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[Mahadev]

Second from the left has a banging rack. I could deal with a little crazy in exchange.

"a little"

 

[teezzy]

#Phonepunk#

I'd argue that the tragedy of those iconic characters was a brave departure in what we would have expected, and further grounded the reality of the storytelling moreso than it was a slap in the face to fans. The Last Jedi isnt the most intelligent film ever, far from it, but it took plenty of risks. People hated it for that reason. Few loved it for that reason. I'm one of the few.

Therearedozensofus.gif

 

[SpongebobSquaredance]

All you have to do is watch Return of the Jedi and look at where it points to vs where we ended up. If you refuse to see it then you are unwilling to be critical of corporate product.

I don't watch movies with a magnifying glass and this mindset of "oh look, here is a leader figure portrayed by a women, here is a black/asian guy just for the sake of diversity" to jump to the conclusion its woke propaganda. I just watch the movie and if I enjoy it then the movie did what it supposed to do. Some of y'all really sound like you just can't accept roles being played by minorities and women, except the women is playing some sex symbol or cliché from yesterday and the minorities only play second fiddle (as in easily interchangeable roles). At least that's what it sounds like.

 

[ExpandKong]

Thinking about it now, I think the SJW Agenda argument really only applies to The Last Jedi.

TFA was basically a soft reboot, played things very safe, not the best movie in the franchise but let's see where this goes.

Rise of Skywalker was just a bad movie, that's all there is to it. My 9 year old nephew said it felt like they tried to cram three movies into one, which I thought was a good way of putting it since Rian basically burned every bridge he could with TLJ.

TLJ has its big reeee capitalism casino planet sidequest of course, but the big thing for me with that one that says it's pushing an agenda is that every single prominent male character is made to look like a dipshit.

• Leia and Holdo both treat Poe, their best pilot, like a stupid asshole for the entire movie
• Kylo Ren is first seen getting scolded like a toddler by Snoke and responds by throwing a destructive temper tantrum
• Snoke, in turn, dies in about the dumbest way imagineable
• Hux gets turned into such an embarrassing joke of a character that JJ basically had to make Hux 2.0 with General Pryde in RoS
• You could write a whole book about the character assassination of Luke Skywalker
• After his whole character arc in the first movie, Finn is put back to square one here, starting the movie by trying to steal an escape pod to flee and ending it by getting his big hero moment snatched away by Rose (whose actions at that time, for all they knew, sealed the fates of all their friends in the cave)

I dunno I feel like I've said all I ever want to say about TLJ and the Disney Trilogy at this point but there's a bit for you.

Lol

Glad we are all in agreement that the second one from the left can get it.

I wanted to ask a sincere thing for you guys. Do these movies actually appeal to girls or do they just fail to appeal to guys while also failing to appeal to girls?

I mean... I'll take my own daughter as an example. She is 6, she loves the Star Wars universe, but she does because of Darth Vader and Yoda. She normally doesn't care about the girl characters in action stuff. She is really into super hero, super sentai, transformers, thundercats, really, a lot of action stuff, anything involving robots, dinosaurs, heroes, etc, and it's always the male heroes that attract her. She was never into any princess stuff and her main hobby is Lego.

What I'm trying to understand here is... do girls like when stuff pander directly to them or would they like the action stuff as it was anyway? I started to think about it when I was finishing Robocop arcade with a friend of mine last weekend (thinking about how pure action flicks are almost inexistent these days).

The girls that I met, throughout my life, who were into action stuff, be it movies, games, animes, etc, they liked the stuff because of how the stuff originally was... Hell, even my mom, her favorite movie franchise was Die Hard. I think these changed universes may attract more people, I guess, but I have the impression it taints the legacy and the girls who would like this stuff would have done it anyway if they didn't. Does my point make any sense?

I think what it is is that girls, like boys, just like good shit. Your daughter likes good shit. My daughter also likes good shit. These movies are not good shit.

Episode 8 is the best episode since Empire.

Oh man your opinions get even worse away from the Politics board.

Last Jedi was the antithesis of the major Hollywood blockbuster, as much as a Disney produced Star Wars could be. The very fact that so few are able to give the film that credit is unfortunate. People point to Luke drinking milk from an alien teet as to why the movie stunk, but I'd argue that's exactly why it was awesome. Different horses for different courses, I guess.

That's all well and good and would be great as a standalone sci-fi film, but the problem here is that absolutely nobody walked in to episode eight of a nine part saga looking for that experience.

 

[teezzy]

ExpandKong

Truthfully, I kinda did. I've grown to love TFA, but I was absolutely one of the people who saw it in theaters and was dismayed at how much it seemed to follow the exact story beats as A New Hope. Seeing such a harsh left turn for Last Jedi was delightful.

