Official Cast of Star Wars VII

[Olinser]

So it has been confirmed that J.J. Abrams will be directing the new Star Wars, and it will be set 30 years after ROTJ.

No word on exactly who they are playing, but the announced cast includes (spoilers have pictures of the person):

John Boyega

http://www.moviemarkers.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/John+Boyega.jpg

Daisy Ridley

http://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/daisy-ridley-photo.jpeg?w=1680

Adam Driver

http://cdn01.thewrap.com/images/2013/11/Driver-News-618x400.jpg

Oscar Isaac

http://www.zekefilm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Oscar-Isaac-206x300.jpg

Andy Serkis (better known as Gollum)

http://hairstyles.thehairstyler.com/hairstyle_views/front_view_images/1849/original/ANdy-Serkis.jpg

Domhnall Gleeson (Bill Weasley from Harry Potter)

http://www.cinemaemuitomais.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/domhnall-gleeson.jpg

Max von Sydow (appearances too numerous to summarize easily)

http://37.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwih6yBDVt1r7k5ddo1_500.jpg


Allegedly the original cast will be returning as well.

[Philistine]

Allegedly? (http://starwars.com/news/star-wars-episode-7-cast-announced.html)

[Olinser]

Allegedly? (http://starwars.com/news/star-wars-episode-7-cast-announced.html)

Yes, allegedly. At this point any of the announced actors can easily be replaced, and none of the original stars are under contract or obligation to appear in the movie, and nothing says they have to be in the final script at all. To be honest I'd be shocked if they had much more than cameo/bit roles.

[Rakaydos]

The first guy says "Lando Calrisian" to me, but that might just be a lack of black characters in star wars.

[LaZodiac]

Serkis will be CGI. Cause he always is. That's all I know :smallbiggrin:

[Olinser]

The first guy says "Lando Calrisian" to me, but that might just be a lack of black characters in star wars.

It's set 30 years AFTER ROTJ, he can't possibly be playing Lando Calrissian. And since Lando's son wasn't born in the EU until 36 years after ROTJ, he can't be him, either.

[Reverent-One]

It's set 30 years AFTER ROTJ, he can't possibly be playing Lando Calrissian. And since Lando's son wasn't born in the EU until 36 years after ROTJ, he can't be him, either.

Except that since they're tossing out the EU, they can do whatever they want.

[FLHerne]

The first guy says "Lando Calrisian" to me, but that might just be a lack of black characters in star wars.
Assuming the original cast are playing the same characters as before (would be strange if they weren't), this trilogy must be set significantly after the originals. Since that guy looks younger than Lando even in the old movies, he'd be far too young to play him decades later. :smallconfused:

[Yora]

Also, Lando is still alive.

[Sith_Happens]

Except that since they're tossing out the EU, they can do whatever they want.

I wouldn't say "tossing out" so much as "rebooting," but yeah, the upcoming movies are officially not in the same continuity as any existing post-RotJ material.

[Hyena]

Man, Adam Driver looks weird on this photo.

[Jeivar]

I'm disappointed there's only one woman in the main cast. I was hoping the new movies would actually feel the need to have more than one girl worth mentioning in an epic trilogy. It IS the 21st century.

I just hope that, for God's sake, they give us a female Jedi.

[Olinser]

I'm disappointed there's only one woman in the main cast. I was hoping the new movies would actually feel the need to have more than one girl worth mentioning in an epic trilogy. It IS the 21st century.

I just hope that, for God's sake, they give us a female Jedi.

I really hate this kind of thinking. All it does is encourage tokenism. When you start rewriting scripts/characters to try and force in different genders/races so they can check the box that says 'female Jedi'. At BEST it simply doesn't add anything to the story.

[Philistine]

Yes, allegedly. At this point any of the announced actors can easily be replaced, and none of the original stars are under contract or obligation to appear in the movie, and nothing says they have to be in the final script at all. To be honest I'd be shocked if they had much more than cameo/bit roles.

Fisher's, Ford's, and Hamill's returns were announced more than a year ago. And yes, that is "announced" rather than "rumored" - the rumors had already been flying for months by then, ever since the initial announcement of the Sequel Trilogy, but confirmation had had to wait until everyone agreed on terms. So you're "Allegedly"-ing old news.

But even aside from that, the above link is to the Official Cast Announcement from the studio and director - if they don't have every single person listed in the announcement under contract, then someone hasn't been doing their job. What's more, the announcement also indicates that filming is set to begin within the next few weeks (and not beforetime, given that the movie is expected in theaters in a year, plus or minus). So we're well past the point of "healthy skepticism," here; we should expect to see the OT stars in the ST, barring unforeseen events such as actor deaths.

[Hyena]

I just hope that, for God's sake, they give us a female Jedi.
Well, there were rumors about the main character being Luke's daughter.


I really hate this kind of thinking. All it does is encourage tokenism. When you start rewriting scripts/characters to try and force in different genders/races so they can check the box that says 'female Jedi'. At BEST it simply doesn't add anything to the story.
When 90% characters in your movie are white males, it might say something about you. Maybe, the fact that you are stuck in the past. Don't ask "why include female and black characters". Ask, rather, "Why not?".

[JoshL]

I've seen Serkis in non-CGI roles, so not making any assumptions. That said, he does it really REALLY well, so either way, that should be pretty good. And Max von Sydow is almost always awesome!

...then again, Episode 2 had Christopher Lee...

[TheOldCrow]

I'm disappointed there's only one woman in the main cast. I was hoping the new movies would actually feel the need to have more than one girl worth mentioning in an epic trilogy. It IS the 21st century.

I just hope that, for God's sake, they give us a female Jedi.

Yeah, no kidding. I'm really disappointed, too. It always feels weird to me watching movies or tv shows that seem to have been spawned in an alternate universe where most humans are male, unless plot reasons demand otherwise.

[Jayngfet]

When 90% characters in your movie are white males, it might say something about you. Maybe, the fact that you are stuck in the past. Don't ask "why include female and black characters". Ask, rather, "Why not?".

Hey, if you're gonna do a story that's the next generation of a mostly white cast, your options are kinda limited here. It'd be kinda weird for Luke's son to be full blooded japanese.

[TheOldCrow]

Hey, if you're gonna do a story that's the next generation of a mostly white cast, your options are kinda limited here. It'd be kinda weird for Luke's son to be full blooded japanese.

Yet there's no particular reason he could only marry white, so half-Japanese? Why not.

[Hyena]

Hey, if you're gonna do a story that's the next generation of a mostly white cast, your options are kinda limited here. It'd be kinda weird for Luke's son to be full blooded japanese.
Of course it wouldn't. But the films are not all about the next generation - there will probably be a child of Luke - maybe also a child of Han, but that's it. The rest of the team is going to be a new ground of opportunities - so could include a woman or an asian.

[TheThan]

Is it a good thing or a bad thing I don’t really recognize any names?

I don’t follow celebrity news at all so I’m basically clueless.

[Legato Endless]

It's set 30 years AFTER ROTJ, he can't possibly be playing Lando Calrissian. And since Lando's son wasn't born in the EU until 36 years after ROTJ, he can't be him, either.

Oh Lord I hope he isn't Lando's son, can't he just be awesome for his own sake? I'm not going to be happy with Star Wars: the next Generation: Literally. Leia and Han will have kids, I accept this. But we don't need the entire cast padded out with heroic lineage.


IAnd Max von Sydow is almost always awesome!

...then again, Episode 2 had Christopher Lee...

So even the inclusion of great actors can't save a film. Obvious, but still depressing.

[Felhammer]

Of course it wouldn't. But the films are not all about the next generation - there will probably be a child of Luke - maybe also a child of Han, but that's it. The rest of the team is going to be a new ground of opportunities - so could include a woman or an asian.

Obi-Wan is rumored to have a daughter in the film.

[Olinser]

Obi-Wan is rumored to have a daughter in the film.

I really, REALLY hope they don't do BS like this.

We don't need carbon copy children trying to recapture their parents.

I'd much rather see Noname Jedi just admitted to the order being given a peptalk/training by Master Skywalker.

[Mando Knight]

I'm not going to be happy with Star Wars: the next Generation: Literally. Leia and Han will have kids, I accept this. But we don't need the entire cast padded out with heroic lineage.

Fact: this is what the original timeline started to become 30 years post-RotJ anyway.

It even had one of Han & Leia's kids going straight-up Darth Vader for even flimsier reasons and with worse execution than RotS-Anakin. They had to retcon him in the following novel series to make it even barely passable.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

A few of your links are busted. And there's a doppelganger in your post. :smallwink:

[Olinser]

A few of your links are busted. And there's a doppelganger in your post. :smallwink:

The hell? I checked them all after I posted, how are they not working now.

[Olinser]

Fact: this is what the original timeline started to become 30 years post-RotJ anyway.

It even had one of Han & Leia's kids going straight-up Darth Vader for even flimsier reasons and with worse execution than RotS-Anakin. They had to retcon him in the following novel series to make it even barely passable.

Meh, mostly it was just the hacks focusing on the Solo/Skywalker dynasties. I read very few GOOD books focused primarily on them.

Good writers introduced their own characters like Thrawn, Palleon, Corran Horn, etc.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

The hell? I checked them all after I posted, how are they not working now.
I dunno if you changed them, but they're working for me now. (It may have also been a browser hiccup or something.)

[Metahuman1]

It's really all gonna depend on 3 things.

1: How cooperative Disney is, if they play this like Marvel were they just bring in the needed people and budget and get the heck out of the way, or do it differently.

2: If Abrams really get's star wars the way he claims.

3: If Abrams is actually capable of directing.


If the answers aren't respective "like marvel, Yes and Yes." then this whole project will tank and will have wiped the expanded universe out down to just 7 movies, 4 of which were bad, and at most 2 animated TV shows and 1 Animated Movie, which are still up in the air.

[Legato Endless]

I dunno if you changed them, but they're working for me now. (It may have also been a browser hiccup or something.)

No, I couldn't see some the images too originally. Anyway they're all working now.

[Kyberwulf]

Andy Serkis is going to be Cg'd in as Jar-Jar's Street Smart, Wise cracking Son. Decked out in Bling, and a Gold capped tooth. Sporting Two costume Gold plated Blasters. And smoking some of that Mad Cronic spice from offworld.

[warty goblin]

I really hate this kind of thinking. All it does is encourage tokenism. When you start rewriting scripts/characters to try and force in different genders/races so they can check the box that says 'female Jedi'. At BEST it simply doesn't add anything to the story.
Better question: why does the script only have one woman in it as is? It's not like there's anything about Star Wars that requires an overwhelmingly male cast; the entire thing's completely made up, or anything about being a Magic Space Monk that men would be better suited for. I mean a modern battlefield drama about special forces sure, that's kinda going to have a lot of dudes in it, but that ain't Star Wars.



2: If Abrams really get's star wars the way he claims.

Modern Star Wars is easy to get: Lightsaber = Money + Fan Outrage. The only trick is producing lots of the first output, which renders the second one more or less irrelevant.

[russdm]

Andy Serkis is going to be Cg'd in as Jar-Jar's Street Smart, Wise cracking Son. Decked out in Bling, and a Gold capped tooth. Sporting Two costume Gold plated Blasters. And smoking some of that Mad Cronic spice from offworld.

Andy Serkis has too much personal honor to do something like that and I expect Abrams or Serkis to commit Seppukku if something like this were to happen. One Jar-Jar per universe is even pushing it and I don't see Abrams pulling out that kind of stupidity.

[Legato Endless]

I'm surprised Kyberwulf's joke didn't mention lense flares.

[Aedilred]

Is it a good thing or a bad thing I don’t really recognize any names?

You should probably be aware of Andy Serkis and Max von Sydow. Andy Serkis most notably played Gollum (and Smeagol) in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit; Max von Sydow is a legend of the screen; probably best known for The Exorcist, but also The Seventh Seal, Never Say Never Again, Through a Glass Darkly, the preposterous 1980 Flash Gordon, and Minority Report. Among many others.

I have a lot of regard for Oscar Isaac as an actor, but he hasn't been in a large number of films (most prominently, I think, Robin Hood (Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe edition), Drive and Inside Llewyn Davis.

[TheThan]

I know Andy Serkis played Gollum, but that’s mostly from the OP. Max Von Sydow’s name is familiar, didn’t connect him to any of those movies, I’m not a horror fan (Never say Never again is a horror movie right? :smallbiggrin: ), and I didn’t connect him to Flash Gordon.

[Legato Endless]

On the other hand, Star Wars has always had an undercurrent of daddy issues, and who has more experience interlacing those with fantasy narratives than Abrams?

[Kyberwulf]

Who was joking. Besides... Len's flares wouldn't come into play unless Jar-Jar's son was ... wait a minute... YES.. A rapper.. You are a genius. We worked the lens flare into it.

[Sith_Happens]

Modern Star Wars is easy to get: Lightsaber = Money + Fan Outrage. The only trick is producing lots of the first output, which renders the second one more or less irrelevant.

Truth.:smallamused:


I'm surprised Kyberwulf's joke didn't mention lense flares.


Who was joking. Besides... Len's flares wouldn't come into play unless Jar-Jar's son was ... wait a minute... YES.. A rapper.. You are a genius. We worked the lens flare into it.

Alternatively, we now know what the newest Force power is going to be.

[russdm]

Who was joking. Besides... Len's flares wouldn't come into play unless Jar-Jar's son was ... wait a minute... YES.. A rapper.. You are a genius. We worked the lens flare into it.

Oddly that just makes it even worse. Jar-jar talks like he is some kind of guy from Jamaica which is funny mainly in that no other gungan talks with his accent and you want to have him actually reproduce and have a rapper kid...

Are you sure you aren't George Lucas? Because that sounds totally like something Lucas would do. "We have a race of aliens and Jar-Jar will be the one that people will be hearing."
"I know, lets have our really good accented black fellow Ahmed Best voice him in a Jamaican accent rather than Best's own awesome accent and lets give every other gungan will meet a pseudo-New Yorker accent (Or whatever accent they used for Boss Nass and Captain tarpals). Just cause."
"Nope, I see nothing wrong with this."

Yeah, I think it would do way more harm than good. We want an actually good movie.

[Water Bob]

When 90% characters in your movie are white males, it might say something about you. Maybe, the fact that you are stuck in the past. Don't ask "why include female and black characters". Ask, rather, "Why not?".

Geez. Really? You're touting Affirmative Action in story telling?

Gimmie a break.

[TheThan]

No No No
Jar Jar is a bunny eared clown.
The baby talk, the dancing, the juggling, the stepping in poop, the getting his hand caught; those are all things that are supposed to make small children laugh... Just like a clown. Smeg it all, I’m surprised he doesn’t bust out a clown car while on their way to Theed.




Geez. Really? You're touting Affirmative Action in story telling?

Gimmie a break.

agreed, lets give it a break and just have some good stories.

[Comrade]

Geez. Really? You're touting Affirmative Action in story telling?

Gimmie a break.

Between giving you a break and not having to deal with media that's stuffed to the brim with nothing but straight white cisgender male protagonists, and any attempt to change that being hollered down as the dreaded 'affirmative action', I think I'd rather go with the latter option, thanks.

[Benthesquid]

Geez. Really? You're touting Affirmative Action in story telling?

Gimmie a break.

You're right. People want women to be more frequently represented in Star Wars? What's next? Forcing all single mothers to gay marry each other? Where will the madness end?

[TheOldCrow]

No, no, no. It's more like this:


agreed, lets give it a break and just have some good stories.

Apparently, having lots of white and male makes storytelling good, and if we mess that up by adding women or POCs the quality goes down, so we need to give it a break or storytelling is ruined. Or something.

[Legato Endless]

Obviously if the casting were diversified, the core Star Wars fanbase would run out of people they can relate to.

This argument hasn't come up yet, but I want to nick it before it does.

[Lord Raziere]

Oh hey guys a new Star Wars mov- :smallsmile:

*notices people being pessimistic about it*

*notices that people have turned to discussing race in media*

*quietly backs out of thread* :smalleek:

[Sith_Happens]

Oh hey guys a new Star Wars mov- :smallsmile:

*notices people being pessimistic about it*

*notices that people have turned to discussing race in media*

*quietly backs out of thread* :smalleek:

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120902105934/mk_/images/e/e4/Scorpion_Get_over_here!.gif

[Comrade]

Oh hey guys a new Star Wars mov- :smallsmile:

*notices people being pessimistic about it*

*notices that people have turned to discussing race in media*

*quietly backs out of thread* :smalleek:

Wait, wait, come back! The primary contention was over gender, not race!

[Pex]

I'm guessing Max Von Sydow will be the BBEG, a new Sith Lord.

[Legato Endless]

Wait, wait, come back! The primary contention was over gender, not race!

It's true. We have no idea how many of the lead characters will be human.

[Olinser]

I'm guessing Max Von Sydow will be the BBEG, a new Sith Lord.

Apparently Driver is going to be, if not the main villain, at least a recurring villain.

[Dire Moose]

I still maintain that Episodes VII-IX should have been adaptations of the Thrawn Trilogy with Timothy Zahn as scriptwriter, personally. Just my thoughts though.

I'm also concerned about the fact that J.J. Abrams is now in control of the two biggest sci-fi franchises of all time and capable of playing both sides of the rivalry.

[TheThan]

No, no, no. It's more like this:



Apparently, having lots of white and male makes storytelling good, and if we mess that up by adding women or POCs the quality goes down, so we need to give it a break or storytelling is ruined. Or something.

So you’re saying that focusing on race/gender/creed makes for good storytelling?
I don’t buy that.

I want to see actors cast that fit the part. Billy Dee Williams got the part of Lando Calrissian because he’s incredibly smooth, not because he’s black.
Now there has to be some give here. If this is a generational film then the sons and daughters of the established characters should probably be of the same skin color. It would be confusing if Han and leia (two white people) produced a black son or daughter.

anyway, I'm done with this argument, as it's just going to make me mad.

[Benthesquid]

Roughly fifty percent of the human race is female, with roughly another fifty percent being male.

If six out of the seven (that's about 86% for those of you playing along at home) of the main cast of a space opera film is male, does it make more sense to assume

A) Males are about six times as capable of playing major roles in space opera films than females.

B) For some reason, this space opera film is focusing unduly on male characters.

C) POLITICAL CORRECTNESS RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN RAMPANT!!:smallmad::smallmad::smallmad:

[ChaosArchon]

Guys how could Jar Jar have a child, he was on Alderaan when it was Death Star'ed right? right? :smalltongue:

[Benthesquid]

Guys how could Jar Jar have a child, he was on Alderaan when it was Death Star'ed right? right? :smalltongue:

Clearly he reproduced by budding. His Jar Jar seeds have been floating around the debris cloud just waiting for some main characters to come investigate.

[TheThan]

Clearly he reproduced by budding. His Jar Jar seeds have been floating around the debris cloud just waiting for some main characters to come investigate.

I think it's his spittle. it's actually some sort of spore.

[Mando Knight]

It's true. We have no idea how many of the lead characters will be human.

We know that Anthony Daniels is definitely 3PO again, Kenny Baker is probably going to do the practical shots of R2 again, and Peter Mayhew will be Chewie. Only 3/7 of the returning main cast are human characters (the Skywalker twins and Solo), and Andy Serkis is best known for being replaced with a CGI model in post.

The remaining 6 actors are basically complete unknowns as to their roles, though the odds of Daisy Ridley playing a "spunky space-princess" are fairly high, since the films are 6 for 6 with regards to the female lead filling that role.

For equal gender representation in Star Wars, Rebels will fare better, with two male and two female main protagonists plus their grumpy astromech droid.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

John Boyega being cast reminds me that I seriously need to watch Attack the Block. I hear it's stellar.

