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[Taricus]

All stormtrooper/TIE Pilot/Imperial Army Trooper party?

[scriver]

And yet tLJ is even more mired in the whole prophecised people of great power being the hinges of the universe stuff than Anakin ever was, what with the whole "Someone Great Will Rise To Be The Good Counterpart of the Great Evil Guy". Once again, the movie goes on and on about how she's just "a nobody" and how that is different from the other trilogies, but she is clearly the Chosen One despite what they say. There's no implications that "anyone can pick up a knack for the Force". The only implication is that Rey is more gifted with the Force than anyone we've seen before, because she is the Chosen One Who Will Rise to Oppose the Evil Sith. The only thing in any of the Disney movies to counter this is the moment in R1 where the dude does his "the Force is with me, I am one with the Force" thing - which is great scene (probably the best in the movie) but also very subtle in how it shows the Force (if he indeed uses it at all, but I prefer to think he does), a subtlety completely lacking in Rey's bombastic and EPIC! usage as portrayed in the other two movies (I do think that she is portrayed as decidedly less EPIC! in tLJ compared to tFA, though. Apart from the fight with the Red Dudes). Rey isn't any kind of exception. She's literally Anakin turned up to eleven, now-the-Chosen-One-doesn't-even-need-training-just-spontaneously-manifests-powers-that's-how-powerful-our-Chosen-One-is edition.

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.

Yeah, I would like that too. But what does tLJ  do to make that more possible than it was possible before? Absolutely nothing. The movie most like that, R1, could just as well been released between Episode I, II, or III as between VII and VIII. TLJ is still completely trapped in the realm of epic destinies, climactic charges in the finale, Super Good vs Duper Evil, while fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance. And that's when we get to

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.

And how can't you see that this is exactly what they've been doing in the new trilogy so far? Now they have AN EVEN BIGGER DEATH STARPLANET! Bigger Star Destroyer! Bigger Lasers! Leia can suddenly use the Force too! Luke can now project himself throughout the universe! Kylo is stronger than anyone before! Rey is more powerful than anyone before! Our ships now crash ibto each other at light speed for spectacular sights! The rebel forces are smaller and weaker than any time before! The odds are higher! Stakes are greater! EVERYTHING IS MORE THAN IT EVER WAS! We shot the Past with our giant peniseslaser cannons and the Past went down like a little bitch (it didn't even have planetary system destroying guns to defend itself with)!

What you want from Star Wars is in the complete opposite direction of what we're actually shown it's going. The corporate narrative is that it's different, but what we get is the same old. It's exactly like my Apple example above. Kill the Past so we can sell it to you over and over again. Just look at the Pirates of the Caribbean movies to see where Star Wars is going.

[Loud Whispers]

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.

Old Wars: "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack"
Nu Wars: "Jedi uses force to attack knowledge"

When you can't create something better than the original, destroy the original lmao

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.

Bethesda syndrome. Where no main characters are allowed to be dudes who experience a rich and unique setting, they have to be the messiah returning to alter the course of every civilization, present in every defining event

[scriver]

Unrelated: when writing R1 repeatedly above it struck me that i really want a sequel to it which abbreviated to R2:D2

[Egan_BW]

2rogue2one

[Loud Whispers]

3rogue5u

[ChairmanPoo]

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.

Quoted for truth


Might I say that

all I'm hearing is "destroy the past, so that we can sell it to you again, and again and again!"

This is delightfully Orwellian?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The war, therefore if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that the hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word "war," therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that is exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and has been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three superstates, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed forever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This--although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense--is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.”

[Starver]

Speaking of the bomber wings, whatever happened to the accompanying fighter wing? People learned pretty quick that you either need to accompany bombers with fighters or fly at night if you don't have absolute or near absolute air superiority.

I'd imagine the same rule applies to space combat if the mega destroyer or star destroyer could still spit out fighters. Of course though, they were being desperate.

It's always night in space! All space combat is night combat!

And also, complete breakage of physics since the bombs wouldn't just drop as if they were in atmosphere.

Internal gravity field 'launches' the bombs. Saves on anything more complex than (the ubiquitous!) artificial gravity, and therefore proof against all anti-energy shielding methods if you're 'dropping' dumb-bombs in freefall.

(Yeah, loads of problems, but it stupidly answers the kind of silly questions raised. And I've been sitting on this whilst trying to remember to catch up enough with the thread before Christmas. Nearly read all the thread. Nearly there!)

[SalmonGod]

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.

And how can't you see that this is exactly what they've been doing in the new trilogy so far? Now they have AN EVEN BIGGER DEATH STARPLANET! Bigger Star Destroyer! Bigger Lasers! Leia can suddenly use the Force too! Luke can now project himself throughout the universe! Kylo is stronger than anyone before! Rey is more powerful than anyone before! Our ships now crash ibto each other at light speed for spectacular sights! The rebel forces are smaller and weaker than any time before! The odds are higher! Stakes are greater! EVERYTHING IS MORE THAN IT EVER WAS! We shot the Past with our giant peniseslaser cannons and the Past went down like a little bitch (it didn't even have planetary system destroying guns to defend itself with)!

What you want from Star Wars is in the complete opposite direction of what we're actually shown it's going. The corporate narrative is that it's different, but what we get is the same old. It's exactly like my Apple example above. Kill the Past so we can sell it to you over and over again. Just look at the Pirates of the Caribbean movies to see where Star Wars is going.

For sure the ridiculous escalation is one of my primary gripes with the new trilogy.  Your quote is from a post where I was talking about how the new trilogy does this.

But the stuff I was originally saying was aimed at Reelya's earlier post.

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.

Now at least they have Rey being a random person who just showed up and became important.  Just because of herself.  Not because she has some hidden past that connects her to everything.  Until they double-back in the next movie and ruin it, anyway.

And they had the kid who force pulled the broom to him at the end.  And i feel like there were other similar little bits in there that I can't specifically recall right now.

They may be fucking up the pacing and escalation as per most modern movies, but I hope at least they really do kill the past and follow this foreshadowing that they'll stop writing stories about how there are only a handful of people in the universe who are important and anybody else who happens to ever do anything of consequence is only by gift of proximity to the chosen ones.

[Starver]

2rogue2one

Two rogues one cup droid.

edit: In-film 'revelation' be damned. Rey does have significant parentage, it was(/continues to be) just Snoke's (literal) mind-games that say otherwise.

[hector13]

Aye, Snoke was lying about him connecting Rey and Kylo over the galaxy. Probably gonna have a “no, I am your father” reveal in the next one and find they’re related in some capacity.

[ChairmanPoo]

or a "surprise, Snoke is alive" move. Many people actually seem to be considering this. Im this scenario, Fake Luke would be foreshadowing.

TBH I think its bad writing either way

[Kot]

Snoke was really Kylo's father.
Leia was into some kinky stuff.

[ChairmanPoo]

Snoke was really Kylo's father.
Leia was into some kinky stuff.

Older scarred bald men?
Wow, Leia sure had daddy issues

[Kot]

Not older scarred bald men specifically, but...