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Ground floor. Seeing this with my mostly-estranged dad when he comes back home for Christmas. All the ads for Gilette ('a father passes knowledge down to his son!'  ) make me feel profoundly uncomfortable.
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Dec 14, 2015 11:45
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Although you phrased that as a rhetorical question, try showing a kid a picture of a cop and a picture of a criminal, and asking "which one is the good guy'. The kid will always pick the cop because that's what they're supposed to say. They're giving the 'right answer' as if filling in the blank on a test.    e: 'from my point of view, metroman is evil!'
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Jan 10, 2016 00:56
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I am a Droid. Hath not a Droid eyes? hath not a Droid hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a alien is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
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Jan 13, 2016 05:08
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Y Kant Ozma Diet posted:They're ideologically confused and in disarray after the fall of the Empire. You're right that it IS a weird mish mash of Nazi and Communist imagery but eh, it worked for me. I see where you're coming from though.   (The Force Awakens is an MCU movie.)
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Jan 13, 2016 06:07
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Bongo Bill posted:Don't call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight blob of grease. For context, this is two droids talking to each other in private, early on in A New Hope, which starts off (after the initial chase sequence) with ~15 minutes of two droids talking to each other in private. If the droids are p-zombies, so is everyone else in the film. And if C-3PO and R2-D2 are people, then so are the battle droids. There are heroes on both sides.
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Jan 13, 2016 06:33
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Ersatz posted:I experience qualia. So do droids. That's why they're people. You're making faulty assumptions based on the physical makeup of fictional, metaphorical characters. There's a reason I quoted The Merchant of Venice and replaced 'jew' with 'droid'.
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Jan 13, 2016 06:54
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It's p. funny that people accuse of SMG of trolling for posting his opinion without prefacing every sentence with "my opinion on this media (as read by Lacan via Zizek) is...", then Judakel turns up and goes "nuh uh" to people engaging him in goodwill. The badness of the Star Wars prequels has been very deeply internalised. That doesn't mean they're not bad, necessarily, but the basic talking points are etched into every "Star Wars fan"'s soul. It makes for a very tiring debate when Cnut and SMG could instead be posting and talking about rad movies (all five/six/seven of them, depending on what you think of TFA and RotJ).
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Jan 14, 2016 04:51
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Squinty posted:This thread moves pretty quickly, what's the SMG approved argument for why the Jar Jar Binks minstrel comedy hour is secretly good and anti-fascist? Jar Jar is a reasonably intelligent, athletic individual whose major 'flaws' are his clumsiness and that his native dialect makes him sound like a simpleton to Qui-Gon Jinn (who upon entering the film, immediately derides the Neimoidians he was sent to negotiate with as 'cowards' and 'fearful', so his attitude towards aliens is maybe not the greatest?). The battle scene in which Jar Jar flubs his way through half a dozen battle droids with one stuck on his foot should be seen in the same light as Han Solo blindly shooting Boba Fett out of the sky in RotJ - it's 'blind luck', or as we call it in Star Wars, 'the will of the Force'. Telekinesis and mind control might be what the Jedi actively use as the Force, but treating the Force like a list of video game powers is either a failure to read or just an unwillingness to do so. Jar Jar Binks could have been the Chosen One if the Jedi weren't obsessed with prophecies and midi-chlorian counts. Jar Jar isn't an anti-fascist character, though - he's coopted by the Republic into fighting a puppet war against an army of droids controlled by the Emperor on both sides. In AotC, Jar Jar is talented enough to be Naboo's Senator when Padme is off getting killed for her Jedi boyfriend. He's then coopted by the Republic into approving a puppet war against an army of droids controlled by the Emperor on both sides. Then he's one of the key players who hands total power to the Emperor in RotS (allowing him to end the war against an army of droids that he was controlling). There's a deleted scene, included in RotS' novelisation, where Sheev personally meets with Jar Jar and thanks him for all his hard work. He's one of the many unfortunate bureaucrats who was willing to sacrifice a little freedom for a little security and lost both.
