Careful.

It's true, though. I think there's also an ecological critique of the Empire in the battle of Endor. They shamelessly and purposelessly destroy nature and kill wildlife with big industrial machines (AT-STs).

Clearly this one is the best Ewok video https://vimeo.com/222882656

Haveth I alreathy been forgottenethereth?

Guys what does Obi-Wan mean by "If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine"? All he does after that as a Force ghost is encouraging Luke and talking to him and Yoda in Dagobah and hanging out at the Ewok party at the end of RotJ.

I think one can assume that by the time of The Phantom Menace, the Republic has become a decadent institution, and that it had functioned better in the past. But I've thought that in Star Wars there isn't as much contempt for democracy as much as there is contempt for politics and institutions in general. Throughout the prequel trilogy, there's a sense that the Jedi Order/High Council is also a failing institution whose rules are constricting, irrational, and lacking in compassion. Qui-Gon breaks many of the Jedi's rules by taking on Anakin as a disciple, and in doing so he sets off a chain of events that ultimately leads to the dissolution of the Jedi Order. In the prequels, it's pretty clear that the audience is supposed to see the Jedi Order as a flawed institution that should be destroyed -- we're supposed to see, I think, the destruction of the Jedi Order as necessary, and as the part of the fulfillment of a prophecy (meaning, obedience to a higher truth than the authority of the Jedi). The Republic, like the Jedi Order, is an institution that seems to have become obsessed with the trappings of power, rather than with carrying out the civic function it is designed for. (Also, as an aside, it's interesting how the prequels ties in with Ep 8 because of some of these themes... In some ways, what happens to the Jedi Order in Ep. 8 brings closer the fulfillment of Qui-Gon's intuition that Anakin will bring balance to the force.)

I've also thought these ideas about institutions don't reflect a particularly well thought out political outlook on George Lucas' part, as much as they reflect fairly conventional themes about rugged individualism that one finds in a lot of Hollywood movies. That, I think, in turn is indicative of just how thoroughly American Hollywood is. Many of the most beloved characters in Star Wars are characters who act before they think, are scrappy and resourceful, and are driven by gut instinct rather than careful consideration. In other words, they embody virtues that Americans prize and applaud: such as practicality (and scorn for useless intellectualizing), earnestness, no sense of entitled, a lack of pretentiousness or refinement, no patience for formality, etc. And I think the disparagement of politics and institutions -- whether they're governments, or rogue non-state military organizations, or whatever else -- with all their byzantine rules and procedures, follow as a consequence of that view of the individual: institutions, or organizations, become mere obstacles, which prevent individuals from following something simpler, something more authentic, namely, their instincts and feelings, and their own private, personal convictions about right and wrong, and what they should do.

The force is a cosmic power that at the most basic level holds the cosmos together, yet at the same time, the way that individuals access it is through feelings and hunches -- a kind of introspective self-awareness. I think there's something so quintessentially American about that, that incommunicable feelings connect individuals to the same forces that move the cosmos, and make possible some kind of cosmic harmony of the individual with the universe. It's takes something that Americans value and is part of their self-understanding, and says it's part of the very structure of nature. It's mythology. (Other American movies do this too... See, for example, the end of Wonder Woman, where Wonder Woman's search for truth gives way, and is replaced with the recognition that there is no truth, only truths, or the world as it appears to individuals... relativism, in other words).

Maybe you've got a point, but the thing is that the Star Wars films (okay, SW in general) are actually globally successful so people don't really need to know about the finer details of WWII fighter planes, Kurosawa or the Vietnam War to like it.

Which reminds me of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, which I bet some people assumed I'd play through at least once since "hey FGR, you're the Deus Ex guy and you liked DX:HR!*". But since that game, all the way from the pre-release promos to (judging by hearsay) to the game itself is filled up to brim with "WE ARE PROJECTING AMERICA'S SOCIAL ISSUES AREN'T WE CLEVER ABOUT IT HEY CHECK OUT THESE PARALLELS AND REFERENCES" - and I don't really give a s*** about America's social issues - it'll be a long time before I might even become somewhat interested in trying it out for a bit.

* = Incidentally, one of my major dislikes in DX:HR were indeed the overall themes of "OHHH WE ARE SO DARK AND GLOOMY AND SERIOUS OHHHHHH THE FUTURE IS BAD OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHFUA$@$€%5345@$£€@£$€]@2" and stuff

America: fights off the Soviets by massive spending and dickwaving.

Finland: fights of the Soviets with Molotov cocktails.

The only thing quintessentially American about the Force is the fact that it gives you skills (repair, piloting, driving, combat) without having to put in any work to earn it. i.e. it divides the world into those with “natural talent” and those without, which to most of us is an alien but distinctly American concept.

