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Grandpa Palpatine posted:we had no idea that the Sith were wiped out. It's never straight up stated that the Emperor and Vader were the last Sith. I figured he meant the Sith religion or mysticism or whatever. The only Sith characters in all the films are Darth Sidious, Darth Maul, and Darth Vader. You typically need to be granted the the “Darth” title by a Sith Master to qualify. (As established earlier, Master “Darth Tyrannus” Dooku is not actually a Sith; he’s a Jedi who’s working undercover as a Sith.) Yoda’s description of the “rule of two” is semi-accurate, because there are never more than two Sith. Yoda himself obviously understands this, because he is voicing his concern that there is still one Sith left. At the end of Episode 6, there are no Sith left - and it would take a very long time for a new Sith Master to emerge. Mastering the dark arts on your own certainly takes a long time. In any case, Snoke doesn’t have a “Darth” title or express anything like Sith beliefs. He is actually a sort of ‘Anti-Sith’ mirror image. He’s the space equivalent of a Christian fundamentalist.
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Aug 2, 2020 01:51
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Darth Vader's politics were laid out explicitly.Attack of the Clones posted:ANAKIN Revenge of the Sith posted:ANAKIN The Empire Strikes Back posted:VADER
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Aug 2, 2020 02:50
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It's pretty important to smg's interpretation that the human Anakin Skywalker and the cyborg Darth Vader are functionally different people Which is true, from a certain point of view
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Aug 2, 2020 03:49
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Grandpa Palpatine posted:we had no idea that the Sith were wiped out. It's never straight up stated that the Emperor and Vader were the last Sith. I figured he meant the Sith religion or mysticism or whatever. The rule of two and Darth Bane are actually straight from Lucas and are in his scripts for Episode 1. Originally during that scene where Qui-Gon tells the council that Maul tried to gank him on Tatooine they go into exposition mode about the Sith and their history. But it would have been awkward to see on screen, in the way all scenes where a character tells another something they already know for expositions sake, so it was cut save for Yoda's line at the funeral. Which is intended to be a direct reference to that no longer existing conversation. That stuff did make it into the movies novelization however, and Legends had to then scramble to reconcile the fact that they had never used the rule of two or the word "Darth" being a title. It's why in EU works made before TPM the Sith are numerous and are known just by their real names. And why ones made after have Darth This and That and so on, Or why games like KotOR had to awkwardly justify their hordes of Sith mooks you mow down as not being the "Real" Master and Apprentice.
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Aug 2, 2020 04:24
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I'm gonna need that TLJ=Lib thinking post again.
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Aug 2, 2020 04:29
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I still like the idea that the Rule of Two exists because any more than that and Sith can't turn on each other fast enough. I mostly know TPM from the novelisation, which describes the Sith master-apprentice chain as 'cannibalistic leapfrog'.
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Aug 2, 2020 04:47
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It’s always super weird when people confuse Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. Famous Darth Vader traits: -Ten years old -Chipper -Racing enthusiast -Afraid of space
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Aug 2, 2020 05:12
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Being turned into a Frankenstein certainly changed what he thought was possible, but did it change what he thought was good?
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Aug 2, 2020 05:24
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Bongo Bill posted:Being turned into a Frankenstein certainly changed what he thought was possible, but did it change what he thought was good? Yes; as established in the (in)famous dominatrix outfit scene of Episode 2, Anakin Skywalker is a masochist with mommy issues who gets off on the idea of being a pathetic slave to Padme. This is pretty much the root of his fascism. After Anakin’s fantasy of being dehumanized happens to him in reality, the incredible trauma of it burns away those pathological motivations and a new subject emerges. Darth Vader is no longer human, where Anakin obviously was.
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Aug 2, 2020 06:13
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It’s always super weird when people confuse Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. Being ten years old is also not a famous trait of Winston Churchill, but most people would agree that in 1884 Winston Churchill was ten years old.
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Aug 2, 2020 06:13
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Kid Anakin being a mechanic and a pod racer is also obviously referencing Vader's role in ANH, where the Death Star trench run is essentially a pod race, and Vader's constantly fiddling with his targeting controls. Vader might say "Don't be too proud of this technological terror", but when push comes to shove, he trusts in his gadgets, not the Force. (And, of course, the idea that Vader and Anakin are different people is explicitly the Jedi philosophy, and the reason why Obi-Wan and Yoda failed where Luke succeeds - they completely dehumanize Vader to avoid responsibility for their failures.)
