PT [TFA Spoilers] Criticism of Anakin vs. Kylo Ren

I enjoy Kylo Ren, but not for the reasons I think the creators like. He's an emo baby who stomps around in a mask he wears for drama and argues with his British boyfriend. That's pretty entertaining.

But when you try to take him into a serious side by side with Anakin or say Kylo is what Anakin should have been... Like Anakin definitely had poor decision-making skills and did some really bad stuff. But from what we know so far, his fall was much more interesting and tragic.

 

The only "tragic" thing so far about Kylo is about his parents and his uncle, at least with Anakin, I could understand his feeling about leaving his mother behind, without knowing for sure if they'll see each other again, then the nightmares about her pain and then

she died in his arms, which started started the whole thing about saving people he loves from death. I perfectly understood his hatred even if I don't condone his action and then his despair for being too late to save her. Then the same thing happens again in

RotS and it backfires pretty hard not only for him but for the whole galaxy.

 

Wow, that is quite a strawman you rigged up there. First Song of the South concerns black freemen and race relations during reconstrucion post civil war, not during slavery but after it! The black field hands are free sharecroppers (which was a rigged system) and Uncle Remis was a freeman, plus the clothing in the film is later style victorian. Apples to oranges. Funny how you forgot how young Anakin was quite used to getting death threats from lowlifes like Shebuba, that only his slave status saved him from being killed since said lowlifes didn't want to pay fro him. You also forget Anakin was a shopkeeper's slave, not a plantation owner's slave which required lots of labor before the advent of labor saving machines. Again Watto wasn't a leader of crazy cult mining for mystic stonces to conqure the world, he was just a greedy shopkeeper who wanted to make a quick buck and a gambling addict, apples to oranges again. Plus Watto made Anakin engage in dangerous activites such as podracing who Shimi was powerless to protect her son from, so Watto was no saint with his slaves. Remember Anakin had to keep his podracer a seceret from Watto, and Qui-Gon had to lie and claim the podracer was his to Watto. All those tools and parts in the Skywalker home suggests they were expected to do some repair work at home, their house was just more repair shop space. Just because Anakin's life wasn't a constant chain of misery doesn't mean it didn't had affects on him such as desensitizing him to violence. The irony with Anakin is he ended up trading his slavery with Watto for slaverly to the Jedi order, then later slaverly to Palps.

To me, that workbench meant he was expected by Watto to do repair work at home. Perhaps you should watch the film again, there are tools and parts all over their home, its pretty much a repair shop they sleep in. In America, "cozy" is often used as a realtor term for very small house or appartment. A cozy house sounds better than small house. Again, Tatooine is not a idealistic place to live, it is a very harsh planet filled with harsh people.

 

Priceless expression and so accurate.

 

That's because Lucas gave us two different slave owners. The benevolent one (Watto) and the sadistic one (Jabba). And yes, there were benevolent slave masters. Ones who weren't so filled with hate and anger that they punished their slaves if they so much as breathed funny. For instance, in "Twelve Years A Slave", we see two different slave owners. Solomon Northup was owned by William Ford who gave Solomon decent clothes and even a violin when he learns that Solomon could play. But he had to sell Solomon to Edwin Epps who was not benevolent and instead treated Solomon far more harshly and did as much to the other slaves on his plantation.

Watto is the benevolent one. Yes, he has explosives planted in the Skywalkers, but he also sees raw potential in them. Hence he lets Anakin work for him and race for him, but lets him leave when he no longer needs him and thus Anakin can go home to his mother, but also go see his friends. He is able to help others like Jira and is able to move about freely. Watto even frees Shmi and helps her to get married to Cliegg, an action that shows that he is not entirely evil. He doesn't even act vindictive when he loses Anakin, by blowing up Shmi out of spite. Jabba is different. Jabba shackles up his slaves and will kill them if they irritate him enough. They are kept within his point of view and has his own needs and desires for them.

See my last response.

Uh, we see convicts in "The Running Man". People who were arrested for various crimes, locked up and as part of the prison work, they have explosive collars strapped to their neck which will detonate if they attempt to escape when the field is up. The criminal who dies does so because he thought Weiss had gotten the field down, but didn't hear him yell that the field was still up, due to another guard having a second computer that was overriding the first, in case of an escape attempt.

Hardly slaves and hardly the same situation. The only similarities was the explosives in case of an escape attempt.

 

Oh we aren't so different..In fact, people hate to what's similar to them.

But hey..

We're just a minority right? Does it matter? Our voices aren't very strong, and your right about TFA being popular... So us saying for a 33 page thread that the PT is popular is nothing compared to people who say TFA is wildly loved and acclaimed.. Since you know.. Everyone says it..

