JJ Abrams Says Ep 8 Haters May Be Threatened By Women

This point often gets completely ignored in this argument. Luke learned to block laser bolts with a lightsaber in less than a minute, and the training he received was Obi-Wan just telling him to reach out with his feelings. It's the first instance of a character learning a Force ability in the Star Wars saga, and it's shown to be incredibly easy to learn if the student simply tires to do it.

 

In a way it's a funny little test.
At worst it selects for:

• lack of primary source checking ability
  
• difficulties in English reading comprehension
• general credulity
  
• heightened defensiveness
  
• confirmation bias
  
• callowness
  
• JJ haters

But also in the mix there are also people genuinely trying to using the platform to make a point, some just making errors we're all susceptible too, and of course actual trolls!

 

am torn because I disliked TLJ but I read the article but personally I never thought he was aiming at me as a viewer. However what upset me and probably others too was JJ's tone, it was rather insidious.

 

Oh sure. I imagine that the most common factor, as it pertains to this particular story, is confirmation bias from people that are simply tired of having their legitimate complaints and opinions of the ST marginalized by people that unfairly label them as sexist.

I'm showing my age here, but until I was talking to someone on a different message board about the misinterpretation of this story (and why he believed it), I never knew how many opinion (disguised as news) videos there were on YouTube that are made by, essentially, random people. Some of the videos even look very professional, but their creators have no special knowledge or expertise in their subject matter. But they do know how to get attention.

And while I have been aware that misinformation and half-truths are easily spread on the internet, I had never seen it in action. And this is about a subject that doesn't really matter and is easily disproved by looking at the source material. I got a first hand lesson on how a few people with a specific agenda can manipulate the opinions of vast numbers of people.

 

This ↑.
I certainly didn't mean to deligitimize all those who perhaps mistakenly identified themselves as targets for the comments.
Or those just fed up with being talked down to by TLJ and ST director lovers!

It's scary.
I fall into similar traps sometimes and only delved deeper into this story because I was initially skeptical. (And I'm not even much of a fan of JJ's work.)
I don't check the source material myself all the time on threads and am probably more likely not too if the angle confirms my opinion.

But it's not often you see a sentence edited together with separate two or three word quotes like that!
From a commercial news standpoint with a business model based on selling eyeballs to advertisers the clickbait sure gets the job done.

These are crazy days.
We've gone from centuries of information scarcity to an age of information overload so we're all learning to dissect the facts from the sensation.
According to Eric Schmidt of Google, every two days now the human race creates as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization until 2003 (about 5 exabytes of information a day).

And even without youtube, discussion and disagreement in text based communication has a steep learning curve.
Letter writing has been limited to the privileged throughout most of history and now we're all learning (and fumbling) the art.
I'm a particularly slow learner!

 

I know. I feel exactly the same as you do, but it doesn't surprise me. The internet somehow facilitates and encourages this sensationalist, misinformed approach to news. Search engines are designed to prune our searches to the point that, if we are not careful, all our hit are of articles, tweets and news supporting our preconceived, prejudiced ideas. It is hard to find a balanced diet of information on the internet. You have to know how to look for things and deploy all your reading skills, critical thinking, logical thinking and need a basic understanding of psychology and sociology to navigate your way through social media, forums, video, blogs, news... It's just far too easy to read and believe rubbish that confirms any sort of wacky belief one may have.

As for this thread I think that many people are just not bothering about reading through all the pages and that's why they keep getting it wrong and saying JJ is awful. But I don't know, anyone that has heard JJ Abrams in interviews can easily realize that the man is a PR sabby, cautious, courteous and polite to the extreme. Calling all TLJ critics sexists would be completely at odds with his public persona. Any intelligent person would see that.

 

Isn't that the truth. Even if you are aware of the human tendency for confirmation bias (and I certainly wan't for a big part of my life), it's incredibly hard to avoid.

That's exactly what set off my BS radar. Even if JJ believed that every critic of TLJ was sexist (which in and of itself is highly improbable), there's no way he would ever say so publicly.

 

Yeah I'm absolutely fascinated by cognitive biases.
While learning about them has certainly increased my awareness of them in others it's had a negligible effect on my ability to mitigate them in myself!

It's why I've experimented with not following anyone on this forum.
Chances are if I consistently like your posts I'd be following you otherwise.
Instead I've an empty new feed, don't even watch threads I've started, and only browse threads that interest me via the new posts menu.

I also purposely hang out on threads frequented by people with radically different opinions than mine (as long as I can handle it).
I'm always surprised by how well I'm tolerated by people with opposite opinions here at The Cantina - I think never giving negative ratings really helps.
In the end I've a lot of ignored posts in threads like The Haters but I'm not there for the likes and always learn something.

