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It's not rational for the girl to wear symbolic clothes, or to talk to her mechanic. Also yeah, the droids and aliens have always represented the universe's underclasses. You're a space racist.
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Dec 10, 2013 20:55
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People are welcome to my world if they want refuge from the world of *prolonged honking fart sound*
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Dec 10, 2013 23:37
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Nutmeg posted:In my mind there are only 3 star wars movies, all the prequels are absolute trash. What's your opinion on Ewok Adventure. I'm dying to know?
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Dec 11, 2013 02:55
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KaptainKrunk posted:Too bad the prequels completely fail to show that the Republic is corrupt or decadent or that the Jedi Order is out of touch and arrogant. We're told these things but we are never actually shown them. All these things are shown. Padme in a pure-chrome ship wearing servant clothes, the Jedi wearing uniforms styled after peasants' robes.... Anakin and Padme disguise themselves as refugees in order to get married in space-Italy. Visually, the heroes are constantly appropriating lower-class signifiers that ring false because they live in an immaculate virtual reality. Contrast them with the 'authentically' degraded sand-people. More to it: the fact that Yoda's empowerment looks like a videogame, and the defeat of Maul is a dance. The characters in the original films don't watch nearly this much TV. Anakin is seduced by Palpatine at some kind of zero-G ballet. The senate floor is recorded by camera-droids for space-CSPAN. A whole hyperreal aesthetic defines the prequels. Put even more basically, the corruption is evident in the very visceral reaction people have to these heroes. People hate Jar Jar, causing them to tacitly side with Anakin ("they're like animals, and I'll slaughter them like animals"). The only thing the films needed to do to be 100% sincere would be to make Anakin likeable, and thereby endorse fascism - getting people to cheer Darth Vader. But people already cheer Darth Vader. It's not subversive to get them cheering for Hitler. People dress their kids up in Vader costumes all the time. He's an image that's been copied into meaninglessness. By making Darth a petulant whiner, there's no chance of anyone falling for that. Everyone recognizes that these films are different from the ones before, and that's the visualization of the corruption.
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Dec 11, 2013 09:46
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There's actually some really complex stuff going on in the lava sword fight dialogue. Anakin bases his view that the Jedi are evil on Palpatine's (entirely accurate!) assessment that both the Jedi and Sith are power-hungry fuckers. But Anakin clearly misinterprets what Palpatine was saying: Palpatine is an extreme cynic who believes that there is no light side. Everyone is corrupt, so you might as well go nuts. Anakin, however, still believes in a light/dark dichotomy. He just declares the (nonexistent) light side his enemy. This is because Anakin has bought into the Jedi propaganda that they are the light. Since the Jedi organization is a corrupt enemy of freedom, Anakin concludes that the concept of light itself is evil. He throws the baby out with the bathwater. Obiwan, for his part, makes statements that are extremely naive. He claims allegiance to the Republic because he supports democracy. But he is talking about a liberal democracy directly opposed the sort of authentic freedom and justice Anakin is willing to kill for. This is the meaning of "only a Sith deals in absolutes!" There's no contradiction there, because because Obi-Wan holds tolerance of a plurality of opinions to be the highest good. Anakin is 'truly lost' because he doesn't tolerate other opinions. Anakin believes he's right - believes slavery is bad! - and, to wishy-washy Obiwan, that's horrible fundamentalism. Of the two characters, Obiwan is definitely most dumb. But Anakin is still way dumber than amoral Palpatine, who sees the universe for the poo poo it is. What none of the characters can understand is the concept of authentically universal democracy - the space-dictatorship of the space-proletariat. Anakin's regular dictatorship is close, but no cigar. This is why Anakin and Obiwan 'used to be brothers'. You need to combine Obiwan's trust in the people with Anakin's passionate, ruthless enforcement. Only then can you have light. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Dec 13, 2013 |
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Dec 13, 2013 08:49
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Dec 14, 2013 13:25
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Robotnik Nudes posted:The lip sync on the Shatnerians is way hosed up and they talk in racist asian accents. That can't be an oversight. Definitely not - aliens and droids in the original trilogy basically never speak English. The only exceptions I can think of offhand are C3PO and Admiral Ackbar. The whole thing about characters understanding eachother, despite their speech being made up of clicks and growls, is very important. R2 and Chewie are the specific characters involved in that loaded image of a robot playing chess against an alien. It's Turing Test imagery; the whole thing's about communication. This changes pretty drastically in the prequels, and it is a race thing. The green dudes have their lines dubbed over in a way that makes them sound much stupider than they probably actually are.
