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Utopia Talk / Politics / Star wars
Seb
Member
Thu Dec 19 17:52:14
So... bit game of thronesey there.

Needed to cut half the scenes that were extraneous, focus down on the story, let it breathe a bit and dial down the crazy.
Nekran
Member
Fri Dec 20 00:46:24
Saw it last night. I was impressed. I had not thought it possible to make a worse star wars movie than Episode II. How they proved me wrong!
smart dude
Member
Fri Dec 20 00:57:40
"Needed to cut half the scenes that were extraneous"

Why only cut half of what is extraneous? Is English your first lanaguage?
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Fri Dec 20 06:54:53
”Is English your first lanaguage?”

Is it you first ”lanaguage”?
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Fri Dec 20 06:55:42
ffs I just did it myself.
jergul
large member
Fri Dec 20 07:52:32
Thats ok nimi. English is not your first lanaguage.
Seb
Member
Fri Dec 20 09:00:21
Oh look, it's the Grammar Alt Right. Like a Grammar Nazi but a bit dim and hard to take as seriously.

Nekran:

Worse than Last Jedi or worse than attack of the clones?

I will leave it a bit before saying what I particularly thought was bad.
Nekran
Member
Fri Dec 20 11:44:24
Worse than attack of the clones, amazingly. Last Jedi had some cringy moments, but was furthermore passable, I thought.
Seb
Member
Fri Dec 20 12:01:34
I thought clones was maybe the better of the prequels - but I did see it only once having been out for drinks first. I think I've just not remembered much of it aside from the ending which was suitably ominous.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Fri Dec 20 14:53:19
Episode I was the weakest one of the three.
obaminated
Member
Fri Dec 20 18:25:53
Mandalorean on Disney plus is pretty cool
Habebe
Member
Fri Dec 20 18:39:25
Oba, Agreed...the mandalorian is decent....i was a lil disappointed that for a while it seemed to be just him going to place after place and fighting someone new with little to no plot advancement...but they brought it back.
Seb
Member
Sat Dec 21 00:59:17
Love the mandalorian - it's fun spaghetti western in space; with a mask standing in for Clint's impassive face; a score clearly echoing Sergio Leone and even the end credit illustrations reminiscent of the dollars trilogy.

So far, it seems to me star wars is best when they use the setting as a vehicle to tell a classic genre story; and not try to do "star wars".

jergul
large member
Sat Dec 21 01:23:50
Seb
Yepp.
Nekran
Member
Sat Dec 21 02:54:47
Yeah, the mandalorian is very nice. To me, tha
Nekran
Member
Sat Dec 21 03:10:54
Ugh... To me, that felt like Disney telling the old fans "Come back to us, we still know how to make good Star Wars stuff", but then they calme out with this.

My ranking goes like so:

- Empire Strikes Back
- A New Hope
- Rogue One*
- Return of the Jedi
- Solo**
- The Last Jedi
- Revenge of the Sith
- The Force Awakens***
- The Phantom Menace
- Attack of the Clones
- Rise of Skywalker

* Very controversial, I know, but I really enjoyed that movie and RotJ is overrated just for being part of the original trilogy

** Probably benefited from me going to see it in the mindset that the best it could possibly be would be "not entirely terrible", but apart from the cringy name-explanation scene, that was a fun movie

*** Very hard movie to rank I feel, being just a weird tribute to the old movies.

Also apart from the original trilogy, I saw them all only once (well Rogue One I saw twice and The Phantom Menace maybe 4 or 5 times when it was new).

It's possible that Attack of The Clones got extra harshly rated as it's the first one that came out when I was starting to be somewhat of an adult (I was 16 when the Phantom Menace came out and I liked it back then apart from Jar Jar Binks... mostly because of the aura of respect the movie had for Jedi and most of the scenes starring Obi Wan were good). But I remember just losing my mind when R2 flied and the terribly written love story between Anakin and Padme throughout that whole movie ("I don't like sand...").
Renzo Marquez
Member
Sat Dec 21 06:33:17
http://twitter.com/nickmullen/status/1206044473274388483

andrew diap play
@nickmullen
The main difference between Star Wars and Star Trek is that the bad guys in Star Trek have a giant cube, whereas in Star Wars the bad guys have a giant sphere. Outside of that the rest is the same gay bullshit
Forwyn
Member
Sat Dec 21 10:21:06
Other than TLJ being ranked weirdly high, overall solid list.
Seb
Member
Sat Dec 21 11:51:56
Nekran:

I loved rogue one - it feels wrong to put it above the original trilogy but I think I'd put it in the same spot.

Solo I just found... Meh. I think for me it would be below last jedi and force awakens. Rise of Skywalker I like less than last Jedi*; then solo, then the prequel trilogy. I'm not going to order those.

Mandalorian is doing everything Solo tried to do but better for not being about an established character.
Seb
Member
Sat Dec 21 11:55:38
* my apparently controversial views on last Jedi are well known, but I would say this movie vindicated it. If they fixed the editing and maybe didn't have to course correct for the direction last Jedi took, at best this movie would have been to rotj as force awakens was to a new hope. I'd like to see the Rian Johnson sequel to last Jedi, just to see where he'd have gone.
Seb
Member
Sat Dec 21 12:01:27
But they should stick to the winning formula of the first trilogy, mandalorian and rogue one: just do genre adventure films in a starwars setting.

Trying to do star wars like star Trek, as a universe with a continuity with the story being about the pivotal events in the universe - it's not working. I loved the thrawn books and I've not seen the animated series they did - so I'm not saying it can't work but I think those stories don't lend themselves to the holiday mega movie.
Habebe
Member
Sat Dec 21 12:03:07
Seb, I'm in the minority on Solo cause I enjoyed it. I think it has a lot less of a star wars feel but as a stand alone movie I enjoyed it.

