Yeah, everyone knows TFA did that

No, not deconstructing. Recontextualizing. I think you're mistaking the moving trusting you can follow the narrative for "wavering." Yes it's good versus evil, but it's asking what those words actually mean.



You're right! And holy cow it would be a boring movie if it was. Characters act on motivations we never hear about all the time.



yes

That was the whole casino thing? But it didn't present any real moral questions since it was more of an improvised plan about finding this guy that ultimately didn't go anywhere. That weapon dealer scene with the Xwing shown didn't seem to have any real impact on the story or the characters.

Maybe Rian had something in mind to go further with that and Disney stepped in and said "Rebels need to be the good guys, you can't do that!" Who knows. Maybe he should have shown Poe using black market items on his special Xwing or something because otherwise this whole part seemed half-baked.

It absolutely presented real moral questions! Yes it was a plan that ended with being double crossed, but is that a bad thing? It's a growth arc for Finn who (prior to this) had mostly been running from both the first order and resistance. By the end of it he's accepted that he's part of the resistance.

No need to tinfoil hat the writing process either. It's the middle movie of a trilogy and setting more things in motion.

It's not though. The movie may throw in a red herring about "oooh are the Jedi really all that good?" it but by the end the movie settles firmly back into "Jedi = good, space Nazis = bad" narrative because Star Wars can't do anything else. Like, it asks the question, then says "nah the basic premises are all good, let's continue forward just fine".

They don't even destroy the books. Rey has them. Of course who knows what exactly that will mean, it could be that IX does some good stuff, which is why I did state in my previous statements that IX will define whether any of the plot of VIII matters. But I doubt it.

THE FLAKY GOOD GUY DECIDES HE'S REALLY GOOD NOW

REAL MORAL CONUNDRUMS

Star Wars has always been about "good versus evil" and I don't think it's bad it's sticking to that. It's showing *new* definitions of evil and that's not a red herring at all. Things can be bad, but not be easy to choose between.



8 begins to establish that divine right to the galaxy is not the end all be all to the series. Like it or not, 8 certainly impacted the series as a whole.

And yeah, when you trivialize a character arc and ignore subtext of course it sounds dumb.

Was the evil BB-8-ish droid only the 3rd evil droid ever in a Star Wars movie? We had the torture droid (jabba's palace right? which seemed to be acting on its own but we don't really know) and then the interrogation droid in the original movie (which was directed by Vader). The new one seemed to really be on the bad guys' side. Not like most droids that always seem forced into it, or just oblivious servants like the mouse droids or whatever they are.

first of all his name is BB-H8

but seriously, the only thing I can think of is the eyeball on a stick at Jabba's front door. That thing was at LEAST pretty cranky

Haha forgot about that one. Wouldn't consider it evil, though. It was definitely grumpy about something.

This thread doesn't explain anything, it wavers around what it wants to like until it settles firmly on the same half full versus half empty narrative that it was always supposed to have.

For every upside you guys can come up with in the space of balls, there exists a downside for me to throw back at you also in the space of balls.

Most solid thing said on this thread.

And today wasn't the first time I said it.

And here: https://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?67925-quot-Star-Wars-quot-was-saved-in-the-edit-by-Lucas-then-wife&p=1209730&viewfull=1#post1209730

I thought that was an apparatus of a larger, spider-like creature...?

What's the new definition? As far as I can tell, nothing of consequence changed.



Was it that before? I personally never once considered the whole "Skywalker lineage" thing, but now I'm supposed to believe 8 is making some deep statement?

Also, it's just a carbon copy of the Harry Potter message, so... waow so deep.



It was already pretty trivial before and I'm pretty sure there was no subtext.

Besides, a character coming out on stage and pronouncing "I'm different now!" is basically the worst style of writing possible.

You thought that was an angry B'omarr Monk guarding the door at Jabba's Palace?!? Bohoho

ANH - The rebellion is good, The Empire is evil. ESB - The evil is now intrinsically connected to luke, how can we deal with that? TLJ - We take a step back from the first order / resistance and see the war machine backing it all.

I'm not sure how you can watch all of the star wars movies and not see it's directly connected to the Skywalker family. Also, I havent seen Harry Potter so no clue what you're referencing. There are no original ideas. The heros journey appears all over the dang place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey ( also look! story diagrams! http://www.openculture.com/2014/02/kurt-vonnegut-masters-thesis-rejected-by-u-chicago.html )

Disagreed that it's a trivial arc. He spends most of his time trying to avoid the fight and find his friend. _his_ challenge is that the fight is unavoidable regardless of where he goes. It ends with an action movie line because it's space swashbuckling! Then you see how he's changed in the skimmer scene. It's… almost… like… there… was… develompent!

I'll develomp you, MB.

The casino world stuff is bad in the movie, but plotting/pacing aside, I don't mind the thematic element they're going for there... that there is this 'war economy' and plenty of profiteers out there, etc.

But in the script, the attempt to create an equivalence between the Resistance and the First Order by saying "they both buy weapons from these guys" is super dumb. That... doesn't make the Resistance bad. It makes the gun runners bad. Why are the Rebels culpable for the two-faced nature of the weapons dealers?? When Benicio del Toro drops that comment, and Finn is quietly like "damn, he's right tho," it doesn't make any sense.

