#imagine being so irrelevant you die in the prequel

[aokuni]

it hit me just now (yes im slow) that gojo probably looked at his friends like this because even in death, the very end of his stressful life, he was still completely misunderstood by his own closest companions. the ones he always trusted, and they don’t even understand his motives or character. they just see him as a rude, selfish, narcissistic person.

that just hurts man, that really hurts.

way to hammer that his friends didnt gaf about him right on his death bed.

the fact everyone thought the same of gojo just. its so wrong. i need gege GONE. EXILE HIM FROM EARTH RN.

getos so fake on god how could you do your bestie like that (nanamin youre not escaping this either)(haibara how could you)

[mysterycharacterbracket]

Round L5, Poll #31 (Losers bracket 1O semifinal #1)

Remember, this is the losers bracket. We are matching up the winners of round L4 with the losers of round W2. The winner of this poll will move on to round L6, and the loser will be revealed.

Character 90: listen she's an astronomer she's gay she's mean a cat tells her she'll die her journey is for nothing she's lost her lover she's changed her name she's existing in folklore. shes a goddamn nerd., she has adorable glasses. please no one knows her god i want her to win

Character 100: Poor guy is a prequel character who only exists to have his identity stolen. He's a stepping stone for someone else's revenge. He's an innocent guy who became a pawn without ever realising it. He trusted his friend and got backstabbed for it. Can you imagine being his parents, raising a child for 18 years, and as soon as he leaves to go to The Big City he never talks to you again? Can you imagine being his parents, hearing rumors about his exploits at the academy, and they sounds like the actions of an entirely different person? Can you imagine being his identity stealer, and being used in some sort of japan exclusive McDonald's hamburger commercial? Can you imagine having your identity stolen by someone so Thoroughly, it becomes their default name even after everyone learns of their original name? Can you imagine being so irrelevant that the story forgets your parents even exist until its time to tie up loose ends and kill them, in the same way you died? God did not smile upon him when he was born, and that's hilarious. Poor bastard never stood a chance, i mean he literally died in the same episode he was introduced in. Also he's from texas.

[im-the-punk-who]

Black Sails as John Silver's SuperVillain Origin Story

Okay so I recently got asked about my views on Silver in a roundabout way so HERE ARE SOME OF THEM. I don’t often post about him because honestly I just really dislike him but he’s an extremely well written character and one of the best ‘villains’ I have ever seen portrayed. The reason Black Sails is such a compelling prequel to Treasure Island is that it does not just say ‘John Silver is a villain because he does bad things.’ Like all the characters in Black Sails he is complex, with deep and thoughtful motivations for the things he does. We see him as a villain because Black Sails sets his goals up in opposition to those of the protagonists we want to succeed - Flint and Madi - but he is not villainous in his own right.

But it is the effects of those motivations on himself that, to me, are the most interesting. 

And just up front because I know this is a touchy subject - especially coming from, well, me, lmao. This is how I read Silver. If you disagree, that’s cool. Like literally everything else in Black Sails(and fiction in general), Silver’s character is mutable based on your views and experiences. Tomato/Tomato.

So! To me, the most important thing about John Silver’s character in Black Sails, is who he is in Treasure Island. Black Sails is a prequel, and Silver is a major character in Treasure Island. We see his actions in the book(albeit through the story of the man who survives him, and, oof, isn’t that a bit of a kicker). We know that in this future Silver is still a lying, manipulative and mysterious person, hard not to like but hard to know.

That consistency is the most important part of Long John Silver’s character to me: he doesn’t really change from the beginning of Black Sails to the end, because he’s not really meant to. 

Silver may not exactly like the person he is but there is no point in trying or wanting to change.  In his view, who he is is just as immutable as the world he exists in. 

And that's the brilliance of Black Sails. 

Silver isn’t the way he is because he is ‘evil,’ or because he wants to intentionally cause harm. He is the way he is because it is the only way he’s worked out to survive. It is “the only state in which he can function.” He does not believe in a cosmic story, in a grand design or justice in the world - and because of that he does not see the point in trying to change something that has kept him alive thus far to appease it.

The entirety of the beach flashbacks is, to me, the summation of both Flint and Silver’s characters but this in particular I feel is important:

-Do you really imagine a few weeks of this is going to make much of a difference? Am I not what I am at this point?

-It's better than nothing.

In the grand scheme, Flint and Silver only know each other for about six months. 

Their relationship - especially to Silver - is a transient one. A handful of weeks. Was it ever enough to expect it to make any bit of difference?

But not so for Flint. He truly believes humans are capable of change, and he believes even the smallest bit of progress is worth the effort. Flint takes the things that happen to him and make them a part of him.

