They forgot to tell a story. They spent billions on the franchise, and then it seems like they used an auto generator to come up with the story. Having watched all 3 movies I still don’t know what the first order is. How is that even possible? I enjoyed your review.
They never really explain it in the films. They just say, "The first order has risen from the ashes of the empire". I remember they explained it in the lead up to the film that the Empire never fell completely, that the new Republic made a peace deal with the Empire/First Order. The First Order was allowed to rule over its half of the galaxy, and the New Republic got the other half. Leia forms a "Resistance" that keeps fighting the First Order... but her resistance is supposed to be operating independent of the Republic, because of their peace treaty with the First Order. The first order finds out that the Republic has been funding and supporting Leia's resistance, and therefore goes to war with the republic, destroying it with one blow by using the Starkiller to wipe out the main 5 planets of the republic. They wanted people to read their dumb books, and they didn't want the movies contradicting the books, so the movies never explained it, only touching on it vaguely in the crawl and in Hux's speech.
To me the failure primarily lay in the treatment of Luke. They took the character who was the OG “New Hope” and gave him No Hope. All while, like you said, putting him in the one place where he should be able to find it. You provided many interesting potential plots that probably would have been better. I don’t think that having the old characters involved had to be as big of a problem. They could have redemptive arcs too. Finally, your core issue re: who is who politically and why is spot on. And it’s something they’re now trying to rectify after the fact with books and Disney shows. That’s poor writing. Glad to have you back.
If Disney had not de-canonized the EU, they could have had TONS of good story content to pull from. I imagine that they could have introduced a younger generation (Leia and Han's children and Luke's child) with an occasional appearance of the older characters. The movies could have passed the torch in that way. The EU was not all perfect, but there was so much to pull from that was really good. Instead, Disney wanted to "reboot" the original trilogy but they did not do a good job at it and seemingly had no plan on where it was all going. Frankly, it was bad writing and bad executive decisions--or just not understanding the Star Wars universe.
I'm happy you released more content. I agree with both your commentary and parts of the comments as well so I don't really have anything different to add just wanted to voice my support.
The slow-speed chase was a rip off of both Empire Strikes Back and Battlestar Galactica. He was copying plot elements of ESB. In ESB, the heroes are unable to use lightspeed to escape the Empire. In TLJ, he couldn't break all their hyperdrives, so he contrived a way to make light speed jumps useless, and therefore costly. Then he stole the idea of a slow-speed chase from Battlestar.
nice to have you back Amy :) _________________ Almost all of the quality criticisms have been around the poor story writing and characterisation, then we have the 'mary sue' aspect of Rey. A lot of nostalgia bait but without any respect shown to those legacy characters. 'Design by committee' at it's worst. Real writers tend to be lone wolves for a reason. _________________________ Have to say that I am looking forward to your feedback on the Rings of Power much more so than the Star Wars stuff, which although I have seen, I don;t have any real investment in :)
@@amys0482 The latest rumour is that Celeborn is dead, not sure how accurate that is; I thought that they would emasculate him, "[can't have a partnership between a man and women without one totally dominating the other]", but we'll see. Although apologies, totally off track for this video.
Disney Star War: things happen, and when you start to question why they throw in some memba' berries to make you feel all warm and nostalgic. This is how they forced the door open with The Force Awakens. These movies were indicative of the poor writing that would soon infest most Disney Star Wars projects. I liked how you brought up the force in your essay, as the way they used it was one of the major reasons I hated these movies. In the first Six movies you got the feeling there were some rules to all of this. We may not have known what they all were, but there were limits; in Disney Star Wars powers all of the sudden appear when the plot needs them to.
Ah yes, good ol TH-cam. Subbed and notified but still missed this. Belated welcome back, always love your stuff. I just have to say on this one, WHAT A WIN FOR EVIL!!! Palpatine's enemies are dead and buried, and his progeny have appropriated their name!! We have no idea if Palpy is actually dead since we can now use the force to teleport, heal, and raise from the dead. Who's to say he can't raise himself from the dead or have another clone hanging around out there? I think there was a LOT of cocaine involved in the making of those two movies.
Hodo was such a fun character in the book series she comes from. Like a rich space hippy star child. Nothing like the weirdo we got in the last Jedi. In the books she was kind and approachable not ah? Detached? Or whatever she was in this movie.
I pretty much agree. Ep. VII was gonna be either good or bad depending on the following movies. It was good in setting up a follow-up (although the shameless copy-paste of A New Hope was horribad, and no, that's not a "hommage"). Action-sequence wise the prequels utterly obliterate the sequels. And they do so under pretty much every other aspect as well, except CGI ofc.
To me, the failure of the Disney Trilogy is that they didn't have Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie together ... at all. Carrie Fisher's death was unexpected, but they didn't even try in the first movie. The overarching story was not there ... no specific story beats. They set Finn up, Poe up, Rey up and Snoke up for a cool story, yet never followed through. To me, this was unfair to the actors. They rushed Rey's story and confused everything about her. They implied in the last movie that Finn had more story, but didn't follow through. They are trying to get you to other Disney media for other parts of the story .... Disney Plus, Fortnite, books, etc. I would like the movie to be coherent in the movies and not have to go to other sources to enjoy the movie. I didn't enjoy the Disney Trilogy and I wanted to, I tried to, but couldn't. The Last Jedi making Luke a hologram was disappointing. I wanted Luke to be heroic again. He was too jaded, too cynical, too dark. Their treatment of the OG characters was terrible.
I really liked your ideas for how they could have done things differently, especially your explanation for why the jedi need to repress their emotions. I think they made a half decent attempt to show the potential pitfalls of the "deny all emotion" strategy of the jedi in the prequel trilogy. I wonder what real world influences went into the inception of the jedi philosophy? I know George Lucas was a big fan of the samurai, although I have no idea if they followed such a philosophy. I'd be interested on hearing your thoughts as to whether you think the jedi philosophy of "no emotions" represents a kind of toxic masculinity which (although clearly still prevalent today) would have been much more inline with the consensus opinion on what masculinity means back when the original trilogy was being developed. Do you think they could have made a more compelling trilogy if the central through-line would have focused around creating a new philosophy in which the jedi are allowed to experience their emotions but not be controlled by them? Perhaps it would have caused even more backlash from internet trolls if "the female jedi" was the one to realise that showing no emotion is seriously damaging to the psyche. Sorry this is very rambling, in summary: I wish you would be appointed head writer for some of these fantasy shows /movies because you have a really good understanding of how stories and characters should work
The Jedi struck me almost like a Paladin a la D&D as originally scoped, not the later 'if you're not with me then anything goes' type, as there are no boundaries to being a truly good person, which, for me, is the essence of being a Jedi.
I liked your review and thoughts but I found a few places where I disagree. 7 and 9 were very unoriginal and hit many of the same beats as 4 and 6 respectively. 8 is weird. At the time I found the movie very distasteful it didn't capture Luke right, it clearly wasted a good opportunity plot wise to kill Leia when we all knew she had to die because of Carrie fisher's demise earlier. I agree the entire casino sub plot was terrible because it has almost no impact. As did the chase to nowhere that is the most of the film. One of the bigger problems in the movie was any time any tension would build in the plot there would be a silly joke right after. I also think you missed the mark on the political messaging, it was clear that certain kinds of politics such as not using animals for sport or weapons manufacturers being more evil then the Nazi's they supply felt crow barred into the plot. Over all good effort on your part though thanks for the video.
Those weren't really plot points. They are just comments from Rose. You can disagree with her, but her stating some opinions about profiteering off weapons manufacturing and animal abuse being gross isn't what ruined the film. Removing those comments wouldnt have saved the movie. Also, she was kind of right... it just didn't have significance against what should have been the main priority.
@@amys0482 yeah I really didn't make my point well. I was saying seeing those things so ham fistedly put in or even the Holdo / Poe conflict makes it feel like having the right politics in our world was a higher priority for the creators than having a well crafted story. I see those complaints and I can forgive some of them the tension popping comedy / irreverent subversion is what really bothers me about this movie long term though. Again thanks for the video and your reply.