I'm the outlier here though, I'm aware.

 

[ExpandKong]

ExpandKong

Truthfully, I kinda did. I've grown to love TFA, but I was absolutely one of the people who saw it in theaters and was dismayed at how much it seemed to follow the exact story beats as A New Hope. Seeing such a harsh left turn for Last Jedi was delightful.

I'm the outlier here though, I'm aware.

I had the same feeling about TFA - I thought it was even a little too on the nose when Han basically said during their planning session near the end "oh it's just a Death Star but bigger we did one of those before it's fine." There's giving the audience a knowing wink and then there's looking into the camera and saying "we are all out of ideas."

Maybe with someone to rein RJ in, TLJ could've hit that sweet spot, shaking things up without appearing to just shit all over everything that came before. I will say there is exactly one scene in that movie that I really liked, and it was the one in the beginning where Snoke just dunks all over Kylo Ren, calling him a dumbass little Vader fanboy and making fun of his helmet. At that point it felt to me like "okay, they're acknowledging that the first movie leaned too heavily on the OT, that's kind of fun."

 

[Hulk_Smash]

You are

Oh damn! SICK BURN BRUH!

 

[JimiNutz]

omg he replied to someone!

get em beast!

One day I'll get a response from the legendary beast

 

[plushyp]

They're actually really cool movies.

8 > 7 >9 Rogue One imho

I don't watch movies with a magnifying glass and this mindset of "oh look, here is a leader figure portrayed by a women, here is a black/asian guy just for the sake of diversity" to jump to the conclusion its woke propaganda. I just watch the movie and if I enjoy it then the movie did what it supposed to do. Some of y'all really sound like you just can't accept roles being played by minorities and women, except the women is playing some sex symbol or cliché from yesterday and the minorities only play second fiddle (as in easily interchangeable roles). At least that's what it sounds like.

Paging brap to post his "y'all" meme.

 

[plushyp]

Oops double post

 

[Dazrael]

To me I think the reason that I don’t like The Last Jedi is that it feels such a spiteful film. It treats its characters and plot lines in such a spiteful way. Johnson has admitted that it was his MO to polarise and seemed to revel in his part to destabilise the fan base. Hardly what you would expect from a director taking the reins of a popular franchise. And yet the film is nowhere near as edgy as it thinks it is, it plays it so safe when it could have gone off in any subversive direction.

The Rise of Skywalker, while also being a bad film, at least treats its characters better and has somewhat of a reverence to the lore. I can appreciate it a bit more for that. But the spite on show in TLJ just makes it unwatchable.

 

[teezzy]

The real tragedy was that we never got a single scene with Leia, Han, and Luke all kicking ass together

 

[Hammerite Zealot]

I don't know if it was pandering but Disney trilogy is simply really bad. To be honest after episode 8 I've skipped watching 9. Actually in Last Jedi both Finn and Rose where turned into joke characters so I don't know if it's pro SJW.

 

[Blond]

Its mainly the 2nd one. RJ's movie.

Basically every guy is emasculated and turned into dumb idiots. Poe's whole story line is he is a dumb idiot and should just listen to STRANG WAMANZ. Holdo might as well just been named STRANG WAMAN because that was essentially her character.

The first and third one not so much, outside of Rey being a mary sue and clearly an attempt to make the force FEMALE and to appeal to WAMANZ. Nothing really wrong with that but Star Wars appealed to Women anyways even with male leads. The bigger problem is that they shit on the OG cast and the third one was straight up stupid and retarded. The first one is probably the best. But that also has baggage as it starts so many threads that get dropped so its almost a waste of a movie.

i still hold the opinion no one should look at these 3 movies as anything more than Disney trying to recoup their investment because look at the sheer speed episode 7 was teased.

The next trilogy is where I think it’ll have more thought and care put into it because they managed to make the entire MCU with together but couldn’t do the same with a trilogy.

 

[Grand Theft Scratchy]

The biggest problem with the sequel trilogy for me was that they more or less recycled story beats and setpieces from previous movies. It didn't really feel like a new trilogy. The fact that they killed off Snoke only to bring back Palpatine also seemed lazy and desperate. That said, I just pretend the sequel trilogy doesn't exist. On the other hand, I did really enjoy Rogue One and Solo and would be interested to see more anthology films.

 

[brap]

Paging brap to post his "y'all" meme.

