Star Wars Griefing Thread (SPOILERS) - Safety off

I should be on the floor laughing watching this shitshow all unfold. From George Lucas’s delusions of cinematic grandeur to the dopes at Disney turning movie gold into shit, the Jenga tower of the Star Wars legacy is collapsing at the hands of self important imbeciles who were so full of themselves that they thought they could do no wrong. Schadenfreude. Joie maligne. But I don’t.

I feel like something that I once had a great fondness for so long ago has finally met its end from a protracted malignant sickness. It's dead.
 
They also can't present any good arguments for authoritarianism because they actually do have some validity. If authoritarians are shown in a modern movie they have to be totally evil and irredeemable with no justification except evil, not the result of any genuine cause.
The NPC meme is old and all, but I want to know how people never manage to think about how the Republic apparently held itself together in one form or another for literally thousands of years at a time, and yet it was apparently still fragile enough to be hoodwinked and overthrown by a single aspirational politician. Like... it's a galaxy-wide democratic republic... there's going to be millions of aspirational politicians, and it's even established within the movies that there's a gritty underworld, with arms dealers, black markets, gambling, bribery, etc. Yet somehow when it comes to governance itself, it's all hugs and kisses until the eqivalent of the devil strolls along and wrecks everything. I can ignore it easily enough, but that might be the most fantasy-like aspect of the whole series.
 
there's going to be millions of aspirational politicians

...yes there may be, but how many of those millions were powerful in the Force? Think of it like Code Geass (assuming you get that reference), that is, that it helps to have a charismatic leader leading a band to victory but eventually there will be some dissent within your own ranks or people who you want to recruit but refuse to join. What better way to deal with both if you could use some ability to manipulate them to fall in line? Well that's were Geass or the Force comes into play. That's pretty much Palpatine and Lelouch in a nutshell in political terms.
 
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...yes there is, but how many of those millions were powerful in the Force? Think of it like Code Geass (assuming you get that reference), that is, that it helps to have a charismatic leader leading a band to victory but eventually there will be some dissent within your own ranks or people who you want to recruit but refuse to join. What better way to deal with both if you could use some ability to manipulate them to fall in line? Well that's were Geass or the Force comes into play. That's pretty much Palpatine and Lelouch in a nutshell in political terms.
I've got news for you: Politicians without Force powers manage to degrade democratic republics just fine
 
Just finished watching the movie during Movie Night tonight. The pacing is all over the place, the dialogue ranged from ‘teehee quips!’ to genuine cringe and you can easily tell that a good portion of the film was rushed just to get to that near Christmas release date. I feel sorry for you Star Wars fans, honestly.
 
I've never seen any of those shows, but there's nothing wrong with making fantasy stories aimed at girls or women or with female leads. They just tend to have a narrower appeal than ones more closely based on mythic archetypes.

Star Wars wasn't just a successful movie franchise, it was a cultural phenomenon on the same sort of scale as the Beatles or the Bible - everyone from the kids in the playground to the President of the United States knew what it was about, who Darth Vader was, and could hum the theme tune. I don't think Sailor Moon has that sort of pull.

The Hunger Games was a huge success and I did see the first movie in that franchise. It was interesting that Catniss wasn't written the way a male protagonist would be - most of the action happened around her rather than at her instigation, and the love triangle was a major part of the story (and its appeal to women, I guess)

Her signature weapon was the bow - a weapon designed to kill people from a safe distance. I don't know if it would have had the same audience if she eviscerated people up close with a sword. (Battle Royale was a lot less female-friendly than the Hunger Games, even though they had very similar setups)

So she was an action hero, but a recognizably feminine one. This is good writing.

From what I've seen of Rey, she isn't well written enough to be interesting or relatable as a protagonist, and casting her as a boy called Ray wouldn't have fixed that. But it would've made it easier for the writers.

They weren't up to the task of giving us a lead character as iconic as Luke Skywalker, so of course they failed at the additional challenge posed by their lead, in an action-oriented sci fi fantasy, being a girl. This is why the Mary Sue stuff gets thrown around. She's not exactly a Mary Sue, but she isn't particularly relatable or sympathetic or satisfying either - for either male or female audiences.

