PT Jim Raynor's "RLM's Episode I - Review A Study in Fanboy Stupidity"

Ah, no. Looking at the scene as shown in the review, it is clear that only a single ship is firing at them: all angles towards the blockade show one ship firing, all angles away, the shots are clearly coming from the same point; also, multiple ships could have easily fired at them without danger of hitting each other when they were still a good distance off. And it's good to see you discreetly abandoned your argument that they were at long range, as they fly very close to one ship, flying almost directly towards a gun in fact, presumably just hoping that they won't get hit; that the characters act comparatively easy about it, and that they do it fairly easily (flying in almost a straight line) is largely what the review notices. I've not seen E.S.B. recently enough to remember exactly how things play out there (I do remember more wild manoeuvring though); your bringing up is just designed to distract from the fact that Raynor has had to resort to misrepresentation in order bolster his arguments.

 

Why doesn't JimRaynor55 reveal himself? Jim, did you ask for your RLM rebuttal to be posted here?

 

Very pointless thread. RLM has been talked upon already. It's a meta involvement of the SW fans and SW itself. It is making fun of everyone one. OT fans, PT fans, TFA fans.....All of them.

Just an endless debate like how we always argue on the PT vs OT...

Don't know if Jim wants this to be a public thing.

 

These are my thoughts, too.

While the rebuttal is public domain, it would have been better if Jim Raynor's permission had been sought before reproducing the full thing, methinks.

Also, yes, discussing a six-year-old video review of TPM, even one as notorious as the RLM review, is a bit past its sell-by-date, I think.

 

Well as far as I recall, in ESB, when the MF flies away from Hoth, it has TIEs and ISD's after it but only the TIE's are shooting. Which makes some sense as the TIEs are quite close to the MF and had the ISD's been shooting as well, they could have blown up some of their own ships.

When the MF leaves the asteroid field, then one ISD is shooting at them and does damage it.

But this is a very minor nitpick indeed.

A bigger problem to me, which was mentioned, is why the Naboo ship flies AT the blockade and not down or up since the TF ships were not in a sphere but in more of a ring formation.
But then again a lot of SF films sort of forget that space is 3D and also really big.

Bye for now.
Mr "Insert-Name-Here"

 

Who’s the more foolish? The fool or the fool who writes a 108-page rebuttal to him?

 

I feel the same bewilderment at people holding the RLM reviews up as good critique or even accurate, so it's good to have a rebuttal to link to whenever someone brings them up. Cheers.

 

Yeah, links to the original RLM videos still pop up around geek culture discussions. Author permission aside, who cares if a rebuttal is re-posted to a prequel forum that really doesn't get much traffic beyond those who aren't going to budge from their opinions one way or another.

 

A link to a 100+ page partisan rant that doesn't understand its own irony is doubtful to be of use. You might be better off providing your own counterpoints, when possible, to criticisms. No one's going to read this whole mess. I could tell just by skimming elements of it that it was pretty worthless and full of fallacies.

Not to mention that if you're trying to sway opinions, a thread/"essay" with the words "Fanboy Stupidity" in the title is going to have the opposite effect, since the rebuttal starts off by insulting the people who hold opposing opinions.

 

Yeah, the three-dimensionality of space would mean that any blockade like the one we see in TPM would be pretty inefficient. I wonder if it wouldn't make more sense to use fighters to intercept ships rather than trying to cover the full planet with those large freighter ships.

The thing that bothers me in ESB is the tie fighters are never presented as even a mild threat to be concerned about. When they first go into the asteroid field, Han is surprised that the ship shakes, despite the fact they're being fired on the entire time. Apparently laser blasts can't even cause a ship to shake? They certainly did in ANH when the fighters attacked the falcon in that movie. But now apparently asteroids are more dangerous than lasers. Kind of the same deal with the chase from cloud city, where the fighters and even the executor itself don't really seem to present a real threat. But yes, this is all rather pointless nitpicking.