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Dec 16, 2013 09:20
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People complaining that Padme's death makes no logical sense miss the point entirely. Lucas specifically includes the robot doctor to tell the audience that it makes no logical sense. It's deliberate. The beep-boop robot can't compute what happened - attributing it to a loss of will to live. The keywords 'will' and 'life' should clue you in here. The robot is talking about the force. Padme's death is actually the purest expression of what the force is in the entire PT. It's characterized here by its sheer absence. Everything is scientifically normal, and yet something intangible is missing... Note that the robot does not say "her midichlorian count is dropping rapidly!" or some nonsense like that. She has been cut off from the force in a way that Jedi blood scanners cannot measure. This, perhaps, explains the 'continuity error' that no-one in the OT believes in the force. Because the Jedi simply treated it as a biological mechanism, no-one actually believed. Padme's last act can almost be read as defiance to all this, literally defying logic. It's no accident that this act is simultaneous with the birth of Luke and Leia.
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Dec 19, 2013 00:11
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Darko posted:It's too bad that Lucas' then wife edited all this subversive intent out of A New Hope and turned it into an enjoyable film on all levels as opposed to the Battle of the Whills that mocked the assumption of enjoying pulp fantasy. A New Hope is 'Elysium' subversive. The Prequels are 'Starship Troopers' subversive. The target of mockery is the mistaking of one for the other, or a failure to distinguish between them at all. (see: Pacific Rim) In any case, the prequels are Good.
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Dec 19, 2013 07:17
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RoboticSpaceWizard posted:Sorry, but while the idea of Padme cutting herself off from the Force is a clever explanation, this nonsense about the Jedi just "treating it as a biological mechanism" that the interpretation demands doesn't work with any Star Wars film. Yoda and Obi-Wan are the only sources of Force knowledge in the OT, and no, they didn't "figure it out" in exile. Padme in Episode 3 needs to be read in context with such figures as Antigone and Sygne. "In order to save the Pope hiding in her house, Sygne—the heroine [of The Hostage]—agrees to marry Toussaint Turelure, a person she despises utterly. [...] She thus sacrifices everything that matters to her—her love, her family name and estate. Her second act is her final No! to Turelure: Turelure, standing by the bed of the fatally wounded Sygne, desperately asks her to give a sign which would confer some meaning on her unexpected suicidal gesture of saving the life of her loathed husband—anything, even if she didn’t do it for love of him but merely to save the family name from disgrace. The dying Sygne doesn’t utter a sound: she merely indicates her rejection of a final reconciliation with her husband by a compulsive tic, a kind of convulsed twitching which repeatedly distorts her gentle face. [...] “Sygne’s No” [is] a kind of bodily gesture of (self-)mutilation, the introduction of a minimal torsion, of the curved space of drive, of the void around which a drive circulates. Therein resides the highest Hegelian speculative identity, the “infinite judgment” that lies at the very foundation of the symbolic order:“the Spirit is a bone,” that is, the ideal symbolic order, the (quasi-)autonomous universe of meaning that floats above common reality, is (linked by a kind of umbilical cord to) a repulsive tic/protuberance that sticks out from the (human) body, disfiguring its unity...." -Zizek SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Dec 19, 2013 |
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Dec 19, 2013 10:06
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You need to pay attention to CGI Yoda's performance after he gets his rear end kicked by the emperor. It's in his face.
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Dec 19, 2013 10:11
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What is the force?
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Dec 19, 2013 20:17
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Shall I tell you what's out there? The Dragon. A beast of such power that if you were to see it whole and all complete in a single glance, it would burn you to cinders. It is everywhere! It is everything! Its scales glisten in the bark of trees, its roar is heard in the wind! And its forked tongue strikes like lightning!
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Dec 19, 2013 21:39
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Robotnik Nudes posted:It's the Holy Spirit That's the light side, yes - but the dark side finds its incarnation in Darth Vader and, if we read the series as a properly Christological narrative, kills itself. The lesson of the prequels is that the 'light side' doesn't really exist at all - at least not in the sense that the Jedi claim to understand it. In the language of Prometheus, David represents the dark side, while the light side sees its only true expression in Shaw's absurd persistence.
