Star Wars: The Last Jedi - On Balance

This post contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Extremely spoileriffic. Spoilers all the way down. SPOILERS.

So. *deep breath* I think The Last Jedi is the Star Wars film I have waited for and will stand the test of time better than The Force Awakens.

It is immediately clear that this is not a consensus. Talking to friends after the midnight screening, first reactions were very divided: a couple of them threw up “disappointing”, an assessment I so vehemently and indignantly disagree with I am actually a-quiver, others were much more positive but cautiously so. Compare this to The Force Awakens: at least anecdotally among my peers, the response was overwhelmingly positive with a few notable outliers. So how is this so different?

Well, first of all, I will concede with pleasure that the film is completely, utterly extra. Everything is at eleven all the time. There are about three movies worth of Star Wars in there. It’s A Lot. The Last Jedi is the Schroedinger’s Cat of the franchise. It is a film full of slapstick, peppered almost constantly with humour of every stripe, and some moments that are so earnest they slip into cringe. It is also a film that casts itself out into the furthest and darkest reaches of what the saga actually is, is visually the most stunning of the series (I don’t think this one is in doubt, only Empire comes close), and the very same moments that are so earnest come hauling a huge load of character development for just about everyone involved.

I loved it. In a complicated way.

Don’t get me wrong, I think The Force Awakens is a delight. It is exactly what I wanted from the rebirth of the franchise; it is 99% fan service, and I wanted to be fan serviced (further explanation: I am a very simple fan who is always on some level pleased by the existence of new Star Wars content). The vast majority of the beats come from A New Hope, reshuffled mostly very well*. But The Last Jedi goes back and asks what the original Star Wars trilogy is about in the first place, and does it by interrogating the most ill-defined yet fundamental part of it: the Force. It’s ambitious, and obvious, and unexpected, and I love it.

The Force - as many have noted - does not really make sense. We are repeatedly told it is about balance, yet the original trilogy is very much about the triumph of one side, and not just the Light side in general, but specifically the (Return of the) Jedi, a religious order (who, in turn, are apparently charged with preserving balance and like I said, it doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny). Yet here we have Luke Skywalker - the last Jedi, the Jedi - disenchanted by years of failure at trying to make old authoritarian systems work and rejecting those systems outright, which is not dissimilar to antagonist Kylo Ren, a structural choice that is as smart and complex as I want a Star Wars film in 2017 to be (something something alt right). That Kylo ends the film declaring himself Supreme Leader, and thus not breaking the cycle at all, is properly distressing (as well as a necessary levelling up in order to take on the primary villain role). That Luke ends the film accepting his failures and passing on the baton to the future - the promise of hope, the arc word of the film - feels both tonally different to the straightforward (and more epic) good vs evil victories of A New Hope, Return of the Jedi, and, yes, The Force Awakens, yet entirely in keeping with the essential promise of the original series, whose great climactic moment is the redemption of Darth Vader: no-one is good or evil, Dark or Light. Everyone fails but everyone can be turned. Balance.

I will admit that a lot of my thinking about Luke has been disproportionately influenced by this meme.

It is key that Luke gives up his life in an act that seems almost futile - allowing a straggling handful of Resistance to escape one last desperate time - far more so than if he’d gone out saber to beautifully choreographed saber with Kylo Ren for real. It is part of the emphasis on small, hopeful community-orientated acts of resistance and rebellion that is repeated again and again throughout the film. It feels like it’s taken a lot of tips from Rogue One (“Rebellions are built on hope”) and it’s all the better for it. It’s the defining theme of all of those disparate character arcs: Poe Dameron’s coming of age story is couched in terms of Not Blowing Shit Up, which is both very literal and very entertaining. Finn and Rose - two characters, both played by POC, who have experienced very direct oppression under the First Order - face almost certain death but “it was worth it” because they got to put that fist through a society of war profiteers first (if this is not Star Wars at its most directly anti-capitalist then…well, it is. It is exactly that). Admiral Holdo is prepared to look like a coward and traitor if it means the ultimate survival of the movement.

The emphasis on the Resistance - what it means, and those who make it up - is timely and really a new thing for Star Wars in its mainstream canonical films, yet, again, very Star Wars-y, with the Extended Universe practically built on the premise of wanting to know more about all of these people with cool names.  In the opening sequence, many die but we really get to meet them first - Paige, Rose’s sister, most prominently but others too: Billie Lourd’s character, the female pilot with the gold helmet who I fell instantly in love with, all of Poe’s backup troupe on board the cruiser. Our acquaintance is fleeting but the storytelling gives you their faces, allows you to touch base with the same people throughout the film, feel the cost of more loss at an already dark time (it allows us to feel along with Leia in particular, for whom loss is foregrounded in this film. It means more than I can say for Leia to be the audience’s touchstone for the original trilogy, despite Luke’s elevated screen time). I don’t think Star Wars is ever concerned about making overt parallels with the real world - nor should it be - but The Last Jedi is extremely conscious of the global context in which it is being made. Hope is a spark, and if you guard it, it grows into a blaze. And, to tie two threads together, part and parcel of that guarding is being flawed and failing and living with failure rather than (in Finn’s case, literally) self-immolating at the first chance. (Holy shit, did Star Wars just make a film about self-care in the face of global politics? Maybe.)

I am actually sparing you the brunt of my Rey/Luke/Kylo Ren feels but just picture me looking at this image whispering "can't even" a lot.

In the interests of balance, of course there are things that didn’t work for me as well, and I’ll probably feel them more on the re-watch: I could take or leave the casino planet as a concept (“Prequals-y,” was my partner’s entirely correct assessment) and Benicio del Toro left me kind of cold, despite evidently having a lot of fun**. I would have liked more Phasma, but I’m also not sure what else they could have done with her narratively, other than just have her hanging around the bridge and I guess they wanted to keep her in the wings for the third act. I think some of its pacing will feel more stumbling when I watch it again - there are a lot of plates spinning and they don’t all stay in the air all the time - and even though I’m a huge fan of what it means for Kylo Ren’s character, boy did they ever not give a shit about explaining Snoke.

