When have you Rooted For the Empire?

I didn't root for Wile E. Coyote as a kid, because he's so obviously Too Dumb to Live. I never felt sorry for him, because more than any other predator-prey cartoon, he brings it all on himself every time. The Road Runner just says "meep, meep", runs off and the Coyote gets Hoist by His Own Petard over and over again. If it wasn't so funny, you'd say What An Idiot.

But I did root for Tom, because Jerry was a Jerkass.

I think Tom and Jerry was at least tolerable most of the time because there was an intentional grey dynamic between the two. It seemed more a playful rivalry than a good vs evil dynamic most of the time. Not to mention they were usually careful to keep Jerry on a leash. The moment he got nastier than Tom he usually suffered some repercussion. Tom actually won a dozen shorts. There were exceptions but they're a lot rarer than many fans make them out to be (and even then Tom sometimes got away with being a ass too). I admit I maybe enjoyed the times Jerry got kicked off his high horse a bit too much, but there weren't that many cartoons he looked unlikeable when he wasn't supposed to.

I think Jerry had more leeway because he wasn't in full control like most slapstick heroes. Usually Tom was just on the brink of killing or snagging him, with Jerry looking fearful and desperate a lot of the time. His retaliations were vicious, but they often seemed more out of desperation than meditated torment like other cartoons. You often knew if he didn't do it, he'd likely be dead. Whenever this wasn't the case and he gained a smug attitude, it started to backfire onto him.

It spawned some horrible Follow the Leader cartoons however, and a lot of them tended to miss the point, Flanderizing the chase formula and the occasionally mean spirited slapstick violence, and overlooking the chemistry and stipulations between the characters. Allegedly Itchy and Scratchy were more a parody of these bad imitations than Tom and Jerry itself.

edited 7th Mar '15 11:45:18 AM by Psi001

The only time I thought the shorts went overboard was when Tom was guillotined, and in the Gene Deitch iterations where his owners were outright psychos. Other than that, each gave as good as he got. It's a similar deal with the Road Runner and Speedy Gonzales, where one was contractually required to not be antagonistic while Wile E. always brought trouble upon himself, and the other was the nicest anthropomorphic supersonic Mexican mouse one could ask for. Now, Tweety on the other hand, I seriously wanted to see cooked.

Yeah, those. Fixed now.

edited 7th Mar '15 11:57:39 AM by indiana404

You mean the Gene Deitch shorts? Avery never did the Tom and Jerry series.

I never found myself rooting for Speedy, at least not against Sylvester. He was a bit too invincible, not smart like Bugs, his Super-Speed just bestowed him the victory. He could just run through anything, making his victories kinda boring. He had won automatically. There were a couple of times he crossed the line too, though like Jerry, these were rare (eg. Gonzales Tomales set him up as an Asshole Victim, he still won).

I remember actually enjoying the Daffy vs Speedy series for this, Speedy wasn't invincible in them. Daffy could overpower him and he had to think his way out. Not to mention Daffy was such an ass in these cartoons that he played on Speedy's naively kind nature more, making it obvious he deserved to win. He also started getting those token losses Bugs and Jerry suffered, making him a bit more human.

I tended to find Tweety on the same league as Jerry, he could be a sadist, but he was rarely unprovoked, and was arguably the most underdog-ish of the franchise protagonists. The only glaring aspect is maybe that they never shown that line he couldn't cross like the others did at times.

Road Runner was just "there". You weren't meant to root for him, but I never really found him offensive or deserving to lose. All of Wile's defeats were self inflicted (the one case it looked like Road Runner would get a final laugh on him, he stated he didn't have the heart).

edited 7th Mar '15 12:06:29 PM by Psi001

The other scrappies of similar cartoons were Hippety Hopper and Silvester's annoying brat of a kid. Not just was mistaking a kangaroo for a mouse too much of an idiot plot to watch, but the kid acting all ashamed from Sly's losses even after he'd seen the behemoth for himself was just grating.

Mind you, every time I see cartoons where cats are mean buttmonkeys, I remember watching Leopold The Cat, which is basically their anti-thesis; a Russian reversal, if you will. Says a lot about cultural mentality, really.

edited 7th Mar '15 12:36:46 PM by indiana404

I didn't really mind Hippety himself in those cartoons, he had little personality but an infant creature, he was like Road Runner only more playful. Any time he beat up Sylvester it seemed more him not knowing his own strength. You felt more vitriol for the jerk who sent Sylvester to keep facing him every time. I liked the Goldilocks cartoon where a beaten up Sylvester called it quits and put his "spoiled brat" son in his place.

