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Phenotype posted:It means that I think they were written poorly? I'm not sure what you're trying to get at, here. What do you think it means? how were they written poorly? i think lucas did a great job of depicting the jedi as out of touch and too entrenched in politics to be the actual good people they claim themselves to be the jedi ignore slavery both in the republic and outside of it and the eventual fate of 99% of them is getting shot in the back by the slave army they thought they had control over
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Mar 19, 2018 03:24
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Brother Entropy posted:how were they written poorly? i think lucas did a great job of depicting the jedi as out of touch and too entrenched in politics to be the actual good people they claim themselves to be I mean, I've said already that I really can't picture the Obi Wan depicted in the movies constantly explaining to a ten year old Anakin how his mother has to stay in slavery every time he gets homesick, and it's also very hard for me to picture the Yoda depicted in the movies hearing about how Anakin misses his mother and deciding "let's just leave that loose end flapping around out there and just hope it doesn't bother our Chosen One too much." I'm not interested in getting into an explanation of why the prequels were secretly great or whatever. I personally think Lucas left way too much about the Jedi being out of touch in the margins of the film for it to be a substantial part of the story, but I'm not even concerned with that -- I simply don't think the Obi Wan depicted in the movies is going to say no when Anakin asks. Remember, Qui-gon originally tried to get both Anakin and his mother freed, it's not like the concept of familial love is alien to them. Obi Wan already went against the council just to train Anakin, by the second or third time Anakin wakes up crying about his mom he's going to say "gently caress this" and fly out to Tatooine to get her back.
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Mar 19, 2018 03:48
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Phenotype posted:I mean, I've said already that I really can't picture the Obi Wan depicted in the movies constantly explaining to a ten year old Anakin how his mother has to stay in slavery every time he gets homesick, and it's also very hard for me to picture the Yoda depicted in the movies hearing about how Anakin misses his mother and deciding "let's just leave that loose end flapping around out there and just hope it doesn't bother our Chosen One too much." You've invented this idea of a scene in which Anakin becomes homesick (for his time as a slave?) and asks Obi-Wan to go back and buy his mother (n.b. Obi-Wan is forbidden to have possessions). That scene doesn't actually happen, so it's a bit odd that you're using it as evidence of inconsistent characterization, but if you want an idea of how something like it might play out, I suggest you consider some of these scenes:
In particular, I think you've got the wrong idea about the character of Anakin. He only started having premonitions about his mother around the start of Attack of the Clones.
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Mar 19, 2018 04:02
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Bongo Bill posted:You've invented this idea of a scene in which Anakin becomes homesick (for his time as a slave?) and asks Obi-Wan to go back and buy his mother (n.b. Obi-Wan is forbidden to have possessions). That scene doesn't actually happen, so it's a bit odd that you're using it as evidence of inconsistent characterization Well, we're talking about what happened during the 10 years between the two movies, so some off-screen extrapolation has to happen here. Anakin was shown to care about his mother in Episode 1. I really don't think it's silly to assume he'd behave like any other ten-year-old who cared about his mother, especially considering where he left her. I just can't imagine Jake Lloyd's Anakin blasting off to Naboo and never worrying about his mother again till Episode 2, ten years later. Maybe after a couple years of Jedi indoctrination, but not little Anni fresh from Tatooine. And again, I feel like Yoda wouldn't have left her fate up to chance with Anakin's prophecy hanging in the balance, and I feel like Obi Wan was compassionate enough that he couldn't just say "no, can't do it" to the kid he's already broken rules for. You obviously have different feelings about how these characters were handled, but I can't help but project how I think "real" people would act in these situations, and it just doesn't work for me. Phenotype fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Mar 19, 2018 |
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Mar 19, 2018 04:20
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We have seen exactly what Yoda would advise he do in a very similar situation and it literally is that he leave her fate up to chance. As for Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan is in way over his head, but he generally seems to want obedience and he's deeply committed to Jedi dogma, which starts with non-attachment. He tries very hard to teach Anakin to let go. It also literally happens that they totally gently caress up the Chosen One. They raised him and then he murdered them all. The story encompasses their failures.
