Star Wars 9: The Sky of Ricewalker: A senseless, incoherent nightmare.

Asita

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Chimpzy said:
Agema said:
Waste of effort, and you've no control (e.g. ability to change direction) at all with all that flying through the air.
In reality, yes.

But these are the Star Wars prequels, where spinning is a good trick. Which is why everyone does it all the time. Even Anakin figured that out the first time he flew an actual space ship [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBlhgAkJBos], and he's the dumbass who didn't notice the super obvious Sith Lord practically telling him he's a Sith Lord.
Well you know, a Sith alluding that they're probably a Sith in front of a hotheaded youth trying to prove his inflated sense of self-worth to the Jedi Council is a tactic some would consider to be...unnatural. So obviously it would completely blindside them, thereby guaranteeing the tactic's success. *sage nod*
 

Agema

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Asita said:
Well you know, a Sith alluding that they're probably a Sith in front of a hotheaded youth trying to prove his inflated sense of self-worth to the Jedi Council is a tactic some would consider to be...unnatural. So obviously it would completely blindside them, thereby guaranteeing the tactic's success. *sage nod*
That or the prequels were written and directed by a guy who'd spent so long out of movie-making that his talent had atrophied and he made a load of flashy garbage. Just putting that idea out there ;)
 

Asita

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Agema said:
Asita said:
Well you know, a Sith alluding that they're probably a Sith in front of a hotheaded youth trying to prove his inflated sense of self-worth to the Jedi Council is a tactic some would consider to be...unnatural. So obviously it would completely blindside them, thereby guaranteeing the tactic's success. *sage nod*
That or the prequels were written and directed by a guy who'd spent so long out of movie-making that his talent had atrophied and he made a load of flashy garbage. Just putting that idea out there ;)
I mean sure, if you want to be completely serious about it. But sometimes a guy just wants to tear down a scene by paraphrasing it. :p
 

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Batou667 said:
That's verging on being an almost complete non sequitur. No, the film isn't a tragedy because Gaston (the villain) dies at the end. But that was in response to you asserting that "real men are beasts, not dandies", so I'll repeat the question; according to who?
I've been holding off on replying to this one because.. it's an essay.

Beauty and the Beast is a didactic story. It was written as a didactic story. It's a story that is specifically meant to teach or instruct its audience in some aspect of morals or social convention. The two books on which the Disney film is based were written to teach and reinforce societal conventions about marriage and relationships which made sense in the 18th century, a time when women (at least, women of the social class would be subject to arranged marriages. The point of beauty and the beast is specifically, textually, to teach women that their own desires are immoral and selfish. The moral is that women must learn to overlook the physical or character deficits of their appointed husbands, because a good woman, a virtuous woman, accepts her allotted station with grace and makes the best of what she has.

When Disney rewrote the story, they made some pretty obvious changes, in particular removing a lot of elements which would be kind of weird or offensive to modern audiences. They changed Belle's character to make her more of an assertive modern woman, and added the standard Disney protagonist motivation of vaguely wanting something more out of life. The moral is now superficially less about how women should strive to display perfect unconditional love because otherwise their husbands will die of magic blue balls and is now more generally about the need to look past superficial appearances. But the original core of the story is still there, it's just less an allegory for arranged marriage as it is about an idealised idea of heterosexual romance. In fact, it taps into some very common tropes about heterosexual romance and its presentation in media.

Imagine a story about a beautiful woman who finds herself forcibly placed under the absolute control of a frightening, feral guy whom she is initially repulsed and frightened by, but through small acts of humanity and protection she comes to realise that deep down he's actually a good, decent person. She falls in love with him, and in turn he is magically transformed and becomes the person he always was inside.

It exists, and it's called The Terminator.

