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[Urist McScoopbeard]

Ep3 has a good plot, bad dialogue.

[ChairmanPoo]

Okay, you can look at that as bad dialogue.  Or you can look at it as jedi wisdom about why you should never have sex on a beach.

Prequel Jedis were celibate (just like sequel Jedis if Luke's smelly old hobo attire is representative of anything).  This means that they are inexperienced in pickup lines.


Or maybe they are trained like that so that they stay celibate, what do I know

[Kot]

Or maybe they are trained like that so that they stay celibate, what do I know

If Sequel Jedis are representative of anything, they are.

[Xantalos]

Saw it a few days ago. I think the most definitive thing that could be said about it is 'kinda'. It kinda had a story, kinda developed its characters, kinda subverted expectations. It didn't really pull any of those off successfully in my view, but it kinda got there.

So yeah, I can't really get mad at it, but I can't really bring myself to particularly care either. It's just kinda there.

So, eh. It looked pretty good though.

[SalmonGod]

PTW

[Loud Whispers]

Is Rey's nobodyness cause for scorn? Imo the move away from midochlorian lineages and into the force being mystical bullshit that more reflects a person's personality than their CK2 dynasty as per the original trilogy is gud. Helps promote developing an actual personality for the character if the writers stop drinking detergent

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Listen, a lot of decisions would be pretty good if the writing wasn't detergent-fuelled rambling.

[Reelya]

Is Rey's nobodyness cause for scorn? Imo the move away from midochlorian lineages and into the force being mystical bullshit that more reflects a person's personality than their CK2 dynasty as per the original trilogy is gud. Helps promote developing an actual personality for the character if the writers stop drinking detergent

The "everyone's a force user" thing is also pretty convenient if you want to make endless sequels and side-stories. Then, you can have budding Jedi popping up wherever and whenever you like, without having to work out how they fit into some larger scheme of things. Perfect for a studio like Disney who'd like to spin off 100 Star Wars related series in all directions.

I don't think this by itself actually makes the writing any better or worse. However, sometimes having constraints on the origin of a character can make you get more creative. "Write whatever you like" sounds liberating, however, things flow better if you have constraints, and constraints cause you to think of ideas that you'd never come up with if you're given carte blank to write "whatever".

e.g. would Kylo Ren be a more developed and interesting character if his parents had also been "nobody"? Or would they have just concocted some hokey backstory that's emotionally unrelated to anything else in the series like they did for Rey? Or Anakin Skywalker for that matter. His story is pretty dark for a main character in any movie series, and it's written like that because of the constraints of who he is and how he fits into a larger narrative that's not his own. If he'd been written "from scratch" and not been woven into the bigger narrative of his family, it's certain that he'd end up as a more traditional hero type character: the story constraints forced the writers to write him as an anti-hero, in a movie series that's all about plain old regular heroes.

Another real risk, is that the Star Wars saga was always about family. If they take it in a new direction where family doesn't really matter, which is where the new movies are going, then they lose that aspect of talking to the whole "human condition". With the high attrition rate of any old characters (either original movies old, or anyone significant who's old in the new movies), the last movie looks likely to be just about a bunch of late teens aged kids battling it out for the fate of the universe.

e.g. Finn, Poe and Rey: none of them have parents or siblings who are really part of the main narrative at all (poe's parents being in a comic don't count. They're not characters referenced in the movies). Notice however, that all three main human characters in the original trilogy turn out to be, or end up being, connected by family bonds.

[SalmonGod]

Personally, I'd like to see more franchises like Star Wars take that route.  I get tired of stories that twist themselves in a knot just for the sake of having everyone related somehow.  We have these conflicts spanning solar systems, yet relatively few people matter outside a specific bloodline and a handful of family friends who seem to have awesomeness rub off on them by virtue of proximity.  Makes the whole thing less interesting to me.

Star Wars has some awesome characters, but the basis of the phenomenon is the setting.  Most of what makes those characters memorable are features imparted on them by the setting.  But when they make every story about how this handful of people are so naturally goddamn amazing and there's nobody else like them out of trillions of creatures in an entire galaxy, to the point that their conflicts control the fates of all... it's like the writing is trying reeeaalllly hard to convince itself that it's the characters making the setting awesome instead, which just isn't true.  It's painful and I don't understand it.