"So just let me see you, bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce"

"Don't let your dreams determine your reality"


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I’m aware that his mom didn’t approve of the racing, but it has no bite as there’s no coercion involved. It comes more as “I don’t like when you do that. And I wish your uncle would stop encouraging you.” And the fact that Anakin had enough free time in order to secretly build a stock car is another sign of whitewashing. It certainly shows that the bug wasn’t keeping too close an eye on them, if he didn’t realize that Anakin was building a stock car in his front yard (because slaves even have front yards in this movie!), and that he didn’t seem to notice that Anakin was stealing a bunch of parts from his shop.

Honestly, the way the film portrayed it felt less like slavery and more like she was a single mom working a minimum wage job and the kid would frequently come in and help out. I’ve encountered single mom waitresses who don’t live as well as they do.

Sadly, I’ve never read Solomon Northup’s memoirs, but I can definitely say that having seen the film, that William Prince Ford comes across not as a nice, noble benevolent slave owner, but as a cowardly hypocrite, who knowingly participates in and enables a system wherein families are torn apart (remember Eliza) and allows men like Northup to be kidnapped and enslaved. He’s also shown to employ sadistic enforcers and to turn a blind eye to the way people are treated. Honestly, I actually hated him more than I hated Edwin Epps, primarily because he was such a self-righteous hypocrite. When Northup tried to tell Ford the true story, Ford just silenced him because he didn’t want to feel uncomfortable. I can’t stand those who engage in despicable acts and then try to wrap themselves in some cloak of righteousness. Ford may not have been a sadist himself but he had no problem allowing sadism to occur around him. He doesn’t actually care about his slaves. Actually hearing about their plights might make him discomfort him and make feel bad about himself, and, of course, God forbid that anyone make him uncomfortable. We can’t have that! Oh no! I don’t care that you were enslaved or that Eliza was separated from her children. As long as I feel good about myself, that’s all that matters. Seriously…**** him!

Yeah, I guess I just don’t have enough respect for self-righteous hypocritical slavers who care more about feeling good about themselves than actually doing good. People like that disgust me and I loathe hypocrisy and dishonesty. Compare that to Samuel Bass, who actually did care about Northup and stuck his neck out to make sure that Northup was freed and reunited with his family. I respect someone like Bass. I have no respect at all for self-righteous hypocrites who claim that they’re still good people because…the Bible. “A right brutal bastard he’s been and will be again! Despite all of his sucking up to the chaplain and reading the Bible!” So no, the bug is not benevolent, no matter how you and Lucas try to spin it. Thank God for an artist like Steve McQueen who actually cuts through that hypocrisy and BS.

There’s no such thing as a “benevolent slaver” and frankly, any attempt to claim such is a highly offensive attempt at whitewashing a very real horror. Maybe we could also have a concentration camp with a benevolent commandant. Oh, I’m sure Lucas’s buddy Spielberg would love that. A happy-go-lucky concentration camp where children shout “Yippee!” and have nice homes where they can invite friends for dinner and the guards are just so gosh darn nice that they let the “workers” off early. Oh, and they have plenty of free time to build a stock car and a robot. Yeah, that’d go over really well, and I’m sure it wouldn’t at all destroy Lucas’s friendship with Spielberg.

Then show the results of that! Don’t just dryly tell us about it while Little Baby Annie is excitedly introducing his mom to his new buddies over dinner. Imagine how much less impact PINOCCHIO would’ve had if, instead of seeing the Pleasure Island sequence, we only had a scene where Pinocchio nonchalantly tells Mister Geppetto about it over a nice family dinner with his new friends, and everyone was just pretty blasé about it.

Oh wait. The cartoon sidekick says “How wude!” Yes. Implanting explosives into your slave isn’t some horrible, evil, heinous act. It’s just rude. It’s like having bad table manners. So very, very rude. If only they were more polite towards their slaves. That’d solve the problem. I guess that’s why you think William Ford was a good guy. True, he separated people from their families, hired sadistic brutal overseers, and really didn’t give a damn what had actually happened to Northup…but at least he was polite about it.

 

This argument is a complete load of crap. You have no clue what the consensus would have been if it wasn't a Skywalker and you know it. There have been a great many stories in this universe that weren't and no one had a problem with it. It's all in the execution and nothing else. In fact, I think this film would have been applauded for pulling off something like that so it would seem less like "The Days of Our Lives: Skywalker Edition".

