Star Wars Episode II - A New Thread

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

movieartman has a history of..... responding like TDSA did back in his day. (I felt weirdly nostalgic just typing that name.)

Anywhoo, I wouldn't get all caught up in this rumor mill nonsense. I've seen plenty of things like this with other franchises where the rumor mills will claim to know the downfall of "X" only for "X" to never actually fall, and then the rumor mill has to spend the next few weeks tossing between "Sorry for the bad info guys but we're totally a reliable source for news trust me" and "WHY IS 'X' CONSTANTLY ALLOWED TO DO STUFF???? BLAAAAARGH!!!" My only wild speculation about Star Wars is that Disney will wait and see how Episode 9 fairs before making any major staffing changes. (They kind of have to at this point. IMDB already lists it as being in pre-production.) These spin-off films have been for more trouble than they've been worth (the amount of reshoots escalates with each one), so I can easily see Disney considering to halt production on those until they can get a handle on that situation. But other than that possibility, I don't see much changing. Unless Episode 9 fails completely in theaters, the only thing I can see happening to Kathleen Kennedy's job is that she's shifted to focus only on the main Star Wars Episodes while someone else produces the spin-off films. That's the most drastic change I can see happening. Episode 9 needs to fail completely in order for anything more drastic than that to happen. (And that's if anything happens at all.)

Basically, we just need to wait and see what Disney's gonna do from now on. Trust me, when they actually do it (whatever it sill be), it'll be very public and extremely obvious to everyone. Kathleen Kennedy leaving Disney would be as public as the time Jeffrey Katzenberg left Disney. If that happens, we can talk about it after the fact. Until then, I see no point in playing telephone with unreliable sources.

[movieartman]

movieartman has a history of..... responding like TDSA did back in his day.

Can you please explain what this means to someone who isn't familiar with TDSA?

I wasn't attacking Gendo's Papa, I was attempting to dismantle the notion that if you take issue with how diversity is being presented in film then you inherently hate diversity on general principle.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

I wasn't attacking Gendo's Papa, I was attempting to dismantle the notion that if you take issue with how diversity is being presented in film then you inherently hate diversity on general principle.

I wouldn’t be so quick to claim that. Birth of a Nation has a couple of real African Americans in the film (mixed among white actors in black face), and the film shows these people getting lynched after being pejoratively depicted as part of a racial group identified as only being rapists. Should we celebrate this example of diversity and how it was presented? Or can how diversity is presented negatively impact the fact that diversity was presented?

[silvermoonlight]

It was inevitable, Episode VIII has been kinda underwhelming at the box office and Solo was a massive flop.

The main issue I had with Solo was the great train robbery in the film its a massive joke, you have this vast space yet they go and make him steal from a grounded planet train which no one would care about, like that whole scene could have been set in Space and him stealing off a space train from a mayor Imperial space station because if he stole from something like that like the galaxy would take notice and go oh look this guy is going places.

[movieartman]

I wouldn’t be so quick to claim that. Birth of a Nation has a couple of real African Americans in the film (mixed among white actors in black face), and the film shows these people getting lynched after being pejoratively depicted as part of a racial group identified as only being rapists. Should we celebrate this example of diversity and how it was presented? Or can how diversity is presented negatively impact the fact that diversity was presented?

Your point here is exactly the point I was making. That not all diversity is handled well.
Gendo's Papa was the one making the claim that the vast majority of people who are critical of diversity in entertainment have deep seated misogyny/racism as the root cause of their criticism.

[Chuckman]

Not most people, just vocal critics who don't have a substantive criticism of a character or story that doesn't reference gender or race. There are plenty of them and there are plenty of them attacking Rey, for example.

A big clue is unironically using the term "Mary Sue". It's come to mean overpowered character, but the original meaning is "a female fan's self insert character designed to recenter the story on herself and have a romance with the male leads, pushing them to second tier importance". The continued use of it as a pejorative has a definite misogynist bent, since it's a critique of female encroachment on male spaces.

[movieartman]

Not most people, just vocal critics who don't have a substantive criticism of a character or story that doesn't reference gender or race. There are plenty of them and there are plenty of them attacking Rey, for example.

But the substantive criticisms must reference gender/race because as I said, many of the flaws in the film were done intentionally in service of elevating the minority characters.

