What is the meaning generated when you equate ‘resistance fighters in places like France and Norway’ to the Viet Cong, putting American imperialism in imagery analogous to the Third Reich? It’s not a baffling contradiction, it’s the alchemy of the whole thing.
Vladius said:
But if you critically examine that at all, it’s deeply cynical about what heroism is, and about the value of tradition or culture. Again, the Jedi and Luke are a noble lie.
*uncritically examine, take at face value
I’ve always felt like some of the other stuff in this thread re: TLJ’s script shortcomings and the [unintended] thematic knock-ons are consistent to TFA, not necessarily subversive.
I didn’t want to get into it really, but everything with regard to TLJ positing something about the Force that is incongruous to the OT – the Rey “having all she needs” bit as a dismissal of the OT’s themes – I see where people are coming from there, but The Force Awakens introduces OT iconography as legible artifacts to the characters in the world.
Rey not only knows history (the OT plot), she puts on a Rebel helmet like she’s play acting the story, she can recognize the Skywalker lightsaber on sight, and engages with Han Solo and the idea of Luke Skywalker like a fan girl. For me, Rey goes into TLJ knowing Luke lifted rocks, and has even heard the lessons he learned from Yoda because as per JJ she’s basically “seen” Star Wars.
TLJ does it what it does, however you feel about it, off of that. It’s consistent to that. It’s messy as hell, obviously, but it’s not as brazen or bold as it gets credit for honestly. It’s thoroughly about reinforcing Star Wars ass Star Wars. It just does something mildly interesting with TFA’s margins and context as opposed to ignoring it.
I’ll go a step further and say it’s less cynical about its meta by being character-driven too. The characters are being challenged on their expectations (which are, granted, ours), but as a gesture towards the universe having some kind of material reality and tangible consequence.
Channel72 said:
The most charitable interpretation I can come up with is Rian Johnson was going for something along the lines of a “Wizard of Oz” type message, where it turns out the Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion had all the brains or courage they needed all along, and just needed to believe in themselves to access it. Something like that. That is sort of compatible with what happens with Rey’s journey of self-discovery, where she sort of self-learns the Force. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a message like that, but it’s not a fit for Star Wars and what was established before, where the Force requires a mentor to learn and is already part of a pre-packaged, venerated mythology.
For me, it’s consistent to the OT in that Luke’s power was always himself, his love of his friends, what he would see in his father - not his training. I think the path to the Force clearly has many different forks either way, otherwise what even is “the Dark Side”? and what is Luke even doing through ANH into Empire if not imperfectly wielding the Force with little to no training? He doesn’t have mastery of himself or his emotions when he’s doing backflips on Dagobah. In the arc of his “training”, that movie ends with him failing to complete it.
It’s hippie cosmology, not literally muscles to work out. Size matters not
To my previous point, Rey has aspired to and used Luke as an example presumably all her life anyway. Idk, it’s hardly anything to me, the lesser of TLJ’s problems.
sigh
Yeah, I see that too, I just think it’s symptomatic of an unwieldy/messy script more than it is intentional malice or whatever for the series. That’s ridiculous to me, it’s at worst a guy who has different ideas [than you or someone else] about how this all works and who these characters are.
It’s about how the past has everything to teach us. Specifically, failure. It’s not about discarding the past, Yoda talks about growing “beyond” [it]. That’s the quote. Rey is going to make different choices than Luke, and Luke is not going to let those past choices define his identity. Rey is not going to define herself by her past as an unwanted nobody.
All of the other read is just meta-textual baggage that has more to do with the aforementioned “culture war”. But nobody is shitting on our toys, maybe they just always played with them differently
I think if TLJ actually did what you laid out (maybe not the specific bad faith interpretation but) actually being subversive and not falling back into reinforcing the same stuff, it would be great, and not just half interesting.
In full context of the interview, he’s just jumping off of a point Cameron makes first actually. It really is more about patterns than him citing specific source. Like, “today’s [insert insurgency here] are yesterday’s Viet Cong”, etc, etc.