Darth Downunder Also, I fully agree with darklighter99 and anakinfansince1983 that your use of argumentum ad populum isn't helping you. None of those with dissenting opinions on this thread have had to bring "the majority's opinion" on whether or not Kylo Ren is a good character or not. They've actually had to to flesh out their arguments whilst you just pull out the "hallowed opinion of the majority" and you think that will suffice. No, it won't. It's a fallacy, so there's no point in bringing it up.

Now for my opinion for the slavery argument. ANAKIN WAS FREAKING KID. A kid who was forced to race in a dangerous sport for cash as well as be forced to work on machinery. It turned out he was good at it. Have you ever considered that sometimes people attempt to derive some sense of happiness from a dire situation so that their melancholy and misery don't drive them insane, hence the "yippee"? I think that's a perfectly reasonable argument to make. Not to mention that his mother always showed a sense of concern for him at every point in the film. Besides, by the time AOTC rolls around, he seems to fully realize how awful his situation was in childhood which was why he had the vehement desire to save his mother in the first place. To fulfill a promise to one of the people he loved the most. So, when he found her at death's door at the Tusken camp only to realize there's nothing he could do, he starts going on a murderous rampage. How can you not care about that? How does one not find that compelling? I just find this argument to be completely ridiculous. So all you need to do to make a character good is to find a good actor and everything else simply doesn't matter, writing be damned? I don't agree at all.

By the way, for all of you attempting to convince people that TPM is a modern-day Song of the South, just stop. No one is buying it and frankly, no one should. It is an argument that can be refuted extremely easily and one that is ridden with hyperbole.

 

I have seen the word "whitewash" enough. That word is being too overused and it starts to lose meaning...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I commend whoever took the time to find the perfect "bitch, please" look on Hayden Christiansen's face for that.

 

I'm gonna be honest, I didn't expect you to have this outlook. I was kinda like "wait Huh?" When I read this. Just goes to show that you can be part of a completely separate fandom yet have similar opinions(INB4 democrats and republicans)..




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

What outlook did you expect me to have?

No, really, I'm curious.

 

Watto, as portrayed in the film isn't benevolent, he is just simply less bad than others. Jabba was a far worse slave owner who feed slaves to beasts when he was fed up with them, but Jabba is a vile being who enjoys being sadistic and has money to buy new slaves. Watto appears not as sadistic, though he still laughs at Anakin when he suffers setbacks during the race, and probably doesn't have the funds to buy more slaves all the time like Jabba.

Another way to look at this is Watto may have treated his slaves a bit better to maintain his investment in them, like taking proper care of work animals or performing maintence on machines to maintain top performence and value. In the Ten Commandments, Moses gives the slaves one day of rest and plenty of grain to fully feed them. When he questioned about this, Moses reples that the strong make many bricks, the sick make few, and the dead make none. Basicly he was initially "benevolent" to the slaves his was in charge of not out of mercy or conscious concern over them, but just to get full efficiency out of them to please the pharaoh. Going back to TPM, Watto was clearly a scuzbag, just a low level one compared to people like Jabba.

Watto also doesn't free Shimi and helps her get married to Craig Lars, he sold her to Lars as a slave, it was Lars who decided to free and marry her. When we see Watto again in AOTC, he is clearly on worse times, working in a small outdoor shop, he is unshaven and dirty with flies around him, indicating he is in bad financial shape, probably from losing all those bets in TPM. AOTC implies Watto sells Shimi to get money, like selling an assist to raise cash, because he probably could no longer afford to keep her and needed the money. Again that is not benevolent or kind, he just sold her like a used car for quick change.

 

I agree with Slicer. While slavery is a disgusting practice, saying that there wasn't a difference among certain slavers' behavior towards their slaves is intellectual dishonesty. Jabba pretty much sacrificed the lives of those who were his slaves whenever they disappointed him FOR HIS OWN AMUSEMENT. Watto isn't anywhere near that level of moral bankruptcy.

 

Kuro While slavery itself is an awful practice, saying that there weren't differences between certain slavers' actions towards their slaves is intellectual dishonesty.

EDIT: Whoops. I thought my previous post failed to send.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, but during the development of TFA a lot of folks were freaking out, that the ST might not be as Skywalker centric, as the allmighty creator had envisioned the saga to be. A lot of folks were relieved, when Kathleen Kennedy announced the story would still revolve around the Skywalkers, so yes, I would say given the discussions that were raging then, a good many GL saga fans would be pretty annoyed at the prospect of a ST that neglected the Skywalkers.

