6 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

Citation needed.

4 minutes ago, micheldebruyn said:

N o, you didn't really answer it.

All writers make telling a great story their priority. It's just that some writers aren't cut out to be writers, and that has got nothing to do with their politics.

The flaws of TFA and TROS are the flaws of Lost and Alias and Fringe. Politics has got nothing to do with it. I mean, do you seriously, honestly believe that somebody made the conscious decision to make Rey more powerful than male Force-users? That this is not just the well-establised trait of JJ Abrams not caring about the rules of the universe he's writing in, even when they are rules he made himself?

All writers CLAIM to make a good story a priority. That does not mean they ACTUALLY do make telling a good story a priority. And who said they made a conscious decision. The mistake you are making is thinking I think there was malice involved or something. See one of the problems is everyone in California and Hollywood live in a bubble. they they have a serious lack of self awareness. I know because I have worked at Hollywood studios. I have seen it in person.

9 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

All writers CLAIM to make a good story a priority. That does not mean they ACTUALLY do make telling a good story a priority. And who said they made a conscious decision. The mistake you are making is thinking I think there was malice involved or something. See one of the problems is everyone in California and Hollywood live in a bubble. they they have a serious lack of self awareness. I know because I have worked at Hollywood studios. I have seen it in person.

So, it's theory and supposition. It might be informed theory and supposition, but it's theory and supposition.

10 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

So, it's theory and supposition. It might be informed theory and supposition, but it's theory and supposition.

It is from experience in dealing with those in Hollywood personally and then observing the same attitudes come out of mouths of the producers and directors saying exactly that. go listen to the interviews listen to how much emphasis they put on diversity and feminism. that tells me exactly what their priorities were. Then compare it to what people like Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau say. you can see the difference in priorities. Compare the depth of character you see in Cara Dune and Ahsoka and the depth of character you get in Rey and Rose. Cara even has more depth of character in her 2 episodes than Rey does. Ahsoka has more depth of character. has had tons of character growth. Is a very strong female character. The trick is the order you do things. priorities. Dave focused on making good characters. He put the same effort into all the important characters he made. Hera is a great character. Kanan is a great character. Sabine is a great character. They put the same effort in every character they do. Dave Filoni clearly does not focus and any specific race, creed, gender. He just makes interesting characters. And because he does that he ends up with very diverse interesting characters.

8 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

It is from experience in dealing with those in Hollywood personally and then observing the same attitudes come out of mouths of the producers and directors saying exactly that. go listen to the interviews listen to how much emphasis they put on diversity and feminism. that tells me exactly what their priorities were. Then compare it to what people like Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau say. you can see the difference in priorities. Compare the depth of character you see in Cara Dune and Ahsoka and the depth of character you get in Rey and Rose. Cara even has more depth of character in her 2 episodes than Rey does. Ahsoka has more depth of character. has had tons of character growth. Is a very strong female character. The trick is the order you do things. priorities. Dave focused on making good characters. He put the same effort into all the important characters he made. Hera is a great character. Kanan is a great character. Sabine is a great character. They put the same effort in every character they do. Dave Filoni clearly does not focus and any specific race, creed, gender. He just makes interesting characters. And because he does that he ends up with very diverse interesting characters.

So, yes...theory and supposition.

By way of comparison, I’ve worked in customer service/call centers in a variety of capacities for about 25 years. As a customer, when I’m dealing with a company, I can use that experience to theorize as to what that company can and can’t do for me, what the various levels that interface directly with customers can and can’t do, and so on. But, without being in the proverbial room, I can’t say for certain. It’s an educated guess, just as yours is.

Re: the various “depths of characters,” I can’t fully agree. At least some of that is subjective; so a back-and-forth on it is counterproductive. I‘ll just illustrate that point with a comparison: I find the comics character of Miles Morales to be a shallow collection of cliches and writer Brian Bendis’ go-to tics and tropes. Others find him one of the richest, most rounded, realistic and appealing of characters. Am I right, or are the ones who enjoy his stories?

After reading all of this I have come to the conclusion that the Emperor does not want us discussing Rey's parentage.

Did anyone feel the Dark Empire vibes? I had many complaints about RoS that seem to have been already stated, but there were a few nods to old EU material that had me going "oh, that's cool."

8 hours ago, micheldebruyn said:

N o, you didn't really answer it.

All writers make telling a great story their priority. It's just that some writers aren't cut out to be writers, and that has got nothing to do with their politics.

The flaws of TFA and TROS are the flaws of Lost and Alias and Fringe. Politics has got nothing to do with it. I mean, do you seriously, honestly believe that somebody made the conscious decision to make Rey more powerful than male Force-users? That this is not just the well-establised trait of JJ Abrams not caring about the rules of the universe he's writing in, even when they are rules he made himself?

Did you miss the Force is Female stuff and you call out JJ but ignore the worst of all the moves aka the last jedi

the fact anyone had any hope for TROS after that mess shocked me

4 hours ago, Vestij Jai Galaar said:

After reading all of this I have come to the conclusion that the Emperor does not want us discussing Rey's parentage.

