The Nerd Crew - September 1st, 2019

[Guest Alien_Nation]

 

[Ginguy]

SW ep 9 is gonna suck so hard.

I didn't see any of the sequels in theaters, I refuse to pay the twenty bucks for something I know is just a giant virtue signalling trash fire.

The only thing left that Disney SW is doing that might be good is the final season of Clone Wars and even then I suspect that will somehow suck.

 

Lucas should have never sold out, the fans hate the new Disney SW, it is an object lesson in "get woke go broke".

 

[Raptorpat]

I honestly don't understand that criticism of new SW movies. I understand criticisms from the angle of it being sterile, corporate largess (over prioritizing storytelling) in pursuit of endless profits, which is just the prequel era on overdrive (which was itself RotJ on overdrive), combined with total oversaturation by the point they released Solo (five months after the film before it).

But I just don't get the SJW/over"woke"ness criticism - especially when, in comparison, the prequels became so overtly political by the end.

[Guest Alien_Nation]

15 hours ago, Ginguy said:

SW ep 9 is gonna suck so hard.

I didn't see any of the sequels in theaters, I refuse to pay the twenty bucks for something I know is just a giant virtue signalling trash fire.

The only thing left that Disney SW is doing that might be good is the final season of Clone Wars and even then I suspect that will somehow suck.

 

Lucas should have never sold out, the fans hate the new Disney SW, it is an object lesson in "get woke go broke".

 

I just watched The Last Jedi because it was on Netflix.

Weird to watch a two and a half hour movie and realize at the end that you haven't felt a single emotion.

Unless... is confusion an emotion?

Anyway...

[Ginguy]

21 hours ago, Admin_Raptorpat said:

But I just don't get the SJW/over"woke"ness criticism - especially when, in comparison, the prequels became so overtly political by the end.

 

  The first trilogy set a story which served to inspire hope, wonder and the value of believing in the best of what people can be. It was aspirational. The prequel trilogy was always about darkness falling, and yes it got pretty overtly political towards the end, but to a certain extent it needed that to tell the story of how good people can be deceived by bad people.

  The sequel trilogy has no story. Episode 7 was a scene by scene re-shoot of episode 4, basically JJ Abrams getting to live out his nerd fantasy. Episode 8, from reviews I read and from talking to people who have seen it, seems confusing and just awful; like a 300 million dollar Packard thread. Characters that show up, virtue signal and an hero, people behaving contrary to their character or just plain having no character at all. In places where a story would be useful, instead we got some kind of virtue signal trash. I suspect episode 9 is going to be more of the same.

 

 

 

[Raptorpat]

I would say that, while the prequels had an arc expected from the beginning, the originals did not tell a cohesive story until the third movie. The gap between finishing ESB and writing RotJ was huge, and the direction RotJ took was probably influenced more by the internal politics behind the scenes more than anything else. So these new films are much closer to the originals in that regard, where we won't know what the final story of the trilogy is until it ends because they're making it up as they go along, with different writers doing different things.

The first film was a soft remake of the original and the second is controversial due to the director's pull towards the subversion of expectations over all else (sometimes including plot or character development), combined with the direction the old Luke character took.

So there are things to criticize, which I don't contest, and for example I definitely feel a lot of the subtext in RLM's "nerd crew" satire videos. But I specifically don't get the criticisms of "virtue signalling" or "wokeness" - like what do those labels actually speak to that other criticisms, like quality of writing or corporate sterility, don't more accurately reflect?

[stilgar]

Look pat, there was a girl as the lead so that means Disney wants to kill or enslave every last straight white man. 

[Guest Alien_Nation]

4 hours ago, Admin_Raptorpat said:

I would say that, while the prequels had an arc expected from the beginning, the originals did not tell a cohesive story until the third movie. The gap between finishing ESB and writing RotJ was huge, and the direction RotJ took was probably influenced more by the internal politics behind the scenes more than anything else. So these new films are much closer to the originals in that regard, where we won't know what the final story of the trilogy is until it ends because they're making it up as they go along, with different writers doing different things.