And on the other hand, everyone from here to Jakku is going to talk about the visuals, so let me add my voice: the light-speed warp through the Star Destroyer, Rey’s hall of mirrors, and the moment when Kylo and Rey’s fight in the throne room against the red-clad henchmen (Knights of Ren, I want to say?) went into slow motion are some of the most beautiful things you will ever see in a Star Wars film or fuck it, maybe any film. Everyone is nailing their performances - John Boyega has less to do in this one but is never anything less than insanely great to spend time with. Oscar Isaacs sells Poe’s growing up and his instinctive impulsive charm. Daisy Ridley has matured a whole lot since The Force Awakens and, despite the occasional odd line delivery (and even that I now think of as an intrinsically Rey-ish thing) radiates a pureness of heart and conflicted need to belong that is too painfully Original Trilogy Luke for words. Laura Dern pulls off the stupidly difficult job of being a one-shot character that is tonally very new to the series (and has LILAC HAIR, and I could do a whole other blog about the presentations of femininity in this film). Kelly Marie Tran is instantly right in the universe in the most Rogue One-ish role of them all and nails the tricky Ascended Fangirl thing with utter charm (cf also Ingrid Oliver as Osgood in Doctor Who).

A word though for Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher. I think it’s fair to say that Mark Hamill’s acting ability is a (very loving) matter of some debate. (Personally, I’ve always been pro-Hamill - he’s not amazing in the original trilogy, but he is Luke, in the way that Ringo wasn’t the best drummer but he was the best Beatle. And besides, his voice work.) But I would say that here Hamill is undeniably, properly actually good. He’s funny, he’s gruff, he’s in pain, he’s completely over the top (Do I hate or love the bit where he brushes his shoulder off after they turn the guns on him? I JUST DON’T KNOW) but he also kisses Carrie Fisher on the forehead with just the right amount of weird romantic tension and Skywalker sibs, I die. I don’t need to say how sad it is that we won’t have her back. I don’t need to say how gutting it is that this film was so obviously teeing up for Episode 9 to be The Leia Film***, in the way this one was The Luke Film and Force Awakens was The Han Film. I’ve written before about the skill of elevating the role of Princess To Be Rescued, how much we feel the loss of her, and The Last Jedi is a punch in the gut, not least because it feels like here is a woman - authoritative, a leader, snappy, hard-edged, inspirational, weary, powerful - finally and completely getting the respect she deserves. It’s hard to watch for a number of reasons.

Not least because we'll now never get to see Leia using a lightsaber.

Above all though, I keep coming back to this film’s care - care for the characters whose story it’s telling, care for nudging those stories off on different vectors. Judging by the early reaction, I think some people feel that it was careless, and it may be the case that tonally it remains unresolved in places, the light and the dark unbalanced. But the flaws are a result of ambition, not laziness, and I was thrilled, and excited, and I’ll take that every single time.


Other assorted thoughts:

- I cannot believe Rey and Kylo Ren spent the whole film Force Sexting. “Join me on the Dark Side. P.S. Send nudes.”

- My wish for the Porgs to have some kind of narrative significance and not be blatantly there to sell toys did not come true, but they were cute and good for a handful of laughs so we’ll let it slide.

- A tip of the hat to Adam Driver’s control over his own face. I particularly covet the ability to look handsome at will when the narrative demands that we sympathise, and like a kind of mad wet cat the rest of the time.

- Mark Hamill and That Bit With The Blue Milk: A Play
   Me: So that’s where the blue milk comes from
   Mark Hamill: *drinks grossly, winks at camera*
   Me: I IMMEDIATELY REGRET THIS EASTER EGG

- How to be Poe Dameron:
  - older ladies
  - constantly pleased to see people
  - just, like, appallingly handsome
  - explosions.


...
*not well done - the First Order/Resistance. Which came first? What exactly is the First Order? Who actually was Snoke anyway? Who the fuck cares, I guess, is the film’s answer.

**I think I actually felt it was too close as a performance to his role as The Collector in Guardians of the Galaxy, which is tonally a very different film. A weird sense of deja-vu, maybe.

***Prediction: Episode 9 will open with Leia’s funeral. Massive ceremonial goodbye, eulogising Leia’s in-universe importance to the Resistance and Carrie Fisher’s importance to the series. And if they do it right, she can still remain a central presence to the film - referenced as the inspiration to keep going in the rebuilding of the Resistance/fight back against the First Order that will presumably make up a lot of Ep 9. She (both shes) deserve nothing less.

Game of Thrones Series 7 Episode 6: Beyond The Wall (The One Where We All Said 'Holy Shit' A Lot)

Ok, let’s all just take a minute to focus on the positives: IMMINENT JAIME/BRIENNE REUNION. If my jaw literally dropped in a cartoonish manner when The Thing happened in the episode (the first Thing, not the Coda Thing), it dropped harder and faster when I realised Sansa was sending Brienne to King’s Landing. Inevitably this leads to heartbreak, but I have poor impulse control and boundless optimism when it comes to my stories, so here we are.

SO LET’S TALK ABOUT THE THING. I’ll tell you one thing this episode did really well: a series of Events We* Did Not See Coming mainly because they were batshit insane. I did not expect to see Dragons v White Walkers: The Ultimate Showdown at this stage**, mainly because I’d heard the theories/rumours about the bringing-a-wight-home plan AND the ice zombie dragon plots before they happened, and I thought they were fucking ridiculous. But let’s be clear: they’re only mostly fucking ridiculous. The wight plan has been very much the wong plan (wait, where are you going) from the minute it was brought up. It should have been met with a healthy dose of NOPE FACE from everyone in that cramped Dragonstone map room. The entire point of it was to convince Cersei of the reality of the threat, like Cersei has given any indication that she’s prone to rational thinking, now or ever. What’s painfully clear now is that it was all in the service of creating the ice dragon, which is either a) an important plot point from a future book that we’ll absolutely definitely see next year eh George or b) something Benioff and Weiss wanted to do so much that they didn’t much care how it happened (I’m inclined to think it’s a bit of both).

And hey, it’s only mostly fucking ridiculous because as an idea ‘ice dragon’ levels the playing field a little bit (remember how unstoppable Daenerys looked at the start of this series? Way to fumble a 3-0 lead), and also is, yes, very cool. I’m upset that it means we probably won’t get the three heads of the dragon/three dragon riders motif but maybe I’m expecting neatness from a show that actually has been at its best when it blurs the lines of things where the expectation is that they’ll be more clean cut (witness the Flaming Baggage Train Attack being a high point of this series - any of those characters could have died, and we’d have been sad).

