#stop making the jedi the villains of their own genocide challenge

[vetinarivimesy]

Gargh I genuinely wish I liked this show more - I like the returning characters, I loved all the intriguing hints of new lore stuff, aesthetically it looked fantastic... The casting was mostly perfection. I could even (mostly) put aside my increasing annoyance at post-Lucas-Star War's increasingly negative stance on the jedi that seems to be influenced by the fans who were adults when the Prequels/90s films came out who insist that those films were all about how the jedi were evil actually, when... No seriously those films were aimed at 12 year olds how did the very basic genocide is bad actually message fly over their heads so collectively?

​But ye gods I really felt the whole, Filoni's been working on 20 minute episodes his whole career with this one. 

I think the thing that properly tipped me over from, I'm enjoying this show, but it's frequently frustrating, because I am unfortunately a fan with opinions... into no, this thing is just frustrating as the finale rolled to its extremely predictable end that he'd not so much done an Empire ending, as promised, yet again, to answer the questions he'd been posing throughout next time... Only next time is hardly guaranteed, as sadly epitomised by the waste of Ray Stephenson's rather intriguing character - let alone the way both Claudia Black and Wes Chatham were essentially one step above being glorified extras.

Eh I liked Mando S3 and even BoBF I adored Andor and Kenobi - I'm hardly impartial. I even quite like Ahsoka for what it was, rather than allowing my sheer annoyance at what it wasn't get me too enraged at all the George Lucas never implied that moments with his worldbuilding - stated very publicly to be the opposite to Filoni's takes several times.

I loved the new galaxy, the Purrgils, getting to see the Rebels gang again, most of the Baylan and Shin stuff and Claudia Black getting to be a terrifying Nightmother, the Kintsugi troopers, and the extremely blatant Stargate type worldbuilding can I copy your homework stuff. Even Huyang in live action, as frustrating as the constant jedi-negging by proxy was... Ezra was perfect. Love the little crab people and seeing Chopper, as toned down for live action as he was.

But Filoni, Dave, Hat-Man, please, if you're going to do glacial and epic mysteries that end on an Empire style cliffhanger at least give us some reassurance that you have a plan and know how all the plot-threads are going to go? And that your worldbuilding is in fact internally consistent actually and not just based on vibes with some degree of yeah this does have coherence... The occassional utterly incoherent aside, for you to go oh yeah, the New Republic are all fucking terrible actually, as bad as the space nazis actually, moments were not reassuring. And in the hands of a different writer I'd have been fascinated by the Sabine getting the force stuff... But I really sincerely do not trust you with this.

You keep leaving extremely important character and worldbuilding moments off-screen, not even summed up, just stated in a sentence then rapidly glossed over. With excruciating lengths of time given to portentious dialogue and incoherent ramblings about how the jedi deserved their own genocide actually.

No? Too much to ask? One and a half plot-threads proved too much to keep spinning..?

Of which, admittedly James SA Corey/David Abraham/Ty Franck you are not you could barely keep one plot thread going coherently let alone the half-dozen or so they kept spinning all the way through.

Actually, no, you know what. Fuck it. This has annoyed me enough that I am going to go off and watch Wes Chatham not be utterly wasted in a glorified extra role, in a sci-fi series featuring mysterious rings and huge conspiracy theories by corporate and fascistic government powers alike fuelled by greed and capriciousness but above all about humanity overcoming.

At least that one doesn't flanderise its own characters and worldbuilding for the rule of cool, and the at times seemingly glacial (but not actually) very deliberately paced plot actually serves a purpose that comes together into something spectacular.

Its that or Farscape to wash the bad taste out. But that's another property heavy on the evil space fascists who never quite seem to get an in-universe comeuppance.

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

I was curious if I was the only one who kinda enjoyed the battle between the paladins and Lotor in s6? Well at least at first I did until it was never further explored in later seasons. I honestly thought for sure Lotor would come back after s6 and there'd be more to the colony. But it's all kind of just forgotten about so they can move on to the next thing. Anyway hope I'm not bothering you. Sorry for my rambling. haha

Hi, anon! Thanks for the note! And no, you’re not bothering me at all; I appreciate the chance to chat! For the record, I know you’re not the only one who genuinely enjoyed s6. I even know people who enjoyed s1-s8 entirely, lol. As for myself, the animation and acting involved in the s6 battle was really great, and I loved the Sincline mecha. It is honestly one of my favorite designed mechas out of all the mecha shows I’ve seen. So s6 wasn’t a total loss for me. And I actually would not at all have minded a genuine villain!Lotor if they’d properly set up for that. As it is, though, the reason for the battle in s6 is what bothers me and sours my enjoyment. Ultimately, I think the show had to compromise very important story components to result in this battle, and that kills my enjoyment.

