How could Disney redeem itself from The Last Jedi?

[Terminal Blue]

Think about it, if I'm in the Rebellion or Resistance, do I trust someone who builds TIE fighters, the single WORST starfighter in the history of the galaxy and sells them to the Empire or First Order to not specifically build my X-Wings to be worse than the TIEs?

Yeah, this is kind of nitpicky, but I think this is an excellent example of why the expanded universe needed to die.

See, remember the Death Star trench run in A New Hope?

Remember Porkins?

Porkins was flying an X-wing. He still died.

There was never any real indication in original trilogy films as to the relative quality of the X-wing and the TIE fighter. Sure, the heroes blow up tons of TIE fighters, but they're the heroes. They wouldn't be the heroes if they died to random mooks. Even when we see the space battle in Return of the Jedi with the massive, massive swarm of TIE fighters (and interceptors) the message was never really that TIE fighters were shit and needed those numbers to pose a threat, but that the rebels were facing overwhelming odds.

But in the expanded universe, it seems like everyone needed to be the hero. Even Porkins needed to be a hero now, so now everyone needs to be able to face overwhelming odds and thus is born the idea that rebel ships are individually superior, not just even a little bit superior but massively superior to the point where TIE fighters can only possibly accomplish anything through sheer weight of numbers.

It's an assumption which became deeply, deeply ingrained into Star Wars canon and cropped up all over the place. In the X-Wing and TIE fighter series, it hit the point where X-wings could shrug off loads of damage with their shields. But in the context of the original films, it just creates problems.. I mean, what happened to Porkins? Did he forget to turn his shields on? Wasn't he aware he could have just directed all power to his rear shields and sat there tanking up the damage like a space boss?

Damn, Porkins must have sucked. He had every advantage and he still went down in one hit. What a loser.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

People constantly think thats the case because of the Easterlings and Haradrim, a race of humans who are not really that fully developed and in the end its mostly humans vs orcs.

Oh come on.. they're not fully developed but you know which ethnic groups they represent. Tolkien included enough information to make those links, and it isn't accidental. The only question is why exactly he did it, which I'll get to in a second.

As for orcs.. let's stop for a second. What are orcs?

See, orcs don't actually exist. Elves, dwarves and hobbits don't exist. There is no actual race of savage, violent, dark skinned, physically overdeveloped but mentally stunted people who needed to be included in Lord of the Rings because they exist in reality. Unlike some of the other fictional races in Lord of the Rings, you can't even argue much in the way of mythological precedent for orcs.

So what are orcs? Well, orcs are the antagonists, they're like people in some ways but unlike people, they're inherently evil. They have no capacity to do good. They possess no humanity or good qualities, so when we die we don't have to worry about some poor orc kids whose daddy won't be making it home for Christmas this year. Their entire role is to be "people who are bad", "people who you aren't supposed to think about the moral dimensions of killing or whether they might have a point".

So how is this portrayed in the narrative. Well, for one, Orcs are ugly.

Wait, stop for a moment here. What makes orcs ugly.

1) They have dark skin.
2) They have flat noses.
3) They have slanted eyes.
4) They have ape-like features, such as long arms or broad bodies.

Do you see the issue?

Orcs are not a representation of a single race, although Tolkien did describe them as resembling "Mongol-types" (i.e. East Asians). They are a representation of evil, corruption and degeneracy. But of course, the European society of Tolkien's time already had an idea of inherently evil, degenerate people. They already had an idea of what those people looked like, through racial stereotyping and the image of the "savage races". People literally thought that black people were less evolved, like apes. People literally thought that asians were inherently evil and cunning.

And this is the fundamental problem. Middle Earth is a world where some people are literally, inherently better than others. What are the markers which Tolkien uses to show that they are superior? What are the markers which he uses to show that others are inferior?

And the funny thing is Aragorn made peace with the Easterlings and the Haradrim peoples when he became King, he did not conquer and enslaved them.

