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Ace_Spade's Replies
Definitely, yes! It's fantastic!
Han Solo was going to be a fish monster, too. C-3PO was going to be a used car salesman-type. But, ultimately, those were abandoned to better suit the story. That original concept of Luke being a woman, I would argue, is the same.
As for Lucas' vision for Episode 7, it might or might not have had any bearing on The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. I'm assuming that they had something to do with it, but probably not exhaustively.
I was aware that Lando was created to balance the cast a bit more.
It's all the same thing: they (writers) make characters certain things for certain reasons. Mostly (and most often) it's story reasons. But sometimes, or partially, they make decisions based on external factors.
I would actually argue that the themes of Star Wars dictate some of those choices.
Star Wars is Flash Gordon serials, samurai movies, and ancient myths repackaged as a space story.
Why does Luke need to be male? Because he's the apprentice knight. He's the hero on a quest to save the princess, so he's male. It's not a "need" like it could be no other way, but it plays into what Star Wars is doing. Chihiro in Spirited Away is a girl for many reasons, but one of them is because Spirited Away has that Alice in Wonderland/ Wizard of Oz vibe, and those stories want girls as protagonists.
Luke's opposite number, Darth Vader, is the Black Knight, so he's male.
Ben Kenobi is the samurai master from a Kurosawa film - he's male.
I would argue that Rey has to be a girl by the same reasoning, by the way. Not so much with The Force Awakens, but The Last Jedi takes on themes of subverting expectations. In this way, the young knight can't be male, because we're changing expectation instead of telling myth.
Ultimately, neither story "needs" their protagonist to be male or female (we can picture a woman wanting off of Tatooine just as easily as we can picture a man finding Luke Skywalker in Ahch-To), but the themes of the stories want certain kinds of characters.
And, outside of the scripts themselves, the authors picked themes and characters based on what they wanted. Lucas wanted an adventure serial, so he put himself into it as wish fulfillment. JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy wanted to make a statement, so they elected to change the landscape of the cast. Some of that is necessary and some is arbitrary.
Thank you, Deliciousfeet.
When the blogger said, "It’s about gender. And, because these issues are intersectional, it’s also about race. Here’s why so many men hate The Last Jedi and– not coincidentally– why I love it," I took that as an argument that the diversity was a reason to like the new Star Wars.
PS
I also disagree with the blog on why we should be loving the new Star Wars. I too love that Star Wars has more diversity in its cast, but that is something to applaud regardless of quality. Diversity (or lack thereof) is no kind of reason to like or dislike the artistry (or lack thereof) of a given film (or play, book, comic, etc.)
The biggest flaw in The Last Jedi, to me, is overall poor writing, which resulted in all the problems of character and pacing.
I could list other flaws of TLJ, but it would be broken record stuff. I don't want to bore you. If you're really interested, we can get into it. But the biggest flaw, the seed from which all other flaws spring, is that the writing of The Last Jedi is bad.
The blogger says that Hamlet is sloppily constructed, politically problematic, and internally inconsistent. For me, that's a good indicator of her ability to assess the strengths of a script.
Yup. In The Force Awakens, he was just a guy who wanted to run away. To take him from that to a guy willing to lay his life on the line for his friends is a great character arc and it was wrecked.
Ah, yes. Definitely should be watching one of those.
For me it's the Chinese Restaurant. They managed to spin a whole episode out of waiting for a table - genius!
1. The Chinese Restaurant
2. The Parking Garage
3. The Limo
4. The Contest
5. The Marine Biologist
6. The Parking Space
7. The Movie
8. The Non-Fat Yogurt
9. The Betrayal
10. The Dinner Party
I think it was a great way to end the show (who but Larry David would have the guts to write a show ending where the main characters go to jail?), but I think they could have done even better. I think they should have stuck to the classic blend of farce and satire that Seinfeld somehow managed to pull off. The courtroom setting was too static. But overall, it's not bad.
No, there's good stuff in season one. The Stake Out and Male Unbonding are great.
If you liked them, that's great, but I don't care about any of them. The only prequel character worth watching is Palpatine, and that's only because Ian McDiarmid is so great in the role. I don't even like Yoda in the prequels or new films.
Bail Organa, Padme, Anakin, Shmi, Watto, Qui-Gon Jinn - I can't get into any of them.
Well, let's not pretend like the prequel characters were so marvelously written, either.
I guess purple hair doesn't beat purple lightsabre.
I actually got the impression that he did the Jedi equivalent of meditating himself to Nirvana. He astral projected across the galaxy, was physically exhausted, assumes his meditation posture, and just feels the Force. Finally, for the first time in a long time, he's connected again and he makes all the connections he wasn't making for all those years and lets go of the physical and material, transcends to a higher plane of existence. That's not giving up and dying.
I have the DVDs where disk one is whatever edit Lucas had declared to be the "definitive" version that week and the bonus disks are the original, unaltered theatrical versions. I have never once even put any of the disk ones into a DVD player.
It's my favourite of his films, but I'm a huge Woody Allen fan, so I like all of his other "nonsense".
Only three I like order: ANH, ESB, ROTJ.
I love the original Star Wars films and I think they're basically evergreen.
I was entertained by The Force Awakens, but there's nothing really interesting or original going on. I like the concepts of The Last Jedi and some scenes, but was overall disappointed.
I enjoy a handful of scenes from the prequel trilogy, and John Williams' score, but overall I find them confused and badly written.
I found Rogue One to be remarkably boring and dull. Donnie Yen's character and Alan Tudyk's droid might have been interesting in a good movie. Rogue One is probably my least favourite of all of them.
Brothers Bloom was a neat con-artist film. It was maybe a little too clever for its own good at times, but the three leads are engaging and entertaining. One of the gags I still quote, which is great. Rachel Weisz isn't just set dressing. It has a kind of a "false ending", though, and my feeling is that they had two possible endings, loved them both, and tried to fold the one into the other.
It's worth watching, I think.