In fact, this is the romantic subplot (or even the main plot) about women being kidnapped, imprisoned or held hostage by violent tough guys whom they end up falling for can be found in literally dozens of films, not to mention countless books and other stories, in which it is portrayed as romantic and indeed relatable. For men, it allows for fetishization of male dominance over women, and the fantasy of getting the girl without actually having to make any effort or improve yourself. For women, it prays on a fantasy of fixing someone who is damaged purely by being the most manic pixie dream girl ever. People like these stories because they serve as a heightened depiction of relationship dynamics which are still seen as good or desirable. In film, men are allowed to be broken, self-loathing and flawed without actually being bad people. They are allowed to be coercive, inflexible, threatening, violent or domineering while still being redeemable, as long as they remain sympathetic. Through the magic of film, these men don't have deep seated emotional and interpersonal problems which they need to work through. They just need to meet the right woman, a woman who is so special and deep and not like other girls that she can see through all their horrible shitty behaviour and realise that deep down they really are a good person, whereupon all their problems will magically disappear and they will turn into a real boy.

So again, beauty and the beast is about an idealized romantic relationship. Now, bearing that in mind, let's move on to your questions.

Firstly, I think it should be obvious that anyone who draws a line between "real men" and other men who aren't real, I guess, is basing that on a set of fairly arbitrary prejudices. That line does not actually exist. It's in no way required to actually explain reality. However, large parts of our culture are still predicated on those arbitrary prejudices, and on the idea that being a man or a woman should come with certain behaviours, expectations and standards which separate "real men", men who measure up to those standards, from the others.

In our culture, and certainly within the quite explicit didactic ideology of beauty and the beast. Beast is "real". That's why it's okay for him to act like kind of a dick, because it's not like he's a bad person, he's just a brooding byronic hero, he keeps it real and plays by his own rules even if people get hurt sometimes, but it's only because he's true to himself. After all, at the end of the day he's doing it for love. Sure, he's not perfect, but what kind of woman needs a perfect man? Just because she's incredibly beautiful and has absolutely no character flaws and is basically framed as the perfect woman doesn't mean she can reject whoever she wants, right? After all, isn't it better to settle for something that's real, even if it's not perfect? She'll learn that after a few months imprisoned in the castle, I'm sure.

Gaston is not "real", he's superficially hyper-masculine, but in a way that is contrived and self-involved, which makes him, again, a dandy. With a few exceptions, our culture does not generally tell romantic stories about people like Gaston. They don't get to be abusive dickbags and still get away with being redeemable or the hero. Even before Gaston has revealed himself to be the truly sadistic character he at the end of the film, noone is rooting for him to learn to be a better person and for him and Belle to end up together as a romantic couple, and that's because of the way he's characterised. There is something off about him, something which was put there deliberately to signal to the audience that this was someone you were not supposed to relate to or see as redeemable.

And again, it just so happens that the mechanism used to convey that draws on a lot of the assumptions about how people of different genders, sexualities behave, or are "supposed" to behave.
 

Hawki

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Johnny Novgorod said:
I think Disney's message is equally disgusting: there's no creative vision, just a series of reactions to reactions.
Not defending the planning of the sequel trilogy (or lack of it technically) but that isn't really a message per se.

Poe's arc in TLJ is "learn to blindly follow orders that don't appear to make any sense from people withholding vital information for no real reason". Which doesn't matter in Rise of Skywalker because he's the one ordering people around by the end.
Not really. It's more knowing how to pick your battles, learning to follow chain of command, etc. I think the film could have done a better job with it though.

Finn's arc in TLJ is "don't sacrifice yourself, love is (somehow) gonna save us". Which is completely disregarded by his final suicidal move in Rise of Skywalker.
What suicidal move in Rise? I honestly don't remember it.

But, no. Finn's arc is TLJ is more him learning to appreciate the moral greyness of the galaxy, yet also being able to commit to a cause he believes in. TFA is the start of his arc (leaving the First Order), TLJ is a continuation/conclusion of it. Rise doesn't really continue or conclude an arc for him, but does at least acknowledge it through his actions inspriring other stormtroopers to defect.

... by assuming the name of people whom she isn't related to?
"Being her own person" is the obvious intention of the final scene. What I'm saying is that the way they tried to convey it makes no sense if you think about it for 2 seconds.
Well, no, I still think it counts. No-one else is going to take the Skywalker name, and she's earnt it.