He made peace with them by physically driving them back to their own lands and claiming large stretches of land in which they had previously lived, because he recognised (correctly, in the setting) that they are not peaceful or noble people. They are not equal races to the free people of middle earth, and certainly not to Aragon and the men of Gondor. They do not have the blood of the Numenorians. They were, in the case of the Haradrim, slaves of the numenorians, which is how they ended up serving Sauron, because they are literally natural slaves, and again, how is this shown narratively?

Well, if I, for one, was to take a stab as to just precisely what said reason might be, I'd probably ascribe it to ideologically-driven nitwits reading (read: "projecting") precisely what they want to onto a work of art - even in spite of the express intention of the single person on the face of the planet with direct access to the mind that actually created said work, because they, presumably, simply know better.

I'm sorry, but who are you claiming to speak for here?

Tolkien's politics, and his views on race, are kind of a matter of public record. Like, the people who seek to downplay and erase his very real politics (which are very much present in his writing) because they simply don't like those aspects of his work seem to me like they're just as guilty of projection as those who try to read too greedily or too deep.

People (including close friends of Tolkien like C.S. Lewis) were discussing the racial implications of Lord of the Rings back when the first edition was published. From what we can tell, Tolkien's own views on race changed throughout his life, as he grew up in a time when casual racism was normal, lived through world war 2 and saw the horrors of racism taken to its logical extreme, and ultimately lived into a postwar and increasingly anti-racist world. The idea that we can't have this discussion now for fear of slandering the memory of saint Tolkien or letting big scary "politics" get in the way of our blissful pre-lapsarian fun is.. frankly it's absurd.

Don't shy away from or repress the parts of an author's work you don't like because it might make you less of a "twoo fan". It's not a good look, and it doesn't reflect well on geek culture in general.

Orcs were Elves corrupted by Morgoth and really I have a hard time equating them with African Black People because when did Africans had plate armour and swords? And not all Orcs were black of skin, that was mostly the Uruk-Hai, the Ubermensch of Orcs. And does this look like a Black African to you?

And really when these Easterlings and Harad blatently serve the Dark Lord, who rather kiss and makeup with the men of Middle Earth, prefer to smash their lands with Oliphaunts, what the fuck do you think the people of Gondor and Arnor are supposed to do?

And bullshit that these people were enslaved by the Numenorians, it was mostly the old Edain who still remained in Middle Earth after the Numenorians were given their island.

 

[Avnger]

Oh look, the dude who points out the passive aggressive cunts is the one who gets punished instead of the ones being passive aggressive cunts.

Never change Escapist.

Did... did you even read the post? It went well beyond passive-aggressive. I mean, I'll be sad that Inu is gone, but it's his fault for not managing his health bar better to the point where he only had one strike left and then dumping out a post like that.

Though I will say that I find his comparison between taking part in gay acts "ball-licking" and being racist rather interesting.

And, for the record, if I wanted to call someone racist on this forum, I'd do it outright and pay the consequences of doing so. The implication I was trying to make there was that Zontar often makes the exact same arguments as groups like the one that created the video (eg: the whole culture war stuff).

edit: Also, how would someone liking a video that removes all of the women be racist like Inu said?

 

[Avnger]

I think we can all agree this was not a good year for Star Wars.

You're going to have to explain this one mate. Because from my reading of the thread, posters here are about a 2:1 ratio in favor of liking TLJ.

To be fair this site isn't exactly a representative sample of, well anything. Just one example is politics, where the two largest ideologies (liberalism and conservatism) that are each larger then the rest outside of their two combined are collectively a small minority here. Then there's race where American users tend to be over-representative of whites and international users over-represent Jews.

Except this is rather unrelated to the post I was replying to mate. Samtendo said "we" then even clarified it further to mean denizens of the Escapist; hence, I responded talking about the denizens of the Escapist who had expressed their opinions in this thread.

Interestingly enough, a Facebook group I follow called starships of the universe ran a poll that got ~1200 votes on simply who liked TLJ, yes or no. The result was 67% yes. If that's at all representative of the general population, then it is safe to say that more people liked it that not.

The word of mouth across social media don't seem to be in line with a facebook group that seems to be dedicated to science fiction.

