star wars 9 spoilers and postmortem shit talk

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.

I can't really recall seeing any SW characters in shock because of the psychic weight of the war they're waging.

https://i.giphy.com/media/3oeSB2MkXOkelcFtKg/giphy.webp
https://i.giphy.com/media/l1ugsXCJdQvzJYYnK/giphy.webp
https://i.giphy.com/media/3ornkd1yQFrDGrTDCU/giphy.webp

last GIF looks like someone dealing with the aftermath of shitting themselves

In Psychological Effects of Combat, a 2008 paper included in the book Stress of War, Conflict and Disaster, Dave Grossman and Bruce K. Siddle wrote that in surveys of soldiers during World War II, “a quarter of combat veterans admitted that they urinated in their pants in combat, and a quarter admitted that they defecated in their pants in combat.”

in contrast to later modified versions, in which both voices are jango fett)

They're not tho. But Boba's voice is.

oh sry yr right. maclunky!

in the future we will all be jango fett for 15 minutes

every day another person's voice is replaced w jango fett's

Is Star Wars still really popular with children tho? I guess the merchandise would say yes but mine (and nearly all their mates) are way more into Marvel than Star Wars these days

Marvel - Galactus literally eats planets and its the Silver Surfer's job to warn people before he gets there so they can evacuate, right? Sort of.

Also Marvel released a couple of films relatively recently wherein literally half the population of the universe gets turned to space dust, the biggest act of murder in cinematic history.

Also the Beyonder years and years ago.

Star Wars violence is like the violence in The Dark Knight - no blood, no gore, no visible injuries most of the time. Batman duffs Joker's head in mercilessly in the interrogation room and all that happens is that some of his make-up comes off. I'd say that's as without consequence as anonymous Storm Troopers being offed with blasters.

Is Star Wars for kids? Yeah, it's for everyone. It took me until my 20s to realise the abject horror of the burnt out corpses of Luke's aunt and uncle. Didn't even notice it when I was 5.

Marvel - Galactus literally eats planets and its the Silver Surfer's job to warn people before he gets there so they can evacuate, right? Sort of.

This hasn't been the status quo for SS in decades. Also, a while ago Al Ewing (aka former ILC poster Vic Fluro) completely inverted Galactus, so that he started seeding dead planets with life instead of consuming them. Tho, sadly, this was such a cool new approach to the character that of course Marvel reverted him back a couple of years later.

Also Marvel released a couple of films relatively recently wherein literally half the population of the universe gets turned to space dust, the biggest act of murder in cinematic history.

Also the Beyonder years and years ago.

IIRC the original Beyonder of the 1980s Secret Wars didn't really kill anyone, did he? But in the 2015 Secret Wars and the Avengers comics that preceded it, the Beyonders (other member of the original Beyonder's race) annihilated the entire multiverse (save for one Earth), making them the biggest mass murdeders ever in Marvel comics, far surpassing Thanos, who only killed half the life of one paltry universe.

Tho of course the 2015 SW was pretty much just a Marvel version of DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths, where the Anti-Monitor also destroyed the entire multiverse (save for one universe). They currently adapted this story for the DC "Arrowverse" TV series, but I haven't seen it, so I dunno if the TV Anti-Monitor has surpassed Thanos as the largest live-action mass murderer.

can we not openly doxx former posters pls

Oh, I'm sorry. He was pretty open about his IRL indentity and even advertised comics he'd written on ILC, but that was years ago, so you're right.

TBF I thought it was an open not-at-all-secret secret, as well.

not a secret but it’s polite to googleproof irl names imo

protect @l 3w1ng at all costs imo

Fair enough, friends.

Yours truly,
V1nce 0ffer

Is Star Wars still really popular with children tho? I guess the merchandise would say yes but mine (and nearly all their mates) are way more into Marvel than Star Wars these days

My 8 year-old bounce back and forth between rabid Marvel phases and Star Wars phases, between the new movie and The Mandalorian, he's deep in a SW phase now. He's building massive Mandalorian armies with his Legos.

Marvel - Galactus literally eats planets and its the Silver Surfer's job to warn people before he gets there so they can evacuate, right? Sort of.

Also Marvel released a couple of films relatively recently wherein literally half the population of the universe gets turned to space dust, the biggest act of murder in cinematic history.

Also the Beyonder years and years ago.

Star Wars violence is like the violence in The Dark Knight - no blood, no gore, no visible injuries most of the time. Batman duffs Joker's head in mercilessly in the interrogation room and all that happens is that some of his make-up comes off. I'd say that's as without consequence as anonymous Storm Troopers being offed with blasters.