I think it would have worked a lot better if she hadn't got an actual surname to fall back on, but still, it does work overall.

Combustion Kevin said:
-Kylo-Rey shipping is still possible, learning from each other along the way, respected adversaries in the first movie, redeemed friends in the second, falling in love in the third.
If he's redeemed in the second film, who's the antagonist in the third?

Can I just add here that I really hate the Reylo ship? I mean, I kind of get why so many people like it, but in the context of the films...Kylo's given two "outs" of the First Order and rejects both of them. Kylo kills his own father, and did his darndest to kill Luke, and that's in addition to all his other sins. My understading was that by the end of The Last Jedi, Rey's moved on from hoping she can redeem him, which fits in with the themes of the film. But what do we get in Rise? Palpy's back (because reasons), and they share a loving kiss because it turns out that "I didn't want Kylo, I wanted Ben." Bleh. I said it in my review of Rise, and I'll say it here - in the film, there's two good men who are clearly interested in Rey, but she spurs both of them to be with a person who should be well past the moral event horizon by now.

Did I like Ben's scenes with Han and Leia in the film? Well, yeah, kinda. But Kylo's perhaps the most interesting character in the trilogy, but Rise sidelines him for Palpy, because apparently Disney thought the drooling fanboys preferred lightning shows to character development. :(
Asita said:
Agema said:
Asita said:
Well you know, a Sith alluding that they're probably a Sith in front of a hotheaded youth trying to prove his inflated sense of self-worth to the Jedi Council is a tactic some would consider to be...unnatural. So obviously it would completely blindside them, thereby guaranteeing the tactic's success. *sage nod*
That or the prequels were written and directed by a guy who'd spent so long out of movie-making that his talent had atrophied and he made a load of flashy garbage. Just putting that idea out there ;)
I mean sure, if you want to be completely serious about it. But sometimes a guy just wants to tear down a scene by paraphrasing it. :p
I've never had a problem with that scene, or Anakin not learning Palpy's Sidious until later. We know from the EU that Palpy acted as a secondary father figure to Anakin, so obviously Anakin's had a blind spot. But even in the context of the films by themselves, Anakin's expressed dissatisfaction with the Jedi/Republic since Ep. 2, and in Ep. 3, he's already frustrated and fearful because of the Jedi and Padme. So, here's Palpy telling the story of Darth Plagius. I don't think it's unreasonable for a chancellor to be well versed in galactic lore/history, and he's telling Anakin exactly what Anakin wants to hear - that his frustrations with the Jedi are justified, and that there's a, um, "force" in this universe that can save people from death.

You can certainly criticize a lot of the execution of the prequels, but I don't consider that scene one of them. Honestly, for me, it's one of the best in Revenge, and the PT as a whole.

evilthecat said:
Imagine a story about a beautiful woman who finds herself forcibly placed under the absolute control of a frightening, feral guy whom she is initially repulsed and frightened by, but through small acts of humanity and protection she comes to realise that deep down he's actually a good, decent person. She falls in love with him, and in turn he is magically transformed and becomes the person he always was inside.

It exists, and it's called The Terminator.
This is me being pedantic, but screw it, I don't have anything better to do right now.

T1 does use the tropes you describe, but I disagree with the notion that Reese is "transformed" in the film per se. To me, it's less Sarah 'transforming' him and more him just allowing himself to be a person that he hasn't lost per se, but has kept intentionally suppressed. We see in the future-flashbacks that Reese does have humanity to him, such as his quiet grief over losing his comrade to the HK-tank, plus how he returns the child's 'pew pews.' That, and even in 1984, he never really harms people. Doesn't hurt the cops, does what he can to get people out of the way in the club, and checks one of the bodies the T-800's left in its wake. Also tells Sarah in the motel that "you turn yourself off," when referring to how one copes with the torment of the future.