See the interesting thing about this post is that your (and everyone else's as well) experience on social media is entirely related to the people you follow and the groups you frequent.

http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/social-media-is-turning-us-into-thoughtless-political-extremists

 

[Terminal Blue]

Orcs were Elves corrupted by Morgoth

Possibly..

The film treats this as canon, in the books it's only one possible theory as to the creation of orcs and I don't think it comes up in the Lord of the Rings at all. I mean, it's kind of thematically implied through the existence of smeagol, who is a hobbit who has been corrupted by the power of the one ring and thus become a stunted, animalistic version of his former self. So we can say that evil in lord of the rings is like a corrupting force, it seems to taint everything it touches, even the land itself (I'll probably get to that at some point).

But, it doesn't solve the problem.. because I now have to use a very interesting word, and that word is "degeneracy".

At the time Tolkien was born, most people believed in a scientific racist view of the world, that white people (or more specifically, British people, or Germans, or wherever the person saying this happened to live) were the "superior" race, the pinnacle of human evolution, as opposed to the other races who had either failed to reach the same level of evolutionary perfection or had deviated from the original, ancient form of humankind (who many people still believed, despite scientific evidence to the contrary already existing, were white).

The constant fear for scientific racists was that white people would degenerate, either through breeding with "inferior" other races and thus losing their superior white qualities, or through losing their strong moral values and becoming emotionally and culturally disordered.

Again, this is not a literal allegory. Tolkien did not like allegories. However, again, how does Tolkien choose to represent these things? How does he represent that a race is "pure" or uncorrupted. How does he represent the effects of the "corruption" of these elves? What have they become, and how is this shown?

and really I have a hard time equating them with African Black People because when did Africans had plate armour and swords?

Curved swords..

That information was important enough to include in the books. Curved. Swords.

 

[Zontar]

See the interesting thing about this post is that your (and everyone else's as well) experience on social media is entirely related to the people you follow and the groups you frequent.

http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/social-media-is-turning-us-into-thoughtless-political-extremists

Guess that's why despite being a conservative since most of my friends are liberals most of what I see that's related to politics is liberal leaning.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Not even the same genre. Not even close. I always found this comparison dumb on MyAnimeList, ever since they started going gaga over Legend of the Galactic Heroes there and spread their fandom to other places.

To be fair, nothing on that list was even close. 40k is not Space Opera, it is a wild mish-mash of science fiction and horror tropes that vary wildly in tone and content depending on the writer. Dune is what comes closest, but even Dune strays closer to actual science fiction then it does space opera.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Not even the same genre. Not even close. I always found this comparison dumb on MyAnimeList, ever since they started going gaga over Legend of the Galactic Heroes there and spread their fandom to other places.

To be fair, nothing on that list was even close. 40k is not Space Opera, it is a wild mish-mash of science fiction and horror tropes that vary wildly in tone and content depending on the writer. Dune is what comes closest, but even Dune strays closer to actual science fiction then it does space opera.

What constitutes a Space Opera than? Unless Star Wars is truly one of a kind?

 

[Dudemaker]

"You want a Space Opera that is deep and insightful and rich in lore and history, Have a gander at Dune."

This!
(that was supposed quote another commenter, i did it wrong)

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

That's because people don't read into LotR as "White people are the saviors and inheritors of the Earth vs the evil negro and asian hordes and their demonic master."

Are you sure?

I mean, that book constantly makes it onto white supremacist reading lists for some unfathomable reason.

Like, the question of whether Lord of the Rings is intentionally racist is controversial, but generally the political messages of Lord of the Rings are about as subtle as those in Atlas Shrugged, and I'm including the films here because the films are not only very thematically accurate but deliberately emphasize a lot of the political points Tolkien was making. The racial coding is incredibly obvious. Heck, Tolkien repeatedly acknowledged and drew attention to the fact that he'd racially coded the various groups of middle earth. It's not something people are "making up". The only question is merely whether it is a form of deliberate propaganda about the need for white people to fight and dominate other races (questionable, but again, the book appears on white supremacist reading lists all the time) or merely a reflection of Tolkien's low key racial biases which he used as a convenient shorthand in his storytelling.