I can try to explain what story components I felt got compromised in s6, if you’re interested. But this could get a lil salty, haha. I’ll put it under a Keep Reading line:

The show had a subtle through-line of showing a duplicitous, distrustful Lotor go from hunting down the paladins and throwing several people under the bus for a personal gain (s3-s4), to being actually scared in s5 when he thought Zarkon was going to kill the paladins, to being willing to share his entire intelligence network and information of unfathomable power with his new allies (s5), to allowing the paladins to actually order him around and actively change his moral priorities (s6, ep1)—which is very, very different than the relationship he had with his own generals. So the show had Lotor on a development arc regarding his distrust—and even a redemption arc regarding a fault in his morals, even though the show very plainly stated (multiple times throughout s3-s5) that he longed to get to the quintessence field to stop the Galran empire’s feasting on planets.

That’s part of what bothers me with s6—it reverses this subtle through-line of development and then punishes Lotor for an understandably disturbing de-valuing of life that…1) likely wasn’t even his worst or most extensive crime, 2) was something he was actively learning to overcome and get away from in the present time, and 3) was based on a moral problem paladins had seen within him and previously still accepted their alliance.

Lotor wasn’t a saint to start in this show, and he had a perspective where it didn’t bother him for some people to die if it meant his larger goal of peace was obtained. The weird thing about s6 is we saw the paladins experience that with him already, well before the s6 colony twist. In S6, Lotor places the value of obtaining unlimited quintessence over the safety of an entire Galran planet, and Allura admonishes him and reminds him of his innocent subjects. In s6 ep1, Lotor is very directly challenged by the morality of Allura, who despite being a victim of Galrans, desires that no one should die. That these innocent subjects and Galran soldiers are still just as valuable as everyone else.

So by this moment in s6, Lotor has identified the paladins as valuable enough to risk his life for them…but he hasn’t assigned that same value to the average Galran soldier or citizen he’s still deemed expendable/not worthy of saving compared to his grand agenda of peace. If he had assigned them such value, he would not have initially tried to argue with Allura on going to save them. It’s the one time that Allura gets huffy with him post-alliance and directly contradicts him. And Lotor looks…almost mournful or ashamed? He submits to her, regardless, allowing for his personal missions to go on hold for the first time in interest of other people.

His submission here shows another switch had been flipped in his character, for the better. Prior to Allura and the paladins, he had no difficulty assassinating Narti or leaving his generals for dead after they realized they were in fact expendable. S6 ep1 shows Lotor submitting to save even Galran soldiers that he likely knew were not Emperor Lotor fans.

So going back to the big colony twist, the paladins actively should have known that Lotor had a slightly bent perspective about the expendability of people, because they’d seen it before in season 6 episode 1 and even back in season 3. Clearly, he’s done not good things in the past at the expense of others “for a greater good,” so I don’t know why it’s such a shocker that he would apply the same perspective to Alteans. They literally saw him de-value his own people before, in real-time.

It gets weird too because we see that Lotor had very quickly changed his tactics for obtaining pure quintessence after he realizes Allura and team Voltron are the path of least resistance and least collateral damage. We see him relenting to protect all of his innocent subjects. So ultimately, he ends up being punished for having a problematic perspective that he was slowly beginning to decouple from at the time of his accusation, which the paladins were also witnessing. As it is, the show punishes Lotor for his past crimes precisely after the paladins had already seen this behavior in him, and also after his perspective had started to change for the better. The narrative then pushes him back down into a behavior where he instead expands the list of people and things he accepts as expendable.

I feel that the subliminal messaging behind this particular construction is a little screwy and disheartening. The colony twist would have been better if the show had presented Lotor in s5 and s6 episode 1 as not being ashamed—not submitting—and even getting irritated that Voltron cared about one labor planet in the face of what Lotor felt was a higher calling for peace. It would have been interesting to show Lotor as inherently unconcerned or even approving that the paladins almost died while he and Allura were out in Oriande. There needed to be a more solid through-line of a very troubling, uncontrollable fault that would undermine the alliance and peace itself.

