except the first two films, those are barbarella spin offs
It just struck me how fucking hilarious the ending of Rise of Skywalker is. The Star Wars canon has carried its audience through displays of immense poverty and deprivation. Slavery and debt peonage on Tatooine, the slave colonies of Kashyyyk, the exploited scrappers on Jakku, etc. It seems kids are growing up all over the galaxy dreaming of the ability to blast off into space, explore the galaxy, become a jedi, etc. The ability to leave their home, let alone their planet is so far out of reach.
So how does the final conflict between the Rebellion and Palpatine's New Order end? Are any of those impoverished, hyperexploited subjects of the galactic empire involved? Do they rise up in a glorious proletarian revolution? :bugs-no: Instead, Palpatine's fleet gets blockaded on Exegol by all the petit bourgeois small spacecraft tyrants. He is literally stopped in his tracks by an army of beautiful boaters. :tromp:
The galactic proletariat was never anything more than a backdrop. Galactic Republicanism is objectively the moderate wing of Fascism.
spoilers for Dune
To be fair to Dune, Paul tries everything he can to try and stop the coming jihad, but realizes that he can't—history is beyond the control of one man, no matter how Great, and he just submits to the contours of time. Pretty anti-Great Man if you ask me.
spoilers
See I still disagree. The Fremen had already seized their own fate, as Liet Kynes shows. They're already changing the planet in their favor, they've already structured their society to be the most powerful warriors in the universe, etc. Sure, Paul sped things up by a century or so (maybe), but I think the outcome was inevitable one way or another. The material conditions of life on Arrakis had already created the fuel. If Paul wasn't the spark something else would be. I guess it's not as well spelled out as I like, so I agree that the optics of a Lawrence of Arabia type deal is Not Great.
And got it, yeah I stopped reading about halfway through Children of Dune so I never got to the God-Emperor stuff. I like that my Dune journey starts and ends with Paul, who rather poetically I think finally rejects his destined "place" in history and walks out into the desert to die, forging his own path as he will not be merely a pawn to a game greater than himself and can choose his own destiny. Which also reinforces what I was saying above—Paul runs away and refuses to complete his task, but it doesn't matter. Somebody else eventually does. You cannot stop what history has been leading to. Not sure if anybody's made that case but I think Dune can definitely be viewed through a historical materialist lens!
Yeah i thought it was weird that even after the world is reborn in mistborn, the society in the 2nd set of novels doesn’t even seem that far off from the one they overthrew in the first trilogy
Yeah I’m currently still reading them too. Almost done with shadows of self
Yeah I really enjoyed the first trilogy but some of the cooler revolutionary aspects went away with Kelsier
Exegol was observing a minority religion. The finale of that film was in fact a pogrom
Yeah like move aside Broom Boy from TLJ, it is time for the small ship owners to rise up
In retrospect that final broom boy scene should have concluded the whole movie series
Literally what me and my friends said at the time. Like we had been podcasting on star wars stuff intensely at that point, buying all the EU and yet came away from TLJ like "I am excited for what happens next, but I kinda want the entire franchise to end because that was so fitting, so beautiful".......but hey TROS came out and said the force is stored in the balls and made eugenics the premise so yay
made eugenics the premise
Wait for real? It was bio-essentialist af (which is still super shitty) but I can't remember it being pro-eugenics aside from that.
Maybe eugenics is too harsh, but flat out rejecting the "everyone is part of the force and who you are doesn't depend on where you come from" for "the galaxy revolves around family lines" was super creepy. JJ made the entire series: "house skywalker vs house Palpatine" and viewed the saga as dependent on the actions of "the important people". which made the "its not a navy, its just people" thing feel so unearned. it was less "look normal people can stand up to evil" and more "look the peasants can die as cannon fodder while those of noble blood do the real conflict".
TLJ literally has Luke with venom say "noble skywalker blood" and then TROS makes that mentality a good thing
Yeah that makes sense. I feel like that mindset is all over the fantasy genre, but after TLJ subverted it with the 'Rey's parents are nobodies' twist it especially sucks that TROS goes right back and doubles down on it.
Half of all popular media is just “cape shit” with a different gloss of paint. Shut up about it and just watch what you want, the ghost of Lenin doesn’t give a shit if you enjoyed fucking Lego Movie, Jesus.
"Guy who's only seen Boss Baby seeing a second movie: 'I dunno getting a lotta Boss Baby vibes from this'"
It is, but it doesn't have to be. Disney is too cowardly to truly embrace the possibilities of the setting, and will be reusing the "rebels vs Empire with some spirituality" formula ad infinitum.
Refusing to read The Illiad and Romance of the Three Kingdowns because they're capeshit.
the first two films
Ah yes, The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.
For real though. It is not high on my favorites, but it genuinely may be the best structured film in the series
:ohnoes:
Old Ben does not have a cape though, I now doubt your cape identification skills :blob-no-thoughts:
:soviet-huff: does so! when he gets zooped its all thats left.
What about all the imperial folks with the little baby capes? Does that count?
Krennic has one to the point that in universe the press interview him about it
it was like half of a good movie, which still means it stands head and shoulders above the rest of the sequel trilogy
luke and ben's duel in TLJ is the second best duel in SW, after ESB. don't @ me
nah, the most important part of lightsaber duels is dialogue, which is why the ANH duel is so iconic and the prequels' duels are so boring.
Anyone else disturbed by the popularity of the fascist coded empire?
it's always been vaguely concerning, but this is when it really came full circle
Han's DL-44 is just a Mauser https://i.pinimg.com/originals/22/a9/0f/22a90f6c24609073ff2dc14549ebd9af.jpg
They also did some cool stuff with junked fighters. There ended up being a lot of changes made by the model team in California that day to day the team at Pinewood would have to change for the physical props. This was especially true of the Falcon. So the model team was kitbashing with model kits of WW2 planes, and the scrap metal the prop team was using for X-wings was harder and harder to source. Till it hit them that they are in England and they could literally buy at a junkyard the actual plane parts that the model team was using models of.
Thems fighting words
The Disney stuff is definitely cape shit tho
I've never watched either but star wars has always struck me as insufferable while star trek seems like it might be watchable
It is cool when they are simply ripping off samurai movies with cool costumes
Tie Fighter is genuinely good (and the recent Squadrons is easily the best Star wars sim since), and the Jedi Knight series is still unsurpassed in making you feel like a Jedi.
KOTOR II's grappling with the fact that jedi are often not the good guys made it one of the most philosophically important games that I played as a kid. It really stuck with me and in hindsight was one of the more important pieces of media for breaking down the "things are either 'good' or 'bad'" dichotomy that you see in a lot of other places.
I think it helped that it pulled on some of the same philosophical threads from the Jedi Apprentice book series about obi-wan's apprenticeship before Episode I. There was a lot of criticism of the existing power structures of the republic and the jedi order — obi-wan even quits at one point to become a revolutionary.
Barbarella unironically one of my favorite films of all time. Entertainment factor through the roof