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Mar 19, 2018 04:39
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Bongo Bill posted:We have seen exactly what Yoda would advise he do in a very similar situation and it literally is that he leave her fate up to chance. As for Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan is in way over his head, but he generally seems to want obedience and he's deeply committed to Jedi dogma, which starts with non-attachment. He tries very hard to teach Anakin to let go. Shmi is definitely a slave and there's a concrete method to free her, whereas Padme is dying in vague visions of the future and there's no obvious way to influence this, so I don't think the situations are nearly as similar as you propose. And Obi Wan, as I keep mentioning, already showed that he cared about Anakin and that he was willing to break rules for him. You can teach someone to stop worrying about their safe and secure family a lot easier than you can teach someone to stop worrying about the family they left in slavery. Bongo Bill posted:It also literally happens that they totally gently caress up the Chosen One. They raised him and then he murdered them all. The story encompasses their failures. Well yeah, absolutely. I just feel like a lot of the reasons they failed were forced by the script and not how the characters would naturally act. Is it possible for us to just agree to disagree? Again, you obviously have a much different opinion of the storytelling in the prequels, but you're not likely to convince me here. I think our views on how the characters depicted in the films are too different to ever come to a consensus.
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Mar 19, 2018 05:01
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We're talking about the same Obi-Wan and Yoda that told Luke to let Han and Leia be tortured to death. The difference is that Luke disobeyed them immediately whereas Anakin waited a decade.
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Mar 19, 2018 05:13
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Phenotype posted:Either? Or even Anakin himself once he's old enough? I get that maybe the Jedi were supposed to be inept and out-of-touch, but they're still shown as well-meaning and compassionate, and I have a really hard time picturing the Jedi saying "lol no gently caress her" when Anakin asks them to go rescue his mother from slavery. All the more so when Yoda and Mace Windu have a vested interest in Anakin's training and keeping him from the dark side. And like, it's absolutely gonna come up. Kids the age of young Anakin get homesick when they go off to summer camp for a week, there's no way he isn't going to be concerned for his mother who's stuck on the other end of the galaxy enslaved to a dickhead alien on a desert shithole of a planet. I think the bolded part is where I and many others still keep stumbling with our complaints over this part of the prequels. For Padme, there are moments like this in TPM and then it becomes a vital plot point later on that yes, she actually did stop caring about Anakin or how he missed his mother and it all becomes a little muddled because we missed the moment and reason why. The catch 22 is that forgetting about Shmi because you don't give a poo poo makes you an rear end in a top hat, and the movie didn't outright want to portray Padme or the Jedi as assholes.
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Mar 19, 2018 06:26
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:He's an rear end in a top hat too, so it's not like there was something character-wise holding him back. He didn't want anyone to think he was an anti-Semite.
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Mar 19, 2018 09:10
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Phenotype posted:Shmi is definitely a slave and there's a concrete method to free her, whereas Padme is dying in vague visions of the future and there's no obvious way to influence this, so I don't think the situations are nearly as similar as you propose. And Obi Wan, as I keep mentioning, already showed that he cared about Anakin and that he was willing to break rules for him. You can teach someone to stop worrying about their safe and secure family a lot easier than you can teach someone to stop worrying about the family they left in slavery. The Jedi aren't so much about teaching people to stop worrying as they are about indoctrinating people in a cult. The Jedi intake of younglings is a cult indoctrination process and that's one of the reasons they're reluctant to take Anakin, because it's harder and crueller to separate someone from a parent they already love than it is to pretend like they never had parents in the first place. Any conversation Anakin has about his mother from the point he joins the Jedi is met with negative reinforcement: You shouldn't be thinking about this, you must learn to let go of this, it is a bad thing that you are still thinking about and caring for your mother. It is making you bad at being a Jedi.
