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Vladius said:
No one said that anyone bought into the tokenism. I don’t really understand what your point is here.
pretty sure you did, sorry if i misunderstood, this is what i was latching onto:
their female, black, etc. status is picked ahead of time as a shield for criticism
anyway - My point was, anti-wokeness is still on a conversation about the mere inclusion of progressive ideas/representation and that’s boring at best. There are real discussions we could have about representation and all the nuances about what makes an example good or bad, but anti-woke can never move on from the fact that they exist at all and will be embedded into work through a variety of different means. It’s an attitude content to default to the most vanilla, uncontroversial take about corporations with a dash of reactionary politics, handwaving every interesting thing there is to talk about in regards to media and its creation.
The annoying thing about anti-woke discourse is that it’s reactionary to a climate that’s at least a decade past at this point. No one ever really bought into that kind of tokenism except ineffectual lib Disney adults in 2014, or like, literal children. So all the whining about a corporation chasing a profitable demographic feels smug and incurious. If it’s a shield for criticism, then corpos need a new blacksmith, because this discourse has never failed to pop up about anything.
Even if something is crap - why is part of the “analysis” going to the race/identity well at all? The answer is always rooted in specific confirmation biased speculation, and it’s only ever triggered by the subjectivity of if the work in question landed well or not. And even in a positive direction, that lens becomes condescending, as though gay/black/minority/whatever progressive thing rose above itself this time. feels unfair
who needs media literacy when wokeness can be the eternal scapegoat
yeah, this show sucks but I can’t get overly doomer about “Disney” Star Wars as a whole when Andor season 2 is still coming out next year
EDIT: also Acolyte sounds good
Really, everything that sucked about Mando still sucked here so idk why we’re acting like Disney has “finally” lost the plot with the IP. I think assessing creative over corporate is way more meaningful than Disney Bad, bc so far we can trace every fault of every show back to creative
but also Disney Bad.
i just don’t think anyone’s being super smart or analytical about pointing fingers at the understood-to-be-bad amorphous entity. If anything, acknowledging how one can work with and through that system to achieve results like Gilroy did, and what Favreau might have lacked in ambition / imagination, is more insightful than anything anyone has said in this thread on this topic so far
godfrey reggio’s star wars
Look, I’m not saying his opinion is better because he got “critic” status. My initial post is really quite economical because I literally open saying that I feel the distinction on RT is useless, and then even talk about what I think Criticism is which IMO shouldn’t [just] be a consumer review telling you what to see.
Chris Stuckmann still put the work in that most audience reviewers definitely didn’t. He has 2million subs on YT, you don’t have to respect it to realize that’s not really a normally attainable thing
I think the critic/audience distinction on RT is completely unproductive and should be abolished, but I think the fact that a critic’s knowledge of film isn’t cursory is what gives them more weight. It’s just populist snobbery to construe that as “elitist” just because they have more education or put the work in to have that engagement IMO. If anyone could be one then we’d all be
Criticism isn’t about being right or wrong, and even the perspective of it as “consumer review of product” is wildly off base about their value in society, but I digress
Maybe I’m just dumb, but other than the music evoking it - I really didn’t see Rogue One doing the classic gee-whizz space opera? They were kind of going from tragedy to tragedy, under the orders of a militarized intelligence op. Interspersed with drama more than any of the characters having some sort of clever fun. And they all die in the end.
I think the whole “grimdark tone” discussion is off-base of what I was actually saying about Rogue One’s internal logic though. ESB could be dark, ROTS could be dark, The Clone Wars could be dark. Rogue One is moving in a different space than just gesturing towards unpleasantness in the ways those do. I’m not denying the tonal dissonances in Rogue One, but the proto-Andor DNA can’t easily be washed out because K2 has some one liners (I’m assuming?).
I do want to stress that to me the part of Rogue One’s DNA that translates over into Andor isn’t just the visual aesthetics or surface tone. When I talk about its “geopolitical texture”, it’s in how:
Jedha is understood and talked about as an ongoing warzone. The franchise typically conceptualizes war as skirmishes beginning and ending in an afternoon, so much so that we have signifiers like BBY to denote the Death Star run that was over in 20 minutes. We visit Jedha as a place that more or less carries on in the midst of heightened tensions, until it doesn’t.
The Alliance conceptualized as different factions, and rebels as a whole having diverse ideologies. Saw as an “extremist” compared to Yavin’s cell is a broad example, but it’s there - and there’s also just subtle flourishes to the in-universe speak that maintains The Empire as an Establishment over this revolution. The Rebels are typically understood almost as its own secret pseudo-government/military, but so much of Rogue One’s first acts emphasizes how beholden they still are to Imperial law, and how fragile whatever authority over their people actually is.
