Quote: (05-07-2017 04:21 PM)Parzival Wrote:
What is the main goal of the Sith? Or the new order? Why are they always bad? They should do a film of a young boy, whos father works as a construction worker on the dead star. He works there to support his family, with no evil intention. And then the Jedi blow it up and kill this man and many other innocent workers in Return of the Jedi. The kid of this dead construction worker becomes a secret agent or a bounty hunter for the Empire to take revenge. This is an emotional story. People will like him, feel him and then he still becomes "bad".
Some random thoughts on all this.
First question: what do you want your Star Wars story to be about, ultimately? Do you really want to cheer on the bad guy? I'm not talking about cheering on Han Solo the scoundrel, I mean cheering someone who's on Darth Vader's scale?
Some people are saying that Kylo Ren's story arc is going to be one of redemption, that he's going to turn back to the Light in the same way Darth Vader did.
If this theory is correct, and accompanied by Rey falling to the Dark Side of the Force, I would class it as a satisfying turn of events and also the best shitlording twist on a popular film in decades, the sort of thing to make SJWs picket Lucasfilm and/or Disneyland for months. Leaving that hilarity aside, it would also be a strong declaration of what Star Wars is about: a declaration that there
are moral absolutes, that there is good and evil to which the Light Side and Dark Side are attached.
But I doubt that's the way the films will go. If Kylo Ren does turn back from the Dark Side, it'll be something of a pointless exercise because the films are firmly taking us down the path that both Dark and Light Side are erroneous and shit, that's it's all fucking Grey Jedi stuff. So Kylo's redemption doesn't mean much at all.
The point at which Star Wars began to mutate into something else was the moment Alec Guinness uttered the line "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
Up until then we had fairly straightforward delineations of good and evil in the saga, as set out by Yoda: A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defence, never for attack. The Dark Side isn't more powerful, only quicker, easier, more seductive. You know the Light Side from the Dark by being calm, at peace, passive. Anger, fear, aggression are all the Dark Side of the Force, and once you start down the dark path, forever does it dominate (as opposed to control) your destiny even if you ultimately turn away from it (as Vader did).
But when Obi-Wan suddenly pronounced -- from the afterlife no less -- that truth was simply a point of view, we were off down the road of moral relativism. Admittedly there were damn few ways out of that box canyon of a plot: Obi-Wan had flat-out lied to Luke that Darth Vader murdered his father, and they had to make Obi-Wan's conduct acceptable somehow. But the moment he said that (or rather Lucas allowed him to say that) he sowed the seeds for the bullshit we're going to see in Episode VIII.
The prequels were basically Lucas trying to rehabilitate Darth Vader, to basically indicate it wasn't the guy's fault that he turned to evil, that he only did it out of love for Padme. In other words, that he had an excuse. This wouldn't have been such a problem if they hadn't made the audience identify with him rather than with Obi-Wan Kenobi. The result of this was to again grind in moral relativism into the universe: remember the (really, really bad) line "
From my point of view the Jedi are evil!"
And the reason they were able to have Darth Vader spout that line and not have the audience start guffawing in disbelief was because over three films Lucas had portrayed the Jedi Order as an ossified, aspie organisation of virgins armed with lethal weapons who seemed to invoke the Witcher's Law of Surprise with the full backing of the Republic. The only guys we were ever allowed to find as sympathetic among the Jedi were Qui-Gon Jinn (who was rebellious against the Jedi teachings) and Yoda (who basically is in the three films for marquee value, let's face it).
The prequels are designed to
remove as much agency as possible from Anakin Skywalker's decision to turn to the Dark Side. You never get the sense that he makes a conscious choice to embrace the Dark Side for its power, you get the sense he's pushed around by other factors. At every turn, he is given an excuse for why he did it. In the first film there was a deleted scene where he beats the snot out of a Rodian who accuses him of cheating. In the second film he turns to mass murder because his mother has just gone "Glacck!" right in his arms. Which is why when he finally does do his flip-flop to the Dark Side in the third film, it has all the emotional impact of a Hallmark card.
And as said, when they do remove his agency, they turn him into an agent of moral relativism. "I killed thousands of people, but I had an excuse." "I murdered my wife, but I had an excuse - I thought she was banging Obi-Wan."
The new film is going to amp this shit up to eleven. Rey is going to be permitted to slaughter people mindlessly because she has an excuse, yo. Meddling with the Dark Side won't touch her because she has an excuse, yo.
Remissas, discite, vivet.
God save us from people who mean well. -storm