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Aug 2, 2020 06:19
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2house2fly posted:Being ten years old is also not a famous trait of Winston Churchill, but most people would agree that in 1884 Winston Churchill was ten years old. That’s confusing various different things with eachother, such as biology with identity. It may seem ‘commonsense’ that your identity is determined by your genetic code, but it’s 2020 now and you oughta be aware that such things as race and gender are actually social constructs. So, identity is socio-symbolic - and Vader is not pretending to be “more machine than man now”. He fully identifies with the robotic mask, saying that ‘this is who I am’. He clearly states that Anakin Skywalker is not who he is. Unlike all other known Sith, Vader renounces his birth name after the lava incident. Calling Vader “Anakin” is effectively deadnaming him. Attack Of The Clones makes the same point with Zam Wessel, the shapeshifting bounty hunter who identifies as a human woman. The Jedi call her a “changeling”, which is undoubtedly a slur. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Aug 2, 2020 |
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Aug 2, 2020 08:15
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galagazombie posted:The rule of two and Darth Bane are actually straight from Lucas and are in his scripts for Episode 1. Originally during that scene where Qui-Gon tells the council that Maul tried to gank him on Tatooine they go into exposition mode about the Sith and their history. But it would have been awkward to see on screen, in the way all scenes where a character tells another something they already know for expositions sake, so it was cut save for Yoda's line at the funeral. Which is intended to be a direct reference to that no longer existing conversation. That stuff did make it into the movies novelization however, and Legends had to then scramble to reconcile the fact that they had never used the rule of two or the word "Darth" being a title. It's why in EU works made before TPM the Sith are numerous and are known just by their real names. And why ones made after have Darth This and That and so on, Or why games like KotOR had to awkwardly justify their hordes of Sith mooks you mow down as not being the "Real" Master and Apprentice. yea but anything that isn't in the movies doesn't loving count The films have to be judged alone. Yoda's statement at the end of TPM comes across more like a philosophical insight instead of a hard rule of two. He doesn't specify there can only be two. He's merely stating that for both Jedi and Sith, where there is a master there is an apprentice and vice-versa, so which one did we just face? Once again it doesn't matter what's in the script. It matters what's in the final film. If you don't hold SMG to novelizations and so-forth, then you ain't doing me that way!
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Aug 2, 2020 09:24
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Yes; as established in the (in)famous dominatrix outfit scene of Episode 2, Anakin Skywalker is a masochist with mommy issues who gets off on the idea of being a pathetic slave to Padme. This is pretty much the root of his fascism. The question is: what evidence of the new subject's specific motivation exists? Overthrowing the Emperor, putting an end to a destructive conflict, and bringing order to the galaxy are entirely consistent with the ambitions he held in his old life. He openly flouts the human-supremacism of the Imperial navy and isn't impressed by their wunderwaffe. But what else is there? If we don't consider what he believed in his youth, we simply have nothing else to go on.
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Aug 2, 2020 09:52
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Grandpa Palpatine posted:yea but anything that isn't in the movies doesn't loving count I'll give you that the canonicity of "Deleted Scenes" and such is not always the final say on a subject. Especially if the scene or line was cut because the creator wanted to take the story in a different direction. But I think they also can be extremely useful in understanding or even enhancing a film, especially if it was cut for time/pacing and does not actually contradict the film itself. The History of the Sith scene while deleted informs everything that takes place after it. The characters in all subsequent films act as though that information is what they know to be true. We outright see it being true with things like Palpatine's conga line of apprentices or them using "Darth" as a title.
