The Kingfish posted:

Which is why Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism is such an instructive text when examining fictional so-called “depoliticized” Hitlerian/Stalinist regimes.
Regardless of whether the FO can be meaningfully described as either fascist or communist (although the seeming lack of significant non-human integration arguably implies the former) Arendt’s framework demonstrates that the Empire and FO were totalitarian in nature, with the Death Stars replacing Hitler’s and Stalin’s concentration camp as the central institution of organizational power.

The Kingfish posted:

Which is why Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism is such an instructive text when examining fictional so-called “depoliticized” Hitlerian/Stalinist regimes.
Regardless of whether the FO can be meaningfully described as either fascist or communist (although the seeming lack of significant non-human integration arguably implies the former) Arendt’s framework demonstrates that the Empire and FO were totalitarian in nature, with the Death Stars replacing Hitler’s and Stalin’s concentration camp as the central institution of organizational power.

The Kingfish posted:

Which is why Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism is such an instructive text when examining fictional so-called “depoliticized” Hitlerian/Stalinist regimes.
Regardless of whether the FO can be meaningfully described as either fascist or communist (although the seeming lack of significant non-human integration arguably implies the former) Arendt’s framework demonstrates that the Empire and FO were totalitarian in nature, with the Death Stars replacing Hitler’s and Stalin’s concentration camp as the central institution of organizational power.

The Little Death posted:

If you watch the Lindsay Ellis breakdown of the new Beauty and the Beast, you can tell that Disney execs are extremely online at this point. They are right in nerd culture, totally misinterpreting what they are seeing as representative of general audiences. what I'm saying is that this is redlettermedia's fault, it is 100% because of their stupid movies that idiot Disney execs thought that they needed to distance themselves from the prequel trilogy as much as they did. I'm not trying to give JJ too much credit, but I'm sure that his script writing started with a list of stipulations from Disney execs who don't actually understand how stories work, but wanted a bunch of do's and don'ts based on what they thought the market for Star wars was.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Rogue One actually made ANH make MORE sense- the Rebellion is down to a tiny handful of fighters on a small base because the Death Star legit made most of their allies poo poo their pants and pull out, and the ones that remained threw everything into a suicide attack to get the plans. Also makes the opening really funny with how blatantly Leia's lying to the Empire.

Red Rox posted:

The prequels loving sucked so bad. A huge disappointment. What a waste.

Maybe my expectations were set very low after that, but the new trilogy wasn’t as bad. But pretty bad.

Red Rox posted:

The prequels loving sucked so bad. A huge disappointment. What a waste.

Maybe my expectations were set very low after that, but the new trilogy wasn’t as bad. But pretty bad.

feedmyleg posted:

I'm going to go ahead and guess that the Coruscant thing was someone at Disney saying "Don't blow up Coruscant, we need to have recognizable locations that we can use in future books."

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Also said before that it's not just exclusive to Star Wars or Disney to have what may be called an aggressively incoherent style of storytelling- omitting background information that puts everything into context because they're afraid it'll confuse audiences, despite the lack of context confusing them more, and then their answer to audience confusion is to overexplain everything that already happens on screen assuming the audience must be staring at their phones instead of watching it, rather than actually giving context for why the characters are doing things.

It gets even worse when the writers and execs also clearly don't know what they want or why, and the directors are actively at war with each other. You get the equivalent of people who 'cook' by getting bored halfway through the recipe and just throwing the ingredients they have around into a put and shaking it around for an arbitrary time, then getting confused and angry why people don't like their cooking.

galagazombie posted:

It not being Coruscant is never actually stated in the movieIt not being Coruscant is never actually stated in the movie. The most we get is "The Hosnian System" but we've never known what system Coruscant was in. Coruscant could very well have been the Xth planet in the Hosnian system.