I think the Hippety Hopper shorts were less popular because they broke a common rule, the villain bringing it all on himself. Sylvester was usually threatened or goaded into facing Hippety, he was the middle man rather than the stubborn conniving asshole he and most other antagonists were in other shorts.

I hated the dynamic of The Dreamstone for similar reasons, which is basically one of the aforementioned ill conceived Tom And Jerry Follow the Leader cartoons merged into an action series. The villains were meek middle men, they were terrified of the heroes and spent the whole cartoon begging not to go after them, only doing so because their evil overlord would kill them otherwise (ironically he rarely ever got a comeuppance). It didn't help that, unlike Hippety, the heroes were like more self righteous and merciless variations of Bugs or Jerry, albeit with none of the two-way karma or grey chemistry. They knew they had no choice but still adored inflicting Disproportionate Retribution onto them and even insisted they were courageous for it. They were a lot who deserved to get it back, they never did.

edited 7th Mar '15 6:35:45 PM by Psi001

At least the old trilogy showed us imperial forces doing evil and shady stuff like blowing up planets, killing Luke's aunt and uncle and going back on their deals in Cloud City just because they can.

The CIS on the other hand... I guess publicly executing spies kinda counts as evil. Which isn't even half as bad as what Anakin did in the same movie by slaughtering a whole tribe. And Padmé being cool enough with it to stay with him. Why are we rooting for those guys again?

The movies try to portray the seperatists as evil simply by naming them a "Confederacy" and making a connection to the American Civil War. It doesn't work so well when the Republic is the one using slaves, however. Especially if you're from a country where "confederacy" has no bad connotations.

There's a fan theory that Anakin was subconsciously using the Force to make Padme fall in love with him, ignoring all his faults, until it was too late. Explains the unreasonably successful romantic dialogue at least.

edited 8th Mar '15 12:12:15 AM by indiana404

I am not sure if that makes sense but I can see that came from.

I wonder if Values dissonance can play into this?

"We are just like Irregular Data. And that applies to you too, Ri CO. And as for you, Player... your job is to correct Irregular Data."

It's possible, seeing as how nobody balks at the idea of indoctrinated-from-infancy telepathic spies with no oversight. Though it's more like it was mishandled as much as the overall political issues of the story. Basically, the pathos of the conflict made sense in the implied feudal future setting of the original trilogy, but not the supposedly democratic underpinnings of the prequels.

Speaking of which, the CIS is likely to have blown up Amidala's ship and tried to have her killed, but other than that, there's nothing inherently wrong about them. As villains, they function similarly to the Empire, really - some of the top brass are murderous bastards, sure, but as a general organization, the chief bad thing about them is meta-fictional guilt-by-association to American conservatives... and that's terrible. Consequently, with the Empire in disarray post-Endor, and the rebels still too weak to enforce government on a larger-scale, it may be that the newly independent ex-CIS states were the true winners of the civil war after all.

edited 8th Mar '15 5:55:18 AM by indiana404

Actually, this is kind of acknowledged in the Clone Wars Animated series, with The Bonteri family.

Mina Bonteri was a friend of Padme (a former mentor) who genuinely believed in the separatist cause, and was killed by Dooku when she tried to propose peace talks. Her son was also the same, though he survived and went on to fight against Dooku's reign. Also, there were apparently other people in the Separatist Senate who felt the same way.

Now while the republic is corrupt, I can't help but wonder if the flaws in both it and the Separatist army are a result of the Evil Power hungry Sith lord manipulating both sides (though he apparently had a good reason).

One Strip! One Strip!

Well, the fluff mentions it was Senator Palpatine who motioned the increase in taxes leading to the invasion of Naboo, so running both sides from the beginning is pretty much confirmed. For me, the problem was in how he did it - namely, via popular vote. For one, it makes the galaxy at large and the Senate in particular look like gullible lemmings unfit to pick their noses let alone their leaders. And moreover, it made the rebels' goal of restoring democracy look a bit counter-productive. As the new canon so far lacks the external threat the Empire was needed to fight against in the old expanded universe, I'm down with just killing the Emperor and letting separate states go their own ways from there... but I'm also now wondering why this shouldn't have happened to the Republic itself, long before he ever came to power in the first place.

