Going into The Last Jedi relatively spoiler free

I heartily look forward to seeing what all the crying has been about. As I sat down to write this post a news story crossed my feed about disgruntled fans starting a change.org petition begging Disney to erase The Last Jedi from Star Wars canon.

No, seriously, stop laughing at the back.

Of course this is part of the usual flailing unhappiness of people who have somehow been Star Wars fans for decades without grasping some pretty simple concepts about the franchise like the idea that, yes, social justice definitely has a place in this world. Laura Dern has purple hair in the film and somehow this is a massive problem for some people. There are those satanic penguin things which, naturally, set off that desperate gibbering overreaction that fanboys get when something aimed at children does anything to appeal to them.

(“These aren't the Ewoks you're looking for...”)

Really all I'm going in to this film knowing this afternoon is that there are two new characters: one of whom is Doctor Ellie Sattler with purple hair and the other is Kelly Marie Tran who at one point wears a hat. There are Satanic penguins who exist mainly to ensure puffins don't interfere with the Star Wars canon (I am not joking about this). Lando apparently continues to not be present.

And the sort of entitled fuckboys I find utterly tiresome hate this film so much they've taken their tantrum to change.org to try and strongarm a multi-billion dollar corporation into declaring a film they spent hundreds of millions on pointless.

Yeah, that'll happen. 

Revisiting the Jacket Scene before The Last Jedi

I'm not seeing The Last Jedi until Wednesday so the other night my housemate and I popped the Force Awakens DVD on for background noise.

Now, I still rather like The Force Awakens. I acknowledge that most of the standard criticisms hold water and that Rogue One was a much better movie that did far more interesting things with the property. Still, I really enjoyed TFA when I first watched it and I really enjoyed rewatching it.

And the Jacket Scene is so much gayer than I remember.

I mean, I thought it was gay when I first watched it but it was so much more obvious watching it again. I thought that the internet had just giffed and captioned that scene to death and made us all think it was gayer than it was but no, it is so very gay. The hugging, the short argument about who keeps the jacket, the little lip bite when Poe says it looks good on Finn.

Now, I doubt we'll ever see anything actually happen with these two. Disney does not do gay on film, not with its major franchises, because China. They're pretty good for it on television (at least in things that make it over here) but I don't think that's going to stop Isaacs and Boyega, two men who are young enough to know they're complicit in an entire internet fan fiction culture with this behaviour.

Its rather charming, actually.