I don't watch movies with a magnifying glass and this mindset of "oh look, here is a leader figure portrayed by a women, here is a black/asian guy just for the sake of diversity" to jump to the conclusion its woke propaganda. I just watch the movie and if I enjoy it then the movie did what it supposed to do. Some of y'all really sound like you just can't accept roles being played by minorities and women, except the women is playing some sex symbol or cliché from yesterday and the minorities only play second fiddle (as in easily interchangeable roles). At least that's what it sounds like.

 

[Fbh]

They never felt that woke to me.

I just didn't like them because of their crappy story, writing and charactes, JJ's complete lack of creativity and ability to do anything that isn't recycling old shit and banking on nostalgia....and whatever the fuck the Last Jedi was supposed to be.

 

[MrMephistoX]

They really aren’t SJW bs they just aren’t very good and that’s the excuse for why: and this is coming from someone who liked TLJ.

TFA was cool the first time since it was the first time we’d seen any of the OT characters for a while but JJ failed to do anything interesting with them.

TLJ attempted to do something interesting with Luke, Rey and Kylo and the TROS just failed to capitalize on it.

Mando, Rogue One and Solo + Clone Wars S7 were fantastic though so I think the blame is squarely on JJ. He’s great at world building but shitty at story.

 

[SpongebobSquaredance]

Yeah, there

 

[Davey Cakes]

The real tragedy was that we never got a single scene with Leia, Han, and Luke all kicking ass together

Right? Maybe the filmmakers thought it'd be too much fan pandering? Maybe Harrison Ford just didn't want to stick around for two movies (if the "plan" was always to have Luke in Episode VIII)?

It's sad how these films were basically rushed to market. They all needed the full three years, with a consistent director and writers coming together for a solid narrative.

Disney fucked up. End of story. Star Wars has always been a business, but Disney's approach cranked the cynicism to eleven.

 

[JoduanER2]

Awful movies, Rise being the worse. Zero imagination, passion or creativity. Is like it was made by a roundtable of old executives who only care about finances, but at the same time are afraid of pissing the wrong people.

 

[teezzy]

People who hate the sequel trilogy are neglecting how rarely sequels live up to the originals in the first place. Movies like Back to the Future 2, Aliens, or Terminator 2 are the exception to the rule - not the rule.

For Empire and Return of the Jedi to be as awesome as they were was nearly unimaginable. On top of that, you had the entire Lucas envisioned prequel trilogy, and then the sequel trilogy which he had little to no involvement in.

Frankly, we should be grateful 8, 9, 10, Solo, and Rogue One were as competent as they were. They're not bad movies whatsoever, and only Rise of Skywalker really felt rushed in tying up way too many loose ends at once.

Yall some nerds, quite frankly

 

[docmindbender]

Pointless moaning. There's gonna be dark skinned heroes in yer new LoTR's too, i guess if you get your panties in a bunch about that stuff, bummer for you or whatever.

 

[Tranquil]

I'll give any of the new star wars movies at least one watch. Thus why I only watched them a single time. I just didn't care about what was going on in any of them, even the spin offs, they all felt soulless.

 

[Stimpak]

“SJW/Woke pandering” aside, the sequel trilogy movies (except Rogue One which I thought was ok and Solo which I haven’t seen) are just mediocre movies.

I got much more enjoyment out of the endless fast and furious movies than I did out of these new Star Wars films.

they at least know what their target audience wants. you know what to expect with the branding, unlike Star Wars/most of what comes from Disney now.

New Star Wars doesn’t seem to know what it wants. I’d rather it go full SJW than be bad at being propaganda and bad at being a movie simultaneously.

 

[Neolombax]

Honestly, I loved TFA. didnt like the other two. Not because they had SJW agenda, but because they were shit movies, especially the last one. I've always felt Rey was more of a Sith than a Jedi, something about how she often goes into rage mode.

 

[teezzy]

Sequel trilogy > mcu

 

[lock2k]

Anything > mcu

 

[appaws]

Pointless moaning. There's gonna be dark skinned heroes in yer new LoTR's too, i guess if you get your panties in a bunch about that stuff, bummer for you or whatever.

Nobody cares about that if they aren't set unrealistically in a historical movie. Anyway, I don't think anyone in this thread so far has indicated that as a problem in these shittastic recent SW movies. The problem is just that they suck. They are disjointed, unspirited, and dull. The main proof will be in 20 years when nobody even remembers them, unlike the original trilogy which will entertain for generations to come.

I was a big fanboy. I went to theater a super excited for TFA. I even really liked the prequels because at least they were fun action movies. Disney beat it all out of me.