Tros is the worse movie, but tlj is very close in an offensive way. Tlj destroys luke, tros destroys anakin, the OT, and finn. Not gonna talk about TROS because that movie is a nonsensical clownshow, but TLJ is also broken on so many levels. Plot, characters, world building, and theme are all broken. The movie only gets worse as you watch it more and more times. Its like a tangled spaghetti cluster where each problem is entangled with 5 other problems at the same time that it becomes dizzying trying to find out where to start. I would dig into this movie harder personally but I enjoyed this review :)
@@amys0482 oh something I forgot to add but thank you for identifying the issues in this movie as entirely separate from the political stabs defenders of this movie try to use whenever this movie gets ridiculed 👍
The Rise of Skywalker I haven't watched (and, from what I saw online, it's not performative woke.) so I'll be focussing on the Last Jedi I disagree with the intro. I don't think anybody is saying The Last Jedi is bad BECAUSE it's performative woke. It's bad because the story is horrible and the characters are badly written, most either staying in place or regressing from the Force Awakens. (You've touched most of the points in this video) And the reason for most of that is the performative woke intentions of Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kenedy. (There are some shows and movies that ARE performative woke, but the story and the characters are good because they woke messaging isn't the focal driving point and the thus those shows and movies are good) As for it "not trying to put men in their place" which male characters do anything of substance? Luke Skywalkers is a bumbling old man. Fin is a comedy relief. Po is constantly been put down by women for being wrong. Etc. The rest of the review, you're mostly spot on. :)
Luke saves the Resistance in TLJ, Finn brings all the ships in Rise of Skywalker to save the galaxy (and Rey). Kylo Ren is an extremely cool and important character. So the men didn't "not do anything." That's not the problem. People saying that are trying too hard to look for that. And the women don't come off better, especially Leia, so it's a moot point. There are lots of problems in these films, but gender balance isn't among them.
@@amys0482 As I said, I'm talking about the Last Jedi, not Rise of Skywalker which was made to retcon most of the things in TLJ and is not woke. I agree that the female characters were also written poorly, but from all the interviews you would think that they think that makes them "strong female characters", while it's actually the reverse. Even the Guardian wrote a puff piece article "A Force for good: why the Last Jedi is the most triumphantly feminist Star Wars movie yet" And performative woke people don't want gender balance, they just want to put men down, not even caring about women OR turning them into men, because that makes them strong somehow (sigh).
Me watching this video having studied English and Language Arts in college: She talks like an English or Language Arts teacher. *Looks up About section: "Former English and Language Arts teacher" Me: Ah, that makes sense.
What ruined the show for me was a couple things, what the writers did to all of the legacy characters, and Rey going from a desert rat to a superhuman ninja in too short of time... I think the force works like a muscle, and like muscles, some people have an easier time building them up, and everyone has limited potential, different for everyone.
The Disney Star Wars Trilogy is bad primarily because of one thing: it is a rehash of the original trilogy. Because of that, characters are put back at the beginning of their arcs and the OT is made basically fruitless. Han is still a shady smuggler, Leia is still a rebel leader, the emperor is still alive. Luke's character does a 180 in TLJ because Johnson wanted to piss people off, but he was originally probably supposed to be the trilogy's Obi Wan/Yoda. And, since it is a rehash, it isn't done as well as the OT. The Luke (Rey) is an OP Mary Sue with weak, if any, motivation for what she does. The Han (Poe) has one character trait. There is a Vader who is not as powerful or as scary. Finn is the only interesting character and they dropped him after the first movie. Oh, and the bad side does the same thing that didn't work for the Empire twice another two times.
I think they really missed an opportunity with Kylo. The fact that he's reckless and desperate to live up to his image of Vader (while being painfully aware that he isn't as powerful) could make him dangerously unpredictable..... if they actually made him menacing.... which they didn't.
Hi. I agree with many of your points here about confused motivations and shallow world building, but I'm afraid I disagree that the treatment of the male cast in last Jedi wasn't consciously misandric, or that all the criticisms of the film's agenda can be dismissed as pro trump right wing rhetoric. English, Marxist, gender libertarian here (certainly no fan of Trump), also btw, my lady happened to hate Last Jedi more than I did for similar reasons. Fin: Goes from being the character with a potentially fascinating backstory, into doing literally nothing. Both my lady and I actually liked Rose and the chemistry she had with Fin, and were sorry their relationship wasn't developed in Rise of skywalker. However, her function in the plot here really did feel superfluous. Why is she explaining the weapons trade and political situation to fin? Surely an ex storm trouper would know some of this? Why has fin gone back to being a coward attempting to leave the ship before rose convinces him to go and find the tracker , and the less said about his part in rise of skywalker the better. Indeed, poor Jon Boyega apparently is quite disillusioned with the hole thing, since the trilogy turned a cool new character with an interesting back story into just (in his words): "the funny black guy." Even his heroic moment is undercut by rose, for little reason, accept that another character is required by the plot. Luke is the one that suffers the most at this. While I enjoyed your discussion on the force, in Starwarsthe magic system was never as much about abilities as about faith and emotions. Luke's story in the original trilogy is all about faith and compassion, both in faith in something greater than himself (as when he turns off his targeting computer in A new hope), and his faith that his father is still a good person. Indeed, the times when Luke Looses most badly are those times when he forgets that faith, when he tries to fight his father head on, even when he confronts Jaba the hutt. In Last Jedi, the Luke Skywalker who tried to murder a child in his sleep seems like an entirely different character. He remains cynical, sarcastic, unapproachable. He provides Rey with no training (for all she wins their only duel), and seems uncertain whether he wants the Jedi to die. Not only that this is a Luke who has apparently been hanging out on an island for the last thirty years completely abandoning his sister, is friends and the entire galaxy. You are absolutely right that Leia's story is an incredibly sad one, due to the writer's need to completely forget Han Solo's character development, and partly due to Carrie Fisher's passing leaving them with less footage. But Leia's story is at least one where she retained her essential character. She was still a leader, a general, a diplomat. Luke's story completely changes who and what he was, with seemingly no explanation as to why. Even his final sacrifice feels underwhelming, providing only a distraction, while Rey moves an entire mountain, indeed given that Rey and Kilo spend their entire time force projecting, its even unclear why this is so draining for Luke. There are a lot of ways in which Luke could've been made as a failure. maybe Kilo Ren (older than 9), chose to follow the dark side and Luke wasn't able to stop him. maybe Luke was guarding some powerful weapon so couldn't intervene in the galactic conflict, and has grown sad and bitter at seeing his friends die. There are literally hundreds of things that could've been done to preserve Luke's essential faith and compassion, but make him an older, perhaps even older and jaded character, indeed, seeing a Karate kid type of setup in which Rey, as the optimistic young student gives hope to her old and down hearted master could've been a profoundly wonderful film. Given there are! so many things that could've been done, the question is, why did the writers not do so, unfortunately, the only answer seems to be provided by a conscious effort to let the past die. I don't believe all! the decisions in the film were misandric, EG the sidelining of Po and Fin in thee rise of skywalker I suspect was just bad writing, but the treatment and deconstruction of Luke here does very much appear to be so, and this from the perspective as I said of someone who has certainly no love for the alt right. indeed, I do fully agree with you that the writer's focus on the "deconstruction", of iconic characters, definitely harmed the story of the new characters, especially the potentially interesting conflict between n Rey and Kilo, and any significant exploration of Fin's backstory. Btw, I'm not overly familiar with the starwars extended universe, but one thing I did! find fascinating when i read Timothy Zahn's thrawn trilogy was the character of mara Jade, the emperor's assassin, who was not in fact a dark side Jedi, but simply an assassin using force powers who happened to work for the emperor. Her relationship with Luke reminded me very much of Aviendha and Rand from the wheel of time, and her perspectives on things like the Empire and Vader were fascinating. had the films drawn more inspiration from those sorts of sources, I definitely think myself, and a lot of other Starwars fans would've liked them far better, and the hole "woke", debate, would likely never have arisen at all.
