For the lovers, how much is too much?

I'm all for seeing new abilities with the force. Leia flying through space and surviving that is not something we're going to see again, it was just an instance where the force granted her a second chance at life and due to her strong Skywalker blood she was able to will herself back to the ship. I was just as shocked to see her do that, as I was when Kylo used the force to stop a blaster bolt in midair at the beginning of TFA. Once again, this is something new and interesting. I don't expect to see many people being able to do that, but when you have the Skywalker blood -- the force is going to help you expand your abilities.

About Luke's character. I was very surprised by it. He wasn't crazed like Yoda on Dagobah, but he was more deliberately resigned. He gave up. He let his guilt swallow him and didn't try to right any wrongs. He brainwashed himself into believing that the galaxy is better off without him. It was nice to see him redeem himself in the end of the film.

I let the films take me for a ride. I go in with my predictions and if the film entertains me, it did it's job. TLJ entertained the hell out of me and I've rewatched it multiple times. Naturally as the SW mega fan I am (aren't we all), I try to find out as much as possible I can about the new things we learn in each movie. I read all the books surrounding the sequels to get a better understanding of things. Reading the novels leading up to TFA really helped me get a better sense of what in the hell led to the First Order and the state of the galaxy. Same thing with reading the novels about TLJ. Helps me understand things better.

 

Star Wars is full of drastic implausibilities, it always has been. What makes us believe in these things? You could argue childlike innocence, but since these movies are now being made for 3 generations of fans, ranging from 5-50 years old, I think it has to do with how convincingly it's executed. There is nothing cheesy or implausible to me about Luke learning how to project a representation of himself across the galaxy. When Jedi ghosts can project a likeness of themselves anywhere at anytime, it'a not inconceivable that a living force user can do something similar, while retaining their living physical form. Leia flying through space is an example of a plausible idea with bad execution. I have no problem with Leia using the force to save herself from death. Rian compared it to a person in a life-threatening situation getting a burst of adrenaline, which enables an unusually high level of strength. But the execution of that scene was cheesy. They should've simply had an over the shoulder shot of Leia extending her hand and gliding towards the ship for a few seconds, then cut to the shot of her hand on the window. The flying part was over the top and cheesy.

 

I think Star Wars fans can be guilty of being reactionary. This is, (I hate to say it), particularly true of those who consume a lot of the EU. It can often make a fan who is so versed on every detail, anecdote and incident in the galaxy that they can become a little pedantic, fussy and not always open to new interpretations and themes.

I get it to some degree, because any relationship can get caught up in repeating the same expected patterns and the more you indulge in those patterns, the harder it can be sometimes to break out of them and try something new.

It can be difficult to characterize the group that "hates" TLJ. The key thing I try to remember as I read the negative reviews, is that the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The fact so many people out there care so much they actually create sock puppets to broadcast and affirm their own opinions, demonstrates to me that they are still quite enamored with Star Wars. The more posts you see here, the more you realize the emotional connection is there. They still care, very deeply, and going on and on about how Star Wars is "doomed", (despite the fact it's booming larger and brighter than ever before), is a cognitive dissonance that only love can truly create.

If you didn't care, you wouldn't care and you wouldn't be here every day showing us all that you still really care.

With all this in mind, I wonder if any creative change to Star Wars is going to matter much. I mean, the force is not a power one owns. The threads that try to judge who is and who is not more powerful with the Force don't seem to get how it works. The Force is more like the wind in the sails, rather than the ship itself. Remember the Force can be manipulated, but it also controls you, and you must be attuned to it, not in control of it. Luke goes on quite a lot about this in TLJ and this to me, is really the key idea that, so far, Star Wars has never broken.

When people use the Force in unexpected ways, it's not really a demonstration of power, it's really a demonstration of the Force deciding to channel itself through a person, who is particularly attuned to the energy. If you think of the Force this way, it's easy to see that the manifestation of that natural force, should never be contained or limited to what has come before.

The Force is also a very poetic, literary device, it's not meant to be measured or analyzed or quantified, something we nerds love to do, but so often creates a distorted and reactionary interpretation of what is truly just there to help creative minds tell an interesting, mythological story.

We have to remember Star Wars is a massive success again. From the dead as a door nail days of when 3-D re-releases of the films were so tragically bad that entire release schedules were swept under the rug and the brand realized it had to be reinvented and reinvigorated with new stewards and new ideas.

And it's working, Star Wars is bigger than ever and a massive success, the shareholders are happy, Disney is happy and the box office is booming.

And if there is any narrative I find the most distorted, it's this idea that somehow Kathleen Kennedy is killing the brand. What a complete joke of an opinion, coddled deep in the vacuous minds of men like Mike Zeroh, who not only doesn't truly believe them, he just broadcasts them in some weird, awful means of validating his own ego and content.

The truth is, it doesn't matter how much you know about Snoke's backstory. None of that knowledge puts you in any better position to judge or criticize art. And herein lies the real problem, there are some fans who think their rabid consumption and absorption of all Star Wars property and trivia, somehow enables their opinions to be broadcast as "truth", or worse, as indisputable fact.

