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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:My favorite books are the original Thrawn Trilogy. I'm at the point in my life where what matters is if I enjoy a story, not what is 'canon'. The easiest thing is to ignore the comics and stuff, because they give a variety of contradictory explanations for things that also contradict the films. Self-contradiction in the films does exist, but it's surprisingly fairly rare. However, for one example: In an early reshot scene of TFA, Rey is a big fan of the Resistance. Then, later, Rey gets confused when Maz talks about the Resistance. Rey: So, you're with the Resistance? I've never met a Resistance fighter before. BB-8 says he's on a secret mission. He has to get back to your base. Later that day: Maz: You've been running away from this fight for too long. [...] Rey: What fight? Maz: The only fight: against the dark side. ... Today, it is the First Order. Their shadow is spreading across the galaxy. We must face them.
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Sep 17, 2020 18:24
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PeterWeller posted:They have to kidnap children (and their other option is clones) to man their war machine, implying that they don't have their own population to draw from.
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Sep 17, 2020 18:33
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Nope; when Kylo Ren was a kid, everyone was aware that he had a growing interest in Snoke’s ideas. It’s why Luke tries to kill him. Everyone being Luke Skywalker and his parents, which doesn't make Snoke famous, just that he's the Dark Sider who they have discovered is trying to corrupt Ben. And being aware of the First Order does not necessarily mean being aware of its leader, who struck me as a shadowy type. I don't remember those details from Rose talking about the FO's conquest of her homeworld. I was a little iffy on the timeline with her. Halloween Jack posted:Those kids are their population. It's just conscription. That's not the impression I got. But I'm clearly forgetting some details.
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Sep 17, 2020 18:43
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:My favorite books are the original Thrawn Trilogy. I'm at the point in my life where what matters is if I enjoy a story, not what is 'canon'. That's the only sane way to do it imho. I still love the Thrawn books, all five of them.
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Sep 17, 2020 18:45
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For the First Order to make sense, it seems like they'd have to have complete control over several heavily industrialized systems that are 100% war economy all the time for decades on end. But then it's introduced that a sizable portion of their fleet is purchased from ostensibly legitimate arms manufacturers? Who's paying for this? Is there normal, non-military trade in the First Order's systems that constitutes a tax base big enough to build a fleet, feed an army of millions, and rent excavators to hollow out an entire planet? Is Snoke just Space Bezos and paying for all of this out of pocket? But then Rise of Skywalker introduces Exogol, which I guess is a planet-wide cult where everyone just builds ships for free, and also has infinite steel and Khyber crystals? If that fleet was available all the time and Snoke was always a proxy for Palpatine, then what was the point of building a separate, brand-new First Order Fleet? Why did they not just unveil the Exogol fleet as soon as Starkiller Base took out the Republic fleet? If you have an entire fleet of mini Death Stars, do you even need a Starkiller Base? General Dog fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 18:48
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General Dog posted:For the First Order to make sense, it seems like they'd have to have complete control over several heavily industrialized systems that are 100% war economy all the time for decades on end. But then it's introduced that a sizable portion of their fleet is purchased from ostensibly legitimate arms manufacturers? Who's paying for this? Is there normal, non-military trade in the First Order's systems that constitutes a tax base big enough to build a fleet, feed an army of millions, and rent excavators to hollow out an entire planet? Is Snoke just Space Bezos and paying for all of this out of pocket? I hate these movies so much
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Sep 17, 2020 18:51
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Does someone say "Khyber crystal" onscreen, please let me know if someone says "Khyber crystal" onscreen
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Sep 17, 2020 19:12
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josh04 posted:Does someone say "Khyber crystal" onscreen, please let me know if someone says "Khyber crystal" onscreen Rogue one does Halloween Jack posted:Those kids are their population. It's just conscription. Nope, Lando says they stole his baby girl. And Disney dropped that Janah was Lando's daughter. The first order is basically every non-state military actor of the past 20 years. They are A mix of ISIS and the Lord's resistance Army which is why they do the kids stealing thing. Once you realize the metaphor they are going for it's really not subtle E: you think it's a coincidence that Disney's first major black protagonist in the Star Wars saga was a child soldier. Just think about it, think about how clever people thought that casting choice was internally Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 19:18
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Rather than being a separate polity, the First Order may be thought of as a political movement or faction within the Republic. Its military arm might be clandestine, and its superweapons certainly are. (It's worth keeping in mind that Star Wars takes place in a setting where the existence of active armies can be kept secret.) It's also unclear whether the seditious disposition of its Snokist military officers is shared by its civilian supporters. The Palpatinist ones certainly don't seem to have many civilian allies regardless.
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Sep 17, 2020 19:29
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TFA and ROS have this thing where you can almost see JJ dismissively waving his hand and saying "gently caress all that, they dont wanna think about that, we're here to bottle the magic of 1977" and it sucks
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Sep 17, 2020 19:48
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Ingmar terdman posted:TFA and ROS have this thing where you can almost see JJ dismissively waving his hand and saying "gently caress all that, they dont wanna think about that, we're here to bottle the magic of 1977" and it sucks Don't pretend Johnson doesn't do that a few times himself in TLJ.
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Sep 17, 2020 19:52
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SolarFire2 posted:Don't pretend Johnson doesn't do that a few times himself in TLJ. He does, but it's at least in service of a few interesting setpieces/visuals, as opposed to something like "lightspeed skipping", which is both universe-breaking and lame scene on it's own merits.
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Sep 17, 2020 19:58
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Weren't Khyber crystals called "Kaiburr crystals" back in the day? When did the spelling change?
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Sep 17, 2020 20:12
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The Little Death posted:Nope, Lando says they stole his baby girl. Bongo Bill posted:Rather than being a separate polity, the First Order may be thought of as a political movement or faction within the Republic. Its military arm might be clandestine, and its superweapons certainly are. (It's worth keeping in mind that Star Wars takes place in a setting where the existence of active armies can be kept secret.) General Dog posted:For the First Order to make sense, it seems like they'd have to have complete control over several heavily industrialized systems that are 100% war economy all the time for decades on end. But then it's introduced that a sizable portion of their fleet is purchased from ostensibly legitimate arms manufacturers? Who's paying for this? Is there normal, non-military trade in the First Order's systems that constitutes a tax base big enough to build a fleet, feed an army of millions, and rent excavators to hollow out an entire planet? Is Snoke just Space Bezos and paying for all of this out of pocket? (From what I've skimmed, even the new Disney Canon EU stuff confirms all of this. There's even a Centrist faction that thinks Palpatine's regime had its pros and cons. I don't have any regard for stuff that isn't a movie or TV show, but you can see that when the people writing that stuff were tasked with adding more background detail to everything, as the EU always does, there's no other plausible conclusion regarding where the First Order comes from.) General Dog posted:But then Rise of Skywalker introduces Exogol, which I guess is a planet-wide cult where everyone just builds ships for free, and also has infinite steel and Khyber crystals? Bongo Bill posted:It's also unclear whether the seditious disposition of its Snokist military officers is shared by its civilian supporters. The Palpatinist ones certainly don't seem to have many civilian allies regardless. General Dog posted:If that fleet was available all the time and Snoke was always a proxy for Palpatine, then what was the point of building a separate, brand-new First Order Fleet? Why did they not just unveil the Exogol fleet as soon as Starkiller Base took out the Republic fleet? If you have an entire fleet of mini Death Stars, do you even need a Starkiller Base?
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Sep 17, 2020 20:23
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Gargamel Gibson posted:Weren't Khyber crystals called "Kaiburr crystals" back in the day? When did the spelling change? The Kaiburr Crystal was a Force-enhancing relic that only worked on one planet, while Kyber was a catch-all term for a variety of smaller and more plentiful crystals, gems, and artifacts, and could be corrupted, cleansed and synthesized for use in a lightsaber depending on one's knowledge of the Force
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Sep 17, 2020 20:25
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Halloween Jack posted:So? That's conscription. In the same way that Joseph Kony did was technically conscription I guess. It was an obvious reference to those to the sort of guerrilla warfare that has become to modern face of war. They might as well have called them space al-shabaab. They consider themselves a legitimate actor, but they are a rebellious seditious force that is a non-state actor in opposition to the central government, which is the new republic.
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Sep 17, 2020 20:34
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Why does conscription become more or less legitimate depending on whether it's being done by Tricky Dick or General Buck Naked? The First Order is not a guerrilla paramilitary force. It's the exact opposite of that in numerous ways. Who says that they're a non-state actor and that the New Republic is the central government? The ragtag "Resistance" that's the only significant opposition to the First Order? Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 20:56
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Halloween Jack posted:Why does conscription become more or less legitimate depending on whether it's being done by Tricky Dick or General Buck Naked? The unsubtle use of child soldiers as a metaphor for the FO being the nefarious foreign enemy to American audiences, which is what Disney and JJ were going for.
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Sep 17, 2020 21:02
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If that were the case, they probably would've made the big "This is what the First Order is all about" scene reminiscent of an ISIL training camp instead of the 1934 Nuremburg Rally.
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Sep 17, 2020 21:10
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Gargamel Gibson posted:Weren't Khyber crystals called "Kaiburr crystals" back in the day? When did the spelling change? Vinylshadow posted:The Kaiburr Crystal was a Force-enhancing relic that only worked on one planet, while Kyber was a catch-all term for a variety of smaller and more plentiful crystals, gems, and artifacts, and could be corrupted, cleansed and synthesized for use in a lightsaber depending on one's knowledge of the Force Originally, the "Kiber Crystal" was the macguffin in the second draft of Lucas' screenplay for Star Wars, and was a unique force-enhancing MacGuffin that Luke needed to take to his father to help the Rebellion. In the third draft, Kiber Crystals are implied to have been carried by all Jedi, but are now in the posession of the Sith. Obviously, the Kiber Crystal didn't make it's way into the final film, but the idea of a crystal that every Jedi carries with them made its way into the novelization by Alan Dean Foster, which mentions that that their lightsabers have jewels in their hilts. Foster also wrote the first Expanded Universe book, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which was intended to be the basis for a low-budget sequel to Star Wars in case the movie didn't make any money. This book had the "Kaiburr Crystal" as a macguffin, re-using the idea of it being a Force enhancing artifact from the movie's second draft. The rough draft of The Empire Strikes Back also contained a lightsaber's crystal as a plot point - in this case, a crystal hidden inside Luke's saber was able to guide him to Dagobah. Lightsaber crystals as they exist today were introduced in the 90's - first getting a passing mention in the endnotes for Dark Empire, and then getting set in stone by the Young Jedi Knights series, the Tales of the Jedi comics, and Shadows of the Empire. They weren't really anything special at this point though, merely just focusing crystals that determined the color of the blade. By the time the 2008 Clone Wars series rolled around, lightsaber crystals of various types were considered the norm, with some having special properties including the Kaiburr Crystal from Splinter as a particularly powerful crystal. The first mention of a "Kyber Crystal" (possibly spelled differently to avoid stepping on the toes of the one in Splinter) in the series was as a MagGuffin that contained a list of Force Sensitive children. The series would later establish Kyber Crystals as the standard type of crystal in a Jedi's lightsaber, and gave them the force-sensitive properties from Lucas' early scripts. These crystals were exclusively found on Ilum, and co-existed with other types of lightsaber crystals. The term (and spelling) stuck as the standard name for a lightsaber crystal of any origin when Disney bought the franchise. Robot Style fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 21:23
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Halloween Jack posted:TLJ and TROS make it clear that the galactic population is more or less fine with the First Order, but they loving hate Palpatine. The Resistance dwindles away to nothing and everyone ignores their calls for help. But when Palpatine reveals himself and gets up to his old tricks, a massive antifa fleet flies to the edge of the galaxy just to kill his rear end. Nazi rule is one thing, but if you talk poo poo in fortnite as far as the entire galaxy is concerned you're loving with God
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Sep 17, 2020 21:58
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This latest chunk of conversation has been largely about how things make sense in context with the established universe and lore. Amusingly, Solo and Rogue one took that poo poo as seriously as they could, because it was basically the marketing strategy that it all fit in. The sequel trilogy has demonstrated about 100 times that they couldn't give less of a poo poo, though, so even trying to explain anything in them is a waste of time. That said they should have still made a story that was interesting, even if the things happening didn't make sense in the universe. I think they failed on both. (still love TLJ though)
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Sep 17, 2020 22:32
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Halloween Jack posted:If that were the case, they probably would've made the big "This is what the First Order is all about" scene reminiscent of an ISIL training camp instead of the 1934 Nuremburg Rally. Keep in mind that they're also hacks
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Sep 17, 2020 22:32
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Hanging out in his golden dressing gown, Snoke is certainly coded as extremely wealthy. A skillful telepath who devoted their powers to personal gain would certainly have no shortage of opportunities for outrageous profit. And if they're basically just a political party, they've probably got other wealthy supporters, likely enriched further by whatever policies they pursue in the open. But they've got civilian contractors manufacturing their star destroyers while Starkiller Base was built and (briefly) maintained by their slave army. So that's two ways they're misrepresenting their aims even from their supporters: first, the overt plan to gain power in the Republic by being openly fascist; second, the outer secret plan to stage a coup d'etat supplant the Republic using their surprise planet-buster even though they also have conventional political power; third, the inner secret plan to coronate Palpatine and supplant the First Order using their surprise planet-buster even though they also have conventional political power. It's seriously the exact secret same plan both times. And even the outer plan where the fascist party goes around kidnapping babies can be thought of as a form of outside context violence disrupting a stable and more moderate order. And didn't the Republic's government come to power after blowing up the Death Star, which looks planet-like? "Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, / And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. / And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on; / While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on." And at the center of it all is DJ revealing the apparent equivalence between the First Order and the Resistance. The cycle of the prequel trilogy was that of the victorious liberals recreating the conditions in which fascists thrive. The sequel trilogy posits instead that the cycle is one of fascists being betrayed by double fascists over and over again. And yet it also depicts the cycle being broken. What's the difference between Snoke and Palpatine? Isn't Snoke literally a puppet that Palpatine sent as part of his scheme? Why does only one of them cause the galaxy to spontaneously rise up and fight back en masse? Snoke is just a single event - an evil dude, but just one evil dude. Palpatine embodies the ultimate evil, the abstract malevolence that transcends the recurrence of individual threats. When he revealed himself, he also revealed that Snoke wasn't just a random villain, but part of a pattern, while our boy Sheev himself is the pattern. So first, it posits, we need everybody to view the cycle itself as the problem, and second, we need some powerful person who has the opportunity to continue it (Rey) to decide instead not to. Just find someone who won't be evil. Invoke a legacy of... protagonists?... and reject the temptation as expressed as an unexamined sort of possession or mind control. Not the most satisfying lesson. Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 22:54
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Bongo Bill posted:What's the difference between Snoke and Palpatine? Isn't Snoke literally a puppet that Palpatine sent as part of his scheme? Why does only one of them cause the galaxy to spontaneously rise up and fight back en masse? Well, that's what returns us to the point that Snoke exists as a reference to Soviet totalitarianism. And that's tied into the fact that Kylo Ren continues to believe in Darth Vader even after it's been revealed to him that all his psychic communications with "Vader's ghost" were falsified. Where the Nazis were merely bad idiots, the Soviets failed catastrophically at a project that was, at its roots, egalitarian. So what exists within and survives the fact that Snoke was a fraud is this ineradicable communist idea. Since Snoke is also presented as an 'evil pope' figure, we can also describe it as the difference between the catholic church and Christ Himself. In other words, the Galaxy largely understands that it was Darth Vader, not Luke Skywalker, who killed the Palpatine the first time. And the consequently understand all too well how the New Republic failed utterly at Vader's goal. Kylo Ren became the most/only compelling character in the trilogy because he was wrestling with this very conflict between his love of the OT heroes as entertaining characters, and a hatred of their garbage politics. This is what Snoke describes as "seduction by the light" - and Snoke, given that he is a reverse-psychology strawman set up by Palpatine, stands for a lot of good things. For example, Snoke is fighting to prevent and Luke and/or Rey from ruling the Galaxy as antichrist figures.
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Sep 18, 2020 00:20
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A lot has been made of how Palpatine’s resurrection cheapens the end of Return of the Jedi, but I would also say it makes Palpatine himself less compelling as a character. The fact that he always apparently had some sort of failsafe/reset in place in case he died kind of cheapens the idea that this guy is willing to risk his life repeatedly just for the thrill of seeing what happens. (Thinking specifically about when he reveals himself to Anakin, or puts himself in a seemingly no-win situation in his standoff with Luke/Vader at the end of Jedi) The guy is a freak- he gets off on corruption and exposing hypocrisy, in episodes 1-6 you get the feeling that his desire for power is almost incidental. tl;dr: Palaptine the omnipotent 12-dimensional chess master isn't nearly as interesting as Palpatine, the unusually canny and opportunistic guy in pursuit of the perfect orgasm. General Dog fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Sep 18, 2020 |
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Sep 18, 2020 01:11
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Yeah, the part that makes Ian Mcdiarmid's so good is the way he is able to sell to the audience just how much pleasure he gets out of getting people to ruin themselves. The viewer can sincerely believe the man on screen thinks that everyone is completely evil deep down just like him, and that he wants to tear down any pretensions of goodness in the human soul. That facial expression and line delivery he gives when Luke refuses to kill Vader is that of a man who was just given the biggest case of blue balls in galactic history.
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Sep 18, 2020 02:01
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I’m still mad they didn’t call the thing Rey found on the Death Star a holocron It was a loving holocron !!!
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Sep 18, 2020 02:05
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Exogol was a place before the end of return of the Jedi then I guess yeah
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Sep 18, 2020 02:06
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euphronius posted:I’m still mad they didn’t call the thing Rey found on the Death Star a holocron
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Sep 18, 2020 02:35
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Halloween Jack posted:And why the stupid Sith dagger key instead of a holocron? Because Merchandising
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Sep 18, 2020 03:04
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The sequel trilogy has tons of maps and schematics because children famously played with plastic replicas of the death star plans in the 80s
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Sep 18, 2020 03:12
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The Tik Tok teens love two things: K-pop and McGuffins. They don’t care what they are, just that everybody wants ‘em!
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Sep 18, 2020 03:23
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Great now I've got the Knights of Ren doing a group dance number to "The First Order (Is Love)"
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Sep 18, 2020 05:14
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missed opportunity not casting BTS as the Knights Of Ren
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Sep 18, 2020 05:38
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TROS and Cats are the last movies I saw in theaters. I was just thinking that, since I may never be not paranoid enough to step into a theater again, I feel like those are two good movies to end my cinema experience on 
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Sep 18, 2020 05:41
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:, the Soviets failed catastrophically  ideology detected
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Sep 18, 2020 05:59
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Ingmar terdman posted:The sequel trilogy has tons of maps and schematics because children famously played with plastic replicas of the death star plans in the 80s I remember the old joke before Rogue One was that every single EU thing has a different way the Death Star plans were stolen Barudak posted:Great now I've got the Knights of Ren doing a group dance number to "The First Order (Is Love)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvafvTnji-Y&t=128s
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Sep 18, 2020 07:02
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Where the Nazis were merely bad idiots Hmm.
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Sep 18, 2020 13:36
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thrawn527 posted:Hmm. I write that in the sense that calling Hitler some ultimate satanic evil ascribes to him a certain dignity and a clarity of purpose that he didn’t actually have. Nazis are just dangerously stupid. Star Wars itself raises this point, with Vader saying that the Death Star is just dumb as hell and then choking that dude out.
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Sep 18, 2020 14:30
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