Not Disney's part in the case of Han though. The only reason Ford would ever come back was if Han died. So yeah, something to remember there.
I get that we want it to be timeless, I do. It's never easy seeing your heroes grow up and we want to stay in our little pocket where they were as they are in the original movies. Again, absolutely not saying the new movies are fantastic or anything (I still think that (spoiling this just to be safe)
them deciding to cut Luke mourning Han is an absolutely fucking terrible decision.)
but it's been mentioned before that even if a lot of the writing *feels* questionable, things like Luke's progression absolutely can make sense if you look at the broad scheme of his character arc in the movies (again we're not talking about EU stuff here, just cinematic things).
Trust me, I absolutely get feeling like a character you love was handled terribly. Oooooh boy has it happened a ton in my life of getting too attached to media. But there's also been many cases of people thinking something is OOC when it absolutely isn't if you take off those idol-ism glasses and really think about the character arc in the given media (so again, we're ignoring the EU completely here and just focusing on the 5 movies currently featuring Luke for example).
If there was a point I wanted to highlight from everything over the last few pages it would be this.
In our age of serialised, rebooted, relaunched or just years long content... this happens all the time now. Alien, Predator, the recent films in those series both did their best to actively damage the prior material. Terminator is a seething mess. The Hobbit did LotR pretty damn dirty. Doctor Who... good grief don't get me started. Those are just off the top of my head from my own experience. Whether or not you personally asked for it (and I'm sure there's plenty of instances where you
will have been excited for more of a thing you like, it's hard not to be) you roll the dice with it, and the worse case being you can end up feeling like the continuation damaged the original (Thank you Alien Covenant I hate you so much).
Like, uuuh recent self indulgent example here 'cos not everyone here will get it, but I look at a series important to me like Psycho Pass and its season 3 that's just starting to air, and recognise like two characters in the promotional material, Akane's protege who goes a bit doolally and that one red head dude from s2. That half focus on the prior material but also kinda not sets off some major alarm bells for me, but then I remember all the franchises that have gone off the deep end, and the blatant absence of prior protagonist Akane immediately makes me go to the worst case scenario contextually, and half expect they're gonna do something completely bonkers like have her be the season's antagonist, and I'm left fearing to even touch that content with a ten foot pole.
Point being I think it can be good to assess whether its worth sticking with these things at all if you can't handle the potential, lets face it, often not great aftermath too well. Star Wars is one thing, but I
genuinely wish I could unwatch Alien Covenant. In hindsight I legit wish I'd never bothered.
But hey, its a complicated srs bsns of media consumption. Sometimes you roll the dice on these things and get a Blade Runner 2049 instead (it was fuckin' great y'all). Other times I somewhat feel glad I didn't have to, like with that PMMM continuation that seems to have vanished into the ether.
Talking about things negatively isn't really a negative in the wider scheme of things. I don't believe in that odd narrative a lot of defenders of TLJ construe about people needing to just turn their brain off and stop having negative reactions to things. Though I have said my point on being sure
where your negative responses come from and how you articulate them (I repeat, if its because of 'Disney products are SJW' then you are playing exactly into the hands of that company you hate so much, congrats)
But what Ani said stands and I get it. This kind of negativity does make it very hard to get discussion in on anything, and probably harder to even want to. When most news or comments are just followed by some snipe at the modern material versus the older ones. Geth's right too on the fact that what Disney have made of Star Wars isn't going anywhere and it'll keep on coming too. So that cycle of behaviour could go on a while. I think TLJ is just terrible but there are quite a few good things going on with Star Wars still I'd be happy to talk about (most of it as niche as the old EU, ironically). The Vader comics have been consistently great and I read most of those series. I play the Star Wars Destiny TCG and its my favourite tabletop game and I've met tons of amazing people who I consider very close friends from doing that. The Doctor Aphra Comics are really fun too and have an *gasp* lesbian relationship at the centre, and it doesn't feel forced and it took forever to work for and hooray! I'm borrowing the Thrawn Trilogy from a friend and reading through that. The Mandalorian looks like it could be good, made by a lot of people who are actually passionate about what their doing. Clone Wars is back soon. Episode 9 could even be all right (maybe 5% odds, what can I say I'm an optimist) and even if it isn't, I will happily (if shamefully, given all I've said about Disney) pay and go see it because it is an absolutely fascinating study into serialised writing and how (not) to end a trilogy given how the last film ended and seemingly wrote themselves into such a small corner on such an already narrow story for what should be a close to limitless universe. I've really enjoyed all the long form critique stuff and podcasts that have come out from people breaking down everything on TLJ. Contrary to what many would say about such criticism, its not inherently negative, and I think a whole lot of people have managed to pull something incredibly positive from a thing that otherwise just feels plain bad. And I am very excited to see that again with 9 if it goes the same way.