I think we agree on everything except that these films are misadrist. I think the writers do a poor job with character development, but not specifically or only with the male characters. I just don't see that.
@@amys0482 The Misandry of the last Jedi is not as in your face as something like the wheel of time Tv series, or other instances like Bat woman. However, just as stories in which all of the female characters are depicted as one dimensionally negative or shallow, can be called at most short sighted, at least actively chauvinistic, I do think this applies to the last Jedi, even if not to the other films of the series. While you are correct that Holdo is hardly a great example of a general, at the same time, the writers did! seem to be pushing her side of things, from the presumption that she had a plan all along (even if her reasons for not telling po seemed nonsensical), to her heroic sacrifice. Consider for example, how a male character would be viewed if he said to a woman: "I've seen lots of over eager women just like you", just as Holdo does to Po. Fin's development in the force awakens is entirely forgotten here, just to make fin a coward. its a shame, Fin and Rose as an equal team is something I would've liked to see, since they had the potential for great chemistry, but in every situation, fin is used either for comic relief, or to disagree with Rose. The biggest indicator of misandry is the direct destruction of Luke's character which I mentioned here, especially having Rey outclass him at every opportunity, whether in optimism, attitude, or in direct tests of their force powers, contrast this to Luke's own training at the hands of Obiwan and Yoda in the original trilogy. Indeed, though I do not believe Rise of skywalker was actively misandric, I do find it interesting that Rey only receives training from Leia, though even then she of course succeeds completely. Just as the wheel of time Tv series adapted the books by utterly diminishing the male cast, iconic characters like Rand, mat, Perrin and even to a large extent Lan, I tend to believe the last Jedi was consciously doing the same with Luke, and to a lesser extent Fin and Po. My lady actually was furious at the film, and literally came out snarling, for what they had done to Luke, since she's always regarded Luke as a great example of a strongly compassionate man, indeed when I once asked her to define masculinity, that was how she defined it, strength, plus gentleness. I admit, we might both be rather invested in Luke's character, not the least because, well my Rl first name actually happens to be Luke, so I've grown up with starwars Jokes all my life. So the last Jedi's destruction of Luke's character felt particularly personal, and part of that is yes, because Luke is indeed an iconic male hero. Yet later finding out about The hole "the force is female" campaign slogan, and many of Cathleen Kenady's direct quotes did not help either, albeit I probably would have not paid attention to these statements if they hadn't already been born out in what I had seen.
@@amys0482 Unfortunately, since ghostbusters 2016 and probably before that, Hollywood has increasingly been reliant on ad homonem arguements to defend their franchises, that is arguing based on the perceived characteristics of the critic, rather than answering their arguments, ---- its not that Ghostbusters 2016 is a bad film, its just that the fans are all racist misogynists who hate films led by women and people of colour. Its a rather cynical corporate tactic, and one which unfortunately at least some of the fans of these films do by in to, its also unfortunately one which continues to divide people and cause massive strife (witness the issues over rings of power and the also misandric Kenobi series). Are their racists and sexists out there? Yes of course there are, there are also women who believe any and all violence or mistreatment of men is justified (look at Amber heard), or people who believe gender should be removed entirely. Most people however are somewhere between these two extremes, and do not appreciate the insult of being characterised as something they are not, especially when they are often the very same people who do! enjoy series like Buffy the vampire slayer, the alien franchise, kill bill etc, and in the end just want good stories with well written characters. Indeed, in all of my own interactions with nerd culture, from 8 years of table top roleplay to working as an accessible games advocate for people with disabilities, I have observed far more accusations of bigotry in the last few years, than actual bigotry. Of course if you google: "get women out of star wars and back in the kitchen!" Your going to get a few hits, but heck,if you google romance fiction starring stay puff Marshmallow man and Godzilla, you're probably going to get a few hits as well. This isn't to say everything is perfect, but a lot of arguements would be stopped if people would actually deal with the opinions that are being expressed, rather than the opinions which people believe are being expressed. For example, i bet there are a few people out there who heard your review of Last Jedi, and because you didn't instantly call it an sjw woke disaster, have labeled you an ultra feminist man hater, which would of course be deeply unfair, and not reflective of your actual beliefs. Btw, wow! I can't believe I'm finally finding a use for that Phd in philosophy, though I will admit it does aid in analysing ethical arguements.
@@darktenor4967 A good use for philosophy! I would characterize myself as a feminist but not a man hater. That so many people conflate those two ideas irritates me and is part of the larger challenge we are having around communication. It's not just "some" people who are sexist unfortunately.
The entire story felt arbitrary, hollow, incoherent, and pointless. They did nothing to expand the world building, and actually undermined the events in previous movies. If anyone with a warp drive can wipe out a star destroyer, none of the space action in any of the previous movies makes sense.
Great video and very good analysis but I disagree about the "Woke" not impacting the movies. When morons are doing "Woke" things, you have POC as trophies and you can't have interesting flawed women. This things happened more in the last two movies and made them worse. Every creator can and will put some of his world view in his art, the problem with the Woke is that the politics come before art and without subtlety. In this movies Woke is a minor problem, because they are already so bad. Also - clearly this movies are not a trilogy, there was not a single story in three parts, but jumbled mess trying to tell different (bad) story each time and by mostly untalented directors (JJ and RJ) with different vision.
I disagree. I think "Woke" is an outside interpretation by conservative pundits slapped on a franchise that just does a poor job at character work and story telling because it isnt actually trying to deliver anything new. I think there is a correlation but not causation. i.e. Star Wars is diverse and has female protagonists and is also bad. But it is not bad BECAUSE it is diverse with female protagonists. That's propaganda. It would be more accurate to say that it is bad because the corporate behemoth fears to change the mould that has been profitable, and so just regurgitates the same story with weak character development and plot development.
@@amys0482 Does a bad job at character work and story telling because it is woke. When you reject common sense and logic you cannot create a good story.
You get it... but you don't get it. You say "the problem isn't the emasculation of Poe... the problem is that Poe is justified in mutiny because Holdo is unnecessarily secretive." What you are missing, is that all the plotholes and story problems are necessary to push the feminist message and are BECAUSE of the woke allegories (which ironically is self-defeating when you apply logic, and understand that Holdo is dumb, even tho Rian Johnson and the movie thinks she is great.) But Wokeness doesn't believe in logic... it's social constructionism. The woke storyteller expects you to fill in plotholes with head canon. Maybe Holdo was worried about spies, and had to be extra secretive. You are supposed to see Poe as misogynist. He would probably respect the secrecy of a male commander, or a commander who looked the part. He doesn't like her because she looks like a woman at a gala... not a general. That's the point. That's why she looks the way she does. Ultra feminine. Rian Johnson is too stupid to realize that Mon Mothma looked ultra feminine and regal in ROTJ, and no one complained or questioned her. But ROTJ wasn't making a point about subverting expectations and misogyny. th-cam.com/video/jnMSbNv9IkM/w-d-xo.html Yes... logically, Holdo is a bad leader. But the movie, by its own nonsense logic, pushes her as a wise leader, and Poe and Finn are the petulant, entitled manbabies who screw everything up by making their own plans behind her back. According to the movie, Poe is not entitled to privileged information because he disobeyed Leia in the opening of the movie and was demoted. According to the movie, Poe is completely in the wrong, and Holdo is completely in the right. Remember... most plotholes and story problems by a woke writer happen BECAUSE of their need to put woke allegories before plot, character and story.