And this leads us to the horrible threads, where fans are screaming at anyone who disagrees with their hatred of TLJ. Because to them, their opinion is the gospel truth, oblivious to facts and data. To them, Star Wars is dying because it is changing radically and has a feminist agenda.

Which is wrong. Star Wars is making massive profit and they are raking it in bigger and better than ever before.

So in the end, it doesn't really matter what does and does not come out of the concept of "the Force". This isn't what drives or influences the quality of the films. It never has.

We super-nerds, who love this brand like an obsession, sometimes easily forget this is just a business and the truest judge of that business is the money, not the adherence to "lore" and "canon". And that's a positive thing, because if it was as reactionary as we fans can sometimes be, the brand would have died a very long time ago.

 

But how do the Mortis arc and the Prequels contradict this?

 

Mortis arc directly contradicts the previous statements I quoted. The prequels do so by showing that the Jedi don't fully understand the Force and see themselves as the protagonists. Luke even shows the same principles in TLJ when he references the Jedi and their misunderstanding of the balance and true nature of the Force.

EDIT:

Maybe I should've stated that srg's quote is more of what I'm referring to. You're saying a single individual doesn't need the dark side to achieve balance which is perfectly fine. srg seems like he's referring to the cosmic and living Force which, according to aforementioned references, does seem to need the dark side to achieve balance.

 

We both agree on this. Perhaps I should rephrase my first statement a bit to avoid confusion. I believe that the Dark Side will always exist and there'll always be some kind of evil that stems from it. There will be no definitive victory over the Dark Side. However, the belief that because of that a presence of the Dark Side should be allowed is wrong. Just because murders keep on happening it doesn't mean that we should make murdering legal. That is my opinion on the matter. I hope that it makes it clearer.

 

Gotcha, I qualified my statement in an edit. Once I reread what you said I realized what you were getting to.

 

I am a bit nervous that my simple answer is not nearly as sophisticated as most of the others above but...
...if JJ shows me a scene with a dialogue as follows in IX, then I think I will at least have a good laugh:

"... this was the first death star (shows big hologram), this was the second death star (shows bigger hologram), this was the Starkiller base (shows huge hologram) and this is the SECOND STARKILLER BASE (shows extraordinary huge hologram)!!"

 

If this happens, I won't be mad, just disappointed. Please, let the concept of superweapons just die out. Three is more than enough.

 

Or at least use chemical warfare! Something devastating but different...

 

Perhaps I misphrased by saying "the dark side" where I've meant the Sith or others who use the Force in evil ways. It's them who seem to break the balance (at least that's always been my interpretation).

To me the fact that the Jedi Order turned out to be kind of foolish at the end of the day, doesn't contradict the fact that their outlook on the Force and the balance is good. So if somebody said it's actually good to be a dark side user, it would invalidate way too much history of Star Wars.

 

TLDR version of all this discussion @Dr Jerrone @Pawek_13 @srg

We all agree and the dark side is inevitable but dark users are preventable/should be combated.

JEEEZ

 

Do you want Doctor Vindi?

Because that's how you get Doctor Vindi.

 

Well, I'll start to say that I liked TLJ I found it a little bit different from what I was expecting in a good way.

Although think this is exaggerated, I do not think that Star Wars movies are supposed to reach the rigorous level of such films of Welles and Kurosawa, they have very different goals.

Regarding Jedi Powers, I am kind of afraid that they go too crazy with that, I think it could ruin the immersion if we would have a world where anything is possible and with no limits whatsoever... Things like that kind of tend to be paradoxically boring.

 

I could not say it better. Hope really bad that someone with decision power at screenwriting feels the same so I can enjoy many many SW movies!

 

Truer words were NEVER spoken. When they realize their line has already been crossed*** I will be much more forgiving of the "wailing and gnashing of teeth" because I understand it.

***you don't need an out of movie reference such as the Mortis and the prequels, it's right there in the movie.
Ren: I killed Han Solo. When the moment came, I didn't hesitate!
Snoke: And look at you. The deed split your spirit to the bone. You were unbalanced, bested by a girl who had never held a lightsaber! You failed!!

What exactly do folks think Snoke means by unbalanced when he says it here? Emotionally?

 

For one I have no idea how that comment about Kylo lines up with what we were discussing. It's probably closer to the opposite. Snoke calls Kylo unbalanced because the light and dark sides of the Force are pulling him in different directions. We were all more or less saying that we wouldn't want a Force user in the future who has the light and dark side within them equally and is called balanced for that reason.

All that being said, if they did do that in the future I wouldn't quit Star Wars because of it. I would have to see how it's executed first. I would hope that if they went that way they could tell the story effectively.

 

Snoke calls Kylo unbalanced because he let himself be affected by "sentiment". He knew full well that Kylo was made of both light and dark; it's why he especially chose him. It is the combination of both that made him powerful.