 

That's also true.

I guess I will just add, at this stage, that I think Stoklasa/Plinkett just looks at the Star Wars movies in the wrong way. He treats them as -- in essence -- Hollywood product. But they're not. Not the "Original Six", anyway.

I think his "Star Trek" reviews are very incisive and on-point. And I think he just imported that mindset into his prequel reviews. He applies Hollywood logic to the films and assumes they're operating by the same rules and can be critiqued in the same way.

But what's fascinating about Star Wars, and about George, is that the man and his movies are a rival paradigm to Hollywood and its relentless output: just a handful of movies, made outside the confines of Hollywood (a Northern California rebel studio out past the woods), with virtually all of a man's heart and soul pumped into them: a unique cosmology.

The soul of Hollywood, in Star Wars, is epitomized by Darth Vader and the Empire; and the greed of Hollywood -- the perverse, corpulent, debauched nature of "the beast" -- is personified in Jabba. Luke, Han, Leia, the droids, and the Millennium Falcon, especially, individually and collectively, represent a spiritual resistance against a cold, uniform field of consciousness, conspicuously symbolized by planet-killing false stars (that devour and are subsequently destroyed by Millennium Falcons), terrorizing agents that use "the Force" in a negative way (the creative spark of the divine turned in on itself: a "Chosen One" gone bad), and fat, slimy, slug-like gangsters (that pursue and imprison rebellious elements as wall trophies or sex slaves). Everything in Star Wars is a message about aboutness: a constant counter-melody to the lifeless, dull, repetitious clanging of the Hollywood mechanism; Star Wars is soaring, mythic poetry to the flat-facted, machine-like march of Hollywood's prosaic thudding; Lucas' films are exquisitely trichromatic to Hollywood's deathly monochromatic.

Meaning in Star Wars is encoded on multiple planes. These aren't just films; or, worse, products. They are bold expressions of the human intellect; interactive reality simulators and elevators; expansive theatre of the absurd. Stoklasa/Plinkett especially doesn't get that last idea. Paradoxically, in failing to grasp it, he makes his own theatre of the absurd -- or Greek commentary of the absurd -- in response to his own third-eye blindness. The problem, again, is that he looks at them like they're something known; as if there is other stuff you can compare Lucas' films to. But as Lucas himself has said, more than once, he's been trying to rethink the art of movies. But what Stoklasa/Plinkett does is to unthink these movies. He unweaves the rainbow and makes it grey. Whether it's Plinkett denigrating the prequels or Disney absorbing the "intellectual property" of Star Wars, what Star Wars shows is that it does not fit into the dominant Hollywood paradigm, even though people constantly think it does. Star Wars is a ping pong ball. People keep assuming it's a breakable egg. Star Wars plays by its own rules; and making the prequels was Lucas' way of proving that. He truly did it "his way", and people still aren't equipped with the language to comprehend it.

 

Star Wars has been a mainstream engine from almost the beginning. It invented mass merchandising tied to film, a system that Hollywood certainly emulated going forward. I would even argue that Return of the Jedi was very much a prime example of a Hollywood product. The Star Wars franchise has been a money-making enterprise since shortly after ANH, one that has never stopped, as exhibited by the sheer weight of merchandise that exists out there. I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that Hollywood is greedy for being profit-driven when SW operates by the same rules. It's also a bit ridiculous to paint Star Wars as this majestic thing whilst on the other hand claiming Hollywood is incapable of range, color or artistry, when there are plenty of films which prove that is not the case.

 

There are some terrific Hollywood movies, of course. And Star Wars duly pays homage to them.