Next, to even get Lotor to go insane or to have him reliant on harvesting Altean quintessence, the show had to contradict its own worldbuilding in early seasons. Lotor was fully infused with massive amounts of quintessence prior to birth that EPs once stated put him on pretty much the same level as Allura, and that he was immune to quintessence. So…s6 heavily contradicts Lotor’s incredibly dynamic behavior and even his moral interest in not killing planets by making him go insane to nearly kill the entire universe. And canon accomplishes this in a way that canonically shouldn’t have been possible, per his in-utero quintessence exposure.

And then I’m bothered that if all he wanted was pure quintessence, there were canonically several other ways to obtain it, including for example that Balmera planets were known for harboring pure quintessence, even pure quintessence offered by living beings like Alteans, and that Balmeras were capable of offering up such power willingly in exchange for a slight token from the asker—or that Weblums happened to be concentrated quintessence manufacturers just floating around…

And I’m bothered that in various places, the show uplifts Alteans as inherently different in their life force/quintessence from all other living things. It contradicts the basic worldbuilding around what quintessence even is according to earlier seasons and creates some…idk, really squicky master race vibes, in ways that other fantasy space shows like Star Wars desperately have tried to avoid by showing diversity among the Jedi and Sith ranks. In VLD, it’s as if to say that Lotor couldn’t have possibly accomplished his goal without specifically sacrificing the life force of one particular race.  

And while what Lotor did doesn’t by definition count as genocide (he still preserved the race and its culture), this messaging in later seasons about inherent racial reasons to sacrifice people is the same problematic thinking people use to perpetuate genocides in real life. And I just…I have a real problem with that. According to the later seasons, the colony Alteans are victims of Lotor’s experiments for specifically being born Altean. It’s even more squicky that the show could have rejected the bad message of “we must sacrifice a race because of their inherent properties” and fleshed out the minimal cues that other races could be just as powerful and helpful—but didn’t.

(For example, the show presents Keith with Princess Leia-like quintessence sensitivity, Coran and Balmera people with the ability to interface with and accept quintessence storages, the Balmera people themselves infusing the Balmera with their quintessence, the Weblums harboring mass stores of concentrated quintessence in their bellies, the very non-Altean Druids like Macidus manipulating mass quintessence into magic, and even a sea serpent/The Baku in season 2 using quintessence to mind-control an entire species. This show could have very easily pulled a Star Wars and at least fleshed out that hey, Midi-chlorians don’t discriminate and that any species can harbor a great Jedi…or Sith.)

But no—instead of presenting a diverse front of magical capabilities coming together to save the universe, the show champions in s8 its own horrific implications in s6, by having two Alteans sacrifice their lives in the end…because of course no other race could learn or manipulate the deep secrets of the universe? No one else could help share the load so that no one would have to actually die? I get that war means sacrifice, but like...why are we always sacrificing specifically along racial lines? So actually, after that s6 morality tantrum, the show approves of Lotor’s tactics by sacrificing the few Alteans to save the many because those few are somehow inherently different? And isn’t it wild that ultimately the federal figurehead of Alteans, Princess Allura, exonerates Lotor for sacrificing Alteans for their power in the name of larger peace…shortly before pulling a Lotor and sacrificing herself in the name of peace? So even in the final moments, the show is trying to argue with me that sometimes it’s necessary to sacrifice a specific race by virtue of their inherent nature.

So…I guess I’ve rambled. I really wouldn’t have minded a villainous Lotor or a big Voltron vs. Sincline battle. There were things I genuinely did like about s6, and I applaud the animators and VAs for their performance in that season. But I think there were a million and one ways to produce that plot, and the way s6 gets to these points makes me feel disquieted. It feels contradictory to previous worldbuilding and to character arcs, it undermines the morality being argued throughout the show, and it just feels like a cheap bait-and-switch if I think about it too long. Instead of relying on an old crime and a known character fault as a justification for battle, it would have been far better if Lotor had done something to specifically betray Voltron and the newly minted alliance or proved himself incapable of submitting to moral choices. And that’s only if they wanted a truly villainous Lotor. There were ways he could betray Voltron without actually turning into a comic book villain...even ways that he could outwardly play a betrayal while still functioning as an agent for Voltron’s aims to stop a loose Haggar/Honerva...

I guess, in retrospect, s6 is a really good example of a plot-driven season. It presented some really fantastic animation and battles and angst…but what did it cost the show to get there?

I think VLD itself should have taken its own advice—that one cannot place a lesser value on one component in the name of achieving a desired end goal. The season ultimately sacrificed world building and character development to achieve a stunning, angsty, heart-stopping robot fight. And that sacrifice undermined so many other things about the show and tainted my enjoyment. Sort of like mixing poop into a cake, I guess, lol.

