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Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

Dogboy said:
It's about 5 hours in total, but it's not like you have to watch them in their entirety in one sitting.
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Yea, but think about that for a second. Alongside everything everyone else has pointed out about the sheer length of the video being a flaw onto itself - what possible reason do I, as a viewer, have for making that kind of investment regardless of whether I do it in one sitting or not? I'd struggle to invest that sort of time into an actual Star War movie, and you're going to sit there with a straight face and ask me to watch what is likely to be an amateur critique possessing some flaws I don't even have to watch the video to know it's going to have. Courtesy has its limit, and devoting an hour to a Youtuber that's established themselves would be pushing it. Nevermind a video five times that length from a person who seems to have a consistent problem effectively summarising their points.
 
Marco said:
Yea, but think about that for a second. Alongside everything everyone else has pointed out about the sheer length of the video being a flaw onto itself - what possible reason do I, as a viewer, have for making that kind of investment regardless of whether I do it in one sitting or not? I'd struggle to invest that sort of time into an actual Star War movie, and you're going to sit there with a straight face and ask me to watch what is likely to be an amateur critique possessing some flaws I don't even have to watch the video to know it's going to have. Courtesy has its limit, and devoting an hour to a Youtuber that's established themselves would be pushing it. Nevermind a video five times that length from a person who seems to have a consistent problem effectively summarising their points.
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And all that aside, doesn't SV have a rule against posting videos as arguments without summarizing them?
 
Dogboy said:
It's about 5 hours in total, but it's not like you have to watch them in their entirety in one sitting.
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If you get something in it for me, honestly literally anything, I promise to watch 1 hour of the video and provide a critique, noting areas I agree and disagree. Keep in mind I did watch a small portion fo the video and have a rough sense of the kind of arguments he presents and the overall calibre of his critique overall. I am absolutely not going to watch the equivalent of over 2 feature length movies of a review of one Star Wars film that I know is going to be against it, potentially unobjectively so, but if I have any incentive at all to give more than my second impression, now based on something even if it's too small for your liking, I'll, in good faith, give it a go.

So since you have criticized people multiple times for not watching the video, including someone who did watch a snippet that contained multiple arguments, you should be okay with putting your money where your mouth is?

Hakazin said:
And all that aside, doesn't SV have a rule against posting videos as arguments without summarizing them?
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He just praised the video which started this convo, he didn't post it.
 
Dogboy said:
It's really heartening to see people not who actually haven't seen the video's in question giving their hot takes on it without actually knowing what he says about the film. As one of my favorite youtubers, Hbomberguy, says "it's really easy to win a fight against an opponent made of straw."
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My dude, I don't have time to spend half of my day watching some chucklefuck.
 
So I went and gave MauLer's video twelve minutes, which is only fair in my opinion because the length is prohibitive.

He talks about some overlapping problems with TFA and TLJ and doesn't really start going into TLJ at this point.
He covers unclear stakes in the conflict, no idea how powerful or weak each side is, or why each side is fighting Empire v Rebels 2.0, no idea where each side came from because the gap between the OT and ST isn't bridged. He says this makes the OT feel pointless. No idea why each side acts the way it does, whether it's the First order, Republic or Resistance. Criticizes the need for additional sources to fill in the holes.
Claims both TFA and TLJ need to "respect the history".
Unclear what happens between TFA and TLJ, both in timescale and just generally.

So at the very least it starts off at least a little more thought out than most critiques I've seen so far, though it hasn't offered anything new. My main concerns at this point are that he talks about having a much less refined video and that this is his "kid-friendly version" he spent more time on with much less swearing, and the fact he'll go through it scene by scene, which is tedious at best. I might go back and view more, but I do get the feeling there's trouble down the line which makes me hesitant to do so.
 
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The whinging about needing more worldbuilding is silly because in Star Wars all we know is:

-there was a Republic (yay), but the Empire took over and took away democracy (boo)
-the Rebels want the Republic back
-the Empire blows up planets because they're dicks and doing so makes them feel good
-there used to be Jedi now there aren't.

versus tfa

-The First Order is pissed their dad got beat up by the Republic's dad
-The First Order is evil dicks who like to blow up planets
-the Republic doesn't think the FO is a threat so some of the Old Guard are running a private army to fight them
-there were Jedi (again) and now there aren't (again)

I will say that I think ANH was more successful in some ways than TFA in making the personal stakes/story stakes for the heroes feel more urgent (Death Star attack just has way more tension to it as a set-piece finale), but they're both wishy washy as hell on the wider galactic/world stakes.
 
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Like I'll say those points are better than when he gets into the nitty gritty, but still not very good because I feel like they fundamentally look at the series as What They Want It To Be rather than What It is. Like I think Night and Chronologist basically hit on this, most of those criticisms can be aimed, to one degree or another, directly at the older films as well, including the OT. People have simply crafted this Star Wars in their head that is a Hard Detailed Sci-Fi Epic because it's what they want to believe the sci-fi/fantasy film they saw was, rather than the kinda silly super soft sci-fi adventure that took direct inspiration from old cheesy serials. So he expects all these things to be met that, more or less, are basically never met in a Star Wars film, or practically so.
 