Mandolorian better though I usually prefwr the pace of tv shows over movies which often feel rushed to me.
Rugian
Member
Sat Dec 21 12:08:02
I'm guessing from this thread that the new movie didnt shill enough progressive politics to satisfy Seb's need for drawing anything and everything into the culture war.
Seb
Member
Sat Dec 21 12:36:42
Rugian:


Star wars has always been about values. It's a story about good and evil. So detecting values in star wars and being unable to see that as anything other than a political salvo in the culture wars is sad.

The fact is it is you that you can only approach The Last Jedi from the culture war perspective you inhabit, save that inhibits your enjoyment of it.
Rugian
Member
Sat Dec 21 12:54:49
Seb,

Using your "good vs evil" argument, your belief that mainstream conservatism is "evil" is noted. Cheers.
Seb
Member
Sat Dec 21 13:21:32
Rugian:

Can you explain to me why you identify the First Order with mainstream conservatism?

You are the one protecting contemporary politics onto Star Wars and frankly I think you might have lost the plot a little.
Seb
Member
Sat Dec 21 13:27:15
Like, in the movie, the rebels are fighting against a genocidal regime that uses weapons of mass destruction and abducts children to turn into brainwashed soldiers, under the rule of an evil space wizard that dresses like Peter Stringfellow metes Hugh Hefner.

You seem to have latched onto the fact that they cast a woman in the lead hero role and a diverse cast; determined the film is actually all about wokeness, are outraged at the fact that the Last Jedi implied that the rebels would have a collectivist outlook; and somehow determined this can only possible mean it is a criticism of your preferred political party.

But that's you. I don't approach it that way.
Seb
Member
Sat Dec 21 13:33:07
Tl;Dr
"I'm uncomfortable with these values, this film is political!" Is a mad take. Star Wars has always had values, highly simplistic values.

Having values doesn't make it a partisan issue; and only needs to be part of a culture war in as much as you the viewer are unable to accept anything that articulates something that doesn't exactly accord with your dogma as unacceptable.
Habebe
Member
Sat Dec 21 19:24:10
In all fairness the Jedi imho are religious extremists who brainwash children into dogmatic floowing of their religion.
hood
Member
Sat Dec 21 23:15:32
"I'm guessing from this thread that the new movie didnt shill enough progressive politics to satisfy Seb's need for drawing anything and everything into the culture war."

It most certainly did shill enough, if you cared enough to pay attention.





To me, it wasn't a dumpster fire like 8 was. Not sure if it was any good though. Also, "dark science" needs to be mocked really fucking hard. That line, that scene, was horrible.
Forwyn
Member
Sun Dec 22 02:55:14
It did plenty of shilling.

But it was also better than 8, and very slightly redeemed 8 itself.
Nekran
Member
Sun Dec 22 03:03:19
How was it better than anything? Nothing in it made any sense at best and invalidated the entire franchise at worst. Even the action was all generic and impactless.

I mean... like... when I was watching Attack of the Clones, I was extremely annoyed and angry at the shitfest I was watching, but I recognised that the battle in the end was all pretty cool and well done. There's some memorable scenes there.

This movie had nothing of the sort. Not a single cool fight or moment. Not a single line delivered with impact (apart from "Let's find out" :') ). Just... nothing.
Seb
Member
Sun Dec 22 03:18:54
Nekran:

Exposition. Swipe. Exposition. Swipe. Etc.
Nothing had any time to breathe and sink in, and i think that robbed much of the impact.

Four hours of movie compressed into half the time, and too, too many scenes that were just there to provide fan service. The first half hour or more could probably have just been absorbed into a line in the title card crawl. If they'd cut say, the first and second scene with Ren in (avoiding spoilers), I think it would have made the last act better.
Seb
Member
Sun Dec 22 03:20:45
Ditto, did we actually need to see the first scene or so with Rey?

Edit all that shit out.
Cherub Cow
Member
Sun Dec 22 03:33:07
My plan was to not pay money to see this (money that the terrorist organization known as "Disney" would otherwise use for more terrorism operations).. and the reviews here have done a good job of keeping me on track, thanks! ;D

There were some story possibilities that I thought might make me see it, so just let me know if these things happened:
• Rey goes full dark side in the first 15 minutes, and the rest of the movie is graphic-gore NC-17 hack-and-slash of all the force-enabled younglings, like those little shits we saw in Episode VIII on the casino planet.
• Maz Kanata turns out to be a serial rapist and murderer, and Rey has to kill her, but not before Rey tortures Maz for hours (at least 30 minutes of on-screen time) to clear her conscience.
• At some point, a captive Finn yells to Rey while she battles a resurrected General Grievous, "Rey! Rey, I love you! But we only have 14 hours to save the Earth!"
• Rey turns out to be a resurrected Darth Plagueis the Wise. She transitions into Tim Curry in his "Legend" devil suit (Plagueis' physical form), kills Poe, Finn, and Kylo Ren, and the movie ends with the absolute dominance of the Dark Side over the entire universe where there is zero possibility that the Light Side could ever resurface. In fact, they show a worm learning to use the force for good, and Rey-Plagueis is already there to crush it.
• They start to show a bunch of hot new "It" teens and 20-somethings so that they can do another lame-ass passing of the torch to future generations of Star Wars fans, but all of those kids immediately get decapitated by a freak cable rigging, like in "Ghost Ship". So instead of them getting a promotion, Bruce Campbell steps in at the end, looks at the camera, and promises a new Star Wars trilogy: "Ash vs. Disney's Legacy of Selling Out for Misguided Focus Groups"
• Kathleen Kennedy's name is removed from the credits. Like, they show it, but then draw a line through it and write, "Sorry!"
Seb
Member
Sun Dec 22 04:03:51
"• At some point, a captive Finn yells to Rey while she battles a resurrected General Grievous, "Rey! Rey, I love you! But we only have 14 hours to save the Earth!""