[aimmyarrowshigh]

I'm down with Rey experiencing temptation and making tough choices, even wrong choices- and learning from them. As long as she doesn't choose the side of genocide and fascism and/or double down at every chance she gets to correct her path in order to continue to pursue power at great cost to others. Kylo being tempted by the Dark Side or "making tough choices" isn't why he's reviled in the way of villains. It's because he's a fucking villain. (Who mind rapes people.)

Exactly. We’ve SEEN Rey make tough choices already, and we’ve seen her tempted by the Dark side! But being tempted and choosing not to give in is what makes her Rey. It is the essential difference that is what Star Wars is ABOUT. 

I feel like one of the big schisms in SW fannish interpretation comes down to whether you think Star Wars is “ultimately about” redemption or choice. I think it’s about choice. I might disagree with the idea that Vader was redeemed in the moments before his death – and that disagreement is shared by every character except Luke, js, which I think is canonical evidence supporting the idea that even in canon the idea of “redemption” is about interpretation – but he absolutely made a CHOICE in those moments, and that choice affected his destiny.

Choice is the through-line of all of the big narrative-changing/“galaxy-changing” storylines in SW. Luke chooses to return to Bespin rather than stay on Dagobah. Han chooses to return to the Battle of Yavin. Leia chooses to trust Lando to devise the plot to save Han. Ben Solo chose to turn his back on the ideals of the Light, and he chose to become Kylo Ren, and he chose every action he’s taken as Kylo Ren – including the massacre at Tuanul, the forced and painful penetrations of Poe and Rey, and the murder of Han Solo. Will he make different choices in TLJ? I mean, yeah, given that it’s a sequel and his storyline is ongoing. But if they want to make it believable that he’s choosing the side of the Light again, they’re going to have to work HARD. And I still will fight tooth-and-nail for Rey, Poe, Leia, Chewie, and Finn to have the dignity of being allowed NOT to forgive him.

We’ve seen Rey wrestle with choices, both before and after she was aware of the Force. Like, TFA wouldn’t even have happened if she had made the choice to put herself and her own well-being above BB-8 when Plutt offered her a month’s worth of food. Especially since we know in her backstory from BtA that she’s having a particularly lean time at the moment since the closest thing she’d ever had to a friend just swindled her out of 10,000 portions and fled Jakku, leaving Rey with no portions and out several weeks’ worth of salvage! It would have been SO much more beneficial to Rey, in the immediate moment, to trade in BB-8 and take the portions.

But the Light guided Rey. That’s one interpretation. Another is that Rey made the choice to trust her own skill – she’d find more salvage and be able to earn some portions, even if it took a while again – and have mercy on this little being that was left behind on Jakku. It was important to her to give someone else what she never got, and that was more core to who she was than the temptation to be selfish and have something come easy.

Now: I absolutely can see how that same reading of her personality could lead to the idea that she’ll have mercy for Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. If that’s how the filmmakers go with it, then it’s not out of the blue, or anything, and I can rationally understand the argument that it would be logical. I just think that it would be boring as fuck reductive storytelling to once again make the female lead character have to put herself aside for the benefit of the male villain, even at the expense of herself, and I think it would be… Frankly, I think that showing narrative empathy for the First Order, in the climate that we live in in 2017, is insulting and dangerous and would be an unforgivable, for me, choice for Lucasfilm as a company to make. Not that that means I don’t think they MIGHT, because like, lbr, Disney has always been antisemitic as fuck and racist as shit, but. 

Here’s what I was thinking about last week: the entire neo-Nazi crowd at Charlottesville? They see themselves as Kylo Ren. They see themselves the way he sees himself, as the lone warrior strong enough to see through the lies of the Jedi and the New Republic, to turn his back on the teachings of Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, to find a wiser teacher in the deification of a long-dead fascist who sought to kill all of those who would challenge him. And they also see themselves as Kylo Ren, the white male major character who by Rights and Logic deserves to win in the end and get the girl and defeat his enemies and be proven to be the Most Human Of All and definitely, definitely get his due over anything that the Black or Latinx or Asian main characters could ever earn. If Star Wars’ Sequel Trilogy does give Kylo Ren forgiveness, redemption, a win over Finn or Poe or Rose, the trophy of having Rey love him? Lucasfilm and Disney are giving those neo-Nazis their stamp of approval. They’re saying, yeah, you’re right, we let Black and Latinx people and antifascism have one movie, but in the end, it’s all about you. You get to win, again. You are the chosen ones.

