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Star Wars Episode IX

Started by JOE SOAP, 10 July, 2018, 01:50:53 AM

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JOE SOAP

#705
Quote from: TordelBack on 16 May, 2020, 04:59:04 PM

It's obvious that IX was supposed to foreground Leia (and Joe's excerpts above support that) , which would have created a more convincing structure. What they managed to pull off in that respect underctrahic cirvumstances was astounding, and buys all concerned a lot of leeway from me.


What I find funny is the last week or so fans were (deservedly) gushing over Filoni's fitting end to The Clone Wars and the recent interview where he waxes lyrical about The Phantom Menace to a bunch of SW directors, but not a peep about these quotes from the art-book that's been out several months with bits and pieces of it copy/pasted into numerous articles – quotes that would 'hang' JJA, Johnson and Kennedy etc.

TordelBack

Have to get that book - so far I've held back on all the Disney artbooks, although if you were to carry out DNA analysis on the browsing copies in Big Bang, you'd detect rather of a lot of Tordeldrool. 

Filoni is a righteous dude, albeit with his own strange peccadillos, who genuinely works hard to learn from his more original influences. Large sections of his current fanbase are, however, borderline rabid and blind to what he actually says - and does. I think they must read the fedora as some kind of gang-sign.

What still fascinates me is remembering the utter savaging he and Lucas (less so Henry Gilroy), got on a weekly basis in the Clone Wars discussion forums. The things that were said about Ahsoka Tano in the early days would make Rey and even Rose seem like fan favourites.

Greg M.

The excerpt Joe posts likening Luke to Frodo is interesting in terms of an insight into the thinking behind the choices made; it is also totally antithetical to my understanding of the former. Luke is not Frodo, horribly damaged by a quest he should never have had to undertake - he ends RotJ more emotionally whole, content and fulfilled than ever, knowing he redeemed his father and is at one with the Force, now truly a Jedi Knight. He bears the mark of mistakes past in the form of his artificial hand, but he's clearly on the threshold of a remarkable future.

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Greg M. on 16 May, 2020, 09:59:08 PM
The excerpt Joe posts likening Luke to Frodo is interesting in terms of an insight into the thinking behind the choices made; it is also totally antithetical to my understanding of the former. Luke is not Frodo, horribly damaged by a quest he should never have had to undertake - he ends RotJ more emotionally whole, content and fulfilled than ever, knowing he redeemed his father and is at one with the Force, now truly a Jedi Knight. He bears the mark of mistakes past in the form of his artificial hand, but he's clearly on the threshold of a remarkable future.

And that he is. As he builds his world and the world trys to build around him. Alas one man and a laser sword do not peace make. Slowly after a good few years of peace and success the darkness builds around him and he learns, like Ben and Yoda before him that he too can't stem the tide. The final bitter blow, his failure to raise a new order of Jedi. And so like the master who taught him he retreats to a life of quite contemptation, guilt and regret.

Until that is a man with a laser sword can be the saviour when needed most and can give the spark of... and I hate to use the most over used term in the whole 'Skywalker saga' ... hope. And like his father he finds his redemption.

For me what you say is utterly right and utterly seen through in TLJ.

We take from things that which we wish to see I guess.

Greg M.

#709
Quote from: Colin YNWA on 16 May, 2020, 10:19:30 PM

We take from things that which we wish to see I guess.

Why you wish to see such a path for Luke, I do not know, but I'm glad I can't see said path.

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Greg M. on 16 May, 2020, 10:26:37 PM
Quote from: Colin YNWA on 16 May, 2020, 10:19:30 PM

We take from things that which we wish to see I guess.

Why you wish to see such a path for Luke, I do not know, but I'm glad I can't see said path.

I honestly don't mean this with an ounce of snark, its an honest answer to an honest question. Why  'cos it provides a good and interesting story with all the pathos of the classic heroes. I honestly can't see any value in Luke being a relentless perfect hero from the end of RotJ on.

Greg M.

I never said he was perfect. I am sure he has challenges ahead of him, and sometimes he will make mistakes. But I can never see him as a man ultimately doomed to repeat the mistakes of his mentors and spend a prolonged period of his life in guilt, regret and misery. It's not what happens.

Dandontdare

Quote from: Apestrife on 15 May, 2020, 01:40:52 PM
Quote from: shaolin_monkey on 15 May, 2020, 09:16:16 AM
I'll leave you with this reaction video, which is the best reaction to anything I have ever seen ever, and I am totally with her all of the way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIe2TLPryJw

Nice reaction video :)

When I clicked, I was expecting this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=nfdsc4Q4R2k&feature=emb_title

sheridan

Quote from: Colin YNWA on 16 May, 2020, 10:19:30 PM
Until that is a man with a laser sword can be the saviour when needed most and can give the spark of... and I hate to use the most over used term in the whole 'Skywalker saga' ... hope.


Oh, I thought it was "I've got a bad feeling."