Well, two out of three ... nearly.
hood
Member
Sun Dec 22 04:07:30
"Rey! Rey, I love you! But we only have 14 hours to save the Earth!"

Closer than you'd expect.


"How was it better than anything?"

I put it above 8, which is my lowest SW movie. I also happened to like how they handled Ben. Kylo was a nightmare though.



"The first half hour or more could probably have just been absorbed into a line in the title card crawl."

SPEAKING OF THE OPENING CRAWL! Oh my god that was fucking hideous. The first 3 fucking words of the movie (i.e. the first sentence of the crawl) set the tone.
Seb
Member
Sun Dec 22 04:13:57
Hood:

Yeah madness. Give away what ought to be the big reveal in the first seconds of the movie and do it in a way that rather than being a nod to 50's B movies is just camp as fuck.

At least it wasn't a treatise on trade negotiations.

Cherub Cow
Member
Sun Dec 22 06:04:16
"Closer than you'd expect."

Wait... what?
hood
Member
Sun Dec 22 10:05:30
I PMed you the spoiler if you're curious.
Forwyn
Member
Sun Dec 22 11:03:10
We got an explanation for both Snoke's uselessness and Rey's Mary Sue powers.

Though I'm still laughing at the handling of Leia
hood
Member
Sun Dec 22 11:11:04
We really didn't, though. There's still no previous evidence that Rey should have been remotely proficient in the force so quickly. Even the most powerful force user of all time, Anakin, had to be taught.
obaminated
Member
Sun Dec 22 11:30:10
That's the Disney problem with female characters. They must be flawless.
Forwyn
Member
Sun Dec 22 11:37:59
Eh. It's less of a gut punch than before. Clearly she got the Cap. Marvel treatment - Anakin/Luke weren't throwing around ship-level lightning at any point in their careers (and there are plenty of earlier examples) - but it stings less than if she was a no-name daughter of space junkies.
Seb
Member
Sun Dec 22 13:22:15
Kinda getting spoilery there guys - Rey is flawed. You keep seeing her clearly losing control and raging, and that's the secret to some of her apparent strength - she's taking the dangerous short cut. Also why throws lighting around that one time. Vader, in some of the EU stuff, smashes bigger ships together than that transport. Yoda says when he lifts the xwing out of the swamp on Dagobah that moving things isn't about their size.

They've established alternative explanations for all the other things that are taken to be examples of unnatural strength or force ability: largely can be attributed to the connection between Kylo and her, allegedly snokes doing.
hood
Member
Sun Dec 22 13:35:52
"Anakin/Luke weren't throwing around ship-level lightning at any point in their careers"

We never got to see Luke do much of anything. Anakin, however, did show some legit power in the Clone Wars cartoon.


"it stings less than if she was a no-name daughter of space junkies."

True. But she still shouldn't have been remotely useful in ep7 or 8 (since they were like, days apart?) and possibly even ep9 (although they at least gave lip service to the fact that Rey had been running a practice course and was being trained by Leia). With the original trilogy, it was like a decade between A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. And even in Empire Strikes Back, it's posited that Luke had been on Dagobah with Yoda for weeks to months, not overnight.


"Rey is flawed. You keep seeing her clearly losing control and raging, and that's the secret to some of her apparent strength - she's taking the dangerous short cut."

But the biggest problem is that in ep7-8, there was no shortcut to take. She had absolutely nothing. She should not have been able to use the force. Her talent with a light saber was fine; they showed her being all sorts of nimble as a scavenger. She just shouldn't have had any real force abilities. Her shortcut made a slight more amount of sense in ep9, but they also didn't really earn believability for her rage and the actress didn't really sell it very well.
Forwyn
Member
Sun Dec 22 13:36:24
Yes, including EU, there is a basis for virtually every new display of power shown - Palpatine was literally creating maelstroms half a mile wide that warped space time - just not really for noobs who happened to get frustrated.
Forwyn
Member
Sun Dec 22 13:41:37
Even the lightsaber is iffy. They're described as difficult for the untrained and non-Force sensitives to wield safely, because its handling is counterintuitive due to the weightless plasma blade.

Moreso an issue with Finn - most likely outcome in more true portayals of him running around with a lightsaber in combat is that he slices off an appendage.
hood
Member
Sun Dec 22 13:45:18
"They're described as difficult for the untrained and non-Force sensitives to wield safely"

Sure, but Rey is force sensitive. I'm willing to let her have the saber skills. Agreed on Finn though.
Paramount
Member
Sun Dec 22 14:00:16
Just got home after watching The Rise of Skywalker. I thought it was okay. But I didn’t like the idea of a resurrected ”phantom emperor”. It was just stupid. I’m glad Star Wars is over now.
Seb
Member
Sun Dec 22 14:26:14
Hood:

So in ep7, the issue is her resisting the mind probe (smoke has done some weird shit connecting them in the force), pulling the lightsaber to her (instinct and rage), being able to "beat" Kylo in a fight (he is at this point wounded, probably conflicted having killed his father, clearly he's actually not very controlled at the best of times - and Rey is visibly angry and likely drawing on dark side energy instinctively, and also had been shown to proficient in melee combat.