It also moves forward the Jon/Dany*** romance, and with a lot of big clanging lines being dropped all over the shop about how Dany can’t have children, I really hope Jon doesn’t have magical undead sperm or something. I’d be way more on board if it turns out that Mirri Maz Duur - the witch who tricked Dany back in the first season and killed her unborn child with magic, also delivering the news that she would never again give birth - was just straight up lying to fuck with her. Either way, it turns out that if you imagine Jon saying “Auntie” at the end of each line from his bed of pain, the scene feels less like sexual tension and more like an aunt caring for her sick nephew WHICH IS WHAT IT IS. I have such a horrible feeling that the show is planning to get them together and *then* reveal Jon’s parentage, presumably accompanied by a sad trombone noise.

"Who's auntie's brave little soldier, eh? Poor wee thing, all tuckered out." 

Ad - on every level - nauseam.

Probably overarching plot-wise, the important thing here is that, as Beric pointed out, the White Walkers have a borg-style arrangement where killing one of them also kills the wights that it animated, and thus killing the Night’s King would take everyone out, Chitauri-style. This gives a clear endgame for either Jon or Dany or both, but also highlights one of several Idiot Balls that characters in this episode were holding at various times: even without this knowledge, the NK is clearly still a pretty big deal up on that totally exposed platform - why didn’t Danaerys target a little more strategically? Why didn’t the NK, for that matter? Why javelin the moving dragon instead of the stationary one that everyone is planning to make their escape on? Why would the Westerosi Maginficent Seven head out beyond the Wall without backup (literally anything - Wildlings, Night’s Watch, their own fucking raven that they could send off so Gendry didn’t have to do a Mo Farah-beating distance sprint back to Eastwatch) beyond a few Obvious Red Shirts who got Red Shirted so hard and so obviously it made Gene Roddenberry go “oh, honey” from his grave? Because it would destroy the story, seems to be the only reason, and that’s distracting enough to be annoying.

Also distracting enough to be annoying is how poorly the other plot of the episode was handled, namely the ongoing Arya and Sansa conflict. I just don’t get what’s being achieved here: either Arya and Sansa (or Arya or Sansa) are doing a massive fake-out of Littlefinger to expose him once and for all as a Lying Liar who Lies, in which case this is a painful disservice to watch these characters go through these motions, or they’re really actually being strung along by him, which is a painful disservice to seven seasons of character development. Notably absent from the series has been any conservation about what exactly the women have been through while away - if it turns out that they’re playing Littlefinger and this conversation happened offscreen, that’s shitty as I’d rather have seen that conversation than almost anything else; if they haven’t, then that’s even shittier as why the fuck not instead of dropping oblique hints you don’t all have to be Bran, and that includes Bran and where the fuck is Bran and his all-seeing eye anyway is he still on a comedown in the godswood because I swear to the old gods and the new I will cut a bitch. Any which way, I’m inclined to think Sansa is sending Brienne away to protect her from Littlefinger, who clearly has her in his sights as a big obstacle to his Happy Gaslighting Ending with Sansa.**** I’m now rowing back on Cersei as one of my big death predictions for this season (unless next week takes A Turn) but it’s still possible that Littlefinger will get it. It’s fine, he’ll still have a rich and compelling story line when we get the next book (*laughs bitterly forever*).

As a note to end on, I just want to register that Jorah was really the only person I cared about not getting killed in that episode (and Gendry, but that’s more because it would be mean to bring him back after so long only to kill him). I fully expected both Thoros and Beric to go down swinging, and honestly I’m a little surprised that Beric didn’t also - but I guess the Lord of Light isn’t done with him yet (RIP Thoros, a drunkard among drunkards). In my most Most Unpopular GoT Opinion, I was sort of hoping for a swift goodbye to Tormund and an end to all this Brienne nonsense, but that’s a deep indicator of how unpalatable I find that particular plot, because away from all that Tormund is delightful and #pure #ginger #kissedbyfire.

But then also, maybe I’m just a massive hypocrite because I love Jorah, and that is hundo p because Iain Glen plays him with such dignified gravelly pain. I really shouldn’t love this character because isn’t he just another man desperately hanging around an uninterested woman hoping that she’ll love him through sheer persistence? Is it really any better than the Tormund and Brienne storyline? But the first four to five seasons of gradually building trust, of yearningly intoned “Khaleesi”s, of betrayal and friendship and uncertainty, are one of my favourite relationships in the show, and probably one of the most complexly drawn, or at least one of the longest lasting. Their reunion earlier in the season felt textured and complicated in a way that was entirely earned, and it’s a hallmark of the pace that these final two seasons are moving at that we likely won’t get such relationships from any of the new alliances being forged.

Oh buddy.

Anyway, the stage is set for next week’s season finale (a whole 90 minutes of it!) to be some good old fashioned vintage Intrigue At The Red Keep style GoT with it being literally anyone’s guess how all this goes down. I’ll leave you with a single word of excitement though: CLEGANEBOWL.


*We = self (have read books) and partner (has not read books, plays on phone during show, asks me what just happened at a rate of knots, is still alive only because I really like explaining Game of Thrones)
**For a hot minute there I thought we were going to get The Climatic High Fantasy Battle then and there, and the subsequent final season would be given over to King’s Landing intrigue and people skulking in corridors, and in that moment I really, strongly wanted that to be the case. It won’t happen though, mainly because it’s harder to write, and B&W want to go and make their super sensitive hot take on slavery (it was bad, you guys).
*** Look, can you be bothered to type and spell check ‘Daenerys’ every time?
****By the way, did we ever get any follow up on Littlefinger’s ‘I want to be king of everything’ speech? Like, how he was going to make that happen? Because he is so far from the Iron Throne. The throne is a dot to him. (I think probably this is just another indicator of the show not quite knowing what to do with him in open warfare storylines given that castle-based skulking is more his metier.)

Game of Boners Returns! Series 7 Episodes 1 & 2 ('Dragonstone' & 'Stormborn')

Game of Thrones is back! Let's be having you.* (Content warning: Game of Thrones, so contains discussion of both rape and violence.)