I think a difference between T1 and Beauty/Beast is that Reese is intentionally keeping himself emotionally distant for personal and professional reasons, while the Beast is the one who does change as a person. If anything, it's Sarah that has the arc in T1, while Belle...doesn't. Not really. Belle doesn't really change as a person, though apparently her desire to explore the great wide somewhere transformed to "screw it, I've got a castle now!"

Ah, women...
 

Marik2

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SupahEwok said:
Chimpzy said:
trunkage said:
Chimpzy said:
We all know what Kenobi and Yoda pacificsm got the universe - tyranny and death
Not really the point I wanted to make. It's not that Jedi confronting the Sith is a wrong thing, but that confronting them by swinging a lasersword at them is a less than ideal solution, because violence is where the Dark Side is strongest. It's giving the Sith the home field advantage, so to speak.
I will always love episode 3.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Hawki said:
Johnny Novgorod said:
I think Disney's message is equally disgusting: there's no creative vision, just a series of reactions to reactions.
Not defending the planning of the sequel trilogy (or lack of it technically) but that isn't really a message per se.
Yes it is. They let backlash dictacte their next move (in a pretty transparent way) rather than backing their own decisions.

Poe's arc in TLJ is "learn to blindly follow orders that don't appear to make any sense from people withholding vital information for no real reason". Which doesn't matter in Rise of Skywalker because he's the one ordering people around by the end.
Not really. It's more knowing how to pick your battles, learning to follow chain of command, etc. I think the film could have done a better job with it though.
1) That is not Poe's arc.
2) The last film all but ignores him anyway.


Finn's arc in TLJ is "don't sacrifice yourself, love is (somehow) gonna save us". Which is completely disregarded by his final suicidal move in Rise of Skywalker.
What suicidal move in Rise? I honestly don't remember it.

But, no. Finn's arc is TLJ is more him learning to appreciate the moral greyness of the galaxy, yet also being able to commit to a cause he believes in. TFA is the start of his arc (leaving the First Order), TLJ is a continuation/conclusion of it. Rise doesn't really continue or conclude an arc for him, but does at least acknowledge it through his actions inspriring other stormtroopers to defect.
He "commits" by trying to sacrifice himself for a good cause, only to get a slap in the wrist for it. He gets to enjoy the nobility of an act that serves no purpose and is immediately chastised for it with an unrequited kiss.

... by assuming the name of people whom she isn't related to?
"Being her own person" is the obvious intention of the final scene. What I'm saying is that the way they tried to convey it makes no sense if you think about it for 2 seconds.
Well, no, I still think it counts. No-one else is going to take the Skywalker name, and she's earnt it.
According to whom, besides herself?
 

Hawki

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Johnny Novgorod said:
Yes it is. They let backlash dictacte their next move (in a pretty transparent way) rather than backing their own decisions.
Which isn't in of itself a message.

This is semantics really. The entire sequel trilogy has been reactionary, and from the sound of it, we both dislike that.

1) That is not Poe's arc.
Then what is it?

2) The last film all but ignores him anyway.
No, not really. Want a character who's ignored? Look at Rose. Or not, since she barely gets any screentime.

But Poe does get the arc referenced considering his despair at throwing away so many lives in the final battle.


He "commits" by trying to sacrifice himself for a good cause, only to get a slap in the wrist for it. He gets to enjoy the nobility of an act that serves no purpose and is immediately chastised for it with an unrequited kiss.
That doesn't negate the arc he goes on, and Rose's actions have more in common with Po's arc than Finn's.

I think it could be better handled, like a lot of things in TLJ, but it's still there.

According to whom, besides herself?
Um, the audience?

It's clearly what the scene is going for. Themes/motifs/idea within a work don't always require in-universe reflection of that.
 

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Jesus, six pages and still going. Honestly, there is nothing left to talk about it at this point. Almost everyone is just rambling in circles. All I have left to say is that I am getting this day one on Blu-ray.
 

