Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)...A Unique Perspective
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Anomaly
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Re: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)...A Unique Perspecti
I shall now begin to ignore any counterargument to my position and respond with snide dismissals and insults so I do not have to perform any critical thinking, which is hard and boring.
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Pickpocket
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Re: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)...A Unique Perspecti
icebrain wrote:Have you really seen any significant number of films - old or not - in which married women in happy marriages with children played a significant role?
I'm sure with some effort we could come up with a decent list of these. There used to be movies made where the dad would have to accomplish something and his ultimate goal was to get back to his family. When was the last time a movie like that was made? And if these movies are made it's like some D list celebrity starring in them. But the point I was trying to make is that the traditional family structure is now demonized and the "strong independent womyn" is now elevated despite being basically worthless. I try to avoid these types of movies but one that is fresh in my mind is Trainwreck which was just the embodiment of every garbage trend that Hollywood is constantly pushing on us. It's weird how they completely embrace gay people, which they are right to do, and accept that they can't change who they are attracted to while simultaneously saying that what straight people are attracted to is just a construct of the patriarchy. https://twitter.com/amyschumer/status/6 ... 69/photo/1 flawless, everybody.
Re: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)...A Unique Perspecti
Pickpocket wrote:icebrain wrote:Have you really seen any significant number of films - old or not - in which married women in happy marriages with children played a significant role?
I'm sure with some effort we could come up with a decent list of these. There used to be movies made where the dad would have to accomplish something and his ultimate goal was to get back to his family. When was the last time a movie like that was made? And if these movies are made it's like some D list celebrity starring in them. But the point I was trying to make is that the traditional family structure is now demonized and the "strong independent womyn" is now elevated despite being basically worthless. I try to avoid these types of movies but one that is fresh in my mind is Trainwreck which was just the embodiment of every garbage trend that Hollywood is constantly pushing on us. It's weird how they completely embrace gay people, which they are right to do, and accept that they can't change who they are attracted to while simultaneously saying that what straight people are attracted to is just a construct of the patriarchy. https://twitter.com/amyschumer/status/6 ... 69/photo/1 flawless, everybody.
Really incredible how far an average (in every way) female comedian can get with the right connections, huh?
Anywho, while it examines the new Star Wars movie from a completely different perspective, this is a stellar review by the great John C Wright;
An excerpt;
"How can this movie both at once be a really enjoyable return to a beloved childhood favorite, and be a bland and dull, and in places offensively stupid and politically correct, piece of trash?
Because it is a remake, not a sequel.
Oh, I know that technically it is a sequel, allegedly taking place decades after the close of TEDDY BEARS OF THE JEDI, but the story follows the same plotline, except that the roles of Han, Luke and Leia are all played by Junkyard Girl, since she is the cynical rogue, the innocent novice, and the girl with the McGuffin needing rescue all at once. Except she escapes on her own. The rollerball robot is not as cute and sassy as R2D2, because he is not given as much to do, and the Exhenchman and the Ace Pilot don’t actually do all that much.
There is a way cool scene when the X-wings come screaming across the lake to the rescue. The hollow star-eating weapon-planet with forests and snowy mountains and atmosphere above its hull was a convincingly impressive weapon, but, again, there was no moment where the impressiveness was played up, no moment when someone whispered, that’s no moon…
So it is a fairly good remake as remakes go, and it does what it sets out to do, and recapture some, or almost some, of the energy, cleverness, craft, excitement and innocence of the original.
So why is this not the review I wanted to write, with me dancing jigs on the steeple, painted with woad with bells on my toes, yodeling for joy? Because the jerkwads of Hollywood had to take a favorite movie and crap it up with political correctness. Because this film is critic-proof. No matter how bad it is, everyone and his brother will go see it.
And the political correctness is subtle. It has to be subtle, because if the poison tasted of poison, the victim would spit it out: so it is sugar coated to go down easy. Do you think controlling the myths and dreams of a generation has no effect on the generation? Story tellers are the secret legislators of mankind.
