1 hour ago, RufusDaMan said:

Rexler if one is to understand the great Franchise, one must study all its aspects, not just the dogmatic, narrow view of the OT purists. If you wish to become a complete and wise leader, you must embrace a larger view of Star Wars...

Good luck getting him to see it that way. He's pretty settled into, "literally the OT is the only good Star Wars thing ever made ever". I've learned not to really bother with somebody so ingrained in that mindset.

(Also, good quote edit. Thumbs up)

6 minutes ago, Dr Zoidberg said:

I saw it here in Beijing. It doesn’t surprise me that it didn’t say long.

Star Wars doesn’t hold the same cultural zeitgeist here that it does in the West. Remember ANH was released towards the end of the cultural revolution and the films were banned for years. China still has a quota on how many foreign films can be shown in cinemas here.

To give you an idea of just how unfamiliar Chinese cinema goers are with Star Wars; when it screened here every time a major character first appeared, a small blurb (in Mandarin and English) appeared on the screen explaining who the character was and where they fit into things.

Oh my god why are we even appealing to the chinese market if that's the case? Clearly they won't care.

A movie that is Episode 8 in a series spanning almost 50 years should stand on its own? To an audience who don’t truly understand the characters or the world in which they inhabit? Yeah... no.

Youre entitled to think it was a poor film. But that’s not the reason it did poorly here. A lack of connection with source material definitely had an influence.

3 minutes ago, Rexler Brath said:

A film should stand on its own. Obviously TLJ does not. Chinese do not like it. But just because the Chinese didn't grow up with a franchise, doesn't mean they won't like a franchise. WoW did very well for instance. If you are in Beijing, you should know that the movie was reviewed very poorly in China and it was removed from the theatres because it did poorly the opening week. It did poorly the opening week because it was a bad movie, not because it was a Star Wars movie.

Wait, okay. So you're telling us that Return of The King should have been released as its own stand alone film despite being part of a trilogy. That's what you're saying. I just want to understand this is what you're doing here.

2 minutes ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Good luck getting him to see it that way. He's pretty settled into, "literally the OT is the only good Star Wars thing ever made ever". I've learned not to really bother with somebody so ingrained in that mindset.

Strawman. I never made that claim. You did. There are many great works outside of the OT. X-Wing Miniatures happens to be one of them and is currently my favourite star wars game. Please apologise for your strawman fallacy

3 minutes ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Oh my god why are we even appealing to the chinese market if that's the case? Clearly they won't care.

Chinese will go see good movies. There is 1 billion people. Its a HUGE market. Maybe you don't care, but corporations DO CARE. Its potential profit. Its the very reason Disney put Chinese actors in Rouge One.

4 minutes ago, Dr Zoidberg said:

A movie that is Episode 8 in a series spanning almost 50 years should stand on its own? To an audience who don’t truly understand the characters or the world in which they inhabit? Yeah... no.

Strawman. Learn how to communicate. A movie should be able to stand on its own in terms of plot, character development, etc. A movie in a trilogy can reference other material but should not depend on outside material in order to drive the plot.

Anyways, when you learn how to properly communicate and apologise for your logical fallacies, we can continue this discussion.

6 minutes ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Wait, okay. So you're telling us that Return of The King should have been released as its own stand alone film despite being part of a trilogy. That's what you're saying. I just want to understand this is what you're doing here.

Logical fallacy strawman. Apologise.

I don’t hold conversations with people who behave and speak to others like petulant teenagers. I’ve better things to do with my time.

We’re done.

17 minutes ago, Rexler Brath said:

Please apologise for your strawman fallacy

No.

I'm not sorry. I will never apologize if I'm not sorry. Western Society did not break me into that weak willed mindset, neither will you.

12 minutes ago, Rexler Brath said:

Logical fallacy strawman. Apologise.

Literally No.

22 minutes ago, Rexler Brath said:

Strawman. I never made that claim. You did. There are many great works outside of the OT. X-Wing Miniatures happens to be one of them and is currently my favourite star wars game. Please apologise for your strawman fallacy

Chinese will go see good movies. There is 1 billion people. Its a HUGE market. Maybe you don't care, but corporations DO CARE. Its potential profit. Its the very reason Disney put Chinese actors in Rouge One.

No, that wasn't a strawman. That was applying your logic to another situation to show its fallacies. It's a legitimate form of debate and one that you seem to misunderstand a lot.

As for your Chinese point, I remind you of my Transformers point. Their taste in movies doesn't have a sterling record.