It's no more crazy than luke being quite good with military grade gun turrets and shooting stormtroopers because he had practice shooting wamp rats.
hood
Member
Sun Dec 22 15:14:47
No, it's fucking not. "Military grade turrets" are still just point and shoot. She legit used the force in ep7. She should not have been able to do anything.
Habebe
Member
Sun Dec 22 15:33:14
Well I will speak mynpeace on the " Mary sue" effect.

It is a little ridiculous that Rey *an entirley untrained force sensitive being** was able to beat kilo ten in her first wielding of a light sabre.

Anakin was raised from the age of ( 9?) With the Jedi training. He also showed strong signs of being force sensitive ( clairvoyance) on top of being the strongest in the force being of all time he literally was fathered by the force itself OR was an experiment from Plagius/ Palpatine to create life solely from the force.

Even Luke had to train extensively with Master yoda and was the grandson of the force and still did not show the skills Rey acquired all of a sudden.
Habebe
Member
Sun Dec 22 15:37:04
Also baby yoda now can wield the force with great ease sort of...he can stop and move large objects and cam force choke ( which btw is do let a dark side power afaik)

However he is also 50 years old, is easily just picked up and not beating highly force sensitive life ling trained Jesus/ sith.
Habebe
Member
Sun Dec 22 15:39:27
Also, kylo is a lil bitch....Vader/ Anakin was always the hero/ Saviour/ Chosen one.
Cherub Cow
Member
Sun Dec 22 23:13:43
"It is a little ridiculous that Rey *an entirley untrained force sensitive being** was able to beat kilo ten in her first wielding of a light sabre."

But, but, Kylo Ren was injured, which somehow completely negates the huge skill gap and didn't actually come into play in the fight choreography.. but like, you know: injured. And Rey heard the word "Force", which let her totally annihilation a superior.. it like.. you know.. makes sense.. from a certain point of view [where you ignore story consistency].
kargen
Member
Sun Dec 22 23:23:01
My favorite Star Wars movie was the one where Captain Picard went back in time to save the whales.
Seb
Member
Mon Dec 23 04:46:28
Everything we know about Kylo at this point is that he's unstable, lacks focus and discipline, and that these are essential part of force weilding.

At this point in the movie we know:
1. He's physically injured
2. He's just killed his father to prove he's all in with the dark side, but we can see he's still conflicted
3. We can infer from the sequel that on some level he's been bonded to Rey by Snoke and this may be inhibiting him from killing her.

He's also the only active force user in the galaxy we know of, so there's no relative baseline to say whether he's actually that good, and everything on screen shows him as being immature, unstable and... patchy at best.

If people are willing to invoke time dilation - a hitherto unused piece of physics in a universe that blithely ignores Newtonian relativity let alone special or general relativity - to explain the timelines in empire strikes back; I find it odd to obsess about this point as brealing suspension of disbelief. Star Wars is riddled with inconsistencies.

hood
Member
Mon Dec 23 07:00:23
We definitely have evidence of his skill level. Do you not recall him catching a blaster shot and holding it in midair for several seconds? That's skill. Kylo wasn't some shitty Padawan, he was Vader 2.
Habebe
Member
Mon Dec 23 12:00:22
Sen, Unstable doesn't mean weaknin the force. Emotional s passionate.

Peace is a lie
There is only passion
Through passion we gain strength
Through strength we gain power
Only through power can we break the bonds of slavery ( its off the top of my head so its probably not 100%)

Also he was trained by Luke.

Hood, stopping a blaster shot with your hand is one thing. In the comics Vader could pull shit like that off simply by thinking it no need to use hand gestures.


Anyway....so whats up with baby yoda using force choke.
Seb
Member
Mon Dec 23 12:35:30
Hood:

How do we know how hard that is? Certainly looks impressive, but is it?

Habebe:
Focused rage we know is good. Unfocused and unstable, with conflicted feelings we know is bad. Snoke literally tells him it is making him weak.

He was trained by Luke, certainly, but we don't know to what level, and again, these are probably different disciplines.

The point is, theres actually plenty of hooks to explain this away as there are to explain everything else in Starwars that's incongruous.
Forwyn
Member
Mon Dec 23 13:25:44
He was good enough to staunch his wounds, presumably with the force, and wreck Finn. There's no reason to assume Rey would do any better than months-into-training Luke did against an asthmatic old man.
hood
Member
Mon Dec 23 13:43:07
"In the comics"

Doesn't matter.


"How do we know how hard that is?"

How do we know how hard anything is? It's not a valid argument. We see that Kylo is proficient in the force. To the point that he can hold blaster fire in place. At minimum, it should put Kylo on a complete different level than someone who has never known the force.
Seb
Member
Mon Dec 23 13:54:35
Forwyn:

Perhaps Vader wasn't an asthmatic old man, and when Luke rushed off to fight him, I do recall Yoda was generally unimpressed with Luke's skill.

If you want to, you can explain it away. The viewer has a choice.

Hood:
"How do we know how hard anything is? It's not a valid argument."

If we don't know how hard it is, we can't say catching a blaster bolt proves Ren is so skilled he couldn't be, under certain circumstances, bested by Rey.

For things to get upset about, it's about, you might as well complain that the death Star 2 wreckage in the latest film is clearly orders of magnitude out from the portrayal in rotj. I mean that's just a stone cold fact unlike this weird attempt to reverse engineer the rules of space magic.
Habebe
Member
Mon Dec 23 14:11:18
True focused raged, ill grant you that. Even Vader meditated.

When you say different disciplines do you mean not light sabre training?