The scene where Luke tosses his lightsaber away rather than using it in righteous wrath to smite the evil Emperor may have only been a scene in a kid’s space opera flick: but the majority of the American public regards exactly that same maneuver, preemptive self-disarmament, as the only moral and right thing to do in the face of the appalling evils of our present war, a war they dare not admit exist, lest they feel a split second of anger, and like a lightswitch being flipped, turn entirely evil themselves. That is what they think will happen if we fight back. If you smite a Sith, you become a Sith.
Why can’t the modern Leftist tell a decent story? Even when he is copying a good and healthy-minded original scene by scene in a paint-by-numbers fashion, it turns out sick-minded.
The answer is ultimately where all ultimate answers reside, in the deep places of the soul."
Re: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)...A Unique Perspecti
Another phenomenal excerpt;
"Example: our Exhenchman sees Junkyard Girl being mugged. While idle passersby, like cynical New Yorkers, do nothing but watch, Exhenchman, for the first time in his life, decides to do something to help a stranger, perhaps the first thing he has ever done when not under orders. His motive is pure chivalry, the desire of the strong to help the weak; his motive is pure altruism.
Junkyard Girl with her kung-fu staff-fighting technique, however, manages to trash two or three hulking brutes who are taller, have reach on her, and are heavyweights. She is in the ultralight bantamweight class.
Now, I do not mind the trope of the martial maiden who can fight as well as a man, not if there is some science fiction-ish fig leaf to cover the inherent improbability. Without that figleaf, seeing the short, slender frail wail on her muggers is as improbable as seeing a cheerleader deck a halfback with one punch of her slim-wristed little female hand.
Putting on the figleaf is not hard to do: just say she comes from a heavy gravity world, or is half-Vulcan, or takes a miracle drug, or whatever. But without that fig leaf, the nakedness of the unreality is embarrassing.
So Exhenchman runs to her rescue, and …. looks like an idiot, standing there with his mouth open, because she has mopped the floor with the apes before he can close the distance. Moral of this scene: you do not need to race to the rescue of young girls in danger. A damsel in distress does not need a brave and strong man to save her any more than a fish needs a bicycle. Let the girls die. Great moral for the kiddies, you jerks.
Now, keep in mind, this was not Woody Allen or Kermit the Frog running to the rescue of Wonder Woman, but a soldier drilled in the arts of war since birth trying to save a streetwise pint sized dame in a skirt. Well, actually she wears a shapeless brown sackcloth throughout.
To add insult to insult, Junkyard Girl then mistakes Exhench for a baddie, runs him down while he runs away in panic, and she can outrun him somehow, and throw him easily to the ground, and threatens him while he blubbers. Can you imagine that happening to Han Solo, or the Fonz, or Captain Kirk? Or even to Frodo Baggins?
Moral of the story: men are useless as heroes. A woman civilian can do a soldier-boy’s job better than a soldier. Men are wimps. Great lesson for the kiddies, you jerks.
But the anti-patriarchy agitprop does not stop there.
More baddies arrive. He grabs her hand to drag her to safety, but in a modern, politically correct movie, she does not need saving, and she is offended by the hand grabbing. Because he only drags her deeper into danger by mistake. Later, she grabs his hand and drags his sorry butt to safety. When she does it, it works.
Then she turns out to be:
1. an ace pilot who can outfly trained fighter pilots.
2. And she knows more about the engineering details of the Millennium Falcon than Han Solo.
3. And she is a crack shot even though she seems not to know where the safety on a handgun is.
4. And she saves Exhench one more time, using her knowledge of the mechanisms of an unfamiliar ship.
5. Then it turns out she has force powers like a Jedi, including visions of the future and past. She can resist mind-to-mind combat with Big Bad Sith, and even read his mind in the process. But, unlike Luke, she needs no training: she can do advanced mind-control techniques without a single lesson or even being told that such things are possible.
