JCC Embrace The FU - Formerly the STAR WARS IS BAD thread

Luke Skywalker has vanished.
In his absence, the sinister
FIRST ORDER has risen from
the ashes of the Empire
and will not rest until
Skywalker, the last Jedi,
has been destroyed.

To me, Wocky, that kind of tells me they're Up To No Good. As for characters familiar:

1) Finn - defector from the Worst Order.
2) Poe - Resistance pilot. Therefore militarily at war with First Order
3) Han - By virtue of proximity to Leia
4) Leia - Head of resistance

Compare it to ANH. The opening crawl refers to the "evil Galatic Empire." We then get:

1) Leia - Rebel, therefore militarily at odds with Empire
2) Luke - Not a fan of the empire for unclear reasons ("It's not that I like the Empire, I hate it...")
3) Han - DNGAF
4) Obi-wan - exiled by the Empire's purge of his people, who we learned was watching over Luke to convert him to his religious crusade like a creepy terrorist.

I think the only difference here tiger is that you get context on the ANH stuff because a) two direct sequels and b) three prequels. But sure, you don't like the film for reasons I think you share with nobody?

 

Wocky, what is the Empire's motivation for the things they do? How does it justify its own existence as a replacement for the previous republic? Why do the people in its service and employ support it? What in their view makes it better than the republic it replaced or other forms of government? Are these questions ever answered in the OT?

 

When Star Wars came out in 1977, people in the theater boo'ed Darth Vader when he first entered the scene. How dare they! How dare they judge him before getting to know him!

 

Jesus, this ******* thread...

 

Your point is unsubstantiated!

 

This is more than a bit silly. In the first place, most of our information about the Empire does not come from the Prequels or the sequels. The most critical, grounding information is all delivered in the Death Star briefing. It is there that we learn of their model for government, with the elimination of representative forms and its replacement by authoritarian rule. We also understand their disdain for beliefs the rest of the film will endorse as true. Going further still, we learn that they don't consider themselves philosopher kings or enlightened despots, but explicitly embrace the idea of rule by terror. We even have an explicit description of what the Rebels are, what their capabilities (political and military) are, and the internal dynamics of the Imperial senior administration, given how tolerant everyone is of one of their Admiral's almost being murdered in the middle of their meeting, by one of the other attendees. That is an incredible amount of information, and really all you need to understand the Empire for the rest of the Original Trilogy.

By contrast, what does TFA offer? Some guy yelling one sentence about "acquiescing to disorder" before a big laser beam shoots out. We don't know how powerful the First Order actually is. We don't know how powerful the Republic is by comparison. We don't know what the relationship between whatever Leia's group and the Republic is really even supposed to be. They intimate that they are weaker than the whole Republic but it's not clear how much weaker, and what that actually means in relationship to the strength of the First Order. We have no idea how they intend to rule, and how this contrasts with whatever currently exists (eg What if their point of contention is bi-cameral instead of a unicameral legislature?). It is absurd and indefensible for any of you to pretend that we had an equal amount of information about the antagonists in TFA as we do in ANH. That is just factually wrong. Make other arguments if you like, but please stop attempting this one.

Even were it true, though, it misses something pretty huge. As JTS mentioned earlier, they can introduce anything they want in an initial film, because there's no previous exposure to the world. But TFA is not in that situation. It is a direct sequel, and informed by six previous films chronologically. The scenario this film opens with is sharply at odds with what we were lead to expect by the close of the film immediately previous. They do very little to address this gap, nor to even acknowledge it exists. That's a weakness all its own, as they don't appear to be setting it up as a central mystery for the franchise going forward. They just decided, inexplicably, that no one needs to know.

 

Has anyone else noticed that Wocky's posts are much better when you scroll right past them?

 

TOO SOON

 

Or ignored. The problem is that sometimes the thread stops making sense for a bit until you figure out that someone's just responding to some bs the Wock wrote. Then I just carry on.

 

But the figuring out costs more time than just scrolling past it.

 

True, true...

 

Reading Wacky posts is preferable to watching AOTC again, though.

 

Christ, that's a tough one...

I'd go for NONE OF THE ABOVE.

 

wocky's posts are some of the only ones i generally always find worth reading, whether for actual insight or comedy purposes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Being on the receiving end of several actions in violation of the Geneva Convention is preferable to watching AotC again.

 

I agree. His insights, no matter how absurd they may seem, are refreshing to read in comparison to deciphering constant frontier gibberish.

 

I think what people hate most about this thread is that it reminds them that TFA wasn't very good.

 

Cool, cool, soon we will be at the "Actually the Prequels are extremely good because something something risk something Rian Johnson" phase of the cycle again.

 

and then back to "everything is terrible", my comfort zone.

 

Mixed with "this and that mirrored ESB too much/not enough"

 

Could be worse. We could post prequel memes/quotes all day long itt like that one subreddit.

 

Uhhh that would be the dream, to be honest.

 

TFA was enjoyable, but not good.