Hey Amy. Just a quick clarification for you regarding your dismissal of the idea that "Wokeness ruins movies". As you are of course aware nobody is upset about women and minorities getting work in Hollywood and being represented on film. Nobody outside of actual Nazis cares about that. The problem with "Wokeness" is that in modern Hollywood wokeness is the only thing they care about to the detriment of all other aspects of filmmaking. The wokeness starts with the hiring process and they hire fellow woke minorities and women not for their talent and ability but because hiring a woman or minorities makes them feel like a good person. They feel virtuous. These woke writers, directors and actors are mediocre at best and, worst of all, they actively despise the source material that they are being hired to work on!! When studios openly brag about how "inclusive" they are it is because they don't have anything else positive to say about the product. They know its garbage. They know they hired talentless activist hacks instead of skilled writers/directors to save money and because they don't respect the fans. They put diversity front and center because they KNOW their product is crap and audiences will need some other reason to watch it besides that they think it will be entertaining. They also need an excuse for when the show inevitably flops and this allows them to accuse all their critics of being racists. So you are correct in that Star Wars isn't a failure because of wokeness. It's a failure because of woke management placing wokeness above essential things like writing, directing and acting. This has become so commonplace that it is now possible to determine if a movie will be terrible simply by measuring the wokeness level of the people who are involved in creating it. More wokeness = less talent. Always. This is because of the simple fact that when you hire people based on their gender or skin color you will rarely get the best person for the job.
I disagree that wokeness has anything to do with it. You are describing Hollywood being hackneyed, which is not something that suddenly became prevalent. Using "woke" perjoratively is political propaganda.
@@amys0482 Sure but what is the politically neutral term? It's often impossible to even have a term for things that both sides agree isn't political. Pro-Choice vs Pro-Life, etc. My point is that we know what Wokeness is when we see it and we have seen it happen to so many of our favorite properties now that Wokeness/Diversity Equity Inclusion is now an indicator to most fans that a show is going to be terrible. This is because in almost every single case the people in Management who are pushing a woke agenda in Media are doing so at the EXPENSE of seeking the highest quality talent.
@@classreductionist Again, I don't think that is remotely true. There is no politically neutral term for woke. The term is inherently political. It was stolen from Black Americans. It is about injustice. The opposite of woke is asleep, or ignorance, or unawareness. Woke messaging can be ham fisted or poorly portrayed, sure, but it only makes you uncomfortable if you want to remain ignorant and unaccountable. There is a reason conservatives do not apply the term "woke" to good movies with great messages about injustice. It's because they want you to associate "justice" with "bad". If you dont see that, you are asleep and unaware, which is exactly what they want.
@@amys0482 I totally understand the history of the word "woke" and it wasn't Conservatives who appropriated it and destroyed it. It's Corporations and Liberals who did that. Conservatives are reacting to the term wokeness the way it is portrayed in our popular media and not what it originally meant in black subculture. (PS I'm a Socialist so I'm punching from the Left here) There's a reason "Go woke, Go Broke" is a saying. It's because despicable Corporations and rich d-bags are always virtue signaling about how woke they are as a cynical public relations scheme. Does anyone actually think the people who own Hollywood Studios or Fortune 500 companies are any less racist because they have diverse employees? That's like saying Don Sterling couldn't be racist because he owns a professional basketball team. The only reason they are casting these people is so they can virtue signal and get braindead basement dwellers to do free PR/Advertising for them on Twitter. "OMG everyone Marvel is going to have the first (insert marginalized identity that has most definitely already been represented for the first time by another person like 30 years ago) isn't that totally awesome!" Woke has been hijacked by Democrats and other lying liberals as yet another way they can pretend to be helping citizens without ACTUALLY doing anything to help citizens. If Democrats wanted to help minorities and marginalized identities they could simply support medicare for all, the 15 dollar min wage and free community college for all. They will never do that of course because Democrats are 90% captured by the Billionaire class and are incapable of actually helping poor or vulnerable citizens. They just point to the GOP who are 100% captured by Billionaires and say "If you don't vote for me those guys are going to win." Wokeness as portrayed in popular media is 100% fake virtue signalling used to cause drama and accuse fans of being bigots when they trash a terrible product online.
Also I think you are slightly too far from your mic, it feels a bit echoey and there's ambient noise. Anyway, sorry for the random unrelated comments. I'll pay full attention to the video now, I usually find your analysis to be fantastically insightful.
The Last Jedi is very good movie but not good Star Wars movie, The Fall Of Skywalker is awful movie i that year watch almost all movies from indy movies, oscar movies, genres movies and this movie was worst movie of that year and that year was greatest year in last 10-15 years
I can't agree with you that this was not woke, they did the male characters very dirty. Han abandoned Leia after Ben went to the dark side (so she lost both of them), back to being a criminal. Luke became a dark gloomy comedic little hermit, who tried to kill his own nephew over a bad dream (after all he went through to save Vader) and got all his students killed. Finn became the butt of all jokes, reduced to chasing Rey while shouting her name. Poe shown as immature by using "yo mama" jokes and by how hard a time he has following the orders of a woman admiral. Speaking of admiral, Ackbar dies a lame death offscreen like he was a star trek red shirt. Snoke ... what a joke! At least Chewbacca was left unscathed, maybe they forgot he was a he? After Carrie Fisher's death, they even preferred to CGI Leia instead of letting Luke live in the 3rd movie. They had a whole year until release, all they had to do was remove the fading Luke scene, and remove the Leia super man scene.
The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker were bad for all the reasons you propose, and all the reasons other people propose. They were an interception of bad movies. They were bad in every way that a movie could be bad. But they were worse than bad movies, they were bad Star Wars movies. The criticism of "wokeism" in popular media long predates any hypothesized efforts by Steve Bannon. It goes back to at least 2014 and Gamergate, when we discovered that a "game designer" had been getting her boyfriend to give her game a good review. Some gamers started mocking her, and then the entire media edifice started attacking gamers. Gamers drew up their own battle lines and many were the clashes on the internet. In 2016/17 the comics industry tried to ostracize Republican voting content creators like Ethan Van Sciver, causing many to switch to crowd funding and leaving the North American direct market behind. This was dubbed Comicsgate. Pulp media aficionados have been part of the culture war, voluntarily or not, for almost ten years now.
That is not how I would describe gamergate. Or, at least, I would not describe the problem as someone giving a positive review of a loved one's creative effort. And if there was a problem with that, it would be in the reviewer not disclosing the relationship, not the one reviewed. Woke was stolen from Black Americans and predates gamergate by many decades.
Disney Star Wars is incoherent. Its like a student forgot to do his homework and badly crips off his friends prior work while still attempting to change it enough to say it's his work The isn't much point in touching the fan politics. The basic fact the "trust" between fans and rights holders of IPs have been broken. Unless you want to debate other fans who hold a different opinion on the "politics" I would avoid the subject as it will create unnecessary bad feelings. I think commenting generally about some Internet arguments will be more trouble. The memes you are reacting to have deeper roots and background than a quick mention. People who do think the films are "woke" or at least developed by "woke" creatives will think your strawmaning their positions. This is risky and probably not worth the drama. It feels like you do want to talk about politics but it's messy and contemporary politics is extremely tribal. If you do still want to talk about it, find and look at a specific person's argument, or maybe find someone you can have a good conversation with.
They forgot to tell a story. They spent billions on the franchise, and then it seems like they used an auto generator to come up with the story. Having watched all 3 movies I still don’t know what the first order is. How is that even possible?
I enjoyed your review.
They never really explain it in the films. They just say, "The first order has risen from the ashes of the empire".
I remember they explained it in the lead up to the film that the Empire never fell completely, that the new Republic made a peace deal with the Empire/First Order. The First Order was allowed to rule over its half of the galaxy, and the New Republic got the other half.
Leia forms a "Resistance" that keeps fighting the First Order... but her resistance is supposed to be operating independent of the Republic, because of their peace treaty with the First Order. The first order finds out that the Republic has been funding and supporting Leia's resistance, and therefore goes to war with the republic, destroying it with one blow by using the Starkiller to wipe out the main 5 planets of the republic.