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Jan 14, 2016 07:47
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MrMojok posted:What was everyone's take on the "bring balance to the Force" thing? Lucas' official stance is that Vader brought balance to the Force at the end of RotJ, when he turned away from the Dark Side and struck down the Emperor. This is the interpretation that makes the most sense if you watch the films in 123456 order, since it completes Vader's character arc - and it's the explanation that makes the most sense diegetically. Alternatively, 'bringing balance to the Force' can be interpreted as destroying all of the Jedi. This is probably how Sheev saw the prophecy, which is why he may-or-may-not have artificially created Anakin in order to bring it about. He either couldn't do basic math or didn't actually believe in the prophecy except inasmuch as the Jedi believed in it, though. The problem with this interpretation is that the Force very clearly doesn't want to be balanced, given that Luke goes off and spends three movies becoming a Jedi. At no point is the Jedi/Sith ratio actually balanced, depending on when you consider Luke becomes a Jedi and when you consider Vader stops being a Sith. When we 'return' to TPM, one Jedi and no Sith leads to a universe with thousands of Jedi and two Sith. Of course, all of this is assuming 'bringing balance to the Force' is concerned entirely with the presence of Jedi and Sith in the universe, which assumes the Force is video game powers. If 'bringing balance to the Force' is supposed to be philosophical or religious, then I think Lucas had it right when he said Vader brought balance to the Force by killing the Emperor. Not because he turned away from the 'Dark side' towards the 'Light side' (after all, he very clearly physically lifts the Emperor with his Force-less gauntlets and chucks him in a pit), but because he rejected what was easy and instead did what was right - just like Luke did by refusing to kill him.
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Jan 14, 2016 09:07
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rear end Catchcum posted:Anyone think that theory about jar jar being a sith has any truth to it? Jar Jar Binks doesn't have enough spooky symbiotic space germs in his cells to shoot lightning bolts out of his fingers, no. Nonetheless, he is responsible for the rise of the Empire. Does that make him a Sith? I wonder if one of those hooded figures on Sidious' council in Episode VI is Jar Jar. That would be pretty much the greatest Special Edition change George Lucas could ever do. e: wrong episode ungulateman fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Jan 14, 2016 |
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Jan 14, 2016 21:37
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Jerkface posted:1. Jar Jar tries to steal some food from a vendor, that is portrayed as a grotesque looking practical effect, looks fine, even if the food he steals looks pretty bad (it looks like a bad practical effect! oh no!). The thing flies into Sebulba's ramen and Sebulba goes to beat up Jar Jar. Sebulba is full CGI & Jar Jar is full CGI (tho portrayed on set by Ahmed Best?) Despite Best maybe being on a set for this scene doing his acting, literally no one reacts to a loving street fight going down! Ahmed Best was on set in a silly-looking Jar Jar costume, yes. I think 'no reaction' is pretty bad direction, but 'apathy' - as in "who's Sebulba trying to kill now? whatever" - works pretty well when we're talking about Tatooine, the kind of place where a Jedi can cut your arm off and nobody gives a poo poo.
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Jan 14, 2016 22:37
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rear end Catchcum posted:The characters and plot only serve whatever George wanted to happen at the given time. Literally every work of fiction you've ever consumed is like this, just replace 'George' with 'the writer/director/producer/programmer' (depending on the medium). Arguing that a universe should have consistent rules and then produce a story based on those rules is some Dungeons and Dragons poo poo, and not even the good kind of D&D where the DM will let you do cool and fun things because they're cool and fun. It's the kind where you get into an hour-long argument over whether a dragon's fire breath is hot enough to melt the steel beams holding up the Two Towers.
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Jan 15, 2016 09:00
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Elfgames posted:i don't disagree with respect to grevious but it does show part of the reason anikin falls to the dark side, windu is a sith. anikin is still firmly on the side of the jedi, he even rats out the guy who can save his love then mace windu strolls in and suppresses palpitine has the guy begging for his life and because of his feer and anger is still going to execute him without trial. and this is not a one time mistake it is his nature. I wouldn't go as far as saying Windu's a Sith, but he's very representative of what the Jedi are willing to do in order to preserve the Republic which they've grown inextricably attached to. I remember reading the Visual Guide as a kid, where it explicitly mentions that he uses a lightsaber form that 'comes dangerously close to the Dark side' (???). Even if we stick to what the films show us, he has a purple lightsaber. Yes, the 'real' reason he has a purple lightsaber is because Samuel L. Jackson wanted a purple lightsaber, but I wouldn't be surprised if he'd actually decided on purple specifically because it's a mixture of red and blue. It feels way too on the nose to be a coincidence. (And depending on how dead you think the author is, it might not matter that it's a coincidence.)
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Jan 15, 2016 11:02
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Man, Utapau has some really nice design work overall. It's a shame that people focus overly on the fact that Grievous is a bit of a patsy and that Obi-Wan rides a lizard. Also, I just realised something really obvious - Grievous is exactly the kind of name a Sith Lord would give themselves. General Grievous desperately wants to be Darth Grievous, but his severe injuries led to him being interred in a robo-body and basically reduced to the level of the battle droids he commands. So he clings onto his 'humanity' with all four robot arms, a stolen lightsaber in each, and demands an honourable duel with Obi-Wan when he could just have his droids shoot him.
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Jan 17, 2016 05:51
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Admiral Ackbar might just be the worst character in the OT. He's certainly the worst character anyone can remember, even if it's just because of funny internet may-mays. His strongest characterisation is that he's a fish-dude, and fish-dudes (real name: Mon Calamari and god I wish I didn't know that off the top of my head) are good at space navy stuff. It's an interesting thematic link between space and sailing...except the OT treats space as 'that thing that gets in the way of the planets we're going to' rather than a location itself, and most of the space stuff in ANH and ESB is more like aerial dogfighting than naval battles. RotJ has a bit more space navy fighting, but the focus in the Death Star battle is still the Falcon pulling off insane stunts like a fighter pilot rather than the daring nautical tactics of the Rebels. Dude doesn't even have a first name. He's just 'Admiral', Ackbar to his friends. His job is to point out the obvious in a funny alien voice. Then he turns up in TFA because, uh, continuity I guess? He does even less here, and the Resistance have even less of a naval theme, so... Like, you'd have to take a pretty strong oppositional reading along the lines of 'Ackbar is supposed to be evocative of the British Empire's powerful Navy prior to WW2, as a contrast to the Nazi-like Empire', but he's even less British than most of the other characters in Star Wars, so gently caress it, I dunno. (Also the real-world parallels don't really work there since it was the Japanese that demonstrated how useless the British Navy was in WW2.)
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Jan 17, 2016 22:59
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Y Kant Ozma Diet posted:So we're onto "JJ is a dumbass" now. Fantastic. No more or less so than the Great Satan, Jorge. I think JJ Abrams and some/all of the writers on TFA thought the Empire was meant to represent the USSR, with the Rebels being pro-capitalist good guys, rather than the Vietnam metaphor that Lucas was aiming for. 'Big scary black/grey Gothic architecture dudes with totalitarian government and vague Nazism' in films written during the Cold War are probably going to be interpreted as Soviet. The PT plays a very important role in contextualizing the Empire and Republic as being two halves of the same whole, rather than a good-evil dichotomy. But since there's a pretty strong backlash against them, and they weren't quite as critically successful as the OT, Abrams probably went 'let's keep it simple like with the OT' and Disney went 'yes do that we'll make more money that way'. This is, in my opinion, the root of why the First Order are pretty lovely villains. They want pretty much the same thing as the good guys (the return to the Good Old Days of the Empire/Republic), except they have to be Evil because the plot needs somebody to be Evil. Also, none of the characters so far want to move forward, into a future without an Empire or Republic. The First Order are weird hybrids of Islamic terrorists and neo-cons who wish they were still living in the Cold War. The Resistance are washed-up soldiers who can't let go of 'Nam, or Iraq, or whatever proxy war they lived through. The Republic is the modern Western world. SMG's interpretation is naturally coloured by the fact that he's not a big fan of the status quo, and so he can't really agree with the Resistance or the Republic, and the First Order are lovely villains, so there's nobody to really 'like', except maybe Luke. And Luke doesn't even say or do anything for an entire movie!
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Jan 18, 2016 00:50
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"Machines building machines...how perverse." I love this line. C-3PO was hand-made. He's basically arguing against sweatshop labour. That doesn't stop him from benefiting from a happy liberal status quo reliant on the slavery in a galaxy far, far away. C-3PO is prudish. He finds the act of reproduction (and what is reproduction but like making like, machines building machines?) obscene. He's more disgusted by it than the violence the droids are being built for. Both of these things make the scenes in which he swaps bodies with a battle droid all the more telling. "Die, Jedi dogs!"
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Jan 19, 2016 08:19
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All the major non-Sheev villains of the prequels are meant to be different reflections of Anakin and/or Darth Vader. Darth Maul is an angry, revenge-driven evil black-and-red guy who has Force powers and mad lightsaber skills. This is pretty much identical to Anakin in RotS. We're not shown that he has a Shmi or a Padme to mourn over, but what we do see is that there are other aliens like him - on the Jedi Council, even - but with their horns filed down and without the tribal tattoos. Something happened - something the Republic did - to his people, that he can't accept. He's an alien Islamist - but then, so is Anakin. Count Dooku is the aristocratic Lord of the Sith who rules with terror over the weak-willed. He's also a master duelist, but relatively subdued compared to Maul - more like the OT Vader than RotS Anakin. He even gets a dramatic confrontation with Obi-Wan which directly parallels Vader revealing the truth to Luke. Then he gets decapitated by Anakin in RotS, directly next to Sheev. Then Grievous is the cyborg abomination with a human heart, obsessed with killing the Jedi, who (willingly or not) identifies with the inhuman yet all too human battle droids. Again, there's strong visual parallels betwen his fight with Obi-Wan and Luke's clash with Vader, which tie in with their thematic similarities.
