Why is backstory so important?

Rax wanted to "right" a wrong. i'll give you that he was crazy, but he believed in giving power back to the children whom the Emperor had virtually enslaved through his "magnanimity". Sloane lost her way in the end. she wanted to fight the system, but in her last moments, i believe she becomes the thing she most despised: a coward who leverages evil for personal gain. i may be a little biased against Sloane because she disappointed me so deeply, but i honestly think Rax, while nuts, had a noble goal. i'm not saying his child army was right. just that his intention was to empower people who had previously had no voice.

i think it's kind of on topic ~ i mean, we are talking about backstory and whether all this is important in the long run. at the moment Rax, Sloane, Brendol: their impact is only on Hux and the origins of the FO. but it honestly doesn't matter if you know any of this because the FO is just power that rises from the Empire, and Hux is what they made him. it's nice extra information to understand that Hux was basically groomed to be the next Emperor by Rax, but Rax didn't make it, so the implications of that are minimal at best. and most people aren't bothering themselves about understanding Hux's back story even though he's probably 100x more important to the forward plot than Snoke was ever going to be.

no, you can't please everyone. everyone wants something different, no matter what level of fan they are. and that's my point.
the current fandom can learn to share, or they can walk away. but Lucasfilm is committed to making the franchise accessible and welcoming.

these movies aren't made for women. they're made to include women. the comparison to Hunger Games/Twilight/Lifetime network is odious and inaccurate.
and such reductions aren't helpful. are the Marvel movies made for male audiences? do you honestly think more women or more men go watch Thor?

because easy bet that at least half the women who watch Star Wars watch it for the male characters anyway.

 

HAHahahaha ~ FIGHT ME! XD

i totally get why our reads are completely different. i see Rax behaving out of his own hurt and abuse thinking he's going to stop that from ever happening to anyone else (while perpetuating the cycle in his blindness). Sloane deliberately uses a 4 year-old boy to protect herself, fully understanding what she's doing. now to be fair, maybe she and Armitty came to be good friends or something later on (that's the headcanon i see in fandom, which frankly i feel very squicky about), but what we see in the novel is nothing like concern for Armitage or a desire to actually protect him for his own sake. i find that really problematic.

but like you said, this is exactly how people can come away from the same text with wildly different investment/feelings/desires.
i think the fandom in general needs to appreciate that more and argue less about what "has to" be.

 

friends and utter Star Wars nerd heads.. and yet you see this stuff completely differently.

i disagree with both of you (i officially declare that from this moment on i will never discuss this topic with either of you now )

in terms of back story, i am completely comfortable when watching the new Star Wars movies (and any movie in fact) with the knowledge that any backstory i get.. was needed for what i'm watching. everyone seen Kill Bill? every single character she comes across gets a 5 minute flashback/history lesson on them... ZZZZzzzzz! dear god please don't do that to Star Wars ! lol

I think a person will go stark raving bonkers if they are questioning the back story of characters while they are watching a movie.. sod that.

look forward to seeing the next movie.. get your ticket, get your ass sat down in the theater and go with the flow. log into the Cantina and chat about it among friends.
rinse and repeat.


simples.

 

there's absolutely no argument that Brendol is the biggest pig in all of this. : o p
what bothers me about Sloane is that she could have taken Armitage in hand and both protected and corrected him ~ or shown him a different way or given him some kind of reassurance, but she didn't. in fact she never approaches him at all, she just uses the premise of protecting him him to stymie Brendol and keep the murder children at bay. and Wendig specifically says that afterward, she leaves Armitty to his own devices.

you don't think that rates too high on the scale of awfulness, and if Armitage was a man, i'd probably agree. but he's just a little boy (and a very traumatized one at that). and people who use and abuse children for their own personal gain are of the lowest form of scum to me. if anything, Sloane just reinforces to Armitage what Rax taught him: the most important kind of power is the power to hurt others before they can hurt you. she not only codifies that behavior, but literally weaponizes Armitty's authority at an age when he should not be put in such a position to begin with.

they're children. she's an adult. i would expect her to defend them and guide them.

oh no you don't! now you gotta tell us why! XD

i'm really interested in this because i can't honestly tell if my read on the Aftermath series is just cr@ckers or what?

 

Star Trek spent years catering to "hardcore fans"
Outside of some of the earlier flicks, the movies would barely break even or make a profit.
I don't know if any of the new ones really made money or just cleared even.
Beyond (the best one) lost money big time.
Star Trek became insular for decades and never expanded their audience. Now? It's not exactly a super profitable IP. It's budget has to be small and concise.