But the thing is, for all the things they have in common, they're different entities. Lucasian Star Wars is the OT and the PT, it's Han and Luke, it's Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, it's Jar Jar and Threepio, it's the Millennium Falcon and the Death Star, etc., etc. One of the ways this duality is best symbolized -- about how it's not really a "Hollywood" thing, despite having the vague look and appearance of a Hollywood thing -- is when Han and Luke are sneaking around the Death Star dressed as stormtroopers. Star Wars insinuates itself as just another merry little action-adventure feature-film franchise working "within" the system. Which it is; but it also isn't. Or it wasn't under Lucas. Luke fires two torpedoes and destroys the Death Star at the end of the first movie; with help from his sneaking companion.

Let's add a second metaphor. The dichotomy of the series -- that is, if you will, a sort of painfully self-aware duality -- is probably best-expressed in the Episode I "teaser" poster: the promising "wonder child" of Anakin being quietly menaced by his own "Vader" shadow. Star Wars isn't free of Hollywood behaviours and mannerisms and limitations, but, in Lucas' words, it's not about monsters, either. In other words, there are human and romantic textures to consider; not just inhuman abstractions. Lucas has, in fact, openly declared Star Wars to be a "soap opera" and a "family drama"; which carries the concealed meaning that Star Wars is a cinematic treatise about how it sees itself in relation to the Hollywood machine. It is an offshoot, not fully detached, but infused with something more: the Force! It has a more spiritual aspect, in terms of its construction and whatever else, that all these discussions about how it's barely any different to other Hollywood movies collapses and paints over. That's what I take issue with. And that, I feel, is where the RLM reviews are way off-base. They're very glib and amusing, but they are also a desecration.

 

Your argument paints it as some sort of subversive counter-culture and capable of more than other mainstream films. There's an implication that this can't/hasn't happened in Hollywood Proper (if there is such a thing). It happens all the time. Subversion, subtext, metaphor, family drama and soap operas. That describes hundreds upon hundreds of films. Spiritual potency is also not the sole proprietary claim of Star Wars. For me, the most spiritual film I ever witnessed was First Contact, through Picard's description of the future he came from.

You also imply that Hollywood films have a sameness that Star Wars avoids. Again, not true. We can certainly point to cheap trends in blockbusters all the time, but even amongst some of those are true gems. Lucas wanted to make fun yarns "for the kids." He's not the only creator in the biz with that agenda. Shyamalan made "The Last Airbender" for his kids... jussayin'.

Attributing all of these glowing elements to the 6 film saga as if it stands above all others in the medium. "Infused with something more." That's just... not true. You don't plug in the Force and instantly get something with more potency or value.

 

I can't believe you just mentioned that film. Well, I suppose, I did mention Plinkett's Star Trek reviews -- but that's because I was just rewatching "First Contact", or bits 'n' pieces, and then rewatched his FC review. That film is so spiritually hollow! Loved it when I was younger, but it's exactly the sort of movie I had in mind. It epitomizes the flawless beauty of the Hollywood machine (and flawless beauty is no kind of beauty at all: beauty is strategic imperfection). Nothing in FC is left to chance; yet, at the same time, it has a rickety, hollow story, and turns the series into vengeful action slop. It's very well-made, but cold, calculated, and empty. It is simplistically shot, stocked with crummy action one-liners, and leaves very little to the imagination. And while Picard describes a Utopic future, he belongs to a soft military society and behaves like a psychotic demon, shooting his own crewmembers on sight, tussling with the Borg Queen and allowing Data to pull her into a flesh-eating soup, and snapping her leftover spine with a hateful look on his face for good measure. So much for the enlightened diplomat and principled explorer of the TV series. It is Star Trek meeting its own napalm death. It is as good an example of fitting into, and being poisoned by, the Hollywood paradigm as any movie I can think of. A perfect expression of Hollywood's death grip.

Okay...

I don't understand this cultural prejudice against making things for kids; and the idea that anything made for kids must mean it isn't proper art and can't be taken seriously and must be fenced off from the adults. Frankly, I find that proposition entirely unconsidered, and, to be perfectly straight about it, downright absurd. Lucas -- in my eyes, at least -- is the Lewis Carroll and the L. Frank Baum of the medium of film. He tells stories with depths and resonances far beyond the simplistic layers and attitudes people commonly ascribe to them.