They wanted people to read their dumb books, and they didn't want the movies contradicting the books, so the movies never explained it, only touching on it vaguely in the crawl and in Hux's speech.
To me the failure primarily lay in the treatment of Luke. They took the character who was the OG “New Hope” and gave him No Hope. All while, like you said, putting him in the one place where he should be able to find it. You provided many interesting potential plots that probably would have been better. I don’t think that having the old characters involved had to be as big of a problem. They could have redemptive arcs too. Finally, your core issue re: who is who politically and why is spot on. And it’s something they’re now trying to rectify after the fact with books and Disney shows. That’s poor writing. Glad to have you back.
I agree with you on their treatment of Luke. It was really disappointing to see how badly they treated him.
If Disney had not de-canonized the EU, they could have had TONS of good story content to pull from. I imagine that they could have introduced a younger generation (Leia and Han's children and Luke's child) with an occasional appearance of the older characters. The movies could have passed the torch in that way. The EU was not all perfect, but there was so much to pull from that was really good. Instead, Disney wanted to "reboot" the original trilogy but they did not do a good job at it and seemingly had no plan on where it was all going. Frankly, it was bad writing and bad executive decisions--or just not understanding the Star Wars universe.
I'm so glad I found your channel. Keep up the good work, I'm excited to see your subscriber count grow!
I'm happy you released more content. I agree with both your commentary and parts of the comments as well so I don't really have anything different to add just wanted to voice my support.
The slow-speed chase was a rip off of both Empire Strikes Back and Battlestar Galactica.
He was copying plot elements of ESB. In ESB, the heroes are unable to use lightspeed to escape the Empire. In TLJ, he couldn't break all their hyperdrives, so he contrived a way to make light speed jumps useless, and therefore costly. Then he stole the idea of a slow-speed chase from Battlestar.
nice to have you back Amy :)
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Almost all of the quality criticisms have been around the poor story writing and characterisation, then we have the 'mary sue' aspect of Rey. A lot of nostalgia bait but without any respect shown to those legacy characters.
'Design by committee' at it's worst. Real writers tend to be lone wolves for a reason.
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Have to say that I am looking forward to your feedback on the Rings of Power much more so than the Star Wars stuff, which although I have seen, I don;t have any real investment in :)
I think it's going to be pretty bad
@@amys0482 The latest rumour is that Celeborn is dead, not sure how accurate that is; I thought that they would emasculate him, "[can't have a partnership between a man and women without one totally dominating the other]", but we'll see. Although apologies, totally off track for this video.
Disney Star War: things happen, and when you start to question why they throw in some memba' berries to make you feel all warm and nostalgic. This is how they forced the door open with The Force Awakens. These movies were indicative of the poor writing that would soon infest most Disney Star Wars projects. I liked how you brought up the force in your essay, as the way they used it was one of the major reasons I hated these movies. In the first Six movies you got the feeling there were some rules to all of this. We may not have known what they all were, but there were limits; in Disney Star Wars powers all of the sudden appear when the plot needs them to.
Ah yes, good ol TH-cam. Subbed and notified but still missed this. Belated welcome back, always love your stuff. I just have to say on this one, WHAT A WIN FOR EVIL!!! Palpatine's enemies are dead and buried, and his progeny have appropriated their name!! We have no idea if Palpy is actually dead since we can now use the force to teleport, heal, and raise from the dead. Who's to say he can't raise himself from the dead or have another clone hanging around out there? I think there was a LOT of cocaine involved in the making of those two movies.
I don't think Disney had any plan for these movies beyond "let the directors figure it out".
Hodo was such a fun character in the book series she comes from. Like a rich space hippy star child. Nothing like the weirdo we got in the last Jedi. In the books she was kind and approachable not ah? Detached? Or whatever she was in this movie.
I pretty much agree. Ep. VII was gonna be either good or bad depending on the following movies. It was good in setting up a follow-up (although the shameless copy-paste of A New Hope was horribad, and no, that's not a "hommage").
Action-sequence wise the prequels utterly obliterate the sequels. And they do so under pretty much every other aspect as well, except CGI ofc.
To me, the failure of the Disney Trilogy is that they didn't have Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie together ... at all. Carrie Fisher's death was unexpected, but they didn't even try in the first movie. The overarching story was not there ... no specific story beats. They set Finn up, Poe up, Rey up and Snoke up for a cool story, yet never followed through. To me, this was unfair to the actors. They rushed Rey's story and confused everything about her. They implied in the last movie that Finn had more story, but didn't follow through. They are trying to get you to other Disney media for other parts of the story .... Disney Plus, Fortnite, books, etc. I would like the movie to be coherent in the movies and not have to go to other sources to enjoy the movie. I didn't enjoy the Disney Trilogy and I wanted to, I tried to, but couldn't. The Last Jedi making Luke a hologram was disappointing. I wanted Luke to be heroic again. He was too jaded, too cynical, too dark. Their treatment of the OG characters was terrible.
I really liked your ideas for how they could have done things differently, especially your explanation for why the jedi need to repress their emotions. I think they made a half decent attempt to show the potential pitfalls of the "deny all emotion" strategy of the jedi in the prequel trilogy. I wonder what real world influences went into the inception of the jedi philosophy? I know George Lucas was a big fan of the samurai, although I have no idea if they followed such a philosophy.
I'd be interested on hearing your thoughts as to whether you think the jedi philosophy of "no emotions" represents a kind of toxic masculinity which (although clearly still prevalent today) would have been much more inline with the consensus opinion on what masculinity means back when the original trilogy was being developed. Do you think they could have made a more compelling trilogy if the central through-line would have focused around creating a new philosophy in which the jedi are allowed to experience their emotions but not be controlled by them? Perhaps it would have caused even more backlash from internet trolls if "the female jedi" was the one to realise that showing no emotion is seriously damaging to the psyche.
Sorry this is very rambling, in summary: I wish you would be appointed head writer for some of these fantasy shows /movies because you have a really good understanding of how stories and characters should work
The Jedi struck me almost like a Paladin a la D&D as originally scoped, not the later 'if you're not with me then anything goes' type, as there are no boundaries to being a truly good person, which, for me, is the essence of being a Jedi.
I liked your review and thoughts but I found a few places where I disagree.
7 and 9 were very unoriginal and hit many of the same beats as 4 and 6 respectively. 8 is weird. At the time I found the movie very distasteful it didn't capture Luke right, it clearly wasted a good opportunity plot wise to kill Leia when we all knew she had to die because of Carrie fisher's demise earlier.
I agree the entire casino sub plot was terrible because it has almost no impact. As did the chase to nowhere that is the most of the film. One of the bigger problems in the movie was any time any tension would build in the plot there would be a silly joke right after.
I also think you missed the mark on the political messaging, it was clear that certain kinds of politics such as not using animals for sport or weapons manufacturers being more evil then the Nazi's they supply felt crow barred into the plot. Over all good effort on your part though thanks for the video.
Those weren't really plot points. They are just comments from Rose. You can disagree with her, but her stating some opinions about profiteering off weapons manufacturing and animal abuse being gross isn't what ruined the film. Removing those comments wouldnt have saved the movie. Also, she was kind of right... it just didn't have significance against what should have been the main priority.
@@amys0482 yeah I really didn't make my point well. I was saying seeing those things so ham fistedly put in or even the Holdo / Poe conflict makes it feel like having the right politics in our world was a higher priority for the creators than having a well crafted story.
I see those complaints and I can forgive some of them the tension popping comedy / irreverent subversion is what really bothers me about this movie long term though.
Again thanks for the video and your reply.
Tros is the worse movie, but tlj is very close in an offensive way. Tlj destroys luke, tros destroys anakin, the OT, and finn.
