Bobby Roberts
Banned
I think it's fair to say Chewie had more to do in this one movie than in any other film in the saga. They used him really, really well.
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[SPOILERS] Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Thread #3) - That's Not How the Force Works
- Thread starter Bobby Roberts
- Start date
I think it's fair to say Chewie had more to do in this one movie than in any other film in the saga. They used him really, really well.
Outside of DS9, none of the Trek series had particularly strong main woman character. Even Troi and Crusher on TNG weren't particularly interesting characters.
It's a shame but my earliest memory of Troi and Crusher is "sexy space yoga"
Monocle
Member
Yeah, Chewie's a bro.
excelsiorlef
Member
Incredibly so...
TPM probably due to not being a great film on top of it was not the cultural phenomenon this one was.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
Outside of DS9, none of the Trek series had particularly strong main woman character. Even Troi and Crusher on TNG weren't particularly interesting or strong characters. Crusher really didn't do anything, and Troi had almost nothing to do. Tasha's actress left because she didn't feel the character was going anywhere.
excelsiorlef
Member
Outside of DS9, none of the Trek series had particularly strong main woman character. Even Troi and Crusher on TNG weren't particularly interesting characters.
And none of them were Padme level bad, again not to go down this route more than I already have, my argument was not Star Trek is so much better but just to highlight how brutal the OT and PT were in that department.
And you can laugh but Janeway was a strong character in my experience.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
Janeway was an idiot, who's morals and convictions changes every other episode in order to fit needs of making her look good. The Writers removed nearly all interpersonal conflict for fear of making the captain look weak. The entire series is based on her failing a command test the Enterprise's counselor could have solved.
And yes I'd put TOS's line "Believe me, it's better to be dead than to live alone in the body of a woman." WAY, WAY, WAY below Padme's "you're breaking my heart" storyline on the "how offensive is this to women?" scale.
Thanks, the term is less grating now that I have the proper context. I'd say most media has jobber characters. In some essence they are essential.
SirMossyBloke
Member
I also must say I hated that they killed off Solo. I know why as I read Abrahms reasoning and it makes sense, but I've always hated the "bring back a popular character only to kill them off in the same episode" trope. I would have been happier if they'd killed him in the next one, even if it was at the beginning.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
This was kind of the key to a conversation me and my wife had really early on, and we were bullshitting about pop-culture (me? doing THAT? imagine!) and she said she was a big fan of Janeway, and I did the thing that was pretty much the verbal equivalent of the gif Forester keeps hitting. And we went back and forth, her bringing up Janeway's good moments, me pointing out what a bullheaded, illogical DIPSHIT she often was.
Eventually she was like "yunno, I can't say you don't have a point, and that a lot of Voyager was pretty crappy, because you do, and it was, but you gotta understand how important to me that it was HER being the bullheaded, illogical dipshit. And they had to listen to her. There weren't too many examples of that for me to look at back then, especially not THERE. So even when I knew she was fucking up, I liked that she had the strength and the weight to make those fuckups, and come back from them." Couldn't really argue with that.
It's part of why the Mary Sue arguments that popped off about Rey were so disheartening. Because there are so many examples of male ineptitude that are either handwaved, flat-out ignored, or even celebrated in our popular culture, and it's not really that big a deal. So when a woman gets to steer the ship, a flawed woman at that, it hurts a little to see that yardstick pushed a couple inches (or a foot) higher than we're typically inclined to measure our heroes by.
Janeway didn't stand so tall, but at least she was standing. Rey stands pretty goddamned tall, and it's fucking awesome.
Chewie was amazing in TFA. Some people are still saying he was "too clean looking," something I was worried about myself when Teaser 2 came out, but overall they completely nailed his look and attitude.
And, you know, I didn't even think about it the first time I watched the movie since I was taking it all in so fast, but I really appreciated how Chewie came back for Finn/Rey at the end. Not that it was out of character or anything. It's just a neat way of showing that he's connected to them now.