No, I know you don't. I meant to indicate the concept of the Force pointing to the idea that the films are engaged, serious works of art. There is a powerful structure and coherency to Lucas' imagination. The films express serious ideas; even if, on the surface, they aren't always that serious. "Your eyes can deceive you, don't trust them."

 

The SWPT was not made within the studio system...

 

Correct. That doesn't mean it doesn't share some unfortunate traits with said system, or that the system is inherently negative, and anything outside the system is inherently positive.

 

lol People still care this much about the RLM reviews?

 

Yes. They are often brought up within discussions of the prequels.

 

I only cared when they were a big deal and constantly posted around the Internet by haters. I saw just about every website that had a bone to pick with the PT post each review from 2009 to I think 2012. It was quite annoying.

But, it's been years since I cared. We'really now in a new Era of films and RLM isn't nearly as big as a deal since the PT reviews. I have barely seen people talking about their most recent TFA review, if you can call it that...

I just don't care enough to talk about RLM anymore, so I've been sitting on the sidelInes for their new review.

 

Which I find incredibly dumb. I actually think their reviews are pretty funny, but I don't agree with all the points made in them. I also don't understand why people spend so much time getting angry about them, or when people use them as their argument against the Prequels.

 

Honestly, I would have never given RLM a second thought if it weren't for the years of multitudes of people across multitudes of sites shoving the reviews down my throat. "If you like the prequels, you deserve no respect. Listen to our pizza roll-gobbling leader's sermon and be enlightened o foolish one." By the time I finally bothered to watch the TPM review, it only improved my perception of the prequels. I thought, "Wait, this is what everyone was raving about? These bizarre arguments like 'The Jedi should have just started fighting the whole droid invasion in the hangar' are what has destroyed prequels beyond any further discussion?" It was but one step among many things in the past 3 or so years that changed me from dismissive of the prequels to appreciative of them.

I think the actual RLM reviews bug me less than the cult-like following of people they have received. I remember on a forum I used to visit years ago, there was this one dude who had started to reply to every thread with "RedLetterMedia says this about this subject," and "RedLetterMedia thinks that," on any topic. (This was a general forum, not a Star Wars forum.) I thought, "Seriously dude? Are you the RedLetterMedia spokesperson? Is he a member here and I'm just not aware?" Another time, I heard someone say that RLM's favorite Star Trek movie was The Motion Picture from 1979. As a Trek fan, this movie is one of my least favorite of the franchise, and many other Trek fans feel the same as I do, and so I sort of laughed it off in a message. Then a guy suddenly exploded into a fury against me, being all, "Who cares what some idiot like you thinks! RedLetterMedia has a fanbase and you're just some nobody on the internet!!!!"

Also, I appreciate Jim Raynor's rebuttal of RLM's TPM review. He successfully sums up many of the same issues I saw with the review. I especially liked his comparison between the Plinkett character and Jar Jar earlier on, something which I think is on-point. All of the RLM fans act like Plinkett is some hilarious character, but I found him so obnoxious to listen to. He basically has all of the same problems that many have with Jar Jar (irritating voice, immature humor, etc,) the only difference being that I have to listen to Plinkett non-stop for 80 minutes or however long his bloated rant was.

 

What's amusing is that Mr. Raynor comes across as the sort of person Mr. Plinkett was supposed to satirise, namely a weirdo who rants about movies.

 

Why are we still talking about a random guy who makes some 1 to 2 hours long reviews of a series of movies that he hates so much with all his heart, after all those years have passed? heels1785 Seagoat

My advice to some people who really want some kind of intelligent and respectful review or discussion about the PT and George Lucas is to check the following documentary, The Prequels Strike Back, which has been shown at the Alamo Drafthouse in Texas 2 days ago, and available for a month on the internet: