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Post #1415221

Author
SparkySywer
Parent topic
Unpopular Opinion Thread
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1415221/action/topic#1415221
Date created
6-Mar-2021, 4:05 AM

Servii said:

SparkySywer said:

Servii said:

SparkySywer said:

Servii said:

SparkySywer said:

The film misinterprets basic concepts of the Jedi and the Force … acting like the Jedi are meant to be pacifists.

I don’t think TLJ is the one misinterpreting basic concepts of the Jedi and the Force.

That’s not what Yoda meant in context. The Jedi are meant to defend the innocent, and that often involves striking down those who would harm others. ANH has Obi-Wan cutting off an assailant’s arm. They absolutely are willing to resort to the use of force to fight someone who threatens innocents. That’s why they carry lightsabers in the first place. This notion that a “true” Jedi doesn’t actually even use his saber to defeat someone is a misinterpretation by Rian Johnson of what the Jedi actually are. Striking down Kylo, or at least genuinely trying to talk him down, could have saved countless lives and ended the war. This notion of a Jedi being purely pacifist never reflected George’s vision or intention. Rian doesn’t know Star Wars better than its creator. In fact, I think there are a lot of people who understand Star Wars better than Rian does.

Called it in the inb4!

What? Look, I don’t want to go through the motions of this argument again, so here’s a flowchart that debunks the whole “Jedi are pacifists” thing, which really is just an invention of Rian Johnson’s imagination.

I think that flowchart’s pretty dishonest. I don’t think literally anyone has said that a Jedi is never, ever, allowed to use violence ever.

I mean, in ANH Obi-Wan lops off a guy’s arm and they were clearly involved in a war, somehow, and Obi-Wan encourages the deaths of millions of Stormtroopers on the Death Star because it meant preventing the deaths of billions, trillions more innocent civilians.

But they still are pacifists. They avoid violence and only use it when necessary.

And again, it’s not like Luke came out and said “Haha Kylo, I owned you non-violently because a Jedi is never allowed to use violence, get bent, son.” Rian Johnson’s intent was never to make any statement on the Jedi, and his reason for putting that in the movie had nothing to do with the nature of the Jedi. So… how Rian Johnson managed to misunderstand the Jedi or invent anything about them in that scene is beyond me.

The question is, what would you have preferred? Because simply removing the astral projection from the scene, having it be a simple action scene played absolutely straight, not only would it create a ton of problems, but it’s the exact kind of thing I’d expect from a hypothetical version of the sequel trilogy that was actually nothing but a lazy cash grab, no creative energy involved.

And I don’t mean to sound negative toward that, there’s room for both, and if you did just want a simple action adventure popcorn movie out of the ST, there’s nothing wrong with that. Personally I would’ve liked that for Episodes 7-9, with TFA and TLJ being 10 and 11. Have our cake and eat it too. But you can’t criticize the ST for being uncreative while also saying the ST shouldn’t have done the parts that were actually creative.

But I don’t want to presuppose your beliefs, so I’m all ears.

The PT has massive amounts of worldbuilding. The sheer volume of worlds, species, factions, and cultures introduced

Like what? Like who? The closest thing we get to that I can think of is that they have some new alien designs, but that’s art design again, not worldbuilding.

in the PT provided so much fertile ground for new stories to tell and history to flesh out.

The EU picking up the slack for the PT does not make the PT good. The EU doing worldbuilding does not mean the PT had any, in fact it just highlights the sheer lack of worldbuilding in the PT.

We finally got to see the Republic

We get to see the Republic is a really shallow ripoff of the United States government made by someone whose understanding of the US government clearly didn’t go beyond, like, 7th grade civics class. We don’t know anything about how it functions other than that the Chancellor is the leader of the executive and that the Senate has some legislative authority, and there is a third branch that is never relevant, despite us being told it’s supposed to be in, like, 2 lines?

Compare, like, literally any other fantasy Republic, or even any other fantasy government. There’s so much more interesting nuance that could be here, but is ditched for a really shallow-ass allegory about how Bush did 9/11 or some shit.

Maybe it could be said that spending too much time on the functionality of the Republic would be a bad idea and detract from the story. I’d probably agree. But that’s a justification for the prequels’ lack of worldbuilding, the fact of the matter is that there is a lack of worldbuilding, and the little bit that is there is downright uncreative.

We got to see the different corporations that formed the CIS.

Aside from the Trade Federation, we get name drops for the different corporations that formed the CIS. That’s it.

You don’t even have to leave Star Wars to see this done right, compare the depth the CIS gets in the EU and TCW to the complete lack thereof in the prequels.

Even the Trade Federation is literally just the GOP. They’re not even trying to hide it. Nute Gingrich + Ronald Raygun = Nute Gunray. While I hate the Republican Party, the Trade Federation as a criticism has the depth of tin foil. We don’t know anything about their beliefs, private or public, we don’t know anything about why their policies are bad, we just know that they’re evil and greedy and mean and they’re in league with George Walker Hitler.