Example - They couldn't just let Holdo be competent & impressive all on her own, they had to go and make Poe look sexist & in the wrong when in reality, he would have and should have done the same thing if a male general was behaving like she did.

A big clue is unironically using the term "Mary Sue". It's come to mean overpowered character, but the original meaning is "a female fan's self insert character designed to recenter the story on herself and have a romance with the male leads, pushing them to second tier importance". The continued use of it as a pejorative has a definite misogynist bent, since it's a critique of female encroachment on male spaces.

But it's not morally wrong or hatful towards women to be against "female encroachment" when its done in a sadistic manner that screams out that the people writing it hold outright disdain for the franchise and fans of the franchise.

I have no problem with comics & films being made for a female target audience but not when they don't want to merge with the fanbase and enjoy what the fans enjoy and instead wish to alter the product to suit them and only them.

Jyn & Rogue One showed how to do a strong inspiring female character without tearing down anything around her and behold she recieved little to no hate from the fans, Rey gets hate because they took a bad approach.
I was fine with her being powerful, I was fine with her holding her own against a injured Kylo but her Jedi mind tricking the trooper was preposterous.

[Chuckman]

Why do you assume Holdo is female just to service that plot? In what way would it be less of an idiot ball plot if Holdo was a man or an alien walrus puppet? Why would you criticize the character's gender in talking about an unnecessary element of convolusion in the plot?

The idea that they must have made a poor writing decision because the character is a woman is a meaningless, sexist critique. There are other plot issues with the film that don't involve women but you're not going to attribute those flaws to the relevant characters being male.

[silvermoonlight]

On the topic of women in power in media I do see a worrying trend in US media that when women are in control it means the world is out of place or there's something wrong in sociality this can be from female driven colony's in the walking dead to female leaders of countries on screen. Even though this is not true in reality and having two female prime ministers in the UK has shown that they made bad choices just like there male counterparts and were not worse leaders than them.

I feel this negative female leader trope in past film is what is effecting a lot of peoples views on The Last Jedi because they don't see Holdo as making bad choices like a male leader in the same situation instead there conditioned because of past movies and media to go female leader in control so things must be wrong somehow in the Star Wars universe and that she will screw up due to her gender.

So the female led argument in my view goes well beyond The Last Jedi is a film and media issue that has not yet been fully corrected. I also though get the other side of this coin which is if your putting it in to this film just to please a bunch on people on tumblr/twitter means your doing it for the wrong reasons as these transitions should feel deeply natural and it should be because the writer wants to write a well balance female character not a copy of male one which they've put a female skin on only then can you set the gender imbalance right.

This also brings me to another problematic point female characters written should not be stepping on male ones in the narrative, granted the ultra hard ass of the 90's was used in this way in shows like Buffy/Xena and in can cause problems with the male characters portrayed as stupid or weaker which is not right and is a type of reverse sexism and is no better than its counterpart. So when female characters are written in power it should be okay for a male character to disagree but still be able to respect the opinion and the female character should be interested in there view point and not cut them off. If you reserve the gender this is a bad trope used to cut down female characters opinions and its not good ether way.

This is where The Last Jedi fails for me who ever wrote Holdo got it wrong because she's not interested in Poe thoughts and she cuts him down and in the other Star Wars movies there's conflict but they normally think off something else or end up on the same page but Poe and Holdo never do. So to the audience who can't see this they go oh look the female leaders being a bitch when the reality is the writers have screwed it with writing a bad dynamic and have misunderstood the consequences of doing so big time and in doing so have alienated the audience with a very none Star Wars feel.

[movieartman]

Why do you assume Holdo is female just to service that plot? In what way would it be less of an idiot ball plot if Holdo was a man or an alien walrus puppet? Why would you criticize the character's gender in talking about an unnecessary element of convolusion in the plot?

The idea that they must have made a poor writing decision because the character is a woman is a meaningless, sexist critique. There are other plot issues with the film that don't involve women but you're not going to attribute those flaws to the relevant characters being male.

