Star Wars: The Force Awakens (12/18/15)

[Khev]

In Jedi Luke's plan to rescue Han from Jabba backfires, his mind tricks don't work on Jabba and Jabba laughs at him. After being humiliated, he's tricked by Jabba and almost eaten by one of his pets. He gets captured and gets his hand blown off. He gets thrown off his bike and nearly killed by a scout trooper. He's told that he must face and kill his father despite not wanting to. He gets captured by little stuffed teddy bears. He can't convince his father to join him and he gets fried by the Emperor and would have died if Vader didn't intervene.

Everything in Jabba's palace and at the Sarlacc Pit came across as being "all part of the plan." When Star Wars Insider interviewed Irvin Kershner about ROTJ in the early 90's he said that he wished he had accepted George's initial offer to direct the final film because he worked very hard to have the heroes earn their victories in Empire and he didn't like that they coasted through all their scenes in Jedi. And for the most part I agree. Thank goodness we had that space battle as it was the one aspect of the film where the good guys' backs were up against the wall.

The fact that so many people have equated Rey of being a Mary Sue has got to count for something.

My understanding of a "Mary Sue" is that it's a character that is overpowered for the purpose of "wish fulfillment." Well, again, that's pretty much all superheroes, virtually every hero ever played by Stallone, Arnold, Van Damme, Seagal, etc., and yes, Star Wars characters as well. I didn't say that everyone is wrong to describe Rey that way, I just don't get the wholesale dismissal of her as a character and seemingly personal dislike against her. She's a fun and likable character that fits well within her respective film. Would I have wanted her to pop up in ESB or RO? Hell no. But IMO Abrams did a good job of constructing a story for her to take entertaining part in.

 

[The Clown Prince of Crime]

Nah, Anakin may have been a Gary Stu, but apart from TPM, he didn't get any feats. C-3PO I'm not counting, since we don't know how hard it's supposed to be. AI seems to be common in the SW univese, so it's the equilavent of a kid building his own PC. Admirable, but for someone who grew up in a hardware store, hardly of great importance. The Pod-Race I'll give it to you.

Apart from that, he gets his ass handed to him by Dooku ala Luke, and that after 10+ years of training. In ROTS he gets back at Dooku, with the help of Obi-Wan, and then gets completely annihilated by Kenobi in the end. For a Chosen One, he has pretty lousy feats. Compared to him, Rey is like a Force God or something..

Yeah, I was only talking about Anakin in TPM. In the sequels he doesn't really live up to the chosen one tittle. They mentioned his skills being great for his young age, but other than that, he didn't seem greatly above everyone else, even if he was significantly younger than everyone else. Maybe that was the point, he was almost as good as all the older masters, but he was still only 23 years old.

As for C3PO, and his mechanic skills, he was pretty young and if I remember correctly, Padme was surprised when she found out Anakin built him. The alien who owns Anakin also mention something about Anakin's skills too, but I don't remember. We never saw Luke building any robots, in fact they were buying the robots. I'm pretty sure Luke at age 18 or 19 can fix an R2D2 and take care of it, but building one from scratch might be beyond his skills and he was at least 10 years older than Anakin. Then again he made a light saber, but that was an older Luke.

 

[DiFabio]

2) Batman: A paranoid rich guy with a God complex, who's way too vulnerable when his parents are mentioned. As per King's & Snyder's retcons, he tried to commit suicide and after that, kill Joe Chill. Continuing from there, he reraly has any real friends besides Superman and maybe Diana, as even his wards abandon him in the end. He has been raped by Talia and now is caring for their son, and his one true love is Catwoman, who has 237 counts of murder. He gets the uber-OP feats here and there, but they mostly have to do with planning. You won't see him going against Sinestro anytime soon.

Wut.

A man can't get raped by a woman, especially when that woman is this hot, pinup model looking terroist chick.

 

[jye4ever]

I do like that she's a new kind of "Chosen One" whether in name or not. She isn't just a retread of boy wonder Jake Lloyd. And to me her power level didn't undermine the coolness of anyone else, not even Kylo. I thought he was a great and conflicted bad guy who lost through an organic chain of misfortune.

While the mary sue (why that name anyways?) observations do make sense i'm also under the impression that Disney did that by design therefore i'm just going to trust their character arc progression and enjoy the ride instead of losing sleep over it lol.

 

[Wor-Gar]

In Jedi, Luke can't even mind trick a space slut.

I know you meant 'slug' but this works too.

 

[DiFabio]

I know you meant 'slug' but this works too.

Spoiler

 

[Khev]

"Jabba you ignorant space slut, free us...or die."

 

[The Clown Prince of Crime]

Everything in Jabba's palace and at the Sarlacc Pit came across as being "all part of the plan."

Yeah, I kind of got that from Luke when he was telling Han, "Don't worry about it! I'm taking care of it" or whatever the line was. Still, it's the single worst plan ever after several months of preparation

The only reason his rescue attempt worked is because R2-D2 was positioned on top of Jabba's ship to launch his lightsaber. What if the ship was simply too far for R2 to even reach Luke with his lightsaber throw? What would Luke have done Luke if R2 didn't show-up on top of that ship? What if Jabba thought R2 was a crappy useless robot and broke it in hundreds of different pieces or decided not to take him with him? What if Jabba scanned the robot and saw it was hiding a lightsaber? What if Luke were dropped in the sand monster with handcuffs or they cut off hi hands before arriving there?