When you release a work as a sequel or follow-up to an existing body of material, there are generally expectations for how it interacts with that material. These expectations don't come from fan entitlement. They are in fact integral to a basic understanding of narrative and art.

What are the stakes in Star Wars if every generation is doomed to keep fighting the same war? That's a real and unanswered question raised by TFA.

I'm sympathetic to fans who just want a fresh start, or newly made fans for whom TFA was an introduction to the series, but it is pretty silly to draw the OT comparison. The two situations are nothing alike.
 
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Night said:
And, for that matter, its best point is one that could be made about the OT as well; unclear stakes and no history.
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Yeah, but the OT wasn't a sequel. It's fine to have the first movie go "so, we're in a far away galaxy, here are the good guys, here are the bad guys"; but when it's a sequel that does this it just begs the question of "but wait, what happened to the goods guys of last time? Didn't they win?".
 
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Vyslanté said:
Yeah, but the OT wasn't a sequel. It's fine to have the first movie go "so, we're in a far away galaxy, here are the good guys, here are the bad guys"; but when it's a sequel that does this it just begs the question of "but wait, what happened to the goods guys of last time? Didn't they win?".
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If framed properly, this would work, but that's not the way our friend the maker of five-hour videos actually framed his complaint about it.
 
keios said:
When you release a work as a sequel or follow-up to an existing body of material, there are generally expectations for how it interacts with that material. These expectations don't come from fan entitlement. They are in fact integral to a basic understanding of narrative and art.

What are the stakes in Star Wars if every generation is doomed to keep fighting the same war? That's a real and unanswered question raised by TFA.

I'm sympathetic to fans who just want a fresh start, or newly made fans for whom TFA was an introduction to the series, but it is pretty silly to draw the OT comparison. The two situations are nothing alike.
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Except literally every work in Star Wars has been about pretty much the same exact war waged by the same characters or their descendents. Like the ST is actually better than most of the EU in that regard since it's not about two halves of the same family fighting forever.

Honestly I think a lot of the ST unwillingness to slow down and spend tons of time worldbuilding is because the Prequels did that constantly and they're not so much films as more an argument for the destruction of the very idea of fiction. It's an over corection, and one that largely works because well, it doesn't actually matter how the setting came about, just that it exists and it works on some pretty basic themes and ideas.
 
keios said:
When you release a work as a sequel or follow-up to an existing body of material, there are generally expectations for how it interacts with that material. These expectations don't come from fan entitlement. They are in fact integral to a basic understanding of narrative and art.

What are the stakes in Star Wars if every generation is doomed to keep fighting the same war? That's a real and unanswered question raised by TFA.
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VolantRedX said:
Except literally every work in Star Wars has been about pretty much the same exact war waged by the same characters or their descendents. Like the ST is actually better than most of the EU in that regard since it's not about two halves of the same family fighting forever.
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The EU long, long ago descended into almost 40k levels of "this is all pointless, nothing ever changes - at least not for the better." TFA retreading the OT for real political reasons (discredited Leia, not actually a great political figure, can't convince the New Republic to treat Space ISIS seriously) is less bad than some of the cosmic "lol screwed again" the EU runs on. It's not even an offense, it's an improvement.

Really, there's no reason Star Wars as a setting is the way it is. Why does something like Tatooine even exist? Because every rich person and their kids on Coruscant are assholes who can't be bothered to make the galaxy better?
 
Kodiak said:
Really, there's no reason Star Wars as a setting is the way it is. Why does something like Tatooine even exist? Because every rich person and their kids on Coruscant are assholes who can't be bothered to make the galaxy better?
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Why does something like Sentinel Island exist on Earth? Or homeless people in the USA? Or large chunks of post-colonial Africa's poorer regions? Because not everyone will efficiently allocate everything to help everyone.

Plus Hutts.
 
The Imperator said:
Why does something like Sentinel Island exist on Earth? Or homeless people in the USA? Or large chunks of post-colonial Africa's poorer regions? Because not everyone will efficiently allocate everything to help everyone.

Plus Hutts.
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Considering the fact that Star Wars contains many allegories to contemporary and historical politics, I'd say the existence of impoverished Outer Rim planets like Tatooine is meant to illustrate exactly this point: life is glitzy and technologically-advanced for certain regions, planets, and people of means.

Science fiction and fantasy actually are frequently used to illustrate real societies and Star Wars is no exception.
 
Or Luke's story works better if he's some provincial nobody farm kid who saves the day. I mean the real reason that Star Wars involves Wars and Stars is sort of self-evident right? The whole Rebels vs Empire bit is played out, but it's a comforting story device that the mass market will buy right into.
 
