ImpAtom posted:Why are you assuming this? Because either Ren's motivations are like Vader's, where we see the end result but not the logic behind them, and we don't get a clear explanation in this set of movies, or they're facile and can be summed up organically, or they're unwieldy and lengthy flashbacks. Those are basically the only three options. I would prefer not to have him be purely facile, but the other two options basically lead to entirely separate movies to explain his motivations. Or to licensed tie-in novels to do it. I actually summed this up in the previous paragraph.
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Dec 30, 2015 03:56
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Effectronica posted:Vader's backstory and motivations were revealed over about 360 minutes, so... Vader's backstory and motivations were embellished upon for 360 minutes. The original trilogy told us everything we needed to know without frame stories or separate movies. What point are you making?
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Dec 30, 2015 03:56
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Effectronica posted:Because either Ren's motivations are like Vader's, where we see the end result but not the logic behind them, and we don't get a clear explanation in this set of movies, or they're facile and can be summed up organically, or they're unwieldy and lengthy flashbacks. Those are basically the only three options. I would prefer not to have him be purely facile, but the other two options basically lead to entirely separate movies to explain his motivations. Or to licensed tie-in novels to do it. If you ignore the craft of storytelling in order to assume that detail, poignance, and inches of film must all be directly correlated.
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Dec 30, 2015 03:58
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Effectronica posted:Because either Ren's motivations are like Vader's, where we see the end result but not the logic behind them, and we don't get a clear explanation in this set of movies, or they're facile and can be summed up organically, or they're unwieldy and lengthy flashbacks. Those are basically the only three options. I would prefer not to have him be purely facile, but the other two options basically lead to entirely separate movies to explain his motivations. Or to licensed tie-in novels to do it. Why are those the only three options? Like... there are literally decades of films which manage to have villains who don't need lengthy backstories to sum up their characterization and motivations. Like what if Ren's reason for falling is something that matters to the plot in the upcoming films and so we find out about it at the same time as the plot is advanced? ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 03:58
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Bongo Bill posted:A prequel is just an achronological sequel. I would say only 300 minutes rather than 360, however, as A New Hope was not very concerned with his backstory or motivations. They were, however, central to the second and third films to be release, and then depicted explicitly for the fourth, fifth, and sixth. (And the seventh is heavily involved with a character who was influenced by those backstory and motivations, while we're at it.) I was thinking I-III, two hours apiece, for 360 minutes that basically lay out his backstory and motivations. Phylodox posted:Vader's backstory and motivations were embellished upon for 360 minutes. The original trilogy told us everything we needed to know without frame stories or separate movies. What point are you making? Actually, the original trilogy tells us zip about why he took the actions he did, and literally as soon as a sequel was released, Star Wars became Episode IV: A New Hope. So there was always the sense that there was more to the story once Vader became the primary antagonist. Cheesus posted:...it couldn't possibly be explain in brief flashbacks as Tom Riddle's transformation in the Half Blood Prince? Voldemort is a pretty facile character. He's pop-psych Hitler, down to being secretly Jewish or born with one testicle or something.
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Dec 30, 2015 04:00
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Effectronica posted:Actually, the original trilogy tells us zip about why he took the actions he did, and literally as soon as a sequel was released, Star Wars became Episode IV: A New Hope. So there was always the sense that there was more to the story once Vader became the primary antagonist. We know all we need to know about Vader in the original trilogy from the original trilogy. It was all we knew about him for fifteen years, and that wasn't a problem.
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Dec 30, 2015 04:04
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Bongo Bill posted:If you ignore the craft of storytelling in order to assume that detail, poignance, and inches of film must all be directly correlated. ImpAtom posted:Why are those the only three options? Like... there are literally decades of films which manage to have villains who don't need lengthy backstories to sum up their characterization and motivations. They generally have characters who can have their motivations set out organically, because they're simple characters. They want this because they're greedy. They want revenge because they were wronged. On the other hand, look at loving Casablanca, where almost the entire movie is set around Rick's internal emotional state, because Rick is somewhat complex, being torn between idealism and pragmatism in one dimension and between pain and love on another. There's nothing wrong with simple characters! The Emperor is a simple character. Nobody calls for his backstory, because it's all laid out. He's convinced that everyone is basically immoral and devotes himself to revealing that in others. But the way TFA sets Ren up as a character, he shows the possibility of being genuinely complex, and I would prefer that to having a purely simple character. Phylodox posted:We know all we need to know about Vader in the original trilogy from the original trilogy. It was all we knew about him for fifteen years, and that wasn't a problem. We know all we need to know about Vader, in the strict sense, without ever watching any Star Wars movies. All you're really saying is, "the original trilogy is well-made enough to feel satisfying to watch", which isn't like, the highest bar to clear.