Big Ups to all my polite disagree'ers at The Cantina!

 

Ditto. I've had my mind changed on topics in these forums. Most notably about Rey's parents. I was hard in the Rey Skywalker camp until I read the well reasoned arguments in this forum.

 

I do exactly the same. In fact, I wouldn’t be able to do it any other way. No followers, no newsfeed. I tend to be a careful internet user perhaps because of my age and not having used it for most of my life. I learn as I go along, but what I do realise often in social media and forums is this culture of validation which is not only ubiquitous but rather infectious, and not in a healthy way. I like the cantina because I don’t think it exists a lot here. The rating system in this forum seems to me more about avoiding trolling and unsensitive posting than anything else.

 

I tend to avoid heavy social media use because of the reason you state.
My time here has been my only education in online forums.

I too am learning as I go along and have built up quite a mental checklist of things I think I should do before pressing "post" such as:

• make sure I'm sober, coherent, and not angry,
  
• proof read first,
  
• wait a bit before posting,
  
• utilize brevity and reduce everything to the few best points,
• focus on positives,
• and include things I like about posts I'm replying to in order to balance my contrarian nature.

Unfortunately I am much better at compiling such checklists than I am at applying them.
I tend to completely ignore most of these sensible ideas E-V-E-R-Y time!

 

Same. There's always that voice in the back of my mind when posting that says "Do It!".

 

Is this an excuse for Rey's lack of training? We don't have to see the details of their training. But Lucasfilm, Abrams and Johnson could have found some damn way in establishing that Rey or any other Force character had credible training.

Probably his Jedi mentor. The Order had already been established around the time of his birth.

 

Did we see Anakin train? No. There was a considerable time gap between 1 and 2. All I'm saying is, it's been more about how these characters act with their powers then simply getting to the next level.

--- Double Post Merged, Mar 4, 2018, Original Post Date: Mar 4, 2018 ---

 

"No more training do you need. Already have, all that you require," -Yoda, Return of the Jedi

The Force can't be quantified, measured in the pedantic, literal ways that some of you demand. It's not important. It's not good story telling and it can ruin a film's ability to delight and wonder, just so that it can inform and explain.

I am so very glad many of you will never get to write a Star Wars film. It's like you all read Moby Dick and went, "it was too predictable", missing just about all the reasons why it's considered great in the first place. It's like you look at a Monet painting and think, "it's too damn blurry".

And for those who are taking the time to defend the franchise, that's soaring at the box office, winning the shareholder's hearts and expanding at a pace never seen in the history of the franchise, thank you. For those who are convinced "Star Wars is doom!" and "It's all Kathleen's and her agenda's fault", your concept of reality and business is weak.

Rey is one of the most beloved and adored Star Wars characters in history and has expanded the marketability of the product exponentially. She's a huge win for fans and shareholders alike.

 

But there is implied training throughout. I really don't know where people get the idea that isn't so.

Every single force user in the OT, PT, cartoons and books it is implied and understood that they trained to be able to use the force in different ways. Rey is the only exception to this. You can write in your reasoning why she can do what she does all you want, but it's not consistent with what came before. The only attempt at an explanation for Rey is "light meets dark". So far all fans have to go on is that the Force will imbue you with Jedi knowledge and experience if it needs you to have it to bring balance.

For many fans that isn't enough. If it is for you, that's great, but that isn't an argument as to there being no training before Rey, it's you writing for JJ and RJ so you can suspend your disbelief... and it works well enough for you.

 

Say what?

 

Refer to my previous post (314) on training. Luke self taught himself between 4-5 and had a 'month or so' Jedi homeschooling with Yoda and between 5-6 he's suddenly a Jedi Knight. Most of his training was by himself and not "properly trained".

 

Ugh... I told myself that my last post would be the last one in this topic. I felt i had explained my stance in detail and ad nauseam.


I get people aren't going to agree with me, and I'm fine with that. Your reply to me and subsequent posts after that are pointing to you being in that category.


I'm really not interested in repeating myself, in detail, for the third or fourth time about the Interactions between Finn and Rey being examples of making men look stupid in order to make the female hero look like a strong female character. You can just as easily go back in my crazy long posts and re-read my points.


So how about more examples? How about stereotyping men as always thinking with their penis? In a rather tense scene where unless Rey fixes the Falcon, Finn and herself will be killed, Finn can't help but inquire about Rey having a boyfriend. Cause ya know, that's what men think of in life or death situations, that being thinking about what to do with our penis. Rey, the ever stoic, and super character she is, is super serious about saving their lives. And Finn, well again his comedy relief comes from targeting him as a man. And it's not that I have issue with a man being used as comic relief, no problem with it at all. The problem is that when Star Wars was supposed to be about giving us stronger female characters, the comedy relief is about taking shots at men in order to dumb down men and make Rey look better.


