T w e n t y S i d e d

Like I said last time, Rian Johnson used The Last Jedi to explore and mess with Star Wars tropes. I found it frustrating, but other people loved it because it gave them wonderful moments that weren’t possible in the old framework.

If you listen to the folks who love / appreciate the movie, you’ll find all sorts of comments like, “Star Wars never showed us [thing] before, and it’s exactly what I’ve always wanted to see!” My favorite is this video from Jill Bearup, who basically went out and pursued stage fighting as a new career / hobby based entirely on her love for the throne room fight against the Praetorian Guard in The Last Jedi. I didn’t appreciate the movie, but I do appreciate how much other people appreciated it, if you see what I mean.

In any case, Johnson’s fondness for punking the audience with their own genre expectations creates room for a sort of meta-level analysis that pokes fun at the genre itself. “Yes, you expected A to happen because A is what these stories always do, but really B makes more sense, except it feels like it doesn’t because we’re used to A, but doesn’t B sort of render the whole thing nonsensical? But does that mean the genre itself is nonsensical?” It’s a style of movie that draws attention to its own genre and deliberately breaks your immersion to think about the fact that you’re watching a movie. See also: Spec Ops: The Line. 

Q: Why do I have to stupidly drop white phosphorus on these people? 

A: Because you always do this kind of thing in these sorts of games, except here you’re getting a “more realistic” outcome.

I love this sort of thing. I think it’s fun to examine a genre through trope perversion / subversion. Heck, half the jokes in DM of the Rings were pitting the tropes of High Fantasy against the completely incompatible tropes of tabletop gaming.

Having said all of that…

Genre demolition is not the sort of thing you do in the context of the second act of an ultra-traditionalist story, you absolute LUNATICS!

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 15: Disney Broke Star Wars”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Last time I said I was going to talk about what makes something “feel” like Star Wars. However, there’s no way we can get near that topic without talking about The Last Jedi, and I’m always wary of bringing it up because of how divisive it is. So before we get started, I need to head off the fight that’s been simmering since 2017. Specifically, I need to give the shove to the angry nerds and culture warriors who have made Star Wars fandom yet another front in their goddamn global slap fight. 

We can divide these folks into two overly-broad and reductionist categories:

1. “Everyone who hates The Last Jedi is a sexist manchild that’s afraid of female empowerment and just wants endless remakes of the original trilogy!”
2. “Everyone who claims to like The Last Jedi is an SJW cuck shill who only likes the movie because it shoves their ideology down everyone’s throat!”

These arguments take many forms. There’s the direct assault of, “Your opinion shows that you are a bad person who hates art / people.” Then there’s the more indirect attack along the lines of, “Clearly you weren’t paying attention, or you’re ignorant of Star Wars, or you don’t understand how warfare works. Therefore your opinion is invalid.”

To be clear: I’m fine if you love the movie. I’m fine if you hate it. I’m fine if you’re indifferent or you haven’t seen it. We’re friends! It’s all good!

What I absolutely cannot bear are the people who feel the need to project insidious motives onto the opposition, or who see their appraisal of the film to be some sort of position of virtue. I’m not going to mince words: These arguments are not welcome here. If you get anywhere near projecting stupidity / malice onto the opposition, or if you drag in any culture-war arguments, or if you’re obviously pissed off and spoiling for a fight, then I’m going to delete your comment without warning. I promise to be unreasonable and trigger-happy about this, because this argument has been driving me up a wall since the movie came out and I’ve basically lost my patience with the entire mess.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 14: The Legacy of The Last Jedi”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Earlier in this series I pointed out how Fallen Order didn’t make us endure one or two chapters of the story before allowing us to have a lightsaber. But here we are nearing the endgame and suddenly the writer feels the need to slam on the brakes and have us spend a couple of hours working to re-acquire a lightsaber.

To a certain extent, I can understand the need for this sequence within the story. Cal has just reached his crisis point and confronted his inner demons. The skeletons are out of his closet, and he’s finally unleashed the emotional outburst he’s been bottling up for the last five years. Having him construct a new lightsaber is a really good way to symbolize his internal struggle. His old self is broken, and to get over his emotional baggage he needs to build something new. Star Wars has always been great at literalizing internal struggles like this.

On the other hand, this timing is a little weird. We’ve now been rejected at the doorstep of the Dathomir temple for the third time. Cal’s breakdown feels like something that should happen at the end of a temple. What I’d expect is that the “treasure” inside the temple is some kind of knowledge that transforms him. The way this is structured, it feels like he has his personal crisis on his way to something else.

This isn’t inherently wrong or anything, it’s just a little odd. I can’t escape the notion that we’re looking at some seams left behind by cut content or last-minute rewrites. I’ll come back and pull on this thread of cut content later in the series, but for now let’s just head for the Jedi world of…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 13: The Lightsaber Tease”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.