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Dec 30, 2015 04:05
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Effectronica posted:They generally have characters who can have their motivations set out organically, because they're simple characters. You're assuming that simple motivations is the same as a simple character. A character can have both simple motivations or even a simple premise but still have depth or complexity. 360 extra minutes of Darth Vader did not actually significantly change his character who can still be summed up by "guy who fell to evil to protect his loved ones and in the process killed them." Not to mention that three films worth of being a villain is more than enough to develop a character without having to devote entire episodes to flashbacks about their history. Very few villains can't be described fairly simply. What gives them complexity is how they are played out and how they contribute to the themes and ideas of the story. Walter White is an exceedingly simple concept ("A man who allows his pride to overcome all else") but is interesting and exciting because of how he is played and acted and how his actions contribute to the world around him. Hannibal Lector is arguably only hurt by increased focus on his history and backstory which weaken a character with a strong base concept. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 04:10
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Effectronica posted:We know all we need to know about Vader, in the strict sense, without ever watching any Star Wars movies. All you're really saying is, "the original trilogy is well-made enough to feel satisfying to watch", which isn't like, the highest bar to clear. Then what are you even complaining about? You want Star Wars movies to be something they are not, never were, and never will be. Sorry?
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Dec 30, 2015 04:16
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ImpAtom posted:You're assuming that simple motivations is the same as a simple character. A character can have both simple motivations or even a simple premise but still have depth or complexity. 360 extra minutes of Darth Vader did not actually significantly change his character who can still be summed up by "guy who fell to evil to protect his loved ones and in the process killed them." Not to mention that three films worth of being a villain is more than enough to develop a character without having to devote entire episodes to flashbacks about their history. That's actually not a thing we knew about Darth Vader before the prequels. We certainly couldn't have summed up his character in that way without them. You're assuming that you can make a character complex without spending time on them, and that's not really the case. You need to devote time to their internal struggles, whether externalized or not. Furthermore, most of Ren's potential complexity as of right now lies behind him. The things which make him interesting, as of right now, are why he's doing what he's doing and what brought him to that point, and I doubt we can get a satisfactory, non-simplistic answer to "Why did he murder his father and a bunch of his peers and join this guy?" in, say, ten minutes of exposition. Or twenty. I mean, I hesitate to be cynical enough to assume that they're putting together plans for a backstory movie about him, though it wouldn't be a bad approach and entirely in line with what they've been planning so far.
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Dec 30, 2015 04:24
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Kylo Ren currently invites speculation about his past because his character is in question, and his past is tied closely to other living characters (Luke, Han, Leia), at least one of whom has also conducted some unexplained actions between Ep 6 and 7 that merit further exploration. Vader at the start of Ep4 was evil for evil's sake. He has no significant relationship with anyone besides his master, who is a big old Satan in a robe. He changes in response to finding out his son is alive and in tune with the Force, and his journey is one conducted after he is fully committed to being super evil. There is no aspect of his past that shows up in his personal journey aside from him having a son, so why look more closely at his past? Arguably the person who should be most concerned with his father's past is Luke, for fear of becoming exactly the same, and that is addressed completely through the OT (his uncle's apprehension about him becoming a fighter, Obi Wan's "lie", the encounter in the cave, Vader's initial proposition that they kill the Emperor and rule as father and son, and finally Luke's redemption of his father). turtlecrunch fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 04:26
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Effectronica posted:You're assuming that you can make a character complex without spending time on them, and that's not really the case. You can make villains complex without ever having them speak. You, despite your derision of it, completely knee-deep in the Marvel mindset where everything needs to be explained and overexplained and have a dedicated backstory and origin and that quantity of exposition is important.