But for Silver,

I've come to peace with the knowledge...that there is no storyteller imposing any coherence, nor sense, nor grace upon those events.

Therefore, there's no duty on my part to search for it.

Silver refuses to acknowledge his own story and so is unable or unwilling to see himself as capable of change throughout it. Or even really the need for change. And that’s not said as a negative - that is who he is. That is who his past - whatever it was - has taught him.

And so he consistently acts solely for his own gain, benefit, and safety. Because if he doesn’t, who else is going to?

And this continues the differences between Flint and Silver. 

While Silver is very wrong that his past is irrelevant, he is correct in that it doesn't matter. It doesn’t matter what his past is, because we can clearly see the effects of it. We don't NEED to know his past to understand his actions.

However, without knowing Flint’s backstory - Thomas, Miranda, England’s betrayal - his actions don't make sense. They are erratic: they seem villainous and vile and like the acts of a tyrant or a madman. Because his actions are tied to his story.

But from the very first moment we see Silver fight the cook over what he presumes is a chance at living, Silver is clearly trying to figure out what is best for him. 

He doesn’t care about Flint’s war, or what the treasure could fund. He doesn’t care about the pardons, and he doesn't care about England. He doesn’t care about piracy. All he cares about at first is the life the treasure could buy him. But when he loses his leg, suddenly the thing he literally spent two seasons fucking everyone over for becomes completely inconsequential, because it no longer benefits him.

It is without relevance.

And through the very last time we see him speaking him to Madi, he is doing the same thing. 

That's not to say he doesn't form friendships or care about people. He is, indeed, a hard man not to like, and I think he also genuinely likes people as well. But that doesn’t mean he changes because of them. The friendships he forms with Flint - with Billy, with Muldoon and Randall and the other crew members - the relationship he forms with Madi. They are all real, but they are also all expendable to ensure his own comfort and survival. 

In the first episode of season 2 we’re told point blank:

It’s likely that if our interests were averse, I’d betray you to save myself.

And of course at this point Silver and Flint are little more than necessary enemies, Silver has no reason to want Flint alive. But the pattern holds throughout the whole show. 

Later in season 2, when Flint is thinking about changing tactics to prioritize the pardons over the gold, Silver has no problem screwing over the entire crew(minus the two men he’s recruited) to meet his own ends. It’s what’s best for him, and Silver operates on this assumption that every person needs to look out for themselves. 

And then again, in the finale of season 2 - he saves the crew because it also means saving himself. When Vincent brings up leaving, Silver says that they would likely be killed if they tried - he’s already considered that option and rejected it because his odds of survival are higher sticking with the crew. 

And then of course, in season three, in the maroon cages - you can bet that the fact that flint’s psyche basically controlled whether they all - including him - lived or died was a major driving force behind his dedication to getting Flint to come up with a plan better than Billy’s in which - again - they all likely end up dead. 

His relationships with Madi and Flint in particular are deep, and so it is the worst thought possible when he realizes that they are starting to agree with each other, but not with him. When Madi agrees with Flint over trading the cache for the fort, I read this as the true end of Silver’s support of the war because the war now threatens his personal ‘safety.’

Because at that moment, the thing most important to him is keeping Madi - who he not only has come to care for but who supports him. And she makes him know she supports him. And the prospect of losing that is what ultimately I think drives him to planning to send Flint away, rather than bring Thomas there or some other plan. 

And again it isn’t maliciousness - not outright. He is doing what he thinks he needs to to survive, because he cannot have enough faith in either Flint or Madi to think they won’t drop him the moment he stops being invaluable. And in the end, that lack of faith is what spells the end for any chance he has at having them in his life.

When he thinks Madi might die if they continue, he doesn’t care if she hates him. He doesn’t care if Flint hates him. He doesn’t care if the relationship is destroyed if he gets what he wants out of it. Madi’s survival. The end of the war. An end to Flint and Madi’s relationship so that he can ‘protect’ her from death and choose how he ‘loses’ her. It is always less painful to be the one doing the leaving.

Based on his world view - that you must protect what is in your own interests and the only person you can count on is yourself - that is the right thing to do.

Over and over we see that Silver is mostly interested in other people through the guise of his interest in keeping himself alive. And I also think that because of that, he views himself as expendable to other people as well. 

When Muldoon insists that the crew would take care of him if he needed that, it’s clear that Silver doesn’t believe him. He still believes himself to be expendable unless he is useful. He is constantly managing his image, managing how people see him, managing the things he allows others to see and what dangers or threats they pose to him, because he believes these are the things that keep him safe. Not his friendships, but what he brings to them.

