him die from a distance. He’s just made contact with Luke a little earlier. You’re not meeting the son of an old-friend-turned-enemy and the first thing you say is “Oh, by the way, that girl you’ve looked at right now is actually your twin sister.” By the time he could talk to them about it, he’s dead (and doesn’t come back as a force ghost until a movie later). Yoda could have told Luke, but he might actually think it would make Luke less focused on his training (which he considers super, super, super important). Yoda comes across as a very conservative person (and that makes sense for a 900-year-old guy) and he might have told Luke had they properly finished the training without Luke running off and Yoda dying when he came back. Outside of the story, I doubt Lucas already had that ‘she’s your sister’ thing going in “A New Hope”. He did put the beginnings of a romance sub-plot for them in, after all.
There are dark Jedi in the prequels (Dokuu being the best example), so obviously the rules of the order don’t stop people from falling to the dark side. Instead of trying to cut all connections and burying all feelings, learning to deal with them would be far more effective. Psychological help and the chance to talk to someone about what worries you would be helpful. Had Annakin been able to talk to someone about his nightmares and had he been able to officially be together with Padmé, his turning to the dark side wouldn’t have happened. Obi-Wan could have promised him to have his back and look out for his wife when he’s not around. She could have been protected by other Jedi as well – like your friends look out for your family when you’re deployed as a soldier, for instance. Keep in mind that Padmé dies because of what Annakin did to prevent it.
As for the age thing – I still think it’s more about ‘you should have started training years earlier, you’re never getting on the level you need now’ and less about ‘you’ve got too many connections to the world.’ That only comes in once you’re in the prequels and Annakin is almost denied. Luke didn’t have that many connections – his family (aunt and uncle) was dead, after all. He had friends, yes, but you can’t tell me that Jedi don’t make friends at least among themselves.
Perhaps the difference in view is that I focus much more on the OT than on the prequels and what follows and you seem to see things more from the prequels and what follows backwards. You can interpret the content of a story in different ways, of course, especially when you take a different point of view. As I said, when Lucas did the OT, he wasn’t planning that deeply. That changed later when he came up with the PT and more or less overdid the thinking, which is why there’s so many problems with the prequels.
Yeah in the OT Obi-Wan and Yoda give Luke specific advice for specific situations, and in the prequels Lucas is like “these are actually hard rules that all Jedi live by all the time (except when they don’t)”
He might as well have said that Padawans walk around blindfolded for their entire training time cause Obi-Wan had Luke put the blast shield on his helmet down when training with the drone.
Can I also nominate the very famous The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater for this category?
Spoilers below!
The initial premise was all about a deadly kiss but it was a bait and switch and we’re supposed to be excited about finding some dead Welsh dude at the end instead. (I was not.) The initial plot just disappeared.
Maybe it’s resolved in one of the sequels but I didn’t want to spend two more books finding out it was actually dead Welsh guys all the way down.
Can someone tell me what happens??
I think that the ending of Dark Knight Rises was supposed to be some kind of symbolic death-and-rebirth, in a Jesusy way. Which is… an odd creative choice in its own right.
I think it’s that Bruce Wayne wasn’t really any different from Batman – it was Bruce Wayne who’d travelled the world looking to learn how to fight criminals, and Bruce Wayne who’d joined the League of Shadows – most of his major enemies knew him as both. And most importantly, he’d already had a chance to live just as Bruce Wayne, and failed at it. If he was truly going to give up Batman, he had to give up Bruce Wayne as well, so he did.
Sorry, that was meant to be a reply to Joseph.
With Moon Knight, the blackout resolution could have worked better if rather than defeating Harrow himself it was used to defeat just some of his followers. After the blackout we could see be these followers being badly beaten or dead, something indicating that it was not done by either Marc or Steven. We could even have a passing dialogue stating that neither Marc nor Steven remember doing this. Then, have a proper fight with Harlow.
Something similar was done in previous episodes, so this wouldn’t hurt.
I guess they were trying to impact by subverting expectations, but it went at the big cost of the payoff.
Another lesser evil would have been coming back from the blackout just after being liberated from Harlow. The antagonist would be confused and the fight would continue. After the fight, we could have team good wondering how Moon Knight managed to free himself, but neither Marc nor Steven remembers, paving the way to the post-credit scene.
This is a late response to Cay in regard to the Jedi and Anakin, because time and this site made it hard for me to keep up:
You could make the case that there were other Jedi as good as Qui gon Jin, but in the movies, almost all the revelant Jedi are nothing in comparison to Qui gon Jin. He was the only one to ascend and guide the remaining Jedi as a force Ghost, with Yoda having to learn this from someone many times his junior. We also see in TCW how they mistreated Ashoka, who was more like Qui gon Jin than any Jedi. It’s pretty clear that he is supposed to be the ideal Jedi we see in the OT and though there are many ways to be a Jedi, his path is the one that really lead to him to become what the other Jedi claimed to want to be like. In tune with the force and never allowing temptation to control you or your passions, but the PT Jedi did, and we all know what happens. Also, we can conclude on how the PT treated the Jedi that we can all say that what Qui Gon Jin represents is the true path to the Jedi.
Anakin’s inability to let go due to his fear of loss that started with his mother is what makes him betray his and Padme’s ideals, and he ended up trying to choke her and wanted her to abandon her beliefs for him. He was pretty controlling with the way he viewed her as some property he has to protect and how selfish he is with his desire to keep her. It is not treated as nobleto control everything so that your loved ones don’t die, he is very selfish and the mortis entities and Qui Gon Jin all agree that it was Anakin’s selfishness that would bring ruin to the Galaxy until he made a truly noble and selfless sacrifice; his life for his son, his only good deed after so many years.
He is also in TCW shown as petty and jealous and even beat up an old friend of Padme because he was flirting with her and even in the prequels, he was gaslighting her and accusing her of betraying her all the while claiming that he won’t let Obi Wan take her from him. She is his object, not someone he (no longer) genuinely loves. His fear of loss overtook him, and it made him irrational and made him selfish, that is why he became a Sith. To claim that he is not controlling is wrong, because he is, if he goes to such extreme lengths to keep her under his pet sleeve and abuses her. All because he cannot let go, unlike Obi Wan, Luke, Rey and future Jedi as well for they will probably use his lessons as to why love should not be driven by selfish desires.
The Prequels maybe made it not clear enough, but I think it is how they intended Anakin’s downfall, and I think it was competently written enough to see it as well.