...

DUM DUM da da DUM DUM da da DUM DUM da da daaaaaaaaaa and etcetera FOREVER (literally forever now that they've added lengthy 'previously on' bits before the credits, you fully have time to make a cup of tea). Oh show, I've missed you. The most problematic of the faves.

I feel like Arya's been very front and centre in the first two eps, so let's start there. First of all, I must reluctantly announce that Maisie William's woefully bad casting in the last but one series of Doctor Who has had a bit of an Emperor's New Clothes affect on me, so I'm not quite as on board with her as an actor as I have been in previous seasons, especially since her Tiny Badass routine has been usurped by TINY LADY MORMONT WHO IS THE TINIEST OF THEM ALL. But it's also the show's fault, because they do quite shamefully trade on how much we want to see a preteen psychopath Fuck Up Dem Lannisters. (Ed Sheeran cameo sidebar: just the worst. I at least thought Arya might kill him, which would then have made the whole thing instantly gratifying and completely justified, but no. She bonded with him instead, which I feel is the worst thing you can do with Ed Sheeran.) Secondly, every time she says "I'm going home", I become more convinced that the Starks are ♪never ever ever getting back together♪. Was this the purpose of the Nymeria cameo? Will being disowned by her direwolf, a hugely powerful symbol of her connection to her family and the north, change Arya's mind again and send her riding south for vengeance instead? I kind of hope so, and her entire role this season is just ping-ponging back and forth between the Cheery Humanising Lannister Soldiers and Byemeria the Direwolf until she gets dizzy.

Speaking of T'North, there's an untenable leadership situation a-brewing between Jon Snow and Sansa, as they continue to have massive public disputes about how to proceed in front of the entire CLP group of assembled Stark bannermen. Could they not have had these chats prior to the town hall? Are there no other rooms in Winterfell? Anyway, I'm default on Sansa's side on most of these because how is she not Queen in the North already? Surely her claim is more legit than Sad Jon Snow's? Anyway, I feel like Dark Sansa is being foreshadowed pretty heavily, which I am here for, so long as nothing tragic happens like she becomes an actual antagonist and Jon Snow kills her in battle. I don't think I could take that level of lip-wobbling woobie-age from Everyone's Favourite Secret Targaryan.

Down Saaf, Cersei is legit terrible at queening, and that is shame because she was at least semi-competent at some point (I think? It was all so long ago. I've done a whole degree since this show started.) I hope she gets some better stuff soon because Lena Headey is one of the best actors left on the show and she looks bored af. You can put it down to the natural entropy of a show in its seventh season but it's HBO. These characters should be getting *more* complex and layered, not walking across presumably still wet floor paintings of Westeros and wilfully misunderstanding what a dynasty is. I also may never get over how much the show has mangled Jaime Lannister, who I swear on my Star Wars posters is one of the books' most interesting characters. Any hope I had of them resurrecting his sort-of redemption arc is pretty much dead in the water by now. Thank god for Nikolaj Coster-Waldau anyway, who is manfully doing A Lot.

My jury is very out on Euron Greyjoy. On the one hand, it's always nice to have a villain on the show who actually seems to understand, nay, enjoy some of the requirements of being a villain (camp delivery and leather trousers, I guess), but on the other say with me now the sacred words of House Jane Shakespeare: No-one cares about the Greyjoys. Something something Batman.

HAVING SAID THAT, Yara is 100% going to die this season and I'm super bummed about that because it definitely discounts Dany & Yara: Sapphic Queens of All Westeros. What with their capture at the end of episode two, I think it's pretty clear that she and Ellaria Sand are going to suffer before they get strategically cut from the show to streamline the narrative killed off: I think there was a showrunner comment along the lines that Euron was going to make Ramsay Bolton look like a kitten so like oh good yay I'm sure we're all super enthused about seeing more women die horribly. (Serious side note: Are we still at this point, show? I genuinely think you believe you're doing something positive for women by constantly representing how shitty their lives are, but that's the least fantastical element of a fantasy show so cut it out, I come here for back-stabbing also front-stabbing ifyouknowwhatImean.)

At the other end of the map, Dany et all have finally arrived, having stayed in strict formation on that boat across the entire season break.

Loved the Varys scene, very sneaky rehabilitation of a character who mostly had skulk-offs with Littlefinger in the Dark Places of King's Landing in the early seasons. I guess there's a salutary political lesson for us all: despise the monarchy but work from within, you get a yearly bonus, despise the monarchy and try to bring them down, you get deaded with wildfire. We also had some fire of the in-the-pants variety with the consummation of several seasons of really lovely scenes between Nathalie Emmanuel and Jacob Anderson as Missandei and Grey Worm. You need someone to have a little fun sometimes, and I thought it was really well done, not to mention historically notable for maybe being the only instance of boobs on the show not to feel totally gratuitous. *fans self*

I haven't really talked much about Tyrion. Huh. Well, that maybe says a lot.

Who else? Sam Tarly, working' nine till five, what a way to make a maester. I'm not a huge Sam Fan but actually the scenes with Jim Broadbent have been pretty great and overwhelmingly gross. Good thing Oldtown Library has that Restricted Section, I think we've all been tired of waiting for a) someone to finally piece together that Dragons + White Walkers = crispy undead barbecue, and b) Iain Glenn to get his fine face back and take those gravelly tones off to Dany's side where he belongs so he can gloomily yet yearningly intone "Khaleesi" to his heart's content.

Elsewhere, RIP Sand Snakes, you were an absolute disaster from beginning to end, and that's all the eulogising I'm going to give. They died as they lived: confusing, superfluous, and tackily written.