Tangential but I somewhat recently read a book of interviews with John Milius, where he talks about Lucas’ unmade Apocalypse Now, describing him and their company as extreme hippie radicals - maybe Lucas is being honest about the original intent in SW; however overt it would’ve been just didn’t make it through the notorious editing process 🤷
also just kind of an insane story, they were gonna do that shit in the actual war
I think it’s pretty obvious that he’s drawing a line (in these interviews, at least) between American foreign policy and fascism. Iconography evocative of what’s nostalgically remembered as a heroic war against unambiguous evil, makes a point when transposed onto a conflict where the hegemonic power is fighting insurgents.
Pointedly, “when I did it” communicates that it’s not even really about Vietnam in particular, but the re-occurrence of Empire vs. rebels throughout history and the news cycle.
Not excluding that he is being revisionist here either way. It fits neatly into the themes of the prequels so it makes sense why he would recontextualize the whole project in that lens.
You make it sound so good!
I think if there’s one, individual Clone Wars arc worth watching, it’s The Wrong Jedi arc (season 5 finale arc). Written by a real crime TV writer - Charles Murray - it’s genuinely just good TV and has the chops to pull off its ambitions. When Ventress talks about turning Ahsoka in to “the bondsman”, I popped. It’s good stuff - just solid procedural genre fiction.
And so much of what the show nails is distilled into these four episodes. If you hadn’t watched previous seasons, it catches you up to the character dynamics at the top, and pays them off (for once) in a single taut plotline. Every other episode tables the character development for ROTS, and this is the only one to offer a new dimension to it.
I would agree if Baris’ plan made a lick of sense.
In order for her to have to have done everything she does in the prison, she would’ve either had to have an invisibility power or the ability to phase in and out of corporeal existence. And clairvoyance.How did she know the exact second to choke Letta? How the hell does a Jedi run around a heavily guarded prison complex with troopers moving everywhere and literally kill some with lightsabers and not get noticed by anybody or caught on the CCTV? Tarkin literally says, “We don’t just have anybody running around in here”. In ANH, our heroes take over the control room (where the cameras likely feed to), disguise as troopers, blow up the cameras in the prison bay, and it’s also part of Vader’s plan for them to escape. Baris couldn’t disguise in trooper armor because her proportions don’t match. The prison is shown to have tip-top security, any Jedi entering immediately have their lightsabers confiscated, and are surrounded by troopers every second. They also can’t enter unless they’re asked there, so how did she get clearance to be in there, and why did her trooper escorts leave her alone?
The arc wants me to be mad at the Jedi and Tarkin, but like, it’s literally physically impossible for it to be anybody but Ahsoka. From their perspective, they did nothing wrong.
Even if Baris’ plan made any sense, Ahsoka’s only argument is, “But they should trust me!”… like they trusted Count Dooku, who Mundi and Windu stood up for, someone who was like a brother to them, only to then get betrayed on Geonosis? They gave him the benefit of the doubt and got their back stabbed, and you’re actually gonna pull that? What a complete lack of empathy. Almost as if we’re just supposed to see Jedi Masters as blocks of wood and not human beings. She expects them to just throw all evidence out the window, I guess. Guess they should’ve also trusted Vader even after those security holograms.
The logical inconsistencies have a ripple effect on every character (which is why, yes, plot holes do matter).Peak TCW08 is the Umbara arc, Maul + Death Watch, and Fives Inhibitor Chip arc.
Eh, none of this moves the needle for me. Barriss can do what she does just as easily as any of the heroes have done anything they’ve done to the separatists throughout the entire show. It’s not like she doesn’t leave behind bodies. It’s consistent to the logic of a show where a few weeks prior was children going on an adventure through piracy and war zones. The important, written moments as they are presented are what really land.
The last part about how you feel coming out of it re: the Jedi is on you. You’re right about it not plausibly being anyone else, and that’s the point. The messiness of that situation and that you can see where the Jedi Masters are coming from is why it’s good IMO. Ahsoka’s decision (in her eyes) is about what’s right for her, not a critique of the Jedi as individuals, who didn’t unanimously vote against her anyway.
Re: those other good arcs, they’re good but they don’t have the sauce of this one.
I think if there’s one, individual Clone Wars arc worth watching, it’s The Wrong Jedi arc (season 5 finale arc). Written by a real crime TV writer - Charles Murray - it’s genuinely just good TV and has the chops to pull off its ambitions. When Ventress talks about turning Ahsoka in to “the bondsman”, I popped. It’s good stuff - just solid procedural genre fiction.