The first film was a soft remake of the original and the second is controversial due to the director's pull towards the subversion of expectations over all else (sometimes including plot or character development), combined with the direction the old Luke character took.

So there are things to criticize, which I don't contest, and for example I definitely feel a lot of the subtext in RLM's "nerd crew" satire videos. But I specifically don't get the criticisms of "virtue signalling" or "wokeness" - like what do those labels actually speak to that other criticisms, like quality of writing or corporate sterility, don't more accurately reflect?

I think what he's referring to the piss-poor characterization of Rey. 

This guy has two massive, long-winded complaint-videos; if you'll take a look at @1:12:45 - @1:20:01 here, he gives a pretty good boil down of why she doesn't work as a main character/why people don't like her.

 

Edit: Playback should start at the right time now.

Edited September 4, 2019 by Alien_Nation

[Raptorpat]

Without litigating each point one by one (some of which seemed to apply to other characters in the series, like Luke in OT), I don't see how any of that, if it's legitimately a problem, is an example of "virtue signaling" or "woke"ness over lazy or sloppy writing.

[HardcoreHunter]

Looks less nerd and more tragic midlife crisis. 

[Guest Alien_Nation]

1 hour ago, Admin_Raptorpat said:

Without litigating each point one by one (some of which seemed to apply to other characters in the series, like Luke in OT), I don't see how any of that, if it's legitimately a problem, is an example of "virtue signaling" or "woke"ness over lazy or sloppy writing.

I dunno. 

It is bad business for Disney to attack fans, regardless. 

[Raptorpat]

what did Disney do to attack fans, I thought it was different sides of the SW fanbase aligning inteo two camps based on politics just like everything else in this godforsaken timeline and attacking each other but really It's all over political tribalism and not actually the substance of SW

[stilgar]

Pat, Disney attacked the fans by making a woman be the lead in a SW film.

[Guest Alien_Nation]

There have been several instances of people involved with Star Wars lashing out at fans on social media.

I, personally, don't care enough to dig too deep; so this is what a cursory Google search of "Disney attacks fans" came up with.

https://boundingintocomics.com/2018/06/13/rian-johnson-and-john-boyega-attack-star-wars-fans-and-consumers-at-their-own-risk/

[Raptorpat]

It looks to me like Rian Johnson and Kelly Marie Tran got bullied by internet mobs - resulting in various meltdowns.

[Guest Alien_Nation]

Rian Johnson is not guiltless:

 

Basically asking for it.

[Raptorpat]

I can't say I agree, but don't know enough to debate the point - my original question though is how this boiled down into a political thing, with the movie being considered bad for "woke"ness and virtue signalling.

[Guest Alien_Nation]

I didn't think the movies suffered from any overt agenda-pushing; it's just a lot of ancillary components surrounding the movies have fans in a wad. 

At worst the films are just boring slogs.

But we live in a different age, it seems, where fans of media are just as, if not more, interested and focused on the production as they are the actual product. 

Mike and Jay addressed this topic a little bit in the Half in the Bag episode for Captain Marvel, jokingly referring to modern outrage culture as "an embarrassing nightmare", lambasting both sides of the aisle for fighting over a movie that is ultimately inconsequential and not interesting. 

This type of thing isn't exclusive to movies; my YouTube feed is flooded with people on both sides bitching about everything from comics to video games to Twitch "thots". 

People have too much time on their hands, I guess.

[stilgar]

Oh look, bucket is victim blaming in this thread.

[Raptorpat]

On 9/8/2019 at 10:57 AM, Alien_Nation said:

it's just a lot of ancillary components surrounding the movies have fans in a wad. 

I don't disagree with the notion that fans are concerned with the production as much as the product, and that has certainly had an impact.

But my question still remains, why is there such a cleave on political fault lines, specifically right-leaning criticisms that the films are filled with "virtue signalling" and "woke"ness?

[Guest Alien_Nation]

I don't know.

Art is subjective; I guess that's what some people get out of these works.