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Post by wordweaver3 on Oct 3, 2018 2:54:51 GMT
I also don't get the political motivations behind the movie. I have never approached it from a political standpoint. Even if I did, that's not enough to harm a movie in my opinion. Some of my favorite movies have very obvious left-wing bias messages that don't bother me at all. Robocop and Rollerball have an anti-capitalist message in all the violence. Don't care. They are among my favorite movies of all time.
I spend a massive amount of my life exploring what makes a story good, bad, or simply mediocre. I study character building, world building, story structure, plot progression, themes, adherence to cannon and lore, etc. All the things that make a story a story.
The Last Jedi is actually fascinating in how spectacularly it fails to tell a coherent story. It's worth studying simply on that basis. That's the only direction that I'm approaching it from. I don't mind that there are feminist agendas. What I mind is that the characters that are supposed to support these agendas are so poorly written. That the story that these characters are in moves forward in such an illogical way. It's so bad that it infuriates me that it actually made it to theaters.
Now, theme is important to a story, but it shouldn't be driving the events so obviously. Characters steer the story, theme is merely the engine. Theme is not magic. If things are happening in a story simply to fit with the theme you're not telling a story at all, you're just fulfilling an agenda. What's more, theme should not be confused with the story's moral message. It should not supplant the moral.
What moral did Rey learn in this movie? More specifically, what did she learn that she didn't learn in the previous movie?
Fin?
Rose?
Poe?
Kylo?
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Post by zaealix on Oct 3, 2018 3:56:49 GMT
...I think, I'm not sure but I think you touched on the problem of letting such agendas run rampant or go too far. A good story can be re-framed with questions of Feminism, or Racism, or whatever hot-button topic you like, and be relevant to that conversation. A tale built around/themed on those things though, tends to only really be applicable towards discussions of that theme in particular.
Like you can do all sorts of things with even something as simple as Mario's story of villian takes princess, hero goes to rescue princess, villian fights hero, hero wins and saves princess, the end. But it doesn't work the other way around.
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Post by Harkovast on Oct 3, 2018 13:02:44 GMT
Wordweaver oh oh I know!
Finn learned that you have to save what you love, not destroy what you hate and you shouldn't sacrifice yourself. Even though those things are mutually exclusive and multiple other characters sacrificed themselves and that was good.
Rey learned that the Jedi are shit...but then kept the jedi text so I guess they aren't shit....um....she learned that luke skywalker talks shit?
Poe learned to stop mansplaining, listen to women and blindly follow authority even if the authority appears to be insane and is giving orders that will get people killed. Authority knows best...especially WOMEN authorities! As leia told him "get your head out of your cockpit" (I bet Rian thought that was really clever when he came up with it.) I bet any money Poe manspreads inside his x wing, the inconsiderate prick.
Kylo learned...to shout a lot? I think everyone in the first orders learned that lesson. Fuckers won't stop shouting.
Rose didn't learn anything. She was already perfect. Same for Putin.
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Post by StyxD on Oct 3, 2018 21:42:22 GMT
Okay, my boys, so I did read the paper. It is… well, it's something, certainly. Not in the way you think, probably. So laugh it up, but the article does have a semi-solid methodology of judging if some of the Twitter accounts display patterns characteristic of known Russian propaganda spreaders. It wholly defers to another article on this, which I may read at some point, but it sounds reasonable. However, the article doesn't make a claim that there was any concentrated effort on Russia's part to target TLJ. It's mentioned that all of these accounts were simultaneously tweeting about Trump and other alt-right talking point at that time. So it looks like they're simply parroting whatever US-native alt-right is stirring shit about. So yeah, Russian trolls are stroking the populist electorate worldwide. Not really something surprising or unique to the Star Wars fandom. Honestly, there are other things I find more… questionable in the paper. First and foremost, the data set was positively tiny: tweets mentioning Rian Johnson directly. This was probably done for simplicity: there are extensive studies on bot and Russian troll activities on Twitter (which gave the author a straightforward methodology for classifying the tweets), and Rian Johnson is a singular entity, unlike a myriad random hashtags people could be discussing Star Wars under. The author is aware of this shortcoming, but doesn't analyze the bias that may come from this selection, instead choosing to, ahem, cover his ass. (emphasis mine) So, does this article mean anything for the bigger picture or not? You decide!Another, much more touchy thing… aside from bots, socks and trolls, the by far most numerous division in the lovely named "likely politically motivated or not even human" is the "politically motivated". As I understood from the paper, this includes people who were dissatisfied with TLJ and claimed it was "ruined by SJWs" or the like, or otherwise expressed racist, misogynistic or homophobic sentiment. Or loved Trump. Stuff like that. Which is fair, I suppose. Tribal outrage works like this. You may not even have seen the movie, but it offends all your YouTube idols, so you're offended too. The problem I have with this is that, unlike with bots and trolls, the author does not try to apply this category to positive tweets for comparison. Make no mistake, I have no love for bigots and conservatists, they should all be sent to the gulag, but it seems unfair to just assume that there is politically motivated hate towards TLJ, but there could never be politically motivated praise. Part of it, I think, is unwillingness or discomfort in defining what would count as having a "leftist political agenda". Boy, that would probably offend someone. But if someone expressing hate for TLJ because of perceived Marxist propaganda can be dismissed as not a real fan, what about someone praising TLJ for perceived pawnage of mansplaining? It's touchy for me, because back where I live, saying that some opinion or statement is "politically motivated" is a silencing tactic used by the governing right wingers all the time. So you think that new legislation is shit, or want to protest for your rights? I'm sorry, but you're clearly "politically motivated" and nothing you say needs to be taken seriously, because you're only doing this just to spite the right-thinking folk and you're probably paid/manipulated by ze Jews. Meanwhile, there's also this poisonous sentiment that if only foreign manipulators would leave us alone we'd be all united and right-thinking, and all dissent is artificially grown. It's still important to note that there's a breadth of difference between the validity of values expressed by liberals and populists… but how we go about policing them seems to be eerily similar. I mean, fuck, I don't want this paper to represent the pervading mentality of the left. I won't hear the end of it from Hark. Oh, and a funny thing: while the Vulture article is the most condescending, it's the Guardian that seems to be confused about the scope of the study and seems to suggest this translates to 50% of all negative posts on all social media. Wow, what shitheads. What more is there to say? By the way, wordweaver3, do you mean that every story has, or should have, some moral message and not just themes?
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Post by Harkovast on Oct 3, 2018 23:57:21 GMT
The study itself is basically meaningless. Its not peer reviewed, its not a huge sample nad he basically just sorts poeple into groups (those who are Amreicna but post at odd times for exmaple) and declares those groups to be Russian bots. Its not solid proof of anything.
The paper SHOULD be totally unimportant and no one should care. Unfortunately cause it fits the narrative people (Rian included) jump all over it.
I don't know how they can not realise how ridiculous it makes them look, but what the hell do I know?
If people have a political objection...that doesn't mean the objection is wrong. If the film had all the women as helpless slaves and Poe slaps Leia on the ass and tells her to make a space sandwich...I think we would all have some pretty strong objcetions to those gender politics. Or if the film started banging on about how awesome capitalism is and how the free market will stop the Empire. I think some might raise a few objects to the politics!
The guardian used to be a proper paper, I dunno what happened. These days they are down and dirty like the worst Murdock run tabloid.
I've noticed the similar silencing tactic in America of saying people are "politicising" something. Basically that means people are using an event that makes us look bad to demonstrate that we are wrong. Both sides cry this tactic. Whn there is a school shooting nad the left say ban the guns, the right say dont politicise the shooting! Terrorist blows himself up and the right wants to cut immigrations, the left are saying dont politicise it! Both sides do it, and both sides cry foul over it.
Politically motivated is an odd one...I mean yeah of course poeple are politically motivated. That's like saying someone shouldn't drive because that are travelling by car motivated! Stop eating, you are clearly food motivated! If you want to do things politically you have to be politically motivated!
