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Arghhhh's Replies
Not only did I read my post I wrote it too. At the same time!
Yes - he *appears* to ride in to the rescue only for it to turn out it's only a trick to buy time for the real hero - Rey - to rescue everyone. He then dies. Because he's tired. Or something. So yes, it was a very clumsy attempt to dismantle a trope. Glad we agree on this.
You're going to have to forgive me now for the on the nose reference but I know you're close to the truth Froggy because I can sense the conflict within you. You're proven yourself to be rational in most respects; your Achilles heal seems to be when these imaginary characters we discuss have an imaginary vagina. It's a very strange thing to get hung up about but you just need to let it go. Poe *is* overpowered and resolutely one note. This has been critiqued many times. Finn is a walking contradiction. So is Ren, who is also whiny, annoying and utterly nonthreatening. As is Hux, who is as intimidating as an over dunked rich tea biscuit. Every single character written by JJ Abrams is abjectly awful, and are routinely condemned by anyone with a lick of objectivity but it's only Rey who inspires such passionate defence and we all know why that is.
You don't even like the last Jedi... and do you know the main reason why that film doesn't work? Rey. Here's an exercise for you: try to write a hero's journey type story in which the main character overcomes every trial they face at the first time of asking, isn't allowed to experience anything save the most superficial of hardships and never needs to be rescued by their friends (thus rendering their place in the story utterly pointless). Now try to make that story exciting and compelling. Good fucking luck!
Jesus Titty Fucking Christ reading your's and Froggy's cult like denials of reality is infuriating. Let me give you some names:
Leia
Mara Jade
Padame
Mon Mothma
Bastila Shan
Kreia
Ahsoka
This is a list of characters from Star Wars. Do you know what links them? They all, every single last one of them, have vaginas. And they're all 'strong' and powerful. And they're all loved by the fans. So can you explain to me why all these misogynists had zero problem with female characters until JJA wrote one with less depth than an After 8 mint?
Would you like to list for me all the well written female characters JJ has written to date? Or shall I save you effort by telling you the obvious answer? Do you remember this scene?
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTmXQHjpODA[/url]
This is how JJ was treating his female characters up until TFA.
JJA is a hack and when he wrote Rey he set back the progression of female characters in sci-fi/fantasy by about 30 years. This is painfully obvious to anyone with eyes that see and a brain free of delusion.
Yeah I loved it. The book is great as well.
I find this point of view harder to get my head around than that of TFA being a flawless masterpiece. It's like you're accepting that it's bad but that's ok because we needed it to happen? I just don't see why that is the case... sure you had to get the universe in a place where the story can continue, but you don't do that just by hitting a big old reset switch, by pulling new villains out of your arse, by ruining a great character (and JJs treatment of Han was every bit as bad as RJs treatment of Luke).
And the Deathstar argument, again, does that mean we can just have Deathstar's in every movie now because Jedi had another one? No. At some point you say enough is enough and two of them was just fine.
Ok, lets accept for a moment that Star Wars is nothing more than a big old rip-off (not that I actually do but just for arguments sake) - in what way does that justify TFA being a rip-off? Can we just keep going forever then, just making the same film again and again and it's ok because there's nothing new under the sun?
No.
Star Wars took something and expanded it, grew it, developed it, improved it, *changed* it. TFA did just the opposite: it took something, then contracted it, reduced it, condensed it, and extracted from it everything that made it worthwhile.
John McTiernan... now there's a name I haven't heard since.... well, too fucking long.
Come off if Furious. If you like the film, fair enough, but to deny it is a rip off is to deny reality. There are actual official reboots that are more original than TFA... look at the remakes of Robocop and Total Recall - these have significantly more differences to their respective originals than TFA has to ANH.
Nothing could redeem TFA. A better writer than RJ could have made TLJ work whilst also retrospectively fixing some problems with TFA but that would be their triumph, not JJs redemption. And fuck that's a lot of acronyms.
The story in TFA isn't just bad it is *broken*. It is fucked. It is the opposite of a story. It manages the near paradox of being a total rip-off of ANH whilst simultaneously destroying that story. It is the cinematic equivalent of Mark Chapman - an obsessed fan who knows everything yet understands nothing, whose only creative capacity is the ability to destroy.
So to answer the question: kinda. I hoped that on watching TLJ people would realise how awful TFA really was. And thankfully that seems to be the case for around 50% of the audience. Which is probably more than I could have hoped for.
Abrams didn't revive Star Trek. He killed it.
I actually half-enjoyed Star Trek 2009 but it's nothing like Star Trek. As a generic action film set in space it's fine but nobody would have paid to see it if it was a generic action film set in space... the only thing JJ knows how to do is to create an empty husk, he then lets his audiences good will and nostalgia do the rest.
Take a look at the life cycle of nu trek and see if it seems familiar:
First film - Explosion filled roller-coaster that makes no sense. Huge success though some fans of the original hate it.
Second film - Rips off the original sequel only rearranging some bits so as to be seen to be less of a rip-off. Still a big success though most of the fans now seem to hate the new series.
Third film - At this point the fans don't bother turning up and the casuals never really cared so you find out you have no audience. The film is apparently closer in spirit to the originals but as nobody saw it it doesn't really matter. Too little too late.