Also, I rather hope Serkis isn't CGI in this, simply because I'd love to see him in a role not as many people expect. I've seen him in Longford, and he was really good, even though that was a small role.

[dps]

Yes, allegedly. At this point any of the announced actors can easily be replaced, and none of the original stars are under contract or obligation to appear in the movie, and nothing says they have to be in the final script at all. To be honest I'd be shocked if they had much more than cameo/bit roles.

You do realize that the pic that Philistine linked to (which included Ford, Fisher, Mayhew, etc.) is from a script read-though, right?

[warty goblin]

So you’re saying that focusing on race/gender/creed makes for good storytelling?
I don’t buy that.


I don't think anybody's saying that - although in some cases it does - so let's amend that to I don't think anybody's saying that in this case.

What I think people are saying is that in this case there's no clear reason not to cast some people who aren't white guys for some parts. You don't have to look very hard to find plenty of women, people of color, people who fall somewhere along the LGBT* spectrum and any other group I'm not listing who really wish they'd been able to see kickass action movies starring people like them as kids. Who still wish it for that matter. For something like Star Wars, there's no good reason not to have a person of color as a major character. There's no reason not to have more than one woman in the main cast. There's no reason a lesbian or gay romance would be any better or worse for the plot than a straight one. Frankly given Star Wars' history with romance I have a hard time imagining a queer romance possibly being worse. None of these would turn Star Wars into 12 Years a Slave or Hedwig and the Angry Inch or The Vagina Monologues or any other film that's about race or sexual identity or gender. They'd turn it into Star Wars with a black dude as a main character, and a cute little homosexual romance that gets six minutes of development before seguing into a wedding at the end and a gender ratio that begins to approach that of reality. It can still be exactly as good or mediocre a story as it was already*, but one that somebody besides white dudes gets excited about recognizing themselves in.

It's not like it really takes anything away from the white dudes. We've still got the dubious honor of six whole Star Wars movies totally devoted to how awesome we are, to say nothing of the bazillion other movies devoted to how full-time badass the white male is. Hell, they could still have a badass white dude in the new Star Wars and still have space for something besides more white dudes. But apparently Star Wars takes place in the frat house just across the street.


*It's worth pausing here to note that Leigh Brackett, who wrote the early draft of The Empire Strikes Back, was also a prolific author of incredibly pulpy Sword & Planet novels, among other genres. Her best known hero was probably Eric John Stark, a man who puts pretty much all other pulp heroes - including the Star Wars bunch - to shame for raw badassery. He's also black, from being raised on Mercury so his original skin color is unknown, and mostly fights in bush wars against colonial powers. Which is to say you can have a ridiculously awesome pulp hero who demonstrates effectively that race is a social construct and works as a statement about post-colonial injustice while choking out fishmen, overthrowing corrupt governments, and battling martian vampires. You really can have it all folks.

[Water Bob]

I'm guessing Max Von Sydow will be the BBEG, a new Sith Lord.

Yeah, I think you're probably right. He makes great bad guys.




I still maintain that Episodes VII-IX should have been adaptations of the Thrawn Trilogy with Timothy Zahn as scriptwriter, personally.

No! Tom Veitch! Dark Empire rules!




Between giving you a break and not having to deal with media that's stuffed to the brim with nothing but straight white cisgender male protagonists, and any attempt to change that being hollered down as the dreaded 'affirmative action', I think I'd rather go with the latter option, thanks.

I'd rather not put any constraints on the writer to write the story he wants to tell. I don't care if I've got a strong female protagonist or strong male lead character. I just want a good story to enjoy. I loved Terminator 2, and Aliens is one of my favorite movies of all time. Both have strong female leads.

On the other hand, Janeway sucked as a Starfleet commander, and I much prefer any of the male commanders (Kirk, Picard, Sisko).

But, on a still other hand, I didn't like Archer much, either.

Great actors in great parts. That's what I like. Doesn't matter if they are female or male. Sharon Stone is amazing in Casino, but so is DeNiro and Pesci.

Belly-aching about politically correct crap makes me yawn and roll my eyes.

[Benthesquid]

And we have a contestant weighing in for Option C,

C) POLITICAL CORRECTNESS RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN RAMPANT!! :smallmad::smallmad::smallmad:

Tell us, Water Bob, is that your final answer?

[Comrade]

Belly-aching about politically correct crap makes me yawn and roll my eyes.

You're the only person belly-aching about 'politically correct crap' here. It's not political correctness to wonder why in every Star Wars film there's only ever at best one major female character amidst all the male ones (and a 'spunky tomboy princess' one at that, as someone pointed out earlier- ugh).

But hey, it's clearly more important to you that you don't have to suffer people whining about inanities like equal representation in media or characters that reflect reality.

[Kitten Champion]

You can change the race/gender of every human character in the Star Wars trilogy and it wouldn't change a damned thing. Not to the story, not to the characterizations, not to anything outside of meta-issues of audiences attitudes on the subject. The only exception would be that Luke and Leia should somewhat resemble one another as dizygotic twins.. however pointless and contrived that was.

As to the movie, I don't really care. I think the time where Star Wars is this significant thing is in the past now, at least to me. That over-the-top spectacle which was a brilliant technical achievement decades ago is a dime-a-dozen from Hollywood now. Hell, at this point we've already seen this movie -- it was called Star Trek, or John Carter, or Elysium.

[Mando Knight]

As to the movie, I don't really care. I think the time where Star Wars is this significant thing is in the past now, at least to me. That over-the-top spectacle which was a brilliant technical achievement decades ago is a dime-a-dozen from Hollywood now. Hell, at this point we've already seen this movie -- it was called Star Trek, or John Carter, or Elysium.

This is a franchise that Disney paid $8 billion to own lock, stock, & barrel. It's not going to be just a dime-a-dozen action flick, it'll be the "Dime-a-dozen action flick of the year" like the Marvel movies are... though it'll be dueling for that spot with Avengers 2.

On another note, Peter Mayhew's been going through a lot of rehab lately, presumably kicked into high gear so he can play Chewie in VII. This (https://d2pq0u4uni88oo.cloudfront.net/assets/001/943/218/6dae1f1daa7cb6404dc8edd4c5443a61_h264_high.mp4) is a teaser for a documentary about it.

[Seerow]

This is a franchise that Disney paid $8 billion to own lock, stock, & barrel. It's not going to be just a dime-a-dozen action flick, it'll be the "Dime-a-dozen action flick of the year" like the Marvel movies are... though it'll be dueling for that spot with Avengers 2.

Whichever one ends up being Flick of the year, Disney wins.

[Kitten Champion]

This is a franchise that Disney paid $8 billion to own lock, stock, & barrel. It's not going to be just a dime-a-dozen action flick, it'll be the "Dime-a-dozen action flick of the year" like the Marvel movies are... though it'll be dueling for that spot with Avengers 2.

Because they know people will see it even if the whole movie is Ewoks fighting the Care Bears, because nostalgia. It's a savvy business decision probably, but the fact remains Star Wars is just one in a deep reservoir of 80's IPs 30-50 year old guys have a sentimental attachment to that's being squeezed out in cinematic remakes and sequels these days. Some will love it, some will hate it, and it'll be forgotten when the next neo-retro shiny thing shows up.

Hell, Disney did this exact thing with Tron Legacy, to my utter indifference.

[russdm]

Billy Dee Williams got the part of Lando Calrissian because he’s incredibly smooth, not because he’s black.


He got the part because he was the only one who could have pulled it off and he did. I can think of anyone who could have pulled off Lando as well.



On the other hand, Janeway sucked as a Starfleet commander, and I much prefer any of the male commanders (Kirk, Picard, Sisko).


This mainly because the writers were pretty bad more so than the fact she was a woman. Its close to the same problem with Archer in Enterprise; Bad writers.

Good actors rise above the bad material if it is possible. If the writing is bad enough, an multi Oscar winner (like a whole bunch of them for best actor/actress) cannot make the story work no matter how good they are.

I personally dislike token minorities because it usually takes away from the film because they are there to be a token person. If you are putting a character in, make sure to use said character to do something more than being like a token female or black or whatever because being doing that you showing that you don't actually care for the group but simply don't want to insult them being not showing one, when most people don't actually care (or at least I don't) if they show up at all.

A token character like a token black one reinforces the bad stereotype that you need the token black for the sake of having a token black and that the writer was too lazy to actually make good use of the token black character. That token black character could actually fill a role beyond being the token black but the writer never bothered to care.

I think that Max Von Sydow will play the New (Restored) Republic president since it makes the most sense. What kind of bad guy could he play? He is slightly too old to do stunts so he can't really jumping around and stuff, while he could be some kind of "orcus on his throne" type, that feels too much of a waste of how cool an actor Max von sydow is.

If we are going to have heroes of dark skin or females heroes in star wars, I expect them to be heroes. Lando was a black hero dude, so was Mace Windu. I want the same for our female heroes there too, no more Padme/Leia laziness. (Padme acts like a hero in episode 2 mainly, does little in 1 and nothing in 3; Leia acts like a hero in 4, acts like a lovestruck ninny in 5, and does very little in 6, but over the course of the original trilogy its mainly Luke and Han and Chewie doing the adventures while Leia Chaperones/Cheerleads)

Don't put in a character of a particular background as a token character because that degrades the story and that's bad.

I am excited for the movie because it will be a chance to see most of the original trilogy cast again. Hopefully they get an awesome send off as they pass the torch to the others.

You lot do understand that this film will be completely about them passing the torch, right?

[dps]

I think that Max Von Sydow will play the New (Restored) Republic president since it makes the most sense. What kind of bad guy could he play? He is slightly too old to do stunts so he can't really jumping around and stuff, while he could be some kind of "orcus on his throne" type, that feels too much of a waste of how cool an actor Max von sydow is.


He's about the same age as Christopher Lee was when he played Count Dooku.

[Zrak]

I'd rather not put any constraints on the writer to write the story he wants to tell. I don't care if I've got a strong female protagonist or strong male lead character.
I think the argument being made is precisely that the inclusion of a more diverse set of main characters would, in the case of Star Wars, not meaningfully constrain the author; the story will be the same regardless of the characters' races and genders. Put another way, if Luke Skywalker and Hon Solo were cast as black women, the only change required to the story would be Luke's first name.


On the other hand, Janeway sucked as a Starfleet commander, and I much prefer any of the male commanders (Kirk, Picard, Sisko).
Similarly, Picard written as a woman would have been just as great and Janeway written as a man would have been equally obnoxious.


Belly-aching about politically correct crap makes me yawn and roll my eyes.
You can then presumably imagine how the rest of us react to belly-aching about belly-aching about politically correct crap. :smalltongue:
Less facetiously, there is a luxury inherent in complaining about others' grievances without having cause to hold any of one's own; one is given to imagining a man sitting alone before a feast, muttering bitterly about the noisome interruption caused by the rumbling stomachs of the starving.

[Aedilred]

He's about the same age as Christopher Lee was when he played Count Dooku.
Christopher Lee is distilled from raw indestructible badass, though. And I don't know how many of his own stunts he actually did even then. Great as Max von Sydow is, once you get to that sort of age it's a crapshoot whether you can even stand upright, let alone run about doing stuff, and von Sydow has given me the impression in some of the stuff I've seen him in more recently that he's getting rather frail. I could be wrong, though.

[turkishproverb]

It's set 30 years AFTER ROTJ, he can't possibly be playing Lando Calrissian. And since Lando's son wasn't born in the EU until 36 years after ROTJ, he can't be him, either.

He doesn't know.


...

I don't have the heart.


Except that since they're tossing out the EU, they can do whatever they want.

Thank you.


Eh, cast is...a cast. That's about my entire opinion.

[Fragenstein]

I'm disappointed there's only one woman in the main cast. I was hoping the new movies would actually feel the need to have more than one girl worth mentioning in an epic trilogy. It IS the 21st century.

I just hope that, for God's sake, they give us a female Jedi.

I'd prefer seeing a female Sith. Girls can be 'bad guys' too. I'd even put up with Ventress if the maintain they original Tartakovsky fighting style.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I'd prefer seeing a female Sith. Girls can be 'bad guys' too. I'd even put up with Ventress if the maintain they original Tartakovsky fighting style.

As long as its not 'evil eyecandy'. The female Sith in the Knight Errant novel were good, Darth Talon sucked.

[Fragenstein]

As long as its not 'evil eyecandy'. The female Sith in the Knight Errant novel were good, Darth Talon sucked.

Darth Talon could have rocked if not for the 'Boob-a-rella' treatment. Put her in something other than fan-boy beachwear and stripper-boots, and she could have had something.

Also keep in mind that the only main-cast Jedi who wasn't GQ quality started life as a pieces of animated felt.

[Olinser]

I think the argument being made is precisely that the inclusion of a more diverse set of main characters would, in the case of Star Wars, not meaningfully constrain the author; the story will be the same regardless of the characters' races and genders. Put another way, if Luke Skywalker and Hon Solo were cast as black women, the only change required to the story would be Luke's first name.


Similarly, Picard written as a woman would have been just as great and Janeway written as a man would have been equally obnoxious.


You can then presumably imagine how the rest of us react to belly-aching about belly-aching about politically correct crap. :smalltongue:
Less facetiously, there is a luxury inherent in complaining about others' grievances without having cause to hold any of one's own; one is given to imagining a man sitting alone before a feast, muttering bitterly about the noisome interruption caused by the rumbling stomachs of the starving.

Wrong.

Patrick Stewart made the character great.

There's a reason Patrick Stewart continued to be a popular actor and most people couldn't even tell you what else Kate Mulgrew has done. While good writing is necessary, great actors will take writing and take it to the next level.

To pretend that changing a character's gender wouldn't change the character is to pretend that men and women are the same. They aren't. They think differently, act differently, and have different physical capabilities.

If your only argument is, "well it wouldn't change anything", then as I said before, all you're doing is encouraging tokenism and having film makers write generic characters before saying, "OK we have to cast 3 female and 3 male".

[Hytheter]

Wrong.

Patrick Stewart made the character great.

There's a reason Patrick Stewart continued to be a popular actor and most people couldn't even tell you what else Kate Mulgrew has done. While good writing is necessary, great actors will take writing and take it to the next level.

This doesn't really rebut their argument, Picard cast as a female of similar talent to Stewart should theoretically be just as good as the current state of things. Unless you're trying to say that male actors are inherently better than females.

I also don't get why you're saying tokenism will occur, as though it hasn't already; the current cast is basically "token black guy, check. token woman, check. And now for 12 white males!"
edit: ok taking a close look they're not all white, but you get treh idea

[Water Bob]

But hey, it's clearly more important to you that you don't have to suffer people whining about inanities like equal representation in media or characters that reflect reality.

I do bristle at people who rant about inane ideas such as enforcing the sex of characters on the creative process.






Put another way, if Luke Skywalker and Hon Solo were cast as black women, the only change required to the story would be Luke's first name.

That's ridiculous. It would totally change the story.






To pretend that changing a character's gender wouldn't change the character is to pretend that men and women are the same. They aren't. They think differently, act differently, and have different physical capabilities.

If your only argument is, "well it wouldn't change anything", then as I said before, all you're doing is encouraging tokenism and having film makers write generic characters before saying, "OK we have to cast 3 female and 3 male".

Exactlyl

[Chen]

To pretend that changing a character's gender wouldn't change the character is to pretend that men and women are the same. They aren't. They think differently, act differently, and have different physical capabilities.

Stewart's gender wasn't what made him great in the role. Him being a great actor for that role did. You could easily have a cast a woman with sufficient acting capability without changing the show in many ways. You'd need a slight re-work in some of the episodes where he's romancing a woman. In fact if it was a lesbian captain you wouldn't even need to do that.

Janeway was a bad captain for completely different reasons than her gender. Her gender came up in the Kazon episodes and again whatever romantic ones there were. Otherwise it made no real difference. Mulgrew wasn't a great actress (though not terrible) AND the writing was god awful in most of the episodes. Throw Patrick Stewart into that role and it would have been nearly as bad.


That's ridiculous. It would totally change the story.

Uh how?

[Olinser]

This doesn't really rebut their argument, Picard cast as a female of similar talent to Stewart should theoretically be just as good as the current state of things. Unless you're trying to say that male actors are inherently better than females.

I also don't get why you're saying tokenism will occur, as though it hasn't already; the current cast is basically "token black guy, check. token woman, check. And now for 12 white males!"
edit: ok taking a close look they're not all white, but you get treh idea

No, neither males or females are necessarily better, but they're DIFFERENT. Pretending that gender flipping a character doesn't change the entire basis of the character is just laughable and dishonest.

If you could get a female of the same acting caliber as Patrick Stewart, you would still have a different Picard. Because women don't think, emote, decide or act the same way men do.

[Lord Raziere]

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120902105934/mk_/images/e/e4/Scorpion_Get_over_here!.gif
....but....why do you want me here? :smallfrown:


Wait, wait, come back! The primary contention was over gender, not race!

AAAAAAAAAH, thats even worse! *tries to escape from the chain*

[Kitten Champion]

Kate Mulgrew can act. The cast of Voyager was never the problem with the show. There are plenty of places where they put on solid performances, even Ethan Phillips despite Nelix's rather odious existence.

Had TNG been cancelled after its second season, most people would've forgotten Stewart was in it. Picard cycled between dull and annoying, the lack of characterization for any of the crew beyond basic stereotype and their job dragged the series down into a mind-numbing torpor which was worse than any season of Voyager.

[Fragenstein]

Kate Mulgrew can act. The cast of Voyager was never the problem with the show. There are plenty of places where they put on solid performances, even Ethan Phillips despite Nelix's rather odious existence.

Had TNG been cancelled after its second season, most people would've forgotten Stewart was in it. Picard cycled between dull and annoying, the lack of characterization for any of the crew beyond basic stereotype and their job dragged the series down into a mind-numbing torpor which was worse than any season of Voyager.

Agreed. TOS just seemed to have so much more fun with their characters. Their flaws were real human flaws rather than the 'cheated on my midterm' mediocrity that started the second series. Kirk's chief engineer was a borderline alcoholic, for goodness sake. Picard's wouldn't let Scotty violate protocol even when Scotty himself wrote said protocol.

Then again... maybe refusing to let a borderline alcoholic bypass safety regulations on technology the man hasn't seen in decades wasn't a bad idea after all.

I will disagree on Mulgrew, however. I've disliked her screen presence going all the way back to 'Mrs. Columbo'. I will say that she did a great job in 'Orange is the New Black', however. Hopefully she gets the chance to continue that role.

[Zrak]

To pretend that changing a character's gender wouldn't change the character is to pretend that men and women are the same. They aren't. They think differently, act differently, and have different physical capabilities.
Neither the physical capabilities of men nor those of women include use of the Force. I don't really think it's tenable to background your argument in an objection to "pretending."


If your only argument is, "well it wouldn't change anything", then as I said before, all you're doing is encouraging tokenism and having film makers write generic characters before saying, "OK we have to cast 3 female and 3 male".
Actually, my argument is that it wouldn't meaningfully change the story, not that it wouldn't change anything. As I said, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo could have the exact same adventures as women of color that they do as white men.


I do bristle at people who rant about inane ideas such as enforcing the sex of characters on the creative process.
You are the only person ranting about any such idea. Other people are questioning a "creative process" which leads to a cast so disproportionately white and male in a setting where there is no reason for a cast to be almost entirely white males; again, if this were something like Twelve Angry Men or Das Boot, that would be that, but it isn't.


That's ridiculous. It would totally change the story.
Several people have said this, none of them have given me even the briefest summary of the differences.

[Fragenstein]

Neither the physical capabilities of men nor those of women include use of the Force. I don't really think it's tenable to background your argument in an objection to "pretending."