Careerism in the Imperial ranks is given grounded play here. Between Krennic and Tarkin, but also in the Ersos’ blurred professional/personal relationship to Krennic, particularly what’s suggested in the Republic/Empire transition period. Catalyst is a pretty good book so maybe some of that is leaking into my appreciation here, but Rogue One still provides the space for this kind of detailed worldbuilding, and services more grounded drama than melodrama.
And then there’s other stuff that just fills out the world far more thoughtfully than we’ve gotten from the franchise recently. The Whills as a non-Jedi institution that has their own, non-instrumental relationship with the Force is a great concept! I’m not saying it gets to really dig into these things, but it’s coming at it exactly how Andor did. And when I say “seriously” I’m NOT talking about tone or grit or darkness, but in how it lacks pretension and cynicism. It’s all about buying into this Star Wars thing like it was a derived from a sci-fi TTRPG guidebook; nerdy engagement with a fixed, detailed lore, blowing up an aesthetic element and giving it logistical play. Pretending this was all real, and that it should feel real, and be handled like it was real material. Not winking at the conventions that betray that illusion through whimsy and one liners.
It’s not about What Would George Lucas Do, it’s unconcerned with reacting to questions of What Is The Spirit or “Soul” of Star Wars? None of that genre-play or legacy-posturing. Just being a movie. It can be dry because of it, and it’s absolutely mashed together with a more traditional Star Wars third act, but I really do think it’s all there in the macro.
I think the value of Rogue One was always in its approach to the galaxy, that Andor then took the ball and ran with to its full realization. Andor doesn’t happen without RO and not just as a parent film to the spin-off.
Like, all the fanservice and Fated Plot were just grist for a film that dared to look at the classic lived-in OT aesthetic, and conceive of it as lived in beyond the visuals. It gets a wrap for being “slow” in the first half but the geopolitical texture it establishes for what’s usually been a pulpy backdrop was enticing IMO. Even the characters being unremarkable and thinly sketched added to that sense of scale; the conflict of the time as tangible “historical” incidence, not genre theater inhabited by larger-than-life figures.
It’s cool in that sense! I think all of that is overlooked because Dr. Evazan and Ponda Baba show up on Jedha, but there’s a lot of stuff in the film’s storytelling language that originated what Andor is now. It took Star Wars as a lore seriously, which for me was a lot coming off the heels of TFA which clearly conceived of Star Wars as a brand more than anything.
Man, there’s nowhere else on the internet but an old-school discussion board to have nerdy diatribes, I don’t know where else to take it
I actually liked The New Republic being conceived as its own brand of neoliberal horror, but I don’t know, the conceptualization of what The Empire as an institution even was, is disappointing here. While I get the surface level comparisons to ANDOR, it doesn’t have a grasp on any tangible theory to fill out the spaces it’s playing in. (And certainly not the writing, it’s very journeyman here.) For as much as it “explores” a postwar reconstruction, it still moves in a Good/Evil, malice-of-an-out-group kind of ideology.
It’s a pretty high school social studies understanding of historical play.
Maybe I’m just attached to the interpretations provided by the prequels and then ANDOR, but Imperialism as Establishment, as oppression evolved from power evolved from status-quo, works far better for me than “Imperial” conceived as a pseudo-nationality. The episode codifies the former Empire’s structure as one that went out of its way to be bleak and awful; Palpatine and his powerbase as one and the same.
It just rubs me the wrong way that it’s even being called Andor-lite. They’re not necessarily incongruous in the macro beats, but philosophically coming from entirely different places. Without any real poli-sci informing the premises, its storytelling ambitions are just cynical for the sake cynicism.
I’m usually down on Filoni, but after a rewatch of TCW and TotJ I want to give him some benefit of the doubt. Don’t get me wrong, his stuff is still so variable in quality, but the underlying motivation behind all of it can be thoughtful and ambitious. When it’s brought [somewhat] to the foreground like in the Dooku Tales, it really works IMO
He has his annoying hobby horses for sure, but Ahsoka was a good character once. It’s the team-up of him and Favreau that I think enables a lot of the schlock. I may not agree with or buy into Filoni’s Star Wars all the time, but at least he’s interested in more than the theme park. Favreau feels like the guy that says it’s okay to indulge like that, and has the perspective of someone removed from the franchise’s prior history. He knows all audiences haven’t watched the cartoons and understands how wide the net should be for a big one. It worked well in Mando season 1 as the first live action tv series, but it solidified an emphasis on form that’s restrained a story itching to evolve.