And so much of what the show nails is distilled into these four episodes. If you hadn’t watched previous seasons, it catches you up to the character dynamics at the top, and pays them off (for once) in a single taut plotline. Every other episode tables the character development for ROTS, and this is the only one to offer a new dimension to it.
I think what a lot of people (and myself) like about Clone Wars Anakin in general is how he matches personality-wise to “The Good Friend” Ben describes in A New Hope. He’s given moments of charm and swashbuckling as a pilot and warrior that feel more believable to that end; more than the deeply troubled young man Hayden mostly portrayed. Luke aspires to this image of his father. The shades of darkness Anakin’s character gets to show, then work as compelling “foreshadowing”. It’s mirroring the OT arc in earnest, which I think is what a lot of people wanted out of the prequels in the first place. That’s the “fix”. It’s not a deconstruction of Vader’s mythos, it’s Luke gone bad.
But yeah, 2/3 of TCW isn’t actually good, and only the aforementioned four episodes are truly great. I will always have a lot of fondness for its insanity, but it’s not a show worth recommending broadly anymore. It used to be the container for a lot of Star Wars’ potential, but all of that has since been met or squashed by the various things released post-acquisition.
Yeah, I think on streaming it’s not burned-in, using the software’s default subtitles for the benefit of anyone watching on a phone.
Speaking of the influence of Japanese / samurai cinema on Star Wars, something mildly interesting is how the creators of the FX show Shogun have cited Star Wars as a resource. It’s fun how a modern samurai show has wrapped back around to taking influence from Star Wars. A big one is the font used to translate the Japanese:
To the point that I’m pretty sure The Mandalorian uses the same one.
They’ve also cited Obi-Wan’s ANH look as the influence for Toranaga’s look (as a send up to Toshiro Mifune being Lucas’ first choice for Obi-Wan), and took inspiration from Lando’s betrayal at Cloud City for [SPOILER BELOW]
Saeki’s betrayal in episode 7.
RE: “Good talent”, I’ve been thinking about how transparently the process of finding creatives has been to this point.
NOT that I want Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo of Shogun to be saddled to Star Wars, but I think there’s no way their names haven’t been floated now re: potential helmers of something in the future. Shogun got great reception for FX/Disney - they’re clearly fans of Star Wars - and I think there’s a path forward there if after Andor, LFL wants to continue pursuing a prestige TV audience. Still, I am interested in the second season of Shogun (even if they’ve run through the source material) and would prefer they stick with what they’re doing.
(Counterpart is another really great show Marks did. I think Andor fans would really like it, it’s also a kinda sci-fi spy thriller.)
I just think “good talent” is hard to quantify, let alone for execs that only follow the money and recent successes. Obviously you can have someone with Tony Gilroy’s prestige and cache as a sure bet (not to mention that writer’s room and all its weight), but would other esteemed industry veterans really want to do it? That in itself was already such an odd serendipity.
What if The Plan™ is bad? Then you’re just recreating the same shit again when the course inevitably needs to be “corrected”. Well easy, they just have to Be Good™, right? The irony of “commitment” being the only quantifiable thing in this pitch is that people were soo happy The Acolyte was never given the opportunity to find its legs.
Either way, with Chapek’s ousting, they’ve already decided to slow down! We are years behind in terms of decision making. There is only one Star Wars show coming out next year, and after that, the only somewhat sure thing we have is Filoni right now building towards an Heir to The Empire movie.
So they literally came to the same conclusion, and I know everyone’s still going to hate it. The problem with making this out to be a no-brainer “just find talent” thing is that the suits agree with you! But what does that mean, really? It means The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars was financially successful and uncontroversial, “proven” in this franchise.
anyway Andor >> literally all of Star Wars, the Michael Clayton director doing Star Wars is the kind of thing I’m going to miss in this bleak future
I’m not anti-Christian, truly, I’m really not trying to be boxed in to these perspectives. There is room to do all of the stuff you all are talking about thematically and still have dialectical discussions about its world. Like you just said about Han and Andor.
The Jedi can be right - they are! But pedagogy is not a question of content.
Also The Wire comparison was me doing an apples to oranges thing. I’m saying I like that kind of thing. It’s not worse than mythology to me. It has its own audience, the prequels in whatever small way have things that work better in that lens.
like, I’m not rejecting the story of Star Wars guys, but there’s emergent stuff in the cracks worth pointing out
I pretty much agree with you. I don’t want to be boxed in with the perspective you’re actually responding to.