I wasn't criticizing Holdo's gender. I was criticizing them intentionally using it and Star Wars as a mouthpiece to spread a out of place message against workplace sexism so they could gather these kinda of leftist critical points of acclaim - https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/20 ... n-to-women

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Offers the Harsh Condemnation of Mansplaining We Need in 2017: An eerily perfect installment for the post-Trump era.

This is where The Last Jedi fails for me who ever wrote Holdo got it wrong because she's not interested in Poe thoughts and she cuts him down and in the other Star Wars movies there's conflict but they normally think off something else or end up on the same page but Poe and Holdo never do. So to the audience who can't see this they go oh look the female leaders being a bitch when the reality is the writers have screwed it with writing a bad dynamic and have misunderstood the consequences of doing so big time and in doing so have alienated the audience with a very none Star Wars feel.

Exactly.
I don't even have a issue with "bitchy" female characters, just don't present them as also being right when characters react naturally to their unlikable mannerisms.

[pwhodges]

It's possible to be unpleasant and right, though.

[silvermoonlight]

It's possible to be unpleasant and right, though.

This is true and I'm not disputing that there are some media where this works really well regardless of the character's gender. The issue the Last Jedi is we are very used to seeing level headed leaders and smart thinkers who normally loose there temper over personal issues like Princess Leia who would get annoyed when Solo was pissing her off but when she was in the hot seat she was always deeply calm and focused and always on the ball.

This is why Holdo becomes so jarring to audience because have this leader who is making it really personal in front of others and being a difficult and take it out on Poe and its so OOC in Star Wars because we don't normally see scenes like this we see leaders at there best fighting there hardest and giving everything they have to make a plan work. I honestly felt that in the writing room the writers were going oh yeah lets create a conflict because those are fun because we need to fill time and if you look they also do with Luke who a lot of people said wasn't acting like Luke because the real Luke would never be that dismissive and would try and help and train Rey

This in turns leads to Rey starting to do super Jedi things which are out of her character bonds due to lack of training it also in turn leads to the save abusive love interest trope with her somehow wanting to save Kylo when she should have killed him or taken his hand off and had zero forgiveness for him after the last film. Like the film is one misstep after another...

[Sachi]

Holdo never made things personal. She was strictly professional, even when she had to call out Poe for his bad decision earlier in the film, and that's why Poe didn't like her. Poe was the one disregarding the chain of command, trying to subvert the leadership with a mutiny. Especially given Poe's recent bad record, she had every reason not to tell him anything regarding the mission, and with her being the ranking officer he should have had no expectation of being told what he wanted to know (and let's not even get into how he eventually did leak the mission, the idiot).

[Gendo'sPapa]

If Holdo had been replaced by the fucking 'It's a Trap' fishman the argument among male nerds would be "Man, why can't Poe, who the movie has already proven to be a bit of a hothead & who in the very first scene disobeys a direct order from his superior commander Leia to retreat & instead cuts her off so he can win a momentary victory by sacrificing a great deal of lives just learn to trust in his superior officer. We know Fishman is a competent leader, I mean he's Fishman!"

[DarkBluePhoenix]

If Holdo had been replaced by Admiral Ackbar the argument among male nerds would be "Man, why can't Poe, who the movie has already proven to be a bit of a hothead & who in the very first scene disobeys a direct order from his superior commander Leia to retreat & instead cuts her off so he can win a momentary victory by sacrificing a great deal of lives just learn to trust in his superior officer. We know Admiral Ackbar is a competent leader, I mean he's Admiral Ackbar!"

ftfy

Though, replacing Holdo wouldn't have made a difference, at least to me, even with Ackbar. Poe, being known as a hothead should have been told something to keep him in check, at least the very minimum that there was a plan and not to do anything stupid, and to simply trust the acting commander to do their job. If Ackbar had done the same thing, it actually would have been more backlash, considering we know Ackbar to be a competent leader, it would be more jarring too see that competence fall away. Holdo was a new character, so other than a throwaway line by Poe about her background as a great tactical leader, we know little of her except what was shown briefly on screen, which, for a male or female character

Anyway, back on point, you never let hotheads prone to rash decisions sit in the dark and fester. Either lock their ass up with minimum human contact with those you trust, give them some task to keep their mind occupied until you enact your plan, or let them in on the plan so they can assist. Plus, this is a rebellion resistance, so is the chain of command all important? I mean, they're rebelling resisting, especially given how easily it was for Poe to convince so many to mutiny in the first place.