Just now, SabineKey said:

It's a legitimate form of debate and one that you seem to misunderstand a lot.

Its not a legitimate form of debate. It is a strawman when they make a claim as if its from me.

> So you're telling us that Return ...

No, I was not telling them anything about Return of the king. I never made any claims about Return of the king. Its clearly a strawman argument. The person who misunderstands debate is YOU.

7 minutes ago, SabineKey said:

No, that wasn't a strawman. That was applying your logic to another situation to show its fallacies. It's a legitimate form of debate and one that you seem to misunderstand a lot.

As for your Chinese point, I remind you of my Transformers point. Their taste in movies doesn't have a sterling record.

Just... Like, Brath is a bully, man. Only he can be right. Let him be, we know he ain't.

Just now, Rexler Brath said:

Its not a legitimate form of debate. It is a strawman when they make a claim as if its from me.

> So you're telling us that Return ...

No, I was not telling them anything about Return of the king. I never made any claims about Return of the king. Its clearly a strawman argument. The person who misunderstands debate is YOU.

*Sigh* it's a way of speaking. He even clarified later what he meant, but you stick to your strawman defense like you are afraid to answer. Well, now I am going to ask you why the logic you used on TLJ doesn't also apply to Return of the King. No indication that you brought it up. No strawman. Just looking for you to use your logic else where.

Also, still making your thoughts on my Transformer point.

Just now, Captain Lackwit said:

Just... Like, Brath is a bully, man. Only he can be right. Let him be, we know he ain't.

Can we trade him for PGS? At least he could bring up a good point occasionally.

This is the reason stuff like this should get put into the Off Topic section. Besides being x-wing unrelated, the threads just turn into big fights.

The mods keep moving them there after the damage has been done. I really wish Imperial Advisor would stop posting off topic threads in the main x-wing room constantly. The vast majority are started by him. All the more reason these forums could use some users who get moderator status to keep things in line on a more timely basis.

I'm still not sure why The Last Jedi is one of those things you can't even bring up without somebody going ballistic about it. I guess some people just refuse to let anyone else just enjoy a new Star Wars movie. It's very odd - the only other things that seem to do this are political, and I didn't think TLJ was that political at all. I guess women showing up on screen and doing stuff? Did that get turned into a "liberal conspiracy" while I wasn't looking? Sometimes I despair of humanity.

1 hour ago, SabineKey said:

Can we trade him for PGS? At least he could bring up a good point occasionally.

If only!

23 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

I'm still not sure why The Last Jedi is one of those things you can't even bring up without somebody going ballistic about it. I guess some people just refuse to let anyone else just enjoy a new Star Wars movie. It's very odd - the only other things that seem to do this are political, and I didn't think TLJ was that political at all. I guess women showing up on screen and doing stuff? Did that get turned into a "liberal conspiracy" while I wasn't looking? Sometimes I despair of humanity.

I don't know why either. Like, everything you just said, is what I'm thinking about all this. If they don't judge the film on its own merits, they judge it on external factors. Can we just... Can we please quote Yoda about this whole thing?

Seriously, people need to keep this in mind. Think about events in the last decade. See the truth in those words.

1 hour ago, SabineKey said:

*Sigh* it's a way of speaking. He even clarified later what he meant, but you stick to your strawman defense like you are afraid to answer. Well, now I am going to ask you why the logic you used on TLJ doesn't also apply to Return of the King. No indication that you brought it up. No strawman. Just looking for you to use your logic else where.

Also, still making your thoughts on my Transformer point.

Exactly.

But he won't. It doesn't support what he's saying, because it's a pinpoint weakness in his argument.

2 hours ago, Kieransi said:

I'm still not sure why The Last Jedi is one of those things you can't even bring up without somebody going ballistic about it. I guess some people just refuse to let anyone else just enjoy a new Star Wars movie. It's very odd - the only other things that seem to do this are political, and I didn't think TLJ was that political at all. I guess women showing up on screen and doing stuff? Did that get turned into a "liberal conspiracy" while I wasn't looking? Sometimes I despair of humanity.

Many people dislike that movie, not because political or ideological reasons, but because of how purists they are with the Star Wars tradition.
Calling these people haters and accusing them of not liking the movie because of ideological reasons is a form of Reductio ad Hitlerum.
"Bigots don't like TLJ. You don't like TLJ? Then you are a bigot".