Not gonna talk about TROS because that movie is a nonsensical clownshow, but TLJ is also broken on so many levels. Plot, characters, world building, and theme are all broken. The movie only gets worse as you watch it more and more times. Its like a tangled spaghetti cluster where each problem is entangled with 5 other problems at the same time that it becomes dizzying trying to find out where to start. I would dig into this movie harder personally but I enjoyed this review :)
facts
@@amys0482 oh something I forgot to add but thank you for identifying the issues in this movie as entirely separate from the political stabs defenders of this movie try to use whenever this movie gets ridiculed 👍
You're back! Cool.
The Rise of Skywalker I haven't watched (and, from what I saw online, it's not performative woke.) so I'll be focussing on the Last Jedi
I disagree with the intro. I don't think anybody is saying The Last Jedi is bad BECAUSE it's performative woke. It's bad because the story is horrible and the characters are badly written, most either staying in place or regressing from the Force Awakens. (You've touched most of the points in this video) And the reason for most of that is the performative woke intentions of Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kenedy.
(There are some shows and movies that ARE performative woke, but the story and the characters are good because they woke messaging isn't the focal driving point and the thus those shows and movies are good)
As for it "not trying to put men in their place" which male characters do anything of substance? Luke Skywalkers is a bumbling old man. Fin is a comedy relief. Po is constantly been put down by women for being wrong. Etc.
The rest of the review, you're mostly spot on. :)
Excellent point
Luke saves the Resistance in TLJ, Finn brings all the ships in Rise of Skywalker to save the galaxy (and Rey). Kylo Ren is an extremely cool and important character. So the men didn't "not do anything." That's not the problem. People saying that are trying too hard to look for that. And the women don't come off better, especially Leia, so it's a moot point. There are lots of problems in these films, but gender balance isn't among them.
@@amys0482 As I said, I'm talking about the Last Jedi, not Rise of Skywalker which was made to retcon most of the things in TLJ and is not woke. I agree that the female characters were also written poorly, but from all the interviews you would think that they think that makes them "strong female characters", while it's actually the reverse. Even the Guardian wrote a puff piece article "A Force for good: why the Last Jedi is the most triumphantly feminist Star Wars movie yet"
And performative woke people don't want gender balance, they just want to put men down, not even caring about women OR turning them into men, because that makes them strong somehow (sigh).
@@Kentchangar I don't think articles count. PR spin is a whole different thing.
@@amys0482 The Last Jedi was the first time I encountered the performative woke, so I might be "slightly" bias. :)
Me watching this video having studied English and Language Arts in college: She talks like an English or Language Arts teacher.
*Looks up About section: "Former English and Language Arts teacher"
Me: Ah, that makes sense.
What ruined the show for me was a couple things, what the writers did to all of the legacy characters, and Rey going from a desert rat to a superhuman ninja in too short of time...
I think the force works like a muscle, and like muscles, some people have an easier time building them up, and everyone has limited potential, different for everyone.
The Disney Star Wars Trilogy is bad primarily because of one thing: it is a rehash of the original trilogy. Because of that, characters are put back at the beginning of their arcs and the OT is made basically fruitless. Han is still a shady smuggler, Leia is still a rebel leader, the emperor is still alive. Luke's character does a 180 in TLJ because Johnson wanted to piss people off, but he was originally probably supposed to be the trilogy's Obi Wan/Yoda.
And, since it is a rehash, it isn't done as well as the OT. The Luke (Rey) is an OP Mary Sue with weak, if any, motivation for what she does. The Han (Poe) has one character trait. There is a Vader who is not as powerful or as scary. Finn is the only interesting character and they dropped him after the first movie. Oh, and the bad side does the same thing that didn't work for the Empire twice another two times.
I think they really missed an opportunity with Kylo. The fact that he's reckless and desperate to live up to his image of Vader (while being painfully aware that he isn't as powerful) could make him dangerously unpredictable..... if they actually made him menacing.... which they didn't.
I disliked ‘The Force Awakens’ just as much.
Hi.
I agree with many of your points here about confused motivations and shallow world building, but I'm afraid I disagree that the treatment of the male cast in last Jedi wasn't consciously misandric, or that all the criticisms of the film's agenda can be dismissed as pro trump right wing rhetoric.
English, Marxist, gender libertarian here (certainly no fan of Trump), also btw, my lady happened to hate Last Jedi more than I did for similar reasons.
Fin: Goes from being the character with a potentially fascinating backstory, into doing literally nothing.
Both my lady and I actually liked Rose and the chemistry she had with Fin, and were sorry their relationship wasn't developed in Rise of skywalker.
However, her function in the plot here really did feel superfluous. Why is she explaining the weapons trade and political situation to fin? Surely an ex storm trouper would know some of this?
Why has fin gone back to being a coward attempting to leave the ship before rose convinces him to go and find the tracker , and the less said about his part in rise of skywalker the better.
Indeed, poor Jon Boyega apparently is quite disillusioned with the hole thing, since the trilogy turned a cool new character with an interesting back story into just (in his words):
"the funny black guy."
Even his heroic moment is undercut by rose, for little reason, accept that another character is required by the plot.
Luke is the one that suffers the most at this.
While I enjoyed your discussion on the force, in Starwarsthe magic system was never as much about abilities as about faith and emotions.
Luke's story in the original trilogy is all about faith and compassion, both in faith in something greater than himself (as when he turns off his targeting computer in A new hope), and his faith that his father is still a good person. Indeed, the times when Luke Looses most badly are those times when he forgets that faith, when he tries to fight his father head on, even when he confronts Jaba the hutt.
In Last Jedi, the Luke Skywalker who tried to murder a child in his sleep seems like an entirely different character.
He remains cynical, sarcastic, unapproachable.
He provides Rey with no training (for all she wins their only duel), and seems uncertain whether he wants the Jedi to die. Not only that this is a Luke who has apparently been hanging out on an island for the last thirty years completely abandoning his sister, is friends and the entire galaxy.
You are absolutely right that Leia's story is an incredibly sad one, due to the writer's need to completely forget Han Solo's character development, and partly due to Carrie Fisher's passing leaving them with less footage.
But Leia's story is at least one where she retained her essential character. She was still a leader, a general, a diplomat.
Luke's story completely changes who and what he was, with seemingly no explanation as to why.
Even his final sacrifice feels underwhelming, providing only a distraction, while Rey moves an entire mountain, indeed given that Rey and Kilo spend their entire time force projecting, its even unclear why this is so draining for Luke.
There are a lot of ways in which Luke could've been made as a failure.
maybe Kilo Ren (older than 9), chose to follow the dark side and Luke wasn't able to stop him.
maybe Luke was guarding some powerful weapon so couldn't intervene in the galactic conflict, and has grown sad and bitter at seeing his friends die.
There are literally hundreds of things that could've been done to preserve Luke's essential faith and compassion, but make him an older, perhaps even older and jaded character, indeed, seeing a Karate kid type of setup in which Rey, as the optimistic young student gives hope to her old and down hearted master could've been a profoundly wonderful film.
Given there are! so many things that could've been done, the question is, why did the writers not do so, unfortunately, the only answer seems to be provided by a conscious effort to let the past die.
I don't believe all! the decisions in the film were misandric, EG the sidelining of Po and Fin in thee rise of skywalker I suspect was just bad writing, but the treatment and deconstruction of Luke here does very much appear to be so, and this from the perspective as I said of someone who has certainly no love for the alt right.
indeed, I do fully agree with you that the writer's focus on the "deconstruction", of iconic characters, definitely harmed the story of the new characters, especially the potentially interesting conflict between n Rey and Kilo, and any significant exploration of Fin's backstory.
Btw, I'm not overly familiar with the starwars extended universe, but one thing I did! find fascinating when i read Timothy Zahn's thrawn trilogy was the character of mara Jade, the emperor's assassin, who was not in fact a dark side Jedi, but simply an assassin using force powers who happened to work for the emperor.
Her relationship with Luke reminded me very much of Aviendha and Rand from the wheel of time, and her perspectives on things like the Empire and Vader were fascinating.
had the films drawn more inspiration from those sorts of sources, I definitely think myself, and a lot of other Starwars fans would've liked them far better, and the hole "woke", debate, would likely never have arisen at all.
