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Edinboro_V posted:
It adds more tedious garbage that was cut for a reason than worthwhile content.
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Dec 29, 2016 13:59
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sassassin posted:It adds more tedious garbage that was cut for a reason than worthwhile content. Eh, I valued the additions more often than not. To each their own, I suppose.
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Dec 29, 2016 14:30
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Good lord, Watto's ownership of sentient beings can't be handwaved (ha!) away because tattooine doesn't have a republic-backed mincome system and his resistance to mind tricks isn't due to some exceptional cleverness or mental toughness, it's just a quirk of his species' biology. Also Jar Jar does seem to give us some kind of "friendship is the true meaning of Christmas" lesson, but no, the gungan army was actually not capable of destroying the droid army, only avoiding a Matabele-style annihilation after Anakin accidentally destroys the control ship. His bumpkin notions of politics somehow propel him up the line of interplanetary politics and he is easily manipulated into introducing the Reichstag Enabling Act. Oops.
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Dec 29, 2016 14:57
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I wonder how intelligent some of the other species on the galactic senate are. Remember, it is canon that E.T. Lives in the Star Wars universe and he was kinda god drat stupid.
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Dec 29, 2016 15:14
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theflyingexecutive posted:Good lord, Watto's ownership of sentient beings can't be handwaved (ha!) away because tattooine doesn't have a republic-backed mincome system Agreed! Slavery is truly abominable, and it isn't justified by any circumstance. But the attitude I described is exactly what the characters in the story think. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan accept it implicitly because they don't want to cause trouble with the Hutts. Even Shmi seems to believe that this is just the way things are. Padme reacts with shock and horror at first, but she shuts up about it. It's only young Anakin who somehow still chafes at the indignity of his circumstances, even though it's all he's ever known. His spirit hasn't broken yet. quote:Also Jar Jar does seem to give us some kind of "friendship is the true meaning of Christmas" lesson, but no, the gungan army was actually not capable of destroying the droid army, only avoiding a Matabele-style annihilation after Anakin accidentally destroys the control ship. His bumpkin notions of politics somehow propel him up the line of interplanetary politics and he is easily manipulated into introducing the Reichstag Enabling Act. Oops. Yes, it turns out that the little boy they freed from slavery played an essential role in the victory. But the actual mission our heroes left Naboo to accomplish, which was to win over the Republic's aid, turned out to be worse than pointless.
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Dec 29, 2016 15:17
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Mameluke posted:I was also struck by Chirrut's statement that "the Force swarms darkly around those about to kill." The films, especially this one, seem to characterize faith in the Force as a heroic quality, but almost all of them are set in a time where the most effective Force users are Sith. If the Force guided Chirrut's life and sustained him until he was able to help transmit the Death Star plans, did the Force not also ensure Tarkin was able to comfortably order the murder of his rival and thousands of loyal soldiers? It makes me curious about what free will exactly entails in Star Wars. The Jedi's dirty little secret is that, given the tropes they draw from and the genre they inhabit, they, not the Sith, are the most lethal, unpredictable, and dangerous force for violence in the Star Wars universe. Palpatine is more or less an outlier, and the Sith at least keep their own numbers down. Anakin killed more men than Vader did, and Luke killed more than both combined. My suspicion is that unless you're going for the KOTOR2 deconstruction, the best explanation is that the neither side of the Force actually cares how many people you kill -- they care about ideology, conflict, and means, and the Force swarms darkly around acts of direct violence merely because the Dark Side finds greater ideological affinity with them. One assumes the Force can afford not to care about death because death is part of life: party of some kind of spiritually enclosed system the Force undoubtedly comprises, where even the death of a planet and all on it merely send those souls into some reincarnation chain elsewhere, or higher level of existence. After all, the Force must have some aspects that do not dwell in the mere physical cells of living things, or midiclorian-reading would be more science than art when it came to predicting outcomes. I have the feeling that the most productive meaning of Chirrut's statement, though, is that he's seeing what he wants to see. I think we're well off from the time when anyone at Disney will let a "what if this whole Light Side/Dark Side thing is bullshit?" plot into the films.
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Dec 29, 2016 15:27
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Then again, the only method of training we've ever seen from the Jedi involves sensory deprivation, weapons, and children as young as nine, so perhaps it's not that secret at all.
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Dec 29, 2016 15:30
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Chirrut says it specifically in the context of Cassian going to assassinate a man that is essentially good and innocent. Obviously he's perfectly fine with blowing up ties and mowing down stormies, which he does in both the previous and following scenes (and he knows Cassian has as well.) It's the difference between premeditated murder and military combat. The line can definitely get blurry, but there you go. I like that he says "a creature" that is about to kill, which implies that you mostly see or feel it with predators stalking prey. Not that animals are susceptible to turning to the dark side, but it's that thrill and excitement that comes along with violence that can be dangerous. KOTOR 2 chat - The game is not only a deconstruction of Star Wars, but also a deconstruction of the RPG genre itself. It calls you out for increasing in power (gaining xp and levels) primarily from killing weaker and unimportant people (NPCs) and gathering a cult of personality around yourself (companion characters, especially with the added influence mechanics.) All backed in-universe by the Force of course.