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Jan 20, 2016 00:28
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Tezzor posted:aaaah i'm vomiting from every hole and there's blood in it now The Death Tezzor has only one weakness - a shitpost port two metres in diameter. Nobody can make that post! That's impossible.
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Jan 20, 2016 01:55
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That's actually pretty cool, Zoran. And it makes Qui-Gon being the first to master the spooky jedi ghost trick a lot more meaningful, too, because he literally becomes the Force, the energy binding the universe together.
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Jan 21, 2016 02:54
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Yeah, it's pretty clear that the battle droids are programmed to obey orders, but that doesn't mean they can't have personhood. C-3PO got mindwiped, but that doesn't make his pre-mindwipe or post-mindwipe selves not people. If you operate under the assumption that artificially created soldiers who are programmed to obey orders but demonstrate some amount of free will aren't people, then the clones aren't people either. This is pretty much the central tenet of Attack of the Clones - the good guys are fighting this war the exact same way the bad guys are, but since they (both the good guys and their soldiers) are biologically human/One of the Good Ones, it's okay! The idea that the clones are superior because they're capable of creative thinking and independent thought isn't necessarily wrong, it just has no relation to them being biological clones rather than mechanical copies. They've simply had the buttons which says "always obey orders, forever" set to "off", except for the button which says "kill all the Jedi", which gets pressed in Episode 3. The droid armies, on the other hand, have both "kill all the Jedi" and "always obey orders" buttons firmly taped down, because their leaders are sending them off to fight and die for a cause they don't believe in - I mean, seriously, who would lay down their lives for free trade?
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Jan 21, 2016 07:55
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I dunno if 'properly filtered' is the right word for it. Obviously the Great Satan Jorge benefits a lot from working with other skilled and talented people, but that's true of literally every director ever. The fact that it's animation is probably a major factor. Lucas' strength has always been visual storytelling, and animation hypothetically lets him do a lot more visually than even the best CGI. It probably also helps that the characters' more simplistic design means the characters and the VOs both have to emote pretty hard, so the characters seem less bored (which is also helped by the show typically taking place on a battlefield rather than in Mega City One).
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Jan 21, 2016 09:11
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I'm fairly sure R2 was there when Luke's lightsaber was there the first time (but without Rey). I prefer the "R2 is Force-sensitive, like everything else" interpretation, but I guess if you want to be a gloomy no-fun guy maybe he can pick up people with ~especially high midichlorian counts~ but that seems really at odds with the movie's general ideas of "the Force belongs to everyone, and it's awakening in all sorts of people". See Han casually shooting a guy coming up from behind him without even looking, let alone turning.
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Jan 21, 2016 10:10
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Since when did we actually care about what the director of a Star Wars movie's opinion was, though? 
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Jan 21, 2016 12:43
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If it helps, the 'balance of the Force' thing could just be the Jedi coming up with a good reason to go and kill all the Sith. It wouldn't be the first time a religion came up with some weird prophecy/parable to justify killing "those guys we don't like". Since this is a space opera, though, those guys we don't like actually do eat babies and worship lying, or whatever.
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Jan 21, 2016 22:33
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Yeah, but then we have Christopher Lee out of a job. Also the fake victory parade Sheev throws himself at the end of TPM is a lot less effective (for Obi-Wan and Anakin) if some evil dude just whacked a Jedi master and peaced out. Also the whole 'phantom menace' thing.
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Jan 22, 2016 07:46
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If I was the secret wife of some big-shot general fighting for his life in a big war and constantly on edge due to his life going bananas and/or being crazy, I wouldn't compound it by telling him I'm pregnant with twins.
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Jan 23, 2016 04:23
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It's a lot more fun to look at the parts of Star Wars that are cool, and good (whether it's little things like visual design or bigger things like radically reinterpreting what the movies are about) than it is to complain about the parts that are not cool or good So far all of the former has been done by Cnut the Great, SMG and a few other posters, and the vast, vast majority of the latter has been done by Tezzor and a few people kinda half-heartedly cheering him on from the sidelines
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Jan 23, 2016 04:40
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Y'know, now that I think about it, it's really weird how people happily accept the Jedi Order taking children away from their parents to be raised in seclusion. It's pretty similar to what monks did back in the Dark Ages. Are we ever given an indication that the parents can refuse? Do the parents ever refuse, then not have some dramatic accident occur that makes them change their mind? Do we ever see Force-sensitive (as in, has spooky space magic) characters that don't join the Jedi Order or become Sith? It really feels like the Jedi Order are trying their hardest to keep things black and white between Jedi and Sith because they're afraid of the flaws in their beliefs being exposed by someone who isn't dogmatically following one or the other. Then Luke turns up and demonstrates exactly that.
