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artist-issues · 2 months ago

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are there any controversial pieces of media that you like? why is it controversial? why do you like it? do you defend it against people who don't like it, and if you do, how?

Do I

Oh boy

This answer is going to dive in to how I've worked out "The Right Way to Make Sequels." So it'll be another long one.

I really, truly like Star Wars: The Last Jedi. And without that movie, I would not like The Force Awakens as much as I also like it.

TLJ is one of the most hotly contested Star Wars movies of all time, which is saying something, because the Star Wars audience loves to hotly contest everything.

I think Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the best Star Wars film since the original trilogy. I would rather rewatch it than any of the original movies, or the prequel movies, or any other Star Wars media.

Because it's just good. It's just a really good movie—and it is also a really good Star Wars movie, because it nails the whole theme of Star Wars, which is "Faith Triumphs Over Fear."

But. Not everybody measures the phrase "really good movie" or the the phrase "good Star Wars movie" by the same metrics I do.

You know that I believe a story is good when it reminds you of the Good, the Beautiful, the True, or all of them at once—by nailing the "main point" or "theme," instead of being entertaining alone. Add to that the fact that I believe a Star Wars movie (or any franchise movie, or story-sequel) is good when it believably emphasizes the overall main-point of its predecessors, without losing the ability to be compelling.

To be "believable," it has to make sure that the characters (if they're returning from their predecessor appearances) make in-character choices. It does not mean that those returning-characters have to make choices that the audience approves of. Nobody likes the fact that the two characters in La La Land choose not to stay together forever. But there comes a point when it doesn't matter what the audience likes, it matters what the characters "would do."

Anyway.

Another way to have the sequel be "believable" is to make sure that what filmmakers call the "style & tone" stay somewhat familiar, echoing their predecessors. There's a lot of wiggle room for this. Some deviation from what the predecessors did in terms of style or even is good and right. But you want to keep the core stuff—because "style & tone" are just another tool used to "nail the main point" that the predecessors used, so you don't want to change it too much.

What I mean is, in The Last Jedi, you have things like:

Epic-scale visuals (dramatic shots that make use of big objects and light and shadow in the composition)

Dramatic Use of Color (Red is bad, blue is good, black is bad, white is good—very in-your-face symbolism)

Quirky Alien Cutaways (even though it's a dramatic adventure, you still sometimes cutaway to see a funky alien or a funny little creature, to remind you this is a fun space-romp.)

Somewhat-Obvious Adventurous One-Liner Dialogue (No explanation needed)

INTENSE emphasis on orchestral score (I don't have to explain this, Star Wars is one of the greatest examples of all time for music in movies)

All of the above contributes to the "tone and style" of a Star Wars movie. The Original movies have that. Most of the Prequel Trilogy has it, too. The Last Jedi does it right. You're supposed to feel heights of "operatic" drama, but it's not working very hard to be subtle or "clever." It's just common-sense, easily-accessible storytelling, from the lighting to the colors to the dialogue. Everyone of all ages can watch and enjoy.

(It doesn't mean a Star Wars movie is not profound—it means that it lets simple-truths shine, because truths that are plain and simple are profound, and only arrogant "intellectuals" can't accept that and clamor for something more "complex" just for the pleasure of hearing the gears in their own heads click. Anyway.)

So The Last Jedi gets that right. You know what doesn't?

Andor. The Star Wars show on Disney+. Andor does not get the Star Wars Style & Tone right. It tries too hard to be complex. It is all about grey areas and blurring the line between right and wrong, good and evil. It tries really hard to be "sophisticated" and "for mature fans." And its style and tone reflect that. It doesn't feel like Star Wars.

So you see how I can show the different examples of what gets this right and what gets this wrong, even in other areas of Star Wars—I'm not just biased and using the movie I like as a template. I enjoyed Andor. But Andor is not a good Star Wars story; not if I apply the metric fairly.

So that's "believable." You have to make the audience believe that they are re-entering the world, and seeing the characters, or the story itself, continue. Otherwise you lose them. Because you got them in the first place with a promise: "you're going to see a continuation."

Let's move on to "compelling."

To be "compelling," you have to tell a good story. That's it. That's all.