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Aug 2, 2020 10:05
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2house2fly posted:I've grown to detest the phrase "subverting expectations". Just say "plot twist" like people have been saying for decades! A plot twist can be a subversion of expectations, but not necessarily so, and all subversions of expectations are not plot twists. Last Jedi does not really have any plot twists. The subversions are based on seeing prior Star Wars movies and expecting certain plot beats based on character archetypes. But the plot within the movie itself is pretty straightforward and don't have any particular surprises in the bounds of the movie itself or even contained within its prequel. The only real "twist" I can think of is "your parents were nobodies" as a kind of inversion of the "I am your father" twist in Empire. But even that was a really soft twist - you were explicitly told that Vader killed Luke in the first movie before you knew Obi Wan was a gigantic liar so seeing that Vader was his father was a large surprise, in TFA; you kind of assumed Rey's parents were important only because it was a mystery box that she cared about - making it only waver towards a twist as opposed to being explicit prior-plot changing. As another example, it's not a plot twist that Marion Crane dies in Psycho* as it doesn't re-contextualize any earlier plot points in the movie at all, it just happens as part of the plot. Similarly, Bates Motel show spoilers about a Psycho film character it's not a twist that Marion Crane lives in Bates Motel, it is again, part of the plot-standard. In both, however, expectations are subverted, before Psycho, people thought the featured star would survive, and for the show, people expect that people will have the same fates they do in the movie. However, Norman-as-Norma is a twist because we are explicitly told Norma was the killer, and Norman was "seen' talking to her, and knowing that changes every prior scene in the movie with him in it. Twists are revelations that change everything about the plot, mainly prior, not just surprising you because you assumed something was going to happen that didn't. If that were the case, anything that any random person expected to happen that didn't becomes a twist, and it really waters down the language. Sorry about being anal about this, but I did a long paper on plot twists years ago, and the specific meaning of them was part of the central thesis on why some twists were more effective than others (the idea being a movie not effectively lying to you but putting things in front of your face from the beginning like The Prestige, serves for a better twist than something like Usual Suspects, which effectively lies to you the entire time, because knowing a twist in the former makes a second viewing entirely different and therefore more rewarding at the end). *Some people do see False Protagonist as a plot twist in itself, but this is kind of arguable since it's often dependent on things happening surrounding the film and casting as opposed to plot construction in a lot of cases. Psycho kind of hedges this, Crane is set up as the protagonist, but a lot of that also worked around its advertising too. Darko fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Aug 2, 2020 |
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Aug 2, 2020 15:35
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Rewatching The Prestige was an incredible experience realising that Nolan is waving the plot twist in front of your face in almost every single scene.
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Aug 2, 2020 16:13
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wow thanks for ruining a movie I was just about to watch. we're just gonna go spreading plot twists from movies that were released barely 60 years ago are we.
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Aug 2, 2020 16:28
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Grandpa Palpatine posted:yea but anything that isn't in the movies doesn't loving count Yeah, I never took that what Yoda was saying as a hard and fast rule about how many Sith can exist, but instead as a thematic link about how there are hierarchies and symbiotic connections that you can't always see – "there's always a bigger fish," "what happens to one of you affects the other," "[midichlorians are] life-forms living together for mutual advantage." But even though the Jedis are the ones who talk about symbiotic connection the whole movie, they never really do much about it. It's all the other character who do like Padme, Anakin, and Jar Jar. So then the Jedi weren't able to see the bigger fish of Palpatine, and instead only saw the most obvious evil, which is some dude who looks like the devil. And despite thinking there was another sith, they didn't look into it for another decade or so.
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Aug 2, 2020 16:50
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Eh 'Always two, there are" is something I think the natural read of is "Everytime the sith appear, there's two of them". Its not "there have only ever been two sith" or "sith always travel in pairs", but at any one time there are only two Sith.
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Aug 2, 2020 17:11
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Bongo Bill posted:The question is: what evidence of the new subject's specific motivation exists? Overthrowing the Emperor, putting an end to a destructive conflict, and bringing order to the galaxy are entirely consistent with the ambitions he held in his old life. He openly flouts the human-supremacism of the Imperial navy and isn't impressed by their wunderwaffe. But what else is there? If we don't consider what he believed in his youth, we simply have nothing else to go on. Aight so: except for the entire plot of Episode 3 where fascist Anakin gets exactly what he desired but ends up ironically hosed by Satan and transformed into a different person in the crucible of incredible suffering, and the entire plot of Episode 5 where he tries to unite with the Space Leftists to defeat the fascists who he now despised, and the ending of Episode 6 where he saves the leader of the Space Leftists by assassinating the fascist leader.... well, there’s really no evidence at all! To be clear, the issue is that your reading lacks specificity. You are effectively arguing that Vader and Palpatine are the same character - that Vader’s attempts at killing him are purely personal; they otherwise have zero political disagreement. After all, bringing order to the galaxy? That’s fascist! But the Republican Rebels also want strong leaders to control the galaxy and bring order. Following in the footsteps of Dooku, the Jedi Order tried to assassinate Palpatine and wrest control of the galaxy to bring order. (Turns out that the Jedi and the Sith are similar in almost every way, including their quest for greater power.) So we have the basic story of the Star Wars films: everybody is a ‘good person’, everybody is fighting for peace and justice, and everybody ends up serving Satan. Only the meek can truly inherit the Earth. So the series end, chronologically, with Space Christ dying for your Space Sins - hoping that maybe Luke will end (droid) slavery.
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Aug 2, 2020 17:38
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Aight so: except for the entire plot of Episode 3 where fascist Anakin gets exactly what he desired but ends up ironically hosed by Satan and transformed into a different person in the crucible of incredible suffering, and the entire plot of Episode 5 where he tries to unite with the Space Leftists to defeat the fascists who he now despised, and the ending of Episode 6 where he saves the leader of the Space Leftists by assassinating the fascist leader.... well, there’s really no evidence at all! So beyond the fact that this explanation skips over Episode 4 entirely (where Vader is shown doing everything in his power to maintain the fascist order), this is an exceptionally tortured interpretation of Vader’s behavior in ESB. I’m struggling to think of any justification this claim at all to be honest. Let’s have some specificity as to how the “entire plot” of ESB is about Vader trying to unite with the space leftists. E: The opening sequence shows Vader directing an assault on the Rebel’s base. The Kingfish fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Aug 2, 2020 |
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Aug 2, 2020 18:02
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Vader very specifically asks Luke to join him, in the next sentence lamenting that if only Luke knew the power of the dark side. He's explicitly embraced fascism and his beef with the Emperor is purely personal E": the character development in Return comes from Vader realising that he doesn't need the power of fascism to defeat Satan, he can self actualize and just throw him down a well. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Aug 2, 2020 |
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Aug 2, 2020 18:02
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:You need to be more truthful and accurate in your analysis. Vader appears to stop the Rebellion obtaining the plans Rogue One gave up their lives to acquire. How can he 'act in their spirit' whilst acting directly trying to invalidate their sacrifice and preserve the existence of the Death Star? And I'm not saying Vader & Ren look evil, therefore are evil, their actions speak for themselves. Vader's offer to overthrow the Empire and rule with Luke are revealed to be a lie when he tries to force Luke to become the Emperor's new apprentice in RotJ and in his first film alone Kylo Ren massacres a village and executes an elderly unarmed man, commits patricide and participates in the destruction of several populated worlds, presumably killing billions. And to really put a point on it, neither Vader nor Ren ever talk about liberation, freedom or justice and none of their actions suggest they're concerns for them either, your entire reading seems to stem from taking Vader at his word when he says he wants to overthrow Sheev and rule with Luke despite being perfectly capable of lying and both his actions before and after that encounter suggesting he is lying. Where was radical christian communist Vader when he brought Luke before Space Satan in chains and told him he must serve or die? Even saving Luke at the end is framed as the 'weak, human' Anakin remerging from the inhuman Vader to belatedly do the right thing, the Vader persona was perfectly happy to let Luke fry.
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Aug 2, 2020 18:10
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And to the extent Vader does look scary, this is due in part to the fact that he is wearing a stahlhelm.
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Aug 2, 2020 18:16
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Hey, SMG - why’s our boy Sheev a bad guy? It can’t just be that he’s an ugly old man, right? Because he seems to be the one doing all the heavy lifting in breaking the back of the corporate interests, the corrupt liberal order, the out of touch elitist Jedi, while your hero Vader is the one trying to undermine his revolution in favour of creating a hereditary aristocracy for him and his son.
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Aug 2, 2020 18:32
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Every sith apprentice will eventually try to kill his master. Not for ideological differences, but because being a sith is about power. Killing his master and taking his power is pretty much graduation for a sith, not because they disagree, but because they agree power is everything SMG interpretation is indeed an interesting thought experiment, but is not really grounded on what we see o. the movies Elias_Maluco fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Aug 2, 2020 |
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Aug 2, 2020 18:34
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Vader's outlook likely changed after episode 4. Up until then the Emperor's victory was total and there were no other options. Then there are rumours of a rebellion, then they actually win a battle against the Empire, then they blow up the Death Star which is a big blow to the regime. Suddenly the Emperor doesn't seem so invincible. Vader still couldn't kill Palpatine by himself, but maybe he could with the help of that strong young rebel who came out of nowhere, holy poo poo that's his son?! Now he can not only overthrow the Emperor but end up with something not too far from his dream of ruling the galaxy with Padme! This would be why Snoke is so dedicated to wiping out the Resistance in episode 8; the very existence of a rebellion threatened the Empire. He can't just take over the galaxy, he has to take away any hope that he can be deposed
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Aug 2, 2020 18:44
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Angry Salami posted:Hey, SMG - why’s our boy Sheev a bad guy? It can’t just be that he’s an ugly old man, right? Because he seems to be the one doing all the heavy lifting in breaking the back of the corporate interests, the corrupt liberal order, the out of touch elitist Jedi, while your hero Vader is the one trying to undermine his revolution in favour of creating a hereditary aristocracy for him and his son. Well, you have it half right: Palpatine is Literally Satan, and plenty has been written about Satan as a promethean figure of defiance. Paradise Lost, for example. In more recent film history, the android David in the Alien movies is a distinctly Palpatine-like character. These are active nihilists: “Active Nihilism is symptomatic of an increased power of the spirit. The will is strengthened and rebellious. This is the form of nihilism that does not stop at judgement, but goes on in action to be destructive towards the remaining vestiges of empty value systems.” Palpatine is an accelerationist in the basic sense that he pushes the logic of his frenemies to its unnatural conclusion. He’s having an enormous amount of fun exposing the hypocrisies of the Jedi and the senators, all the insurmountable contradictions of liberal capitalism, etc. He has fully embraced diabolical Evil as an ethos. This is why Palpatine has become a present-day camp icon. So how do you beat that? Now we‘re back to the eternal debate at the end of Episode 6: who killed Palpatine? We can say it was Luke’s father... but who is Luke’s father? Vader says “I am your father”, but Vader is not Anakin. He doesn’t self-identify as Anakin at all. He repeatedly insists that he is Luke’s father, but not Anakin. The unavoidable conclusion is that he is speaking metaphorically: that he is the father of the revolution, that he is the incarnation of God the father, etc. Luke, on the other hand, credits his biological father Anakin with the victory, and restores the unequal capitalist Republic - with disastrous results, as we’ve seen in the prequel and sequel films. Anakin was a fascist, and Luke becomes a fascist in the backstory of the sequels. Rian Johnson confirmed on Twitter that Luke’s attempted murder of his nephew was a fascist impulse. Luke did that because Ben was getting into Vader worship. So, again, we have an obvious distinction between Anakin and Vader. Luke loves his biodad Anakin Skywalker - and hates Vader, the Space Christ. multijoe posted:Vader appears to stop the Rebellion obtaining the plans Rogue One gave up their lives to acquire. How can he 'act in their spirit' whilst acting directly trying to invalidate their sacrifice and preserve the existence of the Death Star? As broken down earlier in the thread, Leia and the Alderaanian royal family are not planning to attack the Death Star. Leia’s goal at the start of A New Hope is to expose the existence of the Death Star to the Senate, so that they can oust Palpatine and restore the Republic to how it was in the prequel era. That is not what the Rogue One guys were fighting for. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Aug 2, 2020 |
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Aug 2, 2020 19:31
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The Kingfish posted:So beyond the fact that this explanation skips over Episode 4 entirely (where Vader is shown doing everything in his power to maintain the fascist order), this is an exceptionally tortured interpretation of Vader’s behavior in ESB. I’m struggling to think of any justification this claim at all to be honest. It’s really not complicated at all: if Vader is just Anakin in a different hat, then his entire life revolves around serving Padme and protecting Republican liberal democracy. So, Vader would have just hosed off with Obiwan and Yoda before joining the rebellion. Yet he didn’t do that???
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Aug 2, 2020 20:00
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It’s really not complicated at all: if Vader is just Anakin in a different hat, then his entire life revolves around serving Padme and protecting Republican liberal democracy. Well, because he is the most morally conflicted character in all the movies. Anakin Skywalker distrusts and dislikes the jedi, struggles with their code and how it conflicts with his emotions, and interchangeably does the right and the wrong thing all the time. His life revolves around Padme, but he doesn't "get" what she's about (he prefers aggressive negotiations), months into her pregnancy they still aren't being honest with each other. He presents her with an empire and is confused when she doen't want it, and tries to strangle her. Before she dies, he was doing his evil on her "behalf," and after she dies he has already killed all the Jedi and there are videotapes of it. There's no way Palpatine just lets him walk. He's no better than a slave. The tragedy is entirely that it's the same guy. It's the same little kid in the evil space suit. Life just hosed him up.
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Aug 2, 2020 20:24
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It's worth noting that all the EU and fan media that depicts Vader as Anakin-but-older is pretty bad. I'm thinking specifically of The Forced Unleashed, which depicted Vader as eternally moping about Padme, or that fan redo of Vader and Obiwan's duel on the Death Star, which was just ridiculous. In the Auralnauts series it's literally a joke. It may be a consistent read, but it's not a particularly imaginative or evocative one. Whether Vader is a new person with new goals and intentions because he's half-robot or just because he's been working for decades as part of a fascist government doesn't matter, he's still a separate entity in a literary sense.
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Aug 2, 2020 20:28
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It may be worth remembering that Vader has very little regard or loyalty to the empire, it's mega projects or personnel, despite it being the dream polity of Anakin (only he wanted Amidala instead of Palpatine as it's ruler). Vader seems to serve it more out obligation to his dark master, whom he is eager to betray once he discovers the possibility.
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Aug 2, 2020 20:34
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pospysyl posted:It's worth noting that all the EU and fan media that depicts Vader as Anakin-but-older is pretty bad. I'm thinking specifically of The Forced Unleashed, which depicted Vader as eternally moping about Padme, or that fan redo of Vader and Obiwan's duel on the Death Star, which was just ridiculous. In the Auralnauts series it's literally a joke. It may be a consistent read, but it's not a particularly imaginative or evocative one. Whether Vader is a new person with new goals and intentions because he's half-robot or just because he's been working for decades as part of a fascist government doesn't matter, he's still a separate entity in a literary sense. Its pretty textual to the films that becoming a sith is like an evil baptism where you renounce your old identity.
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Aug 2, 2020 20:38
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In ESB Vader spends most of his time killing imperial officers (leading to the great joke at the end where he's to upset to even do that). He doesn't directly kill a rebel the entire film. Vader being anti-empire is a plausible read, you could say his actions in ANH are because he has become resigned to the state of things but then is re-envigorated by Luke's existence.
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Aug 2, 2020 21:20
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garycoleisgod posted:In ESB Vader spends most of his time killing imperial officers (leading to the great joke at the end where he's to upset to even do that). He doesn't directly kill a rebel the entire film. Vader never “directly” kills a rebel on Hoth in the same way Tarkin never “directly” kills anybody on Alderan. SuperMechagodzilla posted:It’s really not complicated at all: if Vader is just Anakin in a different hat, then his entire life revolves around serving Padme and protecting Republican liberal democracy. Well I guess the question is: when does Anakin become Vader? Was it Anakin who attacked Padme? Was it Anakin who murdered all the jedi children? Was it Anakin who executed Dooku? Was it Anakin who slaughtered the Tuskan Raider encampment? And a big citation needed as to why Anakin’s motivations include protecting liberal democracy.
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Aug 2, 2020 21:59
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It's easy to say that Vader is against the Empire, given that he is plotting to overthrow it and holds its officers in contempt. He got what he thought he wanted and it turns out it sucks, but he was stuck with it. It's also easy to suppose he's against the Republic, considering he has firsthand knowledge of how and why it sucks, and enthusiastically purged its religious elite. He appears to respect Tarkin, however, so it's clear there are some parts of the Imperial order he finds tolerable. (In the cartoon there are a few episodes focusing on the character of Tarkin and how he and Anakin became friends, probably relevant to this conversation.) His proposal to Luke is that they form an autocratic duumvirate based on personal power. Structurally, this seems to differ from the Empire. Despite being a Sith Lord of unparalleled strength and clairvoyance, Darth Sidious is concerned with the (literal and figurative) mechanisms of the state. How will he maintain control without the bureaucracy? By using the ultimate weapon, apparently. By contrast, Vader believes that the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force. That's the most explicit point of disagreement between the two of them - even more so than the question of which of them should be in charge. The power of the Force is not just the ability to lift rocks or kill with a thought, though that sort of thing does come in handy when you're the best at it. Vader, then, is a sort of theocrat, believing that the Force itself should rule - presumably through him, its Chosen One, since he never found that "someone wise."
