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I really wish I was smart enough to understand half the things SMG says, because so much of it is lost on me. Not in a "I don't think critically about movies," sense, but a "poo poo, I should have learned more about writing and how to read essays," sense. Like I've been staring at the wikipedia page for "false dichotomy," and realized I will never be an intelligent man.
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Jan 8, 2017 05:31
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Smg also uses it as a tactic to not actually engage people.
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Jan 8, 2017 05:32
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Hodgepodge posted:So the cantina at Mos Eisley was actually the best choice all along? Obiwan's classist disdain for 'scum' is the precise reason why he lies to Luke about his parentage. Love for the 'scum' is a massive threat to the Jedi and the Republic. People might stop supporting them if the truth about droid slavery were emphasized. So Vader is made into the ultimate enemy - considered to be worse than Palpatine.
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Jan 8, 2017 05:36
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Well it didn't take me long watching the original Flash Gordon serials to find the natural inspiration for the Krayt Dragon from Revenge of the Sith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbX62HoKbz8&t=558s
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Jan 8, 2017 05:38
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Obiwan's classist disdain for 'scum' is the precise reason why he lies to Luke about his parentage. So wait, are droid people because you can torture them? Like that one droid in episode 4 in the Jawa ship? And if so, is wiping their mind tantamount to murder? e: Do you have a blog or something? I'm trying to figure out where the "Droids are people" idea comes from, and in what sense.
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Jan 8, 2017 05:41
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The first thing to keep in mind is that Lucas' Six Star Wars films are told from the perspective of the Republic, so characters like Maul and Vader are pushed to the margins. Many viewers, uncritical of the Republic ideology, automatically dismiss Maul as 'just bad because of his race' - when Maul's incomprehensibility is actually the result of Republic racism/classism. Such concepts as droids being people are absolutely alien to these viewers, for the same reason. This means that, although the film's are about the birth and eventual crucifixion of Vader, we see this event from the outside. Yeah I was being legit, I don't remember the details of 5 and 6 that well cause I haven't seen them since I was a young teenager ~15-20 years ago. I've seen the prequels and ANH more recently. I actually almost put "salvation" instead of "lives", since it's not like Christ was all about long life spans either. And yeah the viewpoint issue is so clear in the prequels I almost brought it up too. Clearly we aren't seeing a lot of Vader's inner thoughts or his perspective on screen. You're right that Luke is the most perplexing figure for me. It's clear from his moment on the rebel ship at the end of Empire and his actions and dress in Jedi that he's been deeply influenced by his run in with Vader in terms of his perspective on the Force and how to proceed politically. But he also hasn't fully committed to the offer to ally with him, nor has he thrown off Yoda and Kenobi entirely. I do see now what your interpretation of the offer is though - Luke and Vader "rul[ing] the Galaxy as father and son" represents a metaphorical union of the dehumanized cogs of the Imperial war machine and the disenfranchised and dispossessed citizenry. The dueling aristocratic factions are left in the cold. Maybe I'm being too literal about the ruling as father and son thing, but it doesn't seem like Vader has a clear ethical and political alternative in mind, or that he's a figure who already stands for justice and equality, so much as he now sees an opportunity to do what he should have but couldn't find the means or courage to do before. The hosed up lovely Christ in a sci fi setting is a venerable archetype, from the Book of the New Sun to the Matrix to Dune and so on. What's interesting in Star Wars is that the Christ is really at least two characters, who are also Frankenstein's Monster and Arthur. Wasn't there a plan at some point to have Luke take on the Vader identity at the end of Jedi? Edit phone autocorrecting things to make me look stupider than I am DeimosRising fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 05:44
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Turtlicious posted:So wait, are droid people because you can torture them? Like that one droid in episode 4 in the Jawa ship? And if so, is wiping their mind tantamount to murder? In addition to the torture, they have emotions, egos, fear, pride, and sorrow. Think of Threepio walking around the desert talking to himself. And not, "My program says to go in this direction," but, "gently caress R2, I know I'm right, that little bastard will be sorry." And when Luke radios that he lost R2, Threepio flinches in horror, notices that the humans don't give a gently caress, and his head sinks in despair. There are also droids who are completely independent with full blown careers that benefit only them. Christ, they can be snotty assholes to each other for no apparent purpose.