The Imperator said:
Why does something like Sentinel Island exist on Earth? Or homeless people in the USA? Or large chunks of post-colonial Africa's poorer regions? Because not everyone will efficiently allocate everything to help everyone.

Plus Hutts.
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Heavy W. Guy said:
Considering the fact that Star Wars contains many allegories to contemporary and historical politics, I'd say the existence of impoverished Outer Rim planets like Tatooine is meant to illustrate exactly this point: life is glitzy and technologically-advanced for certain regions, planets, and people of means.

Science fiction and fantasy actually are frequently used to illustrate real societies and Star Wars is no exception.
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Except Earth doesn't work that way despite the most civilized, liberal areas not being a fraction as disproportionately wealthy and industrially powerful to the Outer Rim as the Galactic Core is supposed to have been for thousands of years. Earth as a whole gets to be a materially better place to live on the scale of decades. Again, this sort of thing happens in 40k where interstellar travel is unreliable and the administration of things is notoriously haphazard at best. But Star Wars runs on super easy and cheap FTL, cheap to the point that it makes sense to be Han Solo rather than sell the ship and live comfortably, making it the broad equivalent of a car or speedboat. And again, its run on that for many thousands of years.

It should be no problem whatsoever in any sense for Coruscant - even if it was just Coruscant and not Coruscant as one of many old, super wealthy, politically aligned worlds - to have imposed their version of society everywhere you can reach with those hyperdrives a long, long time ago.
 
Being able to get anywhere quickly -- which is certainly largely possible in Star Wars -- doesn't mean you have any particular reason to do so. A galaxy is a big, big, place, y'know?
 
Kodiak said:
Except Earth doesn't work that way despite the most civilized, liberal areas not being a fraction as disproportionately wealthy and industrially powerful to the Outer Rim as the Galactic Core is supposed to have been for thousands of years. Earth as a whole gets to be a materially better place to live on the scale of decades. Again, this sort of thing happens in 40k where interstellar travel is unreliable and the administration of things is notoriously haphazard at best. But Star Wars runs on super easy and cheap FTL, cheap to the point that it makes sense to be Han Solo rather than sell the ship and live comfortably, making it the broad equivalent of a car or speedboat. And again, its run on that for many thousands of years.

It should be no problem whatsoever in any sense for Coruscant - even if it was just Coruscant and not Coruscant as one of many old, super wealthy, politically aligned worlds - to have imposed their version of society everywhere you can reach with those hyperdrives a long, long time ago.
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But again it would lessen the impact of Luke being a nobody farm boy from some dead end rock becoming a hero. Star Wars wasn't intended to be some worldbuilding exercise or a hard sci-fi economic study of human nature. It's just a fairy tale in space. You're not supposed to think this hard about it. Of course, there are some flaws if you try to apply a bunch of real-world logic to this make-believe story, the same can be said of Snow White or Lord of the Rings. It literally opens with a version "Once upon a Time, in a Land Far Away".
 
VolantRedX said:
But again it would lessen the impact of Luke being a nobody farm boy from some dead end rock becoming a hero. Star Wars wasn't intended to be some worldbuilding exercise or a hard sci-fi economic study of human nature. It's just a fairy tale in space. You're not supposed to think this hard about it. Of course, there are some flaws if you try to apply a bunch of real-world logic to this make-believe story, the same can be said of Snow White or Lord of the Rings. It literally opens with a version "Once upon a Time, in a Land Far Away".
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Star Wars is clearly meant to mirror real societies and histories, but in a very loose way. Parallels between Star Wars and our own society are more a suggestion than a hard-and-fast rule.

foamy said:
Being able to get anywhere quickly -- which is certainly largely possible in Star Wars -- doesn't mean you have any particular reason to do so. A galaxy is a big, big, place, y'know?
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Also, if we're going to make this stand on plausibility analysis, it does bear mentioning that many rich and developed nations still have major issues with poverty, homelessness, and economic inequality. Many of which are actually becoming worse as our society becomes more technologically-advanced and interconnected.
 
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Kodiak said:
to have imposed their version of society everywhere you can reach with those hyperdrives a long, long time ago.
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I wonder why a setting where there's a rich mega-society dominating the galaxy that could theoretically impose their will across the stars would still have slaves and poor people?

Obviously no reason, I guess it's the setting that's wrong.
 
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Reveen said:
I wonder why a setting where there's a rich mega-society dominating the galaxy that could theoretically oppose their will across the stars would still have slaves and poor people?

Obviously no reason, I guess it's the setting that's wrong.
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There's a part from Episode I where Padme is completely shocked to discover that enslavement is still an extant practise on Tattooine. So it's not even a case of "People are aware of the bad situation but simply choose to do nothing" but rather "People aren't even aware of the situation to start with".
 
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