The “dark side” as a blatantly degradative drug is just kind of a boring read IMO. If The Force is supposed to be “everything” then the nuances of the human experience should be given room to work inside the framework. Agency and choice is a far more compelling engine to drive a story than mythological convention. It’s part of what makes ROTJ work for me; it wasn’t “too late.” It denies this idea weight.
Whether or not it accidentally stumbles into it, the prequels do enough to portray that rigid understanding of the Force as flawed pedagogy too - more than truth about nature. For all the convoluted vagueness about the galactic polity and what it’s meant to analogize, the denial of anything innocuous possibly leading to “the dark” (for a child) works too well in a decade not far removed from satanic panic and at the height of Catholic church scandal. I know not everyone agrees, but I do think that stuff is interesting. The Wire is a good show, and better than Lord of the Rings. (/int. absurd)
The prequels get so close to finding a good synthesis, but ultimately fail by retreating into Anakin’s wacky yellow-eyes corruption in ROTS’ third act. It just doesn’t leave much genuine room for feelings of remorse or guilt in The Force, and make Anakin/Vader feel less real.
“He’s more machine now than man, twisted and evil” from Ben is kind of where I’m getting the OT’s thematic vilification of prosthetics. It’s both about the inflicted trauma and the corruption of nature via technology. I don’t think it’s out and out ableist in the same way - because it does make Vader more scary in the OT - but I guess an unfortunate unintended message is that disabled people are unnatural or evil. Which isn’t better lol
most positive depiction of cybernetics in the franchise
I absolutely believe it’s worth exploring why something does or doesn’t work, don’t get me wrong. That’s kind of my whole obsession, yk? I don’t post walls of text working through my thoughts on something on a forum because I fundamentally misunderstand that. I apologize for being a bit glib, but my frustrations are actually that I don’t think people are being good enough at it. /respectfully
Are you a SomethingAwful goon by chance?
I didn’t even know what this meant lol. I’m just an originaltrilogy guy, mostly hang out on our Discord server, actually.
Honestly though, I do want to apologize for how condescending I’m being. I think because I’ve had a lot of these conversations throughout different threads or on the server, I get tired of re-litigating and catching things up to where a different one (on the same topic) is. But forums just move slower and more sparsely and ultimately it is two different communities, regardless of overlap.
That’s really no one’s fault and honestly unfair of me.
There are certainly discussions that I’m not interested in having, yeah
I absolutely believe it’s worth exploring why something does or doesn’t work, don’t get me wrong. That’s kind of my whole obsession, yk? I don’t post walls of text working through my thoughts on something on a forum because I fundamentally misunderstand that. I apologize for being a bit glib, but my frustrations are actually that I don’t think people are being good enough at it. /respectfully
You’re right, terms like “good,” “well-paced” and “competent” are subjective.
But that doesn’t mean they can’t be evaluated.
“Well-paced” usually refers to a story that keeps the audience engaged without dragging or rushing, and “competent” writing means the plot and characters are coherent and compelling. These aren’t arbitrary standards; they’re widely recognized in storytelling. And when Disney’s content doesn’t meet these standards, it can affect viewership and revenue. So, while subjective, these qualities still have real-world implications for the business.
ok define dragging, rushing, coherent, compelling, etc
I realize this is annoying but I truly think whatever thesis you can make from this kind of thing falls apart under any kind of scrutiny. I’m not saying things can’t be evaluated or that I even disagree about the Acolyte, but trying to speak on some kind of objective corporate tip, from your own purely personal engagement with the content’s quality is arbitrary. Your opinion is not invalid, you’re just not going to discover an insight worth saying out loud.
“Make good things, not bad things!”
Disney never had a spine to start with and it doesn’t care about these current day ethical quandaries and diversity inclusions. People like to argue over it but it’s not true. This is a soul-less corporation that was about to tell some guy his wife dying in their park recently was her fault because she signed a D+ user agreement. They just want money, and they thought these projects were a way to make it. When the viewers and subs take a hit then we see shows getting cancelled (or removed). That’s all there is to it; numbers in a share holder meeting and money spent versus money earned.
☝️
I just don’t think we can use these subjective words so definitively and then make up arbitrary diagnoses from that. It’s dialectics 101 guys