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Mar 19, 2018 09:54
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Grendels Dad posted:I think the bolded part is where I and many others still keep stumbling with our complaints over this part of the prequels. For Padme, there are moments like this in TPM and then it becomes a vital plot point later on that yes, she actually did stop caring about Anakin or how he missed his mother and it all becomes a little muddled because we missed the moment and reason why. The catch 22 is that forgetting about Shmi because you don't give a poo poo makes you an rear end in a top hat, and the movie didn't outright want to portray Padme or the Jedi as assholes. Outside of Anakin, every single heroic character in the prequels is utterly convinced of their own moral superiority. To me, the fact that we see them portrayed very sympathetically, and yet everything goes terribly wrong and they all turn out to be terminal fuckups, is part of the power of the story. The point isn’t that this character or that is actually an rear end in a top hat. It’s that everyone is so deeply invested in the way things are that they overlook the naked evil happening right in front of them. Thus the Jedi are not wandering protectors of peace and justice, they are mutant secret agents charged with maintaining liberal capitalism and enshrined in a literal ivory tower. But it's easy to look at that calculation and say it's good—we've got all these state resources and political power to help us help others. Palpatine exploits this by maneuvering the Jedi into a position where using a literal mind-programmed slave army seems to them like the good and heroic thing to do. And why can’t the Jedi do anything about slavery on the periphery of the Republic? Well, they've sacrificed their autonomy to become official agents of the state, and no one would want to mess up trade relations by upsetting the dictatorial Hutts. Padmé's story in Episode I has her run all the way to the capital of her beloved Republic, believing it will deliver her from the Trade Federation's invasion. When she finally gets there, she gets completely disillusioned: the Senate is totally captive to corporate interests and will do nothing to help. Padmé's the character who has the only real moral revelation in TPM. When she shares her distress and disappointment with the clumsy idiot, Jar Jar, she realizes that she has forgotten her natural allies: the Gungans, who are suffering under the same oppression and whom she overlooked because of her people's prejudice. So there's a seed of radicalization planted here. Padmé understands that the system will not help people in need, and she takes up arms herself. But then at the end of the movie, after the Queen has overthrown the oppressors, Palpatine's victory changes her mind. Th system really is good, and it will eventually do the right thing. It has just elected the kindly old Senator from Naboo as Supreme Chancellor, after all.
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Mar 19, 2018 15:46
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Bongo Bill posted:We're talking about the same Obi-Wan and Yoda that told Luke to let Han and Leia be tortured to death. The difference is that Luke disobeyed them immediately whereas Anakin waited a decade. See, my read of that scene had nothing to do with compassion or lack thereof, they just thought Luke would get killed if he faced Vader at Cloud City and figured there was no way he'd be able to save Han and Leia anyway. Which, to be fair, was more or less correct -- Vader beats the poo poo out of Luke and he only survives through luck, and IIRC the actual rescue was performed by Lando after his change of heart. Again, we're just going to have to agree to disagree here. I really didn't intend to get dragged into this discussion, I just wanted to have a fun bitch about what I've always thought was a silly bit in the prequels. I'm sorry, but I just can't see those characters in the same light that you do.
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Mar 19, 2018 19:04
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Regarding Cloud City, it could be argued that R2’s presence was enough to save Leia/Chewie/Lando/3PO. So Luke’s rescue mission may have indeed saved his friends, just not in the way he intended. And ultimately, his run-in with Vader proved extremely fortuitous. Without finding out about his lineage, he doubtless would’ve been defeated by Vader at a later date.
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Mar 19, 2018 19:27
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Jewmanji posted:Regarding Cloud City, it could be argued that R2’s presence was enough to save Leia/Chewie/Lando/3PO. So Luke’s rescue mission may have indeed saved his friends, just not in the way he intended. And ultimately, his run-in with Vader proved extremely fortuitous. Without finding out about his lineage, he doubtless would’ve been defeated by Vader at a later date. Oh sure, Luke going to Cloud City probably did tip the scales for Han and Leia to get rescued, Luke also helped keep Vader occupied during the breakout. I just think it was reasonable for old Obi and Yoda to think "what the hell is this kid gonna do to break his friends out against Darth Vader and a legion of stormtroopers? No, Luke, don't run off and get yourself killed, stay here and finish your training."
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Mar 19, 2018 19:35
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Phenotype posted:Oh sure, Luke going to Cloud City probably did tip the scales for Han and Leia to get rescued, Luke also helped keep Vader occupied during the breakout. I just think it was reasonable for old Obi and Yoda to think "what the hell is this kid gonna do to break his friends out against Darth Vader and a legion of stormtroopers? No, Luke, don't run off and get yourself killed, stay here and finish your training." Han does not get rescued.
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Mar 19, 2018 19:39
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Yoda said, "If you leave now, help them you could. But you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered." Edit: also, "If you end your training now, if you choose the quick and easy path, as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil." They're exclusively concerned with whether caring about saving lives makes you turn evil, in both cases. Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Mar 19, 2018 |
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Mar 19, 2018 20:15
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Right, Yoda is thinking about exactly what happens in RotJ, a scenario where Vader uses Leia as leverage to turn him. Something along the lines of what happened to Anakin, where Palpatine convinced him that the Sith were the only route to saving Padme. Yoda is correct about the risk, but doesn't seem to understand that the path to redemption(for Vader, for the Jedi, for the Republic, everyone) requires Luke take that risk.