People don't need this contrived bullshit to be awesome.  Tell interesting stories about characters to build up the setting.  Let them come and go naturally.  Stop with the crap about how nobody's allowed to be cool unless they're somehow related to the very first characters in the franchise to be established as cool.  And the ultimate balance of power in the entire galaxy doesn't have to hinge on every single story.  There's countless other ways to make a story interesting besides the fate of the galaxy.  Make a million spin offs.  Clinging to Skywalker Wars forever does nothing to help tell good stories, so explore Star Wars instead.

And the same general sentiment goes for every other setting of the sort.  Superhero universes and what have you.  Jessica Jones was one of the best stories to come out of the Marvel Universe, and it's because (the comic not the show) departed completely from your typical comic book material to see what tools the super hero setting could offer them to tell a mature story about emotional abuse, and they created a fresh unknown character with no connections to anyone else in the setting besides some momentary interactions, so it was self-contained and not bogged down with any cosmic destiny bullshit.  Why can't we have more things like this.

[Reelya]

I didn't say they needed to be "Skywalkers" or anything like that. But they're not building new stories that explore family-related ideas. As noted by the fact that Finn, Poe, Rey's families are all basically non-existent in the context of the movies. They have effectively interchangeable backstories. You could shuffle their backstories and it wouldn't make too much difference to the dialogue and plot.

e.g. Rey was a rebel fighter pilot who crashes on Jakku after befriending the First Order defector pilot Poe, then she teams up with orphaned Junker Finn. Rey then discovers she has latent force powers. You could have written it like that with fairly minimal changes to dialogue and plot. Try doing something like that with Han, Luke and Leia.

[RedKing]

And? The trope of family-based adventure novels (fantasy or space) is played out something fierce. It's a relic of an age where lineage meant something to the upper-class authors. The sequels' characters have a lineage of history rather than blood.

Poe is a fighter pilot of the Resistance, derived from the New Republic, born of the Rebel Alliance. He's flying essentially the same fighter that heroes like Luke and Wedge flew.

Finn is a Stormtrooper, part of a lineage that goes back even further, to the Clone Wars.

Rey has an even older lineage, becoming apprentice to Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, disciple of Obi-Wan Kenobi, disciple of Qui-Gonn Jinn, disciple of Dooku, disciple of Yoda.

Who were Obi-wan's parents? Han Solo's? Yoda's? Chewbacca's? Literally the only characters you ever find anything out about their families are the Skywalkers.

[smjjames]

Qui-Gonn Jinn was a disciple of Dooku? *checks wookiepedia*. edit: So he was.

[scriver]

I think it's a ridiculous point to make because I don't think it was a point that needed to be made in the first place - I have never felt "only family blood matters super duper ever" was a Star Wars law that somehow had to be followed. The series is full of characters whose lineages doesn't matter. Sure, "Vader is Luke's father" is the twist in one of the movies, and Luke's family ties to Vader is the means by which he gets through to him in RotJ, but that never meant there was some set in stone law that every character, or even every main character, had to be related to someone important. If anything, that the original trilogy revealed Vader, Luke, and Leia were family was a thing people made jokes about, that people knew were a bit ridiculous and embarrassing.

The reason the internet was overflowing with ridiculous theories about Rey's parentage wasn't that there is this supposed Law of Lineage but because tFA set up a situation where her parentage was unknown and then stressed that it mattered. This is a fault of the new movies, not the old ones. It's like if TFA set up a table for a table cloth pull away trick, but then tLJ shows up and pulls down your pants instead - sure, it's a twist, but it's a bad twist, an unreveal instead of a reveal when the only reason you thought there was going to be a reveal was because they set it up. And then they play up the "DESTROY THE PAST" aspect but it doesn't actually feel like they're breaking any sort of Holy Star Wars Constitution, rather all they're breaking is the set up of the previous, new movie. Besides that it's just a return to the status quo, to what "the Past" actually was.