But what you mean, of course, is that you don't read into LotR as "white people are the saviors and inheritors of the Earth vs the evil negro and asian hordes and their demonic master", presumably, because you think it's just a fun fantasy book about totally fictional races of people who just so happen to resemble real ethnic groups to such a degree that when the film was cast they specifically picked people to play them on ethnic grounds. Obviously, I can't speak for the whole world but I wouldn't assume they share your decades of learning to ignore the political meanings of LotR.

LotR is very much a product of its time. People in Tolkien's lifetime just didn't have a very egalitarian view of race. It's the way it is. And as much as, say, orcs, have become a staple of fantasy fiction it's easy to forget that their depiction is rooted in what can only be called a very colonial view of tribal societies. Now, by itself there's nothing wrong with that as that layer of abstraction that comes with them being a fictional species native to a fictional world keeps it from being actively offensive to anyone it particular but it's very easy to take orcs, take the iconography associated with them and apply it to africans or mongols or various middle eastern societies.

Cue rightists making a bunch of shitty memes about orcs being basically like nonwhite people or rather, the view they, a bunch of sheltered, upper middle class white teenagers, have of nonwhite people. Tolkien sure as hell didn't intend any of that. When he was writing Lord of the Rings he wasn't trying to write a propaganda piece. He was tring to tell a story set in an exotic world with exothic creatures, some of which he loosely based on his view of various real world societies. He himself once stated that LotR was never supposed to be read as a direct allegory for anything.

 

[Dudemaker]

[/quote] You want a Space Opera that is deep and insightful and rich in lore and history, Have a gander at Dune.

[/quote]

This!

 

[Hawki]

What constitutes a Space Opera than?

"Space opera is a sub-genre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, melodramatic adventure, interplanetary battles, chivalric romance, and risk-taking. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it usually involves conflict between opponents possessing advanced abilities, futuristic weapons, and other sophisticated technology."

That said, I can't call 40K a space opera because it doesn't have a central narrative. 40K primarily exists as a setting with stories told in it, rather than those stories driving forward changes in the status quo (which is pretty stagnant).

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

What constitutes a Space Opera than? Unless Star Wars is truly one of a kind?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera Seems a pretty good place to start.

Dune is not a Space Opera because it is pure Science Fiction. A Space Opera has almost no connection to Science Fiction apart from setting, being pretty much a soap opera in Space with more fighting. Dune is a great series, but it is so because it is Science Fiction and deals with real world themes such as food scarcity, class struggle, racism, substance abuse and critique of social systems. Dune also engages with Science Fiction themes like the role of AI, androids, eugenics etc..

You will notice that you can transpose the plot of the Star Wars movies into pretty much any time period, because the basic plot is not reliant on any particular science fiction conventions (the closest you get is the Death Star being an advanced machine, but as a MacGuffin it is indistinguishable from say a Doomsday Spell). Star Wars is the story of a boy who becomes a hero by defeating an evil monster (well, space station), and the trilogy is about him defeating the empire that sent the monster and saving his father from the Dark Side.

Dune can absolutely not be re-made in any other genre, because the original book is an in-depth exploration of the specific conditions in the Dune universe. Let me quote Wikipedia: "The story explores the multi-layered interactions of politics, religion, ecology, technology, and human emotion, as the factions of the empire confront each other in a struggle for the control of Arrakis and its spice".

See the difference? Dune is a masterful Science Fiction series, and should absolutely be called such. To even compare it to Star Wars is an affront to Dune as Science Fiction and to Star Wars as Space Opera. They operate on entirely different genre conventions.
"Hey Luke, you're actually the son of the most evil guy in the galaxy, go redeem him" flies in Space Opera, it doesn't work in Science Fiction because it is way too drama first. Just like "Paul, you need to carefully navigate this political mine field to establish your power base on a resource rich planet while increasing the prestige of your noble house in intergalactic politics" works for Science Fiction but is waaaaay too involved for Space Opera, because the entire plot works on details first to establish which ways Paul have to reach his goals.