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Aug 2, 2020 22:26
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The Kingfish posted:Well I guess the question is: when does Anakin become Vader? Was it Anakin who attacked Padme? Was it Anakin who murdered all the jedi children? Was it Anakin who executed Dooku? Was it Anakin who slaughtered the Tuskan Raider encampment? Anakin’s love of liberal democracy is the entire love story of Episodes 1-3. He loves the Republic so much that, in his desperation to protect it, he (nearly) chokes it to death. It’s a very obvious metaphor. Seeing what she has enabled (“to be angry is to be human”), Padme then admits that liberalism is a failure by committing suicide. The “Darth X” names are considered just a silly code-names by most Sith. Anakin changes his name to Vader partway through Episode 3, but does not become Vader until he’s pulled from the lava and has the mask bolted onto his face. That is when, having overcome his pathological motivations, he fully identifies with the ethical mask. Anakin has some Vader-like traits before that point (e.g. his dream of freeing the slaves, his vision of human and droid slaves working together in solidarity, his overwhelming compassion, etc.) but they’re held back by his mommy issues. If you don’t pay attention to the character dynamics across films, and consider Anakin and Vader a single character... then his entire arc occurs offscreen after Episode 1. Vader Skywalker comes out of Jedi School already spouting fascist rhetoric, nothing of note happens for five movies, and then Vader Skywalker suddenly decides to not be fascist in the last couple minutes of Episode 6. What a saga! That’s a weak reading, compared to the observation that Vader changes massively just between episodes 4 and 5, after he learns of the new hope that is the Rogue Squadron. There’s a lot going on. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Aug 2, 2020 |
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Aug 2, 2020 22:44
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I mean, I feel like all this is pointless because it's pretty obvious that the First Order was an erzatzs empire but really not conceived of as a fascist power. You're trying to find continuity when the entire creative direction behind the franchise changed. In fact, they are more framed like Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army mixed with ISIS, with nazi symbolism lifted from the empire. But they are a non-state terrorist army who steal children and indoctrinate them, and have figures like hux who speak like demagoges from a messianic cult. There's no actual ideology behind either the Empire or FO, but the Empire at least is an imperial power, so the revolution/colonial resistance context is almost immediately readable from the context and coding. Once you remove the dominance of the Empire and it's ties to the government, you're left with a movement that has no purpose other than apparently being evil and a resistance motivated by a concept of freedom that's nebulous and tied to nothing other than fighting the anti freedom people. Hell, it's only in TROS that we see the FO having any sort of effect on the average resident of the galaxy at all. (I don't count the destruction of the capital because that happened so fast and had so little impact it was effectively meaningless.) Whereas in star wars, Alderaan is a planet that matters because it matters to Leia, you see storm troopers marching in an asserting colonial domination on Tatootine, and they kill Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru! They dominate cloud city, they colonize the ewoks, they enslave wookies. All these little things paint a picture of the empire as an empire, whereas the FO are just a bunch of devil nazis from literal hell who can rebuild their massive fleets as easily as if the entire universe was an RTS game. I actually wonder if that was the point, the FO are, unlike the empire, a stand if for America's enemies rather than America. Since this is a revolution fantasy trying to appeal to citizens of a an imperial state, the framing gets all wonky as they try to bridge that contradiction.
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Aug 2, 2020 23:40
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The Little Death posted:The FO are just a bunch of devil nazis from literal hell who can rebuild their massive fleets as easily as if the entire universe was an RTS game. Dismissing the First Order as just incoherent is an easy way out. It’s not incomprehensible. Like, R2’s story in TFA is seemingly incomprehensible until you put all the textual evidence together & discover that Luke’s New Jedi temple was built on Jakku, which is Tatooine. In the same way, there is a simple explanation for why the First Order is so weird: it’s not a monolith. Hux, Kylo, Snoke, and Palpatine all have very different ideologies. There’s tension between Kylo and Snoke, Snoke hates Hux, Snoke should hate Hux but tolerates him because he’s been brainwashed by Palpatine.... So the First Order is really a very loose coalition. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Aug 3, 2020 |
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Aug 3, 2020 00:01
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