Kylo: "It is your teaching that make me strong, Supreme Leader."
Snoke: "It is far more than that. It is where you are from. What you are made of. The dark side, and the light. The finest sculptor cannot fashion a masterpiece from poor materials. He must have something pure, something strong, something unbreakable, with which to work. I have you."

He wasn't looking to eradicate the his light side, he was looking to eradicate "sentiment", it was the cause of conflict for Vader in the end in ROTJ, and a cause for conflict for Kylo. In his conversation with Kylo during the TFA novelization it is confirmed.

Snoke: "It was neither poor strategy nor arrogance that brought down the empire. You know too well what did."
Kylo: "Sentiment"

He requires Kylo to kill Han because it was specifically the sentiment between father and son that undid the empire in the OT. When Snoke chides Kylo he doesn't say he has too much "light" within him. He doesn't even reference the Force Sensitive Parent (Leia). He says: "Yes...there it is. You have too much of your father's heart in you, young Solo."

Now consider Luke's dialogue with Rey on Ach To. He has her reach out with her feelings and she describes a number of diametrically opposed concepts without characterizing any of them as good or evil, and that in between them was "balance".

Luke: Breathe. Reach out with your feelings. What do you see?
Rey: The island. Life. Death and decay, that feeds new life. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence.
Luke: And between it all?
Rey: Balance and energy. A Force.
Luke: And inside you?
Rey: Inside me, that same Force.

If you all are still under the belief that strict Light Side Adherence is equal to balance, I'm not sure what to tell you. Between the PT providing a more nuanced analysis of the Jedi and Sith and demonstrating that not all aspects of the Sith were evil or that all aspects of the Jedi were noble, and Luke's dialogue here, they absolutely are making the case for balance with the Force that it seems you all don't want.

If that disdain is born out of a sense of tradition, so be it, but organically it's not such a reprehensible concept. A logical mind and an emotional mind aren't the same either, but striking a balance between the two is often better than a purely logical outlook or a purely emotionally outlook. It seems the analogy works well with the Force as well (though there would still be some sticking points)

 

I don't have limits in this way.
If I am enjoying myself, I don't care what the hell is going on, nor the logic behind it.

All of this sounds more like brain clutter.
I specifically vacate thinking about what a movie should be, or even where it's going when I sit down to watch it.

I've watched some outlandish concepts in films and it wasn't a problem.
I've watched some pretty mundane concepts in films and it was a problem.

It has to do with how it's written, performed, shot, and edited. That's all that matters to me, because those are the categories which define the taste of film.

You could give me the most Canon Star Wars film and if it's written, performed, shot, or edited in a way that is not to my taste, I could easily walk out thinking it was terrible.

For example: if you want to bother me, just toss in high school quality fanfic melodramatic dialogue right smack in the middle of a saber fight between Rey and Kylo, complete with a pop-song playing in the background.
Yep. I'd probably get up and walk out. No. Correction. I definitely would get up and walk out.

I'm not going to be bothered by the constructs of "reality" within the fictional universe, however.
Do what you want! Surprise me. Hell, have some fun with it if you want.
Go ahead, have someone jump into the veil, become one with the Force for a moment and hop to a parallel dimension to get to the Luke who's still alive and living the EU timeline version of himself over there for some reason.

I'll go along for that if it's done well.
Move a mountain, meet the Force face to face...I don't really care what you do in your film as a concept.

I'll judge it simply by whether it's my style of film or not - not whether it follows a perceived in-universe rule concept or not.

EVERYONE at one point knew that a solid beam laser was Star Trek and having any pulse lasers on an Enterprise was just wrong.
And then it was done, and I could not care less. That was not at all what defined the movie to me.

What defined something to me was when Star Trek Discovery quite openly stated it wanted in-fighting within the team, and flawed people with messy interpersonal relationships, and a dark setting.
Nope!
I'm not going to be showing up for that. That is not what I think of when I think of Star Trek. That's what I think of when I think of Vampire Diaries.

So what would it take?
Change the fundamental nature of the story medium.
Run around with shaky cam POV shots constantly, make it a patriotic story, or make it a drama about life on one outpost and how one person on that outpost has to struggle to find self worth after being betrayed by their friend in a community which is struggling to refrain from extinction, write every character as a superficially minded character seeking self gratification with no moral consequences for behavior and the arc resting upon whether or not the protagonist will simply win, edit the film to flow non-linearly on purpose, fill the film with modern pop hits, or worse, lack any backing score for huge spans of the film and leave large gaps of silence in the dialogue that's suppose to be dramatic but just isn't and is instead rendered stale because of a lack of emotional setting and queue - I can literally hear your set guys...just saying..., shoot it all in hyperbolic 3D so that the film loses itself inside of 3D attention seeking shots that don't fit the scene, or shoot everything with just a master and three quarters all on tracks and have every character firmly planted right smack in the middle of the screen and otherwise only employ panning shots.

Anything like this, and yeah - I'll have problems.

Cheers,
Jayson