Princess Leia will probably still be a popular and famous character long after Rey is forgotten.

Catniss is a mild Sue, but executed well enough you don't care too much.

Catniss manages to achieve personal & "professional" growth as a character. She is not a hunger games "fan girl" and in fact detests it. While everyone naturally loves her, and she has two boys at odds for the right to enter her panties, she still exhibits self reliance - the source of her "combat" skills. She also uses a bow, a weapon that would allow a malnurished teen girl to be able to take on bred-and-fed for combat young men. But she mainly uses her brain, figuring how to game the system to beat more formidible opponents. At no time is Catniss invincible, or really even fighting from a position of strength. She is constantly the underdog, always riding forces greater than herself, and surviving with wits, luck, and getting her opponents to underestimate her.

The rest of the series is interesting as well - the "13th district" having war material enough to take on District 1 was sort of dumb, but set the interesting political backdrop for Catniss seeing & breaking the cycle of violence & revenge. Even the chief villain is given a bit of sympathy, shown to largely be a product of his environment.

Its far, far from perfect but more tolerable than most shit, especially modern shit, with a Stonk Female Protagonist
 
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Catniss is a mild Sue, but executed well enough you don't care too much.

Catniss manages to achieve personal & "professional" growth as a character. She is not a hunger games "fan girl" and in fact detests it. While everyone naturally loves her, and she has two boys at odds for the right to enter her panties, she still exhibits self reliance - the source of her "combat" skills. She also uses a bow, a weapon that would allow a malnurished teen girl to be able to take on bred-and-fed for combat young men. But she mainly uses her brain, figuring

The rest of the series is interesting - the "13th district" was sort of dumb, but set the interesting political backdrop for Catniss seeing & breaking the cycle of violence & revenge. Even the chief villain is given a bit of sympathy, shown to largely be a product of his environment.

Its far, far from perfect but more tolerable than most shit with a Stonk Female Protagonist
Like the Sequel Trilogy the first book was the strongest. Unlike the Sequel Trilogy, Hunger Games goes to painful lengths to properly set up why and how Katniss knows how to defend herself and what her skillset is (as well as why it helps her in the Games). The fact that her father taught her to poach game and that her skillset is both essentially illegal and entirely based on real-world survival situations underscores why few of the other competitors can beat her at it despite being trained from youth for the Games.

Star Wars just had Rey be the best because she's a woman.
 
I interrupt this thread to remind you that you must CONSUME
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I'm more surprised that Kuntz is still alive. Also, shouldn't Cole be like 60 or something?
jesus fucking christ they're STILL making that shit? (lol either PvP or SW amirite)
 
My problem with Rey's yellow lightsabre is it reminded me of a better character who used one.
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Oof, right in the feels...

Mandy was supposedly born naturally from a Mandalorian woman, Boba was born in a fucking lab on Kamino.
Minor quibble: Mando (his actual name is Dyn Jarren, supposedly?) was born to non-Mandalorian parents, then adopted into his Mandalorian clan after being orphaned, according to his comments in episode 4.

He did love and respect his dad but I dont think Jango Fett had time to properly teach him Mandalorian values and philosophy before getting yeeted by Windu. Boba was then raised by other bounty hunters, adopting THEIR culture more than a mandalorian, so while he may be biologically one, culturally he is barely one.
It will be interesting to see if/how the show will touch on that, in the event that Boba Fett actually shows up. Filoni's Clone Wars had a government official claim that Jango Fett was not a Mandalorian, but it was ambiguous as to whether he was stating a fact or indulging in a bit of "no true Scotsman."