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Dec 29, 2016 16:09
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I suspect that the force curdling in response to killing intent is like metal starting to glow when it gets hot enough. It doesn't really tell you what the force wants or indeed that the force has anything resembling an agenda, and it's probably a mistake to view the Star Wars movies as a chess game played with human pawns by opposing cosmic forces.
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Dec 29, 2016 16:15
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Crion posted:The Jedi's dirty little secret is that, given the tropes they draw from and the genre they inhabit, they, not the Sith, are the most lethal, unpredictable, and dangerous force for violence in the Star Wars universe. Palpatine is more or less an outlier, and the Sith at least keep their own numbers down. Anakin killed more men than Vader did, and Luke killed more than both combined. My suspicion is that unless you're going for the KOTOR2 deconstruction, the best explanation is that the neither side of the Force actually cares how many people you kill -- they care about ideology, conflict, and means, and the Force swarms darkly around acts of direct violence merely because the Dark Side finds greater ideological affinity with them. One assumes the Force can afford not to care about death because death is part of life: party of some kind of spiritually enclosed system the Force undoubtedly comprises, where even the death of a planet and all on it merely send those souls into some reincarnation chain elsewhere, or higher level of existence. After all, the Force must have some aspects that do not dwell in the mere physical cells of living things, or midiclorian-reading would be more science than art when it came to predicting outcomes. I disagree with your numbers. Yeah Luke fragged up to seven digits, but Palpatine and Dooku started the Clone Wars (billions of casualties), and Palpatine and Vader smoked all two billion people on Alderaan (which btw caused "a great disturbance in the force", and not a spiritual shoulder shrug). Vader def killed more dudes than Anakin offscreen, that was like his whole job description.
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Dec 29, 2016 16:15
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Soggy Cereal posted:I like that he says "a creature" that is about to kill, which implies that you mostly see or feel it with predators stalking prey. Not that animals are susceptible to turning to the dark side, but it's that thrill and excitement that comes along with violence that can be dangerous. I have a foggy memory of there being Dark side sensitive or influenced creatures in one of the KOTOR games. May just be inventing that
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Dec 29, 2016 16:23
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theflyingexecutive posted:I disagree with your numbers. Yeah Luke fragged up to seven digits, but Palpatine and Dooku started the Clone Wars (billions of casualties), and Palpatine and Vader smoked all two billion people on Alderaan (which btw caused "a great disturbance in the force", and not a spiritual shoulder shrug). Vader def killed more dudes than Anakin offscreen, that was like his whole job description. ANH Obi-Wan Kenobi is probably the least trustworthy character in the entirety of Star Wars so I'm not gonna parse what his interpretation of the Alderaan killcount is (that's without getting into how "great" for one person is different from "great" for a whole system); the context of the statement clearly referred to those killed by direct acts of violence like firing a gun or shooting a missile, so Vader doesn't get credit for Alderaan and Sidious doesn't get credit for anything; and my point is, at its heart, not even really about the Skywalker killboard numbers. It is that the Jedi Knights have always extremely been in the business of killing people. The difference between Light Side and Dark Side is process, not outcome. And the Jedi were not only complicit in the Clone Wars, but every other war of self-interest the Republic started before that. That's one of the major reasons the Jedi being Republic spies and agents in all but name (before becoming half its actual staff officers) was a Bad Idea. Crion fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Dec 29, 2016 |
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Dec 29, 2016 16:23
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Mameluke posted:I would've also liked to see more of Bodhi and Mon Mothma (Genevieve Reilly was clearly psyched to be back in the series and made the most of her dialogue) and if Mads Mikkelsen was going to be killed off so quickly I'd've liked it to be done with more consequences than "indiscriminate bombing run." Genevieve killed it. I wish she could be in more star wars. Just watching the ROTJ briefing scene the other day made me realize how much i liked Genevieve's mon mothma. I hope they use any excuse possible to bring her back.
