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An enigma of a man shaped hole in the wall between reality and the soul of the devil.
Joined: Tue January 01, 2013 5:13 pm Posts: 39818 Location: 6000 feet beyond man and time.
stip wrote:
it should also probably be noted that, at the end of Jedi, the rebels have one a great victory. But the Empire still controls, you know, the galaxy - what with their vast army and huge fleet of star destroyers and all the rest. Because the formal story ended their (not counting the EU stuff) for a long time we wrote in a 'they all lived happily ever after' ending, but that's not one that necessarily makes sense, and these new films challenge that
Not according to whatever version of the originals that has all the planets celebrating and tearing down statues and taking out stormtroopers. The implication was clear: the rebels won the war.
Probably shouldn't have made a princess with no training in military strategy a general. Oops.
Joined: Thu December 13, 2012 6:31 pm Posts: 39854
Leia probably had military training. She grew up as part of the rebellion and she's had plenty of time to learn what she is doing. Why did Han become a general? Why did Luke? Why did fucking Lando?
Answer: they never should have been but they are our traditional male heroes so we don't question that
And there are a bunch of scenes of people tearing down statues and what have you in Lucas' edit of the OT, but even there that speaks to a widespread rising up against the Empire. The military doesn't go away. The ships aren't all detonated. You have the clean defeat of the Republic at the end of the prequels because the entire military and political apparatus is usurped from within. It would be nonsense to assume the same thing would happen to the Empire (and cannonically (and in the former EU) it still takes years to defeat the formal empire.
I haven't read any new books or comics so I'm not sure how the First Order arises (from the ashes, as it were) of the Empire, but I would assume it is a reconsolidation of the Empire's military under new leadership (since they still use storm troopers, tie fighters, walkers, etc)
Joined: Thu December 13, 2012 6:31 pm Posts: 39854
Of course I do. That's just the sort of question you ask in the absence of a reasonable response to an argument.
This shouldb't be a very controversial statement. There are tens of thousands of pages of shitty star wars EU fiction predicated on the idea that Jedi doesn't end the story. The 'sin' of Abrams and Johnson is that they've decided that while the story is continuing, the old heroes are now supporting characters whose lives haven't stayed static (or even happy, which is not surprising given the tasks they've set out for themselves)
The story isn't over yet, and I think that's great. The good guys lost the first part. They won the second. We're in the middle of the third, and are fortunate enough to be in the hands of storytellers that treat simple heroes like complex human beings.
Joined: Thu December 13, 2012 6:31 pm Posts: 39854
I reread those Thrawn books a year or so ago. I loved them when I was younger. Thrawn is a great character. The way they position the ongoing war makes a lot of sense. But the books themselves are kind of lame. and the principle reason they are lame is that your core characters (Han, Luke, Leia) have no growth and no movement from the OT. It makes them paralyzingly uninteresting. Whatever is good in those books comes from the new characters.
Continuing the story thirty years in the future leaves you with 5 options for your main characters.
1. Have them continue to be the main characters. This is stupid because they're old and already had their grand adventure. How would you top it? It would be like watching a new hope with alec guiness as your main character 2. Have them be dead (we'd miss them) 3. Ignore them (but people that important wouldn't just disappear) 4. Put them in a supporting role but have them be exactly the same (this is boring. See the thrawn point above) 5. Putt hem in a supporting role but have the impact of the intervening thirty years change them, leaving them space to undertake character arcs that round out their journeys in interesting ways and allow them to exit the larger story as the heroes they were, but richer and more complex human beings in the process.
The new movies have gone with 5, which is absolutely the right call, from a storytelling/movie making perspective. Whether you think they did so effectively is a subjective response, obviously
Joined: Thu December 13, 2012 6:31 pm Posts: 39854
how can you level some of these arguments against star wars (new movies invalidating past triumphs) and have fucking Logan as your number 2 movie of the year?
An enigma of a man shaped hole in the wall between reality and the soul of the devil.
Joined: Tue January 01, 2013 5:13 pm Posts: 39818 Location: 6000 feet beyond man and time.
stip wrote:
how can you level some of these arguments against star wars (new movies invalidating past triumphs) and have fucking Logan as your number 2 movie of the year?
Joined: Thu December 13, 2012 6:31 pm Posts: 39854
because logan does everything to the wolverine (and xavier) characters and their previous movies that you're railing against in the new star wars. Past victories made meaningless. Character triumphs abandoned. If you tell Logan from the perspective of X-23 you have pretty much the same type of movie
An enigma of a man shaped hole in the wall between reality and the soul of the devil.
Joined: Tue January 01, 2013 5:13 pm Posts: 39818 Location: 6000 feet beyond man and time.
Quote:
"fortunate enough to be in the hands of storytellers that treat simple heroes like complex human beings."
... I'm not touching this
stip wrote:
how can you level some of these arguments against star wars (new movies invalidating past triumphs) and have fucking Logan as your number 2 movie of the year?
Logan was supposed to undo the successes. Professor X's death was intended to be bleak and depressing. X-men is tonally a bit more cynical and desperate than Star Wars anyway (to say nothing of the fact that with all the timelines and fake deaths, there is plenty of room for alternate storylines like this within the X-Men world, but that's cheating a little). Logan definitely pushes that to the extreme, but its not that far out of bounds.
TFA isn't the same. Abrams and co. clearly didn't set out to make that kind of movie. Disney set out to make a very "Star Wars" movie: a straightforward, "fun", adventure movie with simple heroes and villains and no hint of subversion. But, because of carelessness with how they approached the old characters and backstory, they hurt the older movies (to the extent a sequel can hurt previous films). When you stand back and look at these movies as a whole and how they relate to each other, this is clear.
Attempts to reconcile that by saying the Empire still has ships somewhere is just distraction. It's like arguing that these movies aren't good because there are sounds in space or laser swords would never work. The movies clearly intended to say the heroes decisively won this struggle. Instead Disney resurrected it in the laziest way imaginable, with little regard for how that would affect the previous films.
There is something to be said for accidentally making something subversive or more interesting. Intent isn't everything, or much of anything, but subversion or complexity is not the result here. It's just a sloppy, careless failure that actually hurts the originals and blunts the intended impact of Jedi's ending in a way that even midichlorians and Jar Jar couldn't.
- EU is nice and all, but I don't really care about that or whatever new garbage they've pumped out that explains what happened between the movies. These movies indicate that little good happened between Jedi and TFA, and the final fates of these characters and their causes are so hopelessly bleak and final that it goes against the tone of the world they created, and I doubt there is anything that can happen now that would change that.
- I also don't care about them being supporting characters. That has nothing to do with it. There really aren't any rules here, though. There is a good story to be had with almost any of those scenarios.
Joined: Thu December 13, 2012 6:31 pm Posts: 39854
you are right in that the new movies do hurt the originals insofar as the story doesnt END with their biggest victory. we are now telling a larger story, and while these are our major pivot characters, they no longer own it the same way. you will be more or less okay with that depending on how much you want to keep telling that story vs how much you want to preserve that moment in time. there’s not a right answer to that balance
but from a characterization / plot / world building / story telling perspective all the decisions made so far are on point.
the star wars movies are still fun. when you say no hint of subversion youre just wrong. 100% wrong.This movie does subvert expectations about what star wars is (hell, that’s at the heart of your critique) and it is clearly by design. and we know this because the director, actors, and even studio were sending out signals that this is the case long before the film came out
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