That is a fallacy I wish people stopped using because it's a way to belittle the criticism of a great many other people with disrespect.
It's like calling people names because they disagree with your tastes.

What TLJ does that triggers so many purist people (not counting bigots), is that it follows with pride Kylo Ren's slogan "Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Star Wars has always had cheap philosophy and Chinese cracker morale messages. But at least these wisdom pills have been a digest version of commonly agreed ethics and and traditional wisdom:

• Stay true to yourself. Follow your feelings, but don't go yourself unprepared or your will suffer.
• The hero's journey.
• Those that ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.
• Know your enemy. Know yourself. Learn, learn, learn.

And so many others that we have got from millennia of western and eastern culture.

TLJ (and TFA) come to subvert most of them, just for the sake of subverting them.

• Characters do all the time irrational stuff, or act totally against what anyone would consider the right way to behave (Luke's and Finn's cowardice, Poe insubordination, Holdo's hermetism, Yoda's untruthfulness to himself). Rey's reckless decision to meet Kylo at Snoke's ship (a mirror of Luke skipping Dagobah's training and metting Vader at Cloud City) ends, all in all, in a huge success for her. She suffer no ill consequence at all.
• There is no hero's journey, the main protagonist and antagonist are more powerful than anyone ever has been before, from the get go. They don't learn anything in their journey that they didn't already know from the beginning.
• The movie happily pushes the concept of "ignore the past" again and again, against all common sense. Old achievements are undone, old characters are undone (both in personality and physically), old stories are rendered pointless, old experience and knowledge is belittled.
  The movie is a constant celebration of "What is new is best, what is old is crap", that is basically a reflection of one of the worst kind of decadent attitudes people, and society in general, can have. This movies encourages this attitude again and again, to the point of fans repeating that sentence everywhere, even in this same thread.
  People, "Let the past die. Kill it if you have to" perhaps sounds cool to you, but it's an incredibly poisonous and self-destructive ethos. We aren't what our kids grow beyond! We are what we come from.
  We are in a time in our society when ignorance is celebrated, (look at our politicians, our TV, our school system, our news media; and I'm not even mentioning any country in particular) and this movie just embraces the zeitgeist.
• Following the previous point, the celebration of ignorance. In this movie, talent is everything! Everyone is special! One doesn't become great by training or studying anymore. One is great from the beginning, or not. Those that don't have the talent, are depicted as losers.
  Newton said that being a genius is 10% inspiration, 90% transpiration (sweating, as from hard working).
  The characters in this movie are 110% inspiration. Everything is handed to them from the beginning and they outclass anyone else before them. TLJ's Yoda makes fun of the Jedi texts and burns them. The classic Master Yoda is spinning in his grave. What master would encourage their pupils to ignore the knowledge and instead throw themselves into the wild beyond just wielding their innate talent? A really bad one, I can tell you.
  

This movie has an audience, of course it does.
This movie is tailor-made for today's masses. When the Moon's landing is questioned as fake. When people are tired of experts. When scientific vocations are declining all around the world. When some of the most watched entertainment is talent shows. When flat Earth theories are increasing in acceptance. When vaccination is questioned by ignorant parents and long eradicated diseases are coming back to our schools. A time of consumerism and programmed obsolescence. Throw away the old, embrace the new.

It goes against core values in our culture heritage that have been there for centuries, and that original Star Wars transmitted, as part of our cultural production.
This is why this movie feels like something else. Something alien and forced against the Star Wars tradition.

I am fine with debating these points. Unless the response to this is calling me bigot.

5 hours ago, markcsoul said:

This is the reason stuff like this should get put into the Off Topic section. Besides being x-wing unrelated, the threads just turn into big fights.

The mods keep moving them there after the damage has been done. I really wish Imperial Advisor would stop posting off topic threads in the main x-wing room constantly. The vast majority are started by him. All the more reason these forums could use some users who get moderator status to keep things in line on a more timely basis.

We need a system where mods sit down and discuss the problem, agree what's in the best interest of most users, and then do it.

And if they don't agree, they should be made to. By someone w i s e

1 hour ago, Azrapse said:

Many people dislike that movie, not because political or ideological reasons, but because of how purists they are with the Star Wars tradition.
Calling these people haters and accusing them of not liking the movie because of ideological reasons is a form of Reductio ad Hitlerum.
"Bigots don't like TLJ. You don't like TLJ? Then you are a bigot".

That is a fallacy I wish people stopped using because it's a way to belittle the criticism of a great many other people with disrespect.
It's like calling people names because they disagree with your tastes.