And that's the thing. I feel that is something tLJ does constantly, over and over again. It keeps repeating "DESTROY THE PAST" but it doesn't actually offer anything new, it's just as much a rehash of tESB as tFA was of aNH. The one opportunity for something it brings to the table, Rey joining Kylo (and what is probably my favourite non-visual part of the movie), they're to cowardly to actually pursue, immediately turning it down in favour of the status quo, the good VS evil, Jedi vs Sith, the Very Much The Same As The Past They Say They Are Destroying mentality. When the movie makes a point out of saying something like DESTROY THE PAST but then just delivers the Same Old, all I'm hearing is "destroy the past, so that we can sell it to you again, and again and again!" It's like the remaking trend and creativity death of the last 20 years actually came alive and spoke to you through the script. It's Consumerism of the highest degree applied to creative arts. "You need this phone!" says Apple, and you buy it. Two years later they go "Destroy the Past! Buy this new phone!" and when you ask why, what does the new phone add, they repeat "Destroy the Past!" on a higher volume. That is the message of tLJ in a nutshell.

[SalmonGod]

I wouldn't call it a fault of the original trilogy.  But the original trilogy was much more low key about everything in general.  They made Vader and the Emporer out to be larger than life individuals, but they were still leaders of a massive organization which was the true basis of their power.  Luke, Obi-Wan, and even Yoda were incredibly understated by comparison on an individual level.  You didn't feel like the order of the universe was totally bent around the existence of a handful of the most powerful force users.  As I recall, Leia's never portrayed as anything special beyond her spunk and title.  Luke is just a do gooder kid who gets swept up into things and discovers he has unexpected talents and connections to the whole situation that turn out to be just the right thing to get him through some key situations.  The only role he has that strictly depends on bloodline is in provoking Vader's final test of character and chance at salvation before the Emperor.

The prequel trilogy totally re-framed everything with Anakin being the chosen one.  Naturally having power that overshadows all but the most masterful force users, which they reveal to literally be a matter of bloodline.  Operating like a one-man army.  Killing off almost all other force users.  They make it out to be that the Skywalker bloodline is so overwhelmingly powerful that it engulfs almost everything else, and re-brands Luke and Leia going into EPs 4-6 as precious seeds of hope that the whole galaxy depends on to fulfill their destinies granted by parentage.  With the force being a much more conscious seeming entity that selects certain people to be important and fuck everyone else.

And the new trilogy is just building on that trend with the whole galaxy pinning all their hope on the return of Luke Skywalker, and Kylo having scary levels of power attributed to his bloodline.  But at least Rey being an outspokenly glaring exception to that whole thing seems to be a self-aware attempt to break away at the same time, and all the little implications that the force is returning to being something that random people can pick up a knack for.  They seem to make a point that the Skywalker bloodline isn't holding a near monopoly anymore, even while they reinforce the point made by the prequel trilogy that yes - the life energy consciousness of the universe really didn't give a fuck about anyone but Skywalkers for a while there.  My statement was only that I hope they do really get away from it. 

Expand the universe.  Tell more modest stories about a wider variety of characters.  Get away from the rebel vs empire thing, even.  Maybe give me a Cowboy Bebop style thing about a random group of space adventurers who just try and feed themselves while dealing with personal baggage, and have nothing to do with the force.  I like the setting itself, so give me a different vehicle for exploring it.

This isn't a complaint aimed exclusively at Star Wars, either.  It's something most major modern fiction franchises frustrate me with.  The whole idea that as the property matures, it has to be revealed that every major character has some super hidden secret past connection to every other character which gets revealed eventually, like all of reality bends around this handful of people.  No one can be allowed to be just people who happened to come and go from each other's lives and did something meaningful along the way like real life.  And cool settings don't get what they deserve, because writers have to be pushed to always one-up whatever the last thing was, meaning increasingly shocking (increasingly hard to do without being increasingly contrived) revelations and levels of conflict that overwhelm the stage.

[Egan_BW]

We need an all-guardsmen-party equivalent in star wars, don't we?