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Dec 30, 2015 04:33
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ImpAtom posted:You can make villains complex without ever having them speak. You, despite your derision of it, completely knee-deep in the Marvel mindset where everything needs to be explained and overexplained and have a dedicated backstory and origin and that quantity of exposition is important. Who said anything about speaking? You need to spend time to show. Like, to go back to Darth Vader (not even particularly complex), in ESB, all the scenes with him choking and threatening his subordinates all serve to lead up to the final revelation that his encounter with Luke was emotionally devastating by him not doing it for once. You could cut those scenes out, and just have a voiceover or intertitles inform us that "Darth Vader is very sad now." And we could have ten minutes of being told Character X did Y because of Z, or we could have that shown. But showing also requires increasing amounts of support in order to lend it weight, or it's just as bad as a voiceover explaining how the characters feel. So there's a structural issue with having the big issue for the character be well in the past but also requiring them to do things in the present, and Star Wars is an action series. This is resolvable, but there's also the issue of having 2-3 other viewpoint characters to deal with. I feel that it's likely that this issue will have a simplistic resolution. EDIT: Like, the fact that Ren is clearly emotional but subdued during the scene on the bridge, in contrast to his poised or explosive states elsewhere in the film, lends that scene weight and the character complexity. Effectronica fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 04:56
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Kylo Ren has already had scenes like that though. Quite a few of them in fact. The film spends plenty of time setting up his character and thoughts and exposition. The exact reason he fell is unimportant unless it has something to do with Snoke's plot or the overall story at which point it being explained is also advancing the plot. There are countless ways they can both explain Kylo Ren's history while also advancing the story without coming at the cost to either. And if you're expecting a 'super complex' villain then you're going to be disappointed because it isn't going to happen because a complex villain is not the same as a good, thematically appropriate and cohesive villain, especially for the context of a film. If Kylo Ren's entire backstory is "he is trying to live up to his family legacy and failing" that doesn't make him a poor character because there are still things to be said about that concept and character and how it plays out. Being able to reduce a villain's motivation to a single sentence doesn't make them a poor or lacking character.
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Dec 30, 2015 05:05
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I only wrote that the film was generic, so where did the Frankfurt School stuff come from? Leia's "manservant" is her brother. Hardly good for any labor or any other task but talking. And as a force sensitive she is probably exceptionally good at languages herself already. She keeps threepio around because they share a father.
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Dec 30, 2015 05:10
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Went to see the movie a second time today with a friend who hadn't seen it before. I still really liked the movie, as did my friend on his first viewing. Kylo Ren seemed actually a bit more menacing this time, but I think the one scene I gained the most from on my second viewing was the flashback when Rey touches the lightsaber for the first time and I still don't think I "got" everything in that scene. Some people I've talked to aren't clear on the relationship between the resistance, the First Order and the Republic. I thought the whole Nazi thing was pretty unsubtle, but either it went over a few heads or people know gently caress all about history.
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Dec 30, 2015 05:38
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My read on it, having not read the novelization or anything, is the First Order is what remnants of the empire have been reduced to, they maintain control of some outer rim areas that aren't worth it for the republic, or where the empire has superior chatting data and can't easily be kept in check, and the republic doesn't want to spend the resources on a full blown war. Leia is not cool with this and forms a resistance to fight them in the outer rim, the republic doesn't want then showing either so they find or implicitly support the resistance. My read on Snoke is he was a powerful force user for quite some time who laid low from both the south and the Jedi during the time of the Jedi order, then laid low from the powerful emperor during the days of the empire. With the sith dead and the empire reduced in strength he easily took it over for his own purposes, and really the only threat left if Luke which is why the order pursues him. This is what I thought coming out of the movie before reading any of this, an I not of less correct with the novelization?
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Dec 30, 2015 05:48
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My money's on Kylo Ren having been molested by Han and probably also Luke. He'll be the protagonist in Part VIII and finish carrying out his revenge, a la I Spit on Your Grave.
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Dec 30, 2015 06:52
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I asked this before but why isn't Anakin just doing a force ghost or whatever projection and tell Kylo Ren to stop? Would solve a lot of problems. Seems odd to not that long ago have a cluster of force ghosts waving and smiling at Luke but now they've all buggered off.
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Dec 30, 2015 07:05
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I believe that was a scene they had planned. In the art book it talks about Anakin's ghost being a weird hybrid of Vader and Anakin suggesting that when he died, he wasn't fully turned from the darkside
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Dec 30, 2015 07:09
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Mechafunkzilla posted:My money's on Kylo Ren having been molested by Han and probably also Luke. He'll be the protagonist in Part VIII and finish carrying out his revenge, a la I Spit on Your Grave. Lmao, I'm definitely telling this to people unironically when they start talking to me about their dumb theories.
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Dec 30, 2015 07:18
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I only wrote that the film was generic, so where did the Frankfurt School stuff come from? The Frankfurt School, well specifically Adorno, Benjamin, and Horkheimer, believe that (in the most simple explanation) the 'culture industry' produces content designed to be homogenous and mass produced in order to maximize profit and minimize expression. Your argument is one that has been made about basically every box office smash of the past 50 years, because according to acolytes of the Frankfurt School, films designed to make money are designed with that end in mind--rather than on artistic merit or the pursuit of beauty alone and thus subjugated into an efficiency logic in which they are designed to create the most money possible and conform to as many societal norms as they can. This has been successful argued against by scholars, regardless of ideology, as a lazy critique of art in the context of capitalism and an elitist appeal to high culture vs. common culture. straight up brolic fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 08:41
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straight up brolic posted:Lmao. Why didn't you just say that you didn't know what I was talking about? I didn't say anything about deliberateness. What are you reacting to?