6. Hence, she can escape from the innermost dungeon of a Sith Lord fortress unaided.
7. And she can lightsaber fight without training against a man taller and stronger and trained in the art.
This last is after Exhench yet one more time again fails at acting the man and is bitchslapped and curbstomped by the Big Bad, so she picks up his dropped lasersword and finishes the duel. Then there is an earthquake, and the planet blows up, so that part was pretty cool.
Now, each of these improbable little acts of Li’l Miss Too-Cool-for-School might have been believable if the lazy writer had done his darned job and given the paying customers in the audience even the slightest reason to believe it:
1.Maybe her ace piloting was because of her familiarity with the wrecks through which she had climbed and scavenged for years, and she knew where every strut and spar was like the back of her hand.
2. Maybe her years of scavenging had given her such familiarity with machines that, uh, she had worked on Han Solo’s ship previously, as a grease monkey, and read all the engineering manuals.
3. Maybe she was always a crack shot, because she used to bullseye wamp-rats back home in Beggar’s Canyon, and she was merely unfamiliar with this model of blaster, not with all blasters.
4. Maybe she is a technopath, and has the same affinity for any starship circuitry as Speed Racer has for the Mach 5. She was using the Force. Maybe she is a cyborg, and could plug her brain directly into the ship core, and understand immediately where everything is.
5. Maybe the Force is desperate to grant her extra powers to stop the evil Sith Lords or something. Or she has a higher mitochlorian count than Darth Vader. Or she has been practicing in the backyard on her own for years. Or she had years of training but forgot them due to a blow to the head. Or something.
6. Maybe she was being allowed to escape, in the hopes that she would unwittingly lead the Sith Lords to the McGuffin.
7. I myself, with only one lousy year of fencing training, could stand with my back to the wall and parry every attack made by a more athletic, younger and stronger man, and he had a foil and I had a broomstick. The idea that an untrained girl could hold her own against a trained opponent is absurd. Maybe the Big Bad was gutshot, wounded by Exhench, under orders not to kill her, or had some ulterior reason for making her think she can fence.
I can play the fansave game as well as any fanboy. But why the heck am I doing the writer’s work for him?
Any of these reasons would have acted as a fig leaf for one improbable moment of super-competence after another, but the writer, not the fanboy, must have to have a line of dialog say so, if that is the reason.
Any one or two or three or even four might have not broken suspension of disbelief. But the cumulative effect of seven or eight was grating. There was only one scene where she makes a mistake, or fails to do something better than a man: she accidently trips the wrong circuit breaker to open a door she meant to close.
Imagine the sexes were reversed, and one competent man was able to outperform five bubble headed blondes each one at her lifelong profession and task: he cooks better than a woman cook, he drives better than a woman driver, he kills a rat the woman is afraid of, he wrestles a snake while the woman cowers and screams, and he is better at organizing a wedding. Would you or would you not affirm that such a plot was no more than a sneering joke at all womanhood? So, here. The plot was one long sneering joke at manhood."
"Example: our Exhenchman sees Junkyard Girl being mugged. While idle passersby, like cynical New Yorkers, do nothing but watch, Exhenchman, for the first time in his life, decides to do something to help a stranger, perhaps the first thing he has ever done when not under orders. His motive is pure chivalry, the desire of the strong to help the weak; his motive is pure altruism.
Junkyard Girl with her kung-fu staff-fighting technique, however, manages to trash two or three hulking brutes who are taller, have reach on her, and are heavyweights. She is in the ultralight bantamweight class.
Now, I do not mind the trope of the martial maiden who can fight as well as a man, not if there is some science fiction-ish fig leaf to cover the inherent improbability. Without that figleaf, seeing the short, slender frail wail on her muggers is as improbable as seeing a cheerleader deck a halfback with one punch of her slim-wristed little female hand.
Putting on the figleaf is not hard to do: just say she comes from a heavy gravity world, or is half-Vulcan, or takes a miracle drug, or whatever. But without that fig leaf, the nakedness of the unreality is embarrassing.
