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Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

Started by TordelBack, 23 January, 2017, 04:29:12 PM

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Tiplodocus

Quote from: SIP on 23 July, 2018, 04:07:13 PM
*can anyone point at the positive male role model in Last jedi?

Why male? Shouldn't just being a positive role model, regardless of gender, be enough?
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

TordelBack

Quote from: Tiplodocus on 23 July, 2018, 06:35:09 PM
Quote from: SIP on 23 July, 2018, 04:07:13 PM
*can anyone point at the positive male role model in Last jedi?

Why male? Shouldn't just being a positive role model, regardless of gender, be enough?

Also, aren't most of the male heroes in TLJ positive role models?  Poe goes from hotheaded genius fighter pilot (whose actions as I'll argue yet again actually save the fleet at D'Qar) to humble and thoughtful leader, Luke picks himself up from abject failure and despair to wry wit and heroic inspiration: he's a genuine role model.  Not really sure what Finn is up to in this one, TBH, other than "learning", which is a bit of a shame when his journey in TFA is so clear.


Professor Bear

Quote from: Tiplodocus on 23 July, 2018, 06:35:09 PM
Quote from: SIP on 23 July, 2018, 04:07:13 PM
*can anyone point at the positive male role model in Last jedi?

Why male? Shouldn't just being a positive role model, regardless of gender, be enough?

By that rationale, the role model also needn't be female and we're back to square one.  I think the progressive case for more diversity is predicated on the notion that audiences wish/deserve to be personally represented, in which case males have as much right to a representative role model as females.

Although I'd argue there are no good role models in Last Jedi - almost everyone makes monstrously stupid mistakes that get people killed.

Quote from: TordelBack on 23 July, 2018, 06:03:01 PM(her scathing review of Solo well worth a look, BTW)

I like Jenny, but had to tap out about 10 minutes into the Solo review because it was getting into CinemaSins nitpicking territory.

TordelBack

Quote from: Professor Bear on 23 July, 2018, 06:51:59 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 23 July, 2018, 06:03:01 PM(her scathing review of Solo well worth a look, BTW)

I like Jenny, but had to tap out about 10 minutes into the Solo review because it was getting into CinemaSins nitpicking territory.

That it did, but in the context of her other lighter more coherent stuff, I thought that the non-stop barrage of negative minutiae was at least part of the joke.  Probably helped that I was surprised to find myself well-disposed towards Solo.

IndigoPrime

Quote from: Professor Bear on 23 July, 2018, 06:51:59 PMI think the progressive case for more diversity is predicated on the notion that audiences wish/deserve to be personally represented, in which case males have as much right to a representative role model as females.
In which case, look at, I dunno, about 99% of media. As someone bringing up a girl, I'm sick and tired of the notion that films should have X character as a role model. Across film, we should get a range. So if you watch 50 films, you'd see men, women, boys, girls, straight, gay, white, PoC. But what we really get is OH MY GOD THERE'S A GIRL, WHY ARE THERE NO MENZ

And I know that wasn't what you were saying, Professor Bear, but I really wish media as a whole would be a bit more thoughtful. The reality is: people argue girls will read about/watch boys, but not the reverse. The white male becomes the default. Everyone else has to pick up the scraps. Frankly, whatever else I think about the new Star Wars, I was really fucking happy that the hero was a woman, and that the co-hero was black. It's not like the film's not full of white blokes elsewhere anyway – it's just they're (for once) not the leads.

SIP

#965
Yeah, I follow all this guys, but I have to admit, as a 5 year old boy watching Star Wars i really wanted to be Luke, and a little later still I wanted to be Han (now I want to be luke again.....but the one from Return of the Jedi, not that new guy). At no point did I want to be Princess Leia, despite the fact that (in the original trilogy) she was fantastic.

I think it's okay for a little boy to have positive male role models that they want to emulate. That's not denigrating the female role models in the film in any way by saying that.

As for the men in Last jedi, we are arguing that they learned something and improved......maybe......but they are all shown to be inferior people to begin with, and they don't really come across very well for 99% of the fil. Most of them are shown to be fairly stupid and sub-standard for the majority of the film. The.man who would rather die than turn to the dark side, who would sacrifice his life in the solid belief that there was just a shred of decency in his genocidal child murderer father considers.murdering his own nephew because he thought he was a little off kilter. Sigh.

SIP

#966
The Last Jedi fundamentally misunderstands a characters core being, I get that we can become jaded, disillusioned and bitter with age....but this took a giant step into the ridiculous in its about turn with that character choice. It just does not work (in my opinion). What's more, other than sensing darkness in his own nephew, Luke really didn't have any terrible experiences to corrupt his beliefs so drastically.