The #GiveBrienneMoreToDo2017 campaign starts here. We all love Gwendoline Christie, we all love Brienne, she's one of the few truly honourable souls in a corrupt world going through a painful awakening yadda yadda yadda, GIVE HER MORE STUFF.  And by 'more stuff' - and I think this is my only legit *rant* thus far this series - I do not mean this Tormund eye-fucking disaster. I find it so uncomfortable, both in the way it's done and the response to it in reviews and on Twitter**: it's not sexy fun tension, she has repeatedly looked uncomfortable with his advances, Gwen Christie has said as much herself, and yet. And yet. Do you know why "Nevertheless, he persisted" would never become an iconic phrase? Because THAT'S WHAT MEN DO. (Also, yes, Brienne hearts Jaime 4evs and you can't take that from me.***) My worry is that it was originally intended as a bit of levity (though, again, I don't really find a huge dude making creepy faces that funny, even if Brienne can obvi take care of herself) but it's had such a weirdly positive reaction that the writers will just run with it and throw in something wildly out of character like a stormy we're-about-to-die battlefield snog, which would absolutely be the worst thing the show has ever done, including the Sand Snakes and entirely all of Ramsay Bolton.

Anyway, Christie's nailed it so far, obv, especially re Littlefinger, "Why are you still here?" She spoke for us all. Having said that, it's been rumoured that Littlefinger might die this season and please, show, no. He is a sad imitation of BookFinger but I would be so sad not to have him around anymore, even if his entire role this season is for the population of Winterfell to form an orderly queue to punch him in the mouth (yas Jon). As much as I know I should be grossed out by his Sansession, I am morbidly curious to see how far it goes.  I don't feel like there's a potential rape lurking down that avenue, not least because of the uproar the last time that happened to Sansa and how much it would derail the character she's being built into, but there is an interesting question over a character who has essentially managed to achieve everything he's tried thus far, so it would be great to see what happens when he's absolutely, finally denied the thing he wants the most. And maybe it would revive Aidan Gillen from the dead, because he's looking like he checked out two seasons ago.

...

So that's all for now. Will I do this every week? I have quite a lot of work to do, so probably. We are heading into the endgame now and some real heavyweights are going to start getting offed before we get to the Dragons v White Walkers smackdown next year. My predictions for this series: Cersei, Grey Worm, and yeah, maaaaybe Littlefinger. But, excitingly, it's still really anyone's game.


*I am trying to write a Moffat retrospective, which may encompass some kind of (excited) response to Jodie Whittaker's casting, but I keep getting sidetracked by peak This Blog shit like making dumb jokes about Littlefinger's accent.
**Also on Bafflingly Popular GoT Opinions: it turns out many people are rooting for Jon Snow and Daenerys to get it on. I know it's all but inevitable at this point (it's A Song of Ice and Fire, I get it George) but, like, she's his full aunt. Guess y'all are fine with it when it's not Lannisters, huh?
***Just to end on a more fun note than unwanted sexual advances, go and watch this four minute video of Gwendoline Christie and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau interviewing each other in actual real life and I defy you - I defy you - not to come out shipping Jaime and Brienne.

Laterblogs: Pew Pew: The Best Blowy-Uppy Films of 2016: A Careless List

Laterblogs #1: I wrote this AT THE END OF 2016 and then didn't post because I didn't know how to end it. I've just re-read it though, and I think it's solid.

...

Look, there's going to be a ton of film blogs and listicles out there right now telling you how Son of Saul was incredible and La La Land is going to sweep the board at the Oscars but honestly, I just want to watch things blow up and try to forget about literally everything that happened last year. 

So here, ranked worst to best, are some of those films. Spoilers.

8) Suicide Squad

Boo-icide Squad, more like, what a terrible - no, I didn't see it. No plans to. 

7) Batman vs Superman

Look, you don't need to me to list all the reasons why this film was bad. The internet has done that again and again and again. In fact, skip all of those links and just read this open letter to Warner Bros that poses the greatest question of our times: why are you still letting Zack Schneider make films? So I won't go into great detail on this one, but for god's sake, Batman branded people. They shot Martha Wayne IN THE FACE. Which feels like some kind of harsh metaphor.

6) X-Men: Apocalypse

Oh man, this film was so bad. I straight up laughed when Michael Fassbender's wife and child got killed. I did. I laughed right out loud in the cinema. I'm not proud of it. But I'm not ashamed either.

James McAvoy, heroically flying in the face of all logic, was still having the time of his life though, so for that simple bit of human joy it ranks higher than Bats vs Supes.

5) Deadpool

Billed itself as an "alternative" Valentine's Day movie, and it sort of was but, like, in the way that Hot Topic is "alternative". It was funny and Deadpool spoke to the camera and swore a lot, and there was lots of creative violence, and at one point Ryan Reynolds regrew his hand and for a while he had a little hand like a baby, but it obviously wasn't actually *subversive* in any way. It's still basically the tale of a white man trying to dude-punch another white man while a white-passing lady (Morena Baccarin) wears not many clothes.  Also there was this whole bit where Morena Baccarin wanted to fuck Ryan Reynolds in the ass because it was International Women's Day and truly, that is what the feminists want, and then he didn't let her. Like, come on Ryan, just let Morena Baccarin fuck you in the ass.

4) Captain America: Civil War - April 29

Cap Mur Civ War was, essentially, very entertaining filler in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It does a job. It gets us from A to B. From a united group to a disunited one. From a world of structures and binaries (SHIELD v HYDRA) to a world of chaos where anyone could be the bad guy, even when - psych - they think they're the good guy. 

AND IT'S ABOUT THE TIME YOUR GAY DADS HAD A REALLY BIG FIGHT. I think at least 60% of the film was just Tony Stark and Steve Rodgers looking at each other soulfully and sometimes shaking their heads a little in a manly, soulful, world-weary way. It's actually better to think about the film as a big old domestic because if you try to engage with the politics of it (Tony wants the Avengers to sign some accords saying they'll be accountable to the fictionalised UN and Steve doesn't want to do this because...'Murica? Idk. They do debate this. They debate this thorny, complicated, divisive issue for a whole scene before the punching starts. Again, feels like a harsh metaphor.) for one single second, you end up going "wha-bu-OBVIOUSLY YOU SHOULD BE ACCOUNTABLE. YOU HAVE LITERALLY KILLED INNOCENTS, HOWEVER INADVERTENTLY. EVEN NOLAN'S BATMAN USED HIS EXECUTIVE-POWER-BUSH-ADMINISTRATION-METAPHOR-PHONE-SATELLITE-SPYING THING VERY, VERY RELUCTANTLY." But don't think that, because Cap is the hero.

