Elwin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elwinfortuna) wrote2022-12-12 09:04 am
elwinfortuna) wrote2022-12-12 09:04 am
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I don't need luck, I have you!
(Or, me watching Rogue One in 2016: boy I sure hope this doesn't awaken anything in me...)
Watched Rogue One again last night (for I think the 4th or 5th time maybe, but for the first time in a long while), and was struck dizzy by Chirrut Imwe/Baze Malbus all over again.
But unlike when I watched it in 2016, or any of the times since then, I finally got why: they're my first proper Chinese wuxia battle couple. So many of the tropes they play out I've seen in "hao xiongdi" (lit. "good brothers" sometimes code for a gay relationship) and dangai (censored live-action productions of danmei novels, such as The Untamed for Mo Dao Zu Shi or Word of Honor for Faraway Wanderers) shows since.
This meta by evocating on Tumblr, Baze/Chirrut in the context of Chinese culture, does a much better job of explaining them and their relationship than I ever could, and really helped me understand them in their proper context.
While I love so much about Rogue One, and I treasure each and every character, Chirrut and Baze really elevate the movie for me. They bring so much humour, snarking back and forth at each other (like the old married couple they CLEARLY are), and also bring in that feeling of trust in the eventual outcome, even if the present looks dark, that sort of looking-forward, seeing the big picture, hope in the sense of estel to borrow from Tolkien, and belief in the eucastastrope (to borrow again) that will come in A New Hope.
I think without them the movie would have felt a lot more grim and dark, and it needed that lightness to carry us through. And their last scene is the only point in the movie that makes me cry, because it's so perfectly balanced between despair and trust that they are almost the same thing.
Anyway! Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie, fight me, and Chirrut/Baze are the best couple in all of Star Wars, fight me again, and they should be acknowledged as husbands, fight me Disney!
Watched Rogue One again last night (for I think the 4th or 5th time maybe, but for the first time in a long while), and was struck dizzy by Chirrut Imwe/Baze Malbus all over again.
But unlike when I watched it in 2016, or any of the times since then, I finally got why: they're my first proper Chinese wuxia battle couple. So many of the tropes they play out I've seen in "hao xiongdi" (lit. "good brothers" sometimes code for a gay relationship) and dangai (censored live-action productions of danmei novels, such as The Untamed for Mo Dao Zu Shi or Word of Honor for Faraway Wanderers) shows since.
This meta by evocating on Tumblr, Baze/Chirrut in the context of Chinese culture, does a much better job of explaining them and their relationship than I ever could, and really helped me understand them in their proper context.
While I love so much about Rogue One, and I treasure each and every character, Chirrut and Baze really elevate the movie for me. They bring so much humour, snarking back and forth at each other (like the old married couple they CLEARLY are), and also bring in that feeling of trust in the eventual outcome, even if the present looks dark, that sort of looking-forward, seeing the big picture, hope in the sense of estel to borrow from Tolkien, and belief in the eucastastrope (to borrow again) that will come in A New Hope.
I think without them the movie would have felt a lot more grim and dark, and it needed that lightness to carry us through. And their last scene is the only point in the movie that makes me cry, because it's so perfectly balanced between despair and trust that they are almost the same thing.
Anyway! Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie, fight me, and Chirrut/Baze are the best couple in all of Star Wars, fight me again, and they should be acknowledged as husbands, fight me Disney!
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I'm a Texan by birth, I was brought up on stories of the Alamo, and Rogue One has almost that kind of feel to it, so it's almost familiar in that way to me.
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And from what I know as a non-American of the Alamo I can definitely see it so I imagine it hits in a completely different way than someone without that context.
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Even my mother, who doesn't like Star Wars and is utterly unaware of fandom anything, watched it and loved it and assumed they were together. (Although she is a late blooming bi - I came by it honestly!! - so it was probably speaking to her own needs and wants as well.)
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And you’re right, in this rather grim movie they’re the much needed levity at times without being only comic relief; they do get their weighty moments, too!
I wasn’t ever much into Star Wars but I’d really enjoyed that first movie of the new trilogy, and I enjoyed this one. I’m very pissed at how much Disney Fucked the trilogy up, like – how can you fuck it up with all these great ingredients laid out for you?!
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