As for not hearing the end of it...TOO LATE! I've promoted Rian Johnson to God Emperor of all leftists! He speaks for you now! Whatever goes on his twitter has basically just come out of your mouth. I'm pretty sure you have a writing credit on Last Jedi at this point!
(Being serious though, I thought what you said about there being the potential for a political bias in favour of the film as well as against is a good insight.)
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Post by wordweaver3 on Oct 4, 2018 0:50:05 GMT
By the way, wordweaver3 , do you mean that every story has, or should have, some moral message and not just themes?
Ideally, yes. A story without a moral is barely more than pornography. Things happening to satisfy a need in the audience, only instead of titillation it's entertainment. Michael Bay has made a career out of this, but Bay doesn't tell stories. Many things we call a "story" are really just a tale. An imaginative account that is lacking a moral. There's nothing really wrong with a tale, people use them all the time in their daily life, but a tale has no weight. They typically don't transcend themselves in a way that a true story can.
There are exception, of course. Jaws doesn't really have an overriding moral. There are things you can pick up here and there, most notably a touch on the moral of Moby Dick, but that's only cursory. Jaws is a tale. An exceptionally well told tale, but a tale nonetheless.
The problem is that we're getting really deep into the minutia here. For the average person the finer points between a story and a tale are inconsequential. Like wondering if that's a crocodile or an alligator that's biting your leg.
The thing is TLJ doesn't even qualify as a tale. A tale still has a logical progression of events.
Not a moral but I wanted to talk about the "Jedi are shit" theme that is suddenly appearing in Star Wars. I've heard this before how the Jedi screwed up royally and they, as a concept, were a failure. Now it's shown in detail how they screwed up, but what we are witnessing is a very small segment of the overall history of the Jedi order. As Kenobi said: "For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and Justice in the Old Republic". A thousand generations, or even a thousand years (as stated in the prequels), is a long time for something to work. It wasn't until the last two generations that the Jedi had collapsed. We were witness to this, but had no experience with the 1000 gen/years of peace. It's sorta like stepping out of an airplane on Maui, noticing that it is overcast, cold and rainy, and saying that Maui is a cold and rainy place with no sunshine.
And if this is the direction the movies are going to go, once again, why did Disney buy the property if they were just going to throw away the most unique thing about it?
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Post by Harkovast on Oct 4, 2018 1:51:17 GMT
The USA is, I would suggest, a very successful nation. It has been around for over 200 years. If the commies attack and blow it up tomorrow I guess Luke would consider it a REALLY big failure.
I have no idea how long Luke thinks we need to keep things around before they are considered successful. Longer than a human life time isn't enough for our boy Luke, he has high standards.
A friend of mine made that observation about killing the stuf they bought. Adamiral Akbar cost money. I can't put Akbar in harkovast cause Disney owns him. Disney killed him off, so disney paid money for Akbar just to get rid of him.
They did the same for Han Solo. Harisson wanted out so they didn't have much choice. So for Han they were basically paying for nothing. They thought the name had value without hte actor...Solo box office says not.
Hamil wont be back again, Carrie Fishcer is dead...so thats the three main characters they paid for and can't use. After this trilogy ends you are kinda left wondering....what exactly has disney got to show for all this?
Funny thing, People are suggesting that based on his reaction to the movie....Mark Hamil must be a secret Russian bot.
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Post by wordweaver3 on Oct 4, 2018 2:48:34 GMT
I suppose you could still have young Luke bulls-eye some womprats in his T16 in the next offshoot movie. They'll call it Skywalker: A Dirt Farmer Story. We'll even get to learn about his connection to Putin.
But yeah, they completely blew their one chance with Mark. I doubt he'll even come back for the force ghost shit.
It's so baffling to me that they went into this with no plan. JJ had no plan. He had a few outlines and possible ideas of where things would go, but nothing solid. Didn't matter anyway since Rian threw away all of JJ's ideas and preceded with his own lack of plan. You have the most famous franchise in history and you give the whole thing over to "some guy". It just seems to me you should have just hired 10 of the best writers and 10 of the best storyboard artist you could find and lock them in a room for a year and see what they come up with. Sort of a 20 man enter, one man leave.