Supernatural power through introspective self-awareness - enlightenment - is, in fact, an ancient Japanese trope. It’s seen in practically every modern work and even their legends, like Musashi using bokken because the weapon doesn’t matter. Western media, on the other hand, has almost always fixated on power from without: weapons, technology, and artifacts. Gandalf’s power wasn’t earned, it was given to him by Eru Iluvatar, and without his staff he is disempowered. King Arthur’s power came from Excalibur. American power doesn’t come from spiritual awareness, it comes from superior technology, like nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, and capitalism[sup][citation needed][/sup].

Basically, the Force is Qi, and the conflict between power from within and power from without (the Force vs the Death Star) is one of the key contributions of Japanese culture to Star Wars. It’s a big reason why Star Wars resonates with Japanese audiences in a way most western media doesn’t.

(Aside: The reverse situation is why Metroid is more popular with western audiences and never achieved popularity among Japanese gamers. They reformulated the series for Other M to make Samus’s power come from her own strength of will instead of her technology. American critics found the reversal silly, but Japanese critics and gamers liked it way more than the previous entries. Culture is weird. Maybe this is the sort of thing you should tweak in localization if you want to be successful in different markets. v v)

Don't forget the proxy wars!

You know the new movies are bad if you can cite Darksaber as being better.

Luke's Change: An inside job!
https://vimeo.com/61930750

Honestly, the biggest problem with TLJ seems to be that it had to do plot clean up for JJ Abrams in TFA. JJ Abram's biggest problem is that he thinks that a compelling mystery is the same as not bothering to write bits of the story that are a hassle to think through. Rian Johnson said he killed off Snoke because he was boring. And he was right. The trouble with Snoke wasn't really that we didn't know where he came from, but that his existence was totally unjustified. We're just given ****ty the Emperor 2.0 and told to deal with it. People really want to know where Snoke came from because they want something better than that. We didn't need to know where the Emperor came from, because he WAS mysterious. A copy of an existing character isn't mysterious, it's just insulting. Snoke can only be redeemed by some kind of backstory, which I suspect we won't get.


TLJ did bring together a lot of the plot elements from TFA, but you can only do so much to a premise that's basically, "The same thing, but now bigger for reasons that we won't explore because we can't."

I think Episode 9 is going to leave people very disappointed with Abrams coming back to direct. There are a bunch of themes that need to be tied up, and if they aren't, they are just going to turn into plot holes.

So just curious, being in the massassi bubble that I am (fancy that), is this whole ~mysteries~ / plot holes critique something with currency among SW fans in general? On Reddit I see nothing but people apologizing for the films and generally being the eternal optimist / Antony, seeing the good in him, looking down on people who complain, etc.

I think with the OT there was a lot of leeway with character backgrounds because we knew that at some point the prequels should answer all of those questions. With the sequel trilogy the gap between stories isn't as wide since we're seeing a continuation of the OT. I think audience members who care are frustrated because if they don't answer these questions in Episode IX they'll only be answered in books or other materials.

My biggest problem with these films is that plot holes and lazy screen writing are patched up in post by a cleanup team. A film, or series, should stand up on its own without needing supplemental material to plug the holes.

Yeah... From reading this I appreciate a little bit better that the Emperor's gradual introduction into the story in the OT was pretty effective. (Unfortunately the prequel trilogy completely ruins it.) There was a very gradual transition where at first we thought Vader was the villain and his relation to the Emperor wasn't entire clear. But as we learned more about the Emperor, and about Vader, we gradually realized that Vader wasn't the bad guy; the Emperor was. So it's not as if the Emperor had some inherent mysterious quality to him, but rather that we kept learning more about him as the trilogy proceeded in a way that was satisfying, because he was central to the plot: he's character tugging Vader back to the dark side while Luke is trying to pull him back to the light.

That said, I don't think Snoke was intrinsically boring. I think Rian Johnson kind of dropped the ball with him and didn't know how to develop him. He had to find some way to make him necessary to the plot, but he couldn't... or didn't.

I think it's actually the other way around. In the OT it was just fine. There was an empire and of course this empire had an emperor. Sure, it might be an interesting story how he came into power, but the status quo is pretty easy to grasp without that background.
With the new movies we actually already have some background with the other movies. So any new figure, especially someone as old and powerful as Snoke would have had to be around during those old movies. And not only is he powerful, but he is also ambitious. He just doesn't strike me as a figure content with being in the background. The emperor on the other hand was very content with being in the background. I always thought that not many people actually got to speak to him face to face, while Snoke likes to illuminate a whole star destroyer bridge with his face.