Your argument about Anakin and his mother also falls flat, as good ol' Anakin left his mother in slavery for another decade. That's how worried he was about her. So, his discovery of his dying mother is not compelling to me in the least, as he didn't seem to give a toss about her well being while she was alive.

 

I was refuting darth-sinister’s claim that there’s such a thing as a “good slaver”. It’s like saying that a Mob hitman is a “good murderer” because he doesn’t sadistically draw it out and needlessly torture his victims.

All I ask is that the negative consequences of slavery actually be shown. As is, you can remove this entire plot point by just tweaking a few lines of dialogue. It’s flat and has no emotional impact on the viewer. If I see slavery, I want it to have an emotional impact. I want to be disturbed. I want to feel uncomfortable. I don’t want it to feel so…blasé and inconsequential. I would say the same thing about depicting the Holocaust, or rape, or child abuse. Disturb me!

 

DrDre Perhaps, I wasn't clear enough. If they did a film trilogy that didn't revolve around a Skywalker falling and it was good, I doubt anyone would have cared enough to make a big deal out of it. Then again, who knows? I guess I might be underestimating people's disposition towards daytime-TV style storytelling. Besides, the Thrawn trilogy, a storyline that has narrative elements that TFA doesn't, proved to be so celebrated that it resulted in the main villain being brought back in the new canon FOR A SECOND TIME. So, you'll have to excuse me if I find it hard to believe that people wouldn't appreciate that.

You know what, Kuro? I'm just going to leave this here.

 

Interesting that you now have no problem pointing to the popular and critical acclaim bestowed on the Zahn trilogy and the Thrawn character, yet chastise others when they do the same for TFA and the character of Kylo Ren. Double standards anyone?

 

Except I'm not referring to that. I'm referring to people's willingness to accept new ideas that aren't completely redundant. Not to mention that Thrawn, unlike Kylo Ren, is actually an interesting character.

 

You're using majority opinion to give credence to your thesis, which is exactly what you were criticising others for.

 

Yes, but I'm talking about a completely different subject: the willingness of people to watch a new trilogy that wasn't along the lines of what George Lucas wanted. Not Kylo Ren's characterization vs Anakin's. Also, you didn't really say anything that refutes what I just said. I think it better applies to the former than the latter.

 

Huh? I gave my opinion as to why he was so well received & worked for alot of the audience. He received another award just last week. That acclaim doesn't invalidate other people's opinion in any way. Obviously!

By the way, we've reached our quota of members who use Latin phrases to make themselves sound clever. No room for any more.

I mentioned once in one post that he was a well received character. You must be thinking of someone else.

Yes...but you do realise it's impossible to create a character that every single person likes without exception, right? It's never been done & it never will be. Is Kylo Ren a failure as a character just bcs you don't like him? Was Anakin a failure bcs of those who didn't like him? If we keep going down this road every character & every movie was a failure to entertain...someone. Those people all paid their "hard-earned money" too. That's why it is relevant that Kylo Ren worked for so much of the audience. The character & the performance received widespread praise (& no Razzies). That's the best outcome that can be expected. It's unfortunate for you that you happen to be in the camp that didn't like this one character. But, that's hardly the criteria to broadly deem the character a dud & claim that money was cheated from the audience. That your "entertainment rights" were breached .

 

I think if you’re gonna include slavery in your film, you should either deal with it or just not have it in there at all. In other words, don’t half-ass it, which is what Lucas unfortunately did. Like I said, the way it’s depicted is just too…neat and clean and pretty. There’s no real immediacy to the dangers and horrors of it. That whole segment is just too…lighthearted and trying to be all fun and innocent. That just rubs me the wrong way. Slavery should never be portrayed as fun, lighthearted or innocent. It feels like he’s unintentionally trivializing the issue and making light of it. It’s like trying to make a lighthearted goofy comedy about the Holocaust that just downplays the real horror of it in order to make it more palatable to kids. Frankly, it feels cheap and exploitive to just throw that in there without addressing the real horrors of it…and honestly, I find that grotesque. Really, the only positive thing I can say for Lucas in regards to this is that I don’t think he was being deliberately malicious. Incredibly ignorant, callous, insensitive, and lacking any understanding of why you don’t tread lightly with this issue and use it as a cheap plot device, but not deliberately harmful. And yes, I do think George Lucas has a social responsibility to portray it in such a way so that the slavery disturbed the hell out of everyone who saw it…especially considering that he knew how many millions of people would flock to see the new STAR WARS film.

As for GONE WITH THE WIND, this has always been the film’s most disturbing scene to me, although probably not for the reason the filmmakers intended:



I really can’t help but feel bad for that poor actress being humiliated and degraded onscreen like that.