star wars 9 spoilers and postmortem shit talk

i read the tor article and idk, the things he describes that are supposedly so much better in the bible are... all in the movie. still very curious i’m gonna figure out a way to read it though

lol, so much better in the novel*

These Ten Star Wars Expanded Universe Novels are Better Than the Bible, and That's Okay, and Here's Why

lmao

More popular than Jesus!

Okay so here's the pony I'm feverishly riding this evening: if for no other reason, the prequels needed to happen for the sake of establishing a frame and a context for the textually-rich Clone Wars. I'm a season into the eponymous show now, and it remains to be seen whether the Cartoon Network et al took full advantage of the gift they were handed, but it's become increasingly clear to me that this is, if not the heart, at least the most interesting and fertile segment of the SW universe. Like, the scenario is one that the Trek folks would've had a field day with and spun gold from over the course of many television seasons. The fertile elements in question:

- Anakin's transition from headstrong (and occasionally genocidal) Jedi Padawan to Palpatine puppet
- Palpatine's machinations over the course of several years as he moves the separatists and the Jedi around his galactic chessboard (and, notably, his active + vocal presence on both sides of the conflict in contrast to the reclusive, behind-the-scenes Machiavellianisms you might expect from him given such unstable circumstances)
- the philosophical implications of clones bred for warfare and the various ways they might strain against their reins over time
- a galaxy in disarray amidst the breakdown of a long-established and comfortable Republic
- the ongoing occlusion of Anakin and Padme's secret marriage
- the discordant iconography of Stormtroopers and Star Destroyers deployed in service of the protagonists and the underlying sense of doom for an audience who knows what's coming down the pike
- a general excuse to explore the various species of the SW universe as the different sides vie for their support
- etc.

I don't know how (or even if) these things will be dealt with in the show but I've been fairly impressed with the intelligence and nuance they've employed thus far.

something that occurred to me during this rewatch: it's kinda established over and over again how the jedi are like... non-interventionist when it comes to death. (which, of course, means that all of the ways in which the jedi are interventionist, say in policing a three-year war between clones and droids, make them p hypocritical, which is of course canon at this point.) obi-wan is always trying to guide anakin away from being the hero and trying to save everyone, cf. the opening scene of rots where obi-wan says "they're doing their jobs, let's do ours." to a degree obi-wan has a point; there's a profound mixture of fear + vanity in anakin's attitude toward death that's pretty much a waterslide straight into the dark side, but also throughout his betrayal he's aware of how much the jedi will not help him save padme, to the exact the degree that they never helped or encouraged him to save his mother. ofc palpatine manipulates this exquisitely

More of an overall thing- but is there any other franchise, series or movie in existence that is so popular with children and simultaneously so blunt about death and the horrors of war?

People die so horribly and so often in Star Wars, which never made any sense in the context of battles (there's absolutely no reason for any non-droid to be fighting battles in this universe), I find myself so distracted by it. The technology is there. They've basically achieved consciousness in droids but they've never considered relying on them to stand in for actual life in military scenarios anywhere along the trajectory of their technological advancements except for in the earliest moments of the entire series? I don't remember why droids were phased out as soldiers/pilots if it was explained and I can't imagine a good one.

And the series is popular among younger demographics! I'm not opposing it, I'm just mystified given that any other series with this awareness much less targeting of these demos do not come anywhere near the unapologetic relentless killing and dying of soldiers/civilians on screen. With a Marvel movie or something you see cities literally crumble but generally they never ever draw attention to the kind of death that would be proportionate to that destruction. If you see civilians at all it is to show them scrambling or escaping or being saved. Henchman might die but many many times you can assume they're simply knocked out.

So ultimately for me it's that in-universe discrepancy between technology and expendable life (frustrating), and on the outside the bold presentation of this for a pretty large percentage of younger viewers (fascinating).

popular with children and simultaneously so blunt about death and the horrors of war?

Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, tons of others I'm sure

I feel, otoh, that SW is pretty adroit at sidestepping the horrors of war. At the least, the horror always takes a backseat to the thrills and excitement.

Except when Mr. Binks is onscreen, of course.

or when an ewok dies

or when luke's aunt and uncle are reduced to charbroiled skeletons

this isn't like a death in battle but there's even grief when the fuckin rancor dies

I think I'd put as much weight on the response to the horror as I would the depictions themselves. I can't really recall seeing any SW characters in shock because of the psychic weight of the war they're waging.