[Chuckman]

The whole movie suffers from the problem of good idea, poor execution.

Luke who has rejected the warrior path? Perfect. In Return of the Jedi, Luke finally defeats Vader by discarding his weapon. He wins without fighting. Having Luke refuse to become a warrior again and ultimately become one with the Force is a fantastic end for the character. The way they did it?

A slow-rolling naval battle in space? Generally, Star Wars treats space combat more like dogfighting and World War II air raids than the ponderous age-of-sail/submarine style battles of Star Trek, but sure go for it. The way it's executed?

Poe is a hothead and has to learn reserve? Makes sense if he's being built into a main character. Wait... what was even the resolution of this plot? How did he change? Was it ever clear whether his actions at the beginning of the movie made things better or worse? Why is he singled out to be disciplined/yelled at when it looked like the entire Resistance fighter/bomber force followed his orders over their commanders?

The only part of it that was any good was Rey and Kylo Ren.

I attribute a lot of these missteps to having to follow TFA. If Luke was going to be a character he should have come back sooner in the trilogy and had more screentime. Kylo's motivation was clearly made up as the writers went along, and while it makes some sense, it's hard to grasp how the calm, collected Luke who truly mastered the Force the last time we saw him became a fearful hothead again.

In truth I think it would have been better for these movies if Luke had simply been dead and left a hologram for Rey to find or something. The sequel trilogy was simply made too late, and the main actors were too old to properly resolve their characters. With the tragic early passing of Carrie Fisher, the last movie will have to carry itself entirely on new material, and we already saw two movies coasting on nostalgia that is already wearing thin.

TLJ deserves some credit for trying to expand the horizons of Star Wars a little and making a dedicated effort not to be fan service from beginning to end, but in many ways its reach exceeds its grasp.

Edit: You know what the problem with TFA is?

It's the Avengers of Star Wars. You know how the first Avengers movie has this problem where it's not confident that the audience saw the solo movies, so they feel the need to start each character where they were at the beginning of their own movies and give them a little mini arc? (Except Black Widow, who's there to push Joss Whedon's waif fu, feet, and beauty and the beast buttons)

TFA does the same thing to Luke. It feels like it has to use him somehow, but he's a character with a completed arc who has nothing really to do or add. So they put him through a quick, hamfisted repeat of his arc from the first movies, except he's old and cynical too. They just took the character and repeated what they already did. In a way, Luke's presence in TLJ is that film's version of "It's a Death Star, but BIGGER!" from TFA.

It would have been better for the story if TFA had revealed that Kylo simply killed him, and Mark Hamill did not reprise his role except maybe in flashback.

I wasn't criticizing Holdo's gender. I was criticizing them intentionally using it and Star Wars as a mouthpiece to spread a out of place message against workplace sexism so they could gather these kinda of leftist critical points of acclaim -

If there's anyone guilty of that, it's the Vanity Fair article you linked. Holdo didn't exactly look at the camera and mouth "mansplaining" while Poe yelled at her or something.

The problem is that the discussion immediately has to go to her being a woman. Like Gendo'sPapa said, if it had been Admiral Ackbar instead of Laura Dern in a new role, it would completely change everyone's reading and the debate about the characters and plotline. If anything, the dynamic can be read as the filmmakers making the character opposing Poe new and female in order to undermine her in favor of the established character. They used her womanhood to automatically make her a foil to the hero character. It's dismissive of the real issue with the script to say that she was forced into it to make some kind of pro-woman statement.

They can't even make Rey but swoon over Kylo and his eight pack. Having an older actress who's better known for her dramatic ability than sex appeal play an authority figure does not make a movie some kind of pro-woman statement if the context of her role doesn't support that, which in this case it does not.

If they did make the decision to write the part as they did and cast Dern for the role based on diversity or more female characters or whatever, that doesn't make it an attack on men or something. If anything that just makes it more insulting to women.

Look ladies! There's a woman in the movie! She's got purple hair! Sure she sucks and her role is ambiguous at best and she's a foil to the stereotypical scruffy rogue hero, but she would fit in at Pike's Place Market! Wedge your fat asses into the seats and buy some popcorn!