Part of what’s so heartbreaking about Silver’s arc in season 4 is how terrifyingly close he comes to believing himself worthy. He wants the war because the two people who mean the most to him, who he sees as vital to his own survival - Flint and Madi - are both committed to it. And he’s committed to them. But I also think that just for a second, he starts to see their vision. 

When things are going well, when he can’t see the body count, he comes so close. But then of course, when everything falls apart and he is forced to confront once again the horrors of the world, he retreats.

That line he has:

And as long as (I have his true friendship) he is going to have mine.

I see that get thrown around a lot as a declaration of love, of deep feelings - and it is, to an extent. But it is also a sign of the deep mistrust that Silver harbors even when he is not looking to.

Even in this moment when he has Madi, when it must seem like they are nigh unstoppable and Silver himself is poised at the head of this great thing - when he and Flint are closest and when, I assume, Flint couldn’t fathom betraying him. Silver is still thinking in the eventuality that it will happen.

I have his true friendship, and as long as that is true, he is going to have mine. 

Silver’s love is always conditional. And that doesn’t make it any less ‘real’. It doesn’t make it any less important. But it does make it easier to take back. And that’s important for him!! It’s important for Silver’s own safety that he never rely on someone so much that he cannot cut them loose if they pose a ‘danger’ to him.

And to me, that’s the most important thing to realize about Silver. He is a ‘villain’ - and again I use the term loosely because he is ONLY a ‘villain’ because our protagonist’s stories are set in opposition to his - because he will always put himself above the grander goal. 

We see this in Black Sails, and we see this in Treasure Island. John Silver betrays Jim even though he feels conflicted about it. It isn’t until the very end, until Silver sees once again the same opportunity flash before his eyes where someone he loves is in danger and he cannot live with their death, that the treasure itself becomes unimportant again. Black Sails does an incredible job of giving us an antagonist whose defining trait is that he cannot see himself being meaningful in any way that matters. 

Silver ends up destroying just about every relationship he has because of this inability. Time and again when he is faced with an opportunity for growth that comes with hard decisions, he chooses to destroy himself. Because it is easy. 

It is easy to destroy the thing you do not care about, it is easy to destroy yourself if you don't value yourself. To call it winning because at least you are still alive and the things you’ve had to sacrifice are merely unimportant - inconsequential. But thinking like that hurts not only ourselves, but others too. 

And it is not that Silver puts himself first, plenty of other characters do that as well - Miranda, Jack, Max. It is the fact that Silver must deny himself in the process that makes him the villain not just in Black Sails, but in his own story. And THAT is the origins of his supervillain story. That he is, in fact, his own. 

[mst3kproject]

Dance Hall Racket

Remember Timothy Farrell as gangster Umberto Scalli from Racket Girls? He's back with a new scheme in Dance Hall Racket!

What's that?  You want to know how he could be back in 1954's Dance Hall Racket when he was shot and killed in 1951's Racket Girls?  So do I.  My first theory was that Dance Hall Racket was actually a prequel to Racket Girls rather than a sequel, but he dies at the end of this one, too.  Farrell also played Scalli in a third movie, 1949's The Devil's Sleep (which I guess is actually the first Scalli movie, being as it was made before the other two).  I haven't seen that one, but I'll look for it, and if he doesn't die at the end I will be extremely disappointed.

Scalli's scheme this time is using a nightclub as a front to launder the money he makes by smuggling diamonds inside dogs' ears (this actually happens), but if he wants his longtime girlfriend Fortuna to marry him, he's gonna need more than that. An old friend of Scalli's, Victor Pappas, is about to be released from prison – if Scalli can make Pappas tell where he hid the loot from their last heist, he'll be rich enough to win her over, but little does he know, his criminal empire is about to topple (again). Undercover cop Charlie Edson is investigating him, looking for the murderer of a sailor.  You'd think being killed once would be enough to teach Scalli that crime doesn't pay.

The cops use the phrase 'sea men' to refer to sailors.  I'm imagining Tom and Crow snickering over that while Joel tries his best to keep them from making jokes too overt for television.

“But Joel, he said...”

“I know he did, Crow, but there are kids in the audience!”

I went into this movie trying not to remember the pain of watching Racket Girls, but I really expected more of the same.  Because of this, the first quarter hour or so of Dance Hall Racket was actually a pleasant surprise.  Racket Girls began with a scene of wrestling that really contributed nothing at all – Dance Hall Racket, however, got right on with actually telling its story!  The exposition about Scalli, Pappas, and Fortuna wasn’t too annoying, we got to see the sailor killed and Edson sent in undercover, and I began to hope that this might be an actual movie. Sadly, having set up all of that, the story came to a dead screeching halt and began puttering around killing time.