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Dec 20, 2013 06:31
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Sprecherscrow posted:I think that having the would-be messiah fall to evil makes it not properly Christological. He redeems himself in the end which is in line with it, but the whole narrative is anti-messianic. The power of friendship is one of two main themes I see in the OT (The folly of putting your faith in technology being the other). The heroes in the OT only succeed by relying on each other. Anakin/Vader is the 'good guy' throughout most of the prequels - a 'terrorist' who legitimately fights for freedom and justice where the Jedi are confused and decadent. Anakin's only flaw is that he doesn't trust in the people. He loves Padme enough to upset the universe for her, but he has no love for the nomadic 'sandpeople' - when the sandpeople are those he should love the most. Vader's ethical commitment is evident even in the OT, where he consistently chafes at the limitations of the system, and calls his inferiors on their bullshit. He boasts about creating an empire in the PT films, but the result falls short of his ideal. This is why he wants to team up with Luke against the Emperor. Luke refuses only because he knows he'll be subordinate. Return of the Jedi flips it so that Vader works for Luke - and, consequently, 'ruling the galaxy together' turns out ok.
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Dec 20, 2013 18:58
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Danger is quite right. The Star Wars pre-sequels mess with chronology in the exact same way as The Thing 2011, Star Trek 2009 and Prometheus. Hopefully everyone knows that the prequels and special editions form a cycle. The prequels are sequels: we see, essentially, what happens when the rebellion falls into decadence and fails. The series as-a-whole creates a closed loop. "What, however, if we reject the notion of the eternal return of the same as the repetition of the reality of the past, insofar as it relies on an all-too-primitive notion of the past, on the reduction of the past to the one-dimensional reality of “what really happened,” which erases the virtual dimension of the past? If we read the eternal return of the same as the redemptive repetition of the past virtuality? In this case, applied to the nightmare of the Holocaust, the Nietzschean eternal return of the same means precisely that one should will the repetition of the potential which was lost through the reality of the Holocaust, the potential whose nonactualization opened up the space for the Holocaust to occur." -Zizek, The Parallax View The proper response, as is always the case, is to embrace the prequels while rejecting their canonicity.
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Dec 20, 2013 20:15
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He's also a hero who successfully defeated the corrupt and decadent Jedi.
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Dec 20, 2013 21:45
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From my point of view, the Jedi are evil.
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Dec 21, 2013 02:55
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Here's a fun question: what makes Darth Maul evil? I mean, of course, besides his red skin and 'tribal' face tattoo. I guess revenge is 'bad', but what did the Jedi do to him - to "us"? Without recourse to the EU, the assumption that he's referring to the Sith is a shaky one. What if he's referring to his home planet, or his people? Who is demanding revenge? This reading is obviously bolstered by the fact that Episode 1 is primarily about colonialism, multiculturalism, and native rights. And then, recall the 'shapeshifter' reveal in Episode 2, and how that plot point seemingly goes nowhere. It should be read as foreshadowing for Palpatine's transformation in Episode 3. What if he was, all along, a monstrous alien merely pretending to be the whitest dude in the galaxy in order to get back power that was taken from him? What else would the Sith be getting revenge for? SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Dec 21, 2013 |
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Dec 21, 2013 04:21
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Robotnik Nudes posted:Trick question. Darth Maul isn't really a character any more than the older in Raiders of the Lost Ark is a character. His one line only indicates that the Sith haven't revealed themselves to the Jedi, and that they haven't had whatever revenge they're after. Apart from that he has no personality and his only arc is going from alive to dead. In a film where all the aliens are nonthreatening english-speaking stereotypes, Darth Maul's refusal to speak actually says volumes.
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Dec 21, 2013 04:27
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Robotnik Nudes posted:In that scene he's with Palpatine, talking to Palpatine about Palpatine's plan, and is Palpatine's apprentice in the Sith Order, which we know has been hiding from Jedi and Plotting Revenge so it's not at all shaky to assume Maul is talking about The Sith. You're halfway there. Even if Maul is referring to the Sith, why did he choose to become a Sith? Why is he invested in their struggle? People don't just up and choose to be demonized. Maul even makes his motivations clear: he's in it because the Jedi did something - something evil, from his point of view. And, while we don't see what happened to Maul, we do see what happened to them: the Jedi helped create this whole lovely Republic and now occupy a taxpayer-funded citadel in the heart to their biggest metropolis while the 'third world' still deals in slaves.
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Dec 21, 2013 04:52
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Bongo Bill posted:This is some EU poo poo, but the Sith once ruled the galaxy. They were brutal tyrants whom the Jedi overthrew, and they believed they had eradicated that heresy. (n.b. obviously "heresy" is a relative term) That certainly is some EU poo poo, but you are correct in one respect. As I mentioned before, the complete sextology is achronological and cyclical. Phantom Menace is a sequel to Return Of The Jedi - so, the Sith are essentially getting revenge for the events of Episode 6. In that sense, they very obviously were totalitarians brought down by the Jedi. However, Episode 6 ended with the Emperor dead. The only explanation for his reappearance is that some imbalance remained, some imbalance strong enough to create a new Emperor. Luke failed in some way, and the light side was lost. This imbalance is, of course, the Rebellion's descent into decadence - the inherent corruption of the Jedi and their Republic. So again, the point is that the Jedi did something to Maul, hurting him in a way that he cannot forgive. He's the Osama Bin Laden to their America, and it's not so easy to say he did it because he's a (fundamentalist) Muslim. Osama wasn't a good guy, obviously, but he wasn't a demon.
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Dec 21, 2013 05:14
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Lord Krangdar posted:SMG I'm curious why you're now referring to the series as six films, when in the past you've said you see the Special Editions as separate entries in the series. How do they fit into this closed cycle idea? The special editions and the prequels function as a single unit, distinct from the unaltered original trilogy that is only available in bootleg form. I consider these bootlegs the way to break free from the unending cycle of the sextology. In order to escape from canon, you need to literally commit a crime in real life. That's the rebellion. Recall how Lucas undermines the ending of Return Of The Jedi by dubbing in an additional "Nooooo!" That's the clearest indication that the Special Editions are false and that their rebellion is a sham.
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Dec 21, 2013 05:29
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Hbomberguy posted:No don't you get it you moron, Yoda says 'confront' not 'kill' and that definitely means he doesn't want Luke to kill Vader, for some reason. Because Yoda, the guy who didn't tell you he was your father explicitly so he could kill him without having any second thought, suddenly doesn't want Luke to kill the man almost entirely to blame for the fall of everything he holds dear. The fact that a seeming majority of the Star Wars audience - including self-described fans - don't get what the force is, or how it can be balanced, explains why the prequels are necessary. Same with the folks who watch the prequels and still buy into the Jedi ideology. I mean, it's safe to say that most people upset with the prequels are mad at the film's depiction of the Jedi - that the prequels aren't 'historically accurate' depictions of what the Jedi 'actually were'. This reaches a sort of apotheosis in the Plinkett reviews. Really, audiences should be upset at the Jedi's failure to live up to their reputation. But fan attempts at 'fixing' the prequels invariably try to make Padme and Jar Jar into badasses or something - or cut Jar Jar out entirely, as if he's the problem.