As an instance of worldbuilding, they have even less depth than tin foil.

The Trade Federation is not the GOP. If anything, they have much more in common with groups like the East India Company.

I personally used to think that the Trade Federation was a state like the Phoenicians, except more modern. A small Empire built around trade, whose government essentially existed to defend those trade routes. This would also explain why they have a seat in the Senate: They’re not a corporation like the East India Company, they’re a state just like Naboo or Malastare.

The fact this is so unclear is sort of my point. We don’t know anything about the Trade Federation. We know pretty little about the Republic, and the groups that form the CIS are literally just name drops in one scene. Maybe this is breadth like you said, but it isn’t impressive or interesting when there’s almost literally zero depth.

Outside of the Phantom Menace, the world doesn’t feel like it’s exceptionally complex. I really don’t feel like there’s anything interesting going on behind the scenes in AotC or RotS. Even though the Canto Bight sequence in TLJ is probably the worst part of the movie, I feel like there’s far more going on behind the scenes then than I do in Revenge of the Sith. We learn about the economy of the galaxy, and how war profiteering has become the most profitable venture someone can participate in, and how that is a big driver in neofascism and the rise of the First Order.

Admittedly though I find it pretty hard to throw TPM under the bus here. It’s the best (least bad?) prequel by far.

The prequels actually added something significant to the story.

I really have to disagree hard on this. The Last Jedi feels like an actual contribution to Star Wars. It developed on interesting characters introduced in TFA, and gave Luke a character arc I was interested in. It contributed to the Star Wars mythos, and I kind of think you have to ignore the whole movie to say there wasn’t a lot of passion and care put into this movie or that it didn’t add anything significant to the story.

I’d say the opposite. You’d have to ignore large portions of the movie to claim that it was a product of love and care for the mythos. The film goes out of its way to debase and trivialize what came before. It repeatedly trips over its own messages (i.e. the message about whether self-sacrifice to defeat an enemy is good or bad). And it’s filled with so much bloat that’s not deep or cerebral in the slightest and drags the movie down from whatever lofty heights it was aiming for.

I wouldn’t say there’s a whole lot of debasing or trivializing what came before. That’s not what I got out of the movie.

TLJ is downright poorly executed in some places. I mean, starting off Luke’s character arc with a screw the audience joke was a quick and easy way for the movie to shoot itself in the foot in terms of getting people on board with its story. But there is a great story in there, and you don’t have to strip the movie down to its bones’ bones to get to it like the prequels.

I think a no bathos (or an a lot less bathos) fanedit would really help the movie. Because the movie’s biggest problem is that most of its serious scenes get undermined by bathos. Or, maybe it shouldn’t be called bathos because apparently bathos is supposed to be unintentional? I don’t know.

But a lot of criticisms made against the ST seem to be because they weren’t totally vapid. Especially ones having to do with Luke Skywalker.

There is a massive middle ground between “pathetic hobo Luke” and “invincible Force god Luke.” Luke in the OT was a great character not because of his power, but because of his kindness and compassion. He was the right person to restart the Jedi Order because of his wisdom and moral quality. TLJ doesn’t make Luke more interesting. It just removes all of Luke’s personality traits and surgically transfers them to Rey.

I think “pathetic hobo Luke” is a serious misinterpretation of Luke’s character in TLJ and it’s a shame that that’s what a lot of people got out of the movie. He’s not on the island because he’s a depressed asshole.

I don’t think Rey is a copy of Luke in TLJ either, and what sorts of character traits she has that came from Luke besides, like, a general protagonistiness, is beyond me.

I sort of think Rey becomes a rehash of Luke in TRoS, but moreso that they plagiarized his arc from ESB & RotJ. As a character in and of herself, I don’t think she’s that similar to Luke.

No, it didn’t. Anakin’s reason for turning was already being set up in TPM.

The idea that Anakin would turn to the dark side over a fear of losing loved ones from death wasn’t conceived until late 2003, after Revenge of the Sith was already shot. They talk about this on the Behind the Scenes documentary included with the 2005 DVD.

Anakin’s reason for turning to the dark side, behind the scenes during the production of TPM, was his age. He was in the exact sour spot of too old to have a fresh reset when joining the Jedi, too young to be able to make the mature decisions required for such a drastic lifestyle change.

Behind the scenes during the production of AotC, his reason for turning to the dark side was his mother. I don’t know much about what this entails, maybe it was something along the lines of blaming the Jedi for not saving his mother, or maybe he wanted to reverse death. But it had nothing to do with Padme, or saving anyone currently alive, yet.

During the production of RotS, his reason for turning to the dark side was that he thought the Jedi were trying to overthrow the Republic. After they already finished shooting RotS, though, George Lucas changed his mind one final time and came up with the saving Padme from death angle. Literally anything that has to do with Padme dying comes from reshoots, and the old plotline was (IMO, really sloppily) cut from the final version of the movie.