Kitschkraft
Member
He'll eventually "get his win back", but I expect him to be more of a slow-burn in comparison to Rey.
I'm hoping that the coma is used to drive some sort of new motivation in him.
Count Dookkake
Member
.
SirMossyBloke
Member
It does kind of exist, although maybe not officially, but I've seen it in a hell of a lot of TV shows.
He may not have been away from the series, but from what I saw of the timeline, he's been away from other people for a long time travelling with Chewie.
Nostremitus
Member
That's a pretty great way to view Janeway, actually...
Twilight Gap
Member
nvm
I've been considering making a thread discussing the importance of representation, and if I end up doing it, I'm quoting you here so I can find this post later on.
excelsiorlef
Member
I mean great, I'd still put Uhura as a character above Padme, that was my argument, not that Star Trek TOS was some bastion of great for women, again I needed people to understand just how damn bad women in Star Wars is. It was basically Leia or bust until TFA.
And Bobby Roberts perfectly highlights among other reasons why Janeway is important.
I mean fuck my fav Janeway moment is that she kept fucking with the timeline so much that the future version of the of the time cops ended trying to kill her, that episode is fucking fantastic.
Nostremitus
Member
Twilight Gap
Member
If Solo didn't die in the film, Ford probably would have died IRL before they could film the sequel. He's not exactly in his youth anymore.
lol good point.
SirMossyBloke
Member
He looks a damned sight better than Christopher Lee did, Carrie Fisher too. He's still got it, dude survived a plane crash and err...a door.
Twilight Gap
Member
At least he didn't have to get plastic surgery on his face.
When he died my first thought was, "well, I guess they don't have to worry about him not finishing the new trilogy."
Don't die on me, Harrison.
excelsiorlef
Member
This is a perfect statement.
If women are too flawed they're horrible characters
If they don't have an arbitrary amount of flaws they're Mary Sues
and the space between those two is tiny as fuck.
ANd there's no record of Fisher doing so either. Look at Fisher in the movie and in real life, it's pretty clear there was like some major CF smoothing done.
Also lol at you comparing the pressures someone like Fisher would experience to look good in Hollywood compared to Christopher Lee or Harrison Ford.
Ford was allowed to show all his wrinkles, Fisher was not.
Twilight Gap
Member
When he died my first thought was, "well, I guess they don't have to worry about him not finishing the new trilogy."
Don't die on me, Harrison.
Think he'll be around for a while, but I hope we don't see him running on screen again. Every time he did I felt bad.
Me? All I was saying is that his accident wasn't as serious as Mark Hammil's was.
SirMossyBloke
Member
Oh, is there any explanation for c3po's red arm? He mentioned it in a throwaway line and that was it.
excelsiorlef
Member
Sorry misinterpreted.
Nostremitus
Member
The biggest news for me today is the revival of Star Wars in France, TPM almost killed any hype from it back in the days and SW7 is now the most successful SW movie by far, too bad the critics from the public aren't as positive as they are in USA/UK, we'll see how it goes from there.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
I'd say there's a difference between a flawed character, and a character who's flawed because the writers are idiots. A big difference between a character who has to deal with interpersonal problems with her crew (Major Kira for example), and a character who avoids those problems because the writers never address them. If their intention was to make Janeway an incompetent fuckup, they could have at least done it with some consistency. Her making fuck ups and dealing with them would have been something. Her fuck ups were always the right decision, regardless of logical consistency with previous episodes.
The only way to measure it is by box office adjusted for inflation.
By that measure, TFA has grossed $750 million and TPM has grossed $730 million adjusted for 2016. That in itself is impressive. TFA is likely on its way to $900 million to $1.1 billion domestic. That alone puts it in the top 10 for all time highest grosses adjusted for inflation. I think that says "explosively" successful. Yes, you can say there is a different market but these adjusted numbers speak for themselves. You're not going to have another movie crack the top ten highest adjusted grosses for a very long time.