I think we agree on everything except that these films are misadrist. I think the writers do a poor job with character development, but not specifically or only with the male characters. I just don't see that.
@@amys0482 The Misandry of the last Jedi is not as in your face as something like the wheel of time Tv series, or other instances like Bat woman.
However, just as stories in which all of the female characters are depicted as one dimensionally negative or shallow, can be called at most short sighted, at least actively chauvinistic, I do think this applies to the last Jedi, even if not to the other films of the series.
While you are correct that Holdo is hardly a great example of a general, at the same time, the writers did! seem to be pushing her side of things, from the presumption that she had a plan all along (even if her reasons for not telling po seemed nonsensical), to her heroic sacrifice.
Consider for example, how a male character would be viewed if he said to a woman: "I've seen lots of over eager women just like you", just as Holdo does to Po.
Fin's development in the force awakens is entirely forgotten here, just to make fin a coward.
its a shame, Fin and Rose as an equal team is something I would've liked to see, since they had the potential for great chemistry, but in every situation, fin is used either for comic relief, or to disagree with Rose.
The biggest indicator of misandry is the direct destruction of Luke's character which I mentioned here, especially having Rey outclass him at every opportunity, whether in optimism, attitude, or in direct tests of their force powers, contrast this to Luke's own training at the hands of Obiwan and Yoda in the original trilogy.
Indeed, though I do not believe Rise of skywalker was actively misandric, I do find it interesting that Rey only receives training from Leia, though even then she of course succeeds completely.
Just as the wheel of time Tv series adapted the books by utterly diminishing the male cast, iconic characters like Rand, mat, Perrin and even to a large extent Lan, I tend to believe the last Jedi was consciously doing the same with Luke, and to a lesser extent Fin and Po.
My lady actually was furious at the film, and literally came out snarling, for what they had done to Luke, since she's always regarded Luke as a great example of a strongly compassionate man, indeed when I once asked her to define masculinity, that was how she defined it, strength, plus gentleness.
I admit, we might both be rather invested in Luke's character, not the least because, well my Rl first name actually happens to be Luke, so I've grown up with starwars Jokes all my life.
So the last Jedi's destruction of Luke's character felt particularly personal, and part of that is yes, because Luke is indeed an iconic male hero.
Yet later finding out about The hole "the force is female" campaign slogan, and many of Cathleen Kenady's direct quotes did not help either, albeit I probably would have not paid attention to these statements if they hadn't already been born out in what I had seen.
@@darktenor4967 The PR around does seem pretty off key
@@amys0482 Unfortunately, since ghostbusters 2016 and probably before that, Hollywood has increasingly been reliant on ad homonem arguements to defend their franchises, that is arguing based on the perceived characteristics of the critic, rather than answering their arguments, ---- its not that Ghostbusters 2016 is a bad film, its just that the fans are all racist misogynists who hate films led by women and people of colour.
Its a rather cynical corporate tactic, and one which unfortunately at least some of the fans of these films do by in to, its also unfortunately one which continues to divide people and cause massive strife (witness the issues over rings of power and the also misandric Kenobi series).
Are their racists and sexists out there? Yes of course there are, there are also women who believe any and all violence or mistreatment of men is justified (look at Amber heard), or people who believe gender should be removed entirely.
Most people however are somewhere between these two extremes, and do not appreciate the insult of being characterised as something they are not, especially when they are often the very same people who do! enjoy series like Buffy the vampire slayer, the alien franchise, kill bill etc, and in the end just want good stories with well written characters.
Indeed, in all of my own interactions with nerd culture, from 8 years of table top roleplay to working as an accessible games advocate for people with disabilities, I have observed far more accusations of bigotry in the last few years, than actual bigotry.
Of course if you google: "get women out of star wars and back in the kitchen!" Your going to get a few hits, but heck,if you google romance fiction starring stay puff Marshmallow man and Godzilla, you're probably going to get a few hits as well.
This isn't to say everything is perfect, but a lot of arguements would be stopped if people would actually deal with the opinions that are being expressed, rather than the opinions which people believe are being expressed.
For example, i bet there are a few people out there who heard your review of Last Jedi, and because you didn't instantly call it an sjw woke disaster, have labeled you an ultra feminist man hater, which would of course be deeply unfair, and not reflective of your actual beliefs.
Btw, wow! I can't believe I'm finally finding a use for that Phd in philosophy, though I will admit it does aid in analysing ethical arguements.
@@darktenor4967 A good use for philosophy! I would characterize myself as a feminist but not a man hater. That so many people conflate those two ideas irritates me and is part of the larger challenge we are having around communication. It's not just "some" people who are sexist unfortunately.
I've never understood the "woke" argument against Disney Star Wars. It's poorly written. That's the problem. Got nothing to do with it's wokeness.
This is my position
Welcome back. Enjoy your video
In my mind if rei had just joined the bad guys the whole thing might have worked.
Missed you
The new Thrawn books are at least good. Best thing to come out of the whole ordeal.
The entire story felt arbitrary, hollow, incoherent, and pointless. They did nothing to expand the world building, and actually undermined the events in previous movies. If anyone with a warp drive can wipe out a star destroyer, none of the space action in any of the previous movies makes sense.
yay!! you’re back!!
The best Star Wars story ever, is Kotor 2.
Nope its Dark Empire by Tom Veitch and Kam Kennedy
Great video and very good analysis but I disagree about the "Woke" not impacting the movies. When morons are doing "Woke" things, you have POC as trophies and you can't have interesting flawed women. This things happened more in the last two movies and made them worse. Every creator can and will put some of his world view in his art, the problem with the Woke is that the politics come before art and without subtlety. In this movies Woke is a minor problem, because they are already so bad. Also - clearly this movies are not a trilogy, there was not a single story in three parts, but jumbled mess trying to tell different (bad) story each time and by mostly untalented directors (JJ and RJ) with different vision.
I disagree. I think "Woke" is an outside interpretation by conservative pundits slapped on a franchise that just does a poor job at character work and story telling because it isnt actually trying to deliver anything new. I think there is a correlation but not causation. i.e. Star Wars is diverse and has female protagonists and is also bad. But it is not bad BECAUSE it is diverse with female protagonists. That's propaganda. It would be more accurate to say that it is bad because the corporate behemoth fears to change the mould that has been profitable, and so just regurgitates the same story with weak character development and plot development.
@@amys0482 Does a bad job at character work and story telling because it is woke. When you reject common sense and logic you cannot create a good story.
You get it... but you don't get it. You say "the problem isn't the emasculation of Poe... the problem is that Poe is justified in mutiny because Holdo is unnecessarily secretive."
What you are missing, is that all the plotholes and story problems are necessary to push the feminist message and are BECAUSE of the woke allegories (which ironically is self-defeating when you apply logic, and understand that Holdo is dumb, even tho Rian Johnson and the movie thinks she is great.) But Wokeness doesn't believe in logic... it's social constructionism. The woke storyteller expects you to fill in plotholes with head canon. Maybe Holdo was worried about spies, and had to be extra secretive. You are supposed to see Poe as misogynist. He would probably respect the secrecy of a male commander, or a commander who looked the part. He doesn't like her because she looks like a woman at a gala... not a general. That's the point. That's why she looks the way she does. Ultra feminine.
Rian Johnson is too stupid to realize that Mon Mothma looked ultra feminine and regal in ROTJ, and no one complained or questioned her. But ROTJ wasn't making a point about subverting expectations and misogyny.
th-cam.com/video/jnMSbNv9IkM/w-d-xo.html
Yes... logically, Holdo is a bad leader. But the movie, by its own nonsense logic, pushes her as a wise leader, and Poe and Finn are the petulant, entitled manbabies who screw everything up by making their own plans behind her back. According to the movie, Poe is not entitled to privileged information because he disobeyed Leia in the opening of the movie and was demoted. According to the movie, Poe is completely in the wrong, and Holdo is completely in the right.