So Exhenchman runs to her rescue, and …. looks like an idiot, standing there with his mouth open, because she has mopped the floor with the apes before he can close the distance. Moral of this scene: you do not need to race to the rescue of young girls in danger. A damsel in distress does not need a brave and strong man to save her any more than a fish needs a bicycle. Let the girls die. Great moral for the kiddies, you jerks.
Now, keep in mind, this was not Woody Allen or Kermit the Frog running to the rescue of Wonder Woman, but a soldier drilled in the arts of war since birth trying to save a streetwise pint sized dame in a skirt. Well, actually she wears a shapeless brown sackcloth throughout.
To add insult to insult, Junkyard Girl then mistakes Exhench for a baddie, runs him down while he runs away in panic, and she can outrun him somehow, and throw him easily to the ground, and threatens him while he blubbers. Can you imagine that happening to Han Solo, or the Fonz, or Captain Kirk? Or even to Frodo Baggins?
Moral of the story: men are useless as heroes. A woman civilian can do a soldier-boy’s job better than a soldier. Men are wimps. Great lesson for the kiddies, you jerks.
But the anti-patriarchy agitprop does not stop there.
More baddies arrive. He grabs her hand to drag her to safety, but in a modern, politically correct movie, she does not need saving, and she is offended by the hand grabbing. Because he only drags her deeper into danger by mistake. Later, she grabs his hand and drags his sorry butt to safety. When she does it, it works.
Then she turns out to be:
1. an ace pilot who can outfly trained fighter pilots.
2. And she knows more about the engineering details of the Millennium Falcon than Han Solo.
3. And she is a crack shot even though she seems not to know where the safety on a handgun is.
4. And she saves Exhench one more time, using her knowledge of the mechanisms of an unfamiliar ship.
5. Then it turns out she has force powers like a Jedi, including visions of the future and past. She can resist mind-to-mind combat with Big Bad Sith, and even read his mind in the process. But, unlike Luke, she needs no training: she can do advanced mind-control techniques without a single lesson or even being told that such things are possible.
6. Hence, she can escape from the innermost dungeon of a Sith Lord fortress unaided.
7. And she can lightsaber fight without training against a man taller and stronger and trained in the art.
This last is after Exhench yet one more time again fails at acting the man and is bitchslapped and curbstomped by the Big Bad, so she picks up his dropped lasersword and finishes the duel. Then there is an earthquake, and the planet blows up, so that part was pretty cool.
Now, each of these improbable little acts of Li’l Miss Too-Cool-for-School might have been believable if the lazy writer had done his darned job and given the paying customers in the audience even the slightest reason to believe it:
1.Maybe her ace piloting was because of her familiarity with the wrecks through which she had climbed and scavenged for years, and she knew where every strut and spar was like the back of her hand.
2. Maybe her years of scavenging had given her such familiarity with machines that, uh, she had worked on Han Solo’s ship previously, as a grease monkey, and read all the engineering manuals.
3. Maybe she was always a crack shot, because she used to bullseye wamp-rats back home in Beggar’s Canyon, and she was merely unfamiliar with this model of blaster, not with all blasters.
4. Maybe she is a technopath, and has the same affinity for any starship circuitry as Speed Racer has for the Mach 5. She was using the Force. Maybe she is a cyborg, and could plug her brain directly into the ship core, and understand immediately where everything is.
5. Maybe the Force is desperate to grant her extra powers to stop the evil Sith Lords or something. Or she has a higher mitochlorian count than Darth Vader. Or she has been practicing in the backyard on her own for years. Or she had years of training but forgot them due to a blow to the head. Or something.
6. Maybe she was being allowed to escape, in the hopes that she would unwittingly lead the Sith Lords to the McGuffin.
7. I myself, with only one lousy year of fencing training, could stand with my back to the wall and parry every attack made by a more athletic, younger and stronger man, and he had a foil and I had a broomstick. The idea that an untrained girl could hold her own against a trained opponent is absurd. Maybe the Big Bad was gutshot, wounded by Exhench, under orders not to kill her, or had some ulterior reason for making her think she can fence.