Oh I’m sure. I think it’s like 85% there already anyway. I’m just don’t have a creative itch for its use.
I will say, something that does entice me about using AI in edits is the problem solving of making specific models to blend to a scene. So far, in threads like Hal’s Ascendant, everyone is focused on training models based on clean, high quality audio[book] sources. And while that’s ElevenLab’s best practice suggestion, that’s based on the hypothetical commercial use they’re leveraging for. If you’re trying to get a new line to blend perfectly, to emulate the background noise and quality of a specific vocal clip - the AI will do that at a certain clarity. Those are the imperfections or incomplete data for a model that’s meant to be a holistic replacement for a voice actor, but IMO has worked perfectly in my private tests for blending a new line to a specific scene.
A lot of the pleasure of this for me was scavenging appropriate HC clips and finding ways to incorporate them. That was fun and creative in a way that I enjoy. I also wanted to let his [potential] performance shine as much as possible, “prove” that he could probably convincingly pass as the same archetype if given the material and direction to do so. Even if I were to generate new fake Hayden lines, there’s something about knowing he never said or performed them that takes away from that premise.
Idk, I’ve been a little iffy about AI in these spaces, at least for myself personally. I think it’s exciting and cool to watch for other editors but not really anything I would find any fulfillment from. Maybe that changes with another idea I have down the line, but it’s so counter to what made this particular edit fun for me.
To answer the question about feasibility, it is possible, I’ve played around with it already. Just not interested
I will re-release the edit a little more polished soon like I said a few months ago, though. I think if anything, this AI stuff has given me a great out to stop thinking about this edit as ongoing
pls
Having played with this myself, it’s scary how well this works. I’m having some existential feelings about some of the work I’ve done before this tbh
Mostly in polish and tightness, hopefully it’s more or less the same in all the ways it matters
Wow, everyone getting ahead of me haha, that was going to be in one of the new clips in a more holistic post about what I’ve been doing with this edit.
I wanted to come back to this with more to show but not even a few days after I started work on it again, this thread got bumped (and now this lol)! Well, whatever. Yeah, I’m back at this. I dug up my old laptop’s drive and have been going through and syncing/re-sourcing files, redoing edits, etc.
I’m hoping it will be the final version so I can finally put this old edit to bed. And then back to OLD BEN and COAXIUM BEBOP, I swear
If there’s anything about this edit I was most proud of, it was how much I was able to change Anakin/Obi/Padme’s motivations in the story, and I think that may have gotten lost in the all the other ambitious stuff I was cramming in and experimenting with. So I want to just focus on polishing presentation of those elements now, and not just keep throwing shit at the wall. Like I said, I’ll have a more holistic post at some point this month.
EDIT: Also I was never going to add TCW footage this
Hey guys, I have some stuff to detail about this edit’s future soon so I’d rather not send out a draft that is outdated 👀
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Short of writing breakdowns for every episode and being even more annoying haha, I’ll just say that it really just depends on your preferences and what excites you I guess. I personally had a feast to chew on every week and sure, it wasn’t of the plot moving, action variety, but I found it incredibly concise in every ambition it had.
I guess to help you level, I wouldn’t concpetualize Mothma’s arc as “backstory”, implying it as a piece of a larger puzzle being The Saga. It’s its own Story in itself and if you can’t appreciate in on those terms, then it’s whatever
“Faster More Intense” was always kind of patronizing, no? I think to go there for the audience they were obviously going for here, the creative team would have to be intentionally condescending.
You’re asking for this show’s strength as slower paced, broader scope work be stripped, in favor of offering something any other Star Wars thing already has. It’s the kind of cynical, bad faith storytelling I think many of us are burnt out on, as though a SW audience would only latch onto the familiar or the flash. Maybe that just means I don’t like Star Wars™. 🤷♂️. If it’s good, it’s good.
It largely circled back to where it started, at least for Cass.
Not at all! Cassian has undergone a tremendous conversion. Whereas he went with Luthen out of desperation and took part in the Aldahni mission for money, now he’s preparing for action by listening to Nevik’s manifesto and joining Luthen willingly, dissatisfied with any life but one of full commitment to the cause. He is a changed man.
He’s change by the events of the last episode more than all the rest of the season. That is my issue. Nevik’s manifesto is far too similar to his mother’s speech.
I actually don’t think the last episode changed him at all. If anything, he went into the last episode a certain way and ended it just verbalizing that to Luthen. You’re exactly right about the manifesto vs Maarva’s speech. But Maarva’s speech wasn’t for him, he didn’t need to hear it anymore; esp. since she pretty much said all of that to him herself in episode 7.