You should win on the strength of this argument alone. It's a universe where an entire planet can have a democratically elected, 14 year old queen. I think both gender transparency and oxymoronic governance are well established. Using only one character, at that.

[Bulldog Psion]

The only person from the cast I recognize is Serkis. The rest are a big question mark to me. Here are some random impressions from someone who doesn't know these people at all, literally.


John Boyega -- contender for male lead, I'd guess.
Daisy Ridley -- would probably make a good female lead.
Adam Driver -- some sort of quasi-seedy character in the mold of Han Solo?
Oscar Isaac -- looks annoying as all heck, other than that I have no impression of what he'll do.
Andy Serkis -- wonder if he's going to play directly or just as a voice for some creature.
Domhnall Gleason -- is this the son of Luke?
Max von Sydow -- don't know him from Adam, but he's got to be either the leader of a secret New Republic counterintelligence unit, or a Sith.


As for the original cast returning -- well, I guess that's why it looks like most of them lost a bit of weight. :smallbiggrin:

Anyway, I'll be interested to see what they manage to put onscreen.

[Comrade]

Because women don't think, emote, decide or act the same way men do.



To pretend that changing a character's gender wouldn't change the character is to pretend that men and women are the same. They aren't. They think differently, act differently, and have different physical capabilities.

So your argument is intrinsically rooted in sexism. Good to know. I'm curious; why couldn't Han Solo have been female? Is it because females are physiologically incapable of being risk-takers, or because they're too inveterately nurturing to be a smuggler, or is it some other outdated, baseless gender stereotype?

[Olinser]

So your argument is intrinsically rooted in sexism. Good to know. I'm curious; why couldn't Han Solo have been female? Is it because females are physiologically incapable of being risk-takers, or because they're too inveterately nurturing to be a smuggler, or is it some other outdated, baseless gender stereotype?

No, it's not, very poor attempt at a straw man.

Sexism is the idea that one gender is superior. I have not once stated that either gender is superior. Acknowledging that they are DIFFERENT is not sexism.

To be blunt, most of the arguments in this thread are contradictory.

The claim that changing the gender of a character doesn't change the character is at direct odds with any argument that changing the gender of a character is in any way beneficial.

If changing the gender doesn't change the character, then you have literally gained nothing other than being able to say 'We have X females!!!!!' This encourages nothing more than tokenism and casting x% of females, blacks, asians, etc just to try and meet a demographic quota.

If it DOES change the character, then your entire argument goes out the window, because the character is now different.

If you want to try and debate the merits of characters being female versus male, fine, but don't try to pretend that there isn't a difference.

[Hyena]

I predict that this thread will soon be a battlefield between two kinds of people - the ones that believes genders are different and the ones that believe all people are equal, with feminists on both sides.

Before we tear each other apart, can we please move back on topic?

[Zrak]

It would totally change the story because Vader would have to use a shoe sale or something to capture Hanna Solo since she wouldn't go with Lando after he failed to notice her new hairstyle.

Plus, if they made Anakin Skywalker into a woman, he'd make ill-advised, irrational decisions based on his emotions.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Plus, if they made Anakin Skywalker into a woman, he'd make ill-advised, irrational decisions based on his emotions.
I see what you did there. :smallwink:

[Comrade]

No actually, sexism is the idea that both sexes possess congenital behavioural traits that are different from one another, which they should be expected to adhere to absolutely, with no exceptions. In other words, exactly what you're claiming.

Also, you're missing the point so hard I struggle to believe you're not doing it deliberately. First of all, the base contention is not that male characters need to be changed to female characters-- rather that there should just be more female characters at all. Secondly, it is better to have more female characters, but not because they're intrinsically 'different' from male characters in behaviour or anything-- it's because, again, Star Wars (and a lot of media in general) has a terrible track record with female characters. In the original series, we had spunky tomboy princess Leia, who is hardly the most offensive female caricature in the history of film but is fraught with her own issues, Aunt Beru (who spends most of the films a charred, smoking corpse), and Mon Mothma, who says two lines, one of which is now an internet meme. In the prelude trilogy, we had spunky tomboy princess Padme, who does very little throughout the movies, has two kids, and then dies of a 'broken heart', existing primarily to demonstrate her male lover's descent into evil; a few female Jedi of no plot significance whatsoever that you can catch in the background from time to time; that one librarian who shows up for a minute; and... that's about all I can recall. None of them really do anything on the level of the male characters, and I fail to see what is so horrifically dreadful about being irritated because this new film appears to be on exactly the same track.

And you've been going on about the 'differences' between males and females, behaviourally, but haven't actually delineated them for us unenlightened folk. Nor have you answered my question.


I'm curious; why couldn't Han Solo have been female? Is it because females are physiologically incapable of being risk-takers, or because they're too inveterately nurturing to be a smuggler, or is it some other outdated, baseless gender stereotype?

Also, Zrak: Don't forget that it would turn out that Palpatina's whole motive behind seizing the galaxy was because she was spurned by a man she once loved, and Lucy Skywalker would have been unable to destroy the Death Star because she was too 'hysterical'.

[warty goblin]

The claim that changing the gender of a character doesn't change the character is at direct odds with any argument that changing the gender of a character is in any way beneficial.

If changing the gender doesn't change the character, then you have literally gained nothing other than being able to say 'We have X females!!!!!' This encourages nothing more than tokenism and casting x% of females, blacks, asians, etc just to try and meet a demographic quota.


I see no contradiction. An argument by comparison: I'm wearing a forest green T-shirt at the moment. I like forest green; I'm an earth tones kinda guy. The shirt would perform exactly as well were it neon green. I don't like neon green clothing, but nothing particularly fundamental about the shirt would be altered by making it so. I just wouldn't like it, probably wouldn't buy it, and certainly wouldn't look forwards to wearing it some days if I did buy it. Clearly I benefit from the shade of my shirt, yet the shirt would not be substantively altered were it violently green instead of its current, muted shade.

Same thing here. You're confusing an alteration that would cause some people to like the movie more with an alteration that must perforce dramatically alter the movie.

I'm not going to get into the equality debate, as that's one over which much ink has been spilled by both sides, and frankly my knowledge of the contending theories is not good enough to say anything of particular worth, but let's entertain a thought experiment. Let's grant that you are right, and changing the gender/race/ethnicity radically alters the story. In which case surely a less white male skewed casting would be a good thing, unless we're entertaining the hypothesis that the only good popcorn action movies that can exist must star white guys. That position seems untenable.

At this point it seems to me that the only possible appeals left are the sacrosanct nature of the 'creator's vision' and one I'll come to in a moment. The vision thing is one that, operating under the hypothesis that race/gender radically alters a character, is one I see as having merit in some cases. But in the case of a story being squeezed out by an enormous multinational corporation that bought it from another enormous corporation, and directed by J.J Abrams? This exists for one purpose and one purpose alone: to separate nerds from their dollar bills. Any notion of artistic integrity got crapped out of this one a long time ago; hoping for a bit of socially progressive casting isn't too much to ask.

The second is the 'not this movie' defense, aka cast all the non straight white guys you want, but not in this movie. It's NIMBY for media, and exactly as self-serving.

[Legato Endless]

The claim that changing the gender of a character doesn't change the character is at direct odds with any argument that changing the gender of a character is in any way beneficial.

If changing the gender doesn't change the character, then you have literally gained nothing other than being able to say 'We have X females!!!!!' This encourages nothing more than tokenism and casting x% of females, blacks, asians, etc just to try and meet a demographic quota.

If it DOES change the character, then your entire argument goes out the window, because the character is now different.

Are all characters so monolithically defined? I have difficultly believing gender has a homogenous effect upon fiction. To make an absurdly grandiose claim, I would say gender's influence is not, precisely, identical in potency or flavor in all narratives.

Some characters are heavily influenced or wholly defined by their gender and it's surrounding cultural ideas. For others, I would maintain gender may be simply aesthetic. As there is a vast continuum to which to play with this general concept, and a great divergence of ideas about what gender means to various writers, I don't think you can cry contradictory dichotomy and dismiss the other side's claims as irrational.

Furthermore, even if the proportion of characters within the narrative may be justified, that doesn't change the fact that audiences aren't really getting a representative example in media as a whole. People have an odd emotional desire to see something they identify with on screen. That's a perfectly valid thing to ask for, and if the whole is going to change, individual examples will have to. So why not here? This isn't the plight of a group of Franciscan monks in the middle ages. So while having such a monochromatic male dominated casting might not be inherently hideously evil, it does appear to be in line with an established pattern that leaves large groups of people out in the cold.

[T-O-E]

So your argument is intrinsically rooted in sexism. Good to know. I'm curious; why couldn't Han Solo have been female? Is it because females are physiologically incapable of being risk-takers, or because they're too inveterately nurturing to be a smuggler, or is it some other outdated, baseless gender stereotype?

Han has to be male because he shot first.

[Olinser]

No actually, sexism is the idea that both sexes possess congenital behavioural traits that are different from one another, which they should be expected to adhere to absolutely, with no exceptions. In other words, exactly what you're claiming.

Also, you're missing the point so hard I struggle to believe you're not doing it deliberately. First of all, the base contention is not that male characters need to be changed to female characters-- rather that there should just be more female characters at all. Secondly, it is better to have more female characters, but not because they're intrinsically 'different' from male characters in behaviour or anything-- it's because, again, Star Wars (and a lot of media in general) has a terrible track record with female characters. In the original series, we had spunky tomboy princess Leia, who is hardly the most offensive female caricature in the history of film but is fraught with her own issues, Aunt Beru (who spends most of the films a charred, smoking corpse), and Mon Mothma, who says two lines, one of which is now an internet meme. In the prelude trilogy, we had spunky tomboy princess Padme, who does very little throughout the movies, has two kids, and then dies of a 'broken heart', existing primarily to demonstrate her male lover's descent into evil; a few female Jedi of no plot significance whatsoever that you can catch in the background from time to time; that one librarian who shows up for a minute; and... that's about all I can recall. None of them really do anything on the level of the male characters, and I fail to see what is so horrifically dreadful about being irritated because this new film appears to be on exactly the same track.

And you've been going on about the 'differences' between males and females, behaviourally, but haven't actually delineated them for us unenlightened folk. Nor have you answered my question.



Also, Zrak: Don't forget that it would turn out that Palpatina's whole motive behind seizing the galaxy was because she was spurned by a man she once loved, and Lucy Skywalker would have been unable to destroy the Death Star because she was too 'hysterical'.

Hardly. You're the one trafficking in sexist stereotypes here, not me.

Han Solo or Luke Skywalker wouldn't have worked as a female. Why? Because the movie was made in the 70's. And, big shocker, it has the prejudices of the 70's attached to it. Leia herself was already a big stretch at the time.

In claiming that the prequel trilogy didn't feature enough female Jedi you're purposefully ignoring the fact that almost no new Jedi (or other significant characters) were introduced as anything other than background characters, PERIOD.

Literally the Jedi not named Skywalker, Obi-Wan or Yoda that had any appreciable screen time at all were Qui-Gon, Count Dooku and Mace Windu - and Windu had what, a collective 5-10 minutes of screen time across the entire series? If Windu had been female you'd be complaining the only female Jedi had 5 minutes of screen time and got killed off. Asajj Ventress would probably have worked as the villain, but come on.... Evil Brit as the villain? They couldn't resist.

Sure Padme was a terrible character, due in no small part to Natalie Portman's horrendous acting (she's gotten better, but she was absolutely terrible in the prequels), but we already knew the character was going to die after giving birth. There's really not a lot of ways to kill her off that don't involve her abandoning the twins. Her death was handled somewhat poorly (they probably should have gone with, "The damage she sustained when Anakin choked her left her too weak to survive", but that's the result of poor writing, not necessarily prejudice. Yoda running off to be a hermit was written just as poorly, "Well I lost one fight to Palpatine. Guess I'll just run off and hide on a swamp planet while I let him take over and oppress the entire galaxy," or how horribly Anakin was written and acted, "Now that I've established my fear of you dying is my primary motivation for gaining power, I will attempt to kill you!"


For the new movie, to be blunt, I don't give a **** what percent of the cast is female, black, British, Asian, or gay.

Are they well written characters or not? Is the plot good, or not? That's the only thing that should matter, not people whining that X demographic is under-represented.

[russdm]

Now, you are just being annoying. Yes, changing Luke into a woman would change things but who would benefit most? Han Solo. He would have both Leia and Luke, and given what we learn, he could have fun with twins.

Luke being a woman wouldn't prevent him/her from destroying the death star unless you wrote it in as reason. America has female soldiers fighting on the front lines and we don't hear constant stories of how they can't do their jobs because they are hysterical all the time.

You can write good stories with females characters, but it seems that to me are more interested in pointing on the female characters would work based around on their being female.

Examples: Palpatina and a spurned lover; Hanna Solo and shoes; Lucy Skywalker and being hysterical; Annakin Skywalker and her making bad decisions based on her emotions. All this just is trying reinforce the idea that female characters are bad because they need to follow female stereotypes.

Lucas hasn't treated his female characters that well, and in fact the first best female character in the Star Wars "Legends" EU was Mara Jade, who was written by Tim Zahn. She had a personality of her own with her own flaws, not the plaything or plucky or barely-there that Lucas used.

A breakdown of treatment of Females by Lucas:
Episode 4)
1) Leia: She puts the plans into R2, shoots one stormtrooper, then turns into a damsel in distress for rest the film until rescue, and then does a bit of shooting then does nothing, despite no signs that could have flown an X-wing into the battle.
2) Aunt Beru: She is the motherly figure, who dies so that Luke has no reason not to join Obi-wan. Luke was concerned for her safety but she died, and its rather apparent in the film that Luke is still not over it or at least he hasn't handled it yet.

Episode 5)
1) Leia: Plays very little action role, then turns into a damsel in distress to be rescued, this time with Han and Chewie turning them into Damsels as well. Tries to act more action oriented by that rarely happens then she fights a few stormies but lets the Men handle things
2) Female Rebels: They show up only as workers in the HQ command area and do no fighting or actually anything beyond being bridge bunnies for General Rieken. The pilots who are being briefed by Leia about getting out past the shield, all male. The soldiers setting up to defend against the imperial walkers, all male. The pilots in the snowspeeders, all male. Noticing a trend?

Episode 6)
1) Leia: After her botched rescue attempt, she ends up in a bikini and as a damsel in distress with some limited action. She does kill jabba, but only because she ended up on a chain in a bikini. On endor she fights actually alongside Han, but gets shoot or captured by ewoks. (Yes, she was captured by ewoks; its why the ewoks points spears at her when she leaves the hut in the ewok village, if she hadn't been captured I don't think they would have done that)
2) Jabba's Dancer: She gets eaten by rancor after refusing the hutt before leia and chewie show up.
3) Female Rebels: We don't actually see any here this time around
4) Mon Mothma: She says a couple of lines and then watches the rest of the proceedings with an expression of either bemusement or something like surprise at being around so many men. It feels like Mony is fighting the urge to start dancing or something. The rest of the briefing is filled with men aside from Leia. Seriously watch it closely, there are no female rebels presents besides the two.
All of the pilots we see present in the battle are male despite the fact the rebellion has to have female pilots in its ranks or female soldiers even, yet we see none.

Episode 1)
1) Padme: Until the end of the movie, she functions as a damsel in distress or a tag along offering up no advice to qui-gon on how to do anything. Apparently she is supposed to be queen, yet we don't see anything remotely queeny actually happen.
2) Queen Amidala: Same treat as padme but stays on ship to do exactly jack squat. It is the decoy almost always though, except for one time when it is actually padme who is going to speak to the senate or speaking to palpatine. She follows the men's cues here, being doing exactly what palpatine tells her too.
3) Shmi: Lives in the kitchen so to speak, stays in the kitchen, doesn't like putting her kid at risk while also wants him to be free. Does almost nothing to contribute despite knowing Watto for along time and probably knowing things that Quigon could have used to blackmail Watto.
4) There is like one female pilot in the final battle against the droid ship, while we have padme and her decoy followed by a bunch of guys around. Apparently aside from the odd female the rest stay in the kitchen or something.

Episode 2)
1) Padme: She is a damsel in distress by the fact someone is trying to kill her to stop her vote, and then she goes into hiding. Aside from the execution mess, she does almost nothing to explain why she was made a senator and she is there mostly for fanservice; this is especially made clear when the cat monster thing scratches her to reveal her midriff.
2) Jedi libarian: She provides almost no actual help of any kind, which causes Obiwan to visit yoda. There is no reason for be present aside to point out that she believes that the archives are full, anything missing doesn't exist, and we could have a droid tell obiwan that instead of her.
3) Zam: Tries to kill Padme, fails as apparently all bounty hunters are supposed to and she even manages to get her arm partially severed by Obiwan. This is treated as being pretty common and not in need of any medical attention as neither Obiwan or Annakin call for a medic/ambulance. Apparently, the star wars universe doesn't employ first responders. Zam dies when shoot by Jango, begging the bigger question of if Zam knew where padme's apartment was, why did Jango give some insects to kill padme instead of another bomb that the droid carried? That would have worked far more than two insects both of whom fail and why didn't the droid self-destruct or go somewhere else for pickup by Zam? Is she that stupid that she would program the droid to come back to her?
4) Shmi: Dies so that her son can completely lose his marbles and slaughter everybody
5) Aunt Beru: We get introduced to her and she works in kitchen only
6) Padme's female family members: There mainly to highlight that Padme is a woman and the extended material with them solely consists of them congratulating Padme on tapping her own bodyguard for some play. Even her mother subtly suggests that Padme is sleeping with Annie and she approves!!! She or Padme's sister calls Annie Padme's boyfriend even with a line about bringing a boyfriend home and padme has to say "Not my boyfriend"!

Episode 3)
1) Padme: Is pregnant and stays that way, while apparently doing nothing or bringing her concerns or annakin's concerns to the jedi. doesn't do anything but look pregnant and provide angst for her husband to deal with.
2) Other females: Just there to be seen
3) Mon Mothma: shows up in cut scenes helping to form the alliance, without them she doesn't actually show up at all

Star Wars Clone Wars Movie)
1) Ahsoka: Spends the movie as either Annie's padawan learner or as the hutt baby's nursemaid. She is a jedi so takes on 4 of Grevious's bodyguard droids, and maybe takes out 1 or 2 or all of them. Does manage to safely deliver the little hutt though.
2) Asajj Ventress: Fights obiwan
3) Padme: Has the dubious distinction of arresting the only "overtly" gay hutt we encounter, Ziro, for stuff. The film tries to make Ziro come across as "Fabulous" or an unsubtle way of saying Ziro is gay or is implied bizarrely. It really comes across like this because how he acts and looks and everything, actual gay or camp gay or bizarre characterization.

Star Wars Clone Wars Series-Not directed by Lucas in any real way)
1) Ahsoka: Has adventures and has nearly no damsel in distress moments
2) Padme: Has adventures and has nearly no damsel in distress moments
3) Other females: Are either Jedi or other things that actually do stuff relating to what they are and we see almost no damsel in distress from them except for the planned bit for Satine to ruin Obiwan.

Yeah, so I guess that if you want female characters in Star Wars that can hold a torch to male characters, you shouldn't let Lucas have any creative control much.



For the new movie, to be blunt, I don't give a **** what percent of the cast is female, black, British, Asian, or gay.

Are they well written characters or not? Is the plot good, or not? That's the only thing that should matter, not people whining that X demographic is under-represented.

I would strongly second this or maybe quote it in sig it happens to be that profound.

[Olinser]

Are all characters so monolithically defined? I have difficultly believing gender has a homogenous effect upon fiction. To make an absurdly grandiose claim, I would say gender's influence is not, precisely, identical in potency or flavor in all narratives.