And I think that’s literally nauseating to consider.

And granted: TLJ was written and filmed before the election, but not before all of this shit was brewing. I absolutely don’t think that any media creator is BEHOLDEN to be morally and socially responsible, because media creators are human and as long as there are repugnant people, there will be repugnant ideals in media. But I do think that Star Wars, so far, as a franchise, has been clear that they don’t side with the Empire. I don’t think they’ll give the First Order any quarter of empathy or forgiveness or “redemption” that they didn’t give the Empire. But, I also think that there’s absolutely the chance that they’ll execute the story in a way where they try to make Kylo Ren some kind of outlier who can earn his way back into the Light. I don’t personally think he can; I think he’s too far gone. But I do, in a lot of ways, expect for them to try. Some of that, too, I think is because of the prominence of shitty-ass neo-Nazis in Star Wars’ viewing audience: either they’ll be trying to say, it’s not too late for you (sorry fuckos, it is) or they’ll be trying to say, just keep reaching out and maybe they’ll listen (they won’t; they’re fuckos). But, again, I think that execution would be irresponsible at best, actively harmful at worst. 

I want Kylo Ren to go unredeemed because I’m absolutely sick of the coddling of men who make the active, agential choice to harm people and are told they can come back from that choice. 

Kylo’s victims can’t come back from what he did to them. So neither should he.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, right, Rey’s other moments of choice and Dark side temptation in TFA. There’s the obvious one, which I see most commonly as the one that Reylo shippers use as evidence that they’re connected more deeply than Heroine and Villain, which is the moment Rey chose not to kill him. 

I feel like it shouldn’t NEED to be explained why the hero chooses not to kill, morally/ethically speaking?

But the other is one that I haven’t seen a lot of people talk about as being a moment of Dark side temptation, and that I think is up there with the BB-8 choice as being one that’s particularly interesting: her choice to flee on Takodana. First off, you wanna talk mirroring, that’s her mirroring moment with Finn. Both of them are trying to get away from Takodana, away from their destiny, away from the Force itself, even if they don’t necessarily know it yet. 

Rey succumbs to the temptation, on Takodana. That’s her Moment of Refusal when it comes to her Hero’s Journey, and in Star Wars, that’s classically because of temptation by the Dark. If you want to look at it in terms of “the Force creates Rey’s destiny,” she has to succumb in that moment so that she’ll be taken to Starkiller Base and be able to witness the murder of Han, get the lightsaber in the snow, be able to open herself up to the Light to defeat Kylo Ren. But I think that reading of the choice strips Rey of her agency. (As does the whole “the Force is in charge of all choices” in general, but whatever.) 

In choosing to flee, Rey CHOOSES the Dark. She chooses selfishness. She chooses her own needs above those of the Galaxy. She chooses, maybe, in that moment, Finn, running through the forest to try to find the ship he’s leaving on. She chooses fear. Fear, passion, selfishness, the self above others – it’s a classic, perfect Dark side choice. And again, BB-8 brings her back. She stops running to give BB-8 cover to make it back to Han and the Resistance. She is again brought back to the Light by BB-8, and her empathy for this little being who trusts her. The key to Rey’s moral compass is compassion. That is a Jedi belief, not one of the Dark. (And I think it’s interesting that two of the three major choices she makes wrt Dark temptation in TFA, she chooses the Light because of BB-8. BB-8 is shaped like a friend.)

So when it comes to TLJ? I absolutely expect to see Rey wrestle with the Dark side. Just like Luke did. Just like Leia does. But that doesn’t mean that I think Rey will choose it in a way that READS as Dark, per se – her flight on Takodana IS Dark, but doesn’t Read as Dark, yk? You wouldn’t look at it and think, “evil.” I don’t think that it serves Rey’s character to make her choose EVIL even if, and when, she chooses Dark. I don’t think she’ll be willing to give up her selfhood, and I really hope, more than anything else in TLJ, that the writing team gave her enough respect to allow her that continued selfhood. I absolutely expect for Rey to be tempted by selfishness; I think that as far as the Dark side goes, that’s kind of her achilles’ heel – Rey getting to have something and not wanting to give it up would be very in-character, IMO, and I totally expect to see that. I also expect for her to be tempted to give into her very real anger and confusion at the death of Han Solo and how she (selfishly!) wanted to keep him and be kept by him. Same with Finn; she wants to keep him, dammit, he came back for her and the First Order cannot have him back. I’m anticipating her being tempted by her hatred of Kylo Ren, too, and to be tempted by the Dark whispering that she should have killed him in the snow. I don’t think that Rey is the Perfect Encapsulation of the Light insofar as being only compassionate and selfless, because that wouldn’t allow her the breadth of agency and selfhood that she deserves. And that she’s already shown.