It does this in two main ways: one is watching women change.  These scenes are filled with weird cuts in which the characters’ clothes appear and vanish again, while the actresses remain standing in the same spot.  They’re often not wearing any less clothing, and the dialogue continues, so we’re not supposed to think that any time has passed.  I think the cuts may have less to do with modesty than with a camera that could only film a certain number of seconds in one take.  There’s also a scene in which two drunk women have some kind of limp-wristed parody of a catfight which is so bad it’s actually laugh-out-loud funny.

The other way the movie fills time is with Punchy, a supposed ‘comic relief’ character who is so devoid of humour I think I’ve forgotten how to tell a joke.

So yeah, all this goes on for another half an hour, during which time very little happens that’s actually relevant to the plot.  Occasionally hints of it peek out of the foliage, but mostly we’re listening to Punchy fail to be funny, or watching Scalli’s goons threaten women with knives when he thinks they’re stealing from him (like Jackie and her Swanky Apartment in Racket Girls, I guess).  Then when we’ve almost forgotten about him, Pappas finally shows up and the movie actually takes a surprising turn, when jealous and trigger-happy thug Vinnie takes exception to Scalli appointing his girlfriend Rose as Pappas’ date for the evening.

This is a surprisingly good piece of storytelling for this movie – Vinnie’s possessiveness of Rose was set up earlier, although by this point we’ve pretty much forgotten about that, too.  So much time was spent on other details of the characters’ lives and relationships that turned out to be irrelevant, we can’t be blamed for assuming Vinnie and Rose are more of the same.  Seeing it paid off like that was actually kind of satisfying.  Unfortunately, it also serves to emphasize just how many other things were set up in the movie that didn’t pay off, many of which seemed like they ought to be important.

What, for example, happened to Fortuna?  We only saw her in one scene and then she vanished utterly.  She was the one Scalli was trying to please, so you’d think we’d see her hanging around and pestering him.  What happened to Icepick, the guy who wanted to leave the racket and get married?  His story was set up in a way that makes us sure something terrible is going to happen to him, but the movie never gets around to it.  What’s up with Pappas being unable to speak?  We’re told twice that he had his tongue cut out and that really sounds like it ought to be a plot point but it never is. When he made sure Vinnie got shot I thought for a moment it would turn out that he’d agreed to work for the cops in order to get out of jail, but the movie ends without going into it.

It’s also another movie that can’t really be said to have a hero.  We don’t know Edson at all – we don’t even learn his name until well after he’s introduced and nothing he does ever gives him a personality.  He’s just A Cop.  The movie is much more interested in the various double-crossings among the nasty types who work for Scalli.  None of these people can really be considered a protagonist, since they’re all horrible and never sympathetic in the least, but they at least have relationships and motivations.

For all that, though, this is still a better movie than Racket Girls!  The irrelevant dancing is somehow much more bearable than irrelevant wrestling was, maybe because the dancing isn’t a contest and we don’t feel we’re supposed to have something invested in it when we can’t. More importantly, we don’t have a Peaches Page in this movie.  There are plenty of half-clothed women in it, and the movie leers at them unapologetically, but there’s no single one who is set up as a potential hero only to be exploited and forgotten about.  In this sense, Dance Hall Racket feels a little more honest and a little less disappointing.  It’s a terrible, terrible movie, but it’s not quite as bad as I know it could have been.

Between this and Racket Girls, I also think I’m starting to get an inkling of what, if indeed anything, the ‘Scalli Trilogy’ is trying to say.  The films are obviously about how crime doesn’t pay, but the comeuppances in them are not brought about by the police but by Scalli’s fellow criminals. Crime doesn’t pay, but organized crime in particular cannot possibly pay because everybody in the organization is a criminal, and criminals are by nature untrustworthy and therefore unable to work together.  Maybe this is what’s being emphasized by Lois the thief in this movie, or Jackie and her Swanky Apartment in Racket Girls – there can be no cooperation when everybody is out for themselves.

I also have to wonder what’s going on with the thing where Scalli dies in Movie One only to reappear in Movie Two a few years later and die again.  The two can’t possibly be in continuity with each other unless Scalli respawns like a video game character every time he’s killed, so what gives?  Is Dance Hall Racket supposed to be a remake?  That kind of makes sense when you consider how it does try to start correcting some of its predecessor’s mistakes. Is this an alternate universe, demonstrating that crime doesn’t pay in any possible world?  Has Scalli been reincarnated, only to learn nothing from the mistakes of his previous lifetime?  This fascinates me far more than it should.