Some characters are heavily influenced or wholly defined by their gender and it's surrounding cultural ideas. For others, I would maintain gender may be simply aesthetic. As there is a vast continuum to which to play with this general concept, and a great divergence of ideas about what gender means to various writers, I don't think you can cry contradictory dichotomy and dismiss the other side's claims as irrational.

Furthermore, even if the proportion of characters within the narrative may be justified, that doesn't change the fact that audiences aren't really getting a representative example in media as a whole. People have an odd emotional desire to see something they identify with on screen. That's a perfectly valid thing to ask for, and if the whole is going to change, individual examples will have to. So why not here? This isn't the plight of a group of Franciscan monks in the middle ages. So while having such a monochromatic male dominated casting might not be inherently hideously evil, it does appear to be in line with an established pattern that leaves large groups of people out in the cold.

Wow, you know, it's almost like movies are attempting to appeal to their target demographic and not make movies with percentage accurate population representation!

[Legato Endless]

Wow, you know, it's almost like movies are attempting to appeal to their target demographic and not make movies with percentage accurate population representation!

If this were true, 30-50% of the cast should be 12 years old and younger. Strangely, this does not appear to be the case.

[Comrade]

Hardly. You're the one trafficking in sexist stereotypes here, not me.
No, I'm not, I'm really not. You are the one contending that males and females are intrinsically different in their behaviour, not me.


Han Solo or Luke Skywalker wouldn't have worked as a female. Why? Because the movie was made in the 70's. And, big shocker, it has the prejudices of the 70's attached to it. Leia herself was already a big stretch at the time.

You're moving the goalposts here. You claimed that a male character cannot be changed to female without any change in behaviour because males and females are again just intrinsically different in their behaviour. I asked why Han Solo would not work as female, and now you're bringing in the historical context instead of arguing your own point. Not that your own point would have been any better, of course, as it would inevitably have entailed sexist stereotypes.

That being said, considering the prelude trilogy had the exact same issues, the argument of 'it was a different time!' really doesn't suffice. Sexism in the 70s is still sexism, sexism in the new millennia is still sexism.


In claiming that the prequel trilogy didn't feature enough female Jedi you're purposefully ignoring the fact that almost no new Jedi (or other significant characters) were introduced as anything other than background characters, PERIOD.

But they did introduce new characters of significance in the prequel trilogy. Dooku, Jango, Darth Maul, Qui-Gon, Mace Windu... all of them were male.


Literally the Jedi not named Skywalker, Obi-Wan or Yoda that had any appreciable screen time at all were Qui-Gon, Count Dooku and Mace Windu - and Windu had what, a collective 5-10 minutes of screen time across the entire series? If Windu had been female you'd be complaining the only female Jedi had 5 minutes of screen time and got killed off. Asajj Ventress would probably have worked as the villain, but come on.... Evil Brit as the villain? They couldn't resist.

Again, all the new characters? All male. Plus, Ventress, I think, would have been a much more interesting antagonist than Dooku.


Sure Padme was a terrible character, due in no small part to Natalie Portman's horrendous acting (she's gotten better, but she was absolutely terrible in the prequels), but we already knew the character was going to die after giving birth. There's really not a lot of ways to kill her off that don't involve her abandoning the twins. Her death was handled somewhat poorly (they probably should have gone with, "The damage she sustained when Anakin choked her left her too weak to survive", but that's the result of poor writing, not necessarily prejudice. Yoda running off to be a hermit was written just as poorly, "Well I lost one fight to Palpatine. Guess I'll just run off and hide on a swamp planet while I let him take over and oppress the entire galaxy," or how horribly Anakin was written and acted, "Now that I've established my fear of you dying is my primary motivation for gaining power, I will attempt to kill you!"

But the fact is, they didn't go with 'the damage she sustained when Anakin choked her left her too weak to survive'. They went with 'she died because her man left her'. They went with her entire character being a plot device for Anakin. They went with a female character who existed pretty much wholly for another male character, with little to her own name and character. And that's the goddamn problem.


For the new movie, to be blunt, I don't give a **** what percent of the cast is female, black, British, Asian, or gay.

Are they well written characters or not? Is the plot good, or not? That's the only thing that should matter, not people whining that X demographic is under-represented.

Yeah, see, you have that privilege. Other people don't. Other people have to put up with media that marginalises and pigeon-holes them, if it chooses to represent them at all. The fact that you react to anybody who tries to point this out as unhealthy and unrealistic by accusing them of whining exposes your inability to realises just how badly marginalised a lot of people are in the media.

[Olinser]

If this were true, 30-50% of the cast should be 12 years old and younger. Strangely, this does not appear to be the case.

APPEAL to target demographics, not represent them. Heroes in their late teens/early 20's appeal to the 12 and younger crowd because they can imagine being them in a few years.

[Legato Endless]

APPEAL to target demographics, not represent them. Heroes in their late teens/early 20's appeal to the 12 and younger crowd because they can imagine being them in a few years.

And having, hypothetically in that age group, 3 guy, 3 girls, and an asexual transgender person would kill that somehow?

[Olinser]

No, I'm not, I'm really not. You are the one contending that males and females are intrinsically different in their behaviour, not me.



You're moving the goalposts here. You claimed that a male character cannot be changed to female without any change in behaviour because males and females are again just intrinsically different in their behaviour. I asked why Han Solo would not work as female, and now you're bringing in the historical context instead of arguing your own point. Not that your own point would have been any better, of course, as it would inevitably have entailed sexist stereotypes.

That being said, considering the prelude trilogy had the exact same issues, the argument of 'it was a different time!' really doesn't suffice. Sexism in the 70s is still sexism, sexism in the new millennia is still sexism.



But they did introduce new characters of significance in the prequel trilogy. Dooku, Jango, Darth Maul, Qui-Gon, Mace Windu... all of them were male.



Again, all the new characters? All male. Plus, Ventress, I think, would have been a much more interesting antagonist than Dooku.



But the fact is, they didn't go with 'the damage she sustained when Anakin choked her left her too weak to survive'. They went with 'she died because her man left her'. They went with her entire character being a plot device for Anakin. They went with a female character who existed pretty much wholly for another male character, with little to her own name and character. And that's the goddamn problem.



Yeah, see, you have that privilege. Other people don't. Other people have to put up with media that marginalises and pigeon-holes them, if it chooses to represent them at all. The fact that you react to anybody who tries to point this out as unhealthy and unrealistic by accusing them of whining exposes your inability to realises just how badly marginalised a lot of people are in the media.

Nobody is moving the goalposts. You asked why a specific character couldn't be female. I answered it. You just didn't like the answer because you chose a poor example. Star Wars was made in the 70's, and the 70's left their mark on the movie.

For the new movie, you literally have no idea whether anything is being 'marginalized' here. The only thing you, or any of us, know is that of the announced cast, there is one female so far. You have no idea what kind of character she represents, what her plot significance is, or even the name of the character, and yet you're already complaining there aren't enough females, for no reason other than there aren't enough females.

You're never going to be satisfied. If exactly half the cast were female, you'd whine that they didn't have enough screen time. If literally screen time between females and males were exactly equal, you'd whine that the males had 'better' roles, whether it were true or not.

Which is why movie makers don't even try. They don't CARE about making a cast that is a representative cross-section of the population.

They don't CARE (and neither do the vast bulk of movie-goers) whether the cast is half female, 16% Latino, 13% black, 5% Asian,

Such factors are IRRELEVANT TO THE STORY.

Don't like it? Fine, don't see it.

[dps]

Stewart's gender wasn't what made him great in the role. Him being a great actor for that role did. You could easily have a cast a woman with sufficient acting capability without changing the show in many ways. You'd need a slight re-work in some of the episodes where he's romancing a woman. In fact if it was a lesbian captain you wouldn't even need to do that.

Well, with a female Picard, we would lose the subtext that maybe, just maybe, Picard is actually Wesley's biological father. But OTOH, we could have lost Wesley entirely and the show would have been the better for it.


Janeway was a bad captain for completely different reasons than her gender. Her gender came up in the Kazon episodes and again whatever romantic ones there were. Otherwise it made no real difference. Mulgrew wasn't a great actress (though not terrible) AND the writing was god awful in most of the episodes. Throw Patrick Stewart into that role and it would have been nearly as bad.


Pretty much agree here, but if I elaborate any more this'll just turn into a rant about how badly Voayager was written.

[Comrade]

Nobody is moving the goalposts. You asked why a specific character couldn't be female. I answered it. You just didn't like the answer because you chose a poor example. Star Wars was made in the 70's, and the 70's left their mark on the movie.

It is moving the goalposts. The question of Han Solo being female was clearly raised in the context of your contention that males and females are intrinsically different in their behaviour. Fine then, if it will make it easier for you; can Han Solo, in a vacuum, with no historical context, with no alteration whatsoever to the character itself, be female?


For the new movie, you literally have no idea whether anything is being 'marginalized' here. The only thing you, or any of us, know is that of the announced cast, there is one female so far. You have no idea what kind of character she represents, what her plot significance is, or even the name of the character, and yet you're already complaining there aren't enough females, for no reason other than there aren't enough females.

I literally do have an idea, considering the main cast, as it now stands, has one female, and the rest are males. There's no reason whatsoever for this-- Star Wars is not, as somebody pointed out, the tale of Franciscan friars in the middle ages. There is no reason for the characters to be overwhelmingly male.


You're never going to be satisfied. If exactly half the cast were female, you'd whine that they didn't have enough screen time. If literally screen time between females and males were exactly equal, you'd whine that the males had 'better' roles, whether it were true or not.

Which is why movie makers don't even try. They don't CARE about making a cast that is a representative cross-section of the population.

They don't CARE (and neither do the vast bulk of movie-goers) whether the cast is half female, 16% Latino, 13% black, 5% Asian,

Such factors are IRRELEVANT TO THE STORY.

Don't like it? Fine, don't see it.

Wow, you're just really doing your damnedest to completely miss the point, aren't you? Rather than provide any sort of rebuttal to my points, you go on about 'whining', and about how marginalisation of minorities is 'IRRELEVANT TO THE STORY', and then to cap it all off, tell me to just not see it if I don't like it, proving once and for all your utter inability to realise the impact of media and its representation of minorities on society.

[Olinser]

And having, hypothetically in that age group, 3 guy, 3 girls, and an asexual transgender person would kill that somehow?

Where's the black? The Asian? The Arab? The Latino? The Catholic? The Protestant? The Jew? The atheist? The Muslim? The homosexual? The bisexual?

See how absurd this gets?

[Hyena]

Right, so it's better to have a cast of all white guys and one token girl - so social justice warriors won't complain. Makes sense.

[TheThan]

Leia acts like a hero in 4, acts like a lovestruck ninny in 5, and does very little in 6, but over the course of the original trilogy its mainly Luke and Han and Chewie doing the adventures while Leia Chaperones/Cheerleads)


Leia never misses a blaster shot in episodes V and VI, and she actually gets a fair amount of action screen time towards the end of the movie. She acts love struck because she sorta is you know. People do fall in love after all.



If this were true, 30-50% of the cast should be 12 years old and younger. Strangely, this does not appear to be the case.

They have the new TV show for that.

Here’s my thoughts on why you shouldn't change the sex, race etc of a character for the sake of changing it.

Changing a character’s sex is recasting that character with a different actor; which will automatically change the performance given by that actor in the part.

Chris Pine is not the same Captain Kirk as William Shatner’s Captain Kirk.
If you replace Harrison Ford with any other actor, it will change the character, even if they hit all the right beats (see Chris Pine’s Kirk for example), that version of the character will be intrinsically different. This is because when an actor takes on a role, he’s putting on a performance, a performance that is molded by their talent, experience and personality. This is particularly noticeable when portrayal of a character that’s already very well established.

By simply gender flipping a character, you change a lot of things about that character. How that person thinks, how they act, and what they’re life experiences are. Just going to puberty generates a great deal of life experiences that are different between men and women. So yes you can have a black female lesbian actress play Han Solo (Hanna Solo?), but that character wouldn’t BE the same Han solo that Harrison Ford played because they’re different people trying to fit into the same pair of shoes. not to mention Han has already been cast as a white heterosexual male, which is the exact opposite of the fictitious Hanna Solo I mentioned above. doing so would confuse the audience.

Now, up until we know who's playing what, everything is guess work. For all we know John Boyega may end up being the leading man.

[Water Bob]

Before we tear each other apart, can we please move back on topic?

I agree with this sentence. Those who think that they are correct will remain thinking that. The idiots will remain idiots. Those two sentences apply to both sides of the argument. I'm ignoring the thread derailment from here on out.

Let's talk about Star Wars!

[Legato Endless]

Where's the black? The Asian? The Arab? The Latino? The Catholic? The Protestant? The Jew? The atheist? The Muslim? The homosexual? The bisexual?

See how absurd this gets?

Not really no. I'm not arguing the plight of the polygamist little person must appear in every film. I'm arguing the vast majority of Hollywood films shouldn't look demographically identical. That doesn't seem like an absurd goal.

Furthermore, gender changes work perfectly fine with the setting. Atheists in Star Wars are setting inconsistent morons.A few more women can gel just fine.

@Comrade- I have a name! :smalltongue:

[Comrade]

By simply gender flipping a character, you change a lot of things about that character. How that person thinks, how they act

I am still waiting for a justification of why gender-flipping a character will completely change their behaviour-- at least, a justification that isn't rooted in baseless, sexist gender norms.


and what they’re life experiences are.

Okay, hold up here. In media dealing with the modern world, where sexism is a massive issue and males and females deal with drastically different issues in life, you might have a point here. But we're not talking about the modern world. We're talking about Star Wars, where thousands of alien species manage to (usually) co-exist (despite humans curiously enough appearing to be the dominant race), people run around shooting lightning out of their fingertips, and traveling from one end of the galaxy to the other is pretty much no big deal. This isn't the modern world; this is so radically different that in all frankness, there's no reason to assume the sexism that exists in the modern world and produces such different experiences for males and females exists in Star Wars.



@Comrade- I have a name! :smalltongue:

Sorry, I couldn't remember exactly who had made the analogy, just that someone had and that they'd had a very good point in doing so :v

[Hyena]

Let's talk about Star Wars!
Too late, even I, a vocal enemy of feminism, have read things here that are so absurd, that I can't just ignore them.


By simply gender flipping a character, you change a lot of things about that character. How that person thinks, how they act
You know, let's change your words slightly - because I believe that both race and gender have the same difference (superficial), it won't change anything, right?
"By simply making character black, you change a lot of things about that character. How that person thinks, how they act."
Oh wait, somehow it manages to sound absolutely backwards and bigoted - racist, even. I wonder, what would that make of the original quote. Maybe, this point of view happens to be sexist, eh?

[Olinser]

Right, so it's better to have a cast of all white guys and one token girl - so social justice warriors won't complain. Makes sense.

Again, poor straw man.

I seriously doubt most stories call for white males. Because when you define your characters based on demographics, you aren't looking at how they fit in the STORY. Your forcing the story to conform to the demographics. That always has, and always will, breed poor movies.

It's better to write a good STORY, and cast people that fit the story you have written. If that ends up being 5 white men? Fine. If it ends up being 5 Asian women and a Jewish man? Equally fine.

If you found the best fits for your characters were all white men (or black men, or Asian men), and pick the 2nd or 3rd choices in the names of satisfying some demographic, you have reduced the quality of the movie in the name of a quota.

If you're casting a movie for 3 male leads and 3 female leads, and you find 3 perfect fits for the men to all be black and the 3 women all happen to be Asian, are you going to discard two of them on the grounds you aren't representing enough people? No, that would be stupid, you've found the perfect fits for your characters.

So you make your movie with 3 black men and 3 Asian women. Hope its a good one.





I notice a complete lack of people complaining that British people are over-represented amongst the cast and Asians are under-represented.

[Comrade]

I seriously doubt most stories call for white males. Because when you define your characters based on demographics, you aren't looking at how they fit in the STORY. Your forcing the story to conform to the demographics. That always has, and always will, breed poor movies.

It's better to write a good STORY, and cast people that fit the story you have written. If that ends up being 5 white men? Fine. If it ends up being 5 Asian women and a Jewish man? Equally fine.

If you found the best fits for your characters were all white men (or black men, or Asian men), and pick the 2nd or 3rd choices in the names of satisfying some demographic, you have reduced the quality of the movie in the name of a quota.

If you're casting a movie for 3 male leads and 3 female leads, and you find 3 perfect fits for the men to all be black and the 3 women all happen to be Asian, are you going to discard two of them on the grounds you aren't representing enough people? No, that would be stupid, you've found the perfect fits for your characters.

So you make your movie with 3 black men and 3 Asian women. Hope its a good one.

If you don't already realise how bizarrely nonsensical and utterly devoid of logic this point is, there's absolutely nothing anybody can possibly say to change that.

[TheOldCrow]

Where's the black? The Asian? The Arab? The Latino? The Catholic? The Protestant? The Jew? The atheist? The Muslim? The homosexual? The bisexual?

See how absurd this gets?


White is a color and male is a gender. If there is no good reason for overwhelming male and overwhelming white in the story, I hate to break it to you, but it already looks absurd, because someone has already made a choice about color and gender and they picked white and male. Diversifying actually makes it look more normal in comparison to reality, and easier to accept on a Willing Suspension of Disbelief plane, because I don't have to make up some weird reason that women and POCs don't exist in that particular AU.

[Olinser]

Leia never misses a blaster shot in episodes V and VI, and she actually gets a fair amount of action screen time towards the end of the movie. She acts love struck because she sorta is you know. People do fall in love after all.




They have the new TV show for that.

Here’s my thoughts on why you shouldn't change the sex, race etc of a character for the sake of changing it.

Changing a character’s sex is recasting that character with a different actor; which will automatically change the performance given by that actor in the part.

Chris Pine is not the same Captain Kirk as William Shatner’s Captain Kirk.
If you replace Harrison Ford with any other actor, it will change the character, even if they hit all the right beats (see Chris Pine’s Kirk for example), that version of the character will be intrinsically different. This is because when an actor takes on a role, he’s putting on a performance, a performance that is molded by their talent, experience and personality. This is particularly noticeable when portrayal of a character that’s already very well established.

By simply gender flipping a character, you change a lot of things about that character. How that person thinks, how they act, and what they’re life experiences are. Just going to puberty generates a great deal of life experiences that are different between men and women. So yes you can have a black female lesbian actress play Han Solo (Hanna Solo?), but that character wouldn’t BE the same Han solo that Harrison Ford played because they’re different people trying to fit into the same pair of shoes. not to mention Han has already been cast as a white heterosexual male, which is the exact opposite of the fictitious Hanna Solo I mentioned above. doing so would confuse the audience.

Now, up until we know who's playing what, everything is guess work. For all we know John Boyega may end up being the leading man.

In fact, this article states outright that he will be 'helming the franchise', as they put it

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/30/john-boyega-the-hero-of-star-wars-episode-vii-has-the-force.html

Which I have mixed feelings about. He was good in Attack the Block, but other than that his performance reel so far is pretty thin. Hopefully he'll rise to the occasion and not leave us with another Hayden Christensen.

Fun fact. When you google 'Hayden Christensen', the first suggested search is 'Hayden Christensen bad actor'.

[Olinser]

White is a color and male is a gender. If there is no good reason for overwhelming male and overwhelming white in the story, I hate to break it to you, but it already looks absurd, because someone has already made a choice about color and gender and they picked white and male. Diversifying actually makes it look more normal in comparison to reality, and easier to accept on a Willing Suspension of Disbelief plane, because I don't have to make up some weird reason that women and POCs don't exist in that particular AU.

It only looks absurd if you're looking through a lens of race or gender.

