Disney Star Wars Is It Actually That Bad?

[Snarf Zagyg]

Hey, this is what The Last Jedi's critics wanted. I take no pleasure in any buyer's remorse they may have over it.

The fans knew what they wanted, and they deserved to get it good and hard.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Hey, this is what The Last Jedi's critics wanted. I take no pleasure in any buyer's remorse they may have over it.

I think either having her as the emperor's or as obi wan's descendent could have worked if it was handled properly. They also could have just kept it as her family being junkers like Kylo said and maybe her finding out more about them. The issue with the emperor's return is it looked like zero thought went into it, no real attempt was made to make it connect cleanly with previous movies, etc. This is another part of the movie where I think better dialogue and more thought would have gone a long way. If we really had a chance for her and Kylo to get into why Kylo lied, that would have been interesting. I don't think we really got that. Everything zipped by so quickly it is like you didn' even process it until after it happened. Just way too much going on in this movie.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The fans knew what they wanted, and they deserved to get it good and hard.

This is the problem with not doing things out in advance. They could have done a cohesive trilogy following either Johnson or Abrahms visions. But starting on one, shifting to another, then veering back towards something like the first one started could never work. Now the trilogy as a whole is only interesting for how much of a disjointed and strange it is (maybe in twenty years that will look very compelling to people I don't know).

 

[Mercurius]

I tend to think describing Rey as "Luke but without any faults" is pretty damn uncharitable too. I get that there's a line between a fictional character and living human person, but when 95% of this "debate" boils down to vitriol based in real-world biases and bigotry, I'm more inclined to see that line as blurrier than it might otherwise be.

Bingo. You should have stopped there - rather than basically accusing me of "vitriol based in real-world biases and bigotry," or at least adjacent to that.

What have I said that entails biases or bigotry? Absolutely nothing. You're either making assumptions, or you lump everyone together that disagrees with you, and then insult them with nasty accusations of bigotry and bias. That's an ad hominem.

Now you soften it somewhat later on, but only somewhat; you're still connecting what I'm saying with whoever you think is actually biased and bigoted.

So where's the conversation? Can we have one without such nastiness?

As for Mary Sue, ironically I didn't even initially use the term - you did. And in doing so, you followed a red herring, completely missing what I was saying - which really had nothing to do with whether Rey is a Mary Sue or not, and more how I speculated the characters were conceived. So I have no interest in a straw man argument about whether or not Rey is Mary Sue, because that wasn't (at all) my point.

Again, re-read what I wrote: I didn't say Rey is Luke without faults, I was making a point in how I imagined the character was conceived: in relation to Luke, yet more competent. You latched onto the erroneous belief that I was saying "Rey is a Mary Sue" and skipped over what I was actually saying.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I tend to think describing Rey as "Luke but without any faults" is pretty damn uncharitable too. I get that there's a line between a fictional character and living human person, but when 95% of this "debate" boils down to vitriol based in real-world biases and bigotry, I'm more inclined to see that line as blurrier than it might otherwise be.

But this is part of where we go off the rails. I don't think the majority of this debate is because of bigotry. I think it is mostly to do with taste and people not liking the way a newer movie handled an older franchise (if you have older fans of a franchise they are going to have complaints when it gets rebooted). Look Disney is a very, very powerful company. I think they used this to deflect criticisms of the movies and to help generate online discussion at the same time. I don't think people who disliked Last Jedi are bigots, and I don't think people who loved it are bad either. Nor is one side more virtuous and the other less so. There are always bad actors in online discussion but most people I know who had criticisms of any of the movies, just were giving honest opinions they had about a film. It is just a movie. It is a distraction from real problems that exist in the world. Disney is still making tons of money off of it. And lets not forget Disney itself nixed both a gay relationship and an interracial one, largely for concerns of how that would play in markets outside the US. Most of us debating the merits of the movie with one another are all in a similar boat in terms of how much power and money we have in the world. No good for us to be turning against one another over characters in a film.

 

[Gradine]

Now see, I also found most of the comedy in the movie quite, but I'll admit that the prank call was a little... distracting. I think the other line that tends to take me out of it a bit was the whole "the Queen is dead, long live the Queen" bit. On the other hand, I love myself some Hux, by which I mean to see I love seeing his whiny, entitled self getting consistently trolled and otherwise put in his place. He actually I thought had the most interesting arc in the 3rd film, but again I love seeing him being (a) petty and (b) paying for it.

It's far from a perfect movie. It just can be hard differentiate legitimate disagreement with the kinds of bad faith rhetorics that drove the original wave of hatred toward the movie in the first. And it's not fair to folks who legitimately didn't care for the film, and I acknowledge my role in it. But the bad-faith trolls have torn a hole in a fandom I cared about by drawing their line in the sand and filling their side with hatred and bigotry.

I'm still mad about it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I tend to think describing Rey as "Luke but without any faults" is pretty damn uncharitable too.