Did anyone feel the Dark Empire vibes? I had many complaints about RoS that seem to have been already stated, but there were a few nods to old EU material that had me going "oh, that's cool."

they stole from an EU story after tossing it out and it is a piss poor copy

33 minutes ago, Oldmike1 said:

Did you miss the Force is Female stuff

Ah, you mean the Nike shirt, that Kennedy happened to wear at an event? Stuff like this getting overblown is why I stop listening if SJW Stuff is mentioned. I mean sure, it happens, some stuff feels forced. But imo not enough that the fuzz about it is warrented.

30 minutes ago, Vode said:

Ah, you mean the Nike shirt, that Kennedy happened to wear at an event?

Thank you. That explains things a bit better for me - I was wondering if I'd missed a line in the last three movies about the Force being female.

In other words, it's apparently all about some form of fanrage and not based on a line in the movies.

Here we go again...

1 hour ago, Oldmike1 said:

Did you miss the Force is Female stuff and you call out JJ but ignore the worst of all the moves aka the last jedi

the fact anyone had any hope for TROS after that mess shocked me

I consider The Last Jedi the best or second best Star Wars film. Whatever flaws it had stem from having to be a sequel to The Force Awakens (and yeah, Poe's general Hugs joke is aweful, but then Star Wars was never known for its great comedy).

1 hour ago, micheldebruyn said:

I consider The Last Jedi the best or second best Star Wars film. Whatever flaws it had stem from having to be a sequel to The Force Awakens (and yeah, Poe's general Hugs joke is aweful, but then Star Wars was never known for its great comedy).

The problem is TLJ caused so much unnecessary division in the fandom and did nothing to address the questions Fans had. In many ways it came across as a big middle finger to those fans questions. I dont consuder that to be good story telling at all. Add on top of that the fact that many characters behaved in manners that dont make sense from a character background point of view makes things worse. Admirals dont become admirals if they behave in a manner that causes mutiny.

12 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

Citation needed.

honestly it's pretty hard to deny that disney tried to make star wars even more mainstream and therefore tried to attract a larger female audience. which is fine in itself, I suppose. but we all know what came out of it. flashy, short term amusement with no soul.

16 hours ago, Shizuya said:

this trilogy is (imo) a hot mess and very disapointing to say the least. many plot decisions (like reys parents) feel like they were made afterwards and the writers didnt think the story through at all.

TRoS had a number of issues with rewrites. Leia was supposed to be the Skywalker in question. With Carrie's death they made a lot of strange choices. I don't envy them the situation. Do you kill off Leia? We were all pretty raw about Carrie's death and that might have made things worse. Continuing to CG her was jarring. The there the decision to cowtow to vocal minority of angry fanboys that didn't like TLJ. TLJ was, by every metric, a huge success. TLJ made over four times its budget, a 7/10 aggregate fan reviews, and a critic's aggregate score of 85/100.

The entire trilogy lacked a narrative through-line (nothing new there for Star Wars) and seemed to be cobbled together from disparate scenes that Abrams thought was cool. TLJ is by no means perfect (though I think it is objectively a well made film). It appeared (I have no evidence of this) that they wanted to model the story on ESB. ESB split the party and two characters went off on a side quest while the Jedi was trained. End it with a parental figure confronting a child figure.

The strength of the original Star Wars film was that Lucas was emulating movies like "Hidden Fortress" and "The Searchers." Those films have a clear objective and through-line that leads to that objective. All other Star Wars films lack that to varying degrees. Because there was only supposed to be one film.

Sorry for the pontificating. I agree. They were a hot mess. But I still kinda liked them.

40 minutes ago, Shizuya said:

honestly it's pretty hard to deny that disney tried to make star wars even more mainstream and therefore tried to attract a larger female audience. which is fine in itself, I suppose.

Ah, the Nike shirt. Cross promotion with another company is, I suppose, some sort of proof of production priorities?

40 minutes ago, Shizuya said:

but we all know what came out of it. flashy, short term amusement with no soul.

Sounds like a description of one movie out of five released in the past few years (and the most recent one, which seemed to try hardest to appeal to the complaints of so-called “forced diversity,” at that).

1 hour ago, Nytwyng said:

Ah, the Nike shirt. Cross promotion with another company is, I suppose, some sort of proof of production priorities?

Sounds like a description of one movie out of five released in the past few years (and the most recent one, which seemed to try hardest to appeal to the complaints of so-called “forced diversity,” at that).

The problem is they created the problems unnecessarily. good writing and not trying to force things. Star Wars can have plenty of diversity with out needing to force it. Dave Filoni does it just fine. In fact he is really good at doing it with out coming across shallow about it. I think because he doesnt think about diversity. He just makes good stories with interesting characters with out making an agenda about it.

1 hour ago, Nytwyng said:

Ah, the Nike shirt. Cross promotion with another company is, I suppose, some sort of proof of production priorities?

where exactly can you see a nike logo on this shirt? have you ever seen any nike shirt without the logo on it? how good of a promotion is it if there is no visible indicator of nike being involved at all?
whatever, it's beside the point actually.