How about we focus on whether they were good actors that played their parts well, or not. They didn't pick 'white'. They picked an actor that fit the part. Who happens to be white. Or Black. Or whatever.

Quit looking at what color or gender people are and focus on the story, you'll enjoy movies a lot more.

[TheThan]

Too late, even I, a vocal enemy of feminism, have read things here that are so absurd, that I can't just ignore them.


You know, let's change your words slightly - because I believe that both race and gender have the same difference (superficial), it won't change anything, right?
"By simply making character black, you change a lot of things about that character. How that person thinks, how they act."
Oh wait, somehow it manages to sound absolutely backwards and bigoted - racist, even. I wonder, what would that make of the original quote. Maybe, this point of view happens to be sexist, eh?

Simple. Everyone is different. No two people have gone through the exact same life experiences. I cannot be replaced by another person and another person cannot be replaced by me.
when you change the actor playing a character, that character will come out different based because its a new actor playing that role. an actor that (surprise) is different than the previous actor. Race, sex, sexual preference, creed etc don't necessarily have to enter into it.

[Comrade]

It only looks absurd if you're looking through a lens of race or gender.

How about we focus on whether they were good actors that played their parts well, or not.

Can't. Sorry. Fact is, there are problems with representation of minorities in the media, and it is a problem, and it does have societal consequences, and it does need to be fixed, and it does need to be talked about, whether or not you like it.

[Daimbert]

Okay, my comments here:

Tokenism? Bad. No one wants diverse characters being plunked in there to be nothing more than diverse characters and especially to look that way. If you're going to put characters in, they should look like useful characters first and of a specific race/gender second.

Gender-flipping? Not required. You should be able to fit different races and genders into roles that don't have specific genders or races, like what people say happened with Lando.

But it does seem odd that if you're writing a story and out of 6 or 7 main characters you can only ever come up with one female character, and out of all the secondary characters you don't have very many either. Surely you have more gender/race neutral roles than that.

As to how to get more female characters, at least, into the new Star Wars:

1) I hope they'll have a Wedge character (I think the prequels suffered from not having this at all, due to the clones). It won't be Wedge because he'd be too old, but surely THAT character could be female without too much trouble. Heck, even if the timelines won't work out it'd be great to take a page from the EU and make it Wedge's daughter, who is considered to be a fighter ace in the latest series.

2) I hope they'll have a rogue character in the series (I think the prequel series REALLY suffered from not having this). Why can't this character be female? Heck, you could steal from the EU AGAIN -- making people who like the EU happy -- and make it either Mirax or Wedge's OTHER daughter.

3) If the Big Bad is going to be male, why can't The Dragon be female?

4) Why can't the head of the Alliance military be female? Heck, use the Ackbar expat Niathal for it. And you can use Daala as the leader of the military forces of the opposition.

And so on. It's not hard to look at the archetypes you need and not that in today's world you don't have to make them male to make it work. Note that I tend AWAY from the "affirmative action" type of arguments and STILL noticed that, yeah, there's probably not enough women in this cast.

[warty goblin]

It only looks absurd if you're looking through a lens of race or gender.

Which says nothing about whether race or gender is are useful lenses through which to look at something. Given that racial and gender biases are things that affect billions of people, I'd say they're completely reasonable ones to look at.


How about we focus on whether they were good actors that played their parts well, or not. They didn't pick 'white'. They picked an actor that fit the part. Who happens to be white. Or Black. Or whatever.
How do we know that?


Quit looking at what color or gender people are and focus on the story, you'll enjoy movies a lot more.
Stop telling other people their concerns are invalid because you personally aren't bothered about them and you'll piss off a lot fewer folks.

[TheOldCrow]

It only looks absurd if you're looking through a lens of race or gender.

How about we focus on whether they were good actors that played their parts well, or not. They didn't pick 'white'. They picked an actor that fit the part. Who happens to be white. Or Black. Or whatever.

Quit looking at what color or gender people are and focus on the story, you'll enjoy movies a lot more.

White is a color and male is a gender. Actors are already picked because they are white and male, not because they just happened to be better actors than non-whites and women. The truth of the matter is that they did pick white and male, because white and male. It would be awesome if parts were picked primarily because the actors will play there parts well, but until TPTB start examining why they default to white and male that is not going to happen.

And yes, I agree that people who are happy with movie universes being overwhelmingly white and male do enjoy movies more. But I won't be one of those people, so telling me to quit seeing all the white male casts in front of me is not going to fly.

[MLai]

@ Olinser:

I will appeal to you from a different direction than Comrade.
I also tend to veer away from Affirmative Action, and when I smell White Knights (i.e. men who think they're being feminist) I also get riled up.
As evidence, just recently I was arguing in defense of that particular scene in Game Of Thrones, the scene next to Joffrey's corpse.
(If anyone is offended by the above, just read the director's interview regarding that scene.)

And even I think you are, on the whole, wrong in regards to this particular topic.
I could reiterate all the reasons already discussed, but why? My point is "I know what you're saying brah, but I gotta tell you you're wrong."

[Legato Endless]

How do we know that?

Obviously, the casting directors, and the Executives they answer to are perfectly uniformly free of such petty taints.


And you can use Daala as the leader of the military forces of the opposition.

Okay, I was pretty much with you until here. I would be totally open to a female military forces leader. I would say though, a good conceptual beginning for such a character would be to in no way resemble the laughing stock of the EU. We want the audience to not be reduced to cringe induced groans whenever she appears.



Here’s my thoughts on why you shouldn't change the sex, race etc of a character for the sake of changing it...So yes you can have a black female lesbian actress play Han Solo (Hanna Solo?), but that character wouldn’t BE the same Han solo that Harrison Ford played because they’re different people trying to fit into the same pair of shoes. not to mention Han has already been cast as a white heterosexual male, which is the exact opposite of the fictitious Hanna Solo I mentioned above. doing so would confuse the audience.

But TheThan, none of the characters are established yet. There's no one to confuse because the audience has no idea who they are. We don't even need to gender flip anyone when the final script hasn't been approved yet, and is undergoing a complete rewrite under a new scriptwriter.


Sorry, I couldn't remember exactly who had made the analogy, just that someone had and that they'd had a very good point in doing so :v

No prob, I was trying to a certain extent to inject a bit of levity to the proceedings.

[Olinser]

@ Olinser:

I will appeal to you from a different direction than Comrade.
I also tend to veer away from Affirmative Action, and when I smell White Knights (i.e. men who think they're being feminist) I also get riled up.
As evidence, just recently I was arguing in defense of that particular scene in Game Of Thrones, the scene next to Joffrey's corpse.
(If anyone is offended by the above, just read the director's interview regarding that scene.)

And even I think you are, on the whole, wrong in regards to this particular topic.
I could reiterate all the reasons already discussed, but why? My point is "I know what you're saying brah, but I gotta tell you you're wrong."

Really? Because it doesn't sound like you're appealing to anything. You're just saying, "LOL I'm right and you're wrong", with nothing to back it up.

[Daimbert]

Okay, I was pretty much with you until here. I would be totally open to a female military forces leader. I would say though, a good conceptual beginning for such a character would be to in no way resemble the laughing stock of the EU. We want the audience to not be reduced to cringe induced groans whenever she appears.


Bear with me here:

1) I chose her for the Admiral in charge of the main opposition. They've always tended towards incompetence in the movies. The most competent one was Piett, and that's mostly because he wasn't an actual moron like Ozzel (which is why he survived to the end). So her being not terribly competent but being very nasty works well in the movie context.

2) You could present her in-universe as what she is: a cut-rate Tarkin, relying more on surprising weapons than on actual skill. All you need to set this up is have someone talking about her exactly that way, saying "Daala isn't a particularly strong tactician, but the special weapons developed in the Maw give her an element of surprise".

3) If you make the main Admiral on the heroic side someone who studied under Ackbar -- a Calamaran female -- then you have the match-up of tactical wizardry against technological wizardry, which is a callback to Ackbar and Tarkin's history, which you can reference with some nice banter between the two, of "You studied under Ackbar? He learned everything he knows from Tarkin, who I studied under". "Yes, but Ackbar WON his battle, while Tarkin put too much faith in his toys. The same will happen here".

[HasSIn]

The only person from the cast I recognize is Serkis. The rest are a big question mark to me. Here are some random impressions from someone who doesn't know these people at all, literally.


John Boyega -- contender for male lead, I'd guess.
Daisy Ridley -- would probably make a good female lead.
Adam Driver -- some sort of quasi-seedy character in the mold of Han Solo?
Oscar Isaac -- looks annoying as all heck, other than that I have no impression of what he'll do.
Andy Serkis -- wonder if he's going to play directly or just as a voice for some creature.
Domhnall Gleason -- is this the son of Luke?
Max von Sydow -- don't know him from Adam, but he's got to be either the leader of a secret New Republic counterintelligence unit, or a Sith.


As for the original cast returning -- well, I guess that's why it looks like most of them lost a bit of weight. :smallbiggrin:

Anyway, I'll be interested to see what they manage to put onscreen.

I don't want to disrupt your discussion about sexism and portrayal of genders and races in media, but I want to go back to this and mention that Serkis is not doing voice acting, he is actually playing his characters as normal actors do, only using motion capture to capture both - his movements and emotions. So all the facial expressions of Gollum are real Serkis' facial expressions. I just wanted to mention this, because, I think, not many people are appreciating what Serkis is doing and how profound his work is for the cinema, but also for video games and others. :smallwink:

Also my take on the casting news:

I know Boyega from Attack the Block, but not much else, so I'm quite ambivalent about him. I don't know Ridley at all. Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac are both really good actors, coincidentally they appeared together in Coens brothers' latest movie Inside Llewyn Davis. I am really glad that they got their parts in Star wars, which might hopefully bring them more attention that they deserve, I think especially A. Driver is quite a scene stealer. He hadn't had very big roles up to now, but all of his performances were, at least for me, memorable. Anyway, the rumor has it, he was cast as the main antagonist.

As far as Domhnall Gleason is concerned, because I never saw the Harry Potter movies he was in, I know him mainly from his work in Anna Karenina and About Time. I would recommend, especially, the latter movie, if you want to get a feel for the actor. It's a very intelligent British comedy/dramedy and don't get fooled by the trailer, which imho doesn't catch the spirit and essence of the movie. It's not just another romantic comedy. It is much deeper than that. :smallwink:

And Max von Sydow. There is not much to say about him. He is the man, the actor, the Alec Guinness of the new trilogy. :smallbiggrin:

[Jayngfet]

Can't. Sorry. Fact is, there are problems with representation of minorities in the media, and it is a problem, and it does have societal consequences, and it does need to be fixed, and it does need to be talked about, whether or not you like it.

Right.

By the same merit though, J.J. Abrams has no responsibility to fix any of those problems. It's not a thing that was put on his job description, it's not a thing he has any legal obligation to do, and he generally didn't swear an oath of equality when he started working on the script. It'd be nice if he cared to, but it's nothing he's bound to work with.

That's not how Hollywood's system works and it never has been. It's something that's built entirely on cash returns, business plans, and prior examples. Even if he wanted to, the studio would demand a list of successful examples of that sort of casting as long as his arm and then scrutinize those numbers to hell and back. This is something they have every right to do, given how often good intentions with representation can blow up and wind up with those people taking losses of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, which Disney learned the hard way when they made The Princess and the Frog, which wound up being a heavy financial blow on that scale once you divvy up all the numbers.

Disney isn't going to let a star wars film they're committing double that to money wise go without serious scrutiny, especially given that the whole brand is riding on the film. Every one of those actors was chosen with great care and scrutiny under multiple metrics and even beyond just money, there's something in the neighborhood of a thousand people's livelihoods riding on Star Wars VII's success. If you want to talk representation, you have to be able to prove, objectively, that not only will an actor of that specific race or gender do well, but that there are enough actors that'd fit the role at that pay grade that it's worth discussing.

It's not exactly fair, but that's the world we live in. Disney spent four billion dollars to get the rights to this thing and bare minimum 4-5 hundred million is going into the individual films once you account for marketing.

[Olinser]

I don't want to disrupt your discussion about sexism and portrayal of genders and races in media, but I want to go back to this and mention that Serkis is not doing voice acting, he is actually playing his characters as normal actors do, only using motion capture to capture both - his movements and emotions. So all the facial expressions of Gollum are real Serkis' facial expressions. I just wanted to mention this, because, I think, not many people are appreciating what Serkis is doing and how profound his work is for the cinema, but also for video games and others. :smallwink:

Also my take on the casting news:

I know Boyega from Attack the Block, but not much else, so I'm quite ambivalent about him. I don't know Ridley at all. Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac are both really good actors, coincidentally they appeared together in Coens brothers' latest movie Inside Llewyn Davis. I am really glad that they got their parts in Star wars, which might hopefully bring them more attention that they deserve, I think especially A. Driver is quite a scene stealer. He hadn't had very big roles up to now, but all of his performances were, at least for me, memorable. Anyway, the rumor has it, he was cast as the main antagonist.

As far as Domhnall Gleason is concerned, because I never saw the Harry Potter movies he was in, I know him mainly from his work in Anna Karenina and About Time. I would recommend, especially, the latter movie, if you want to get a feel for the actor. It's a very intelligent British comedy/dramedy and don't get fooled by the trailer, which imho doesn't catch the spirit and essence of the movie. It's not just another romantic comedy. It is much deeper than that. :smallwink:

And Max von Sydow. There is not much to say about him. He is the man, the actor, the Alec Guinness of the new trilogy. :smallbiggrin:

Given his area of expertise, I presume that Serkis is going to be playing some variety of weird body alien. Perhaps the same species as Yoda? That could be pretty sweet.

Driver has been all but confirmed to be, if not the main villain, at least the recurring/#2 villain.

Right now I'm kind of operating under the assumption that, until confirmed otherwise, Max von Sydow will be the villain. He just LOOKS like Ancient Plotting Sith Lord. Plus, come on, Evil Brit!!!

Most of the rest I'm willing to give a shot, but they've mostly only had one or zero major leading roles. Hopefully we'll see them rise to the occasion. This is pretty much their career launcher/killer.

[Grif]

Given his area of expertise, I presume that Serkis is going to be playing some variety of weird body alien. Perhaps the same species as Yoda? That could be pretty sweet.

Driver has been all but confirmed to be, if not the main villain, at least the recurring/#2 villain.

Right now I'm kind of operating under the assumption that, until confirmed otherwise, Max von Sydow will be the villain. He just LOOKS like Ancient Plotting Sith Lord. Plus, come on, Evil Brit!!!

Most of the rest I'm willing to give a shot, but they've mostly only had one or zero major leading roles. Hopefully we'll see them rise to the occasion. This is pretty much their career launcher/killer.

I never actually saw Serkis out his voice acting gigs, so I'm cautiously excited to see him in person now.

[TheThan]

[COLOR="#0000CD"]
But TheThan, none of the characters are established yet. There's no one to confuse because the audience has no idea who they are. We don't even need to gender flip anyone when the final script hasn't been approved yet, and is undergoing a complete rewrite under a new scriptwriter.


True, but people are saying there is no difference between an already established character played by a (insert chosen gender, race, sexual preference, creed here), and the same character played by the opposite race, gender, sexual preference, or creed.
I’m simply arguing that there is a difference.

Anyway, back to a less heated discussion.

I suspect Andy Serkis is probably going to be a Sith Lord of some sort. While Max von Sydow is probably going to play some sort of imperial leader. As for the others I can't get a good feel for them, mostly before I've never seen them before.

[Mando Knight]

Most of the rest I'm willing to give a shot, but they've mostly only had one or zero major leading roles. Hopefully we'll see them rise to the occasion. This is pretty much their career launcher/killer.
For Ford, Fisher, and Hamill, Star Wars gave them their first "big" roles, too. We'll see if casting relative/complete unknowns works for Abrams as well as it did for Lucas.

[MLai]

That's not how Hollywood's system works and it never has been..
I think the discussion revolved around what ought to be done, rather than what is going to be done. Obviously you're absolutely correct because money.
Comrade was arguing against the position that (hypothetically) changing the film's cast demographics would make the film less good.

[Aedilred]

Yes, that would be quite interesting. I wonder if they can have him live-acting, then shrink him down and turn him green, say, with CGI. Should be relatively easy compared to creating something out of whole cloth. I've never seen him on film, only heard his Gollum voicing, so I'll have to let others judge what slot he might fill.
You'll have seen him in Return of the King: he played Smeagol as well as Gollum.

He's best known perhaps for playing roles that are slightly creepy/damaged, but there can be a fine line on screen between "slightly creepy" and "genuinely kind-hearted and benevolent", oddly enough, so he could go either way.

Max von Sydow... well, obviously he's going to be playing some old dude. But what that old dude is, who knows. After all, Terence Stamp was the fantastically unmemorable Chancellor Valorum in The Phantom Menace and it wouldn't surprise me too much to see von Sydow in a similar role.

[Legato Endless]

You'll have seen him in Return of the King: he played Smeagol as well as Gollum.

He's best known perhaps for playing roles that are slightly creepy/damaged, but there can be a fine line on screen between "slightly creepy" and "genuinely kind-hearted and benevolent", oddly enough, so he could go either way.

Max von Sydow... well, obviously he's going to be playing some old dude. But what that old dude is, who knows. After all, Terence Stamp was the fantastically unmemorable Chancellor Valorum in The Phantom Menace and it wouldn't surprise me too much to see von Sydow in a similar role.

I would be. This is going to be vetted through so many people that the idea of wasting someone like Terence Stamp on generic 1 scene politician isn't going to fly.

[Aedilred]

It depends, I think. I don't think Max von Sydow would get a role quite so bland as Terence Stamp did, because hopefully nobody will, but he might get a part that's not significantly larger. Star Wars is still a major property and will have a lot of pulling power for cameo roles. Some of the "name actors" associated with the project at this stage might have relatively small roles and just have been announced now to help build buzz.

[Legato Endless]

I think, regardless of prominence, whatever he gets will be quite self contained. You can't cast anyone in their mid 80s with the contracted assurance he will be available for episode 9, unfortunately.

[Zrak]

True, but people are saying there is no difference between an already established character played by a (insert chosen gender, race, sexual preference, creed here), and the same character played by the opposite race, gender, sexual preference, or creed.
I’m simply arguing that there is a difference.
I don't think anyone was saying there would be no difference, but rather that the same story could be told with the characters' demographics changed. Though the actress playing Hanna Solo might make some different choices than the actor playing Han, the fundamental aspects of "the story the writer wanted to tell" would remain the same.

EDIT: Also, to be clear, nobody is arguing that this is true of every story, only that it is true in this case. The core story of Star Wars, its "creative vision," is not reliant upon or even really related to the identarian categories of its central characters.

[Dragonus45]

Can't. Sorry. Fact is, there are problems with representation of minorities in the media, and it is a problem, and it does have societal consequences, and it does need to be fixed, and it does need to be talked about, whether or not you like it.

Then write it yourself, or direct it or edit or animate or follow your personal talent happens lead you. I think the person or persons who creates a story need only be beholden to themselves and know that whatever choices they made made the story a better one from start to finish. If the story in my head is about three white guys a white girl and a black guy at the end of the day its MY story to tell and everyone else to listen too, or not listen to as the case may be. You can't hold other people and their stories to what you think the story should be, its not anyone's story but theirs and we just watch it.

As a side not, since when did acknowledging that men and women are sexually dimorphous become sexist? Last I checked there were numerous differences both physically and neurologically between the two genders.

[Benthesquid]

As a side not, since when did acknowledging that men and women are sexually dimorphous become sexist? Last I checked there were numerous differences both physically and neurologically between the two genders.