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Dec 29, 2016 16:29
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Soggy Cereal posted:Chirrut says it specifically in the context of Cassian going to assassinate a man that is essentially good and innocent. Obviously he's perfectly fine with blowing up ties and mowing down stormies, which he does in both the previous and following scenes (and he knows Cassian has as well.) It's the difference between premeditated murder and military combat. The line can definitely get blurry, but there you go. The specific wording is “the Force moves darkly near a creature that's about to kill”, and we should place emphasis on near. But it has nothing to do with some legal-ish distinction between combat and murder or whatever. (If Chirrut meant murder, he would have said 'murder'.) It also has nothing to do with 'blurry' moral ambiguity. Rogue One is about ethical clarity. The point is to be careful about what you are killing for. Killing for the authentic light side (e.g. the revolution, as opposed to the rebellion and the resistance) is extremely difficult. Before Rogue One, there was only one character who achieved this: Vader, in Episode 5 and 6. If you count Padme's suicide and Luke's attempted suicide, that's two or three characters total. (Remember: the film doesn't condemn Saw or Cassian's tactics at all. It condemns their ideologies.) The actual ambiguity in Rogue One comes from the ending, where we see Vader before his-life changing experience in A New Hope and his offscreen transition into being the true terrorist-hero of the series in Episode 5. The final imagery of an archetypal good-versus-evil battle between Leia and Vader is a total fake. Hence the CGI. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Dec 29, 2016 |
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Dec 29, 2016 16:35
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Nah I'm p sure Leia is good and Vader is evil in ep 4
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Dec 29, 2016 16:50
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The specific wording is “the Force moves darkly near a creature that's about to kill”, and we should place emphasis on near. I'm not saying the Force makes that distinction, but Chirrut does. He doesn't bring it up or ask if anyone looks like a killer before or after that scene.
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Dec 29, 2016 16:54
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jisforjosh posted:I have a foggy memory of there being Dark side sensitive or influenced creatures in one of the KOTOR games. May just be inventing that Yeah but those are like Sith abominations or whatever, not plain lizards or wolves or something. You're thinking of Tarentateks or Storm Beasts.
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Dec 29, 2016 16:58
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theflyingexecutive posted:Nah I'm p sure Leia is good and Vader is evil in ep 4 Right; that's what I wrote. It's in Episode 5 that Vader is 'beyond good and evil'.
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Dec 29, 2016 17:03
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It's always amusing to remember when thinking about stuff like this that from the point of view of the fictional citizens of the Star Wars universe, the most important character of the PT -- more important arguably even the Emperor -- ended up being Jedi Master General Mace Windu, who led the Jedi coup against the duly-elected government of the Republic and whose betrayal was so egregious and absolute the Chancellor had no choice but to implement a radical war powers declaration in order to ensure galactic security. There are Jedi spies everywhere, you know. Especially the Senate.
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Dec 29, 2016 17:03
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Crion posted:It's always amusing to remember when thinking about stuff like this that from the point of view of the fictional citizens of the Star Wars universe, the most important character of the PT -- more important arguably even the Emperor -- ended up being Jedi Master General Mace Windu, who led the Jedi coup against the duly-elected government of the Republic and whose betrayal was so egregious and absolute the Chancellor had no choice but to implement a radical war powers declaration in order to ensure galactic security. There are Jedi spies everywhere, you know. Especially the Senate. Paradoxically, however, despite the Jedi being the generals in a gigantic war and ostensibly attempting to overthrow the galactic government (and despite being, you know, wizards), a well-traveled spacefarer a mere 20 years later seems skeptical that they even existed. Star Wars is weird.
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Dec 29, 2016 18:50
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HannibalBarca posted:Paradoxically, however, despite the Jedi being the generals in a gigantic war and ostensibly attempting to overthrow the galactic government (and despite being, you know, wizards), a well-traveled spacefarer a mere 20 years later seems skeptical that they even existed. Well in a galaxy that probably has trillions of inhabitants, the Jedi were so rare that most people probably never met one. With them all gone, they'd probably seem even more mythical.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:07
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There were what, around 10,000 Jedi at any one time? In a galaxy of trillions? They had important positions within the army, but it's not like any normal person is going to run into them often. Especially since the galaxy also appears to be populated with other quasi-religious groups who worship the Force and other things. Just one kook among many.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:10
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Yeah I think there were only like a thousand Jedi or so, if even that
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Dec 29, 2016 19:12
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Given that the Galactic Republic is some sort of hyper-connected society with galaxy-wide newsnets, I feel like the only way the Jedi could be forgotten in 20 years would be through some sort of Orwellian censorship campaign which would be somewhat complicated after the Galactic Emperor gave a speech where he said "I look like a monster because the Jedi tried to kill me"
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Dec 29, 2016 19:14
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Why are you obsessing about a throw away line from the first movie.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:17
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The lines importance isn't it's "canon" exposition. It's importance is characterization of Han and setting a simple conflict between his world view and obi wans.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:19
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I was hoping the monks would act as a focal point to elaborate on how people saw and understood the concept of the Jedi, but instead we just got some throwaway lines about how silly they are for believing in old junk.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:22
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I think that the need to handwave it away is emblematic of how poorly thought out the Clone Wars were as portrayed in the prequels though. One thing for the jedi to have fought in them, and then become lost to history as a result of whatever reason; another thing for them to have been the Republic High Command, and then forgotten for whatever reason.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:23
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In that scene, the thing that Han doesn't believe in is destiny, not the existence of Jedi. He is also incredulous about their incredible psychic powers.
Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Dec 29, 2016 |
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Dec 29, 2016 19:25
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Bongo Bill posted:In that scene, the thing that Han doesn't believe in is destiny, not the existence of Jedi. He is also incredulous about their incredible psychic powers. This is a good point. Han just doesn't believe in their magic, which is understandable, as so few have seen the Jedi in action.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:28
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On the other hand, Anakin, a slave boy in a rural backwater that's not even in Republic space, has heard of the Jedi.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:30
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and Jabba is aware of "Old Jedi Mind Tricks", but since he's 600 years old or whatever, that makes a bit more sense.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:31
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quote:Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen *anything* to make me believe that there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. 'Cause no mystical energy field controls *my* destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense. Han likely knows about the Jedi and is just incredulous at the claim that they're magical. All of the major world religions rely on people--as a tenant of their faith--in our own real world to believe in things way more outlandish than telekinesis and low level precognition
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Dec 29, 2016 19:36
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It's not that they are forgotten; no one believes in them any more. They never freed the slaves. They just fought the war to install the Empire. Han Solo just thinks the Force is just parlor tricks performed by crazy old monks. The crazy old monks turn out to be true believers in "the Force of Others" and are instrumental in the victories and the survival of the Rebellion. Which is why Chirrut was my favorite character. That and the "Are you kidding me? I'm blind!" gag.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:36
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The blind dude and the dude from the very very beginning of TFA are the most interesting looks into the force in all the movies and I'd love to have seen more of their ideology on film Non force users using and worshipping the force is a cool concept--it reminds me of a star wars version of the way that non practicing catholics or jews use their religion as a cultural signifier instead of a religious one. Like, Max Von Sydow's character is basically a single line away from saying, "I was raised catholic"
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Dec 29, 2016 19:39
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Watto knows about mind tricks too, so probably different people/groups/races believe diff things about the Jedi. You could say people would be incredulous about the Jedi having been as powerful as purported if they were all killed so quickly. Or maybe only BAMFs like Yoda and Mace can do the crazy acrobatics and throwing giant boulders poo poo and the rank-and-file dudes are just good at less impressive skills like meditating and karate.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:41
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theflyingexecutive posted:Watto knows about mind tricks too, so probably different people/groups/races believe diff things about the Jedi. You could say people would be incredulous about the Jedi having been as powerful as purported if they were all killed so quickly. Or maybe only BAMFs like Yoda and Mace can do the crazy acrobatics and throwing giant boulders poo poo and the rank-and-file dudes are just good at less impressive skills like meditating and karate. They also have to say something about mind tricks because otherwise everyone would be asking "why didn't they just mind-trick Jabba/Watto to get him to give away the captive protagonist?" Edit: Qui-Gon's failure is also kind of like Indiana Jones reaching for his standby gun in Temple of Doom, as he had in Raiders, only to find it wasn't there.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:42
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Cherrut would have been a cooler character in a universe where we haven't seen super-powerful Jedi. Like if we the audience were left to guess as to whether or not Jedi were ever that powerful. It's really a strike against their mysticism to have them so integrated in the Republic to be leaders and generals and poo poo as opposed to guiding society with a gentler more removed Touch.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:45
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homullus posted:They also have to say something about mind tricks because otherwise everyone would be asking "why didn't they just mind-trick Jabba/Watto to get him to give away the captive protagonist?" They had a perfectly good explanation from the very first movie where Obi Wan said it only works on the weak-minded. It would've been a better turnabout to reveal that the slimy gangsters are actually more intelligent than they looked, but they instead shoehorn some weird species-specific Force immunities.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:50
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theflyingexecutive posted:They had a perfectly good explanation from the very first movie where Obi Wan said it only works on the weak-minded. It would've been a better turnabout to reveal that the slimy gangsters are actually more intelligent than they looked, but they instead shoehorn some weird species-specific Force immunities. It's not diegetically proven that Hutts and and Wattos are immune to mind tricks. It's up to you to ask yourself whether your believe watto when he says "I'm a Toydarian. Mind tricks don't work on me." While I'm sure Wookieepedia has a whole article devoted to how Toydarians are immune to the force, take the film on its face. I always just assumed Jabba and Watto were exactly as you describe--much smarter and more cunning than the heroes thing. For god's sake the movie is called The Hidden Enemy
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Dec 29, 2016 19:56
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