Remove R1 from Nu Star Wars and we see the exact same pattern. And yes I know RJ made TLJ but don't think for a minute JJ (who was an executive producer) wasn't fully on board with it.
The guy is now instrumental in the destruction of the two greatest sci fi sagas in history.
Your levels of projection are quite something Otter.
"Maybe I just dislike people who get all worked up and angry about frivolous subjects."
You're on these boards day and night, calling people who don't like the film incels, wishing their 'heads would blow up' and God knows what else.
This form of hypocrisy seems to be very common with those who view themselves as morally superior. It seems to go something like: "I wish all these hateful, angry people, whom I hate as they make me angry, would all just die so then there would only be nice people around like me". If only we had some kind of an example from history where this line of thinking takes us.
'Deconstruct' was a poor choice of word. 'Original' would have been a better choice. And it wouldn't be anti-jedi, just the opposite. But given where the story is at this point it would by necessity be quite bleak (at least at the beginning).
The prequels tried to be great and failed, whereas the sequels aimed for mediocrity and failed even at that. I know which one in my mind counts as the greater failure.
I don't doubt it!
And in a perfect world somebody with talent and passion would buy up Lucasfilm and then make Star Wars films that aren't targeted for the ADHD tumblr crowd.
But until that happens...
I just think this is the last story worth telling within Star Wars. A Bobafet movie is a terrible idea, the current story is now dead, yes they can fast forward 500 years but then what's the connection going to be to Star Wars? It'll just be a sci-fi/fantasy film with lightsabers. EM was the best thing about the prequels and he's the right age. And it could be a fantastic story if it's done right: he's a broken man, he's lost everything, he wanders the wastes until he finds meaning and purpose again etc etc. It could be a chance to deconstruct Star Wars in the *right* way, not RJs cringe inducing 'Gotcha' style: no space battles, no Empire, no Rebels - just an examination of a great character, portrait by a great actor.
Well there you have it christomacin: take the time to write out a thoughtful reply to someone and all they can do is reply with snark.
Amazing game
"Kubrick? He made a few great films, but I don't think his body of work puts him among the best of the best."
I can understand why Kubrick isn't to everyone's tastes (his films can be slow and strangely sterile) but to say he isn't among the best of the best... Not only is almost every film he made beautifully put together I can not think of any other director that succeeded in so many genres:
Crime
Drima
Sci-fi
Satire
Period pieces
Horror
Kubrick was a genius.
Fair enough.
You know I recently found out that Jesse Plemons was up for the role of Finn. He's Todd from breaking bad and was also in Black Mirror as a deranged Star Trek fan. Now this guy - famous for playing maladjusted sociopaths - would seem like great casting for a brainwashed storm trooper but instead they went with Boyega and we ended up with his bizarre non nonsensical character/borderline racist caricature. If you listen to JJ's interviews he basically says 'I look around and see white people everywhere' and so they decided - quite late on - to switch the role to a black actor. Now this wouldn't be quite so bad (still racist in my opinion) but then they obviously decided to re-write the role to remove the trained-from-birth killer aspects and replace them with lines like 'droid please'.
So thanks to identity politics we have:
People being denied work based on the colour of their skin
Two old white guys writing a black character as a cliched semi-racist runaway slave type cliche
A key character in your $2 Billion investment now makes no sense, significantly harms the story and is insulting to many.
Fantastic!
I don't get how hard it is to just not be racist.
"SJW" doesn't mean left-wing and their are plenty of left-wingers who despise SJWs. As well they should, given that SJWs have adopted the position of the 'moral majority' that the christian conservative right used to hold back in the 80s.
But saying this I'm sure there's plenty of people that use the term disparagingly to refer to the left as a whole.
And I see your point re politics but I think the truth is a bit more complicated than that. I don't believe for a minute that JJ actually is a progressive, I just think he's a near expert at PR. STID had that cringe worthy gratuitous nudity scene and he got hell for it, so from that point on he says all the right things and then writes Rey... He didn't write her that way to make a statement or to be a feminist, he wrote her that way because his focus groups told him that a female character like this is very 'on trend': No flaws, no femininity, and no harm done to her. So TFA was both very apoltical in that it did what it did purely to maximise its appeal but also political in that it was designed to appeal to the politics of the day. If that makes any sense!
But the politics did play a part in why they killed Luke off as they're trying to dismantle the trope of having the man ride in to the rescue (and nothing wrong with trying to do that if done correctly) but that just leaves the male characters not much else to do save be killed off.
Not sure what you mean by 'maybe guilt'. And given that Kelly hasn't said anything about this the only person's experience that is being negated is the anonymous twitter account. And who are they exactly to become a self appointed mouthpiece for Kelly... to deny her agency? "A woman has come off Instagram - it must be because she's been chased away by bullies!". I'd say that's more sexist than someone saying she's beautiful.
Also, you know the same thing happened with Daisy Ridley? She deleted her social media account and there were all kinds of rumours as to why and ultimately she came out and said she just didn't think it was healthy to look at 'distorted images of how things should be' - implying she didn't like the pressure to be perfect. A very sensible and healthy reason.
No how will Kelly feel if she deleted hers for the same reason? Maybe she didn't like the fame, the exposure, the press - and now there's a bazillion articles written about her, making her a victim...
I've no doubt she's gotten a lot of crap she doesn't deserve from the usual wankers but I'll let her be the one to define her own experience.