Anyway, it there was a scene where all the Avengers plus Spiderman just beat the crap out of each other, so it scores higher than Deadpool.

3) Doctor Strange

*surprised Jerry Seinfeld voice* This was really good! This was a really good movie! Because the trailer looked dumb af. Actually the things about the trailer than worried me were still the things that worked least well in the actual movie (casting of Bendytoots Cumberbritches, TSwints all dressed up in vaguely orientalist garb, Mads Mikkelsen as the same character he's played since Casino Royale) but it was also offbeat and wry and trippy and seemed to hold actual levels of, like, disdain for its main character before he enrolled on A Better You Through Tibetan Magics course. 

And tbh it was worth the price of admission for the stinger alone, which promises that in the future Bothering Cummenpatch will team up with Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Tom Hiddleston (Loki) to find Antony Hopkins (Odin or maybe Loki pretending to be Odin so maybe Antony Hopkins doing an impression of Tom Hiddleston that I hope made him cry), and my soul rejoiced.

2) Ghostbusters

AKA THE GREATEST FILM OF ALL TIME THIS YEAR. *ducks* Oh man, I do not laugh out loud in cinemas (except when Michael Fassbender's family gets it, obvz) but I was doing my embarrassing Alone Laugh through the whole of this. Look, I'm not a diehard fan of the original - it's a classic and it's enjoyable and blah blah Your Childhood but it shits on its (two) female and (one) POC characters. I inevitably here have to say that the 2016 film's treatment of Leslie Jones, both onscreen and offscreen (a thundering silence surrounding the campaign of Twitter abuse she received, orchestrated by real life B-list Disney villain Milo Yiannopoulos) was shitty. And we shouldn't be afraid to hold things we love to account, and I did love this. I loved Melissa McCarthy, I loved the smart bundling of Kristen Wiig into a straight man role so she couldn't do too much damage, I loved the world discovering a whole new sexuality in Kate McKinnon's queer-coded maverick Holtzmann licking her guns. And I loved Leslie Jones too, and it breaks my heart that there will be no sequel because I think she would have got a more central role out of it. 

1) Rogue One

ROGUE M'FUCKING ONE. Eh? EH? Yeah. Let's end this shitshow of a year with the tale of a group of *forgotten misfits* who ALL DIE in the service of a greater cause. This film should be the model for your 2017: no-one gives a crap about you but you should do good stuff anyway because you might end up taking down the Death Star, inadvertently, after you have died. And then be the subject of a movie where people come out going, "That was really good but I really thought we were going to find out about the Bothans? Where were the Bothans?" In Episode VI, as it turns out, which I obviously knew and didn't have to Google because I'm a bad Star Wars fan. Anyway, Rogue One is probably the best war movie I've ever watched.

Carrie Fisher: *points to my mental state* You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought.

There is a tendency among Star Wars fans to assume that you came to it as a child, sitting wide eyed in front of worn out VHS tapes, soaring plastic x-wings through the air in chubby fingers. It didn’t happen like that for me. I watched Star Wars for the first time at the age of seventeen - my immediate family thought sci-fi and fantasy was a bit silly, a bit weird, and the nerd renaissance hadn’t happened yet so if you could reel off too many facts about lightsabers it was still a sign that you were dangerously unsocialised. But Star Wars saturated my consciousness. How could it not? It was Darth Vader advertising sinus-clearing gum, it was references in Spaced, it was a kind of proto-meme. It was too big to ignore, and so many people I liked seemed to like it, so it was time to do something about it. Accompanied by two of my best mates, I rented the trilogy from Blockbusters.

I can’t remember how exactly that instant love felt - I think I remember (though isn’t this how I feel ever time?) the swooping of my stomach at the crawl text, the first triumphant blast of the overture, the satisfaction of finally being part of this massive, culture-consuming thing. I think we watched all three films in one sitting, spurred on at my delight. I demanded that we talk Star Wars, exclusively, insistently, in the same way that we talked Harry Potter and Doctor Who and Lord of the Rings, with forensic exactness and affectionate mockery. We were, in 2007, just about touched by the internet as a daily part of our lives (no smartphones, this was get-home-and-log-on-to-Messenger time) and there was a definite net-inflected language to the way my shippy heart took to Han and Leia, the meme-ish smart-alecky snideness of the way we used the same Whiny Boy Voice to impersonate both Luke and Hamlet and their daddy issues (a school set text, plus we’d just discovered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and the notion you could get paid to do fanfic was properly life-changing). My Livejournal entry (haha, like I’m giving you the link) recording the momentous occasion is all “OMG”s and “made of win”. I was seventeen, and I was young enough to be delighted. 

One of our regular rainy lunchtime chats was to ‘cast’ members of our friendship group as characters in a film; my friend turning to me and saying “You’re probably the most Leia-ish, sort of like, ‘why aren’t things happening? I have told them to be happening’” was, to my teenage self - fuck it, to my adult self - the most cherished of compliments. I was of an age where you begin to form Views About The World, and Leia provided a model for me: no-nonsense, smart but never dour, always open, happy to bestow a hug or a wounded comment. In retrospect, so much of that is Carrie Fisher’s performance. Leia as written is all of those things but a different actor - someone more guarded, more trope-aware - might have found them harder to synthesise. Fisher’s great strength in those films is her vulnerability, the way everything shines out of her face, and when coupled with her precise, scornful authority becomes a character that is instantly familiar, iconic for more than her hair. Leia was me, and she was who I wanted to be. In her publication of her teenage diaries that came out this year, Fisher wrote about knowing that she felt things too deeply, that there was something “too much” about her; she also writes about how carefully she cultivated a worldly persona, hiding how nervous she was through filming. It’s always tempting to apply new information after the fact, but I think it comes through in Leia, or I want it to at least - a public figure barely out of adolescence, fighting a war, falling in love: she’s all front and she’s all honesty, all at the same time.