Twilight Gap
Member
np
Always get a little anxious when we see older guys sign on to these big films. even Liam Neeson is getting up there.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Academically, yeah, there's a difference. She even admitted as much when she conceded the point to me that the show wasn't very good and Janeway, along with the rest of the show, wasn't written very well.
But that doesn't carry a ton of weight in the face of the fact she was watching that show and someone she liked, someone who looked like she did, was at the center of it. So on some level, even though she knew it was a botched delivery of the character AND the show, it was HERS. There was an in that she didn't have to most other fiction, much less that kind of fiction.
It's a fundamental aspect of most fandoms, honestly, the ability to find yourself in the entertainment you like, regardless whether that entertainment is academically worth the time and attention spent on it. That opportunity is afforded to us, as men, so frequently it doesn't even occur to us to take note of it. Why would we.
The writer's failures as writers is secondary, in this case, to their success in putting a woman at the center of their show, so far as she was concerned at the time of her watching it for the first time as a young girl.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
I guess if the whole point that terribly written characters are a good thing just because they're women then I am. Like I said. An incompetently written character is just that to me. I agree Star Wars has been terrible to women, but I'd put every male character from the prequels save Palpatine into the incompetently written character slot too. I can see cause to cheer for flawed characters, if they are written that way. I don't see the need to cheer for characters flawed by incompetent writing.
Should we be cheering on how awesome and great Bella Swan was too?
I guess I can kind of understand that. But it seems like settling for mediocrity, rather than desiring greatness.
Eh, I call out a bad character regardless of sex or race. Janeway was dumb, Archer borderline retarded, and I've already made my opinions about Rey. I'm black and while it's awesome that Sisko was black it would never blind me to poor writing, luckily he was the best most badass Captain. That said, his devotion to the Bajoran religion and that whole Sisko
being Space Jesus
He's a hero denied his homeland
excelsiorlef
Member
Ahh yesss the it's just as bad for men too argument.
BTW Janeway is not Bella Swan.
Well, then, not to presume, but congratulations on your privilege of having a penis then.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
I don't think it's wrong to point out that when it came to the prequels, that George Lucas was a very equal opportunity guy in the writing of shit characters.
It's also not wrong to point out that the sky is blue, just inane.
DryEyeRelief
Member
jesus christ
excelsiorlef
Member
Good thing I was also mentioning the OT too, where in it was just Leia who ya know got to wear a sexy slave outfit...
And even if we agree that the PT sucked for all, Padme was easily the worst of the bunch.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
That's a pretty un-generous sound though, ain't it?
The point isn't really about whether you're enlightened enough to take any/all aspects of gender and/or race out of your estimation. It's about whether you're enlightened enough to understand how important such things can be to younger people who are only just starting to self-identify and grow a sense of self-awareness.
There's something to the fact we, as guys can (and do) watch bad heroes that look and sound like us ALL THE TIME and we only secondarily tend to think of whether they're written/performed well as opposed to whether they're badass or had a cool enough moment to handwave all the shit we don't like.
A large amount of this thread is about very loudly, consistently, carefully making sure we don't ever give Rey that same handwave, no matter how slight it might be.
This is kind of the point she was making, which struck me in the way I hope it eventually strikes you: Yeah, maybe it seems like settling for mediocrity, but when mediocrity is all they're offering you, then you take it as it comes.
We've never had to worry about that. We could afford to desire greatness, because greatness is much more easily offered to us.
Hmm. But how do you know that isn't happening? You got tapes of foxtrot's nine year old niece being psyched about Rey and then foxtrot taking a dump on her parade?
In terms of dialogue, sure. In terms of character, Amidala, the former queen, fighter and sitting senator, dies of a "broken heart" when her kids are born, while the boys duke it out with their swords.
DryEyeRelief
Member
If you're white
excelsiorlef
Member
And this is why Rey is such a revelation for many, she isn't mediocre, she's fucking amazing and the lead.
She's arguably one of the better female characters in sci-fi period...
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