To get extra nerdy Palpatine and Rey are the only two to have there style of dueling. Its not even one of the 7 types ( such as Yoda using style 4 with the jumping and such)

Palpatine was considered a master of dueling by being able to adjust his technique even besting Yoda.

While agree it can be explained in the SWU , I think it was poor writing to leave out her training of any kind until later.
Seb
Member
Mon Dec 23 14:22:04
Habebe:

I meant general approach to the force - what like taught Ben might not be as useful for the approach that Snoke is teaching Kylo.

I did notice the lunges in the force awakens, and remembered Palpetine did it because I noticed that too. I used to fence, and it always struck me that in reality, you'd probably use a lightsabre much more like a rapier or epee. Pointy end dangerous, no real armour, no need for much energy behind your slashes - surely you'd hold yourself side on and it's all be about lunging and parying.
hood
Member
Mon Dec 23 14:31:22
"If we don't know how hard it is"

We don't know how hard any of it is. There is no established difficulty meter in using the force. Suggesting that a legitimate demonstration of force powers is completely meaningless compared to little miss orphan girl who has never even heard of the Force is asinine.

You're comparing "point and shoot and get lucky" (recall, Han tells Luke "ya got lucky, kid") with "had enough force ability to fight back with force powers and use mind tricks." You're fucking stupid. Suggesting that Rey in ep7 (or 8, because it was days later) is at all equatable to Luke in ep4 is preposterous. You're fucking retarded.

Rey is a complete Mary Sue and it isn't really debatable.
Seb
Member
Mon Dec 23 14:39:05
Hood:

We know she didn't use mind tricks. Snoke had connected them. It was Snoke, not her, probably because he's dicking with Kylo to set him up for further progressing down the dark side. We see him having done that by taunting him on other matters.

I'm not saying they are equal. I'm saying that you are investing a lot of energy in bigging up Kylo and justifying your claim that Rey is overpowered.

Ok, so your arguing she should have died at his hand, so the movie is ridiculous... maybe you shouldn't be watching a movie about space Wizards.
Forwyn
Member
Mon Dec 23 15:21:57
"Luke Skywalker lamented the fact that Kenobi had never addressed the subject of telekinesis in his lessons during the brief time that he trained under him, likely because Kenobi felt he wasn't ready to train in something that was considered an advanced field of study."

http://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Telekinesis

He didn't barely pull a lightsaber three feet to him ala Hoth (to be expected of a novice - no novice would win a force tug of war with someone trained for years, they just wouldn't), he managed to exert force fast enough to stop a highly charged bolt of plasma that travels faster than the eye can track, that most Jedi would deflect or avoid because it's easier, and still allowed it to retain its kinetic energy, as a show of force.

If he's conscious, he's winning any force battle with a noob, and even the lightsaber outcome is only slightly better, because of his injuries.
Seb
Member
Mon Dec 23 17:18:59
From your own link:

"Rey, despite having no formal training in the use of the Force, was able to override Ren's attempt to use telekinesis to summon a lightsaber that had once belonged to Luke Skywalker, summoning it to her own hand instead. However, this was while Ren was weakened physically and emotionally by Chewbacca's bowcaster and killing his father.[5] Her knowledge in the use of this skill was also partially taken from the memories she managed to extract from Kylo when he attempted to use the Force to interrogate her earlier.[33]"

Basically, lots of reason to think Kylo got very unlucky and Rey very lucky, largely through Ren being injured, conflicted. and Snoke messing around with both of their heads.

Bish bash bosh - Rey doesn't need to be super-powered.
Forwyn
Member
Mon Dec 23 17:33:29
Seems a lot of contrived bullshit for her to emerge from every underdog fight completely unscathed.
Cherub Cow
Member
Mon Dec 23 19:43:58
[Seb]: "I find it odd to obsess about this point as brealing suspension of disbelief ... maybe you shouldn't be watching a movie about space Wizards."

You can probably stop repeating this cop-out argument. It doesn't matter if we're talking about muppets, Doom Hell Dimension demons, Jason Voorhees, Harry Potter, or "space wizards" in Star Wars. In *all* cases a story has its own internal consistency. If that consistency is broken, the story breaks. In Harry Potter, if it were established that weakly-trained spell-casters fatigued after only a couple of spells, but then a god-mode character appeared off the street with zero training, rapid-fired spells, and defeated Voldemort, that would be a fucking problem. It is not internally consistent. So stop copping out with "suspension of disbelief"/"space wizards" when the rules established in the most canonical Star Wars (Episodes IV–VI) have been broken by a Mary Sue.

..
[Seb]: "From your own link:"

Keep in mind that the fandom's points on Episodes IV–VI have much more weight than the fandom's (poor) attempts to rationalize how Mary Sue defeated Kylo Ren.

..
[Seb]: "At this point in the movie we know:
1. He's physically injured"

That wasn't relevant in the fight choreography. Kylo Ren psyches himself up about his injury before fighting Finn, but once he gets going, there is no pause for injury or look of hurt in Ren's face. Ren makes speedy and agile moves, dodges falling trees, and is apparently uninhibited by any injury. There's no limp, no "Ouch, that move hurt!" — nothing.


..
[Seb]: "2. He's just killed his father to prove he's all in with the dark side, but we can see he's still conflicted"

That wasn't relevant in the fight choreography. Before fighting Finn, Ren seems — if anything — super ready to tear some shit up because he's just committed to the Dark Side. He has plenty of rage and doesn't seem to question his powers and passion.

..
[Seb]: "3. We can infer from the sequel that on some level he's been bonded to Rey by Snoke and this may be inhibiting him from killing her."

We can "infer" that Jar Jar Binks is the Sith Lord who masterminded the entire fall of the Jedis, but there was zero on-screen evidence of that theory. For there to be any support for Snoke stepping in during Mary Sue and Kylo Ren's fight, the director or editor would have needed to step in to show some kind of mind control (e.g., an image of Snoke training his thoughts, Kylo's eyes rolling back because he's momentarily lost focus). But, there was zero indication of that plot in action. Even the train wreck of Episode III showed and talked about Darth Sidious' power over the senate in several scenes.

..
[Seb]: "He's also the only active force user in the galaxy we know of, so there's no relative baseline to say whether he's actually that good, and everything on screen shows him as being immature, unstable and... patchy at best."

*Now* he's the only force user. But he was trained in a camp with a bunch of other would-be Jedis where he saw force skills in action. Trained by Luke himself. Luke's star pupil. Luke's best success when it comes to Jedi skills. And then he was trained by Snoke — shown even more force abilities. And being unstable and immature just makes him a better Dark Side force user, since it has been established that Sith love channeling rage.

..
[Hood]: "Rey is a complete Mary Sue and it isn't really debatable."


Yup!
hood
Member
Mon Dec 23 19:44:50
It was just a summation of what happened in the movie. The facts are not in dispute; what is in dispute is whether she should have been able to do it or not.
Habebe
Member
Mon Dec 23 22:19:32
FYI: I have a correction to am earlier statement about Palpatine having anything to do with creating Anakin. Lucas himself has come out to say that was never the case but apprared to explain how....so we are back to immaculate conception " force Jesus" if you will.
hood
Member
Mon Dec 23 22:26:44
That was the intention with Anakin. He was "the chosen one."
Habebe
Member
Mon Dec 23 23:19:22
Something I always thought was odd was the that the chosen one was supposed to bring balance* to the Force.

I take that as balance between the light and dark sides of the Force.

Thr Jedi never seemed to want balance though.
hood
Member
Mon Dec 23 23:55:41
And Anakin kinda did bring balance. Luke ended RotJ in a sort of gray area where he resisted the pull of the dark side, but clearly was too emotional to be a Jedi. The last real Jedi, Yoda, had already died and the sith were finally defeated. It was balanced.
Cherub Cow
Member
Mon Dec 23 23:57:37
"so we are back to immaculate conception " force Jesus" if you will."

I thought his mom was raped by swan-Zeus?
Seb
Member
Tue Dec 24 04:35:50
Star wars has never been that big on internal consistency. Hyperrealisitic it is not. "But the choreography!" just shows how much concentration Rylo was having to put into using the force to compensate for his injury.

If you can't suspend your disbelief over these trivial matters, you might as well not bother.

The latest movie caters for this absurdity by wasting lots of time in exposition that really doesn't help the movie one bit. Star wars isn't and never was supposed to be a hard sci-fi tale, it was conceived as a sitiched together quilt of narrative tropes, film homages and mashed into an archetypal narrative. It works best when it is this.

Last Jedi was a reasonable attempt to grow the franchise by being a bit (modicum) more sophisticated with the morality, ethics etc. but the "fandom" didn't like it, they wanted it kept in pastel shades. There's no where for it to go while it's telling tales of Jedi - not as two hour holiday hits.
Seb
Member
Tue Dec 24 04:48:18
I am way more interested as to why star destroyers are nearly always shown engaging with broadsides, and appear to manoeuvre to do so preferentially, risking their engines getting exposed to attack.

Yet its wedge shape means all side mounted guns ought to be able to fire forward, so a direct attack would offer greatest cross-sectional depth of armour and highest volume and intensity of fire.

Are the Imperial navy officer class stupid?
Nekran
Member
Tue Dec 24 07:02:23
"Yet its wedge shape means all side mounted guns ought to be able to fire forward, so a direct attack would offer greatest cross-sectional depth of armour and highest volume and intensity of fire."

But you see, this is the sort of details that are inconsequential to the plot and fun to try and explain away or mock its inaccuracies.

When basic plot points become ludicrously inconsistent though, like untrained Godess of the Force Rey or inexplicably unkillable Palpatine (at this point we must assume that in 30 years from now, we will learn as old farts that he is still not dead and still pulling the strings), it's no longer fun to explain away, it becomes a problem for our suspension of disbelief.

There is a large zone between hard Sci Fi and the straight up nonsense that we got, that is preferable to be in.
Cherub Cow
Member
Tue Dec 24 07:07:59
[Seb]: "If you can't suspend your disbelief over these trivial matters, you might as well not bother."

Again, it. Is. Not. About. Suspension. Of. Disbelief.
Read. That. Again. If. You. Can't. Understand.

That is a cop-out argument that completely misses the point. Internal consistency does not have to be at odds with suspension of disbelief; internal consistency accepts suspension of disbelief. All of the "space wizards" have been long-accepted within the story consistency. But within the story consistency, they still must follow the rules of the story. Mary Sue did not.

..
[Seb]: "Star wars isn't and never was supposed to be a hard sci-fi tale, it was conceived as a sitiched together quilt of narrative tropes, film homages and mashed into an archetypal narrative. It works best when it is this."

Hard sci-fi? Not sure why you feel the need to make that point when no one here argued that Star Wars is hard sci-fi. Though, I suppose we should be happy that you now admit that it is *not* hard sci-fi after you previously tried to impose hard sci-fi logic on the Episode VIII hyperspace ramming.