 

[Elcid]

Star Wars Episode 7 was actually the first movie I ever noticed the woke agenda. I remember seeing the bad guys, all white males. Then the scene where the rebels all run to their X-Wings, and every single one of them is either a "minority". "Minority" meaning anything that's not a white male. Stupid fucking mentality. I walked out of there so confused like, "huh...that seemed like oddly specific casting..."

*For the record, I never saw 8 or 9. 7 was shitty enough for my taste.

 

[MetalAlien]

Lol

 

[Stouffers]

Solo was the worst offender. Female robot asking for equal rights. Main villain was a rich guy on a yacht "stealing" from poor minorities.

Besides Mando, Solo is the best thing to squirt out of Star Wars since the Disney acquisition.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

Sequel trilogy > mcu

Not really hard to disagree with. The MCU has like three above average movies.

 

[highrider]

Go on YouTube and subscribe to The Critical Drinker . He does it in a very articulate and entertaining way

 

[Halo is Back]

Rogue One is really good by itself. VII is not so bad. The rest is just soulless corporation blob.

Rogue One is probably the only one I genuinely enjoyed standing the test of time. It's still not great imo the main character is just really dull and most of the other cast but it was still a fun dark/military take on Star Wars I enjoyed.

 

[Halo is Back]

It kills people that Star Wars today is better than ever.

This guy got jokes over here, real edgy one too

 

[Scotty W]

Everyone is just swinging at the necks of the hydra here. You have to take it to the source.

The source of the all the problems with these films is the treatment of good and evil. Everything flows from this.

Finn just suddenly realizes that the Empire is evil. Consciousness of evil and our involvement in it is never so clear in real life. The Bad Guy ( I cannot bear to type that stupid name) murders his father and suffers no negative psychological consequences.

There is no struggle to be good. If you have doubts you must be a Nazi.

What is perhaps worse is that what motivates the drive to alter the character of good and evil in these films is the intention to modify our perception of good and evil in the real world. What is offensive in all this is the way that this new morality dovetails with the political program to uncritically exalt those who it would exalt, and demonize those who it would demonize.

 

[SpongebobSquaredance]

The problem is just that they suck.

Criticism for those films is fine. What I don't get though are those people that literally see anything as woke/sjw propaganda. Like you can't have a movie with a female lead nowadays without someone coming up telling its woke and agenda driven.

 

[lock2k]

Criticism for those films is fine. What I don't get though are those people that literally see anything as woke/sjw propaganda. Like you can't have a movie with a female lead nowadays without someone coming up telling its woke and agenda driven.

I understand where they're coming from.

It's not having a female lead... it's the fact that most of the films nowadays, when they have a white man, they make the character fucking stupid and often depending on the female. Or they make the villain the evil white man archetype. They would never release a movie like Street Fighter nowadays where Guile was the hero (a super european white guy playing a patriotic american army hero). And they had everything in that movie - people of color, women, everything. So this is where the complaint comes from, not from diversity of characters itself.

 

[ExpandKong]

Criticism for those films is fine. What I don't get though are those people that literally see anything as woke/sjw propaganda. Like you can't have a movie with a female lead nowadays without someone coming up telling its woke and agenda driven.

I'll give you that, but in the case of Star Wars in particular, they weren't exactly quiet about their agenda.

Not really hard to disagree with. The MCU has like three above average movies.

So about two more than the sequel trilogy, then.

 

[Happosai]

Mostly it is because of VIII spends all its time lecturing the male heroes. Do you recall lots of lecturing in previous Star Wars films? Yet we have Poe getting chewed out by Holdo in a terrible subplot. We have Finn getting lectured by Rose. He was a hero in the last film, his hero turn was the first scene of the movie, and yet he still must be lectured to. By a new character who we haven’t seen before. Two main heroes who spend a good deal of time getting lectured to on heroics, by women who are literally fucking things up to the point of getting almost the entire resistance killed off. If that isn’t forcing in an agenda I don’t know what is.

So instead of the heroes working together they are all split up to be lectured to. That does not an enjoyable film make. Then we learn that Luke is suicidal. Again not enjoyable to watch a suicidal mopey person. Do you recall any suicidal main characters in previous Star Wars films? No. It was a massive waste of time. Why is it here? Rian wants to tell us that heroes aren’t all that great. No shit? So the same thing he is telling in the Poe and Finn stories. Coincidentally every single male hero is learning that heroes are bad. Yeah no agenda /s

Ultimately all you have to do is look at how all the male characters were treated. Han Solo’s arc of becoming a committed leader was rejected to make him a dead beat dad. Feminism thinks fatherhood is evil. This is why there are no nuclear families in the series. Luke apparently dies alone. Kylo Ren turned to patricide (for which he is rewarded). Lando even had his child stolen from him into slavery. Not a single male character has a good ending.