Star Wars can spend 200 million on movie and in a few weeks they've made money.
Why? Because Star Wars has tried to reach as many people as possible.

 

that's a perfect analogy; better than the Firefly one.

 

Oh Firefly.
I miss that show. But another run on it would fail just as much as the first show and movie did.

People always have a tendency to overrate their fanhood's population. So when a studio thinks "Oh this is great and this is really popular among this crowd, let's put a huge amount of money into something because nerd culture is the dominant pop culture right now..." Remember...if you aren't willing to seek the majority audience....



Quality be damned. If it isn't accessible to the GA, it won't succeed.

 

would now be a good time to take a Cantina sabbatical?

the funny part is that i hadn't questioned how i felt about any of these characters until both your posts today, and now it's affecting my work this afternoon coz i can't get it out of my head. how wonderful is that? gotta love Star Wars !

where was i? Galli=utter pig. Rae=worse than Galli
i'm now wondering if i read it properly lol

please refrain from mentioning 'Firefly'.. i have a program running on the internet constantly searching for news of a new series and it's cluttering the results

and you.. stoppit people ! lol

 

Sorry but there just aren't enough Browncoats out there to support it lol.
Serenity was the space fantasy of it's time and still lost money lol

 

well i see you agree that Sloane is worse than Rax, so that's interesting!
say more! we won't hurt! XD

as an interesting on-topic aside, this analysis of Aftermath, again, sort of highlights the complexity of providing backstory for characters.
Aftermath ends with Brendol, Sloane, Armitty, and the murder children setting off for the unknown regions like a psychotic ark that will one day repopulate the galaxy with its particular brand of poison. but how we feel about that, about Rax for setting it in motion, about Sloane for carrying it forward, about Hux for being the fruit of it, is clearly all over the map.

even if we got a truckload full of backstory within the movies, we'd still be quibbling over what it means, how it colors our opinions of the characters, etc.
the belief that "backstory" will explain things and guide our understanding in some satisfying, unified way is a misconception.
we can't even agree on Luke Skywalker, whose backstory is almost completely known to us through the movies. XD

 

hahaha! i love where you're going with that
i see her as a product of her own determination.. which i am cautiously and reluctantly admirable of.

i really really really (x10.. infinity.. no backsies) want to disagree with you.

you're right unfortunately

more backstory will just complicate the plumbing, so i'd rather just have what's absolutely necessary to the forward movement of the story/characters.

 

I can't figure out if I think you have a valid point or are being completely dismissive.

I'm trying to imagine a movie where we knew nothing about Luke and he simply jumped into the fight against the Empire.
It's kind of hard to get invested in a hero when you don't know anything or care about him.

But for Snoke or Palpatine? I agree. Frankly, I find the complaints about the lack of a back story for Snoke to be a little disingenuous.

 

A small observation about fans an backstories:
The ST introduced us to two villains - Phasma and Snoke.
Phasma is an evil authority figure, who corrupted and abused Finn, so Finn had to overcome and kill her as part of his character arc.
Snoke is an evil authority figure, who corrupted and abused Kylo Ren, so Ren had to overcome and kill him as part of his character arc.
Snoke and Phasma have the same role, about the same amount of screen time and on screen backstory. Yet, Phasma has a ton of backstory overall, we know where she came from, how she grew up, how she joined the FO, where her armour came from and even how she survived the Starkiller base. So? Nobody talks or cares about Phasma, and even her cool armour doesn't help.
Snoke on the other hand doesn't have a backstory (for now) and fans keep discussing him again and again.
Sure, one can argue, that despite her cool armour and menacing look, Phasma was a lame villain and went out like a loser. Ok. But so did Snoke and another fan favourite - Bobba Fett. OT Fett didn't have any backstory until AotC (that is for 19 years), had no character arc of his own, no real role in anybody else's arc and was just a guy in a cool armour. And yet, Bobba Fett is a fan favourite and the last time I've seen Phasma discussed was about whether she was somebody's relative.
Star Wars fans keep saying that they want to know everything about everyone, but in reality a lot of them seem to prefer their secondary villains to be cool looking and "mysterious".

P.S. Snoke will probably turn out to be some random evil wizard, doing his thing in the Unknown Regions until the fleeing imperials would just stumble upon him. And this Big Reveal would be the moment fans would lose all interest in him.

 

Yup. Snoke is a boring character and the only interesting thing about him is his abusive paternal relationship with Kylo. And his golden bathrobes. I like his golden bathrobes.

 

You are right, I suppose. It's just amusing, that people criticise Snoke exactly for the same thing that makes them care about him in the first place.