But yes, it uses narratives. It still must do so *well* and with internal consistency. It failed to do so with the Mary Sue vs. Kylo Ren Episode VII fight. It can stitch together all the narratives it wants, but if it breaks its own world in the process, then it fails. That's kind of what happens when a studio hires and fires too many writers, can't find or keep competent directors, can't decide on a narrative, waters down its messages with focus group input, and violates its own canon.
hood
Member
Tue Dec 24 08:48:13
Just as an aside:

Rey could have still been a Mary Sue without breaking the universe in half. A very quick fix:

- focus on Rey's combat ability instead of insisting she's a force goddess (props to Nekran).
- when Kylo Ren is invading her mind, have the rebels cause a distraction that breaks his concentration. This creates a hole for Rey to merely break free.
- if Rey must have force abilities to escape.... she shouldn't; just give her the element of surprise and exceptional combat skills and have her fight her way out. Even Luke was minimally able to deflect blasters, so having Rey dodge a shot or two would have been ok.
- BUT IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HAVE REY USE FORCE ABILITIES! Have the previously mentioned distraction actually cause Kylo to force his memories in Rey instead of having Rey proficient in the force. Then when Rey's escaping, have her uses of the force appear to be beyond her control, as if the memories Kylo accidentally pushed into her mind were taking over. In essence, Kylo's powers are manifesting in force-sensitive Rey. This would even build up that "they're connected" narrative.
- get rid of the tug of war over the lightsaber and find something else to do.
Seb
Member
Tue Dec 24 15:56:26
It's becoming quite clear that some of you are using a very strange definition of Mary Sue - namely "a powerful female protagonist"; rather than "a character created as a stand in for the author for wish fulfillment who is unrealistically lacking in weaknesses and flaws"

I think we already covered that it was established that Rey has combat skills from the get go. It's depressing you needed to hear that from someone else, Hood, to take it in.

Ultimately, you seem to be wanting more exposition to lead people to see explicitly what can be easily inferred.

I submit that this latest installment of the franchise demonstrates this does not necessarily make for compelling story telling.
hood
Member
Tue Dec 24 17:29:47
"I think we already covered that it was established that Rey has combat skills from the get go"

I'm the first person in this thread that said it was fine for Rey to be good with a saber, you cunty fuckstain.


"It's depressing you needed to hear that from someone else"

It's depressing that you cannot follow a simple conversation. It's also depressing that you cannot recognize that Rey is indeed very much a Mary Sue. There are no weaknesses or flaws in her character. Everything she does furthers her abilities. Even her rage adds to her power.
Nekran
Member
Wed Dec 25 03:37:02
Just compare it to Luke... Luke spends 2 movies failing at almost everything he tries. Gets pricked by the practice droid most of the time, can't get his X-wing out of the swamp, loses his hand to Vader, can't even stack rocks properly and when he wants to go save a princess, he ends up needing saving by her. Apart from blowing up the death star for his first taste of what relying on the force has to offer, he's pretty much useless.

There is a sense of training and progress and only in Return of the Jedi does he have any real succes in force use.

Rey is just stupidly good with the force from the get go. If that doesn't bother you, that's great for you I suppose, but most people see that as the universe breaking its own rules, especially considering her age when she gets noticed (like it was with Luke, who appropriately sucked for a good amount of time).
Habebe
Member
Wed Dec 25 03:38:58
Well oh yeah? This

http://www....php?viewkey=ph5da369e9021a3#1
Seb
Member
Wed Dec 25 04:44:33
Hood:

This is thread is hardly the first time we've had this conversation! How many times have I pointed out Rey is established very early on as being quite good at fighting.

If you think rage and physical power is a good thing you've missed the entire point of Likes arc and Rey's.

Nekran:
Yet he picks up flying an xwing to a level that's better than most other pilots, he's a pretty good shot etc.

Star Wars hasn't generally got a great record in internal consistency across the board. Vader can sense Luke from empire onwards, yet he doesn't even notice Leia is his daughter when she's right in front of her. Of the places in the universe for the falcon to end up, it's on Jacku, and Han is nearby? There's a giant monster in the military installations trash compactor? You can retcon all these issues or explain them away with various assumptions, if you are sufficiently motivated. The real reason there is a monster in the trash compactor of the death Star is because it's actually the dungeon under the dark Knights castle and they always have a monster in them. And few people who watch starwars even question that because... there's always a monster in the dungeon that the heros end up in when they fall down a hole in the baddies lair.


Very little about the world is that consistent or has a sound internal logic. Even the basic scale of ships. It's always been driven to fit the archetypal narrative.

Things not many people say about Han in the Solo movie "he's a Mary Sue", yet by the definition being used here, he totally is.



Nekran
Member
Wed Dec 25 06:31:18
"Very little about the world is that consistent or has a sound internal logic. Even the basic scale of ships. It's always been driven to fit the archetypal narrative."

Is your point of view then that nothing needs to make sense whithin the universe?

I mean there's a big difference with the ones you mention up there... Vader not sensing Leia comes before the big reveal, and while certainly an inconsistency in the movies, it is something that you notice later on, when you've seen all the movies and think about it. Likely came forth of nobody knowing at that point that they are going to be brother and sister.

Monsters in weird places is very Star Warsy, and yes, makes no sense when you think about it, but it is what that universe is like.

But these are things that the instant you see them, your immediate raction is "This isn't right! It would not be like this in this universe!". I mean hyperspace skipping? Wtf is that?
hood
Member
Wed Dec 25 08:42:29
There's no point in arguing with Cunty Fuckstain. There will always be another distraction to throw up, another point of wackiness that YOU need to explain, despite the clear lack of effort on his side to explain anything. It's an incredibly weak "arguing tactic" that you can be certain CF would call you on if you weren't sticking to arguing the main point against him.