In a meaningful way, Rey has to be tempted by the Dark to NOT forgive Kylo Ren. Forgiving him would be being that Mary-Sue-perfect-Light that people accuse “antis” of seeing Rey as, because it would be putting him and his feelings and his needs above her own. I want Rey to be selfish as FUCK and say NO. He doesn’t get that Light and Good part of her. He doesn’t get her compassion. Rey owns herself. And she’s not giving that up.

Forgiving Kylo or Rey somehow putting Kylo Ren on a path to redemption would not show Rey’s compassion, it would be subsumption of her Self. It would say to the audience that he had a right to use her body, mind, and soul to gain his own personhood back, and that’s fucking disgusting.

[c2ley]

I wasn't aware that dramatic narratives contained so much exhausting and cringe inducing jokes i.e. forced humor for its own sake. Really? It says what it wants to say in a deeply effective manner? Then why are its scenes constantly contradicting themselves? Poe wouldn't have needed to come up with and execute a Hail Mary play had Holdo communicated what the plan was for the Resistance. She has no motivation, want nor need to withhold the information from her crew, which showcases terrible character design and awful writing. Laura Dern deserved so much better. How can you be a responsible leader if information is purposefully withheld from you for no real reason? Rey is much more complex? Really, because by the end of the movie Daisy Ridley looks very bored and all of her power has just been handed to her by Rian Johnson. No work, No effort, No struggle, No journey. Also, in Episode 7 Rey isn't concerned with her lineage, she wants her family members to come back to Jakku, to return for her. Maz Kanata very explicitly tells her that this isn't going to happen and it's devastating for Rey, she cries. This idea is then abandoned by Rian Johnson because he didn't care about Episode 7's plot. Rey's parents are nobodies is brilliant, huh? Aside from the fact, that that's easy and lazy character design (doing nothing instead of something is always easier and lazier) well then, the revelation that the chosen one of the Force is a nobody slave from Tatooine aka the planet farthest from the bright center of the universe as Luke says, should be considered superbly brilliant genius then, right? Han is a selfish smuggler and Finn is a cowardly deserter. Han is interested in credits and Finn is fleeing for his life and safety out of fear. These are only similar arcs if you don't know what fiction is and choose to believe your own ideas absent of any kind of supporting evidence. She doesn't trust how reckless he is... so as an effective and intelligent, strong, smart, and independent leader Holdo thought telling the reckless guy nothing would curb his reckless tendencies? Wow, that's dumb and highly ineffective. Also, Holdo doesn't just not tell Poe, she doesn't tell ANYBODY. It's why Rose is guarding the escape pods and electrically stunning her crewmates to keep them from abandoning ship. Here's the REAL reason. She doesn't tell Poe the plan because Kathy wanted feminism in the movie and Rian tucked his tail between his legs and said, "...okay." I love pointing this out to people. Lockheed Martin = 51.048 Billion USD (2017) Disney = 55.137 Billion USD (2017) There’re lots of businesses that will make you rich, not just defense contracts. Also, The First Order can build Starkiller Base, but it has to buy weapons? So when TFO conquers worlds and enslaves indigenous populations they don't force the slaves to produce resources and materials? Yeah... again... that's really dumb. In our world we have sweatshops, illegal in some places but not in others. Hard to believe that TFO is that desperate for support and if that is indeed the case how did they conquer the galaxy? How do they reign supreme? I love how DJ argues for no objective morality after five planets were genocide-ed. Makes total sense DERP. Kylo, "You have no place in this story. You come from nothing. You're nothing." This line is spoken right after Snoke revealed that Rey is deus ex machina Kylo's counterbalance within the Force. This is also after Luke compared Rey's force potency and proficiency to that of Ben Solo a member of the SKYWALKER bloodline. Why doesn't Rey just tell Kylo to shut the fuck up and fight him? Wouldn't that be the strong independent thing to do? Why is she even listening to him? Why does she care about Ben's redemption? I'll remind you that Kylo Ren is a man that TORTURED her. Rey becomes an emotionally stable Jedi, with no help from old what's-his-name. Wow, becoming a Jedi these days is really easy. I thought if you wanted to become a black belt in a type of martial art it took practice, skill, focus, drive, determination, challenge, and success. Not so anymore. The Disney fairy can just tap you on the head and now you're a Jedi, please to enjoy your new Jedi status Ms. Mary Sue. Finn... was never like DJ. You're an idiot and a liar who's only fooling him/herself if you think so. Kylo Ren was already a villain when this movie started. WTF are you talking about? Competent... wow... really (see link)? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ECwhB21Pnk&t=12m35s Do you know what the definition of a plot hole is? Yeah sure. The TLJ is a quote unquote real story if you throw away guiding, rock solid character motivations, well-loved antagonist tropes, beautiful mythology, and basic common sense. Here's a question for you, how do you miss the easiest layup in film history? It's also interesting how you characterize deeply loved and shared understanding as "indulgence." Though, that's common for hipster nihilists and meta-narrative obsessives. I wonder if "indulgence" (that is to say deeply loved and shared understanding) has been celebrated and successful elsewhere... http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=starwars7.htm http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=marvel0518.htm How can you claim this film doesn’t pander to the audience? So Rian referenced NOTHING from Episodes 5 and 6? Here’s another question for you directly from Mike Stoklasa, “Have you seen Star Wars?” This franchise and audience needed this movie as much as a man needs a kick in the nuts or a woman needs a boot to her boobs. Super stupid massive gigantic plot holes. Bigger and more massive then Black Holes themselves. You can sniff your own butt hole all you like and intellectualize BS until it shines like gold in your mind, but that will not stop bullshit from still being of terribly poor quality.