I'm not even saying it is proof of anything rather than indication. honestly I see no point in discussing this as pretty much all points have been made in this thread. if you dont want to see the identity politics that were dumped into this movie than so be it.

1 hour ago, Nytwyng said:

Sounds like a description of one movie out of five released in the past few years

I agree.

1 hour ago, Shizuya said:

honestly it's pretty hard to deny that disney tried to make star wars even more mainstream and therefore tried to attract a larger female audience. which is fine in itself, I suppose. but we all know what came out of it. flashy, short term amusement with no soul.

The mistake is thinking Star Wars doesnt have a huge female following. It is the same mistake some at Marvel make. Thinking their audience is only male. When in fact the audience is clearly already largely both genders. Women like action and scifi flicks in similar amounts to men who like them. So when you try and pander to one set of your audience with the goal of expanding that audience tends to fall flat. It is kinda like how they replaced Black Widow with Captain America in the action figure toy set. The attitude was that boys wouldnt buy it with a girl action figure. It is a stupid assumption that results in bad decision making and pisses off a lot of fans. Because in a large part you are insulting a lot of your fans with bad assumptions about who they are and what they like.

28 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

Dave Filoni does it just fine. In fact he is really good at doing it with out coming across shallow about it. I think because he doesnt think about diversity. He just makes good stories with interesting characters with out making an agenda about it.

"I also want to get these men who are in a privileged position to tell these stories right now to change their dynamic, and to start looking at stories and characters. To just make great interesting and to stop doing the same thing over and over and over again. If that’s your experience, fine, but we have to be a part of this change. …

I want dimensional, diverse characters. I want characters that are women of every race, every age, every description, what have you, doing interesting things, being dynamic. That’s what we’re dedicated to at Lucasfilm, I can assure you. … It won’t just stop with two movies [The Force Awakens and Rogue One], it’s something we’re dedicated to for the foreseeable future." - Dave Filoni's "diversity agenda".

8 minutes ago, Mistervimes said:

"I also want to get these men who are in a privileged position to tell these stories right now to change their dynamic, and to start looking at stories and characters. To just make great interesting and to stop doing the same thing over and over and over again. If that’s your experience, fine, but we have to be a part of this change. …

I want dimensional, diverse characters. I want characters that are women of every race, every age, every description, what have you, doing interesting things, being dynamic. That’s what we’re dedicated to at Lucasfilm, I can assure you. … It won’t just stop with two movies [The Force Awakens and Rogue One], it’s something we’re dedicated to for the foreseeable future." - Dave Filoni's "diversity agenda".

The difference is he isnt lazy with his writing.

11 minutes ago, Mistervimes said:

"I want dimensional, diverse characters. I want characters that are women of every race, every age, every description, what have you, doing interesting things, being dynamic. That’s what we’re dedicated to at Lucasfilm, I can assure you. … It won’t just stop with two movies [The Force Awakens and Rogue One], it’s something we’re dedicated to for the foreseeable future." - Dave Filoni's "diversity agenda".

The most disappointing thing concerning diversity in the new movies to me ist the complete lack of new aliens in the main cast. I guess Disney thinks Nobody would identity themselves with trandoshans twilek or any of the hundreds of non human species 🤯

8 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

The difference is he isnt lazy with his writing.

I agree with that statement.

4 minutes ago, Shizuya said:

The most disappointing thing concerning diversity in the new movies to me ist the complete lack of new aliens in the main cast. I guess Disney thinks Nobody would identity themselves with trandoshans twilek or any of the hundreds of non human species 🤯

I don't disagree with this point of view. I feel there should be more aliens, I think (and this is purely hypothesis) is that Star Wars (compared to Star Trek) has always had truly alien looking aliens. In Star Trek, Roddenberry had a rule about aliens having a certain level of human features so that you can identify with them. With very few exceptions, in the movies, the aliens that got the most screen time (Wookies, Twi'leks, and Ewoks for example) had human features that showed human-like expressions. The one real exception is Admiral Akbar. It's hard for an audience to identify with a Talz or an Ithorian when you're basically looking at a faceless puppet. All the aliens with speaking roles in "The Mandalorian" have followed this logic.

20 minutes ago, Mistervimes said:

I don't disagree with this point of view. I feel there should be more aliens, I think (and this is purely hypothesis) is that Star Wars (compared to Star Trek) has always had truly alien looking aliens. In Star Trek, Roddenberry had a rule about aliens having a certain level of human features so that you can identify with them. With very few exceptions, in the movies, the aliens that got the most screen time (Wookies, Twi'leks, and Ewoks for example) had human features that showed human-like expressions. The one real exception is Admiral Akbar. It's hard for an audience to identify with a Talz or an Ithorian when you're basically looking at a faceless puppet. All the aliens with speaking roles in "The Mandalorian" have followed this logic.

I could bring up CGI and characters like jar jar binks.

But I wont.

2 minutes ago, Shizuya said:

I could bring up CGI and characters like jar jar binks.

But I wont.

I feel ya. When I saw TPM in the theaters I walked out and looked at one of my friends and said "Did we just watch two CGI armies beat the $#!% out of each other for 20 minutes?"