Harry Potter the deaths are big moments, and aren't as gruesome imo. Star Wars you get plenty of cock pit views of a pilot that you just saw cracking wise a few scenes ago helplessly burning to death at the beginning of being exploded.

Lord of the Rings was certainly popular with a lot of kids but Star Wars has so much more kid focused content and targeting and merchandise... it's just on another level. You might imagine this would encourage even more scrutiny from executives worried about parents opinions about exposing this violence, but the cockpit view of pilot screaming and dying in an explosion or a light saber slices someone in half are all just as much borrowed from the original trilogy as the rest of the fan service, so it gets a pass! People just accept it because it's a familiar Star Wars element.

xposts

Luke prodded Owen with a stick a few times and asked him why he was just lying around

whoops, cockpit* ha

xxpost It isn't, like, messy though. Dude in an x-wing dies screaming in an explosion and it's like, aw man that sucks, welp here's some more 'pew pew'.

I mean in battle you can't pull your X-Wing into a breakdown lane and start sobbing

Maybe u can't but let me show u how it's done

I think I'd put as much weight on the response to the horror as I would the depictions themselves. I can't really recall seeing any SW characters in shock because of the psychic weight of the war they're waging.

― Pizza is Really Yummy for Me (Old Lunch), Monday, January 13, 2020 12:05 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah for real isn't the last scene in Star Wars 8 the like 30 survivors standing around chatting casually as if they didn't just watch almost everyone they know die in a chase in which they themselves barely escaped?

I mean consider this: every shot/lightsaber slice in these movies is either a clean kill (like exceptionally clean, very little blood and certainly no viscera) or a survivable injury. At worst, you have the members of the Skywalker clan getting dismembered. And even a charbroiled Anakin gets safely sealed up in his fetish suit where no one has to look at or openly acknowledge what happened to him.

TLJ is the only one I can think of where there was a genuine sense of 'oh shit, these guys might be fucked rn'.

https://i.makeagif.com/media/1-20-2014/R4dNiC.gif

kid focused content and targeting and merchandise

oh, so once again the mega-corporate merchandizing/cultural saturation is the real issue

I know you don't see the rebel's flesh melting or anything but it's still much more brutally upfront than anything else that targets young demos. But again, it's just a fascinating lack of shyness on that front. In the actual SW universe it still makes zero sense that living soldiers fight in battles.

xposts

this may come as a surprise to you but nothing touches Star Wars as a franchise in terms of scale/marketing, so yr using a metric that by its nature excludes any other property or text

much more brutally upfront than anything else that targets young demos

but if *this* (ie, the level of brutality) is yr metric I don't think this is accurate at all, kids are inundated with depictions of violence

Lord of the Rings was certainly popular with a lot of kids

For over sixty years, and sold lots of merchandise on dead trees

kid focused content and targeting and merchandise

oh, so once again the mega-corporate merchandizing/cultural saturation is the real issue

― Οὖτις, Monday, January 13, 2020 12:25 PM (fifty-five seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

eh just using that stuff to emphasize how interesting it is to me that the depictions of war are not watered down.

but if *this* (ie, the level of brutality) is yr metric I don't think this is accurate at all, kids are inundated with depictions of violence

― Οὖτις, Monday, January 13, 2020 12:28 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

If you mean cartoon violence these movies don't really count; if you mean from media or content made for adults also not the same

Yeah, sorry, 'depictions of violence in SW = not watered down' is just not in any way a stance I can hang my hat on.

Can you clarify cause maybe I understand " not something I can hang my hat on" differently here

hanging my hat is where i’m a viking

If you mean cartoon violence these movies don't really count; if you mean from media or content made for adults also not the same

SW isn't marketed specifically to children, it's marketed to over-grown children

Top of your game

I think if you're saying that the SW films demonstrate in a somewhat abstract sense that there's a cost to war, that the outcomes are uncertain, that sacrifice is sometimes required, etc., I can get onboard with that.

If, otoh, you're saying that the SW films offer any kind of realistic depiction of the horror of war, like in terms of the psychic and emotional and physical toll on those involved, I have to mos def call shenanigans.

nah I'm just talking about the literal depictions of the deaths, not the peripheral stuff; the shots of characters blowing up and getting cut in half and all that.