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Jan 8, 2017 06:00
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Turtlicious posted:So wait, are droid people because you can torture them? Like that one droid in episode 4 in the Jawa ship? And if so, is wiping their mind tantamount to murder? Just to make sure you're not confused, nobody is saying droids are human. They are not human, but they are people, with hopes and fears and crazy ideas that just might work.
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Jan 8, 2017 06:02
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:"Since the ideological universe of Star Wars is the New Age pagan universe, it is quite consequent that its central figure of evil should echo Christ. Within the pagan horizon the event of Christ is the ultimate scandal. " This is correct, I think, not because Christ offers something that cannot be found elsewhere, but because the New Age movement seeks to appropriate from other forms of spirituality what is already present within our own culture in the form of Christ. On the other hand, I'm suspicious of anything that downplays the real resentment towards Christian imperialism, which includes and begins with the denigration of the beliefs of Roman conquests as "pagan." And because, however unsatisfying, the New Age movement was founded due to the atrocities Christianity perpetrated upon its own people and others. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 06:03
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Turtlicious posted:So wait, are droid people because you can torture them? Like that one droid in episode 4 in the Jawa ship? And if so, is wiping their mind tantamount to murder? They're not people because they can be tortured. Droids are people because they're sentient. They have feelings. They feel pleasure and pain. They have independent thoughts and desires. They have a self preservation instinct. They are also treated as a low class. They are also in tune with the force. Edit: With that in mind, think about how individual characters and groups treat droids. A lot can be reflected about their personality that way. Detective No. 27 fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 06:03
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Obiwan's classist disdain for 'scum' is the precise reason why he lies to Luke about his parentage. This has a great callback in the prequels, when some drug addict accosts Obi-Wan in a bar and Obi-Wan can barely hide his disgust at having to mind-trick this person into having a dramatically better life. I'm also reminded of a close friend, who when I read the class choices in Dark Heresy, stopped me at 'Scum" and said "I want to be Scum." Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 06:06
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That makes a lot of sense, but man that's dark. So, iny our guys mind, which version of Star Wars is correct? The original "de-specialized" edition, or the latest one with the most of Lucas' changes?
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Jan 8, 2017 06:10
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Turtlicious posted:That makes a lot of sense, but man that's dark. The correctness you seek is a false idea. Ideas from any source have an equal ability to be valid. You may find stronger correspondence between the most recent versions of everything from the same author, however.
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Jan 8, 2017 06:19
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Turtlicious posted:That makes a lot of sense, but man that's dark. SMG's post history in this and the last Star Wars thread is a fun and exciting romp which touches on this - I don't remember precisely, but to paraphrase: The special editions change the original trilogy in such a way that it's clear that Luke's actions will bring back the Republic, so the movies effectively form a closed time loop, going 1-6 and back to 1 again. "Time is a flat circle" kinda stuff. The original cuts, in his mind, are a way to break free of this cycle - but they can't be bought, or negotiated for, or found. In order to save Star Wars, you must steal it.
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Jan 8, 2017 06:19
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Turtlicious posted:That makes a lot of sense, but man that's dark. As I mentioned with regards to Leia, there is some genuinely dark poo poo in the OT. It would ring hollow, even to children, otherwise. ungulateman posted:The original cuts, in his mind, are a way to break free of this cycle - but they can't be bought, or negotiated for, or found. In order to save Star Wars, you must steal it. Can you imagine if the Bible were subject to copyright? Any new equivalent work would be. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 06:30
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SW Rebels just had their first 2 episodes air and Forest Whitaker is doing the voice. Holy poo poo - it's amazing, he's a broken, broken man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM7pTSxJKyY
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Jan 8, 2017 07:04
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Turtlicious posted:Like I've been staring at the wikipedia page for "false dichotomy," and realized I will never be an intelligent man. Consider rhetoric like former President Bush's statement "You're either with us or against us". This statement makes it seem like you either fully support Bush (You're "with him") or you stand in stark opposition to him (You're "against him"). This is where the actual false dichotomy comes in, because the premise of the statement ignore other views you could hold- you may have simply no opinion on Bush's policies at all, being neither with him nor against him. There could also be a fourth option, such as being nominally supportive of him while also being highly critical of him. There are few times in life where you only ever truly have two options. There often is a third way, a fourth, a fifth etc. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 07:04
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Does anyone remember the specific wording of a line? I'm in a debate with my Girlfriends sister about a plot hole, but I honestly don't remember this line being said, "I don't care what the Council says, your orders are to assassinate Gaelin Erso." She says it seems dumb that no-one calls him out on what he did, or punishes him for it.