[uomo-accattivante]

[donalsgirl]

Irish Independent interview with Oscar Isaac

Oscar Isaac on the Coen brothers: 'They've been like godfathers to me'

Oscar Isaac tells our film critic about his special relationship with the Coen brothers and why he wished he had been able to film some of his Star Wars scenes in Ireland

Three years ago, Oscar Isaac was an obscure actor in his mid-30s who didn't seem to be going anywhere very fast. Small parts in films like Che, Robin Hood and Madonna's disastrous Wallis Simpson biopic W.E. hadn't attracted much notice, and he was still auditioning for theatre plays and TV shows when the Coen brothers asked him to try out for their 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis.

A wry drama set in 1960s Greenwich Village and telling the story of a struggling folk musician, it was a role tailor-made for Issac, who's a musician himself and still regularly performs. He got the part, was nominated for a Golden Globe and suddenly every casting agent in Hollywood was interested in him.

He's chosen his subsequent projects well. After an eye-catching turn in Hossein Amini's underrated Cold War thriller The Two Faces of January, Issac co-starred with Jessica Chastain in JC Chandor's gripping 1970s thriller A Most Violent Year, giving a performance so intense some likened him to a young Al Pacino.

He played a creepy inventor obsessed with creating the perfect sentient robot in Alex Garland's beautifully orchestrated science-fiction chiller Ex Machina, then turned up in the most celebrated sci-fi franchise of all, starring opposite Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Adam Driver in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as a daring rebel fighter pilot who takes Daisy Ridley's character under his wing.

He has had luck, which he acknowledges, but also the courage to tackle demanding roles, and his latest film plumbs the horrors of the Armenian genocide during World War One. In Northern Irish director Terry George's drama The Promise, which opens here next Friday, Isaac plays an ambitious young Armenian from a small country town who arrives in Istanbul to study medicine on the eve of World War One. The Ottoman Empire enters that conflict with typical bluster, but within a year, the Turkish government begins a covert attempt to annihilate its Armenian minority. "To my great shame, I didn't know much at all about it," Isaac tells me. "I'd heard about it vaguely, but had no idea of the scale so when I read more, I was surprised, shocked, appalled, moved, and wondered why it was so unknown. It's so close in a way, and yet so on the cusp of being lost to history so I felt like it was extra special to be part of a film being made about this subject, you know?"

His character, Mikael, arrives in Istanbul with high hopes for a future that's about to be taken away from him in the most brutal and unexpected way. But he's no saint himself: he's engaged to a girl from his village whose dowry is helping pay his college fees, but falls in love with a glamorous society beauty played by Charlotte Le Bon.

"I think the hope in creating these fictional characters," Isaac says, "and this love story in the middle of it all, was that they're very relatable things.

"The idea of coming from a small town and wanting to go to the big city and make something of yourself, and you fall in love with someone that maybe you shouldn't, these kind of things happen to people every day all around the world.

"And then within that, to have those things stripped away by these horrible events, I think that is hopefully what allows people to make parallels to what's happening now. It becomes not abstract, but very personal.