 

[Victοr]

Yeah, I was only talking about Anakin in TPM. In the sequels he doesn't really live up to the chosen one tittle. They mentioned his skills being great for his young age, but other than that, he didn't seem greatly above everyone else, even if he was significantly younger than everyone else. Maybe that was the point, he was almost as good as all the older masters, but he was still only 23 years old.

As for C3PO, and his mechanic skills, he was pretty young and if I remember correctly, Padme was surprised when she found out Anakin built him. The alien who owns Anakin also mention something about Anakin's skills too, but I don't remember. We never saw Luke building any robots, in fact they were buying the robots. I'm pretty sure Luke at age 18 or 19 can fix an R2D2 and take care of it, but building one from scratch might be beyond his skills and he was at least 10 years older than Anakin. Then again he made a light saber, but that was an older Luke.

Didn't Anakin find C-3PO pretty much complete, circuit wise? I think it was only the plating and reprogramming that he did, so technically he didn't build him completely from scratch. Even then, Anakin was the Chosen One, and lost pretty much the majority of his duels. Meanwhile, you have Rey the great engineer, pilot, Force User, Fighter...

Wut.

A man can't get raped by a woman, especially when that woman is this hot, pinup model looking terroist chick.

In the original story they have hot sex (with Bats still wearing his cowl...), but it's been retconed as rape. Grayson has been canonically raped as well. He was injured and then, whatsername started riding him.

 

[jye4ever]

"mind trick a space slut" will be my favorite line of the day.

 

[Khev]

I do think that RO magnifies some of Abrams' shortcomings as a director. I liked Maz' castle but when responding to criticism that he just ripped off the cantina from ANH he said, "well I would assume that there are thousands of these watering holes throughout the galaxy and honestly if I went to a new SW movie that *didn't* have such a staple of the saga I'd feel cheated." Except that ANH, ESB, ROTJ, and now RO all have sequences of "scum and villainy" and yet none of them repeat the cantina. In ESB we get the bounty hunters on the Executor. In ROTJ we get Jabba's palace. RO gives us Jedha, a holy city full of religious pilgrims and violent insurgents. JJ didn't have to just give us another bar. Han could have had a friend *anywhere.*

Also the way Abrams handled the deaths of the X-Wing pilots in TFA really sticks out compared to the OT and RO. In all the other four films we get just enough footage of the pilots to care about them and mourn their loss as they go up in flames but the way Abrams staged the Starkiller X-Wing attack we just see third person shots of random X-Wings exploding with no indicator of any kind as to who was dying. Just that one alien dude that crashes in the trench. In interviews and on the blu-ray commentary he says "Oh the X-Wing attack is a backdrop, of course the audience knows they're going to blow up the base, the real drama was in the lightsaber duel so I focused on that." But that was a mistake, IMO. All the other films placed equal importance of the plight of the pilots, even if only briefly, to increase tension on ALL levels, and increase the verisimilitude that there was indeed a real war going on.

 

[DiFabio]

Whew, thank you post deleting Gods. I didn't know how to explain myself out of that one. You saved my neck there . . .

Yes, Rey is a great a example of wishfulfillment for a character. Though I can't say she's as sympathetic or vulnerable as let's say, Rocky Balboa or Rambo. She is definitely more powerful and unstoppable compared to the likes of the Terminator.

Maybe I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around the idea of what a little girl might want to see? Perhaps that's why. When I was a kid though, I never liked the hero being unstoppable or invincible. As a kid, I loved seeing Luke get bruised and beaten in Empire or seeing Batman limp up the cathedral all bloodied and burned. It was like they were defeated, but still going for it. It was cool and made them even more of a hero. I dunno.


If I were a kid, I'd think Rey was lame. But then who knows, maybe that's what young people want in their heroes now a days?







I still think Leia, Padme and Jyn Erso are better female Star Wars characters. Though I'm sure that had to have been pretty traumatizing for any little girl to have invested in Jyn only for her to get nuked.

 

[Centurion]

"mind trick a space slut" will be my favorite line of the day.

 

[greygoose]

Space Whore sounds better.

 

[Victοr]

So **** and ***** are censored, but ass, whore and slut aren't? Those are some weird rules...

 

[greygoose]

So **** and ***** are censored, but ass, whore and slut aren't? Those are some weird rules...

Ass, whore and slut and even piss are on the verge of being swear words but aren't quite. You can use them in a normal sentence without sounding aggressive, e.g. 'The local whore was a doing the grocery shopping whilst showing her off her great ass to the public.'

 

[Wor-Gar]

So **** and ***** are censored, but ass, whore and slut aren't? Those are some weird rules...

Derogatory girl words are not as bad as derogatory boy words.

 

[ZaCHw117]

'The local whore was a doing the grocery shopping whilst showing her off her great ass to the public.'

God, what a slut.

 

[Victοr]

Ass, whore and slut and even piss are on the verge of being swear words but aren't quite. You can use them in a normal sentence without sounding aggressive, e.g. 'The local whore was a doing the grocery shopping whilst showing her off her great ass to the public.'

Still, it's weird. I mean, ***** is the medical term for the male reproductive organ and that's censored. **** is a name, and that's censored as well. It just seems weird to me.

 

[DiFabio]

I could make one quick sentence and have all three of those words disappear forever. I'm the reason *** got censored on this board. It was either me or Nam.