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Dec 21, 2013 07:41
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Dooku is a lot like Maul in that a lot is expressed in very little runtime. He's a loving Count, modeled after Dracula. He's also the official leader of the separatists, and I don't think that's a ruse. He's not pretending to lead the separatists. He really does want to retain his wealth and nobility - a total aristocrat. Dooku is the embodiment of that stuff about 'a more civilized age'. We also know that Dooku used to be Yoda's pupil, so his character is directly tied to Yoda's arc. That's the reason Episode 2 ends with a battle between them. Dooku's main character trait is that he's boastful. He's constantly talking up how powerful he is, that people are fools to defy him - while Yoda is all sitting in his sad room, feeling impotent. In killing Dooku - pulling out his lasersword, commanding the clone army - Yoda becomes him. Dooku has the allure of power and nobility. But Dooku is also the biggest patsy out of all the Sith. Maul dies too, but Dooku is the one who gets explicitly screwed over. There's a clear rift between his goals and Palpatine's. Palpatine, very obviously, is not in it for the nobility. He doesn't give a gently caress about dignity and whatever. Like Maul, Palpatine just wants revenge. That's why Dooku 'betrays' Palpatine and tells Obiwan that the senate is corrupt - retaining his aristocratic status puts him at odds with both Palpatine, and the senate. Dooku's goal is to elevate the Jedi to the highest level of power. And, of course, this is exactly what they do, when Windu and the gang attempt to arrest/execute Palpatine. Like Yoda, they end up doing exactly what Dooku wanted to do. The only difference is that Windu and Yoda wanted to cleanse the senate, not completely destroy it. But the outcome is the same. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Dec 21, 2013 |
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Dec 21, 2013 23:30
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redshirt posted:Yoda doesn't kill Dooku, and Dooku left the Jedi order in disgust and signed up with their arch-enemies; how can he then wish for the Jedi to be elevated? The point is that Yoda tries to kill him, and does end up winning. A crucial theme in the prequels in the prequels is the disconnect between the various institutions' stated ideals, and the reality of how they operate. Dooku knows that the Jedi order is a shambles, and identifies the problem as their subservience to the senate. Dooku sez: The jedi are good. The dark side is an ally. The light side is weak. The senate is evil. The Sith are evil. Obiwan sez: The senate is good. The jedi are its ally. The light side is strong. The Sith are evil. The dark side is evil. Vader sez: The dark side is good. The sith are an ally. The senate is weak. The jedi are evil. The light side is evil. Palpatine says: There is no good or evil. The Sith are strong. All others are weak. etc.
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Dec 22, 2013 00:27
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Yeah, that's what I was talking about before. The Emperor is a product of flaws in the Republic - the failure of the rebellion. Episode 1 is a thematic sequel to Episode 6 a.k.a. "the one with the ewoks." So: where are the ewoks at the start of Episode 1? They're underwater, living beneath the whites. One has been training, planning revenge against the Jedi. The ewoks 'return' in Episode 1 in the form of Darth Maul and the Gungans, these 'native' characters who are excluded, like the sand-people. Chewbacca doesn't get a medal. That's why the Sith re-emerge, will always re-emerge until the cycle is broken. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Dec 22, 2013 |
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Dec 22, 2013 10:02
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Let's narrow it down to the most important part: MACE WINDU: I sense a plot to destroy the Jedi. [...] We must move quickly if the Jedi Order is to survive. As with Yoda, Windu's top priority is protecting the Jedi institution. When he arrests Palpatine, he says that he is officially acting on behalf of the senate - but that is not what he said in private, off the record.
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Dec 23, 2013 21:12
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A Steampunk Gent posted:Twenty minutes of screen time later he validates all their actions and fears by ordering a genocide against the Jedi, and let's nor forget for all the Jedi's failings, acting against the Sith, a group which explictly defines itself on its hatred of the Jedi and the propagation of psychopathic values, isn't exactly the wrong thing to do, Windi tried to save those younglings! Palpatine easily exploits the Jedi because he recognizes their desire for more power, and their fear of losing that power. Again, preserving the Jedi institution is their top priority - even if it means compromising on their stated ideals. So, you have it backwards: the Jedi validate everything Palpatine has said about them. The younglings are child soldiers anyways. Better they be rehabilitated, but their deaths aren't unambiguous evil. The term 'youngling' is like 'midichlorian'. It makes Obiwan look like a doofus.
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Dec 23, 2013 22:39
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Billy Idle posted:I don't disagree that there's a connection. It would be hard for there not to be, given that Blade Runner was the first modern science fiction film to portray a vast city-planet in that way and George Lucas was no doubt aware of it. It's just important to keep in mind that the Coruscant concept dates back further than the prequels, all the way to early drafts of A New Hope in fact. And of course that concept was most likely based on Isaac Asimov's Trantor. They even put the little firey smokestacks in there. But, in a broader way, Obiwan plays at being a detective in a film about replicants. You shouldn't fall into the trap of believing this was all pre-planned. The CGI dinosaurs were inserted into the Special Editions because the effects in Jurassic Park made Lucas cry with joy. Lucas did not invent photorealistic CGI back in 1970 either. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Dec 24, 2013 |
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Dec 24, 2013 04:21
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Billy Idle posted:Well, that's how Obi-Wan dishes out justice at least. Just ask this guy: That guy's cool, because he and his buddy are Slightly More Evil versions of Chewbacca and Han Solo.
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Dec 24, 2013 04:52
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So I rewatched the Empire Strikes back for the first time in a very long while. It's odd because it ditches a lot of the themes that made the first Star Wars stand out to me. While still about communication, it's no longer a McLuhanist battle between visual and oral cultures. Instead, you see the Empire adopting strategies used by the rebels. At the start of Star Wars, a huge ship enters the frame from 'behind' the audience, flying to some point in the distance - but Empire opens with the same ship dead-centre on the screen, launching a shower of pods into the foreground. Vader later appears as the miniscule, tactile tv-hologram, in place of Leia. The pods very similar to the escape pods in Star Wars. The thing that accounts for this change is that Vader is now totally in charge. When you first see him in Star Wars, he's totally getting dissed by his superiors. He's got the cool suit and can choke a dude, but he's basically an armoured lackey. Vader needs to employ violence, because he doesn't have much other authority. The death star arguably explodes because nobody listened to him - and because he didn't listen to himself. See the fact that he relied on a targeting computer. Not any more. What's the most important scene in The Empire Strikes Back? As with Star Wars, it's one nobody cares about : near the end of the film, R2-D2 tries to 'talk' to the cloud city computer, but accidentally plugs into a power outlet. He gets a bad shock, then moves over to plug into the proper computer terminal. This throwaway bit of nonsense is hugely important. Empire Strikes Back is unique in the series for making its vehicles and buildings alive. Tanks have legs, and caves have mouths. The Millenium Falcon has a "peculiar dialect", and Cloud City itself can speak. When R2D2 asks Cloud City to open the door, the city tells him something in return. Despite C-3PO's admonishments, R2 trusts this 'strange computer'. And the strange computer was telling the truth: it turns out the Cloud City had been told by the Millenium Falcon (or overheard from the Vader) that the hyperdrive had been sabotaged. This little robot subplot is the force - the clearest expression Empire's idea of the force. The light side is nuanced communication, while the dark side is plugging into the wrong socket and getting zapped. Literally, too much power. It's kind of ridiculous. I don't know how many of you folks have watched the film recently, but the entire story centers around the loving hyperdrive. Everyone's trying to fix the hyperdrive, throwing in their two cents about how to repair it. Both Han and Lando yell that the malfunctions are 'not my fault!' in a repetition that is in no way accidental. A theme of trusting others to help - as when R2 trusts Cloud City - is constantly recurring. So, who ultimately fixes the thing? R2, using the info he learned from the strange computer, does a quick twist with his probe and they instantly blast off. The important detail is that R2's dialogue with the computer bypasses the security codes. It's direct, unmediated electrical impulse plugging one brain into the other, with no codes in the way. It ties into Yoda's "luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." Yoda's talking brain-machine interface, and Kant's "intellectual intuition": Electrodes plugged directly into the brain mean that "with my mind, I can directly cause objects to move; that is to say, it is the brain itself which will serve as the remote-control machine. In the terms of German Idealism, this means that what Kant called “intellectual intuition [intellektuelle Anschauung]”—the closing of the gap between mind and reality, a mind-process which, in a causal way, directly influences reality, this capacity that Kant attributed only to the infinite mind of God—is now potentially available to all of us, that is to say, we are potentially deprived of one of the basic features of our finitude." -Zizek, The Parallax View Negative Entropy posted:George Lucas seems to follow the idea that having too much of the Light Side is bad as well: Far from taking Yoda at his word, though, it's important to remember that this idea is harshly satirized in the prequels with the concept of midichlorians: the reduction of the force to an objective process, a predetermined fate. When being taught by Yoda, Luke masters his fear, but his anxiety remains. "On a first approach, anxiety emerges when we are totally determined, objectivized, forced to assume that there is no freedom, that we are just neuronal puppets, self-deluded zombies; at a more radical level, however, anxiety arises when we are compelled to confront our freedom. [...] Consequently, cognitivist self-objectivization causes anxiety because—although, in terms of its enunciated content, it “objectivizes” us—it has the opposite effect in terms of the implied position of enunciation: it confronts us with the abyss of our freedom, and, simultaneously, with the radical contingency of the emergence of consciousness." (ibid.) This is what happens at the end of Empire. Yoda's teaching only goes so far - and Luke ventures out alone, calling out to Ben and receiving no answer. By rejecting Yoda, Luke encounters true freedom, in the existentialist sense. Freedom as a terrible responsibility, without any outside guarantees.