He has his own set of values and limits (I remember mentioning that while he was cold stone, he did beat up Jabba's goons when they were attempting to rape Leia, evidence that shit like that is just going too far to him). Yes, it would be interesting seeing Mandy and Boba clashing perhaps not physically but in terms of both morality and their own native culture.
My memory's a bit foggy on the subject, but I think you might be conflating a couple of different incidents. In Tales of the Bounty Hunters, the night before the excursion to the Dune Sea, Jabba has Leia sent to Boba Fett's quarters. The princess not unreasonably expects that the bounty hunter is going to rape her (and this is certainly Jabba's intention in having her so delivered), but Fett bemuses Leia by getting philosophical instead, explaining that he will not touch her in accordance with a very harsh and stringent sense of morality by which he believes himself to be in the right for aiding the Empire against the Rebellion (since the Empire represents Order, and the Rebel Alliance, Chaos, in his mind). The story (Last Man Standing by Daniel Keys Moran) is prefaced by a statement identified as Fett's written response to his being exiled from Concord Dawn for killing a (corrupt) fellow law-officer, when he was a "Journeyman Protector" known as Jaster Mereel:

Everyone dies. It's the final and only lasting Justice. Evil exists; it is intelligence in the service of entropy*. When the side of a mountain slides down to kill a village, this is not evil, for evil requires intent. Should a sentient being cause that landslide, there is evil; and requires Justice as a consequence so that civilization can exist. There is no greater good than Justice; and only if law serves Justice it is good law. It is said correctly that law exists not for the Just but for the unjust, for the Just carry the law in their hearts, and do not need to call it from afar. I bow to no one and I give service only for cause.

*Interestingly, the Mandalorian religion as explained in the Star Wars Insider article, "The Mandalorians: People and Culture" by Karen Traviss, features a personification of entropy, Darasuum, as its chief embodiment of evil. This entity is opposed by the Mandalorians' deity, the heroic war-god Kad Harangir, whose sponsorship of conflict prevents the universe from sliding into decay.

The other textual incident is from the aforementioned Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy, where Fett stashes a high-value female VIP whom he's protecting in Jabba's harem as a dancing girl in order to keep her away from the assassins hunting her (it's complicated), while quietly making it known to Jabba's goons that anyone who tries to have his way with the girl is going to be terminated with extreme prejudice.

Oh shit he's starting to be ashamed of that avatar tier bald spot, doug might be getting self awareness
The one nice thing I'll say about him is that he's somehow managed to avoid getting a full-blown soyboy face.

So, just to make sure I get what's going on with the DisneyEU...

- Leia basically gets kicked out of the Republic because she's Vader's daughter, which is a bad thing despite her being, y'know, a motherfucking badass in her own right. And Vader ultimately was the one who defeated Palps anyway.

- Rey, who is Palpatine's granddaughter, is not going to be subjected to the same unfair scruitiny even though Palpatine's entire plan was for her to succeed him, and he's the main evil entity in the galaxy?
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Wasn't it common knowledge, though, that Leia was Darth Vader's daughter in the EU? I seem to have some recollection of Borssk Fey'la trying to use it as a cudgel against her, but most people in the Galaxy didn't care, because like mature adults, they were able to process the fact that she was not responsible for her father's actions, and indeed, a heroine in her own right? As opposed to Current Year "canon" where the general population is a bunch 'tards who are most definitely willing to punish the child for the sins of the parent, which sounds very much like the sociopolitical state of affairs that the Lucasfilm Story Group is representative of, oddly enough...

Lucas's prequel characters were flat, empty plot devices that were apparently written without theory of mind. They exist only to move towards the plot events that were inevitable when working backwards from the OT. They're awful.
I don't think they were flat, just a little hamstrung by Lucas's difficulties with realizing his (generally quite grand) ideas in written form without someone to tard-wrangle him. The relationship dynamics between Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Anakin, for example, are just magnificent in their conception and entirely, heart-breakingly believable, but disserviced by sometimes-awkward dialogue and Lucas's memetic reputation for schlocky badness as a writer.

Filoni definitely has a strong presence in the episode's finer details. He wrote or directed the shrimp planet episode, and that has his fingerprints all over it (the loth-cat in a cage is a big one). Tonally it's a bit slower-paced to begin with than the first two, and has the kind of family themes that he tends to like to cover in the shows he does.
Maybe it feels more like a Filoni episode, but according to IMDB, it was written by Favreau and directed by Bryce Dallas-Howard.

Somebody in the chat posed an interesting theory about The Mandalorian. Symbolically it's a story about the fans vs Disney for the soul of Star Wars. The Mandalorian represents the fans, the Client/Empire represents Disney, and Baby Yeed represents what's left of Star Wars.