You may wonder why I bother to think about it when the real answer is obviously just that the film-makers and actor Timothy Farrell were just too damned lazy to come up with a new character.  It’s true that there’s probably no more to it than that, and yet I’m not totally sure, because the movie does make a point of ending where it began.  With Scalli and Vinnie both dead and Icepick out of the racket, management of the club falls to the next guy down on the totem pole, bouncer Bert.  We’ve heard the girls who work there talk about him and how he keeps everybody in line – both the customers and the girls themselves. The policeman who has supposedly been narrating the whole story says they figure Bert is continuing to launder money and sooner or later he’ll be next on their list, and thus the whole cycle starts again.

I gotta see that third (first) Scalli movie.  Maybe that one will tell me whether there’s really anything going on there.  Or maybe, considering how much of an improvement this one was over Racket Girls, it’ll just be totally unwatchable.  The only thing I can be absolutely certain of is that Dance Hall Racket would have made for some awesome MST3K.

[thezolblade]

Fanfic ask game~ C, F, G, and V. If that's not too much :')

Okay let’s try these for some of the fandoms we have in common, though not all apply to each letter.

C: What member do you identify with most?

- FF7

I was going to say that I don’t particularly identify with any of the cast, beyond feeling for them as the story plays out. But then I remembered, omg Shera. It was obvious from the start that she did her job and saved Cid’s life, but he gaslighted her for not telling him what he wanted to hear, and only realised that she was right after bullying her for years? Wtf Cid, go die in a fire if that’s what you really want. It left me thinking “…And…? Will Shera be okay? Will she finally leave and get on with her life?”

I don’t care what Cid named after her in AC, I want to know if she recovered her self-esteem & career & personal life. If you have a techy skill, and people who don’t know better try to undermine you, that can be such a tough situation to handle… Years of it would be horrifying.

- Revolutionary Girl Utena

Anthy most of all, I think. Not the drama and trauma at the end, but the solitude she maintains when it’s not yet clear why. The show did a good job of showing that school can be hell for a lot of people, for all kinds of reasons. And damn, it was painful seeing Anthy spending so much time alone, offering everyone a false smile, avoiding the crowds because they really weren’t going to do her any favours. It got frustrating in the early episodes, seeing Utena push her into things when she’d said she didn’t want to about as clearly as she was ever going to. And it was pretty gratifying to see Utena apologising for that at the end.

I mean it was also relatableto see Utena trying to do the right thing, and getting frustrated at the world when it was never easy. I’m still impressed that they managed to demonstrate so much emotional realism in the conclusion, at least as far as you can extrapolate reality for magical near-immortals or whatever they are. With the show being heavily metaphorical, and ending with everyone trying to take the same journey in the movie, it seems like Anthy’s struggles were meant to have universal elements - showing how you can self-sabotage by hurting others, and hurt yourself by telling others what they want to hear. How you need to be able to imagine better options before you can walk away.

- Golden Sun

Uh, Alex, somehow. He’s an embarrassing mess, he makes so many bad decisions which are all ‘wft are you doing?’, and Dark Dawn got into near-wallbanger territory where I was disgusted with both him and the game, bc the gratuitous damage seemed pointless and inconsistent from a gameplay perspective, and so far across the line from a characterisation perspective that it’s really hard to see why Kraden was programmed to say that Alex may have been 'helping in his own way’ or something like that. But in the first two games, at least, there was some complexity to his attitude. (And bits like that of the 3rd one indicated that the canon may still have been trying for nuance, only pretty poorly executed. #.# )

Still, gotta admit by now that judging from the amount of meta and fic I keep writing from his pov, something about his thought process is relatableenough that you can see why he’d think what he thinks, even if he’s wrong. When he actually provides factual information, it tends to be correct. He uses relatively inarguable facts to try to influence people, and the trolling is kinda unrelated. The manipulation isn’t emotional “Leave or I’ll be disappointed in you for picking this fight” - it’s attempted-impartial “Don’t pick this fight because your opponent(s) are too strong / your parents won’t be released unless you keep your side of the deal with those people.” Plus a side of “Lol you think I’m trash don’t you?”, demonstrating that he’s not trying to use a personal connection as leverage bc he’s burning those bridges, and still somehow expecting people to listen. ’I’m not on your side! But you should take my advice!’ Embarrassing mess…

And yet the others sometimes come across as relatively young and distracted by comparison, making assumptions about the world that he wouldn’t, and arguing over petty details. What is the point of panicking over things you can’t change?