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Jan 8, 2017 08:55
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It was more like 'forget what you heard in there. You see Galen, you kill him.' The spymaster guy who says that line never gets in trouble because nobody finds out he gave that order. And after Jeddah, the squadron goes off to Eadu with the knowledge and blessing of some other people on the council (presumably). And after the clusterfuck there his secret orders are moot. Prolonged Panorama fucked around with this message at 09:32 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 09:18
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DeimosRising posted:Maybe I'm being too literal about the ruling as father and son thing, but it doesn't seem like Vader has a clear ethical and political alternative in mind That's not so much Vader as the film itself. Episode 6 ends with the heroes going on a cheeky anarchoprimivist vacation, pushing aside any worries and questions about what will happen next. Ok, you're celebrating the Ewoks and their primitive communism - but how are anarchoprimitivists going to build spaceships? What will happen to these Ewoks? Will they be assimilated into the liberal-capitalist Republic (as Jar Jar was), or left in the forest without healthcare? What will happen to the droids? Will they still be enslaved? It's a fake ending. A 'dance party' ending. Vader's death brought Luke the freedom to choose any fate for himself. But, as Ungulateman notes, everything points to Luke simply restoring the Republic - and if that's the case, then nothing is fixed. Luke has simply looped back to Episode 1, and the Emperor will inevitably reemerge. (Abrams' Episode 7 kinda stumbled, redundantly, towards this same idea - but with something like your literal interpretation: that the Republic just needed more 'family values' to defeat the foreign enemy. In a similar way, Cnut says that the Republic just needed 'more communication' to defeat the foreign enemy. But these paths all lead back to Episode 1. None of them would free the droids.) The overall point of the 6 films is to figure out how to break the awful destructive cycle. And there's only one way to do this - to defeat the Emperor permanently: go with Vader. This is what Rogue One is about : time is a closed loop, but the loop is modifiable. This is one point where things could have turned out differently. ungulateman posted:The original cuts, in his mind, are a way to break free of this cycle - but they can't be bought, or negotiated for, or found. In order to save Star Wars, you must steal it. To be clear: this excludes Episode 6. The special editions, the three prequel films (and Rogue One, and Force Awakens) - these are all a response to Episode 6's failure, its bullshit non-ending. They are an attempt to build off that failure and redeem the film.
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Jan 8, 2017 10:49
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here's a cute scene from rebels about droids and clones and republics and empires https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLAg9k79tNc roger roger
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Jan 8, 2017 12:46
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Did anyone write down anyplace or feel like explaining (again) how Maul, Dooku and Grievous are parts of Vader/Christ? Interested in which parts and how so. I only remember Dooku as the noble part. But what are Maul and Grievous (already more machine than man) and what does their defeat mean for Vader? I only vaguely recall a lot of talk from Lucas or PR pre-Ep1 stuff like "Maul looks like the devil etc." but what the relevance of that is I don't have a clue other than clearly signifying this is a bad guy, or otherwise like SMG says "you need to think this is a bad guy but it's complicated for real" Related to Dooku: how frustrating was it to see Obi Wan be an idiot and utterly reject what Dooku had to say btw, the Jedi had it coming.
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Jan 8, 2017 14:44
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ungulateman posted:here's a cute scene from rebels about droids and clones and republics and empires Hell yeah. I gotta catch up on Rebels, because clones teaming up with droids is right up my alley.
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Jan 8, 2017 15:28
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Serf posted:Hell yeah. I gotta catch up on Rebels, because clones teaming up with droids is right up my alley. Not clicked the link so i don't know exactly what scene or scenes were in it, but a bit of that ep showing up on youtube is what made me decide to watch Rebels. That episode can basically stand on its own if need be but the show is fairly well done. Not watched the 2 brand new eps though.