When they threw away the expanded universe I took it as a sign that they had some far reaching idea of where the whole thing was going that the EU just didn't fit in. Turns out they just thew it away because that's all they know how to do. Jedi? Throw it away (but keep the light sabers). Luke Skywalker? Fuck that guy. Han Solo? Eh, wring a bad movie out of him and toss that shit. Sith? Do we really need negative labels?
The thing is, if you were just going to make what is essentially a parody of Star Wars there's no reason to actually purchase the property.
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Post by StyxD on Oct 4, 2018 13:00:17 GMT
If people have a political objection...that doesn't mean the objection is wrong. Yeah, but alt-right objections, like TLJ having forced diversity or being somehow hateful to men… well, they pretty much are wrong. Politically motivated is an odd one...I mean yeah of course poeple are politically motivated. I think the idea is that if your only complaints about a work are about its politics, you're not really talking about the quality of the work but are only angry it says what you don't want it to say. Hence, not a real fan. It's, again, something that was mostly the domain of alt-right, as regressive gamers would object to criticising their favourite games on the grounds of anything else but bare functionality. You know, I think I realized something. So far, it was mostly conservatists trying to shield their favorite works from scrutiny by declaring it to be purely political. With TLJ it's probably the first time it's happening in reverse. We're seeing the same thing, but with mostly leftist fanbase. A story without a moral is barely more than pornography. I find this extremely quotable. Still, I've never heard "story" and "tale" being used as different technical terms. Is it really accepted? And what would you classify as a "moral" of a story? Clearly, it's not supposed to be just a lesson spelled out at the end. I have no idea how long Luke thinks we need to keep things around before they are considered successful. Well, the EU (non-canon, I know!) hints at the cyclical nature of the conflict between Jedi and Sith. In this light, the Jedi could be considered a failure, because their teachings and their order failed to destroy evil once and for all, instead being content to beat it down with lightsabres repeatedly when it emerged, at the same time compounding the problem with their own members falling to the Dark Side. The Jedi were the guardians of peace, yet they never seemed to manage to stop Star Wars (plural) from breaking out. None of this is new, really. The same story point was at the core of KotOR 2. Fans seemed to love it then. So clearly, Trump is to blame. Or maybe, when Luke says that Jedi were a failure, he's talking about himself. Luke never knew the Jedi Order of old, and by the end of OT he pretty much were "the Jedi". He set out to rebuild the Order, but when the reemergence of the Dark Side came in Ben, he wasn't ready, panicked and everything collapsed. In this way, the Jedi teachings failed him personally. See? Even I can write theming for Star Wars. It's also possible the writer saw Jedi as a patriarchal, conservative order, and so their failure was self-evident, and the right way for the Force forward was to let everyone play with levitating brooms equally. But that's political. A friend of mine made that observation about killing the stuf they bought. Are they, really? The OT cast is not getting any younger. One way or another, they had to give the characters closure and introduce their replacements. They still can make loads of prequels.
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Post by Harkovast on Oct 4, 2018 13:09:14 GMT
Prequals with new actors no one cares about. Again, Im not sure they thought this through very well.
Something being political doesn't make it bad, but it doesn't make it correct. You can have polticial objections that are shit.
I don't think the idea that the film did goofy anti male stuff is invalid. The whole thing where Poe has to learn to listen to women was pretty heavy handed. And thats not a right wing conspiracy. lots of progressive feminist types have praised the movie precisely because it make the male characters wrong and they have to learn to trust the wiser women. Jonathan Macintosh from feminist frequency did a whole video about how good this was. So it seems those themes are there, its just a matter of are they handled way or communicated in a way that isn't embarrassing.
Honestly to me its less the message and more the way a message if given that can spoil a film. A lot of action movies have pretty right wing messages about a strong man solving problems with guns and violence that I wouldn't agree with in real life so much, but its well told and works in the context of the movie. Fury Road has loads of female empowerment stuff and is great. Its more putting in political stuff badly, in a ham fisted way, that is the problem. Canto-Bite awkwardly stops the movie to give us a moral lecture about war profitering. You could put in a message like that and have it be cool, but it was the way it was conveyed that was the problem.