TordelBack

I don't think Luke is Frodo either - he emerges whole from Return of the Jedi, his lone vigil at Vader's pyre followed by Leia drawing him away from the lineup of approving ghosts and back to party with his friends perfectly sums up the character's completeness.  There is no wound to re-open every 6th October (he's already confronted the reality of his hand), and the white shores of Valinor are all around him; perhaps waiting at the end of a long life, but not as an escape from one he no longer belongs to. Yoda's final instruction is to pass on what he has learned, so unlike Frodo his purpose is still ahead of him.

I also don't think his later failure was a passive one, or that it grew from his own nature: in TROS we learn that it was Palpatine that twisted Ben Solo, just like he did Anakin - so Luke's failure to keep Ben on the light path wasn't any more of a deficiency in his abilities as a teacher and mentor than Obi-Wan's was; rather it was a defeat in a hidden struggle with a Sith mastermind he didn't even know existed.  He thought he was contending with Snoke, but that was only one part of what was going on.

Where Luke did fail was in a single moment of despair when confronted with the complete undoing of his happy ending, and in that instant weighing options that should never have been considered. I can happily allow him this one moment of doubt, because he didn't go through with it, without ascribing it to some deep damage he sustained in the OT, or a flawed character. And his subsequent withdrawal follows on as a natural, even rational decision: this system he's devoted his life to rebuilding only ever ends in darkness. Better it ends now.

Of course he's wrong about that, but it'll take time and events for him to see that.

The Enigmatic Dr X

Quote from: TordelBack on 17 May, 2020, 10:52:48 AM
I don't think Luke is Frodo either - he emerges whole from Return of the Jedi, his lone vigil at Vader's pyre followed by Leia drawing him away from the lineup of approving ghosts and back to party with his friends perfectly sums up the character's completeness.  There is no wound to re-open every 6th October (he's already confronted the reality of his hand), and the white shores of Valinor are all around him; perhaps waiting at the end of a long life, but not as an escape from one he no longer belongs to. Yoda's final instruction is to pass on what he has learned, so unlike Frodo his purpose is still ahead of him.

I also don't think his later failure was a passive one, or that it grew from his own nature: in TROS we learn that it was Palpatine that twisted Ben Solo, just like he did Anakin - so Luke's failure to keep Ben on the light path wasn't any more of a deficiency in his abilities as a teacher and mentor than Obi-Wan's was; rather it was a defeat in a hidden struggle with a Sith mastermind he didn't even know existed.  He thought he was contending with Snoke, but that was only one part of what was going on.

Where Luke did fail was in a single moment of despair when confronted with the complete undoing of his happy ending, and in that instant weighing options that should never have been considered. I can happily allow him this one moment of doubt, because he didn't go through with it, without ascribing it to some deep damage he sustained in the OT, or a flawed character. And his subsequent withdrawal follows on as a natural, even rational decision: this system he's devoted his life to rebuilding only ever ends in darkness. Better it ends now.

Of course he's wrong about that, but it'll take time and events for him to see that.

The sequels failed by not telling this story. Instead we got a rehash of the original trilogy. The whole think trod water.
Lock up your spoons!

TordelBack

#716
Quote from: The Enigmatic Dr X on 17 May, 2020, 03:13:49 PM
The sequels failed by not telling this story. Instead we got a rehash of the original trilogy. The whole think trod water.

There's a lot of truth in that, even though I generally enjoyed them, love one of them, and am happy to have the new characters in my head.

I think we could have had the New Republic/Luke's Jedi era films had there been any enthusiasm for it in the early 90s, show rather than tell what happened next, but once the actors were left to age for 35 years it was necessary to introduce new heroes, and thus move the old ones off the board - or to skip right ahead to where they were memories or ghosts. A ghostly Palpatine threatening a complacent galaxy might have been enough of a link.

The (financial) decision to juggle both casts on screen, along with all the nostalgia hardware and costuming, meant that there was very little time to do anything new, even across 3 movies.

Rather than 'treading water' I think it was more of a case of having no time for worldbuilding or for a developed plot - hence we get Blow Up the Death Star Again, SpaceshIp Chase & Jedi Training and Find a Maguffin So We Can Blow up the Death Star Yet Again, because those things aren't much of a distraction from the character dramas.

When the sequels aren't doing the same old things in familiar deserts, forests and spaceship hallways, they are at their most interesting - Rey and Finn's stories are pretty cool, Poe is an affable third wheel, Ben is a great villain. There just wasn't enough of their world that wasn't part of the old one.

Apestrife

Quote from: Dandontdare on 17 May, 2020, 01:05:28 AM
Quote from: Apestrife on 15 May, 2020, 01:40:52 PM
Quote from: shaolin_monkey on 15 May, 2020, 09:16:16 AM
I'll leave you with this reaction video, which is the best reaction to anything I have ever seen ever, and I am totally with her all of the way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIe2TLPryJw

Nice reaction video :)

When I clicked, I was expecting this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=nfdsc4Q4R2k&feature=emb_title

I still look like that. Even if I've seen the scene at least 20 times  :)