Is Star Wars for kids? Yeah, it's for everyone. It took me until my 20s to realise the abject horror of the burnt out corpses of Luke's aunt and uncle. Didn't even notice it when I was 5.

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, January 14, 2020 5:43 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

[SPOILERS] Not permanently space dust! And it was also more of a big huge story moment, not just business as usual. But again more importantly, it was ultimately reversed.

Storm Troopers are a little too convenient of a counterpoint, given that they're basically faceless henchman. I wanted to focus more on the colorful good-guy peripheral rebel characters- how often they die in near hopeless skirmishes that are essentially certain death based on the odds, usually bookended by scenes of them hanging out as a kind of family. Their sacrifice is noticeably more in focus and they feel like actual people instead of faceless nobody good guy deaths (like in Marvel movies when they have main baddies killing faceless Asgard or Wakanda soldiers in the midst of a battle). But they debuted this formula with A New Hope because it was helpful and compelling to establish the team involved in the Death Star attack, and it was dramatic to understand how that team got picked off one by one as they moved closer to their goal. The only reason they're doing the cockpit view shot all the way through to ep 9 is because it's yet another stylistic callback to the original trilogy, but it's not as directly practical to tell the story of all the battles (which are much more haphazard and epic) so the result is a unique to Star Wars emphasis on intimately showing good guys dying. I guess I figured out why it felt strange to me.

"No-one feels the effect of death" is an interesting POV only in that it manages to ignore everything we're told about both of the non-white leads in the new trilogy.

ctrl+f-ed your quoted text, zero results. Who u responding to?

SW doesn't really linger on death or trauma as things that have emotional impacts on the survivors. would do as an example

To be fair: "No-one [character] feels the effect of death" ≠ "SW [series] doesn't really linger on death or trauma"

xxxp

My 11 year old son is way more into Star Wars than the Marvel movies. He watches and enjoys the marvel movies, but for the most part doesn't get nearly as excited about them as he does about Star Wars. We got Disney+ and so far he is mostly using it for a full Star Wars rewatch.

Evan is correct. Show me a SW character affected by death and I will show u that same character half an hour later in the movie cracking a joke or going WOOOOOOO as they 'pew pew' other people to death.

I mean... that's any war movie

I mean i think most of us were probably happy that the second half of Terminator wasn't Sarah going to therapy over the loss of Matt and Ginger

That's...kind of a bad counterargument, as Sarah Conner is clearly pretty traumatized through most of the runtime of The Terminator.

wasn't Empire about Luke struggling with his compulsion to save his friends in the wake of losing his aunt and uncle and Obi-Wan Kenobi?

why no rainbow stormtroopers

nevermind

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2stg7a/rainbow_stormtrooper/

Also the argument isn't that that isn't the case in most cinematic depictions of war and violence (as it's pretty overwhelmingly the norm to depict it all as a grand adventure where the heroes barely get a scratch and can enjoy a good night's sleep when the pools of the enemy's blood have begun to coagulate) but rather that SW isn't exactly a gritty documentary about the human cost of intergalactic battle (which, even as I've argued against that notion, I've never said it should be or that anyone would expect it to be, given the kid-friendly nature of the enterprise).

Xxxpost She's wrecked but even she manages to have sex with Reece and have jocular moments at the hotel. These things don't mean she's not feeling destroyed inside, but everyone needs levity even in tragedy.

Adrenaline takes over in battle when you're in a monumental fight for your life, as well

I don't think anybody ever argued it was. The original statement has been warped a lot.

Xpost

Granted, part of the issue here is that if we're talking exclusively about the movies here, the cumulative forty years of the SW universe has a runtime of like < one day and thusly only has time to depict what's most crucial to the plot (see for instance: Jar Jar stepping in a pile of shit). What I've seen of The Clone Wars thus far has actually done a pretty good job of giving some space to the more human effects of the war, at least in part because it has the luxury to do so.

@ AF - what Evan said, pretty much --- Finn and Rose are both shown as *affected* by death, but I still don't think the films *linger* on it. ymmv tho!

It's Finn's only consistent motivation - get the fuck away from the First Order, go to pieces when it looks like that's not possible. It's still neck-and-neck with "Can I have Rey's number, why because she interesting" at the start of the second film, but some of that can be read as "Because she can fuck up Stormtroopers and the dude with the Lightsaber"

Rose not so much, I'll grant - and by coming in for the second film (of two, when will SWIX ever get released, none of us will ever know) she has a lot less of an arc.