Don't fall into the trap. Luke is not Rey. Han Solo is not Rey. Finn is not Rey. Kylo Ren is not Rey. His explanations for Rey do not involve Rey because he doesn't have any real argument about Rey.
Seb
Member
Wed Dec 25 11:01:00
Nekran:

Monsters in weird places that make no sense is ok, but the force behaving less like a rigorous self consistent phenomenon isn't?

My point is these are all plot driven. Like the fantasy/adventure movies that star wars is a deliberate and intentional homage to; the force behaves however the plot requires it to. Just like stormtroopers are elite super troopers that can deliver blaster fire that is precise and accurate when Uncle Ben Kenobi needs to figure out that it wasn't Russian raiders; but incredibly inaccurate when trying to shoot the heros ten metres in front of them a few scenes later, then retconned in additional material around the edges that stormtroopers in the new hope era are conscripts with badly fitting helmets.

Nothing about Star Wars stands up to much scrutiny if you approach it from a forensic perspective. It's not Asimov. Travel times, communications etc. make little sense. On the one hand it is big enough that Jedi can be consigned to being possibly fictional legends - twice over... as though it were the medieval dark ages that the narrative demands; but small enough that people can galivant over much of it in a few hours when needed, news travels faster than people travel, and that a few big companies can have majority market share in ships.

The only thing it's consistent with is the old action adventures it apes, with everything forced to bend to facilitate those narratives - which is why it struggles to grow beyond the original trilogy by extending the narrative.
Seb
Member
Wed Dec 25 11:19:12
"I mean hyperspace skipping? Wtf is that?

I'd surmise it to be skipping along the edge of whatever regime hyperspace is, dialing down whatever navigational safeties normally prevent you from going to close to a gravity well so that you crash out near a surface, allowing you to skip from near surface to near surface location in a way that is really bad for the engines. Something like that. Certainly I used to use a similar trick in the old xwing game: if there was a large ship in getting of the direction you'd jump to hyperspace in, you'd go to crazy speeds then stop dead before you hit it, and you could use it to outrun or overtake other ships. It was clearly not a workaround to prevent you accidentally crashing the ship when trying to exit a mission but a faithful modelling of the hyperspace mechanics ;-)

Doesn't really matter does it? Do we need to know the physics of how hyperspace engines work? Would we be happier with a professor character popping up to explain it with a nice bit of exposition? It was irritating enough to be subjected to someone explaining the Holdo manoeuvre was a one in a million that can work.

Star Wars is the kind of place where there is a monsters in the trash compactor because that's cool. There's probably an in universe reason, but best not to focus on it.
Nekran
Member
Wed Dec 25 11:50:30
"Star Wars is the kind of place where there is a monsters in the trash compactor because that's cool. There's probably an in universe reason, but best not to focus on it."

Exactly. And when you make a Star Wars movie, it is on you to respect the universe enough, so the viewers don't automatically focus on the inconsistensies you create. In that they've failed hard in this last one. Or at least for almost everyone who watched it.

Seb
Member
Wed Dec 25 12:11:12

Nekran:

I think something very different happened.

They made the last Jedi, and it was decried largely for being too close to the first movie, and a few "super fans" complained about Rey.

So Rian Johnson tried to do something different. And a lot of people complained about that one not being star wars enough. And a few super fans complained some more about Rey and woke and how it was ridiculous to have space bombers but totally fine to have space ships behave like navy ships and aeroplanes with Aristotles physics.

So they got JJ back and he took all the starwars ingredients, doubled them, thought of every possible fanboy call back he could, and added loads of exposition.
And it was the worst possible thing.

Basically, you can either try to turn it into a more coherent world - in which case I think Rian Johnsons look at the wider world and society shows way more promise than trying to work out the coherent rules of the force which - at the end of the day - isn't as interesting as similar mechanics in other settings where there are huge trade offs inherent to the use of the macguffin built in from the get go with the intention that the plot derives from this mechanic.

And if you can't do that, then you are just stuck making the same film over again unless you find a different archetypal story: a war film, a Western, a heist movie. The young squire become knight in shining armour fairy tail has been done to death.

Basically,they need to completely ignore the superfans because trying to accommodate them makes bad movies and actively catering to them makes for terrible, terrible movies.


If I was them I'd be digging out the Greek myths and see what they can get from that.

hood
Member
Wed Dec 25 13:03:12
When you're so much of a cunty fuckstain you think that ep9 was attempting to cater to the superfans, you're Seb.
Seb
Member
Wed Dec 25 13:25:54
Hush hood, the grownups are talking.
hood
Member
Wed Dec 25 13:31:58
Age != Grown-up. Your flagrant insistence on ignoring reality is remarkably childish.
Seb
Member
Wed Dec 25 16:33:13
Hood, I'm sure Nekran doesn't need you nipping at his heels going mee-too-mee-too. You come across like an insecure playground bully looking to join someone's gang, it's embarrassing for him, me and most of all yourself.

hood
Member
Wed Dec 25 17:05:37
You're really grasping at straws for insults. What insanity makes you think I'm attempting to piggy back off of other people to insult you must be a soothing illusion.
Seb
Member
Wed Dec 25 17:23:53
Nekran:

Re Leia being Vader's daughter, I guess what I'm saying is nobody said "hold on, she can't be Vader's daughter, Vader would have sensed it, that's not consistent with how the force works, this is shitty writing", they accepted that luke and Leia being siblings worked for the narrative.

There's no deep consistency in these films and taking the first trilogy as setting fixed rules feels arbitrary. It's always been making it up as it goes along.

It's true expectations are greater now. We expect more, perhaps, as a more sophisticated audience and literally more grown up - but I think the problem is starwars is building on a foundation of sand here.
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