Disney just wants to clone it and doesn't care if it lives or dies in the process. The fans were eager to see it in Disney's hands and see a big payoff for it (more Star Wars movies that are better than the Prequels), but then they realize that Disney doesn't care as much about Star Wars as they do. So they steal it back.

Of course, people at Disney didn't necessarily want to kill Star Wars. Most probably don't believe they are, while others know what's happening and are trying to counteract it. This is where Dr. Pershing fits into the analogy.
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Otis Frampton is cool. You know he does artwork for the How It Should Have Ended videos?

Iirc wasn’t Ellen Ripley suppose to be originally a man?
None of the characters in Alien had sexes in the script. Just surnames.

Many female superheroes are just derivatives and spin offs of males.
So, so many...

I've got news for you: Politicians without Force powers manage to degrade democratic republics just fine
The Republic was already massively corrupt and increasingly heading towards collapse. Palpatine merely took advantage of and accelerated that state of affairs.

The rest of the series is interesting as well - the "13th district" having war material enough to take on District 1 was sort of dumb, but set the interesting political backdrop for Catniss seeing & breaking the cycle of violence & revenge. Even the chief villain is given a bit of sympathy, shown to largely be a product of his environment.
The 13th District is apparently what remains of Canada. 🤔

Hot Take: Blade Trinity as a whole was insufferable and his performance didn't make it worse.
The SCRIPT however....
Blade Trinity was fun when Reynolds and Parker Posy were snarking at each other.

...or when Jessica Biel was onscreen.

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You know, in response to whoever the fuck brought up hunger games: Rey is the shallowest, worst main character I've ever seen in mainstream movies to this degree. She's basically the John Cena of this franchise. I mean fuck, Marvel didn't introduce their version of this shit mary sue bullshit until Captain Marvel and that bitch had the decency to not hog screen time in Endgame. You know, that movie that brought a satisfying conclusion to a long epic series of films and made enough cash to purchase a few Epstein sized islands.

Like seriously sit there and think, because I can't think of a character that's managed to shit on as much Rey has, all the while being pushed in all the wamarts, toy catalogs, videogames, three massive movies, etc. Nobody likes this bitch.
 
So I'm a few hours removed from seeing it and I'm trying to remember all the inconsistencies with the film. Lets see if I can list them all:

1) How is Palpatine even alive? Forget falling down a shaft that exploded, but how the fuck did he get off the 2nd Death Star before it exploded? Force Did It example #1

2) What was Finn going to tell Rey? Did they just forget to wrap that up? They referenced it so many times that them not resolving it feels odd.

3) I may have missed a detail here, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but C-3P0's whole side plot. He lost his memory to reveal the translation of the inscription to read the Sith Dagger. But later, Rey is all like "We need the Dagger! Let me go get it". Okay, um, she turns out to be right, but once C-3P0 reveals the coordinates of Exogol, why would she think they even need the dagger anymore? Force Did It Example #2 perhaps?

4) Also, WHAT IS THE SITH DAGGER?! Is it an ancient artifact? If so, why would it specifically be used to map out where the Wayfinder is on the Death Star, something that would have been made long after the inscription on the dagger was made. The dagger is a bizarre mcguffin that makes absolutely no sense.

5) Can Finn use the Force? It certainly seems like he has it as he can sense Rey is in trouble and all that shit. If Finn is a force capable, then why would he not have an arc in this film at all? Or is this Force Did It #3 and its just an excuse to get from point A to point B with no questions asked?

6) I posted this earlier, and now that I've seen the film, it bears repeating. If Leia can train Rey, and Leia can best Luke (as shown in the flashback) then why the fuck didn't she just train Rey from the start? Why did they need to find Luke and the map to Luke and all of the shit that happened in VII and VIII if Leia could have just done it herself? This isn't even Force did it. This is just straight up taking the first two films and ignoring them.