But I agree MB, this movie does seem like a pretty clear reflection on the fact that up until now (in the OT, PT, and despite the focus on new characters, still in TFA) Star Wars has been a Skywalker Family Story. The focus on tearing down the old, building the new, the mention of the wider impacts or complications of the war, the depiction of the Rebel-sympathizer slave children that the move *ends on* all point to that. I don't know if I think they quite pulled it off, or if it felt particularly moving or profound, but I think that's definitely what Rian Johnson was going for.

So for one scene we see that the same people profit off both sides in the war. That's the deep revelation, here?



Of course the story is told about the Skywalkers, but I never felt their bloodline/lineage itself was essential to the plot.

The evil guys in Harry Potter literally believe "magical bloodlines" exist and that people who have them are superior to people who don't have the bloodline. These magical Nazis are wrong, and Harry Potter is very overtly anti-special-bloodline or whatever you call it.



I agree there was development, it just wasn't interesting development. At least not to me.

But the movie is making the exact opposite point. The hero is Finn, and he's told the "moral relativism" tale by Benicio del Toro, but Benicio del Toro betrays them so Finn sees it's bull**** and goes full #Resistance.

The hero very obviously rejects the message. That's why I don't get the kinds of things people are saying, the movie super clearly says "no, it's all just good and evil in the end".

Yeah I agree that it was presented in a simple way, but I'm not sure it would have benefitted from being overwrought? Curious to see where it goes in the next movie. My interpretation of that scene wasn't that Finn suddenly sees the resistance as bad, but that taking down the gun runners might hurt his friends?



yeah I dunno if it felt really profound to me, but I like it as a way to move the story forward.


And Reid - Prequels are all about Anakin, OT is about Lukes conflict with Vader, and now this Trilogy is handling the repercussions of Luke Skywalker. Maybe its not the literal blood thats essential, but the skywalkers are essential to it. But Rey being just a nobody with no "magical bloodline" seems to be upsetting to people! its odd to me!

I'm clearly being ignored on this thread!

That said, the next time that guy reappears, I'll be the one to remember.

I literally don't care at all who Rey's parents are, I just mean the entire "lol bloodlines don't matter" thing is like, a huge plot point in Harry Potter, and is a pretty basic ***** liberal point of view. Not that I disagree with the moral, but it's not very interesting to see.

As in, if Rey's entire defining feature is that she's not a Skywalker, then she has nothing interesting going for her because that never mattered to me anyway.

The HP connection seems tenuous. It's not like in SW the bad guys are saying magic blood matters and the good guys are saying "anyone can be a Jedi!" Maybe there's a... vague connection between the in-fiction stance of Good Wizards in HP and the real-world stance of Rian Johnson re: the fictional content of Star Wars?

I don't want it to be overwrought, just to make sense. And I agree re: curiosity about where they might take it next... but I won't be surprised it 9 doesn't really take it anywhere. In a broad sense, I think it will be quite interesting to see what J.J. does... if he takes any cues from RJ, if he continues in this trajectory, if he wraps things back around to the direction of TFA, etc.




Yeah. To me it feels like an opening for any number of those Expanded Universe stories about smugglers or bounty hunters or relative nobodies. Those won't be in the mainline Star Wars movies of course, but maybe we'll see more spinoffs (including RJ's) that get into that. Is there any news about what his Star Wars Story trilogy is even supposed to be about?

Call it whatever you want, "race is only skin deep", stuff like this, meritocracy, etc. It's all tied in with liberal ideology, regardless of how each work of fiction embeds it in their fictional world, they're all based on the same idea, that your parents don't determine who you are, and that a moral world is meritocratic on a person's abilities, not their past.

It's an insanely mainstream, common point of view. It's not transgressive to make that point. And Episode VIII is lock step in with saying the same thing millions and millions of people have said before about human capacity.

That's why I say they're related, because it's the same real-world ideology behind both plot narratives.

If you're really concerned about Rey's bloodline you should just do the midichlorian test and find out.

Since when has Star Wars said anything deep at all about anything?

It doesn't, lol. Which is why TLJ comes across as so much more pretentious, because it pretends to.

Ah, I see. Certainly I was bothered by some obvious preaching that took me out of the moment, and which felt like cheap nods to trendy (though still noble) progressive views to have. E.g.,

• You should feel bad about eating meat.
• Men should be aware that their bravado and charisma are mostly reckless and possibly immoral, and that they ought to instead step aside to make room for a less assertive but sage cadre of women.

Both admirable ideals and lessons to be sure, but the apparent desire of the writers to make some kind of moral point sort of took me out of a galaxy far far away and back to Twitter / Facebook.

What was that old movie where every time there was some deeper meaning being communicated someone would jump out and scream "MESSAGE!"?

[tangent]Sometimes I like to imagine at the end of TFA the New Republic fleet shows up and takes over Starkiller base. Yeah, it's kind of anti-climactic compared to it blowing up like big space objects do, but imagine having a twist where the good guys have a weapon designed to blow up planets and where that could go.[/tangent]

Then again, every post on this thread following that one is completely in accordance with the main point of my three-post-reminder starting from this one.

mb, don't waste your time with these people.

quoting admin sass

OG Koobie will rise again!

But we all love mb. Always.