F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Oh I like so much dialogue, tough choice. Uh well this probably isn’t the best scene, the oldest oldfic is still a messy WIP and I can tell it’d need a lot of work to match the newer stuff, and even to get it finished as what I originally envisioned I need to schedule a whole lot of time to work on it. But I want to, because I still love it, and since I haven’t managed to communicate the whole story yet to its readers, it feels like a self-indulgent choice. I’m pretty attached to the parts where Alex and Isaac get incredibly annoyed at each other, making the situation worse even while trying to work together, though they can’t each recognize genuine effort in the other - for a variety of reasons by this point.

“I… am sick of receiving derogatory communications from the aether, the last one wasn’t nearly as offensive, it wasn’t even real, - ”

“Wait, it’s… What?” Isaac was having trouble making sense of this. “Have you been getting obscene messages from the gods?”

“Can’t you go five minutes without bringing the gods into this?” Alex snapped, looking down again, seizing the chance to change the subject. “We are the ones with infinite potential!”

“Yes… but…”

“And you are the one capable of taking the rest…” It was only after Alex added this that Isaac realised he’d meant the two of them, not humanity in general. For a moment, he’d thought they were of the same opinion there.

“But is it… really…?” Isaac gestured at the paper, wondering how its message could be so irrelevant to Sheba’s fate. If it wasn’t about Sheba, what use was it?

“If you do not intend to believe anything you hear from me, why tell me to speak?”

“No, it’s… uh, don’t worry. I’ll take your word for it, for now.” Isaac smiled, realizing that 'don’t worry’ was slightly inadequate even as he said it. “We have to make sure it comes into existence the way it’s supposed to. First things first. We’d better head upstairs and tell the others the plan.”

“Bring them to me.” Alex could see that Isaac didn’t understand why he would request this. Shouldn’t it be obvious? Why would he want to go back to them, to approach them entirely on their terms? “Whoever would be involved, bring them here.”

“If it happened upstairs, you should probably try it there.”

“Do you think I still need higher ground?” Alex asked quietly, his voice barely audible over the noise of the water behind him - boiling water flowing from the cold tap.

G: Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

Often from start to finish in as few sessions as possible, though if it’s long enough to take more than a few days, I end up jotting down dialogue notes, and then trying to put the notes in order, which gets more fiddly the more there are. The multichapter longfic get big chunks written out of sequence, which sometimes makes it easier to fill in the gaps by joining the dots, and sometimes leaves me blocked on how to tackle the parts in between.

V: If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

Not sure I could choose anything; other people’s stories are their ideas, and I generally want to hear more from the authors because they’re not the kind of stories I’d have intuitively come up with. Reading fic does tend to spark plotbunnies, but more those that place a headcanon in its own verse showing how else it could play out - different characterisation even if I’m adopting a headcanon I like. Back when I read more fic, I used to get the urge to play with the more macguffiny plot elements of things too, but never got to the point where I had a divergent fan-fan-fic that I could have asked the author about as far as I remember.

[echobasegazette]

Star Wars: A New Adventure

Two new Star Wars movies have been released since the last time that I wrote an article on my all-time favorite franchise, and I’ve decided that it is finally time to take a long hard look at the newest entries to the franchise and see if they really hold water.  

Several people have asked me why I never did a review on the two new films, and for those wondering here is the answer: I did not feel that I could provide an unbiased review of any film in this franchise because I just love it too much! In any review I’d write, I would either fawn all over the film or pick at things that the average viewer wouldn’t have noticed. And if I read a review that was overly picky, I know it would color my judgment of an otherwise watchable movie. So, I have saved my praise and condemnations for this article, where I can profess my love for the new films and pick them apart.

For those of you who haven’t seen these movies, I will warn you that you will find spoilers, but I will properly label each section, so if you’ve only seen one of the two films you can still read half of the article. Additionally, if you haven’t seen one or both of these two films, go see them now.

This is my official Star Wars Ranking: (First to worst)

1.       Empire Strikes Back

2.       Star Wars (A New Hope)

3.       Rogue One

4.       Return of the Jedi

5.       The Force Awakens

6.       Revenge of the Sith

7.       Attack of the Clones

8.       The Phantom Menace

Star Wars: Episode 7 – The Force Awakens

I of course saw this film as a midnight release (well it was at 10pm on a Thursday but I’m going to call it a midnight release). My four-man group arrived at the movie theater two hours early to ensure that we would get good seats, and we ended up being the first four people inside. I remember having a combination of both high and low expectations; low because the prequels were bad and high because the trailers looked great. I was pretty sure that J.J. Abrams (who is a huge fan of the franchise) wouldn’t mess it up after his successful Star Trek films. Overall, I thought The Force Awakens was a solid, watchable film that had lot of solid aspects.