Xprimentyl

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CoCage said:
Jesus, six pages and still going. Honestly there is nothing left to talk about it at this point? Almost everyone it's just rambling in circles. All I have left to say is that I am getting this day one on Blu-ray.
I haven?t even read any of this thread because Star Wars and okay, but I assumed this was the state of things; this much discussion is rarely indicative of a cacophony of agreeance. I think new Star Wars movies should join the holy trinity of sex, religion and politics as things not to discuss in civil company. Besides, I watched the video below and pretty much got the gist: it?s a Star Wars movie. If at some point it happens to pop up in front of my eyes and I don?t? move my head for a couple of hours, I might watch it.

 

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Xprimentyl said:
CoCage said:
Jesus, six pages and still going. Honestly there is nothing left to talk about it at this point? Almost everyone it's just rambling in circles. All I have left to say is that I am getting this day one on Blu-ray.
I haven?t even read any of this thread because Star Wars and okay, but I assumed this was the state of things; this much discussion is rarely indicative of a cacophony of agreeance. I think new Star Wars movies should join the holy trinity of sex, religion and politics as things not to discuss in civil company. Besides, I watched the video below and pretty much got the gist: it?s a Star Wars movie. If at some point it happens to pop up in front of my eyes and I don?t? move my head for a couple of hours, I might watch it.

Already saw the video, but thank you.
 

Hawki

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CoCage said:
Jesus, six pages and still going. Honestly, there is nothing left to talk about it at this point. Almost everyone is just rambling in circles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnRzSHTrQtw
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Hawki said:
Johnny Novgorod said:
Yes it is. They let backlash dictacte their next move (in a pretty transparent way) rather than backing their own decisions.
Which isn't in of itself a message.

This is semantics really. The entire sequel trilogy has been reactionary, and from the sound of it, we both dislike that.

1) That is not Poe's arc.
Then what is it?

2) The last film all but ignores him anyway.
No, not really. Want a character who's ignored? Look at Rose. Or not, since she barely gets any screentime.

But Poe does get the arc referenced considering his despair at throwing away so many lives in the final battle.


He "commits" by trying to sacrifice himself for a good cause, only to get a slap in the wrist for it. He gets to enjoy the nobility of an act that serves no purpose and is immediately chastised for it with an unrequited kiss.
That doesn't negate the arc he goes on, and Rose's actions have more in common with Po's arc than Finn's.

I think it could be better handled, like a lot of things in TLJ, but it's still there.

According to whom, besides herself?
Um, the audience?

It's clearly what the scene is going for. Themes/motifs/idea within a work don't always require in-universe reflection of that.
You obviously enjoyed the movie, and I think that's what your defense boils down to. Nothing more to say about it.
 

Terminal Blue

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Hawki said:
T1 does use the tropes you describe, but I disagree with the notion that Reese is "transformed" in the film per se. To me, it's less Sarah 'transforming' him and more him just allowing himself to be a person that he hasn't lost per se, but has kept intentionally suppressed.
I definitely see what you're saying.

But in terms of what we are actually shown, there is an enormous change in Reese's behaviour, especially towards Sarah. Initially, he is far more violent and controlling towards her, whereas towards the end of the film their relationship softens and becomes more of a partnership.

I also think you could form exactly the same interpretation of Beast, that he doesn't fundamentally change, but instead reveals a part of himself that he had hidden out of fear of being hurt and despair at his situation. In both cases, we only really see these characters through their actions.

And yes, to preempt a criticism. Reese is entirely justified in everything he does. His behaviour is necessary to save Sarah's life. But put this in the context of a supposedly romantic relationship, since the film wants us to believe that this is a romantic situation. It's not about whether Reese the character wrong, or a bad person in the context of the film, it's about why the writers thought that being put in this situation would cause Sarah to decide that she was in love with him.

The answer is that a lot of romantic storytelling, including Beauty and the Beast, kind of fetishizes the idea of men being controlling, violent or abusive before they are "fixed" by the love of a woman whom they have controlled and abused.
 

Hawki

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Johnny Novgorod said:
You obviously enjoyed the movie, and I think that's what your defense boils down to. Nothing more to say about it.
Yeah, that isn't an argument.

Also, which movie are you talking about? If it's Last Jedi, then yes, I do like it, warts and all. If it's Rise, then I don't. I really, really don't...