Remember... most plotholes and story problems by a woke writer happen BECAUSE of their need to put woke allegories before plot, character and story.
Hey Amy. Just a quick clarification for you regarding your dismissal of the idea that "Wokeness ruins movies". As you are of course aware nobody is upset about women and minorities getting work in Hollywood and being represented on film. Nobody outside of actual Nazis cares about that. The problem with "Wokeness" is that in modern Hollywood wokeness is the only thing they care about to the detriment of all other aspects of filmmaking. The wokeness starts with the hiring process and they hire fellow woke minorities and women not for their talent and ability but because hiring a woman or minorities makes them feel like a good person. They feel virtuous. These woke writers, directors and actors are mediocre at best and, worst of all, they actively despise the source material that they are being hired to work on!!
When studios openly brag about how "inclusive" they are it is because they don't have anything else positive to say about the product. They know its garbage. They know they hired talentless activist hacks instead of skilled writers/directors to save money and because they don't respect the fans. They put diversity front and center because they KNOW their product is crap and audiences will need some other reason to watch it besides that they think it will be entertaining. They also need an excuse for when the show inevitably flops and this allows them to accuse all their critics of being racists.
So you are correct in that Star Wars isn't a failure because of wokeness. It's a failure because of woke management placing wokeness above essential things like writing, directing and acting. This has become so commonplace that it is now possible to determine if a movie will be terrible simply by measuring the wokeness level of the people who are involved in creating it. More wokeness = less talent. Always. This is because of the simple fact that when you hire people based on their gender or skin color you will rarely get the best person for the job.
I disagree that wokeness has anything to do with it. You are describing Hollywood being hackneyed, which is not something that suddenly became prevalent. Using "woke" perjoratively is political propaganda.
@@amys0482 Sure but what is the politically neutral term? It's often impossible to even have a term for things that both sides agree isn't political. Pro-Choice vs Pro-Life, etc. My point is that we know what Wokeness is when we see it and we have seen it happen to so many of our favorite properties now that Wokeness/Diversity Equity Inclusion is now an indicator to most fans that a show is going to be terrible. This is because in almost every single case the people in Management who are pushing a woke agenda in Media are doing so at the EXPENSE of seeking the highest quality talent.
@@classreductionist Again, I don't think that is remotely true. There is no politically neutral term for woke. The term is inherently political. It was stolen from Black Americans. It is about injustice. The opposite of woke is asleep, or ignorance, or unawareness. Woke messaging can be ham fisted or poorly portrayed, sure, but it only makes you uncomfortable if you want to remain ignorant and unaccountable. There is a reason conservatives do not apply the term "woke" to good movies with great messages about injustice. It's because they want you to associate "justice" with "bad". If you dont see that, you are asleep and unaware, which is exactly what they want.
@@amys0482 I totally understand the history of the word "woke" and it wasn't Conservatives who appropriated it and destroyed it. It's Corporations and Liberals who did that. Conservatives are reacting to the term wokeness the way it is portrayed in our popular media and not what it originally meant in black subculture. (PS I'm a Socialist so I'm punching from the Left here)
There's a reason "Go woke, Go Broke" is a saying. It's because despicable Corporations and rich d-bags are always virtue signaling about how woke they are as a cynical public relations scheme. Does anyone actually think the people who own Hollywood Studios or Fortune 500 companies are any less racist because they have diverse employees? That's like saying Don Sterling couldn't be racist because he owns a professional basketball team. The only reason they are casting these people is so they can virtue signal and get braindead basement dwellers to do free PR/Advertising for them on Twitter. "OMG everyone Marvel is going to have the first (insert marginalized identity that has most definitely already been represented for the first time by another person like 30 years ago) isn't that totally awesome!"
Woke has been hijacked by Democrats and other lying liberals as yet another way they can pretend to be helping citizens without ACTUALLY doing anything to help citizens. If Democrats wanted to help minorities and marginalized identities they could simply support medicare for all, the 15 dollar min wage and free community college for all. They will never do that of course because Democrats are 90% captured by the Billionaire class and are incapable of actually helping poor or vulnerable citizens. They just point to the GOP who are 100% captured by Billionaires and say "If you don't vote for me those guys are going to win." Wokeness as portrayed in popular media is 100% fake virtue signalling used to cause drama and accuse fans of being bigots when they trash a terrible product online.
Sure, except the directors, the screenwriters, etc. have all made statements that contradict you.
I haven't looked at those, but it's tough sometimes to separate the PR spin from what actually happened.
Your framing is too high (your hands and arms constantly go off the bottom of the screen) and I cannot unnotice it now 🙈
Also I think you are slightly too far from your mic, it feels a bit echoey and there's ambient noise. Anyway, sorry for the random unrelated comments. I'll pay full attention to the video now, I usually find your analysis to be fantastically insightful.
The Last Jedi is very good movie but not good Star Wars movie, The Fall Of Skywalker is awful movie i that year watch almost all movies from indy movies, oscar movies, genres movies and this movie was worst movie of that year and that year was greatest year in last 10-15 years
I can't agree with you that this was not woke, they did the male characters very dirty.
Han abandoned Leia after Ben went to the dark side (so she lost both of them), back to being a criminal.
Luke became a dark gloomy comedic little hermit, who tried to kill his own nephew over a bad dream (after all he went through to save Vader) and got all his students killed.
Finn became the butt of all jokes, reduced to chasing Rey while shouting her name.
Poe shown as immature by using "yo mama" jokes and by how hard a time he has following the orders of a woman admiral.
Speaking of admiral, Ackbar dies a lame death offscreen like he was a star trek red shirt.
Snoke ... what a joke!
At least Chewbacca was left unscathed, maybe they forgot he was a he?
After Carrie Fisher's death, they even preferred to CGI Leia instead of letting Luke live in the 3rd movie. They had a whole year until release, all they had to do was remove the fading Luke scene, and remove the Leia super man scene.
The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker were bad for all the reasons you propose, and all the reasons other people propose. They were an interception of bad movies. They were bad in every way that a movie could be bad.
But they were worse than bad movies, they were bad Star Wars movies.
The criticism of "wokeism" in popular media long predates any hypothesized efforts by Steve Bannon. It goes back to at least 2014 and Gamergate, when we discovered that a "game designer" had been getting her boyfriend to give her game a good review. Some gamers started mocking her, and then the entire media edifice started attacking gamers. Gamers drew up their own battle lines and many were the clashes on the internet.
In 2016/17 the comics industry tried to ostracize Republican voting content creators like Ethan Van Sciver, causing many to switch to crowd funding and leaving the North American direct market behind. This was dubbed Comicsgate.
Pulp media aficionados have been part of the culture war, voluntarily or not, for almost ten years now.
That is not how I would describe gamergate. Or, at least, I would not describe the problem as someone giving a positive review of a loved one's creative effort. And if there was a problem with that, it would be in the reviewer not disclosing the relationship, not the one reviewed.
Woke was stolen from Black Americans and predates gamergate by many decades.
Translation: This is woke garbage, but I have to avoid saying so.
Disney Star Wars is incoherent. Its like a student forgot to do his homework and badly crips off his friends prior work while still attempting to change it enough to say it's his work
The isn't much point in touching the fan politics. The basic fact the "trust" between fans and rights holders of IPs have been broken. Unless you want to debate other fans who hold a different opinion on the "politics" I would avoid the subject as it will create unnecessary bad feelings.
I think commenting generally about some Internet arguments will be more trouble. The memes you are reacting to have deeper roots and background than a quick mention. People who do think the films are "woke" or at least developed by "woke" creatives will think your strawmaning their positions. This is risky and probably not worth the drama. It feels like you do want to talk about politics but it's messy and contemporary politics is extremely tribal. If you do still want to talk about it, find and look at a specific person's argument, or maybe find someone you can have a good conversation with.