I can play the fansave game as well as any fanboy. But why the heck am I doing the writer’s work for him?
Any of these reasons would have acted as a fig leaf for one improbable moment of super-competence after another, but the writer, not the fanboy, must have to have a line of dialog say so, if that is the reason.
Any one or two or three or even four might have not broken suspension of disbelief. But the cumulative effect of seven or eight was grating. There was only one scene where she makes a mistake, or fails to do something better than a man: she accidently trips the wrong circuit breaker to open a door she meant to close.
Imagine the sexes were reversed, and one competent man was able to outperform five bubble headed blondes each one at her lifelong profession and task: he cooks better than a woman cook, he drives better than a woman driver, he kills a rat the woman is afraid of, he wrestles a snake while the woman cowers and screams, and he is better at organizing a wedding. Would you or would you not affirm that such a plot was no more than a sneering joke at all womanhood? So, here. The plot was one long sneering joke at manhood."
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Suture Self
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CMonster
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Re: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)...A Unique Perspecti
I leave the forums for 1 week to do some holiday celebrations and this happens. Please everybody, put a hold on your stupid fights till I have a chance to get a couple shitty points or good zingers in.
Let me tell you exactly what this new Star Wars was about. It had nothing to do with gender politics. No commentary on the spiritual sides of the force or deepening of Star Wars lore. No, this film was all about showing everybody that new Star Wars is more like really old Star Wars than sort-of-old-but-not-really Star Wars. They put the defining characteristics of Han, Luke, and Leia into a random number generator and pooped out Finn, Po, and Rey. Po got to be the captured high ranking rebel. Finn got to be the self-interested guy till he befriends the other protagonists. Rey gets to be magic kid from a desert planet. Exactly like the originals. Nothing like the prequels. Don't read to deep. Then you'll get past the obvious Rey is just super strong in the force point which kinda makes sense and start asking things like, "How did they find Luke's lightsaber from Empire Strikes Back?" "Has JJ toned down his use of lens flares or did I just miss them because I was staring at BB-8's balls?" "Why can't the highest ranking general for the good guys buy a can of gold spray pain for C3P0?" "How could those people see the space laser so clearly in broad daylight? I mean, it wasn't brighter than the sun. Was it brighter than the sun? If so wouldn't it have made them all blind? OH GOD PLEASE TELL ME THAT THIS SPACE OPERA IS FLAWLESS AND THAT THE PLOT HOLES AREN'T....AREN'T....(inset sounds of rope chinch and the tumbling of a stool."
Let me tell you exactly what this new Star Wars was about. It had nothing to do with gender politics. No commentary on the spiritual sides of the force or deepening of Star Wars lore. No, this film was all about showing everybody that new Star Wars is more like really old Star Wars than sort-of-old-but-not-really Star Wars. They put the defining characteristics of Han, Luke, and Leia into a random number generator and pooped out Finn, Po, and Rey. Po got to be the captured high ranking rebel. Finn got to be the self-interested guy till he befriends the other protagonists. Rey gets to be magic kid from a desert planet. Exactly like the originals. Nothing like the prequels. Don't read to deep. Then you'll get past the obvious Rey is just super strong in the force point which kinda makes sense and start asking things like, "How did they find Luke's lightsaber from Empire Strikes Back?" "Has JJ toned down his use of lens flares or did I just miss them because I was staring at BB-8's balls?" "Why can't the highest ranking general for the good guys buy a can of gold spray pain for C3P0?" "How could those people see the space laser so clearly in broad daylight? I mean, it wasn't brighter than the sun. Was it brighter than the sun? If so wouldn't it have made them all blind? OH GOD PLEASE TELL ME THAT THIS SPACE OPERA IS FLAWLESS AND THAT THE PLOT HOLES AREN'T....AREN'T....(inset sounds of rope chinch and the tumbling of a stool."