I don’t disagree with you, Frink, about any of the specific instances of clear trolling you cite.
Well, since I’m kinda mentioned in Frink’s list, I just want to remind that I have provided clear arguments against Rey as a character. The trolling part (which at first wasn’t meant to be aggressive, just “being sarcastic”) was just to make fun of a few guys who were ridiculously over sensitive about a “female lead” being criticized.
[So I guess when you criticize a character who happens to be a female you become a misogynist right away. I’m lucky Rey isn’t gay, black and jewish, otherwise I would also be homophobic, racist and antisemite (note that I criticized Finn’s character as well and I think a romantic story between him and Poe in Ep VIII would be totally off topic in a SW movie so I might be racist and homophobic after all. I’m lucky there are no jewish people in SW… except for Watto… oh…no… ok, now I’m also antisemite I guess…)].
I was nevertheless wrong according to internet anglo-saxon rules to act as such (on french forums people don’t get offended so easily and don’t usually talk about their private life), but I have never received any “warning” private message by any moderator as far as I remember.
Hal 9000 said:
I think there’s something to be said for the opinion that the prequels feel more legitimate than TFA because they sprung from the mind of Lucas. I don’t hold it, but I think there’s something to discuss there without shutting them down.
On one hand the PT backstory is very close to what Lucas had in mind when he developed ROTJ, and who is more legitimate than the original author ? A few things have changed (the Clone Wars were to finish long before the dawn of the Empire; Luke’s mother was supposed to die when Leia was 2 yo; the Lars were not related at all with Anakin; Anakin would become half-machine a few months after joining the dark side and not the following day; etc.), but overall the PT tells the story it was supposed to tell. On the other hand, the ST is also close to a few ideas Lucas and Kurtz had when they discussed it during TESB post-production (Luke becoming an hermit - and eventually joining the dark side -; Luke’s sister being some kind of a scavenger on a desert planet; the Emperor - here now Snoke - as the ultimate vilain to be faced in Ep IX last act), and Kasdan was a key element of TESB/ROTJ. Personally I prefer to watch a movie made by an author/creator than something decided by a huge company shareholders, and the PT is the work of a creator (a lazy creator with controversial ideas, but a creator nonetheless) whereas TFA is not. I’m however being a little bit hypocritical because I now only watch fan edits of them… fan edits that use GL material anyway.
That’s being said, I still think as a movie TFA to be way better than AOTC (not sure about TPM and ROTS), but one was a daring and fascinating (and eventually barely watchable) experimental and independent (yeah) piece of art (yeah again) while the other is “just” a common but nicely done blockbuster. By the way I would be highly interested to know what Gary Kurtz thinks of TFA (and of the entire PT; I only know his thoughts about TPM).