The other thing that shines through, deliciously, is Fisher’s wit. She is undisguisably clever. She nails her comic moments, she gives a sense of wheels turning in her brain, all the time. Comedy was her forte, both as a performer (a minor appearance, but her episode of 30 Rock is a serious favourite) and as a writer. But others will eulogise her talents in these areas better than I can. I would come to learn more about her life later on, her honesty, her coolness, her charm, her openness both about her mental health and Hollywood’s sexism, and it would cement her as something close to a hero for me (by which I am not damning with faint praise - I find it very hard to use the term without feeling like a knob). Once again, she gave me a model to live by, not as Leia but as herself. She was a gadfly stinging away at the hide of a dinosaur, irritating the right people and refusing to shut up, and that is a great thing to be. As Harrison Ford told her, “You have the eyes of a doe and the balls of a samurai.”

But for now I am thinking of myself almost a decade ago at the age of seventeen, very much a child in very many ways. In the end, of course, it doesn’t matter than I never watched Star Wars as a kid - as though there’s only one way to love something. I watched it when I did, and it was shaped for me, as so much of my consumption of fantasy and sci-fi was then (god, it still is), by a desire to know how to achieve good in the world. How to take down the empire. Princess Leia was testament to that. Of course, real life rarely parcels the fight into handy quests, metaphorical colour-coded missions of good and evil, and Carrie Fisher was testament to that. In my mind, the two are inextricably intertwined, as I think they were for Fisher herself. Only last month, she wrote to a fellow bipolar sister, “We have been given a challenging illness, and there is no other option than to meet those challenges.” It’s a line that would do any heroine proud.

#GBBO2016: Batten(burg) Down the Hatches

IT'S BACK. And this year the stakes are higher than ever, because I've managed to convince my partner to watch it from Week 1 instead of doing his usual thing of feigning disinterest while freshly made lemon drizzle cakes keep mysteriously appearing in the kitchen.

By now we have had a solid hour of getting to know this year's sacrificial twelve. I can say, with confidence, this is how this shit will go down:

Lee having dropped sweetly away like the body of a rocket falling gracefully back to earth to allow the elites in the shuttle to soar to new heights of human achievement, Val must be next. a) Her cakes are characterised by the sort of slightly shonky icing that goes unnoticed in grandma's house but when Paul Hollywood is staring down at it suddenly makes you feel a gnawing pity in the depths of your soul, and b) she defines herself by liking Ed Sheeran, and no-one who willingly submits that biog deserves an airing on national television.

Val: not long for this show but may live forever

I am spectacularly uninterested in the three remaining white men in the tent. They are a really bad representation of white men in general. Tom already believes he has his own cooking show and is providing faux-expert commentary whenever the camera comes near, which would be fine except that this is the sixth season of Bake-Off and we all know everything forever about baking now, and are watching like when you watch a football match roaring advice at world class athletes while your triple chin jiggles gently. Michael is doing a kind of sub-Blumenthal thing which resulted in him serving up green sponge that tasted like grass, baffling Mary Berry almost to the point where she looked personally hurt.  Both of them should, and will, leave in the first half of the competition. Andrew is a more interesting one as he is, on the face of it, the candidate most likely to become Telly Boyfriend of 2016 (soft of face and voice, clad in sensible flannels, awakener of maternal lusts), but has been thwarted by a) displaying no real character thus far and b) the presence of Selasi.

Ah, Selasi. Selasi Selasi Selasi. Anything I could say about Selasi has already been perfectly summed up by his entry in this Vice article, which was written BEFORE THE COMPETITION EVEN STARTED:

"Selasi is the boyfriend of the girl you're lowkey in love with and he's better than you in every single way. "Hi," Selasi says, his handshake tight but smooth, strong but finessed. "Selasi." The girl you are lowkey in love with – your housemate, which makes this all the more uncomfortable – suggests you two will get on. "Selasi plays football too!" You invite Selasi to play with you all on Wednesday nights and he absolutely, yet modestly, outplays you. You're panting out of your arse and you're pretty convinced you're having a coronary. "Good game, mate!" he says, then jogs off the field. At the bar afterwards, Selasi gets a round in for 15 people without even blinking. "Please, lads," he says, "don't worry about it. I just got a bonus at work, they're on me." You were going to walk home because you don't have the bus fare but Selasi gets you both a cab. "I'm heading back to see Kate anyway." That night, you lay on your bed and listen as, there in the living room/kitchenette combo, he cooks a curry from scratch, bakes a cake, then plays her a subtle and beautiful saxophone solo. Later, you hear giggling and immaculate, fulfilling-sounding intercourse. You realise in the middle of the night that you are now low-key in love with Selasi as well. Your life really is a mess."

100% Vice. A fucking star. Every single thing Selasi did resulted in a chorus of shallow intakes of breath from me and my partner, a nominally heterosexual man.

Selasi: will make a fortune on an app where he just comes over and holds you in the middle of the night

The result of which is that I am now hardcore shipping Selasi/Candice, saving each other's cakes week by week. I can only assume the end result of this will be something like the end of the first Hunger Games, where they make it all the way to the final and rather than allow a corrupt Mary and Paul to keep the populace divided by claiming a single winner, they vow to end their own lives, possibly by drowning in a vat of soggy bottomed Victoria sponges.

Speaking of which, I love Candice. I regretfully feel she may not last long in the tent but her lipstick is on point, so I just need her to last through to Week 5, by which point she will have enough Twitter followers to be answering make-up questions and eventually land an endorsement deal with Benefit.

So who does that leave? Louise, who I like but I am wise enough not to get too attached to, as she has Week 4 Exit written all over her. Rav, alas, I feel may also not make it past Week 6, though I feel sadder about this as the world is not done seeing Rav and his family whose names almost but don't quite rhyme or alliterate. Perhaps Rav's House is the next great British sit-com, and we will laugh and cry and grow together in equal measure. Perhaps not. (Probably not. The Daily Mail is a thing that exists in the world, after all.)

Benjamina. Benjamina evoked an instant, uncomfortable stab of empathy for me as she is clearly a perfectionist who will never quite believe her work to be good enough, while turning out beautiful, understated high quality work. She will get to the semi-final and then inexplicably lose out to someone like -

Well, someone like Kate. Let's talk about Kate, shall we? Kate, who owns a farm, which was referenced not once but several times in the programme. Kate, whose children will grown up in the outdoors and actually be both hale and hearty and you will look at them and not know what those words mean but know they are it. Kate, who lives a life of incredible prosperity despite genuinely believing that blue icing will make a mirror glaze. Kate, who will almost certainly make it to the final through sheer absence of controversy. Kate, who forages. Kate, who is nothing and yet inescapable. Kate, who will always, always be fine.