Averages, man. On average, men are taller than women. However, for the vast majority of men, there exist women who are taller than them (at the extreme end, meet Siddiqa Parveen (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/siddiqa-parveen-worlds-tallest-woman-3069717), who is seven foot eight. But even setting aside cases of gigantism, I'm six one and I've met women taller than me). Likewise, for the vast majority of women, there exist men who are shorter than them. This extends to pretty much any legitimate difference between men and women. At best you can say, "On average," but using that as an argument for any specific case is likely to make one seem the ass, at best. (Someone with more formal debate training than me can probably name the fallacy I'm describing here).

Throw in the suspicious ways in which Evolutionary Psychology tends to be used to reinforce the gender roles of the last fifty years, which have by no means been the case throughout recorded history, and no, I don't think there's an awful lot to be said in favor of the "But women are just different," argument.

[Olinser]

I think, regardless of prominence, whatever he gets will be quite self contained. You can't cast anyone in their mid 80s with the contracted assurance he will be available for episode 9, unfortunately.

That obviously depends on how exactly they plan on filming the trilogy.

If they're doing a Lord of the Rings or Hobbit type deal where they film the entire trilogy at once it would probably be safest.

It also depends on the script.

If they do some kind of storyline where Sydow is Evil Ancient Sith Spirit trying to free himself and take over a human body, you could handwave a new actor in as soon as he was resurrected with a, "Well, he took OVER a body, he didn't make a new one".

[MLai]

(1) Don't like it? Fine, don't see it.
(2) Well let's see you do better!

Let's take care not to repeat the 2 points above, even in passing. It's 2 such fallacious talking points by now that you can see it's not even responded to anymore. But it still hurts my brain to have to read them.

[Zrak]

Then write it yourself, or direct it or edit or animate or follow your personal talent happens lead you.

This is hardly a solution to a pervasive problem in mainstream media. Firstly, one does not need to be a creator to be a critic; one can be troubled by the exclusion of significant segments of the population from mainstream media without being a screenwriter or director. Secondly, the creation of an independent work, almost by definition, does not really address a trend in mainstream media. The work even becoming popular enough to intervene in that discourse is a longshot, to say the least. Even if it does become popular enough, it will still be an interjection from outside the mainstream; something from the periphery edging its way into the center does not necessarily reflect or effect a change in the center itself. Thirdly, if you are suggesting that Comrade drop everything to become a Hollywood screenwriter and write diversely-casted blockbusters, the impracticality of that solution is exceeded only by its inefficacy. Aside from the fact that becoming a screenwriter for massively expensive summer blockbusters is one hell of a "Step One," I think you're vastly overestimating the level of control screenwriters typically have over their projects.


I think the person or persons who creates a story need only be beholden to themselves and know that whatever choices they made made the story a better one from start to finish.

So, just to be clear, your argument is that white characters make for better stories than people of color and male characters make for better stories than female characters? Unless your contention is that stories about white males are intrinsically superior to stories about other sorts of characters (which I hope it is not) I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning. If the story is not expressly concerned with matters of race or gender, such that the race or gender of the character is relevant to the plot or the film's thematic concerns, why else would choosing to make the majority of characters white males "make the story a better one form start to finish"?


As a side not, since when did acknowledging that men and women are sexually dimorphous become sexist? Last I checked there were numerous differences both physically and neurologically between the two genders.

That is not the argument being made. The argument being made is that it is sexist to assert that women necessarily and invariably do or do not act, think, or feel a certain way — that they cannot behave in another manner. It is not sexist to say that Hanna Solo would have different body fat distributions than Han does, not to mention different genitalia; it is sexist to say (or at least imply) that a woman would not and, indeed, could not behave in the manner that Han Solo does.

[Dragonus45]

So, just to be clear, your argument is that white characters make for better stories than people of color and male characters make for better stories than female characters? Unless your contention is that stories about white males are intrinsically superior to stories about other sorts of characters (which I hope it is not) I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning. If the story is not expressly concerned with matters of race or gender, such that the race or gender of the character is relevant to the plot or the film's thematic concerns, why else would choosing to make the majority of characters white males "make the story a better one form start to finish"?



That is not the argument being made. The argument being made is that it is sexist to assert that women necessarily and invariably do or do not act, think, or feel a certain way — that they cannot behave in another manner. It is not sexist to say that Hanna Solo would have different body fat distributions than Han does, not to mention different genitalia; it is sexist to say (or at least imply) that a woman would not and, indeed, could not behave in the manner that Han Solo does.

Ok just to be clear that is nothing like what I said and you know it, don't put words in my mouth to make me sound racist like that. What I said was that if a person wants to tell a story and that story has white characters, or black characters, or more women than men or more men that women or any combination of the above then it's no ones business but theirs. They have the responsibility to tell the story they want to tell their way, and if the character in their head happen that's not a problem they need to be called out for. And the argument was that a Male character and a Female character would probably be different people because they would have different life experiences even if they were born to the same parents in the same situations. Not totally different, because many of the same things would be likely to happen in their lives but there would also be likely differences. Now since these aren't real people that means less and we can just decide that things are the same, but if the character appears in the writers head as a guy and the writer definitely feels that this character is a guy then why should he have to change the race or gender just because someone out there wants him to champion their social issue. Heck how would he pick which one to champion there are a dozen of them that are all important.

[Zrak]

Ok just to be clear that is nothing like what I said and you know it, don't put words in my mouth to make me sound racist like that.
I didn't put words in your mouth. You said that a creator must "know that whatever choices they made made the story better from start to finish." Assuming the race and gender of the character is not a plot point or thematic issue, I see no way in which the choice to make a character white and male would "[make] the story better from start to finish." If the stories of white males are not intrinsically superior to stories of other people, then the choice to fill a story that could be about anyone exclusively or almost exclusively with white males does not improve the story. It doesn't necessarily make the story worse, either, but I don't think it's tenable to argue that it makes the story better without also implying some very unpleasant things.


What I said was that if a person wants to tell a story and that story has white characters, or black characters, or more women than men or more men that women or any combination of the above then it's no ones business but theirs. They have the responsibility to tell the story they want to tell their way, and if the character in their head happen that's not a problem they need to be called out for.
I disagree entirely. A creator's decisions are not above question, criticism, or even reproach; the way they choose to tell their story is very much the business of those who consume it. That's why you get to click how many little stars you want to give a movie on Netflix. That's why newspapers pay people like Roger Ebert and Peter Travers — why they pay people like Rex Reed remains a mystery — to watch movies and say whether or not they are good.

In other words, audiences and critics have every right to question a creator's decisions, and the creator should be able to justify, or at least explain, those decisions; as you say, the creator should know their choices made the story better and be able to explain why. I think a lot of the problem is that the creator's "vision" is an issue that should be broached and discussed; if the writer happens to "see" scientists as white or Asian in his head every time he creates one, work after work, I think it's worth asking why he just "happens" to have that come into his head. It's one thing to picture a character as a white guy; it's another thing entirely to picture basically every character in basically everything you write as a white guy.


And the argument was that a Male character and a Female character would probably be different people because they would have different life experiences even if they were born to the same parents in the same situations. Not totally different, because many of the same things would be likely to happen in their lives but there would also be likely differences.
This is fair and true for movies set in the real world or even fictional settings which function based on most or all of the same rules. That is why Star Wars, home of democratically elected 14-year-old Queens who go on to marry telekinetic space samurai who turn into evil cyborgs, is being brought up as a specific opportunity to avoid this sort of real-world baggage.

[MLai]

Star Wars is predominantly filled with Western First World white male humanity because they need their exotic ethnicity options open to populate all the weird and slapstick alien characters.
It wouldn't make much sense to have a human character with a faux-Jamaican accent if the clownish CGI alien also has the same accent. :smallwink:

[Kitten Champion]

It is slightly amusing that white male is the default state for a franchise which borrows so heavily from everything Samurai and traditionally Eastern generally. It's not whitewashing since it isn't a Japanese period piece or even Earth regardless of how Asian-seeming names and roles are being applied to white actors, and as I said race and gender do not matter in-universe for any logical reason... just that, the only Asian in the movies I can remember at all who isn't some piece of **** offensive stereotype alien was one of the pilots at the end of A New Hope, and I think he died (honourably, I suppose).

[russdm]

I don't know whether to offer up some popcorn for others to eat while watching the entertaining argument this thread turned into or to be more appalled at how much of an argument occurred as a result of a few comments.

I am mostly glad who have a cast list and something that apparently no one has caught on to yet: If a black dude is the hero, then a black dude won't die first so it has to be one of the white dudes to die first unless they cast a black extra to die first.

[Jayngfet]

I think the discussion revolved around what ought to be done, rather than what is going to be done. Obviously you're absolutely correct because money.
Comrade was arguing against the position that (hypothetically) changing the film's cast demographics would make the film less good.

:smallconfused:

In that's the case, we all ought to have ten million dollars and an army of sexy robots. But good luck explaining that to a bank teller.

What you ought to have has no bearing on reality. You look at what you do have and try to see what you can have.
Then best complaining about Ought-to's does with a company on this level does, is maybe get a bone tossed every time something with low risk comes up and somebody in charge feels like being nice. See also: A lesbian couple showing up ...on Disney Channel, on a non-finale episode late into the last season of a series that was done anyway, meaning that the network had almost nothing to lose, particularly with so many of the actors and the network president leaving shortly after anyway.

That's really the best Ought-to's can expect for screen presence for any demographic. Years of campaigning yielding incredibly tiny results in the form of throwaway characters, granted out of pity rather than any kind of confidence.


I am mostly glad who have a cast list and something that apparently no one has caught on to yet: If a black dude is the hero, then a black dude won't die first so it has to be one of the white dudes to die first unless they cast a black extra to die first.

Hey, it can be a light adventure that ends with the hero dying right before the end.

Though at this point we're being obtuse for the sake of it.

[Zrak]

In that's the case, we all ought to have ten million dollars and an army of sexy robots. But good luck explaining that to a bank teller.

I don't really think we ought to have those things. If you ask me, everyone in the world having an army of sexy robots would turn the future into a hellish, unending war over control of Uncanny Valley.

[russdm]

I don't really think we ought to have those things. If you ask me, everyone in the world having an army of sexy robots would turn the future into a hellish, unending war over control of Uncanny Valley.

Why exactly? If you program them to be able to perform a limited set of functions, doesn't that remove that possible problem?

[Zrak]

It was just a play on the term "uncanny valley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)" and the idea of an "army" of sexy robots.

EDIT: Unless I'm misunderstanding and you're familiar with the term, in which case, yeah, it is totally possible to make sexy robots that don't fall in the uncanny valley. Actually, I guess "sexy robots" pretty much categorically cannot, since I think being "sexy" implies that they don't. I mean, for most people. I guess if one were into that sort of thing, one could choose some super uncanny robots to be in one's sexy army. That's cool, no judgment. What happens in Sexy Robot Army Utopia stays in Sexy Robot Army Utopia.

[Grif]

It was just a play on the term "uncanny valley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)" and the idea of an "army" of sexy robots.

EDIT: Unless I'm misunderstanding and you're familiar with the term, in which case, yeah, it is totally possible to make sexy robots that don't fall in the uncanny valley. Actually, I guess "sexy robots" pretty much categorically cannot, since I think being "sexy" implies that they don't. I mean, for most people. I guess if one were into that sort of thing, one could choose some super uncanny robots to be in one's sexy army. That's cool, no judgment. What happens in Sexy Robot Army Utopia stays in Sexy Robot Army Utopia.

I can't help but feel amused at the odd turn the thread has taken. :smalltongue:

On a slightly more on-topic note, any word on CGI usage? Do you think the movie will go the way of the prequel trilogy?

[Kitten Champion]

I think it'll look like Star Trek. Compared to the prequels, more real sets, more focus on verisimilitude and functionality, less... cartoony. Part of it because of bumps in technology making effects blend more seamlessly into reality, but mostly that's how Abrams tends to think. Which generally works, his movies look good because there's so much real blended with the fake that you don't get that persistent feeling of falseness where your eyes register the incongruous nature of full CGI environments. This is something Spielberg and Cameron realized that Lucas unfortunately did not.

[MLai]

I was gonna say, if I had an army of sexy robots my first impulse would not have been to make war.
Though it depends on the use of the word "sexy." Ppl consider Transformers i.e. giant fightin' robots as "sexy", which is not my meaning.


Which generally works, his movies look good because there's so much real blended with the fake that you don't get that persistent feeling of falseness where your eyes register the incongruous nature of full CGI environments. This is something Spielberg and Cameron realized that Lucas unfortunately did not.
And which Peter Jackson has forgotten.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Hmmm, looking at the main cast list, I'm immediately expecting the plot to be about Luke Skywalker's son winning over (and eventually saving) a girl while hanging out with his kooky black friend (Who happens to be the son of a famous character). Gollum-guy will be the Yoda replacement, and the evil looking guy will be evil... I'm not sure what the other 2 people are there for, maybe to give the Skywalker kid some more people to hang out with. Maybe one of them will be the villain's number 2 baddie.

If some or all of those things are wrong, that would be good. But I'd bet they're probably going with what people know about Star Warsy stuff. Like (Abrams did with) the Star Trek reboot, this is probably going to be something safe and familiar, to prove that Star Wars is still a marketable brand.

[BeerMug Paladin]

It's better to write a good STORY, and cast people that fit the story you have written. If that ends up being 5 white men? Fine. If it ends up being 5 Asian women and a Jewish man? Equally fine.
This is a valid standard for good writing, yes. But you are aware that this is not how these scripts are actually produced, right? Especially when it concerns a big franchise like this one.

Tokenism is making sure to put a black guy in there, and making sure there's a girl around. It is not about trying to create a demographically accurate cast of characters. It is about checking off items on a list. And then when you're done, adding more white guys.

Often, movies are written around those requirements in order to be maximally marketable. And having those requirements in the first place is what the problem is. A lot of people are just annoyed that it's the industry standard to do this kind of thing.

As always, with this case, we can't be sure these requirements were placed on the script, but if they were, we would get exactly this outcome. It's a potential indicator that they are more concerned with holding to some formula rather than crafting a good story.

Of course, they could easily have an amazing story told with exactly this casting that could be brave and interesting, and use the audience's expectations of tokenism in order to surprise them. (I can think of something that would work). But I'm not expecting them to do anything like that.

[Beanie]

What you ought to have has no bearing on reality. You look at what you do have and try to see what you can have.

But that line of thinking is basically just a skip away from saying "If you don't like it, go and make something you do like." Should we never complain about anything we don't like because we technically don't have the power to change it? If that was the case, all critical discussion about any kind of media would just dry up completely. I can't talk about the poor plot direction some book took, because the author isn't going to read my post and rewrite their book? :smalltongue:

Like, nobody in this thread is under the delusion that us having this discussion on this forum is somehow going to get the cast of Star Wars VII changed. That would be silly. We voice our gripes to make them known, to let people with the same gripes know "Hey, it's okay, you're not alone! I see this problem too!" and to bring said gripes into the view of people who haven't really thought about this kind of thing before. Because raising awareness of problems is a good thing. Maybe those people who didn't think about it before might go on to create their own works with representation in mind. And what it might achieve, when repeated over many many (Many!) years, in forums and comment sections all over the internet, and in conversations in real life - along with, yes, making our own things that demonstrate our values - is eventually creating a culture that does take these things into consideration when making blockbusters, and that knows that casting more than one of Y or Z rather than a billion of X is not in fact going to alienate your entire audience. :smallsmile:

[Dr.Epic]

Allegedly the original cast will be returning as well.

Does that mean Porkins will be back? :D

[warty goblin]

But that line of thinking is basically just a skip away from saying "If you don't like it, go and make something you do like." Should we never complain about anything we don't like because we technically don't have the power to change it? If that was the case, all critical discussion about any kind of media would just dry up completely. I can't talk about the poor plot direction some book took, because the author isn't going to read my post and rewrite their book? :smalltongue:

Honestly I think in a lot, but not all, cases 'go do it yourself' is a completely reasonable point. For books certainly; there's no particularly massive requirements in terms of budgets or esoteric technical skills required in operating your basic word processor. 'All' it takes is the ability to write, which can be learned, an idea, and a crapload of determination. These days a person can even self-publish if they're so inclined. For multi-million dollar movies though, I don't think the argument stands up particularly well, since the price tag of making one of the things independently is prohibitive.

Nor do I think this argument negates any sort of critical engagement with a text. It may negate a critical engagement that consists entirely of complaining, but I don't think that's a particularly enormous loss even if somehow this response were able to make people stop complaining. Which I find somewhat less probable that waking up tomorrow morning to discover I've been elected Supreme Planetary Leader by unanimous vote. It still leaves open the wide range of interpreting a text; hardly a well that's bound to run dry in the near future.

[Zrak]

I still think "go do it yourself" is of limited use when arguing about the mainstream. As you say, books are probably the most likely candidate for a DIY solution to one's concerns, but at this point books are tangential-at-best to mainstream media as a whole and lack a particularly unified mainstream even within their own medium.

Though it wouldn't "negate" a critical engagement that did not consist solely of complaints, that attitude would still negate every possible negative opinion in such an engagement if it were accepted as a valid refutation of those criticisms. In other words, a review that lauds a work's intricate plotting while criticizing its shallow characterization would be reified into a puff piece about the plot; that attitude does not just negate critical engagements constituted completely of complaints, it turns all critical engagement into the pull-out quotes we see on movie posters.

[warty goblin]

I still think "go do it yourself" is of limited use when arguing about the mainstream. As you say, books are probably the most likely candidate for a DIY solution to one's concerns, but at this point books are tangential-at-best to mainstream media as a whole and lack a particularly unified mainstream even within their own medium.

Could be, I've fallen so delightfully out of anything that could be considered mainstream anymore that I have no clue.


Though it wouldn't "negate" a critical engagement that did not consist solely of complaints, that attitude would still negate every possible negative opinion in such an engagement if it were accepted as a valid refutation of those criticisms. In other words, a review that lauds a work's intricate plotting while criticizing its shallow characterization would be reified into a puff piece about the plot; that attitude does not just negate critical engagements constituted completely of complaints, it turns all critical engagement into the pull-out quotes we see on movie posters.

Only if it was considered a sensible response to every possible complaint, which I don't think most reasonable people would hold forth as plausible. No other criticism is given such a broad operational scope. That is, I don't think it's a reasonable response to 'the dialog's a little clunky right here,' but may well be to 'I hated everything about this except the title font, here's 30,000 words explaining why.' Mostly because at that point, I start to seriously wonder why the person is bothering, and whether they (and everybody else) wouldn't be better served if they actually tried to create something they would like instead of shredding whatever this thing is.

But I realize I hold some fairly heretical views on this sort of thing. I tend to have more respect for the creation of something than its critique; particularly incredibly negative critiques. That's pretty easy compared with making even a pretty bad new thing. It can be valuable to be sure, criticism is a major driver of improvement, but at some point I think it tips over into a self-indulgence on the part of the critic. Similarly, I tend to find the criticism of people who actually have some real experience working in whatever medium to be more interesting than that of people who don't. I'm not a writer, but I've done enough creative work to know that until a person really tries to make something, it's pretty unlikely they have any great understanding of how that creation actually works. My woodcarvings are pretty crappy, a fact I'd be the first to admit, but I'll take the criticism of somebody who's also sat down with a block of wood and an idea they want to shape far more seriously than a schmuck who's never worried about how to deal with a whorl in the grain or felt the skin of their thumbs start to crack from the pressure of guiding a blade. Both can point out that my finish is rough in that spot, but only the second will understand it's because the wood was spalling under the knife, or be able to tell me anything useful about how to deal with that problem in future.

In other words, I'm a touch of an elitist when it comes to creative endeavors.

And yes, I'm well aware of the irony of this post.