Things I liked:

·         The lightsaber fights – the scenes felt like traditional Star Wars lightsaber scenes. The flipping and fast action of the prequels was pretty cool but it felt too frantic and almost draining to watch.

·         The movie had light-hearted humor that was a lot more natural than in the prequels.

·         Tension – I was actually worried about the fate of the characters, whether they’d live or die, and what would happen to them in the future. The prequels lacked this same tension because the fate of the characters was already predetermined.

·         I really liked the new characters. Rey is a multi-faceted character, and her parentage promises to be the next big Star Wars reveal. Finn also has potential and held my interest throughout the film, even though it looks like he will be starting Episode VIII in a coma. I also enjoyed Poe Dameron, the newer version of Wedge Antilles (Wedge is an X-Wing pilot that is in all three movies and a major character in the expended universe and it would be cool for Disney to bring him and Lando into the new movies) and I hope they really develop this character.

·         The sets for The Force Awakens were grittier and darker than prequels. Episodes I, II and III seemed too perfect and neat, almost less “real” when compared with the atmosphere of the new films.

Things I didn’t like:

Derivative

This is the best way to describe the plot of the Episode VII: If I saw Star Wars: A New hope, as an 11-year-old and then imagined what my Star Wars adventure would be like, it would be the plot of The Force Awakens. I’m stranded on a deserted planet, and I steal the Millennium Falcon to escape. Along the way I shoot down some TIE Fighters and bump into Han Solo, who offers to make me his second mate. Together we travel to a seedy bar where we meet some crazy looking aliens and get tangled up with the Empire. I learn about the Force and wield a lightsaber against a poor man’s Darth Vader. Afterwards I travel to a new world to start my force training with the ultimate, Luke Skywalker. So yes, the movie was good but it was basically a remake of Episode IV, without being a remake.

New Planets & Aliens

When Disney purchased Lucas Arts, one of the first things they did was remove the Expanded Universe (EU) from the Star Wars cannon. For those of you who aren’t Star Wars nerds, the EU made up the stories and characters that were created in the Star Wars books, comic books, and video games. Disney essentially eliminated these stories and made all of them irrelevant. I completely understand why they did this, and if you just paid $4.2 billion for a franchise, you probably wouldn’t want to be bound by the countless stories that already existed either. But why do they have to create entirely new planets and aliens too? Can’t they at least use some of the old ones that Star Wars fans are familiar with?

Humor

While some of the scenes in the movie possessed a natural humor that played well with the story line, other scenes seemed to force humor when there wasn’t really a need for it. One of the scenes that I felt was really well done involved Han Solo and Finn. Upon landing on Star Killer Base, Han asks Finn about the “plan”, and Finn responds, “We’ll use the Force.” Han Solo, now angry to find out that Finn made up the plan says, “That’s not how the Force works.” For me this scene was perfect, it had the quick relatable humor that seemed and the dialog seemed to flow naturally. One of the scenes I didn’t like was when the new rebels are discussing the plan to blow up Star Killer base and Han says, “There is got to be a way to blow it up, there always is.” To me this seemed like forced humor and really removed the seriousness of the situation.

Lightspeed

In the Star Wars books, lightspeed had specific rules. You couldn’t go into lightspeed if you were inside of a star or planet’s gravity well, and you couldn’t jump to lightspeed from inside of a star ships hanger bay. But apparently in this film, those rules no longer apply. This kind of has an effect on how space battles might be fought. Wouldn’t the rebels just run away any time they couldn’t win, and wouldn’t the First Order do the same thing? I am probably a huge nerd for even caring about this, and I am sure the Star Wars movies will always still have space battles, but I must admit that I was annoyed about this because it contradicted a cool quote from Han Solo in a New Hope, “Traveling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops boy, without precise calculations we could fly right through a super nova or too close to a black hole and that would injure something real quick.”

Star Killer Base

Star Killer Base is really lame and was probably one of things that bothered me most.  It’s essentially a planet killing weapon that’s built into a planet and uses the power of a star, draining that star in the process? So, what happens when the star is completely drained? Is Star Killer now useless? Does it even have the ability to move? A lot of details are never really explained, and let’s be serious, it’s a complete rip off of the Death Star.

 Star Wars: Rogue One

I am not old enough to have seen the original trilogy in theaters, but I was around when the prequel trilogy was released, and waiting three years for the next installment is not a fun wait. Disney decided to fix this problem when they bought the franchise with a plan to release new Episodes every two years with standalone stories in between. This means that every year for the foreseeable future, we get to experience a new Star Wars adventure!  But exactly what stories were they going to tell? The first one that was released was the story of how the rebels got their hands on the Death Star plans, essentially serving as a prequel to A New Hope.