Dune is great, but it won't scratch a Star Wars itch, just like Star Wars won't scratch a Dune itch.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

When I look at Sci Fi, I think of Hard Science, Aliens, Robotics, realistic.

When I look at Space Opera, I think of Romance, Orchestral Music, Adventure, and War and sometimes Fantasy.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes looks way too romantic for me to be hard Sci Fi. I mean listen to the soundtrack for it:



It makes me think of a romantic war fought in space. Between a Monarchical Empire fighting for Sovereignty of the Galaxy and a Democratic Alliance fighting for Freedom.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

What constitutes a Space Opera than?

"Space opera is a sub-genre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, melodramatic adventure, interplanetary battles, chivalric romance, and risk-taking. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it usually involves conflict between opponents possessing advanced abilities, futuristic weapons, and other sophisticated technology."

That said, I can't call 40K a space opera because it doesn't have a central narrative. 40K primarily exists as a setting with stories told in it, rather than those stories driving forward changes in the status quo (which is pretty stagnant).

It could be argued that the central narritive is the Imperium vs Chaos. Every other faction at play in 40k are just side stories.

And if anything Star Wars is the samething if you factor in the Expanded Universe.

 

[Hawki]

And if anything Star Wars is the samething if you factor in the Expanded Universe.

Not really. There's plenty of side stories in the EU, but if you go post-RotJ, there was a clear sequence of events that went from the Battle of Endor - Thrawn, the Yuzhan Vong, etc. In 40K, there's no central narrative whatsoever. There's plenty of stuff that leads up to 40K, but the 'story' of 40K itself is...what, exactly? I could describe the setting of 40K, and how it stands at this point in time, but it's not done through narrative, but through codecies and the like.

40K is primarily based on setting. Star Wars is primarily based on narrative.

Dune can absolutely not be re-made in any other genre, because the original book is an in-depth exploration of the specific conditions in the Dune universe. Let me quote Wikipedia: "The story explores the multi-layered interactions of politics, religion, ecology, technology, and human emotion, as the factions of the empire confront each other in a struggle for the control of Arrakis and its spice".

You could easily transplant Dune into fantasy. When you look at Dune (at least the first novel), much of its conventions are based on fantasy. The machinations of the Bene Jesserit could easily fit into fantasy, the fighting is done primarily in close quarters with a lack of ranged weaponry (yes, I know how lasguns work in Dune, but it's basically an excuse to keep the fighting a certain way), the sand worms could easily be treated as creatures of fantasy, spice giving navigators the ability to fold space could be seen as being akin to a fantasy power, the prophecy around Paul, etc.

I actually do agree that Dune is sci-fi first and foremost, and I do agree with the themes you listed, but you could easily transplant its basic plot structure and worldbuilding into a fantasy setting and not lose much.

See the difference? Dune is a masterful Science Fiction series, and should absolutely be called such. To even compare it to Star Wars is an affront to Dune as Science Fiction and to Star Wars as Space Opera.

To be frank, I'd just call Star Wars space fantasy. Space opera is a sub-genre of science fiction, but Star Wars doesn't even fit the sci-fi bill. Science fiction usually has at least some form of relationship with the world as we know it - even Dune is obstensibly set in our own universe, just insanely far into the future. Star Wars meanwhile takes place "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," and has no relationship to the universe as we know it. The opening line I just mentioned is taken from classic fairy tales. Something like 40K is more science fantasy, because as outlandish as the forces of Chaos are, 40K at least obstensibly takes place in our own future, albeit even further than Dune.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Not even the same genre. Not even close. I always found this comparison dumb on MyAnimeList, ever since they started going gaga over Legend of the Galactic Heroes there and spread their fandom to other places.

To be fair, nothing on that list was even close. 40k is not Space Opera, it is a wild mish-mash of science fiction and horror tropes that vary wildly in tone and content depending on the writer. Dune is what comes closest, but even Dune strays closer to actual science fiction then it does space opera.

What constitutes a Space Opera than? Unless Star Wars is truly one of a kind?

Starblazers/Space Battleship Yamato