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Dec 25, 2013 20:11
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Obiwan doesn't seem like the kind of dude who had many friends. He's kind of a massive dorkus, and a canonical virgin.
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Dec 26, 2013 09:16
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Hbomberguy posted:The most hilarious joke beside the 'rethink your life' segment is when Anakin loses his lightsaber and it flies out into a city of a trillion flying cars, and lands directly into Obi-Wan's hand. That's the joke, but the punchline is when Obiwan, in one smooth gesture, just hucks it under the passenger seat. If that weapon is Anakin's life, this image has implications.
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Dec 27, 2013 19:16
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enraged_camel posted:I can't wait to read your seven-paragraph analysis of why Obiwan stows away Anakin's ligithsaber under the passenger seat. He thoughtlessly tosses it under the passenger seat. He doesn't place it in an accessible location on the drivers' side.
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Dec 27, 2013 19:28
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The trick with Grievous is that his status as a brain in a jar is not that far removed from Yoda's "luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." It's the inverse; luminous beings are cut off from matter. That's how prostheses work: you extend one ability at the cost of another. A (laser) sword enhances your ability to claw and hit, but at the cost of your hand itself. This is taken to a literal extreme with Luke's dismemberment. It's another example of how the light side is absent in most of the films - there are just different types of darkness. Empire Strikes back itself rejects Yoda's stance by saying love breaks from his logic. See the scene of Han kissing Leia, and how C3PO doesn't understand. See also how Obiwan and Yoda can't prepare Luke for meeting his biological father. "What if sexual difference is not simply a biological fact, but the Real of an antagonism that defines humanity, so that once sexual difference is abolished, a human being effectively becomes indistinguishable from a machine. Perhaps the best way to specify this role of sexual love is through the notion of reflexivity as "the movement whereby that which has been used to generate a system is made, through a changed perspective, to become part of the system it generates." This appearance of the generating movement within the generated system as a rule takes the form of its opposite; say, in the later stage of a revolutionary process when Revolution starts to devour its own children, the political agent which effectively set in motion the process is renegated into the role of its main obstacle, of the waverers or outright traitors who are not ready to follow the revolutionary logic to its conclusion. Along the same lines, is it not that, once the socio-symbolic order is fully established, the very dimension which introduced the "transcendent" attitude that defines a human being, namely SEXUALITY, the uniquely human sexual passion, appears as its very opposite, as the main OBSTACLE to the elevation of a human being to the pure spirituality, as that which ties him/her down to the inertia of bodily existence? For this reason, the end of sexuality in the much celebrated "posthuman" self-cloning entity expected to emerge soon, far from opening up the way to pure spirituality, will simultaneously signal the end of what is traditionally designated as the uniquely human spiritual transcendence. All the celebrating of the new "enhanced" possibilities of sexual life that Virtual Reality offers cannot conceal the fact that, once cloning supplements sexual difference, the game is over." -Zizek, "No sex, please, we're post-human!" You can see this in the achronological shift from the original trilogy to the prequels: sexual love becomes the Jedi's enemy again. Attack of the clones.