What TLJ does that triggers so many purist people (not counting bigots), is that it follows with pride Kylo Ren's slogan "Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Star Wars has always had cheap philosophy and Chinese cracker morale messages. But at least these wisdom pills have been a digest version of commonly agreed ethics and and traditional wisdom:

• Stay true to yourself. Follow your feelings, but don't go yourself unprepared or your will suffer.
• The hero's journey.
• Those that ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.
• Know your enemy. Know yourself. Learn, learn, learn.

And so many others that we have got from millennia of western and eastern culture.

TLJ (and TFA) come to subvert most of them, just for the sake of subverting them.

• Characters do all the time irrational stuff, or act totally against what anyone would consider the right way to behave (Luke's and Finn's cowardice, Poe insubordination, Holdo's hermetism, Yoda's untruthfulness to himself). Rey's reckless decision to meet Kylo at Snoke's ship (a mirror of Luke skipping Dagobah's training and metting Vader at Cloud City) ends, all in all, in a huge success for her. She suffer no ill consequence at all.
• There is no hero's journey, the main protagonist and antagonist are more powerful than anyone ever has been before, from the get go. They don't learn anything in their journey that they didn't already know from the beginning.
• The movie happily pushes the concept of "ignore the past" again and again, against all common sense. Old achievements are undone, old characters are undone (both in personality and physically), old stories are rendered pointless, old experience and knowledge is belittled.
  The movie is a constant celebration of "What is new is best, what is old is crap", that is basically a reflection of one of the worst kind of decadent attitudes people, and society in general, can have. This movies encourages this attitude again and again, to the point of fans repeating that sentence everywhere, even in this same thread.
  People, "Let the past die. Kill it if you have to" perhaps sounds cool to you, but it's an incredibly poisonous and self-destructive ethos. We aren't what our kids grow beyond! We are what we come from.
  We are in a time in our society when ignorance is celebrated, (look at our politicians, our TV, our school system, our news media; and I'm not even mentioning any country in particular) and this movie just embraces the zeitgeist.
• Following the previous point, the celebration of ignorance. In this movie, talent is everything! Everyone is special! One doesn't become great by training or studying anymore. One is great from the beginning, or not. Those that don't have the talent, are depicted as losers.
  Newton said that being a genius is 10% inspiration, 90% transpiration (sweating, as from hard working).
  The characters in this movie are 110% inspiration. Everything is handed to them from the beginning and they outclass anyone else before them. TLJ's Yoda makes fun of the Jedi texts and burns them. The classic Master Yoda is spinning in his grave. What master would encourage their pupils to ignore the knowledge and instead throw themselves into the wild beyond just wielding their innate talent? A really bad one, I can tell you.
  

This movie has an audience, of course it does.
This movie is tailor-made for today's masses. When the Moon's landing is questioned as fake. When people are tired of experts. When scientific vocations are declining all around the world. When some of the most watched entertainment is talent shows. When flat Earth theories are increasing in acceptance. When vaccination is questioned by ignorant parents and long eradicated diseases are coming back to our schools. A time of consumerism and programmed obsolescence. Throw away the old, embrace the new.

It goes against core values in our culture heritage that have been there for centuries, and that original Star Wars transmitted, as part of our cultural production.
This is why this movie feels like something else. Something alien and forced against the Star Wars tradition.

I am fine with debating these points. Unless the response to this is calling me bigot.

I'm far too busy to answer in the depth that this post deserves (kudos) and I don't have a snappy star wars gif to sum it up.

Anyway, I philosophically disagree with your assessment, but some of your points are valid and well put. When I'm done with this funeral I shall return and answer in length.

If that trailer comes out, we are Ron❗️

4 hours ago, Azrapse said:

Very, very well put sir. I applaud your reasoning, statements and justifications. You hit many nails right on the head. *Salute*

9 hours ago, Kieransi said:

Did that get turned into a "liberal conspiracy" while I wasn't looking? Sometimes I despair of humanity.

No, people are just upset that their losing their jobs and careers to the truth of what they've done. Some people can't handle equality.

Super Bowl teaser. Full trailer the Monday after Super Bowl.

Seriously I'm just laughing at apology demands on the internet. Like... has that ever worked in the history of internet?

21 minutes ago, Dabirdisdaword said:

Seriously I'm just laughing at apology demands on the internet. Like... has that ever worked in the history of internet?

Once. When apologize was spelled correctly.