[Zrak]

Only if it was considered a sensible response to every possible complaint, which I don't think most reasonable people would hold forth as plausible. No other criticism is given such a broad operational scope. That is, I don't think it's a reasonable response to 'the dialog's a little clunky right here,' but may well be to 'I hated everything about this except the title font, here's 30,000 words explaining why.'

I disagree. If the fact that a criticism will not change a work of art is accepted as a valid refutation of that criticism, it is as applicable to "the dialogue is a little clunky" as it is to "I hated everything." The criticism will not change the dialogue that has been written and, in all likelihood, will not even improve the author's dialogue in the future, especially if one is not a published, professional critic. If we accept the premise that this inability to effect change in the work criticized renders a criticism invalid, virtually all negative criticisms about a work are necessarily invalid.


But I realize I hold some fairly heretical views on this sort of thing. I tend to have more respect for the creation of something than its critique; particularly incredibly negative critiques.
I think this reflects a narrow and inaccurate view of criticism; a work of criticism is as much a creation as any other work of non-fiction. Incredibly negative criticism has the same potential pitfalls as the fictional or non-fictional Jeremiad, and tends to lack the nuance or insight of more thoughtful, balanced examinations, but that is not to say it's wholly bad or never meaningful. In general, though, I think criticism is too often viewed as a parasite that draws its life from the effort and creativity of others, when criticism is — or at least can be — as much a creative endeavor as any work it critiques. I've read a lot of criticism that, even when it's extremely negative, has more literary merit than the work it is critiquing.

[Magatsu Izanagi]

just that, the only Asian in the movies I can remember at all who isn't some piece of **** offensive stereotype alien was one of the pilots at the end of A New Hope, and I think he died (honourably, I suppose).
Let me guess, you're referring to the Neimodians. As a person of Asian descent, I honestly did not see what was so racist about the Neimoidians until it was pointed out to me. Making claims about how the Neimoidians (or Jar-Jar Binks, for that matter) are supposedly racist stereotypes probably says more about the racism of the one making the comparison than about the racism of George Lucas. If you really want to see offensive Asian stereotypes, watch an episode of Family Guy instead.

[warty goblin]

I disagree. If the fact that a criticism will not change a work of art is accepted as a valid refutation of that criticism, it is as applicable to "the dialogue is a little clunky" as it is to "I hated everything." The criticism will not change the dialogue that has been written and, in all likelihood, will not even improve the author's dialogue in the future, especially if one is not a published, professional critic. If we accept the premise that this inability to effect change in the work criticized renders a criticism invalid, virtually all negative criticisms about a work are necessarily invalid.

I don't think the statement that a criticism won't change what it's criticizing is equivalent to the statement that if you don't like it, maybe you should produce something you do like. For one thing the first is simply a statement of fact, the second combines observed diagnosis and suggested remedy. To elaborate, criticism can't change what is written, and either you regard this fact as making criticism uniformly worthless or not. I'd suggest that here there is not a lot in the way of middle ground. However 'if you don't like it, maybe you should make something you do like' leaves room for a middle ground. Substantial room in fact. There can still be value in the criticism, even if the response of the critiqued is that perhaps the remedy for the critic's complaint is for the critic to produce something that they will like. I can for instance argue that Terry Goodkind writes horrible and morally reprehensible books, and still note that he has in point of fact written a book and I have not, and if I so fervently wish that there were a greater preponderance of non-horrible books out there, my efforts may be more productively employed by writing a new book instead of complaining about an old one. There is nothing about that renders my criticism any more or less meaningful than it already was.


I think this reflects a narrow and inaccurate view of criticism; a work of criticism is as much a creation as any other work of non-fiction. Incredibly negative criticism has the same potential pitfalls as the fictional or non-fictional Jeremiad, and tends to lack the nuance or insight of more thoughtful, balanced examinations, but that is not to say it's wholly bad or never meaningful. In general, though, I think criticism is too often viewed as a parasite that draws its life from the effort and creativity of others, when criticism is — or at least can be — as much a creative endeavor as any work it critiques. I've read a lot of criticism that, even when it's extremely negative, has more literary merit than the work it is critiquing.
I said I tend to respect the original creation more. I don't see that as saying that criticism is universally of no value, or even uniformly of less value than the original. It's a statement that, on average, the former is worthy of more respect than the latter in my eyes. The second part of that paragraph was pointing out that someone who has actually worked in a field is likely to have a richer understanding of the challenges of doing so than somebody who has not. This does not imply that the opinion of somebody outside of that field is of no value, merely that it is perforce probably less well informed in some key areas, and therefore on balance of less value.

[Zrak]

I don't think the statement that a criticism won't change what it's criticizing is equivalent to the statement that if you don't like it, maybe you should produce something you do like.
Ah, I was making my arguments in reference to a different aspect of the post you quoted than the one to which it seems you were responding; I took your comments to be in reference to the lines "Should we never complain about anything we don't like because we technically don't have the power to change it? If that was the case, all critical discussion about any kind of media would just dry up completely," which are about a criticism not changing what it criticizes.


I said I tend to respect the original creation more. I don't see that as saying that criticism is universally of no value, or even uniformly of less value than the original. It's a statement that, on average, the former is worthy of more respect than the latter in my eyes.
I may not have phrased myself clearly, here; the inherent separation of criticism from creation — the attitude that a work of criticism is not, itself, an "original creation" — is the point I'm challenging. Writing a criticism of a work or an author or a genre is no different and no less original a creation than when you produce a woodcarving of an owl or of a ship, or a painter produces a picture of a scene from literature or mythology. If you view criticism not as a derivative of "real" creation, but as its own, original creative endeavor, you can enjoy it a lot more and get a lot more out of it. I think relegating criticism to realm different and implicitly lesser than that of an Original Creation is the exact sort of attitude you, yourself, decried in the earlier thread about what is art and what gives art value; good criticism requires no less skill (or, as I believe you put it, "craft") than weaving, music, carving, or poetry.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

It is slightly amusing that white male is the default state for a franchise which borrows so heavily from everything Samurai and traditionally Eastern generally. It's not whitewashing since it isn't a Japanese period piece or even Earth regardless of how Asian-seeming names and roles are being applied to white actors, and as I said race and gender do not matter in-universe for any logical reason... just that, the only Asian in the movies I can remember at all who isn't some piece of **** offensive stereotype alien was one of the pilots at the end of A New Hope, and I think he died (honourably, I suppose).
I'd make the case that, given the nature of the "cultural borrowing" in Star Wars (and the predominance of the "monomyth" in the conception of the movie), it almost is apropos.

[Beanie]

It probably would have helped if I had phrased my point a bit more elegantly: "criticism" rather than "complaining about things we don't like." :smallredface: If it was indeed literally just pure complaining it wouldn't be a great loss to critical discourse.

From a personal standpoint I kind of agree with warty goblin, in that I don't really consider it a good use of my time to criticize things I don't like; I would rather just move on to something else that I hopefully will like, because it's not like the thing is doing any harm by existing, and subjectivity of taste and all that. (I tend to reserve said criticisms for aspects of things that I DO think are doing harm by existing, such as the representation issue that's come up in this thread.) But I would also agree with Zrak that criticism can be useful and a creative endeavor in and of itself. Criticism can be a good way of fleshing out our ideas and sparking debate about what we consider valuable. In that context, saying that you would be better off making something you'd like better is sort of a non-sequitur, because the act of formulating a criticism itself takes on its own value, as does discussion that stems from it. While it's useful sometimes to remember to not get too caught up in essentially hating on stuff we don't like when we could be doing better things, I just think we should take care to not go too far down a line of thought that can end up stifling conversation.

[Legato Endless]

That obviously depends on how exactly they plan on filming the trilogy.

If they're doing a Lord of the Rings or Hobbit type deal where they film the entire trilogy at once it would probably be safest.

It also depends on the script.

True, but we know this isn't the case. LOTR was a huge financial risk, though it certainly paid off. Disney will film and release each Episode individually. Now, I do think we are going to see more of an connection than the previous trilogies. The original Star Wars is a typical trilogy in the standard model. The first film stands on its own, the second two are deeply interconnected. The prequel trilogy also uses this model for the first film, despite completely not needing to, and was frankly a mistake. While I never found Machete Order to be fairly convincing, the fact that you can completely cut the Phantom Menace out and still perfectly understand Episodes II and III demonstrates a distinct lack of foresight. I think we'll get something in between. Episode 7 will have a problem at its center which is solved by the end of the film, but we'll see a larger number of set up for 8 and 9.


If they do some kind of storyline where Sydow is Evil Ancient Sith Spirit trying to free himself and take over a human body, you could handwave a new actor in as soon as he was resurrected with a, "Well, he took OVER a body, he didn't make a new one".

As demonstrated by the EU, this is certainly an idea that could fit in Star Wars, though I've seen few believable examples of it being pulled off. Oddly, body changing also often changes the character's dialogue, as though the writer themselves starts thinking of them as a different character. It can be done, but I am leery of the execution after so many failures.

Let me guess, you're referring to the Neimodians. As a person of Asian descent, I honestly did not see what was so racist about the Neimoidians until it was pointed out to me. Making claims about how the Neimoidians (or Jar-Jar Binks, for that matter) are supposedly racist stereotypes probably says more about the racism of the one making the comparison than about the racism of George Lucas. If you really want to see offensive Asian stereotypes, watch an episode of Family Guy instead.

I am not entirely so certain. When I saw the prequel trilogy, my only thoughts were that the Trade Federation was greedy, cowardly, and dumb. That said, the first time I encountered a historical depiction of the Jewish caricature in Middle Ages Europe, I would not have understood the antisemitism for what it was, as I had not met many Jews with brilliant red hair, nor cloven hooves and tail. I would say I find something…off about the fact that Nute Gunray's voice acting was derived from a mangled Asian accent. When you have a non Asian actor imitate a Thai actor reading the dialogue, I have to wonder what the purpose is in a space swashbuckler, and if it couldn't be accomplished some other way.

[TheThan]

Personally I don’t buy the machete order either.
I feel it doesn’t make sense to chop up the orginal trilogy and shoe horn episodes II and III in between V and VI. Talk about losing the plot.
I feel, that it’s best to watch them in the order they were made (IV, V, VI, I, II, III). Like the machete order nothing is spoiled, but we’re not fitting a different story in the middle of it.

Anyway on to more joyous topic:
I realized that with Peter Mayhew slated to be in the new movie, and Disney rebuilding star wars canon; the events of Vector Prime will not have happened which means:


Chewbacca will no longer have died on Sernpidal.

You can all thank me later.

on top of that, first official trailer for starwars rebels:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_soLH5MWGOg

[Jayngfet]

Let me guess, you're referring to the Neimodians. As a person of Asian descent, I honestly did not see what was so racist about the Neimoidians until it was pointed out to me. Making claims about how the Neimoidians (or Jar-Jar Binks, for that matter) are supposedly racist stereotypes probably says more about the racism of the one making the comparison than about the racism of George Lucas. If you really want to see offensive Asian stereotypes, watch an episode of Family Guy instead.

In all honesty, yeah.

I mean, I spent years in the west indies, so I know what a Jamaican dialect sounds like. I have never once been able to make that connection no matter how often it gets reiterated, and most parodies like The Simpsons change it entirely for the point of the joke anyway. Of all the badly executed stereotypes I've seen, Jar-Jar never even gets close to my list, and it's never once come up even when talking about Star-Wars to an actual Jamaican from Jamaica. People saw a bunch of flaps and assumed they were dreadlocks despite behaving entirely differently, heard some weird speech and assumed it was a stereotype of a people they'd probably never even heard outside of a Bob Marley song, and decided that they wanted to get offended.


I still think "go do it yourself" is of limited use when arguing about the mainstream. As you say, books are probably the most likely candidate for a DIY solution to one's concerns, but at this point books are tangential-at-best to mainstream media as a whole and lack a particularly unified mainstream even within their own medium.

Though it wouldn't "negate" a critical engagement that did not consist solely of complaints, that attitude would still negate every possible negative opinion in such an engagement if it were accepted as a valid refutation of those criticisms. In other words, a review that lauds a work's intricate plotting while criticizing its shallow characterization would be reified into a puff piece about the plot; that attitude does not just negate critical engagements constituted completely of complaints, it turns all critical engagement into the pull-out quotes we see on movie posters.


To clarify, I'm not saying "go do it yourself", because god knows none of us have three hundred million burning a hole in our back pockets. I'm saying prove it's worth being done. Not in a sense of "prove it makes a few people feel better" but "prove this three hundred will turn into four after a few weeks in theaters".

We had this conversation like six months ago, and it was generally agreed that a blockbuster with a female lead could make major money, based on figures shown. Of course, it turns out Lionsgate was banking on that at the same time with their Hunger Games sequel and it did pay off. Disney did another feature with Frozen and made even more money, so that argument should be well and truly settled by now, given that numbers don't lie.

The thing is, you kind of have to do that with every single demographic every time, and it gets harder the lower a demographic gets in terms of percentages. A mostly even gender split is one thing, but a third of the population is harder, a quarter harder still, and ten percent or less reeeeally difficult. That's not to say it's not a noble goal or not worth doing, but it's an entirely different sort of discussion from the sort I always see forming.

[Aedilred]

In all honesty, yeah.

I mean, I spent years in the west indies, so I know what a Jamaican dialect sounds like. I have never once been able to make that connection no matter how often it gets reiterated, and most parodies like The Simpsons change it entirely for the point of the joke anyway. Of all the badly executed stereotypes I've seen, Jar-Jar never even gets close to my list, and it's never once come up even when talking about Star-Wars to an actual Jamaican from Jamaica. People saw a bunch of flaps and assumed they were dreadlocks despite behaving entirely differently, heard some weird speech and assumed it was a stereotype of a people they'd probably never even heard outside of a Bob Marley song, and decided that they wanted to get offended.
I never really got the Jamaican Jar-Jar thing, no. However, Watto is a walking, or rather flying, Jewish stereotype - and a pretty primitive and negative one at that - if ever I saw one, to the point where if pressed I'd have to say it's probably actually antisemitic. Nute Gunray and co. weren't much better either on the Asian terrible-kinda-racist-accent front. I spotted those without having it pointed out, mind - Jar-Jar I would never have made the purported connection and still don't really see it now.

[Kitten Champion]

That brings up an interesting point. For most part, these movies are a distillation of mid-to-early twentieth century space adventure serials, which like Indiana Jones is couched in the theoretical creator's parochialism and general attempt at mass appeal towards a semi-educated audience of the white lower-class. That's why you can kind of shrug off the various degrees of utter wrongness that are piece of **** stereotypical aliens... even in the prequels.

So the question is, do you think Abrams is going to have a blackface alien hanging about in episode 7? I'd say it's unlikely, but ****ing Bay's Skids and Mudflap prove my position untenable.

[Grif]

I never really got the Jamaican Jar-Jar thing, no. However, Watto is a walking, or rather flying, Jewish stereotype - and a pretty primitive and negative one at that - if ever I saw one, to the point where if pressed I'd have to say it's probably actually antisemitic. Nute Gunray and co. weren't much better either on the Asian terrible-kinda-racist-accent front. I spotted those without having it pointed out, mind - Jar-Jar I would never have made the purported connection and still don't really see it now.

As an Asian, I never saw the connection between Neimodians and the purported bad Asian stereotype either.

[Psyren]

When 90% characters in your movie are white males, it might say something about you. Maybe, the fact that you are stuck in the past. Don't ask "why include female and black characters". Ask, rather, "Why not?".

Thank you.


Is it a good thing or a bad thing I don’t really recognize any names?

I don’t follow celebrity news at all so I’m basically clueless.

This, and I'm too lazy to trawl IMDB. Anything notable that these guys were in?

[pendell]

Reading the discussion of sexy robots being in uncanny valley, I just wanted to point out that robot prostitutes have been seriously proposed (http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/robot-prostitutes-120423.htm).

ETA: And one prototype (http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/sex-robot-initially-health-aid.htm)

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

This, and I'm too lazy to trawl IMDB. Anything notable that these guys were in?
John Boyega was the lead on Attack the Block (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1478964/), which was a British "alien invasion" movie. It got a lot of buzz, as I recall.

Max Von Sydow was in a lotta stuff (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001884/), including Minority Report, Robin Hood (the Russel Crowe one), Flash Gordon (perhaps that's more infamous than famous?), The Exorcist, and The Greatest Story Ever Told.

[137beth]

You do not want to argue about gender in this thread!
*waves hand*


Oh, it didn't work. I guess people arguing about fandoms and gender on a forum don't qualify as weak-willed:smalltongue:
But since I'm here...at least in the original trilogy I think pretty much all the characters could have had their genders and/or sexes changed without altering the plot. You'd need an alternate explanation for why Anika was unaware of her twin children, but it's possible with current technology so it is almost certainly possible in the SW universe.

[russdm]

I recall hearing somewhere like from somebody in making the film, on its dvd stuff about how the accent for Jar-jar was supposed to be Jamaican or influenced there by, but can't recall anything further beyond that it might have been the voice actor or somebody else who said it.

As for the cast, I think:

Max Von Sydow is playing some kind of officer (would be a good Pellaeon) or perhaps some kind of senator. I really don't pick up on him being the main bad guy since someone has already been cast.

Adam Driver has had other revealed information suggesting he is the film's bad guy or at least from I could tell; there has been an article that says he was cast as film's villain.

Black guy (Boyega) could work as grandkid to lando, if we have his parent, lando's kid happening before cloud city, or he could be lando's kid after a relationship had later. Maybe with leia or some other woman?

The girl (Daisy Ridley) definitely going to be doing something, hopefully no damsel in distress. Make her a badass girl character, its about time for this.

Oscar Isaac will be some kind of Jedi or a bounty hunter or maybe a scoundrel.

Domhnall Gleeson is definitely being cast as some kind of wookie. He just screams wookie to me. Reminds me of a younger looking Peter Mayhew, same smiling feel.

Andy Serkis is hopefully playing some kind of yoda type or General grievous. Nothing like Jar-jar please. I want my sanity intact, thank you.

Personally, that's what I think people are being cast for. Given that the original cast is here, this story is definitely going to be a "Passing the Torch" story with the original cast in for part before disappearing in some fashion, leaving the youngsters to save the day at which point the original cast might show up to officially do a torch passing moment (Saying stuff about how the newbies are responsible for the galaxy or something)

Personal Wild Guessing: Adam Driver is playing C'baoth, Max Von Sydow is Pelleaon, and Andy Serkis is Thrawn who came back from somewhere to ruin people's day. Barring that, Driver (Already confirmed previously as villain) will be helped by Max Von Sydow and Andy Serkis. Mainly because Driver had info released saying that he had been cast as the villain already.

Or maybe General Grevious survived and returns under Driver's villain and gets played by Andy Serkis.

Or maybe Abrams is doing a pseudo-sequel, that reboots the series by having each of our new actors playing an alternate dimension/continuity of the original cast??

[Zrak]

This, and I'm too lazy to trawl IMDB. Anything notable that these guys were in?

Max Von Syndow has for real been in, like, everything. He's one of Those Actors who aren't necessarily famous but appear in a ton of stuff.

Aside from the oft-mentioned Attack of the Block, Boyega was in Half of a Yellow Sun, which was a pretty good movie, though even as someone generally against saying The Book was Better, it was.

Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver were both just in the most recent Coen brothers movie, Inside Llewyn Davis, with Isaac acquitting himself quite well in the title role and Driver delivering a memorable performance as a typically oddball Coen side character. Apparently, Driver is also in Girls.

[MLai]

http://media1.break.com/breakstudios/2012/2/25/dumbo%20crows.jpg

When I watched Dumbo, I had no idea these crows were supposed to be African American caricatures. They sure don't look like black ppl.
That didn't make it false.