If they'd have just got Lukes character right, if he came across as a maturing of the same man that we saw in Return of the Jedi, I could have forgiven the film it's awful Finn, Rose, Po and Holdo story arcs and the constant rug pulling.

Right, enough of my anti last jedi propaganda......I've said it all before. It's just not for me.

SIP

#967
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 23 July, 2018, 07:18:49 PM
Quote from: Professor Bear on 23 July, 2018, 06:51:59 PMI think the progressive case for more diversity is predicated on the notion that audiences wish/deserve to be personally represented, in which case males have as much right to a representative role model as females.
In which case, look at, I dunno, about 99% of media. As someone bringing up a girl, I'm sick and tired of the notion that films should have X character as a role model. Across film, we should get a range. So if you watch 50 films, you'd see men, women, boys, girls, straight, gay, white, PoC. But what we really get is OH MY GOD THERE'S A GIRL, WHY ARE THERE NO MENZ

And I know that wasn't what you were saying, Professor Bear, but I really wish media as a whole would be a bit more thoughtful. The reality is: people argue girls will read about/watch boys, but not the reverse. The white male becomes the default. Everyone else has to pick up the scraps. Frankly, whatever else I think about the new Star Wars, I was really fucking happy that the hero was a woman, and that the co-hero was black. It's not like the film's not full of white blokes elsewhere anyway – it's just they're (for once) not the leads.

I really liked Rey in the Force Awakens. I thought all of the new cast were great. So much so in fact that I really wish the old cast weren't there to get in the way and cause problems.

I take no issue with Rey and Finn being front and centre in the whole trilogy.......what irritated me was the constant having to make men look stupid to elevate the female leads. That's not equality is it?  Finn is made to look inferior and stupid, Po gets the same treatment (and later finally learns how to run away) and Luke comes out of it worst of all. I'm assuming that was no accident. All men = lacklustre in that film. Kylo ultimately fails, but at the hands of cowardly Luke on his island.....where he seemingly hides while leaving his sister and family in constant mortal peril .....because that's what Luke is like......apparently.

Damn....thought I was finished ranting about this goddam stupid film.

Professor Bear

I didn't like Rey because she is a Mary Sue in the original sense of an authorial avatar within the fiction, rather than the more commonly accepted idea of a Mary Sue as someone who displays uber competence in all things - "OMG Han Solo!  OMG Millenium Falcon!  OMG I know all about the OT - but not those awful Prequels!"  So yeah basically I hated Rey because she's a Star Wars fan, and Star Wars fans, as we know from Disney's marketing, are dreadful.

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 23 July, 2018, 07:18:49 PM
Quote from: Professor Bear on 23 July, 2018, 06:51:59 PMI think the progressive case for more diversity is predicated on the notion that audiences wish/deserve to be personally represented, in which case males have as much right to a representative role model as females.
In which case, look at, I dunno, about 99% of media. As someone bringing up a girl, I'm sick and tired of the notion that films should have X character as a role model. Across film, we should get a range. So if you watch 50 films, you'd see men, women, boys, girls, straight, gay, white, PoC. But what we really get is OH MY GOD THERE'S A GIRL, WHY ARE THERE NO MENZ

It was unfair that 8 year old girls didn't have role models in sci-fi, but equally unfair that 8 year old boys now have to carry the can for it.  Some kids won't watch old films, so referring them to that 99% of existing media doesn't really help them much.  A level playing field would do that, but as you say, there will always be those in the audience for whom any concession to diversity is "too far, too quickly."

Keef Monkey

The one criticism I keep seeing about TLJ that I really don't get is this notion that they got Luke's character wrong, or that he was a different person than he was in the original trilogy.

Just don't see it at all, he was always conflicted, prone to grumpiness and self doubt and even when he was projecting himself as some badass jedi warrior he could come out of it looking arrogant and flawed. I thought TLJ nailed that guy further down the line and later in life.

IndigoPrime

Quote from: SIP on 23 July, 2018, 10:23:54 PMAt no point did I want to be Princess Leia, despite the fact that (in the original trilogy) she was fantastic.
She was also 'other'. She was Smurfette. Re-watching the original films, as Mrs G and I did years back, we were open-eyed about just how few women were in the entire run.

As for boys having male role models, I'm all for that, but, as I said, that's almost all media anyway. Film. TV. Comics. Books. I would say of the children's books we have for mini-IP, 90% have male protagonists. And this isn't for the want of trying to find something that doesn't (and that also isn't a stereotype of pink and unicorns). Of TV shows for kids, the vast, vast majority are male-focussed, and that's especially true for the popular ones. In the original Paw Patrol, of the six-dog line-up, FIVE are male. And she's the smallest. And pink. And 'support'. When they finally deigned to add another female dog, they stuck her up a fucking mountain, and made sure they added TWO extra male dogs, just so the boys didn't feel hard done by.