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Mar 19, 2018 21:03
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thrawn527 posted:Han does not get rescued. He gets rescued eventually!
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Mar 19, 2018 21:53
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Where did Leia get her disguise in ROTJ? With the help of Maz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thOQwKCm-IY How did Rey learn how to levitate rocks and lightsabers in The last Jedi? With the help of porgs! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjxLBUhEIHI
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Mar 20, 2018 00:12
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See in the old EU these things would have been in some long drawn out side story involving at least one new Death Star level superweapon, someone from the Mos Eisley Catina, and possibly Boba Fett.
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Mar 20, 2018 00:27
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Nodosaur posted:See in the old EU these things would have been in some long drawn out side story involving at least one new Death Star level superweapon, someone from the Mos Eisley Catina, and possibly Boba Fett. Dumber, yet also funnier.
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Mar 20, 2018 01:59
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The MSJ posted:Where did Leia get her disguise in ROTJ? With the help of Maz. Please like our new characters.
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Mar 20, 2018 02:01
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At least it's consistent with the part about Leia being a badass and there not being a problem R2 can't solve by sticking his rod in a port.
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Mar 20, 2018 02:18
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Phenotype posted:Anakin was shown to care about his mother in Episode 1. I really don't think it's silly to assume he'd behave like any other ten-year-old who cared about his mother, especially considering where he left her.
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Mar 20, 2018 04:07
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Zoran posted:Outside of Anakin, every single heroic character in the prequels is utterly convinced of their own moral superiority. To me, the fact that we see them portrayed very sympathetically, and yet everything goes terribly wrong and they all turn out to be terminal fuckups, is part of the power of the story. The point isn’t that this character or that is actually an rear end in a top hat. It’s that everyone is so deeply invested in the way things are that they overlook the naked evil happening right in front of them. This is all well and good, but the problem I have is that Padme even more than the Jedi has been given pretty straightforward reasons to act a certain way at the end of The Phantom Menace, and simply being entrenched in her own feeling of moral superiority seems like a poor reason for her not to act. She doesn't really hit it off with Anakin in their first scene together, but in the scene I posted they bonded emotionally and she empathizes with him missing his mother. Then he does something incredibly brave that contributes to the salvation of her planet, something that we know goes acknowledged by all the characters in the movie because he is right there by her side during the victory parade. They even exchange smiles. To go from that to "And then everyone went along their business" is lame. The movie fumbles the balance between humanizing Padme with a scene like the one I mentioned, and off-screen acts of ignorance like not giving a poo poo about her friend's slave mother.
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Mar 20, 2018 06:51
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I smile at people all the time but don't go rescue their parents.
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Mar 20, 2018 08:14
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I hope Star Wars 9 has tons of close quarters fistfights and a funky cool soundtrack.
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Mar 20, 2018 08:23
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Anakin basically created his moms replacement anyway in 3PO. Shmi should have been free from the start.
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Mar 20, 2018 08:26
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Anakin was the valuable slave to Watto, so he probably sold Shmi pretty quick afterwords. Lars should be a familiar character to the audience because he raised Luke, so we know that however hosed up it is that he bought his wife, we have reason to believe that he's a caring person and was able to provide a decent, if humble, life. If you want the story of a young girl sold into slavery to a scrap dealer on a backwater planet who frees herself and goes on to leave that world and join the affairs of the Galaxy, well, good news:  
Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 09:59 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 09:44
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Hodgepodge posted:If you want the story of a young girl sold into slavery to a scrap dealer on a backwater planet who frees herself and goes on to leave that world and join the affairs of the Galaxy, well, good news: Man, it's so weird that Star Wars has now canonically introduced reincarnation.
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Mar 20, 2018 10:50
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Grendels Dad posted:Man, it's so weird that Star Wars has now canonically introduced reincarnation. I'm down if we get Mace Windu 2.0 out of it.
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Mar 20, 2018 10:54
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Rey doesn't free herself. She's staying on Jakku out of her free will, until she has to leave. She's basically a "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" who gets power and wealth.
BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 11:12 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 11:01
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Rey doesn't free herself. She's staying on Jakku out of her free will, until she has to leave. She's basically a "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" who gets power and wealth. She steals a ship and leaves. If leaving is sufficient evidence to prove one is not a slave, then freeing oneself is impossible. This implies that you see slaves as abject subjects who exist for the purpose of being saved.
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Mar 20, 2018 11:47
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Hodgepodge posted:She steals a ship and leaves. If leaving is sufficient evidence to prove one is not a slave, then freeing oneself is impossible. This implies that you see slaves as abject subjects who exist for the purpose of being saved. Slavery is when people are treated as property. Rey isn't a slave, she simply lives n a wasteland and works at a dead-end job. She's not under any obligation to stay. It's not even wage-slavery, she's perfectly capable of simply flying away. She only does so out of extreme necessity, and then intends to go back. Notice that when Han Solo offers her a job, it's very literally about employment, not a question of freedom ("You're offering me a job?").
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Mar 20, 2018 12:12
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Slavery is when people are treated as property. Rey isn't a slave, she simply lives n a wasteland and works at a dead-end job. She's not under any obligation to stay. It's not even wage-slavery, she's perfectly capable of simply flying away. She only does so out of extreme necessity, and then intends to go back. We first see her being left with her boss as a child, who she works for in return for subsistence rations, at exploitative rates. When she escapes, she does so by stealing a ship; there is no legally available means of travel or alternatives. She works for the only form of authority in her community, from who she must steal to escape. She is free to go only in that her personal abilities are sufficient to defy the person she was given to as a laborer as a child. What you define as slavery is chattel slavery, in the real world slavery is often more complex and can resemble Rey's situation. She is clearly destitute, living in a tiny shelter with only scavenged possessions, and the fact that she is barely able to feed herself is a plot point. Moreover, her situation is an explicit parallel to that of Shmi and Anakin, working for a junk boss who exploits her talented labor as part of a salvage and repair operation. The entirety of the difference, and the core of your objection, is that she is able to free herself from this situation, a capacity which comes not from legal or economic freedom, but from her personal abilities.
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Mar 20, 2018 12:54
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Hodgepodge posted:She is clearly destitute, living in a tiny shelter with only scavenged possessions, and the fact that she is barely able to feed herself is a plot point. Rey has been educated, as her accent indicates, and she's learned how to pilot. That means there's a school and facilities that are simply not shown, and there's communication and traffic. She's working at a dead-end job at a dead-end place because she prefers it that way. That's why she's planning to go back. Instead she quickly becomes a powerful and influential figure as a successor to the Jedi theocracy over the course of days - a millionaire no longer temporarily embarrassed. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 13:08
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Rey has been educated, as her accent indicates All British citizens are educated? What?
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Mar 20, 2018 13:17
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Rey has been educated, as her accent indicates, and she's learned how to pilot. That means there's a school and facilities that are simply not shown, and there's communication and traffic. She's working at a dead-end job at a dead-end place because she prefers it that way. That's why she's planning to go back. Instead she quickly becomes a powerful and influential figure as a successor to the Jedi theocracy over the course of days - a millionaire no longer temporarily embarrassed. She prefers it this way because she still thinks her parents will come back for her. She'd prefer her parents show up so they can all leave together for somewhere better. The moment she leaves Jakku, she immediately wants to go back, because she's worried that the longer she's gone, the bigger chance that she'll miss her parents returning. Her delusion that this is still possible is effectively trapping her on Jakku. It's a character flaw she spends the movie overcoming, and finally coming to terms with in The Last Jedi. On the topic of accents (her accent means there's a school there? What?), I have always found it interesting that Daisy Ridley can use her natural accent, but John Boyega has to use an American accent. I figure there's a reason for that (I originally thought it was a hint to where she's from, but that doesn't seem to be panning out), but I'm not sure what it is. Other people in the First Order have British accents, so Finn having one would make perfect sense. Maybe it's to show how he doesn't fit with the First Order, or something?
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Mar 20, 2018 13:29
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Kylo explicitly says her parents sold her for drinking money. There’s a flashback of her begging her family to come back while Unkar Plutt starts to drag her away. How much clearer does this need to be?
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Mar 20, 2018 13:38
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I'm still thinking about that instant space bread
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