How about the dynamic of the return of the big three?


Han? Well when things got tough, he leaves his friends and family. He ditches his responsibilities to go back to "what he was good at" aka what he likes doing. He gives up on his son. He gives up on his family, to go and play bachelor again. He only comes around when lectured by two females (Maz and Leia). Han is the Star Wars poster boy for dead beat dads, the only thing that was missing was Leia asking for all the child support that Han owed her.


Luke? Well when things got tough, he leaves his friends and family. He ditches his responsibilities to throw the galaxies biggest pity party. Luke reverts back to his Tatooine days of looking off to the horizon instead of worrying about the here and now. About helping his friends and family.


Leia? The only one of the three that has stuck it out. That is being the responsible one. That is trying to fix what her dysfunctional family has wrought. Trying to fix what she believes her mistakes and short comings led too. Surely she'd like to be doing something else... While Han and Luke are off in self-absorption, she's remains strong and righteous.


It's a theme that's becoming more and more prevalent. Something that even women are complaining about because it's not how they think or want to see a woman character built (off the back of stupid men). It's sometimes referred to as the see-saw effect, that in order to lift one side up, it means putting the other side down.


Could you imagine what the reaction would have been if Abrams wrote the scene when Rey hops in the driver seat of the Falcon and starts running into everything left and right, and Finn kicks her out of the drivers seat with some remark that insinuates all women are bad drivers? The fandom would have lost its mind at such a sexist joke in a movie that's supposed to bring strong female characters to the forefront. But it's just a joke right?


How about some role-reversal. Instead of Han telling Finn that Rey will figure out he's lying cause "they" always do. Put Rey in Finns spot so that now she's the one lying to Finn about something, and Han tells her that Finn will figure it out cause "We always do". Holy smokes, they would never have been able to get away with that. A movie that is supposed to give us a strong female character and here's Han Solo telling that character that men are smarter than women, or are at least better at sniffing out the BS of women. But it's just a joke right?


Can anyone, on a point by point basis, point to the bad faults or traits of the "good gals" as opposed to the "good guys" in TFA?


More role-reversal, this time in TLJ. Could you imagine the reaction to a scenario where Poe open hand slaps Rose in the face for something she did? Melt downs...


In fact some women are holding that moment up as what should be done to any man that "man-splains" to a woman. Physical violence being sanctioned as necessary because someone was O-fended. But that passes off as being OK because it was a man getting slapped.


I guess at the end of the day, as I pointed out in my last post, I don't believe the things people do or say are in these little separate bubbles that don't effect one another or aren't related. So when Kennedy and Abrams spend the months ahead of the release of TFA talking like they did, as shown by the examples I provided in my previous post, about fixing the wrongs of previous Star Wars movies, than we see the jokes made in that movie, I see a connection. I don't think Abrams disconnected himself from the propaganda that was being pushed prior to the movies release.


That's the last I will have to say in this topic. I feel I've more than made my points over and over again.

 

You can self teach yourself quite a bit in 3 years (comparing force skills to other skills)... and there's a year or so between ESB and RotJ after his training with Yoda. The time gaps here are key. Rey has no time gap between knowing the force is real and her mind trick, and there are days, a week or two at most, before she moves tons of boulders. It's unprecedented. Now we know Kylo's initial mind rape triggered something, either blocked memories or a view into his mind and she downloaded skills from him. I don't mind the block of memory explanation, but the download explanation seems contrived and opens up a can of worms (why don't masters use this technique with their apprentices all the time, especially dark force users).

I wouldn't even mind her using brute strength on the mind trick to get it to work... but if you use brute strength, there should be a cost somewhere. I think the Storm trooper should have collapsed, his mind turned to much or something like that. That you can simply apply more power get the exact same result just doesn't seem logical to me. More power to get an effect is fine, but there should be side effects too. There's a reason why people practice to use a gentle touch. I would think affecting someone's mind would be a delicate thing, done with care and precision.... requiring practice.

There are more explanations on the rocks in TLJ that I'd be able to accept, but the problem is we don't get any concrete explanations. At least nothing to my satisfaction. If you're satisfied, that's fine, but many fans have issue with it, would have issue with it regardless of the characters gender or race or any other outside factor. It's about what we've come to know about force users, that they've all practiced for years before we've seen them use the force without an effort, without guidance and successfully with any measure of consistency.