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Jan 8, 2017 16:04
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Thinking more about Vader as Christ, I don't think it is tenable to merely say that he is depicted as evil because we see him from the Republic's perspective. Let's be clear: Christ was explicit that he is his church. This is because Christ was not a coward who hid behind rationalizations or excuses to hide his failures. Taken seriously, as he would wish to be, we are forced to admit that treated as a being who lives through his church, Christ is the most evil creature alive. That he has done much good is not an excuse Christ would accept. This works perfectly with Star Wars. You can argue that Vader doesn't kill children, but that takes a lot of sleight of hand. Like Obi-Wan's argument that he didn't lie to Luke because "from a certain perspective" what he said was true, the idea that someone else pushing the button on the Death Star absolves Vader from his active participation of the murder of more children than we can rationally conceive of is a shallow equivocation. Christ took full responsibility for the actions of his church. If we were to imagine someone attempting to make the argument that Vader was not responsible for the death of the people of Alderaan in his presence, the only possible outcome would be the swift death of the panegyrist foolish enough to make excuses for Darth Vader. This is precisely why Vader as Christ is absolutely necessary for Star Wars to function, and the means through which it goes beyond a retelling of the Christ myth. Christ accomplished the conquest of the Roman Empire through peace, only to have the Rome transform Christ Himself into the anti-Christ. Christ failed. And here is where the story of Christ was not complete: God never asks for our forgiveness. The theodicy debate tends to get lost in trying to escape a simple conclusion: God is all good and all evil. There is no escaping it; free will is no excuse. Omnipotence means omnipotence. There is no sin whose ultimate author is not God; sin is God's creation. Prechristian Judaism had no trouble admitting that Satan is God's servant, the idea of an angel disobeying God is a Christian syncretism with Zoroastrianism. And this is a problem, because it is not a new observation that genuine faith requires being able to forgive God as well as accepting his forgiveness. Star Wars makes this explicit: Christ is in need of redemption through genuine faith in him. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 16:55
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The best reason to move past religion as a society is so we can stop comparing movie characters to characters from the bible.
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Jan 8, 2017 17:09
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Magic Hate Ball posted:The best reason to move past religion as a society is so we can stop comparing movie characters to characters from the bible. Instead, we'll endlessly compare characters to characters from Star Wars.
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Jan 8, 2017 17:16
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Magic Hate Ball posted:The best reason to move past religion as a society is so we can stop comparing movie characters to characters from the bible.
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Jan 8, 2017 17:24
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Someday, a poster will be called pretentious for comparing a character to Chewbacca. I only hope I live to see such glorious shitposting.
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Jan 8, 2017 17:31
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:That's not so much Vader as the film itself. Episode 6 ends with the heroes going on a cheeky anarchoprimivist vacation, pushing aside any worries and questions about what will happen next. Ok, you're celebrating the Ewoks and their primitive communism - but how are anarchoprimitivists going to build spaceships? What will happen to these Ewoks? Will they be assimilated into the liberal-capitalist Republic (as Jar Jar was), or left in the forest without healthcare? What will happen to the droids? Will they still be enslaved? To be clear, I am not supporting the Abrams approach or the monarchical alternative, but I do think it's interesting that Abrams tried to get the force worshiping religion and a variation on the "taking up the mantle of Vader" stuff in there. He seems to have a good eye for which discarded Lucasisms to pick up and run with, he just runs directly into a wall. Hodgepodge posted:This is correct, I think, not because Christ offers something that cannot be found elsewhere, but because the New Age movement seeks to appropriate from other forms of spirituality what is already present within our own culture in the form of Christ. SMG tends to use "Christianity" as a very narrow reference to the teachings of Christ rather than in a historical or comparative religious sense. Which doesn't make what you're saying irrelevant of course - and I think it's maybe even more relevant to the BotNS, which I tried talking about in the Book Barn the other day but god help you if you want more than 3 responses a year about something that's not Game of Thrones or Star Wars. Which I know is ironic given this thread and the fact that BotNS is fucken sci fi, too. It's also funny that a New Age movement now would probably be derided as "cultural appropriation".