Kate: #blessed #byalawyerwhomanagedtocircumventinheritancetax

Let's talk about Kate being, for the next ten weeks, someone who I will loathe joyfully and religiously. There is always one, and they nearly always make it to the end. It is almost my favourite part of Bake Off. Now, I understand that there are those who claim the programme's appeal lies in it being a gentle tea-time treat, a celebration of the diversity and talent to be found the length and breadth of This Great Nation, those who look on the dizzying heart-stopping pains of near-cake-drops and sliced fingers and say, "Ooh, it's a bit tense, isn't it?"

To these people I say, Fools. If you only choose, you too can live your life in a barely contained state of emotional instability, constantly teetering on the edge of tweeting all in caps while stuffing handfuls of raw cake batter into your grateful mouth. If you only choose it, Bake-Off can become the bloodiest arena sport since man first stumbled out of the sea.

My hatred of Kate is a beautiful thing, a poetic thing, and I shall nourish my blood-baby with the fury of a dying sun; the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. It lives eternally, at least until October.

Also her whole swallows thing is, like, out of control twee.

I am so glad to have you back, Bake-Off. The scent of blood and icing sugar is in my nostrils once again. Morituri te salutant.

Orlando (some words)

Like so many people whose words I’m reading, I’ve been carrying the shooting in Orlando around inside me for the last two days. It is only this morning, as I wake again to find that the weight on my chest has not shifted, that I start to put a true name to it: grief. Late to the party, I know, but what I see around me and feel is the endless sea of people grieving, for fifty lives, and for the loved ones left behind, for whom this will not be over when the news cycle moves on. 

There’s so little to say that hasn’t been said. I wasn’t in Soho for the vigil last night; I should have been. I should have been there to lend my voice, instead of allowing myself to stay silent and choked, because silent and choked is the aim of every act of hate and act of terror. This morning my Facebook feed is flooded with photos and videos from the vigil, with words of tenderness, with the unbelievable, brave hope that love wins out in the end.

And I feel bitter. I feel bitter because I used to believe - still believe - that love is a stronger force than hatred, that love is a selfless thing, an inexplicable thing, that radical love for a stranger is one of the most powerful things in this world, that we cannot ever think that looking after our own is a substitute for being truly compassionate - but lately it has been harder and harder to believe this. Like so many others, I find myself slowing down, stumbling, ever more aware that that the onus is on us, on the LGBTQ* community, on anyone standing against hatred and injustice, to keep making our voices heard against global establishments, governments, and status quos that protect their own interests before all else.

Love Wins - but only when backed by sweeping gun law reform. That’s the thought that went through my head looking at those posters and placards on Old Compton Street. I am - I admit - weighed down by a profound despair, and all I can do is wade into it with the belief that at some point it will turn to anger, which will turn to protest. 

Already these events are being co-opted into narratives on all sides to suit all agendas. There are those on the right who have moved immediately to using the shooting to fuel their anti-Muslim beliefs, rejecting out of hand the notion that this has anything to do with access to guns and conveniently staying silent on the LGBTQ* lives taken.  There will be those on the left who will not want to talk about the role extremism played in shaping this man’s actions, lest they be perceived as Islamophobic. The truth is that this is a story that belongs to nobody. It is a series of events of incredible complexity, set in motion by fear, enabled by a 225-year-old law.

It is a truth that this happened because LGBTQ* people were targeted, as they have always been, for centuries, and it is a truth that mostly frequently the purveyors of that violence in the US have been white men. It is the truth that you can die for loving who you love, fancying who you fancying, and we all today feel the chill of the target on our backs, the target we sometimes manage to forget.

It is a truth that this happened because a man legally had access to weapons with devastating killing power.

It is a truth that this happened because this man listened to religious extremists for guidance.

And now the latest news is that this man was a regular at the club and had a profile on Grindr. So it is also a truth that this man was driven to violence over desires and feelings within himself that he had learned were wrong.

It is easy, at times like these, to make a blanket statement condemning America. That vast, unwieldy nation that so much of the rest of the world looks towards, that young country restlessly seeking its identity, that place that uses words like “opportunity” and “freedom”, words that we over here blink and shuffle at, and find embarrassing, to our own detriment. A country of extremes, a country of will, a country that has been at the forefront of innovation, exploration and art, that houses some of the greatest cities in the world, a country of excitement. A country where the wheels of government turn crushingly slowly - too slowly for those who have died, too slowly for those who will die when this happens again, as it will. 

A man will walk into a church or a school or a club, and open fire. And he will do so not because he is Muslim (for the majority of mass shootings in America are committed by white males), but because he purchased weapons legally. Because he went through the background checks, waited for his licence, handed over his money, and received a weapon capable of ripping fifty lives out of the world. When the Second Amendment was written, providing citizens with the right to keep and bear arms, those arms constituted inaccurate and unwieldy muskets. I cannot believe that the Founding Fathers - men who were, after all, trying to build a world of freedom, freedom from fear - would make that same amendment today were they faced with a world where members of the public could be given an assault rifle capable of gunning down 130 people in an instant. No citizen in the world should be able to carry that much death.

If America were to fulfil the promise they made to the rest of the world - to become, truly, the Land of the Free, they could be a beacon to us. In the UK, we bang our heads against an electoral system designed several hundred years ago to protect the interests of landowners - imagine a world in which the USA gives up its weapons and says “You know what? It’s not 1791. It’s 2016. The world has changed and we will change with it.” What couldn’t we do then? That would be an extraordinary world. But it didn’t happen when children died at Sandy Hook, and my belief in America isn’t so blind that I think they’ll do for the LGBTQ* community what they didn’t do for school kids.

I know that love will win, in so far as Orlando will come to back to life, that LGBTQ* people will continue to love boldly and brightly, that we will all drown ourselves in fucking rainbows to show our defiance, our lack of fear, that hate and terror have not sent us scurrying into dark corners. But I also know that more people will die in the doing of this. More lives will be lost as the gears grind slowly towards a less hateful world, and before long we will have to mourn again. That is the grief, and the heartbreak, of these few days: not only do we mourn for those who have been lost, but those losses yet to come.