I felt Rey had plenty of faults. Some of them not explored deeply enough but by the second and third movie they are pretty clear (as they were with Luke). But these are also not really meant to be super flawed characters like in the walking dead. They are space heroes. What the group needed was one really flawed character like Han. But Rey was fine as she was. One of my big complaints in these kinds of movies is the actors don't look strong or physical enough to do what they are doing but she really seemed physically ready for that role.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Now see, I also found most of the comedy in the movie quite, but I'll admit that the prank call was a little... distracting. I think the other line that tends to take me out of it a bit was the whole "the Queen is dead, long live the Queen" bit. On the other hand, I love myself some Hux, by which I mean to see I love seeing his whiny, entitled self getting consistently trolled and otherwise put in his place. He actually I thought had the most interesting arc in the 3rd film, but again I love seeing him being (a) petty and (b) paying for it.

I just felt they had this really frightening villain (someone who seemed potentially more dangerous than Kylo Ren because he believed in the empire). Turning him into a joke just didn't add anything to the movie for me. I get the whole tradition of Hogans Heroes and stuff. But this is a movie where you want a frightening empire that puts the heroes in true peril. It just felt so goofy to me.

It's far from a perfect movie. It just can be hard differentiate legitimate disagreement with the kinds of bad faith rhetorics that drove the original wave of hatred toward the movie in the first. And it's not fair to folks who legitimately didn't care for the film, and I acknowledge my role in it. But the bad-faith trolls have torn a hole in a fandom I cared about by drawing their line in the sand and filling their side with hatred and bigotry.

I'm still mad about it.

I can't tell you what to think. But I think a lot of what was going on is they were trying to paint any criticism of the film as being a product of vitriol and hate and I just don' think that was what was going on. It is clever marketing. Anger, ironically enough, is one of the surest drivers of clicks and views in our current environement. But I think it is actually pretty dangerous to generate buzz around a movie in this way by getting the fanbase to turn on one another and to fear one another. Definitely there are always going to be bad people who say terrible things. But most of this was people just not liking a movie or a character in a movie. And for all of Disney's posturing about this stuff, in the end, it didn't really do anything to support the actors it had expressed concern for. Rose was a great character and they should have stuck with her in the third movie. But they didn't. Which is a shame. I would personally blame the company that made these decisions rather than people who just weren't fans of a film.

 

[Gradine]

Bingo. You should have stopped there - rather than basically accusing me of "vitriol based in real-world biases and bigotry," or at least adjacent to that.

What have I said that entails biases or bigotry? Absolutely nothing. You're either making assumptions, or you lump everyone together that disagrees with you, and then insult them with nasty accusations of bigotry and bias. That's an ad hominem.

Now you soften it somewhat later on, but only somewhat; you're still connecting what I'm saying with whoever you think is actually biased and bigoted.

So where's the conversation? Can we have one without such nastiness?

As for Mary Sue, ironically I didn't even initially use the term - you did. And in doing so, you followed a red herring, completely missing what I was saying - which really had nothing to do with whether Rey is a Mary Sue or not, and more how I speculated the characters were conceived. So I have no interest in a straw man argument about whether or not Rey is Mary Sue, because that wasn't (at all) my point.

Again, re-read what I wrote: I didn't say Rey is Luke without faults, I was making a point in how I imagined the character was conceived: in relation to Luke, yet more competent. You latched onto the erroneous belief that I was saying "Rey is a Mary Sue" and skipped over what I was actually saying.

If I made a leap of logic or misunderstood what you were saying or putting words in your mouth, I apologize. I read more into I was reading than what was actually there, and went off completely half-cocked. I didn't ever think you, yourself were actually some kind of misogynist.

All that said, I stand by that the driving force behind the criticisms of The Last Jedi and the way fans have treated many of its characters/cast members was rooted in a particularly nasty brand of politics, and that many, including myself, have unfairly lumped those with legitimate complaints with the film. It's just such a good movie in my eyes that it's hard to reconcile the middle ground between where I'm at and the alt-right trolls crying "Mary Sue".

I'll also stand by that anyone who would claim that this is anything close to a Mary Sue doesn't have a leg to stand on, but I'll accept that I don't think anybody's doing that here.

Apologies, again, for treating you unfairly.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Now see, I also found most of the comedy in the movie quite, but I'll admit that the prank call was a little... distracting. I think the other line that tends to take me out of it a bit was the whole "the Queen is dead, long live the Queen" bit. On the other hand, I love myself some Hux, by which I mean to see I love seeing his whiny, entitled self getting consistently trolled and otherwise put in his place. He actually I thought had the most interesting arc in the 3rd film, but again I love seeing him being (a) petty and (b) paying for it.

It's far from a perfect movie. It just can be hard differentiate legitimate disagreement with the kinds of bad faith rhetorics that drove the original wave of hatred toward the movie in the first. And it's not fair to folks who legitimately didn't care for the film, and I acknowledge my role in it. But the bad-faith trolls have torn a hole in a fandom I cared about by drawing their line in the sand and filling their side with hatred and bigotry.

I'm still mad about it.

You're not the only one.

TLJ wasn't perfect, but at a minimum it was interesting and provided a fresh way forward. It made me excited again. Rise ... killed all interest I had in Star Wars movies for the foreseeable future. I would rather watch a new trilogy that only had Gungans than watch Disney make another movie with the current brain trust that chose to go forward with Rise.