[DarkBluePhoenix]

If they did make the decision to write the part as they did and cast Dern for the role based on diversity or more female characters or whatever, that doesn't make it an attack on men or something. If anything that just makes it more insulting to women.

Look ladies! There's a woman in the movie! She's got purple hair! Sure she sucks and her role is ambiguous at best and she's a foil to the stereotypical scruffy rogue hero, but she would fit in at Pike's Place Market! Wedge your fat asses into the seats and buy some popcorn!

You're absolutely right, Dern did a great job with what she was given, similar to Ryan Reynolds in Green Lantern and X-Men Origins, it falls to bad writing as to why everything came off as shit. But the problem of TLJ is that Holdo's characterization points to a systemic problem in Hollywood. The problem being IMHO that Hollywood, rather than actually write a powerful role for a woman in sci-fi, writes it for a man, an then just casts a woman in the role rather than having to change how a specific character archetype would act. This leads to two issues. First, the woman comes off as a "bitch" as was mentioned by a lot of the disgruntled fans (and that was some of the nicer things that were said by the dissenters). The second is that while trying to make a woman badass in a role, they try to hard to make it happen, which makes things seem unnatural, like Ray having some massive mastery of the force without needed effort, which leads to the hoards of "Mary-Sue"-ers screeching at the top of their lungs.

And to make things clear, I don't care about the more diverse cast of the new movies, just in case anyone asks. Like Chuckman said, it comes down to execution, and the writers and directors are doing more of a disservice to the woman and minority not just in this franchise but in the industry as a whole, by poorly writing their roles and only looking to diversify films to appeal to all rather than hunkering down and really writing great characters. If TFA and TLJ had more time to work, the films may not have been that bad, but the rush and Hollywood's need to diversify everything may have forced corners to be cut, which undercut the very people they are trying to correct years of disservice towards.

[Chuckman]

These kinds of roles are doing a disservice to actresses almost as bad as if they only roles for Asians were as Fu Manchu or for black men as Bojangles. "Bitchy stock female boss" is minstrel show level stupidity. It needs to die.

That said, part of the problem here is that no matter how the producers intended Holdo to be read -she is pretty badass, and has one of the most visually striking heroic moments in the entire franchise- the audience is insistent that she's a diversity hire. The same as Rey is a Mary Sue.

Compare Luke to Rey:

Luke:

1. Son of the literal Jedi Messiah who fell to evil
2. Learns to almost be a Jedi in the amount of time it takes the Falcon to escape a space worm and fly to Cloud City
3. Somehow becomes a Jedi despite receiving no further training, with his teacher dying as soon as he returns to the swamp planet
4. On his second fight with Vader, having had no other sparring with a lightsaber, schools and nearly kills him
5. Achieves a messianic moment of peace and balances the Force, defeating two Sith Lords without fighting.

Rey:

1. Daughter of a nobody and some jerk.
2. Survives a fight with a wounded, enraged not-Jedi not-Sith full of conflict over killing his dad who just got shot with a bowcaster
3. Just, like, totally went to the dark side for a minute
4. Waved a lightsaber around
5. Killed a bunch of jobber guards, with help from a guy with way more training, after he killed the not-Sith Lord
6. Lifted some rocks

I'm going to award Luke more Mary Sue points than Rey.

(Can I just say real quick that 'mary sue' is 99% of the time a stupid and totally worthless non-criticism? Every protagonist ever does crazy shit because they're the protagonist of a story. Is John McClane a Mary Sue? How about Dutch from Predator?)

Here's the problem: There is no 'zone of competence' for a female character in a nerd movie. She's either a domineering bitch like Holdo or a Mary Sue like Rey. They can't just be the hero, unless they're both sufficiently masculine and a proper sex object. I guarantee you even the criticism of Rey for offering compassion to Kylo (isn't a Jedi supposed to do that? I thought they were supposed to be peaceful warrior poets, not go all choppy choppy; I remember one of the big criticisms of the prequels being how ready the Jedi are to whip out their weapons) would evaporate if the gender roles were reversed and the protagonist of these movies was a dude and Rey a tormented big tiddy goth GF sith lady.

Female characters have to apologize for themselves with an offering of sexiness and crotch-fu.