So, honestly, I don't care if there's a Star Wars film where the men aren't solely front, centre, heroic and amazing. Let boys see other people taking the lead now and again. As for equality within Star Wars alone, I might have more sympathy for that if we weren't still seeing a huge proportion of films (including ones for children) failing something some simple as the Bechdel test.

Quote from: Professor Bear on 23 July, 2018, 11:40:55 PMIt was unfair that 8 year old girls didn't have role models in sci-fi, but equally unfair that 8 year old boys now have to carry the can for it.
How very dramatic. So they're "carrying the can" in one film. How terrible for them. Perhaps they can learn that it's OK to root for a woman, and consider her a role model. (And how are they really "carrying the can" here anyway? Even new Star Wars is weighted towards men in the primary cast. Would your solution have been to swap out Rey for a man?)

QuoteA level playing field would do that, but as you say, there will always be those in the audience for whom any concession to diversity is "too far, too quickly."
Fuck them. It's not 1950. Again, that we still have films – including children's films – where two named female characters don't talk about anything other than male characters is ludicrous. That we still have a vast, vast majority of films where there are no leads that are female, and where even the support cast and background cast are weighted heavily in favour of male characters is ludicrous.

There are exceptions. Saving Private Ryan, for example, obviously isn't going to be terribly equal in terms of gender. But when you have things like science fiction, far into the future, there's no bloody excuse. (Hello, rebooted Star Trek, which in your utopian future still seems to basically be a sausage fest. And Star Wars, frankly, no longer has that excuse either, even if it's technically set far in the past.)

Keef Monkey: I agree. The portrayal of him seemed quite in keeping. He was slap-dash, arrogant, and grumpy. But also, he came good in the end. I suspect part of the problem for people is these stories don't match the one people have had in their heads since the 1980s.

SIP

#971
Quote from: Keef Monkey on 24 July, 2018, 09:36:51 AM
The one criticism I keep seeing about TLJ that I really don't get is this notion that they got Luke's character wrong, or that he was a different person than he was in the original trilogy.

Just don't see it at all, he was always conflicted, prone to grumpiness and self doubt and even when he was projecting himself as some badass jedi warrior he could come out of it looking arrogant and flawed. I thought TLJ nailed that guy further down the line and later in life.

I think he couldn't be a more different character.

You think that the Luke Skywalker who would lay down his life rather than turn to evil, and is eternally optimistic, to the point of his own potential destruction, that there is a spark of good in a man who has done the terrible things that his father has done would turn into a man that would murder a young, defenceless, confused member of his own family in his sleep because he sensed a flicker of bad in him? A person that had, at that time, done nothing?

A guy who would rush headlong into mortal peril to help his friends, would completely abandon them?

I'm struggling with that one. Our interpretations of that character are clearly a hundred miles apart.

SIP

#972
I think maybe we were all watching different films. So....

A new hope - luke aspires to join the rebellion to fight the evil empire. Risks his life to save a princess, then risks it again to destroy the death star. He's a bit stroppy because he's young and bored.

Empire - luke fights the evil empire on hoth, trains to be a jedi, but must leave to save his friends....risks his life for them......chooses potential death rather than join his evil father.

Jedi - luke risks his life to save his friend from Jabba, tells yoda he can't murder his father, tells his sister he can save their father, risks his life to do so, chooses almost certain death rather than join the emperor.

Last jedi - luke has trained some young aspiring jedi.....has a sense of something bad in his nephew....decides to go and kill him in his sleep. Abandons all of his friends and hides from the baddies.

We know of no terrible trauma that he's had over the decades that should somehow push luke to this incredible about face on all of his beliefs and convictions......he's just a bit of a coward and a weasle now because he's older.....and he had a dodgy feeling about something that hadn't happened.....despite him knowing jedi visions are entirely unreliable.

Seriously? Help me out with where that was plausible character progression. He's fundamentally changed his entire belief system and motivations for absolutely no good reason. Why has he lost everything that made him Luke?.

SIP

I don't need a big lightsaber duel, I don't need over the top fan service wankery.....just a believable interpretation of an old character. Hans character progression I could understand, didn't particularly like it, but I can understand it. Lukes......it didn't appear to be the same character, just the same actor doing distinctly out of character things.

SIP

It's fair to say......it's not for me.

I'm sure that the film must appeal to those who can reconcile such a quantum shift in a character who was inherently the personification of all that is good and noble, becoming something pathetic and cowardly. It grates on me, and it's a step too far for me to extract any enjoyment from the film.

Right.....I really must go and find something more worthwhile to do with my life!  ;)