Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

This looks to be the start of a constructive discussion.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

If their problems with the films are simply about the perceived flaws with the writing and execution, why even bring up race or gender? And, as mentioned before, the Story Group aren't the ones writing the screenplay so complaining about their lack of screenwriting experience is silly. And how many screenwriters do people know in the first place? How many times do people really dig into the careers of white or male writers who are involved in movies they dislike? I don't think people were looking up the guys who were behind Transformers 2 and trying to find out if they were hired out of nepotism or claiming they were obviously unqualified.

Edited by TommyFresh on Dec 20th 2018 at 6:57:38 AM

Several really noteworthy screenwriters that people know of and criticize greatly for their poor movie scripts include Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, Ehren Kruger, David S Goyer, Kurt Wimmer, Damon Lindelof, and Fred Dekker. Not to mention all the directors who also write the films they direct. And again, the story group may not be writing the scripts, but they are the ones that brainstorm the ideas and come up with the plan needed to progress the series. You can't exactly do that if the core is rotten.

Edited by LDragon2 on Dec 20th 2018 at 6:53:24 AM

If Star Wars were really concerned with hiring women just for being women, it wouldn’t have a track record of hiring only 10 male directors in a row.

But sure, prop up a Reddit post that skimmed for “woms” names on IMDb. What a terrifying agenda, forcing women into... literally zero directing seats.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Dec 20th 2018 at 7:07:20 AM

Nah, if they did that, they would have looked at the actual writers. They wanted to complain about wommin and DIVERSITY and how "forced diversity is BAD," etc etc.

It's your basic sexist/racist complaint about every new thing that they don't care about, only this time with links to IMDB and more nonsense, especially since none of the Lucasfilm Story Group actually wrote any of the movies.

Or they hired people that they believed could do the job well and they were all women. I mean, it happens — look at all the writers and directors they've hired for the SW films, they are all men!

Rewind time: "You know, I was wondering why this and the other recent SW films weren't good in my eyes." But sure, list some stuff that the Story Group has been responsible for that you don't like.

No, they don't. Again, their job is to make sure that the continuity stays correct going forward. The person "brainstorming ideas" for Episode 9 is the writer of that movie and JJ Abrams.

Edited by alliterator on Dec 20th 2018 at 7:22:12 AM

y'all sure are patient.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

Is this another "Kathleen Kennedy has to go!" argument, L Dragon? Be honest.

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Dec 20th 2018 at 10:26:26 AM

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

She doesn't need to be let go, she just needs to, imo, listen to the fans and the like a bit more. Her statement that she doesn't really have a responsibility to them rubs me the wrong way, as is the case with Rian Johnson's statement that he doesn't feel like he should either. When you are dealing with a franchise as beloved as Star Wars, you kind of have to at least give a bit of attention to the established fanbase.

But what do I know? I'm just a sexist bigot who's critiques mean nothing because they are apparently hateful towards minorities.

Your "critiques" don't mean nothing because of the implicit sexism. They mean nothing because they're based on groundless assumptions and parroted statements, are poorly researched, and shed light on the fact that neither you nor the people you're trying to use as references really know what you're talking about.

I mean, the crux here is that you listed an assortment of women who worked for the story group, cherry picking them as the reason the writing for the films was not as you liked it. Only to be told that those people had nothing to do with the writing of the movies in the first place. There. Argument done.

That you're still trying to find reasons to blame those women despite having been proven wrong, and the supposed "nepotism" that you believe was the only conceivable reason they could have been hired (with the implied message that a man would naturally have done it better, ergo they must not have been hired for their skill) is where the sexist leanings are coming in.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Dec 20th 2018 at 8:01:54 AM

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

By your own admission then. Let that stand for posterity.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

Umm, not sure I really want to get involved here.

Still, its kinda true you are way too easily influenced by opinions you read in random places. I mean, majority of your posts in various media threads are of sort "I like this thing, but I read this article/forum that didn't like this thing, so not sure if should I like this thing, thoughts?"

The primary function of the Story Group, far as I can tell, is to rule on matters of lore for the new post-Disney acquisition universe. If you were taking issue with something they actually had control over, like the decision to nuke the Expanded Universe, that would make sense. But The Last Jedi was written by Rian Johnson, so I have no idea how you can justify pinning the problems with the writing of this movie on them.

Considering the facts as they stand, L Dragon 2, I really don't think you have a case here.

Edited by Gault on Dec 21st 2018 at 12:15:57 AM

yey

"listen to the fans and the like a bit more. "

Some would argue THAT is the reason we got TFA in the first place, "I wont care about politics of any of that shit, give me same farm boy, the same socundrel and another big ball of death!"

So....no, no really.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Exactly! Are we "pandering", or are we "ignoring the fans"?

Those things ARE mutually exclusive.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

Linkara actually did a pretty fun review of The Force Awakens comic book adaptation, where he makes the argument that though The Force Awakens shares some motifs with A New Hope, it's really a pretty different movie altogether.

Can you past a link because I seriously contest that asertion right now.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

It's really a pretty different movie.

Edited by theLibrarian on Dec 20th 2018 at 11:58:21 AM

From a Certain point of view....

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Let me put it this way, if you had told me that TFA was a reboot with a gender-swapped lead and not a sequel, I would have believed you.

Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.

You can look it up on YouTube, I don't have time to find it now. But his point was that even though there are certain similarities, on the whole, it's a vastly different film. Rey is not Luke, Finn is definitely not Han, and Poe is not...Leia? Or, wait, Poe is not Han and Finn is not...wait no...

I mean, that's kind of the point: Finn, Rey, and Poe are wholly new characters thrust into a war that has been going on for a long time. Action scenes that have no ANH equivalent are Poe and Finn's escape from the Star Destroyer in a stolen TIE fighter, the meeting at Maz Kanata's, and the final battle between Rey and Kylo. In ANH, the final battle was all about Luke firing a weapon at the Death Star, but Poe and the Resistance's attack on Starkiller Base is firmly in the background for Kylo and Rey's battle in the snow.

Well, that is clearly incorrect.

Edited by alliterator on Dec 20th 2018 at 11:18:07 AM

And that's the entire point. This is a new generation of people. Rey isn't nearly as brash and confident as Luke was at her age. Finn is also still trying to learn how to be a hero and his top priority in every movie is keeping Rey safe, while Poe is learning how to really be a leader.

The only reason people think they're "the same" is because Rey grew up on a shit desert planet, there's a big Death Star-like superweapon, and Han Solo's in it.

I find that try to overplay the minute diference: Rey come from a deser planet with a big mistery surronding, the post imperials act like imperial in almost everything, hell the starkiller pretty much exist to ape ANH.

TFA DOES feel like a remake actually.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

If anything it's just borrowing story elements.

Plus building a big dumb superweapon is entirely in-character for an organization trying to be the new Empire.

TFA absolutely feels like a remake and it is a soft reboot of the franchise — the Captain Obvious rejoinder that Rey is not Luke isn't relevant to the broader criticism that the newer film is too dependent on plot devices, imagery, and set pieces from an earlier work to tell what is essentially the same story as ANH. And TLJ is honestly a little too dependent on ESB — but it reverses the general sequence of events. The fact that the static siege with walker mechs takes place on a salt planet inside of a snow one, or that it's at the end instead of at the beginning, is less relevant than the broader issue that the production and writing team thought that such a set piece was needed at all.

These films are simply not as fresh as the hype wants us to believe.

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Dec 20th 2018 at 3:11:09 PM

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

By that logic, you could say that Return of the Jedi was a remake of A New Hope. Hey, it started on Tatooine and the climax involved destroying the Death Star, so that makes it a remake, right?