To quote Westworld Season 2:

"Not just pretty. Perfect. Just as you built me to be. Sexy, but not threatening. Accommodating, but not unchallenging. Sweet but not boring. Smart but not intimidating."

[silvermoonlight]

I guarantee you even the criticism of Rey for offering compassion to Kylo (isn't a Jedi supposed to do that? I thought they were supposed to be peaceful warrior poets, not go all choppy choppy;

That not though why I hate the idea of Rey showing compassion to Kylo I hate it because its a forced love interest perspective like women in movies can not go with out a love interest its like they can't just be friends with guys and I'm not saying I hate romance I do enjoy it but in Hollywood its in almost all movies and its annoying as hell.

The Last Jedi also feeds in to abusive love trope that abusive assholes like Kylo just need love to fix them which I hate and its a very dangerous message to send. Its the 90's beauty and the beast cartoon all over again and young men and women need to stop being fed this toxic message period as it causes real issues in the outside world and male and female characters who act this way should be given zero reward and held accountable for there actions.

[Gendo'sPapa]

Won’t comment on the rest of the talk going on here. Have a lot of issues with it & it’s a whole other discussion.

BUT in regards to the movie, I never felt the Rey & Kylo thing in TLJ was ever played as romantic. At least not from her side. Just because a man and a woman of equal age are talking does not mean they’re falling in love. I felt it was played more as simply she started to feel misguided sympathy for the guy as she started to think she was getting to know him through her interactions with Luke, the disappointing teacher. The shirtless scene was just a gag for a laugh or two & while fan art plays it differently with blushes & shit in the actual film her reaction is more “Dude, I ain’t interested in that, put a fucking shirt on.” I never felt there was a specific moment in the film that was played as Rey being romantically interested in him. It was more that he was the only other person in the universe who had experienced what she was experiencing - being let down by the figure they had built up to be a messiah - and she felt that maybe that connection could help save him. She was buying into the nonsense (the nonsense that Star Wars has pushed for 40 years) of “saving someone from the Dark Side”.

I also find it odd silvermoonlight that you’re criticing the movie for spreading a toxic message about “loving abusive assholes” when the movie refutes that very notion. It doesn’t feed into that like most of the Marvel movies do where the heroes start out as assholes & learn the lesson that they’re awesome assholes. It surely sets things up to go that way but then in the third act the film explicitly says “NO, YOU CAN’T SAVE AN ASSHOLE UNLESS THEY WANT TO BE SAVED.” Yes, Rey falls into that myopic thinking that she can save the son of Han Solo so she foolishely flies out to meet hin. She then helps him defeat Bland Andy Serkis MoCap Man in hopes of freeing him. And if the movie had then had Kylo REN go “okay, I’m a good guy now. Let’s go save the galaxy as best friends/boyfriend & girlfriend/police partners” then you’d have every right to be angry. Instead, Kylo immediately starts going Full Syndrone monologuing about ruling the galaxy, killing those in their way, starting a new world order and all that heinous misguided hate shit & Rey learns one of her key messages in the film - people can’t be changed unless THEY WANT to change - so she gets the fuck outta there. Even at the end of the film when they do that Force Communication thing and he tries to lure her back she closes the door on him.
A story - even a film in the middle chapter of a trilogy - has a beginning, middle & an end and you’re attacking a message in the film because of what the beginning & middle set up but not taking into account the end.**. The movie intentionally doesn’t even give Kylo Ren a moment of sympathy after he goes all Third Reich on Rey after they kill Andy Serkis. He’s a petulant, spiteful, angry shit for the rest of the movie and even Leia practically says to the camera “Yeah, he’s gone”. Idiots may take the wrong message - people argue Thanos was right or that what Kaworu represents (total dependence on another person for validation) is a good thing and that’s their folly - but the film surely doesn’t say trust in abusive assholes. It says if you give them a chance they’re most likely going to hurt you.

** Mind you, I have little doubt J.J. Abrams won’t fully lean in to giving Kylo Ren a redemption arc in Episode IX. He’s the most pandery filmmaker alive & Episode IX is going to bend over backwards to appease fanboys however possible but that will be that films cross to bear and not The Last Jedi’s. At least Episdoe IX isn’t a Colin Trevorrow film anymore.