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Dec 28, 2013 02:52
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Luke slicing open the belly of the ATAT is related to the image of Han slicing open the goatasaurus. It's also related to the image, near the end, of the Falcon attached to the rebel 'mothership' by some sort of umbilicus. (The design of this mothership is often overlooked. It's shaped like a dozen smaller ships, or modules, being gradually fused together.) Empire Strikes Back is stuffed full of cave, womb, and devouring imagery. The triangular windows on the bridge of the star destroyer recall the pointed teeth of the space worm. Vader chills out in a big black egg, R2 is lucky he doesn't taste very good, Luke floats in the bacta tank, people's entire homes are revealed to be sentient.... ynohtna posted:The Dambusters is to A New Hope what Alexander the Great is to The Empire Strikes Back. (i.e. the AT-ATs are war elephants.) SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 7, 2014 22:22
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:So what or whom is preparing to be born? Is it Luke's nascency before becoming the Martin Luther of the Jedi order? Or is it the growth of Vader's ultimate redemption in ROTJ? I guess I'm leaning toward the former since the OT is meant to be Luke's journey while the prequels are meant to be Vader/Anakin's. It's not so much one symbolic pregnancy leading up to a birth as it a bunch of variations on a theme. You have three scenes of Luke fighting a monster in a cave, for example, with different outcomes each time. (In the first, Luke cuts off the monster's hand. In the last, Luke self-identifies as the monster and 'kills himself'.) The pregnancy stuff is tied into themes of symbiosis and parasitism (e.g. the mynocks). The Falcon - the protagonists' communal space - is presented as an ailing organic body that needs to be 'cured'. It's all different types of relationships between bodies. Note that the Falcon survives by becoming a parasite on the side of the Star Destroyer, before being literally passed in its waste. Luke, too, dumps himself out of Cloud City's exhaust port at the end. We've been told Cloud City is sentient. It's very important is that the final scene is of the Falcon being (re)born from the Rebel mothership, heading out in search of Han. Han is one of the only characters to break from the transhumanist rhetoric of Yoda - note how he repeatedly pulls Leia away from some computer, to express his love - and how he leaves the warmth of the cave, risking everything in search of his friend: "Your taun-taun will freeze before you reach the first marker!" "Then I'll see you in Hell!" This is all part-and-parcel with Han's dislike of computers, and why you should never tell him the odds. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Jan 8, 2014 |
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Jan 8, 2014 00:28
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It's also important that the ATATs only appear on Hoth, at the very beginning of the film. The entire Hoth section establishes Luke's disenchantment with his role as hero: when Dak talks about his enthusiasm for fighting the empire, Luke's "I know what you mean" is weary. The subtext in Hamill's performance is "I remember how that felt...." This, along with the blurring of sides (Vader employs rebel tactics, while the rebels employ an 'ion cannon' that resembles a miniature death star), sets up what it means to 'turn to the dark side' - the way Yoda understands it. Luke - and the rebellion - could easily end up totalitarian, falling from 'the light side' in their pursuit of real victory. However: what's implicit in Empire, and made explicit in the prequels, is that Yoda isn't actually on the light side. Vader is actually far closer to the light, being a capital-E Evil figure, at odds with the establishment. Vader, unlike the Emperor's other lackeys, is genuinely fighting for freedom - on the very cusp of fulfilling his role as the galaxy's Christ. (And, as noted earlier, the true, authentic light side is the Holy Spirit - the community of believers - directly opposed to Yoda's new-agey pacifism.) The only thing holding him back is his subservience to the emperor. The ATATs, with their spectacular display of power (and their straight-ahead, monocular approach), are of the same logic as the Death Star - the sort of standard 'technological terror' that Vader rejects. Recall that the one dude is killed, by Vader, for attempting a similar sort of shock-and-awe tactic instead of lurking among the asteroids. Luke is fed up with these ATATs for the roughly the same reasons. And so: Luke's ultimate goal, unbeknownst to him, is to reunite with his father and defeat the Emperor. That's a goal that Vader shares, and it defies both the Emperor and Yoda. That's where the light side is.
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Jan 8, 2014 09:49
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echronorian posted:Are you saying Vader always intended to crush the emperor as a goal? The final fight scene of ROTJ has him look back and forth between Luke and the emperor, clearly conflicted with what's right. Vader seems to be rather ambivalent about the Emperor. In the original version of Empire Strikes Back, before the Special Edition dialogue changes, Vader has been hunting Luke long before the Emperor steps in to specifically command it - and is the one who suggests recruiting Luke rather than just killing him. Vader does see the Emperor as an ally, but in more of a 'means to an end' sort of way. When he talks about ruling the galaxy as father and son, Vader doesn't mention the Emperor at all. That's not to say that he's deliberately scheming to overthrow him - moreso that he's indifferent. The goal of recruiting Luke doesn't conflict with the Emperor's "shitloads of power!" agenda, so there's no need for conflict. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement. As gone over earlier, the Emperor is totally amoral, where Vader is fighting for authentic freedom and justice. Luke himself is not "just" Luke Skywalker, but a leader who stands for the people. As Luke goes, so do they. That - more than the personal relationship - is why Vader wants Luke on his side. Vader actually does want to help people. So, at the end of Return of the Jedi, Vader is conflicted not because he loves evil, but because he's worried what will happen without the power to enforce the peace. And he's rightfully worried, since the rebels may simply restore the Republic - looping everything back to Episode 1 again, solving nothing.
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Jan 8, 2014 12:57
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