"Mikael just kind of gets buffeted by the winds of fortune, and he reacts to them in much the same way the average person would. And it's just a reminder that things like this are happening right now."

The Promise is unlikely to get a release in Turkey, however, as Ankara has never formally acknowledged that the genocide happened, or taken any responsibility for it. "It's unfortunate," Isaac says, "and it's a tactic we still see today with a lot of governments, you know, admit nothing, deny everything."

The Armenians had always been second-class citizens in the Ottoman Empire, despised for their Christian faith and distinctive customs, but in the spring of 1915, while the rest of the world was distracted by the Great War, the Turkish authorities began a covert and systematic campaign of terror and repression that seemed consciously designed to wipe the Armenians off the face of the earth.

Able-bodied men were either massacred on the spot or slowly worked to death in forced labour camps, while women, children and the elderly were marched into the Syrian deserts to die. Between 1915 and the early 1920s, it's estimated that about half of the Ottoman Empire's Armenian population, or 1.5 million people, were wiped out - and many others fled to the US and elsewhere to survive.

In approaching this enormous, daunting subject, Issac tried to focus on his own character first because "that's where everything starts for me".

"I needed to figure out what does he have to know, and what do I need to know about living in a small village in the Ottoman Empire around this time, what of the relationships between Turks and Armenians - what was it that went so horribly wrong?

"The scene that hooked me into the project in the first place was the one in the forest when Mikael finds his family and his entire village slaughtered: every time I would read that, it was very moving for me, so then it was like, well, what will allow that to happen. And so I listened to recordings of the survivors of the genocide recounting their stories, where they'd talk about their grandmothers being bayoneted to death by the gendarmes, babies being left under trees and marching out in the desert to die of thirst.

"All that kind of stuff you have swirling around inside your head so then when you're in that moment, and you see those people, you don't have to stretch so hard, you know."

The shoot, he says, was tough going. "I think there was something like 18, 19 different cities and towns that we shot in throughout Spain, in all kinds of conditions, and it was exhausting. It was one of the most challenging films I've been a part of on a physical level, but also emotionally."

But his performance holds the film together, and demonstrates once again why Issac is one of the most sought after leading men in Hollywood.

Handsome but not especially tall, Oscar has a kind of everyman quality, and an ability to move easily between very different types of role.

Raised in Miami and trained at the exclusive Juilliard School, he made his professional acting debut at 19 in a forgettable film called Illtown. TV and theatre work followed, and in 2005 he played Joseph in Catherine Hardwicke's controversial biblical drama Nativity Story. But the 2000s were slow for the young actor: he was almost too versatile, too good at disappearing into forgettable character roles. Well-received appearances in Robin Hood (as the villainous King John) and Nicolas Winding Refn's thriller Drive were a step in the right direction, but it was the Coen brothers who really changed everything for Isaac.

The Coen brothers had a very hard time casting the role of Llewyn Davis, the earnest folk singer whose attempts to breakthrough in early 1960s Greenwich Village will be entirely overshadowed by the arrival of Bob Dylan. In fact, according to Ethan Coen, they were "screwed until Oscar showed up".

The character of Davis was partly inspired by the 1960s singer Dave Van Ronk, and Isaac's initial audition involved performing one of his songs.

"I sent them a video of me playing a Van Ronk song," he recalls with a smile, "and based off of that, they decided to bring me in. So I auditioned in front of them, and about three weeks later I found out that I'd got the part."

The role might have been written for him, combining the kind of intense character he excels in playing with plenty of singing and guitar playing.

"It was the crowning achievement for me that I was able to do that," he says, "not only because it involved all of the things that I love, but because out of that, I developed a friendship with Joel and Ethan. They've been kind of like godfathers for me with everything I've done post-Llewyn, and it's such a special film for me.

"Doing Inside Llewyn Davis opened up so many opportunities that I wouldn't have had otherwise, and I've been working more or less non-stop ever since."

Oscar's ascent continues apace: later this year he'll star in the George Clooney/Coen brothers comedy Suburbicon, and after that he'll resume his collaboration with Alex Garland in the eagerly anticipated sci-fi thriller Annihilation. And then there's the little matter of The Last Jedi, the next instalment of the Star Wars franchise that's out at Christmas and is likely to be the biggest film of the year.

"My whole family were huge Star Wars fans," he says, "so doing the first one was a surreal experience. Unfortunately, I didn't get to shoot in Ireland for this one. I've never been, but I'd really love to."

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