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Jan 23, 2016 05:23
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The deathsticks joke is amazing and I will fight you if you say otherwise It's also hilariously on-point with the interpretation of the Jedi Order as incompetent and overly attached to the Republic. Rather than doing anything about the environment that led to Sleazebaggano trying to sell 'deathsticks' to Obi-Wan, he just tells him to go home and not do drugs. It's so '90s it hurts. ("Winners don't do drugs!")
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Jan 23, 2016 07:18
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Obi-Wan has two friends. One of them owns a diner and they like to have conversations about how stupid droids are, in front of the droid staff. The other is Anakin. Obi-Wan does not have good friends.
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Jan 24, 2016 03:18
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Yaws posted:If it hurts their feelings or whatever you could just reprogram them so it doesn't. That's what's cool about droids. You can make them do and make them 'feel' whatever you want Is it ethical to do that, though? If you altered someone's brain chemistry (with technology we don't currently have), you'd be able to achieve the same effect. Is that ethical?
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Jan 26, 2016 01:56
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Rey's motivations are kinda lame because all the people working on TFA are such huge Star Wars Fans that they didn't think they needed to write good reasons for her to not fly around the galaxy with Han Solo and Chewbacca, the Greatest People Ever of All Time (actually a space trucker and his talking dog).
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Jan 26, 2016 23:38
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He gets into a gunfight with security because they think he's a Space-Muslim and that means they have to commit a coup to stop him bringing about sharia law [despite the fact that they have incredibly shaky grounds for him being a Space-Muslim and that they have no proof he's done anything wrong except 'be a Space-Muslim'].
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Jan 27, 2016 01:44
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It is never actually revealed - at any point in the films - that Sheev Palpatine and Darth Sidious are the same person. The fact that Sheev and Sidious share an actor is just another element of the prequels using visual storytelling over explicit dialogue. Look at Dooku's face, just as he is about to be executed by Anakin. That's the look of the apprentice betrayed by his master. I don't have any screenshots, but look at how wrinkly Sidious is in the holograms in TPM (and AotC). When Sheev's 'mask' drops during his fight with Mace Windu, the same wrinkly face emerges from Palpatine. The Sith Lord was coming from inside the Chancellor.
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Jan 27, 2016 02:37
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jivjov posted:Anakin and Vader are explicitly the same person and character; and if you seriously want to argue otherwise you are a goddamn idiot. Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker not being the same person is true...from a certain point of view.
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Jan 28, 2016 03:40
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Yeah, those real Star Wars movies, like The Empire Strikes Back and Revenge of the Sith, not any of those fake Star Wars movies. This is ideology.
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Jan 28, 2016 03:52
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Barudak posted:If we assume that Jedi fight with the force like they pilot or what have you, it means your offense/defense has collapsed so thoroughly your opponent is getting a free move/bested your predictions and skills. Even if the blade isn't in you yet, they're setting you up for the killing blow. There's also a social element. Kicking someone is effectively putting them below your feet - and feet tend to be considered unclean, or worse than the rest of the body. For an obvious example of kicking used as denigration, see 300's scene where Leonidas kicks the cowardly Persian diplomat into a well. When Darth Maul or whoever else is kicking Jedi into pits, they're saying they're poo poo that they've stepped in.
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Jan 28, 2016 15:20
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Jack Gladney posted:That's silly. Texts produced by capitalism reproduce capitalism. Sorry about your optimism. I guess 1984 and Animal Farm are chilling dystopian tales of...capitalism???
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Jan 29, 2016 00:54
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Jack Gladney posted:Why is that one monster in the arena a mammal? Everything else on that planet is an insect. Somebody, probably SMG but maybe Cnut, theorised that the monsters are just hideous visualisations of the characters' sexuality. Obi-Wan's is a praying-mantis like creature that he stabs to death with a sword/spear, Anakin climbs up on the rhino with a dong for a horn and rides it around, while Padme strangles the feminine cat alien to death with her chains. I'm working off memory so I might have gotten something wrong, but the general idea seems fairly sound.
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Feb 1, 2016 04:31
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