I'll pin not talking about those kinds of things here on being ill and grumpy, and uni scaring me off of writing more than anything but yeah. The buzzword sniping stuff isn't conducive to much either.
Neither is this character judgement stuff off of opinions on movies though? Do we have to do that? Geth my dude you're saying Star Wars fans turn things black and white but that is very much that also. I think Rey and Rose's character's are pretty garbo town, doesn't mean I have or would direct anything untoward at Daisy or Kelly, and I know you don't mean me, but I have good faith that applies to most people. Those two both seem lovely (Except that one brain fart you had about Mary Sue being a sexist term, Ridley. But I forgive you!) I don't doubt they get a torrent of abuse off of people, but that's true of anyone in anything you've put your name out onto whilst also possessing an internet connection. And I don't doubt being a woman/minority yields them some what more of that, but it mostly just provides an attack vector for what kinds of abuse you'd get sent. I've never met a single youtuber who's spoken on the topic say anything less than they get threats against them made pretty much on the daily. Anonymity does weird things to people. To
people. It ain't a Star Wars thing.
I've always felt that the biggest reason these films have been getting soooo much hate has little to do with anything that can be construed as political. It does weird me out a bit that we still consider casting women and minorities as a thing that even can be political, but heyho. No, the reason I think is because of just how much potential they had. There are great ideas in there. To speak your language Geth, as a wise Rich Evans once said, a disenfranchised Luke sounds like a damn interesting thing to see. How they executed it? Not so much. That had to be earned, and they could have done a damn film or a half on that. As it is we got one really flimsy scene that feels like its missing a script or two to properly convince the audience that that's a thing that could have happened with what we know of the characters involved. And the big problem with TLJ's issues is they BLEED. That being the reason we're told to be the cause of Luke's disenfranchisement with, pretty much everything, is also the reason we're given for Kylo going school shooter and saying F U to the
whole galaxy. I don't doubt your uncle and mentor trying to kill you is traumatic but we are missing oh so much here. Why do you hate your parents and why are you so mad with EVERYONE? I can fill in the blanks with so many ideas and they all seem... pretty interesting if I say so myself. It would have felt infinitely better if we could have seen even a bit of that. But then that scene is also the reason Rey decides to try and redeem the guy, when in the prior scene (and a genuinely great one at that) Rey is struggling just to even speak during this sudden skype call she's been forced into with this monster she calls him, who she considers, the film tells us, to have very recently (isn't it like two days ago? But then she also knew Han like two days so idk) killed her father figure.
This stuff just does not work together. It could! The skeleton of a structure is there, but there is so little meat on those bones. And that hurts man. That's so much worse than meh can ever be. Squandered potential just stings to look at. The prequels were much the same, but we are not during the prequels anymore. Old wounds, to sound hyper dramatic. They've had expanded universe (and I mean Disney canon too) stuff that's helped patch up that potential and do some good with it. Yeah, a lot of fans don't know that stuff. But you're talking to fans that do, you can't divorce yourself of how that's skewed your emotional responses (tho I can definitely acknowledge my bias)
Just because not everyone likes to rant endlessly in run on sentences that elaborate on too much and more like I do doesn't mean they hate women lol.
I am enjoying ranting again tho, in between all this shouting. X)