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Dec 30, 2015 09:18
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Dec 30, 2015 09:19
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Athletic Footjob posted:I asked this before but why isn't Anakin just doing a force ghost or whatever projection and tell Kylo Ren to stop? Would solve a lot of problems. Seems odd to not that long ago have a cluster of force ghosts waving and smiling at Luke but now they've all buggered off. Maybe it's hard to commune with someone who is mentally unstable.
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Dec 30, 2015 09:28
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Gonz posted:If they're looking for a young Han Solo, they should probably get this kid: He doesn't seem bad, and both JJ and Disney like to bring in "new" actors. Either way, I hope that the Han Solo movie is well done, and brings forth a good story. Not just a predictable story about how he had to turn to smuggling or something.
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Dec 30, 2015 10:06
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teagone posted:Maybe it's hard to commune with someone who is mentally unstable. The idea that Kylo is merely insane has become this sort of meme that rejects the only interesting characterization in the film. Kylo does not have random outbursts of rage. He is actually trying very hard to 'make himself angry' in order to frighten his subordinates. During these scenes, the film invariably cuts to the reaction of some toady, who ends up completely unharmed. That's Kylo's audience. Crucially, during these scenes, Kylo is wearing the mask - the same mask he tosses away in the end. Unlike Vader, who was the mask, Kylo is only honest when he removes his mask. But Kylo is not rejecting the ethical stance the mask stands for. Rather, he has embraced Vader's teachings and has moved beyond the need for a mask. Kylo can't see 'force ghosts' because 'force ghosts' are simply memories. Kylo has never actually met Vader.
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Dec 30, 2015 10:06
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Kylo can't see 'force ghosts' because 'force ghosts' are simply memories. Kylo has never actually met Vader. Ah HA! So you concede that Hayden Christensen's force ghost makes no sense. Bravo.
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Dec 30, 2015 10:43
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Steve2911 posted:Ah HA! So you concede that Hayden Christensen's force ghost makes no sense. Bravo. Luke did meet Vader/Anakin?
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Dec 30, 2015 10:45
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Looks like the novelization answers a whole lot of questions the movie didn't (and raises new ones, too): http://www.mashable.com/2015/12/29/force-awakens-novel/
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Dec 30, 2015 10:45
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The idea that Kylo is merely insane has become this sort of meme that rejects the only interesting characterization in the film. drat, didn't realize my random thought would trigger you. Lmao.
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Dec 30, 2015 11:31
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teagone posted:drat, didn't realize my random thought would trigger you. Lmao. Nice..."trigger" joke, hot HOt stuff
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Dec 30, 2015 14:19
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One of my favorite lines from Finn is "You got a boyfriend? A cute boyfriend?" Stormtrooper programming can't defeat a dude's boner 
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Dec 30, 2015 15:48
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Poor Finn probably never got asked to dance at First Order middle school parties.
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Dec 30, 2015 16:03
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hiddenriverninja posted:One of my favorite lines from Finn is "You got a boyfriend? A cute boyfriend?" Stormtrooper programming can't defeat a dude's boner Finn is by far the best thing about the movie and his reactions and facial expressions make every scene he's in a lot better.
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Dec 30, 2015 16:07
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CelticPredator posted:In the art book it talks about Anakin's ghost being a weird hybrid of Vader and Anakin suggesting that when he died, he wasn't fully turned from the darkside ...what if that's what Snoke is?
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Dec 30, 2015 16:36
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Snoke doesn't look like a person or a robot.
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Dec 30, 2015 17:05
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Cnut the Great posted:Well, clearly, they had to use CGI for that kind of stuff because it would be impossible not to (unless they wanted to go back to motion-control cameras and models, which not even Disney is crazy enough to want to do). The movie isn't zealously CGI-phobic or anything, obviously. The move away from the artificial and frankly amatuer looking visuals of the prequels is one of my favorite things about TFA. It feels like epic film-making, there's a romanticism involved with filming in real desert dunes that can't be replicated by computers or CGI. EDIT: Hollismason posted:What he's saying about Dooku is totally on point. Jesus christ this is a tedious scene. Shageletic fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 17:24
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Shageletic posted:The move away from the artificial and frankly amatuer looking visuals of the prequels is one of my favorite things about TFA. It feels like epic film-making, there's a romanticism involved with filming in real desert dunes that can't be replicated by computers or CGI. https://www.google.ca/search?q=Star...W7lCTgQ_AUIBygC
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Dec 30, 2015 17:36
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They used a lot of practical sets and miniatures in the prequels that ended up looking like poo poo CGI as well as actual poo poo CGI.
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Dec 30, 2015 17:36
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