7) Teleporting objects...never set up (not that I recall anyway)...never explained. Rey can just do it. Force did it #4

8) Force healing. Okay, I am racking my brain on this one. So Rey has Force healing. Alright, I'll go with that, and she does it twice in the movie. Fine, fuck it, its something she can do. But...but then Kylo can do it...and then he dies from it. But Rey did it twice and didn't even get hurt by it. I can't believe I'm saying this, but with The Last Jedi, they at least showed how the Force projection can cause harm to the user, so it can't be done all the time, and Luke's use of it was a sacrifice. But they NEVER showed in this movie that Force healing damages the user, Rey used it twice and was fine, Kylo does it once and he's dead....k. Force did it #5.

9) Chewie fake out death....oh so he was on a different transport....uh, what other transport? I only saw the one and it very clearly looked like the one that Chewie boarded, so, uh, what? Force did it #6.

10) Why did Zorra Bliss (sp?) decide to help the gang again? She literally was like "I'm not helping, fuck you all, I'm collecting the bounty" and then Rey knocks her down and she's like "Oh ok, here's everything you need". Character arc achieved!

11) So wait, the force connection between Rey and Kylo (which to be honest, was probably the best stuff in both TLJ and this film) is something pre-established and is a once in a lifetime thing? I thought Snoke made the connection himself? Whatever, Force did it #7.

12) So Exogol is a hidden Sith planet that looks like a mostly dead world...that is sure heavily populated for a hidden near dead world. Who are all those people? How do they survive? Where do all the Sith Troopers and Star Destroyer crews come from?

13) Gotta love Palpatine doing a sky beam to take out the Rebels, huh? But here's my question. If he could do it here, why didn't he just do that in Return of the Jedi when he was stronger? Could he do that the whole time, because if so, why not just blow up the Jedi Temple himself or blow up the Rebel fleet himself? Force did it #8

14) Oh this one is golden. So Palpatine gets killed by having his lightning reflected back at him...which happened to him in an earlier film. Its like, JJ, you know we've seen these movies, right? Hell, it was inconsistent in Revenge of the Sith as Luke got lightning up the ass in Return of the Jedi, and he didn't get deformed, yet Palpatine did in Episode 3. Now, it straight up kills him (I assume anyway...guess they could also use Sith magic to explain bringing his ass back). So Sith Lightning is inconsistent. I guess it was the 2nd lightsaber that did made the difference, although that makes no sense either. Force did it #9

15) Is Han a Force ghost or is Kylo just a crazy man that's seeing things? Either way, something isn't adding up. But Kylo needs to turn good and rush into the final battle for some reason so...Force did it #10

16) Luke/Anakin's saber...who fixed it? When was it fixed? Why was it broken in the first place if it was just going to be used again by Rey anyway? And the whole "I have to prove I'm worthy of Luke's saber" or whatever...uh, lady, you've been using it for two films. It is basically your saber now.

I think I got them all, but wow. This movie was just a mess.
 
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Luke got lightning up the ass in Return of the Jedi, and he didn't get deformed, yet Palpatine did in Episode 3.
I think the official (pre-Disney) explanation was that the Force/Sith lightning merely revealed Palpatine's true appearance, the result of dipping into the Dark Side for many decades.

Were they some manner of missionaries? Because that sounds sorta like the setup to the old pulp scifi Star Wolf (aka Fugitive Alien)
The Mandos, or his birth parents? If the latter: dunno. It looks like they were just ordinary townsfolk from the flashbacks, but it's impossible to say for certain at this point going by the limited amount of information that's been provided.
 
Just finished watching the movie during Movie Night tonight. The pacing is all over the place, the dialogue ranged from ‘teehee quips!’ to genuine cringe and you can easily tell that a good portion of the film was rushed just to get to that near Christmas release date. I feel sorry for you Star Wars fans, honestly.
I too caught the 2nd showing (well except the first ~10 min so i didn't see Rey "train" ) and agree with your conclusions. Ridley still can't act, can't choreograph and is a bigger Sue than ever. The dialogue is almost all terrible quipping, and the editing feels very disjointed, the last act in particular. Overall it didn't feel like a SW movie to me no matter how many memberberries Jew-jew shoved in my face, the cinematography and editing made it feel like a current year generic action movie.

Box office wise i looks like this is doing OK. Predictions are that it's currently behind TLJ, but it might have better legs than that dumpster fire. Hopefully WoM kills it, like it killed TLJ.

Now to catch up on ~90 pages of you jerks.
 
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