Star Wars Episode 7 and Disney buy Lucas Film

[TordelBack]

.... is frequently represented in popular media by a bikini-clad harem girl.

Disney Princesses Jasmin and Ariel notwithstanding.

TS, it's time to up the potassium bromide intake again!

[ThryllSeekyr]

You know it's bad, but some of the worst politically incorrectness is great for making films like this entertaining.

BTW TD I don't know what that shit is, but I did once swallow a mouthful of coolant.

[TordelBack]

...but I did once swallow a mouthful of coolant.

Mmm-hmmm.

(Bromide is an apocryphal libido-supressant supposedly (but not really) used by the British Army to keep their privates in line, so to speak. Commando Forces and Tankie could probably elaborate).

[Professor Bear]

This is all rather topical, given Disney's alleged recent edict that 'Slave' Leia is to be retired from its licensed merchandise.

It just won't be a comic con without the Slave Leia pageant and grown men openly taking pictures of bikini-clad girls as young as 8.

[sheridan]

Could you also make Harrison Ford's hair a little less grey, fix the Falcon's radar dish, and add boobs to Captain Phasmas armor?

And not so teal and amber would be nice (did I complain about that already?)

[sheridan]

We're going to have to have this "she doesn't exist for you to approve of her physically" discussion again aren't we?

No? I'd say let this one go.

Also how amazing is it that a Star Wars film is coming out with more than two women in it?! NICE.

Hmmm, which other SW film has two women in it, in proper speaking roles where they get to be a character and not just reveal the rest of the plot (so disregarding Mon Mothma's one scene)?  Technically TPM had Amidala and Sabé, but not sure that really counts...

[Eric Plumrose]

Not because I want to support the salve trade

Fair enough. Not something I'd want on my conscience, either.

[COMMANDO FORCES]

...but I did once swallow a mouthful of coolant.

Mmm-hmmm.

(Bromide is an apocryphal libido-supressant supposedly (but not really) used by the British Army to keep their privates in line, so to speak. Commando Forces and Tankie could probably elaborate).

I am aware of the story but as far as I know it's a myth. Then again I don't drink tea and only have a couple of coffees a year, so even if it did do what it's supposed to do, it would never have been ingested by me

[Frank]

The gold bikini eclipsed the two-danish hairstyle as visual shorthand for Star Wars itself some years ago, possibly around the time Jennifer Aniston combined the two elements in Friends

That's definitely the case. Star Wars fandom is huge, but more 12 year old girls have watched one of the endless, daily reruns of that Friends episode than will see any of the Star Wars films (past or future).

I'm firmly in the camp that considers Carrie Fisher in a bikini a very good thing, but I remember struggling a bit with it tonally as a kid. I could see it was riffing on Conan and Flash Gordon tropes [1], but the slave/rescue dynamic seemed a little at odds with the effortlessly sarcastic, blaster wielding, bad-ass Leia of the original film [2].


[1] nobody complained when Max von Sydow treated a captive Melody Anderson to Studio 54 bondage gear in the near-contemporary Flash Gordon

[2] although both Star Wars and Jedi have scenes where she passively clings to her brother as he swings to her rescue

[TordelBack]

I actually don't think there's anything wrong with the costume in the context of the movie (although Leia in her snowsuit was far more my pre-teen ideal of beauty), Leia arrives at Jabba's palace as a hard-as-nails bounty hunter, rejects her degredation and leaves having used the very chains of her bondage to free herself and her prospective lover: job jobbed. It's the recent fetishisation of that costume that bothers me, and Disney are (if they are) right to distance their IP from that.

Flash Gordon is pure filth, and more power to it.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Hmmm, which other SW film has two women in it, in proper speaking roles where they get to be a character and not just reveal the rest of the plot (so disregarding Mon Mothma's one scene)?  Technically TPM had Amidala and Sabé, but not sure that really counts...

I didn't say two women who "get to be a (proper) characters" - if we're judging SW in those terms I'm provoked into expanding the thought that the whole saga is just a shallow but compelling romp  intentionally following the mould of shallow but compelling action serials of yesteryear but as a consequence not having any particularly distinctive characters. They're all just flat tropes in nice costumes. The sole exceptions being the charismatic Han and old Kenobi (and that's the actors entirely I think) - those two serving to 'guide Luke to his destiny' and nothing else in the first film. This flimsy characterisation functions well in the originals because 'character moments' are either super brief or accompanied by serious shit going down.



In the prequels the veil fell well away and the awkward attempts at more rounded characterisation appeared stilted and pointless. Most of them slovenly building to conclusions we already knew. Like how explaining the mechanics of the Force blows the tissue-thin concept wide open, so too does exploring the depths of characters who have none makes us see that there weren't any characters there before either, we just weren't hanging around them long enough to notice.



GET ON WITH IT.

I guess what seems most promising is that not only has the new film got likeable actors in it - but motherflipping Lawrence Kasdan of Empire fame as well as solid character writer Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3, Little Miss Sunshine) are on script duties alongside audience-pleasing JJ so a good balance may be struck between actual characterisation that modern audiences crave and that shallow and compelling action serial schtick that greases the wheels of the saga.

 

[CrazyFoxMachine]

*and the 'actually having some roles for women' is the icing on the optimism cake

I meant to add.

[radiator]

Anyone else a bit bummed out that there's what looks like a [spoiler]Death Star[/spoiler] in the official poster? I'm guessing this is [spoiler]'Starkiller base'. So basically, a Death Star that destroys stars, and thus entire solar systems?[/spoiler]

Isn't that a rut that the spin-off novels and comics fell straight into? Every single plot hinging on [spoiler]the villains having an ever-increasingly powerful iteration of Death Star?[/spoiler]

[von Boom]

Anyone else a bit bummed out that there's what looks like a [spoiler]Death Star[/spoiler] in the official poster? I'm guessing this is [spoiler]'Starkiller base'. So basically, a Death Star that destroys stars, and thus entire solar systems?[/spoiler]

Isn't that a rut that the spin-off novels and comics fell straight into? Every single plot hinging on [spoiler]the villains having an ever-increasingly powerful iteration of Death Star?[/spoiler]

[spoiler]I wonder where they hid it. Tatooine?[/spoiler]

[JOE SOAP]

Anyone else a bit bummed out that there's what looks like a [spoiler]Death Star[/spoiler] in the official poster? I'm guessing this is [spoiler]'Starkiller base'. So basically, a Death Star that destroys stars, and thus entire solar systems?[/spoiler]

Isn't that a rut that the spin-off novels and comics fell straight into? Every single plot hinging on [spoiler]the villains having an ever-increasingly powerful iteration of Death Star?[/spoiler]

Not at all; it's not like it falls in-line with a pattern of an Empire of Star-Destroyers and TIE-Fighters duelling a band of Rebels with X-Wings; a desert planet of farmers/scavengers wrapped in beige cloth; a mythical and half-remembered religion practiced by a hermetic knight hunted by a devoted black-art opposite; a talismanic lightsaber, with a legacy attached, carried by a questing orphan and her robot who take a jaunt on a familiar ship with an elder keeper-of-the-flame, and a furry alien.