I liked the new direction of finally actually seeing one dark side user being killed by another dark side user. But the movies would have worked equally well if Snoke had never existed at all.

If only someone had thought of this before introducing Snoke into the series.

HMM.

Whatever problems Rian Johnson inherited from JJ Abrams given Abram's idiosyncrasies as a story teller, I can't help but think that a lot of these problems come from directors being given too much freedom to do whatever they want with the episode of the trilogy they happen to direct, and not having a single person masterminding the trilogy as a whole.

"Whatever problems"



Yeah. Problems.

"Things that make money don't have problems."

Speaking of directors given way too much freedom, did you guys catch John Boorman's follow up to Deliverance?

I'm sure he didn't have that much freedom under the gaze of the Mouse.

That said, I thought having some director/writer freedom was a good thing after what Rogue One went through. So I can't see how having freedom in itself is a fault. That new Solo movie looks like a mess with Ron Howard jumping on-board.

The funny thing is that when I heard the announcement that Lucas had sold the franchise to Disney, I assumed that there was all this pent up potential for Star Wars films just waiting to be released, that even half way competent Hollywood directors who seemed to have more common sense than Lucas, was just waiting for the opportunity to pump out fantastic movies, given the incredible universe that the OT had given them, and all the advances in special effects since the prequels, couldn't really screw up. I hadn't anticipated that such a shoe in could go wrong in strange ways so easily. A lot of it just seems like laziness, which is sad.

imo they'd've been best off making a whole bunch of less ambitious content aimed at completely different markets. I think that's what they might have been originally trying to do, but something spooked 'em.

Maybe somebody showed them the infamous YouTube review of The Phtantom Menace, and they decided they didn't want to tarnish the Disney name for generations by making it synonymous with furious Star Wars fans.

"Just make good movies" is much easier said than done; I think a lot of the flaws in these movies come not out of laziness, but Disney's aggressive production schedule. I've secondhand from ILM people that FX shots for TLJ were still being turned in in November. A flawless tentpole blockbuster every two years is a big ask.

I think it's also getting a bit forgotten that Disney's people clearly went in with the intention of "fixing" the mistakes of the prequels--they made much of the use of practical FX, bringing in nerd gurus like Simon Pegg for consulting, plus original trilogy people. And for years the consensus was that the prequels were missing likable characters, something the new movies went all-in on, ultimately at the expense of OTHER things like worldbuilding and plot and pacing that Star Wars fans didn't miss until they were gone.

There's a lot to criticize but IMO they're definitely not guilty of not trying.

You're right! I think my characterization of laziness was lazy.

The notion that things were generally lined up for a killer movie but then hurried along too briskly seems to ring true, given (echoing what you wrote) that the project was both massive in proportions but at the same time somewhat rushed to market.

I assumed that this:

my eyes!

Bad Star Wars song/dance thread?

Yay, I can contribute! The ultimate Jabba song:

I think that and the fact that every possible aspect of movies has been refined to a formula with as little artistic variation as possible. Writing is not something that you can really do that with and I don't think producers can really cope with that.

They want low risk ROIs. That's why everything is a sequel or adaptation. It's reliable money. The thing is, you spend so long milking reliable sources of income, you eventually run out of compelling reasons to bring people into the theaters. Good stories involve risk, and most of them won't do as spectacularly as an established brand. But you don't get new established brands without taking risks.

not just the movies.

Star Wars in 1998, we had:

• first person shooter game
• third person action platformer game
• action flight simulator
• arcade flight game
• grognard wargame
• tournament fighter game
• YA fiction novels
• science fantasy novels
• sci-fi mil fic/spec ops fic novels
• romance novels

Star Wars in 2018, we have:

• one movie about the jedi
• one movie about the war (watered down in post)
• one video game that does everything poorly

Yeah, there's a lot to criticise, but the bottom line for me is well, ...

Back when I saw TFA I already had a feeling that I wasn't sure this story was worth telling. TLJ didn't do much to change that.

RotJ was a perfectly fine ending to the saga for me.

I'd rather see them do a story set a thousand years in the future, where after a millennium of peace things go out of balance again. They could even have some Skywalker descendant walking around for all I care, but seeing this story, with Luke in this sorry state, it feels very fan-fiction like.

Also, what's that whole deal with the concept of balance in TLJ? As far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong, it was Anakin who brought balance when he threw the Emperor down that shaft. Such was Lucas' vision, as far as I know.

I'm just mildly entertained watching Star Wars these days. I don't need a film that throws homages to ANH at me followed by a film that throws homages to TESB at me. If I want to see Star Wars how it used to be, I'll just watch the old ones.

Hell, I'd probably have more fun watching some simple spin-off about the life of some bounty hunter or something.