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Jan 8, 2017 17:47
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DeimosRising posted:SMG tends to use "Christianity" as a very narrow reference to the teachings of Christ rather than in a historical or comparative religious sense. Which doesn't make what you're saying irrelevant of course - and I think it's maybe even more relevant to the BotNS, which I tried talking about in the Book Barn the other day but god help you if you want more than 3 responses a year about something that's not Game of Thrones or Star Wars. Which I know is ironic given this thread and the fact that BotNS is fucken sci fi, too. Yeah, that's a classic bullshit trick, though. "Christ cannot fail, he can only be failed." Although it's actually more that he's arguing for a better reading, which is actually a creative act and not simply finding "the real truth." Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 17:57
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Hodgepodge posted:Instead, we'll endlessly compare characters to characters from Star Wars. "These aren't the Israelites you're looking for."
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Jan 8, 2017 18:35
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https://twitter.com/Pegahsa_bbo/status/817694584490770433
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Jan 8, 2017 18:51
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Jan 8, 2017 18:56
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Hodgepodge posted:Instead, we'll endlessly compare characters to characters from Star Wars. We already live in this age. Presidents Bush and Trump have both been compared to Palpatine and Candidate Clinton with Leia/Mon Motha/Jyn. This is the post Star Wars era--may God help us all.
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Jan 8, 2017 19:43
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Hodgepodge posted:Thinking more about Vader as Christ, I don't think it is tenable to merely say that he is depicted as evil because we see him from the Republic's perspective. To be clear, there is no making excuses for Anakin. He was a bad person, and then he was burnt alive and put through other unimaginable torture. Anakin truly died. And I mean that in a very specific sense: "The victim as it were survives its own death: all different forms of traumatic encounters, independently of their specific nature (social, natural, biological, symbol...) lead to the same result - a new subject emerges which survives its own death, the death (erasure) of its symbolic identity. There is no continuity between this new 'post-traumatic' subject (suffering Alzheimer's or other cerebral lesions, etc.): after the shock, literally a new subject emerges. Its features are well-known from numerous descriptions: lack of emotional engagement, profound indifference and detachment - it is a subject who is no longer 'in-the-world' in the Heideggerian sense of engaged embodied existence. This subject lives death as a form of life - his life is death-drive embodied, a life deprived of erotic engagement; and this holds for henchmen no less than for his victims." -Zizek Vader is quite literally an undead zombie/demon. The logic is familiar from any zombie movie: that's not your dad. It looks like him, but it's not him. It's something else. Vader's indifference to the Death Star is a result of this trauma, and that indifference is not the same as complicity. Vader has all along voiced his opposition to Tarkin's plan, but it's stated outright that he's on a leash. Vader's subordinate status in Episode 4 stands for the unrealized potential of the merely-bad idiots of the Empire to become diabolically Evil, and therefore indistinguishable from the good. This, of course, is the what Rogue One and Empire Strikes Back are about : the characters kept on a leash, and Vader finally being unleashed. And I think you miss the radical point of the Bible and of Star Wars: as Zizek notes, only a suffering God can save us. Not a bad God. Vader suffers in solidarity with people.
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Jan 8, 2017 21:03
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Do you think he's ever barfed into that little harmonica?
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Jan 8, 2017 22:01
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:
This fits in quite well with Palpatine's promise to Darth Vader, "to cheat death is a power only one has achieved, but if we work together I know we can discover the secret". Of course Palpatine is telling the truth (from a certain point of view). Anakin does indeed learn how to cheat death. Just not at all in the way he intended. One of the fun little entendres I noticed during ROTS is how Obi-Wan cheekily says at the beginning that he wants to "spring the trap" on board Grievous' ship. It's a good example of how blinkered the Jedi are: they only ever have a surface-level understanding of the threat they face (and it's only ever more or less what Palpatine chooses to reveal). Then of course moments later Palpatine says of Dooku "he was too dangerous to be left alive" which is Mace's exact logic for assassinating Palpatine. "There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere", indeed.
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Jan 8, 2017 22:05
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Magic Hate Ball posted:The best reason to move past religion as a society is so we can stop comparing movie characters to characters from the bible. You compared Trump to Voldemort, didn't you?
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Jan 8, 2017 23:25
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wyoming posted:You compared Trump to Voldemort, didn't you? No, I compared Jyn to Trump, please keep up.
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Jan 9, 2017 00:50
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