2house2fly posted:

That doesn't make sense, why would they want to set a story on Coruscant if it's not where the government is

The Little Death posted:

I wonder if this comes from seeing movies only as a series of set pieces like a bad video game, versus an organic narrative that tries to build a setting with a sense of realness to it. I'm not convinced that JJ thought of any reason why the resistance worked the way it did, what the blowing up the capital would mean, who the Knights of Ren were or what the name would imply, even the weirdness is Snoke as a figure mimicking the emperor. for him it was just all cool things to put on the screen, and all the background fluff was filled in later by other writers trying to make sense of his mess. I think a lot of movies have generated to the point where they are first and foremost a set of scenes as expected by studios, and coherent narratives second.

galagazombie posted:

Oh it was 100% this. Hell they were even too cowardly to commit to their cowardly decision to make it not Coruscant. It not being Coruscant is never actually stated in the movie. The most we get is "The Hosnian System" but we've never known what system Coruscant was in. Coruscant could very well have been the Xth planet in the Hosnian system. I'd bet it was part of the reason for all the other store-brand versions of OT planets like Jakku, some souless exec didn't want anything to happen to places like Yavin and Tatooine.

Pretty good posted:

The Star Wars prequels were perfect movies and their detractors are Terrorists.

Jewmanji posted:

I’ll never understand these takes.

Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:

Its this

The sequel trilogy in general (and seemingly JJ in specific) is absolutely loving terrified of even gently reminding the audience that the prequels exist, which is why TFA is so allergic to even hinting at galactic politics and why we never saw Hayden Christensen appear to Kylo as a force ghost, even though that’s such an incredibly obvious Thing to do.

Jewmanji posted:

I mean, it's fine not to like the prequels (they're great), but I can't think of a single criteria under which the sequels can be considered more enjoyable films. They are narratively inert, at times incoherent, and suffer from a fatal lack of imagination. I strain to think of a single truly original idea that emerged from the films.

Jewmanji posted:

I mean, it's fine not to like the prequels (they're great), but I can't think of a single criteria under which the sequels can be considered more enjoyable films. They are narratively inert, at times incoherent, and suffer from a fatal lack of imagination. I strain to think of a single truly original idea that emerged from the films.

Vinylshadow posted:

"I hate the prequels but finish the Clone Wars."

Jewmanji posted:

I mean, it's fine not to like the prequels (they're great), but I can't think of a single criteria under which the sequels can be considered more enjoyable films. They are narratively inert, at times incoherent, and suffer from a fatal lack of imagination. I strain to think of a single truly original idea that emerged from the films.

Cartoon Man posted:

2house2fly posted:

The characters come across as more likeable(possibly due to the actors being better directed) which makes emotional scenes connect better

Jewmanji posted:

I mean, it's fine not to like the prequels (they're great), but I can't think of a single criteria under which the sequels can be considered more enjoyable films. They are narratively inert, at times incoherent, and suffer from a fatal lack of imagination.

Jewmanji posted:

I’ll concede that Adam Driver elevates everything he’s involved in, but other than a few scenes between Poe and Finn, I found most of the acting in the sequels to be very unremarkable. The fact that the context around most of the emotional scenes is incoherent doesn’t help. Why are Leia and Rey hugging at the end of TFA? It makes no sense. Even Laura Dern was uncharacteristically bad, which no one seems to want to admit. And Carrie Fisher... I mean...

2house2fly posted:

It's less that the acting is good per se, more that the overall presentation of the characters makes it more easy to feel an (much as I dislike this term) emotional connection, so dramatic moments land better. This may be purely due to the sequels hewing closer to familiar archetypes, tbh

The Little Death posted:

It's a rotating capital. I know that was mentioned somewhere in the extended material but that didn't stop the Republic from dying when it blew up.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

That would explain a lot. I've always said that listening to your fanbase is vital for understanding how your stuff is recieved, but for the love of god, don't believe everything they say. Most people don't know what they want and don't know how to articulate how they feel about things.

Also said before that it's not just exclusive to Star Wars or Disney to have what may be called an aggressively incoherent style of storytelling- omitting background information that puts everything into context because they're afraid it'll confuse audiences, despite the lack of context confusing them more, and then their answer to audience confusion is to overexplain everything that already happens on screen assuming the audience must be staring at their phones instead of watching it, rather than actually giving context for why the characters are doing things.

It gets even worse when the writers and execs also clearly don't know what they want or why, and the directors are actively at war with each other. You get the equivalent of people who 'cook' by getting bored halfway through the recipe and just throwing the ingredients they have around into a put and shaking it around for an arbitrary time, then getting confused and angry why people don't like their cooking.

euphronius posted:

I don’t know if they were listening to fans but they probably listened to test audiences a whole lot