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Post by StyxD on Oct 4, 2018 15:45:40 GMT
Prequals with new actors no one cares about. Again, Im not sure they thought this through very well. Okay, so what should have they done? Cast Hamil & co. the main characters again? I don't think the idea that the film did goofy anti male stuff is invalid. Goofy, yes, but saying it's anti-male is a rather peculiar standpoint.
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Post by Harkovast on Oct 4, 2018 22:25:57 GMT
I was just going by the wya the feminist interpreted it when they were saying it was good!
Regarding buying the franchse...I kinda wonder if Lucas saw then coming. The actors are too old, you cna't really do much more with it, so he sold it for a massive amount. Maybe its just not that good a thing to buy.
Though buying it with literally no plan of what actual stories you intended to tell was crazy! 4 Billion dollars down and we will figure out what to do with what we bought later!
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Post by StyxD on Oct 4, 2018 23:07:54 GMT
I was just going by the wya the feminist interpreted it when they were saying it was good! Well, the feminists didn't call this "anti-male", it was the right-wing interpretation of the feminist interpretation. Uh, I don't know what is real life anymore. Regarding buying the franchse...I kinda wonder if Lucas saw then coming. The actors are too old, you cna't really do much more with it, so he sold it for a massive amount. I dunno. I think you're overestimating the significance of the original protagonists. The Prequels and a huge part of the EU stuff did not rely on them and it still made solid money, apparently. Though buying it with literally no plan of what actual stories you intended to tell was crazy! 4 Billion dollars down and we will figure out what to do with what we bought later! Well, that sounds exactly like corporate logic. Besides, they probably thought they can do just about anything with Star Wars and it will make mad money. And it worked, kinda.
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Post by Harkovast on Oct 4, 2018 23:24:35 GMT
You have to remember, star wars started 4 billion in the hole for disney. They have to make more than 4 billion, after all costs, production, advertising etc, to have made any profit at all. When you factor in the up front cost, and the fact there are already warning signs that the value is flagging, it might not be the cash cow everyone imagined. Movies that bomb like Solo are actually putting them MORE into the hole!
They should put that on T shirts.
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Post by wordweaver3 on Oct 5, 2018 1:53:37 GMT
The "story" and "tale" distinction might just be for my own emotional well being. Sometimes a movie or novel doesn't seem to classify correctly as a story but I don't have the heart to label it as pornography.
Moby Dick is one of the most iconic examples of a moral, the major theme is vengeance, the major moral is the futility and ultimate self-destructive nature of that theme. However, that's just the one everybody comes away with because of the last few chapters. It's the one that's spelled out for us. Also in the book is don't judge another on appearance alone, be careful what you ask for (in this case, adventure), don't dismiss wise council, quit when you're ahead, and sailors tell dirty, dirty jokes.
But it's the major moral that makes it a true story. This is what the author spent almost 600 pages trying to get across. It's the entire point of it. Any author can trip and fall into some accidental morals, a good one knows what he's trying to say.
No that wouldn't have worked either. They needed to pass the torch to new characters. The problem is that the new characters aren't very good. One of the things that irked me about TLJ was when Rey reached out to the force and Luke declares that she didn't shy away from the dark side. There is no set up to that. We don't see Rey acting in a self-serving manner or making questionable moral decisions. Maybe if we had something earlier like she actually sold BB8 when the fat guy made the offer we could go "Okay, yeah, she's got some dark side influence". Instead it comes off like a toddler grabbing someone's crotch because they don't know any better. This could work if she was presented as someone who was sheltered, but the movie goes through great pains to show us that she's self-sufficient and living in poverty. She should be worldly, not naive.
And really, Rey as the force sensitive one was a massive mistake anyway. It should have been Finn. Rey should have been more Han Soloish, which would have gone a long way to explaining why her character seemed to bond with Solo.
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