Giant bureaucratic structures like the Old Republic have an incredible amount of inertia. No matter how rotten they may be at the core, it still takes a massive force to push them into collapse.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That and it still had reason to exist, the republic's control of trade was actually quite good for its member worlds. And really that's what the clone war was about trading disputes although with someone playing both sides so they fight.

Quite. The irksome thing about it all is the vague and rather off-hand attitude regarding the economics and astro-political specifics that would drive such a conflict in the first place. In light of this, I kinda feel Lucas wanted to tell an epic story about the rise and fall of a galactic government, but without bothering to give any thought to the practical internal matters, instead continuing to treat it like a fairy tale even when they've become plot points. Much like how The Lord Of The Rings is played as a mythologized account of events long past, Star Wars is nigh-Shakespearean in its approach to politics and moral stances. Given how much of a villain Sue Palpatine is in the prequels, the most solid political message of the heretofore six films is basically "don't vote for office to fall in the hands of an evil wizard... whom you won't see coming anyway". Remove him, and the Empire becomes just the Republic with less bureaucracy and a proper military - nothing inherently wrong about that.

edited 8th Mar '15 4:48:54 PM by indiana404

When the Senate actually existed that is.

A "proper military" against what, though? Discounting the canonicity of the EU for the moment, the enemies faced by the Old Republic were almost entirely internal, or at least deliberately stirred up by internal enemies.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

We also see entire planets controlled by organized criminals because the Republic cannot influence them, while the Senate proves useless to prevent invasion by a wealthier world against a poorer one. Even without Sith Lords to fan internal struggles, it's not that bad to have a standing army with family connections to the general populace, rather than allow the loophole of battle droids easily hijacked for corporate affairs.

The main point is that villainy in the Star Wars films revolves around specific people, rather than organizations or policies - it's shown that an ostensible democracy is no greater deterrent for atrocities than an outright dictatorship. And like I mentioned, the thing that irked me about Palpatine in the prequels is that none of the heroes could have stopped him or even see him coming until the final reveal. Meanwhile, even Imperials aren't too fond of him or Vader, making it likely they'd run things a lot less forcefully under different leadership. As I've stated before, that's the Empire I actually support - but indeed, that one's also no longer canon. However, from what little is known about the new continuity, it seems the Remnant is still functioning, so it will eventually become clear whether this impression is still correct.

edited 8th Mar '15 5:54:25 PM by indiana404

The separatists were as much victims of Palpatine's schemes as the Republic was. Without Palpatine, they would have simply seceded from the Republic in peace. The senate would have had nothing to oppose them with but harsh words.

Then again, what would the Confederacy have amounted to without Palpatine around?

They all started off as trade organizations that occasionally got a little too greedy the Jedi would intervene and put them back in their place, Hence why the Jedi were known as skilled negotiators and such.

When they got the backing to counter the Jedi via the Sith then things started spinning out of control.

What little irritance I can find in the Star Wars dynamic (in the films I've watched at least) is that the Jedi consist of rather pious individuals. Compared to the rag tag anti heroes like Han Solo or the Card Carrying Villains of the Sith, they had a bit of Tautological Templar demeanour to them, even when using skewed methods to try and succeed, it's not even a case the ends justifying the means, all their actions represent purity (eg. Obi Wan is completely unapologetic about lying to Luke about his father to convince him to kill him, more or less saying it's his own fault for not reading between the lines, something that is full on considered being driven into the dark side with a villain).

I wouldn't call a Jedi Mind Trick negotiation. It's plain old manipulation and override of the other side's will. But it's okay, they're the good guys.

The Jedi mind trick and other heavy handed techniques are rather frowned on but not outright disallowed depending on the source.

From what I remember Qui Gon tried to use his mind tricks on Watto over a trade, but his species was immune, suggesting they're not above abusing their powers to make mundane situations easier.

This is something that kinda gets on my wits too, the whole "it's okay when I do it" disposition. I mean yeah I get there's when giving the villains A Taste of Their Own Medicine is called for, but when the hero stoops to all the lows they constantly preach as evil when the bad guy does them, there's some blatant hypocrisy to it all.

edited 10th Mar '15 1:28:36 AM by Psi001