All you have to do is watch Return of the Jedi and look at where it points to vs where we ended up. Yoga’s dying wish to Luke was “pass on what you have learned” but Luke is a shit teacher as well as a shit hero apparently.

If you refuse to see it then you are unwilling to be critical of corporate product.

Sometimes I just look forward to you jumping into these threads with reason. For me personally -- we didn't even need to go the route we did with the originally trilogy. If you look back at Star Wars (later retitled "A New Hope"); you have a complete cinematic masterpiece with that alone. Empire Strikes Back was more dark and daring; yet, fans still loved it. Return of the Jedi is more of the fun family adventure Star Wars movie and I feel opened the door for sequels and prequels. What came out with this last trilogy is a face-value read out of pretty much the lackluster and dead talent Hollywood attempted to assemble in every department. It almost seems as if the only thing people remember about the last trilogy is either the merchandising or how much they hate it. That's about all it's worth. A few toys and t-shirts and a stain on the reputation of Star Wars.

 

[teezzy]

I understand where they're coming from.

It's not having a female lead... it's the fact that most of the films nowadays, when they have a white man, they make the character fucking stupid and often depending on the female. Or they make the villain the evil white man archetype. They would never release a movie like Street Fighter nowadays where Guile was the hero (a super european white guy playing a patriotic american army hero). And they had everything in that movie - people of color, women, everything. So this is where the complaint comes from, not from diversity of characters itself.

Yeah but people who share the "ew sjw pandering" sentiment dont seem to realize that a lot of women and minorities whatever, were sick of seeing characters which represented them more always falling into similar stereotypes. There's a good balance of both now, and the whole "wheres my brave white male hero?!!" outcry seems weird to me.

I find both sides pretty annoying tbh. A good story is a good story. Representation and character ethnicity/gender be damned.

Wake me up when they remake Escape From New York with a transgendered Snake Plissken lol

 

[belmarduk]

A lesbian alien kiss is too triggering for conservative snowflakes.
In The Last Jedi, Rose was just not a compelling character and the actor who played her was talentless. That has nothing to do with her ethnicity.

 

[ExpandKong]

A lesbian alien kiss is too triggering for conservative snowflakes.
In The Last Jedi, Rose was just not a compelling character and the actor who played her was talentless. That has nothing to do with her ethnicity.

All the arguments and opinions laid out in this thread and you zero in on the blink-and-you'll-miss-it out of focus girl-girl kiss from the last five minutes of three terrible movies.

 

[lock2k]

Yeah but people who share the "ew sjw pandering" sentiment dont seem to realize that a lot of women and minorities whatever, were sick of seeing characters which represented them more always falling into similar stereotypes. There's a good balance of both now, and the whole "wheres my brave white male hero?!!" outcry seems weird to me.

I find both sides pretty annoying tbh. A good story is a good story. Representation and character ethnicity/gender be damned.

Wake me up when they remake Escape From New York with a transgendered Snake Plissken lol

OK, I get your point. However, people who are fans of something like Rambo may never get another movie like it again. They had a new Rambo, but it's legacy stuff. Try to develop something like that. You won't get funds for that. And even if the representation is more balanced, one type of movie or protagonist didn't have to erase the other. It's such bullshit. True variety is not like this.

 

[Kadayi]

I don't know about pandering, but poorly written creatively bankrupt would be how I'd describe it.

 

[SpongebobSquaredance]

One of my favorite movies is Kill Bill. I don't even want to know what would happen if it was released today. lol

All the arguments and opinions laid out in this thread and you zero in on the blink-and-you'll-miss-it out of focus girl-girl kiss from the last five minutes of three terrible movies.

I've missed the kissing scene. lol
But I was super tired at that point and XI was a weird movie anyway. Thats my problem with the sequel-trilogy, they are not as well connected to each other as the prequel-trilogy (while I do like the sequel-trilogy more except III) and the classic-trilogy.

 

[Goro Majima]

I dunno guys maybe we shouldn't be so hasty in calling Star Wars pandering...

 

[YCoCg]

I don't think them being "woke" was the issue, it just fell flat with the whole "subvert expectations" bullshit which made the entire thing feel pointless. TFA did a decent job of capturing the feel of Star Wars and setting up all these new characters, only for TLJ to turn around and go "LOL NOPE" on most of them. Combine that with the "twists" in ROS and it just all feel like it was throwing shit at the wall and they cared more about not being predictable than telling a detailed story.

 

[LaughingStock]

It's always about the strong white woman leading opressed minorities against the evil white men.