I agreed with you upthread about the weird emotional disconnect btw

agreed with Old Lunch - we do get death being bad, more than in most PG-13 death-fests (Aquaman, e.g., depicts the deaths of tens of thousands of undersea folk basically in the background), but apart from the original trilogy, SW doesn't really linger on death or trauma as things that have emotional impacts on the survivors. Harry Potter is MUCH more interested in this, from Harry's origin story to the major deaths in 4 and 5, and the general grimness of the final film's battle for Hogwarts - not a scene of thrills but of people we love dying in the gray dust.

lots of one-off kids' movies from E.T. to Coco are also about different emotional aspects of death and mourning, though not usually in a "war" setting.

Finally saw this over the weekend. Weeks of rotten reviews made me go in with a shrug and I came out thinking it was better than the reviews had let on. It was, like most of these things now, too long and also rushed. They breezed past every location so quickly I never felt like I knew where the team was. Disappointed that Rose got erased, probably could have left Leia out altogether and opened with her funeral or something.

I liked all the new cast and was sorry to see them go, especially Finn, but at the same time it sure seemed like they were leaving spin-offs set up all over the place. Lando practically looked right at the camera: "Let's go find find your parents... this November, only on Disney +!"

It has become quite a bit muddled over time, but I think technology vs nature was a big part of the subtext at the beginning of the saga. The Stormtroopers and Darth Vader and the Imperial Pilots are kinda inhumane, like robots, while all the Rebels are living beings. Luke has to turn off the computer and shoot with the force! At the end of the early trilogy, the teddy bears save the day! In TPM, it's the trade federation that uses battle droids, against the gungans. The idea that the films are critiquing the Vietnam War is a bit overplayed, but there is a sense that relying on technology and droids won't make for more humane warfare, it'll just mean that the ones with the most resources will win. Human heroism is much better.

Of course, this has gotten muddied. Turns out all the inhumane imperial stuff is just armor. And the Jedi thing makes it a bit awkward as well, because they claim to fight nobly and more civilized, but... They are still a fighter elite killing people. Obviously based on Samurai, and those people could uphold a civilized way of warfare, because they upheld a ruthless dictatorship that disarmed the citizens and meant they could kill everyone with their trusted sword.

So to me, that is kinda why the wars aren't fought with droids, and why the series is full of humans screaming as their spaceships explode around them. It's important to show that human sacrifice beats the military industrial complex. Like the viet cong did.

I just feel like it was an intuitive translation of the human vs. computer relationship from a 1970s outlook. Everything needed "human" operation- even the droids had very limited mobility or functions, despite their cartoony ability to emote. When the prequels provided much more updated perspectives on technology, it made no sense chronologically at the very least and the idea of manned space fighters or actual ground troops nonsensical at the most. Oh well.

I don't even remember -- when the original came out in 77 did we know the stormtroopers were dudes in suits and not droids?

Aren't you a little short for etc.

Also the copious arterial spray when they got hit with a blaster.

conversation between two stormtroopers on the death star about "the new models" of something-- of a piece w all the car culture stuff around the spaceships-- marks them not just as people but as different people (in contrast to later modified versions, in which both voices are jango fett)

the clones tho-- manufactured specifically+solely for war, denied even childhoods, cut off from all forms of relationship beyond martial camaraderie, unaware there is anything in the universe more important than the war you-the-viewer know is actually a kind of enormous prank, churned out by rainswept factories on what surely must be the most evil world in the galaxy (korriban is a theme park), the only place they think of as home-- are a breathtaking concept+image tbh

Yes. It's a large part of the reason why I'm enjoying the Clone Wars program atm (plus the effort they made to actually present the clones as identifiable individual personalities despite there being just shades of difference between most of them).

when I was a kid I thought stormtroopers / tie pilots were droids (despite han and luke putting on suits) and all the death was totally abstract, despite the destruction of alderaan and the millions of voices crying out in terror, lars and beru's smoldering corpses, incinerating x-wings, etc.

the idea of death and the scale of it never really hit me until i read a novelization of ROTJ a year or two after it came out (so I'd have been 10/11) and it described luke looking out the window of death star II during the battle of endor and picturing all the frozen dismembered bodies floating in space.