It is good and right to re-enter a franchise's "world" and shine a light on the same main-point as the original stories—from a new set of characters' perspective. It is good and right to not re-tell and reboot the same old characters and recount their lives, over and over. It is good and right to make a new story that continues the theme of the old story.

And as long as you're doing that, you don't need to follow any other supposed "rules" that the "fandom" made up.

The Last Jedi does that perfectly. It takes the characters that were introduced in "The Force Awakens," takes into account where each of them began and where we last left them, and then believably and compellingly moves forward.

That's all it was supposed to do. And it did it, super super well. In a way most Star Wars media does not.

Like for example, I said Andor is a bad continuation of the Star Wars franchise because it gets the Style and Tone wrong, right? So it's not "believable" as a Star Wars story?

Well, the other side of the coin is also true. Ahsoka, another Disney+ Star Wars story, is on the other end of the spectrum. It might nail (in lots of ways) the "Style and Tone" of a Star Wars story, to make it believable. But it's not compelling. Because it gets the other thing wrong: it's a bad story.

The Last Jedi gets both "believability" and "compelling storytelling" totally right.

But the fans didn't want a good story. They didn't want a continuation of the Star Wars theme, because they probably never really thought about what that theme really was.

No. The fans wanted what I call 💫 A Checklist of Star Wars Stuff Disguised As a Story 💫 . They wanted to hear more name-drops of characters from Deep Cuts in the previous movies. They wanted the New Characters to have familial ties to their favorite Old Characters. They wanted the movies to be about the Old Characters—so they really wanted Luke Skywalker to come out swinging as an undetectable Jedi Messiah with no character flaws who makes the New Characters look like fools because the fans hate the New Characters. They also wanted more Old Characters to come back, and they would only have liked the New Characters if those characters, in and of themselves, were...bad characters, because Star Wars fans, by and large, really often forget what made their precious Old Characters well-written characters in the first place. And that was: human flaws.

Luke is always focused on how he can control his future, especially when it comes to fulfilling his destiny or saving his friends. That's a flaw. That's pride. But Star Wars fans forgot that that's Luke's "fatal flaw." They just remember the nostalgia of green lightsaber backflips and retconned Legends books.

So then when Rey comes along and is focused on her past, and has her own pride issues, the fans go "ew, she's so annoying, let's nitpick about whether or not she could win a fight in real life."

Because Star Wars fans went into The Last Jedi believing that "A Good Star Wars Story has Luke Skywalker Being a Total Beast, a Realized Messiah who Dominates New Characters," or "A Good Star Wars Story Has Ultra-Powerful Villains Who Fit the Previously-Done-to-Death Mold, Like a Video Game Boss..." then they found the movie unbelievable. They don't believe it because they had silly expectations going in.

The one thing they can't deny was that it was compelling. Every showing I went to, even way past the premier, you could cut the tension in the theater with a knife when you were supposed to, you could feel the air move as everybody gasped when they were supposed to, you could hear laughter at all the right moments and empathy with the characters at all the right moments. But then a few months after the release, and online, everybody's claiming to have hated it. I know that's not true. I experienced it.

But Mark Hamill, the guy who played Luke Skywalker, ran his mouth about how he didn't understand Luke's character direction. He very cleverly, in interviews, set himself up as the Actor who Understands His Character being ignored and misunderstood by a Plebian Director...and as a "consequence," they "got Luke all wrong." So then of course the nostalgic fan base, who already had silly expectations, feels those silly expectations justified by the actor from their childhood. Who is wrong about his own character, I don't care, that's happened before, actors are wrong about their own characters, get over it.

Anyway. My point is, The Last Jedi is controversial because it's a good story, and not a Star Wars Checklist Disguised as a Story. And people have a skewed idea of what stories are for, so no wonder they have a skewed understanding of what made Star Wars good—and if you don't know what makes it good, you won't be satisfied when the real thing comes back around in the form of a good sequel. Because you thought "good" meant "name drops, intellectual tickling, and a regurgitation of Focus on Old Characters to entertain me."

You could apply this whole measurement-system for sequels to where the MCU did everything right for so long, and how it's doing it all wrong here recently. Anyway.

I have a lot of posts expanding on this. One or two argument-reblog-matches with fans who hated the movie, too. They're not very popular, because people have been majorly gaslit by the loudest Star Wars fans concerning the Sequel Trilogy.

Thanks for reading!

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