I will admit that I really enjoyed this movie and thought that it was a much better film than The Force Awakens. As I said earlier the thing that I liked most about the original trilogy was the grittiness, and this film had it in spades.  Rogue One was also much better with the comic relief than Episode VII, and overall felt like a more natural flowing storyline. Because I liked this film more, I’ll switch it up and quickly list the points I didn’t like and expand on my favorite parts.

Things I didn’t like:

·         The use of lightspeed is just as bothersome in this movie as it was in The Force Awakens

·         More new aliens, including that crazy Bor Gullet thing that reads your thoughts – creepy!

·         I am not sure if I like or don’t like that the new movies put a small label in the corner every time a new planet is introduced…I will get back to you on this one.

·         There was no opening scene story crawl? What the hell?! This is one of the things that make Star Wars movies, Star Wars movies. Why did they get rid of it?

·         The Guardians of the Whills. For those who aren’t crazy fans, the Whills were part of the original concept of the Force. Lucas got rid of this aspect early in the development of Episode IV, and they haven’t appeared in any of the other films…until now. I wish they would have just kept them out of the story.

·         As I stated earlier, I don’t like that Disney is creating new planets, and the worst of all is Jedha. According to Rogue One, Jedha is a major planet for the Jedi but it doesn’t show up until this movie? It just doesn’t make sense and isn’t necessary.

Things I liked:

Old Characters Return

One of the main villains of this film is Grand Moff Tarkin, who is played by Peter Cushing in both this film and A New Hope. Peter Cushing died in 1994, and because this film takes place directly before A New Hope it wouldn’t have really worked to have a different actor play this character. Disney recreated him using digital technology, and for the most part this was generally well done. The voice worked sounded great and most of the time his character looked very realistic.

On top of bringing back Grand Moff Tarkin, they also brought back some of the more obscure characters. During the final space battle, the rebels show up to battle in X-Wings and Y-Wings to take on the Empire, and Disney used the pilots from A New Hope. If you look closely, you will recognize the pilots of the Red and Gold Squadron. However, the same technique was used for a final scene involving Princess Leia, and that felt too cheesy. Leia was only really used to show that the next scene would be the opening of A New Hope and they didn’t really need to show her face to get that message across.

Space Battle

The final space battle was freaking awesome! There were Rebel capitol ships duking it out with Star Destroyers. TIE fighters, X-Wings and Y-Wings were dogfighting for control of the sky. Finally, Vader and the Devastator show up to mop up the pesky rebels. Scenes like this are one of the reasons I love Star Wars films, and there have really only been two major space battles shown on screen before: the final battle in Return of the Jedi, which is epic, and the opening battle of Revenge of the Sith, which was lame because you knew there was no chance that Anakin or Obi-Wan were going to die. Hopefully future movies will have even more epic space battles!

SPOILER: Everyone Died!

Rogue One did a nice job of developing a new cast of characters for this film. Jyn Erso is the daughter of an Imperial Science officer, Cassian Andor is the Rebel Intelligence officer who is forced to do things he doesn’t like for the sake of the Rebel cause, and Saw Gerrera is a disillusioned Rebel Leader who has lost his way in his war with the Empire. Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus are guardians of the Whills who join the rebel cause, and they even added some comic relief with the presence of a rebel owned Imperial Droid, K-2SO.

Halfway through the movie I started to wonder, what is going to happen to these characters? Is Disney really going to kill everyone? None of the characters are in IV, V or VI so there really isn’t anything that they could do except kill them. But would they really spend $265 million developing characters just to kill them off? Are they going to keep them alive and develop a whole new series with these characters appearing in movies set around the original trilogy? Well I didn’t have to wonder about this for very long. By the end of the film every one of these characters was dead, and as much as I enjoyed getting to know them, it was the right way to end the movie.

Female Leads

This is really more of a “like” for both movies because they both have strong, lead female characters. The original trilogy only really has one female character, Princess Leia, and most other women are just in the background. The prequels included a few more women, but again, none of them were leads while Padme was a supporting character at best. But having no female leads won’t work in the new post 2010 world, so the new movies fixed this!  Both films have females in leading roles which helps make the film more appealing to the masses and makes the films easier to watch with girlfriends and wives.

 Overall, I am generally excited about the new direction of the Star Wars world. There are a lot of things to like in these new movies with expanded and parallel storylines and new actors and actresses. Disney has also avoided adding a Jar Jar Binks character who all Star Wars fans love to hate. There are still a handful of things that I don’t like, but I am willing to suffer through them so that I can continue enjoying the franchise that I love.  Luckily, Disney hasn’t shit the bed yet.

The Movie Guy