[Hyena]

You know, these crows' clothing looks like something a russian in 90's could be actually seen wearing. Sans hats. Just saying.

[Olinser]

John Boyega was the lead on Attack the Block (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1478964/), which was a British "alien invasion" movie. It got a lot of buzz, as I recall.

Max Von Sydow was in a lotta stuff (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001884/), including Minority Report, Robin Hood (the Russel Crowe one), Flash Gordon (perhaps that's more infamous than famous?), The Exorcist, and The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Don't forget The Seventh Seal, which was the role that really put him on the map, and regularly appears in 'top movies of all time' lists.

[hamishspence]

He was Liet-Kynes in the Dune movie. And the head of Spectre in Never Say Never Again.

[Aotrs Commander]

When I watched Dumbo, I had no idea these crows were supposed to be African American caricatures. They sure don't look like black ppl.
That didn't make it false.

They were? I wouldn't have known if you hadn't said.

(Mind you, I didn't like Dumbo (only the pink elephant sequence I found even watchable), so it wasn't like I was paying attention. Or that I try to categorise nonhuman species into human subdivisions unless they have a strong or cartoonish accent. Admittedly, I tend not to overanalyse even then, since unless you are professor Tolkien, you probably can't just invent an accent (much less get lots of actors/voice actors to adopt it) without enormous effort, so one sort of expects you use an existant one - especially since many accents have some level of persception based on them/ just sound good for certain uses (which is we we Brits are alwasy the bad guys...))

[Jayngfet]

When I watched Dumbo, I had no idea these crows were supposed to be African American caricatures. They sure don't look like black ppl.
That didn't make it false.

Their leader is literally named Jim Crow. No offense, but there was never any ambiguity in that case.

[Aotrs Commander]

Their leader is literally named Jim Crow. No offense, but there was never any ambiguity in that case.

Without googling it, I have no idea who that is. I suspect it may be far less obvious to those outside of the US (or MLai and I are merely dumb...)

[hamishspence]

Wikipedia might do, as well.

[Aotrs Commander]

Wikipedia might do, as well.

Same difference. The point is, I don't know who Jim Crow is without looking it up (which I haven't done, for once, since that's kinda the point. Also, I've been wiking astrophysics stuff all day, I think I've had about eneough!) If I have to go and look it up, it's not common knowledge (and would be even harder to become so without today's modern instant-access information.)

(I can only infer from Jayngfet's statement he is a figure related to African American culture somehow. I think the second word in that phrase is the most key one - it's apparently not something as well-known to non-US residents as Martin Luthor King, for example.)

So the fact the character is named that is not necessarily making anything obvious.



Side example/interesting experiment: Without looking it up, who recognises the name Richard Arkwright and how he relates to Britain?

[Zrak]

Arkwright effectively established the factory system that would define and dominate the industrial revolution. I'm not really sure if he was an inventor, entrepreneur, or both, but I do remember his name and the sobriquet "Father of the Industrial Revolution."

Jim Crow was not a real person. The name is most famous for its association with "Jim Crow laws," a collective phrase for the various laws which mandated racial segregation in many public facilities in the states which enacted them. The phrase comes a super racist blackface song-and-dance piece called "Jump Jim Crow." After the song became extremely popular, the name Jim Crow became a pejorative term for black people, likening them to the buffoonish, racist caricature depicted in the song.

[Psyren]

Let me guess, you're referring to the Neimodians. As a person of Asian descent, I honestly did not see what was so racist about the Neimoidians until it was pointed out to me. Making claims about how the Neimoidians (or Jar-Jar Binks, for that matter) are supposedly racist stereotypes probably says more about the racism of the one making the comparison than about the racism of George Lucas. If you really want to see offensive Asian stereotypes, watch an episode of Family Guy instead.

The difference is that Family Guy is actively trying to be offensive as that is part of their shock humor. Lucas' portrayal of Watto and Gunray - and his lifelong mission to fail the Bechdel test, though at least Princess Leia stayed badass from start to finish - was merely thoughtless by comparison, and it is that casualness that makes it feel even worse. (Though for what it's worth I didn't see anything particularly racial about Jar-Jar.)


If I have to go and look it up, it's not common knowledge

This is pretty clear Personal Incredulity Fallacy, and despite the fact that this phenomenon is primarily limited to one culture, given that the movies being discussed are largely a product of that culture then the observation is relevant even if the audience may be international.

[Olinser]

Dumbo was also made in 1941.

[Aotrs Commander]

This is pretty clear Personal Incredulity Fallacy, and despite the fact that this phenomenon is primarily limited to one culture, given that the movies being discussed are largely a product of that culture then the observation is relevant even if the audience may be international.

Clarification: the point I was making that while it may be common knowledge in the US (and especially been so at time of release), the fact that MLai and I are both non-US-based and didn't make the connection seems to indicate it's not something that is so obiquitous outside of that area that we should have known instantly as Jayngfet's comment implied.

(Note: I'm not debating on whether or not it was intentional - it clearly was - or on the ramfications of such, merely the suggestion that the reference was so obvious that anyone should have gotten it.)




(Though for what it's worth I didn't see anything particularly racial about Jar-Jar.)

To be fair, there is SO MUCH offensive about Jar-jar that even if someone does find his accent dubious, it is probably the least area of concern...!



Zrak, now out of interest, which part of the world you are from?

(Part of this is merely curiousity - I spent three flippin' YEARS studying the industrial/agricultural revolution (I can't now pass through Cromford with twitching) at school and am curious to know as to what - if anything - people outside the UK know about it i.e. how much is world history or just British history.)

[Zrak]

I'm from the United States, specifically the Southwest, but I'm not sure if I set an accurate benchmark for "common knowledge," necessarily. Though his name may have been mentioned in the world history class I took in high school, I'm only certain of recalling him from a college course framed around "Culture and Anarchy" (the Arnold Essay) and the literary notions of culture and community in the 18th century. So, while I can tell you who Arkwright is without looking it up, I can also tell you about economic metaphors in romantic poetry without having to look up the line numbers for most of the shorter poems.

[Aotrs Commander]

I'm from the United States, specifically the Southwest, but I'm not sure if I set an accurate benchmark for "common knowledge," necessarily. Though his name may have been mentioned in the world history class I took in high school, I'm only certain of recalling him from a college course framed around "Culture and Anarchy" (the Arnold Essay) and the literary notions of culture and community in the 18th century. So, while I can tell you who Arkwright is without looking it up, I can also tell you about economic metaphors in romantic poetry without having to look up the line numbers for most of the shorter poems.

Interesting, thank you. So some of it does perculate out, though as I expected it might, probably only in passing. (Whereas we had two years of GCSE and the year before on the damned industrial/agricultural period - which wouldn't have been bad except the fact I don't think the Napoloenic Wars were even mentioned, despite being piviotal and slap-bang in the middle of the period. Not that i'm still bitter after twenty years, mind...)

[Aedilred]

Well, there are folks who haven't heard of Kristallnacht either, but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't common knowledge, or that it was hard to find out about even prior to the Internet.

Now if someone mentioned an English movement one of whose mottos was "When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was gentleman?", I can see some eyebrows being raised.
John Ball and the Peasants' Revolt?

"Common knowledge" is a tricky one, particularly in multinational language communities, because what's common knowledge in the US might well not be in the UK and vice versa, and that's without even considering the Commonwealth. However, whether or not it counts as "common knowledge" (which the more I think about it really is a useless term), "Jim Crow" is hardly a desperately obscure phrase, I think, even in the UK.

[TheThan]

(only the pink elephant sequence I found even watchable),

You found the terrifying pink elephant segment watchable?

[Aotrs Commander]

You found the terrifying pink elephant segment watchable?

It was the only part of the entire movie I found even approached enjoyable...

I am Evil, y'know?

[Kitten Champion]

I suspect what Lucas was going for was the rather persistent trope in Japanese period pieces where you've got the good-hearted but utterly buffoonish peasant underclass character who does unfunny stuff and makes the protagonists seem more noble while I wince inwardly, but lacking the rather specific context of that genre Jar Jar came off far far worse.

Frankly, all he had to do was let the aliens speak their own language. I sure as hell would've appreciated Jar Jar more in theatre had Lucas given him subtitles. As it was I was straining my mental facilities to understand one word he said. The fact that all the aliens didn't speak English was pretty cool, made the Star Wars universe more immersive and culturally complex while showing how homogeneous the Empire is in contrast.

[Psyren]

He's a cartoon rabbit. They threw him in there for the kids to point and laugh at. His goofy design and all his goofy scenes (like sticking his tongue in that electrical arc) make that abundantly clear.

The problem is that within the space of one film they go from that murdering women and children. And in both films they have long boring trade dispute/senate crap. The tone is just all over the place. But RLM/Confused Matthew/et al. already ripped the prequels apart enough, I don't need to rehash any of that here.

[TheThan]

He's a cartoon rabbit. They threw him in there for the kids to point and laugh at. His goofy design and all his goofy scenes (like sticking his tongue in that electrical arc) make that abundantly clear.

The problem is that within the space of one film they go from that murdering women and children. And in both films they have long boring trade dispute/senate crap. The tone is just all over the place. But RLM/Confused Matthew/et al. already ripped the prequels apart enough, I don't need to rehash any of that here.

I think i already mentioned that somewhere. Bunny eared clown.

Hey, tearing the prequels a new one is one of my hobbies.

[warty goblin]

The problem is that within the space of one film they go from that murdering women and children. And in both films they have long boring trade dispute/senate crap. The tone is just all over the place. But RLM/Confused Matthew/et al. already ripped the prequels apart enough, I don't need to rehash any of that here.

I've never for the life of me understood how inconsistent tone is a bad thing.

[Jayngfet]

This is pretty clear Personal Incredulity Fallacy, and despite the fact that this phenomenon is primarily limited to one culture, given that the movies being discussed are largely a product of that culture then the observation is relevant even if the audience may be international.

Really it's important to keep in mind that this was a mostly domestic product, even by early Disney standards. WWII had just cut off most of their international distribution or made it difficult(or else was just about to in many cases). It made money, but it European and Asian priorities were kind of oriented away from funny cartoon elephants at that moment. Hence why the very next year they'd go to work for the military's propaganda campaign. Dumbo was something that was made for and viewed mostly by American audiences for like a decade almost exclusively. Given the context it was the kind of reference they'd have gotten almost instantly in most cases and something they'd be expected to react to in some way or another.

Granted this is only tangential to a really, really complicated topic that would need about ten pages of explanation that I'm not really willing to type out. Racial politics in animation, even if it's just African Americans within that specific time period, is really convoluted and winds up being a mess of good intentions, bizarre stereotypes, weird period ideas, generational censorship, and behind the scenes shenanigans. It's interesting as a look at industry standards and practices, and you can see clear extensions of various ideas continuing even into the modern day(and thus, Disneys treatment of Star Wars and how it'll likely differ behind the scenes compared to Lucas's methods in minute ways).

[jere7my]

When 90% characters in your movie are white males, it might say something about you. Maybe, the fact that you are stuck in the past. Don't ask "why include female and black characters". Ask, rather, "Why not?".

I think there's some information missing from this thread. Specifically:

1) This is not the entire cast (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-episode-vii-casting-699924). There's still one major female role to be announced. This is probably the role Lupita Nyong'o and Maisie Richardson-Sellers were reading for, so it's most likely for a black or biracial woman.

2) Oscar Isaac is Hispanic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Isaac), specifically half Cuban and half Guatemalan. His full name is Óscar Isaac Hernández.

I wrote a whole blog post (http://theslowpalace.blogspot.com/2014/04/my-reaction-to-episode-vii-cast.html) about this news, but in short, this actually looks like a pretty diverse cast. If Adam Driver and Max von Sydow are villains (which I think is likely) and Serkis is a CGI character (also likely), then the five core heroes could very well be a black dude, a white woman, a Hispanic dude, a white dude, and a biracial woman—with the black dude getting top billing in the cast announcement. That seems like big news to me.

I'd recommend waiting until more news comes out before giving in to disappointment about the homogeneity of the cast.

[jere7my]

Personal Wild Guessing: Adam Driver is playing C'baoth, Max Von Sydow is Pelleaon, and Andy Serkis is Thrawn who came back from somewhere to ruin people's day.

Given that "Episodes VII-IX will not tell the same story told in the post-Return of the Jedi Expanded Universe" [link (http://starwars.com/news/the-legendary-star-wars-expanded-universe-turns-a-new-page.html)], and the EU in general has happily been wiped from Star Wars history, I think these are highly unlikely.

[Jayngfet]

I'd recommend waiting until more news comes out before giving in to disappointment about the homogeneity of the cast.

Given disney's vocal equal opprotunity employment and committal to giving everyone a chance at least behind the scenes since day one(Walt himself being the first man to hire women artists at a major studio), and the fact that George Lucas himself just got married to a black woman, the complaint was basically always hollow to begin with.

But yeha, Lupita is a strong favorite and the rumored role has been swirling around for months now for a black or biracial female as a main character somehow related to Obi-Wan.

[Zrak]

I've never for the life of me understood how inconsistent tone is a bad thing.

Yeah, I never really got this either. Gravity's Rainbow, Lolita, and Ulysses are probably the three major literary milestones of the twentieth century and all of them jump from hilarious to horrifying and back pretty much constantly. Even if we're specifically going for film, pretty much any Coen brothers movie is way more tonally inconsistent than the prequels. I mean, you want to talk about goofy comic relief segueing awkwardly into horrific violence, meet Fargo.

[hamishspence]

Not to mention OoTS - it has more than a few switches in tone.

[Zrak]

Yeah, I mean, it's everywhere. Even sticking just to works originally in English, it goes back at least as far as Chaucer.

[Mando Knight]

Changes in tone are bad generally when they're unwarranted or written/executed poorly. Generally, if changing the tone goes against the flow of the plot, it's a bad change. Things like introducing a slapstick character during a more tense scene, or interlacing serious exposition or plot development with unrelated slapstick. Or almost every scene in Episode I where Jar-Jar does something.

If the rest of the film was more of a "Jar-Jar-esque" tone, though, I could see some of his scenes working a lot better. However, as executed, it's like dropping clips from Three Stooges shorts into a film that's otherwise mostly like the other Star Wars films.

[Psyren]

I've never for the life of me understood how inconsistent tone is a bad thing.

There's a difference between changing tone and inconsistent tone. When the tone of your piece changes it should be consistent with the changes in the narrative situation.

For example, let's look at the gold standard of Hollywood movie-making, the pacing/engagement chart for Episode IV New Hope:

http://a51274b2bfd36c9eba6f-b2cc59e0ef85511aa5ed3ad88986348d.r9.cf1.rackcdn.co m/10677/pacingchartfromextracredits__large.png

Notice that though tone is NOT called out on this graph, I can spot the tonal shifts easily - they happen every time the graph starts to majorly swing in a different direction.

- Rebels captured - tense, desperate action scene of the Empire basically crushing ants. Towards the end of that segment as the curve swings down, Leia hurls insults at Vader, providing comedy and also letting the audience know "things look bad now but she's not in immediate danger." With that tension dispelled, we can be introduced to Luke's parochial life in a calm setting.

- As the curve swings up again to Luke's parents being killed, we have drama - pathos for this protagonist who now has nowhere left to go and must venture out into the world.

- Curve swings down to humor as we fool stormtroopers, meet the easygoing Han and are introduced to a wretched hive of scum and villainy that has pretty sweet music.

- All right, we have an adventuring party! Curve swings up, things are looking great! BAM, Alderaan nuked. The sharp upswing in the curve mirrors our sharp change in mood as Obi-wan shares his horror with the audience. We may not make it after all.

- No more messing around, our enemy is serious business - time for Luke to train. Curve swings down and the audience has the breather to process what has just happened - an entire planet wiped out, and the hopelessness of the rebels to oppose such unstoppable power.

- Curve swings up; oh crap, tractor beam. Tone shifts again, from distant threat to very imminent danger.
- Curve swings down; Kenobi disabled the tractor beam, we have hope again.
- Curve swings up; sweet, we found Leia! Oh crap, Vader! Obi-wan dies.
- Curve swings down; calm before the storm at the rebel base. And of course, that calm gives the audience time to process Obi-Wan's death.
- Curve swings up; trench run! Climax! Tense action! USE THE FORCE!
- Curve plummets - denouement. Audience gets to reflect on what we've learned by journeying with these people through their world.

Disjointed tone happens when the tone is not married to the engagement swings the way it is above, such as when you have comic relief from a cartoon rabbit randomly stuck into a serious scene because it's getting boring or dark, not because the comedy actually signals a tonal shift to the audience. In New Hope, comedy is used in tense situations effectively, both to entertain the audience and to defuse tension, signalling when it's time for the tone to change. Leia insulting Vader after the rebels are wiped out, Obi-Wan punking stormtroopers after we leave Luke's charred home behind, Luke, Obi-wan and Han trading barbs during Luke's training after Alderaan is wiped out etc.

[Zrak]

Changes in tone are bad generally when they're unwarranted or written/executed poorly.
A consistent tone is bad, generally, when it's unwarranted or written/executed poorly. That's just the tautology that bad writing is bad.


There's a difference between changing tone and inconsistent tone. When the tone of your piece changes it should be consistent with the changes in the narrative situation.
I said inconsistent tone and I meant inconsistent tone. All of the examples I gave tend to invoke humor in narrative situations with which it is not remotely consistent.

[Psyren]

I said inconsistent tone and I meant inconsistent tone. All of the examples I gave tend to invoke humor in narrative situations with which it is not remotely consistent.

I can't speak to any of those except possibly Ulysses, which I don't remember having jarring tonal shifts. I do however highly doubt that Phantom Menace/Attack of the Clones stack up to any of the examples you provided, so...

(Also, the pacing and therefore tonal shifts of a book - or webcomic, for that matter - are of necessity very different from those of a film - they are different media.)

[Zrak]

Oh, the prequels certainly do not stack up to those examples, that was kinda my point; the prequels' problem isn't their tonal inconsistency, it's just bad writing, plain and simple. I'm making the argument that films like Fargo and Barton Fink, which play horrifying scenes for laughs without any attempt to diminish their horror, demonstrate that there's nothing wrong with pairing grisly murders with goofy slapstick.

Or, to look at the matter from the opposite angle, would the prequels really have been meaningfully better if they were all Jar-Jar antics or if they were all Hayden Christensen sulking at Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman?

EDIT: No, autocorrect, I did not mean to say there was nothing wrong with trimming grisly murders with goofy slapstick by cutting away its outer edges, but I could have made a pretty good pun if I thought about it. Thanks for trying.

[Psyren]

No, of course not, but that doesn't mean that the erratic tone didn't contribute to the wrongness of these films even if there were other failures present.

Besides, tone problems are themselves a product of bad writing. They pull you out of the experience, throwing the other flaws into stark relief.

[Comrade]

Or, to look at the matter from the opposite angle, would the prequels really have been meaningfully better if they were all Jar-Jar antics or if they were all Hayden Christensen sulking at Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman?

At least in the latter case we might have gotten some good comedy out of it. The former case, though, that's... that's bordering on realms of horror even Resident Evil and The Shining weren't willing to explore :smalleek:

[Zrak]

Yeah, but the erratic tone of those films contributed to their flaws; erratic tone is not a flaw in and of itself and does not necessarily contribute to any other flaws and may even alleviate them.

[Legato Endless]

"Meesa knows secrets dat would drive yousa mad! Mad! And meesa gonna giggle while yousa goes off da deep end!"

Sorry, couldn't resist. :smallredface:

Sounds more Lovecraftian then. No real body horror or internal madness, but more bizarre and inexplicable and kind of goofy yet expressing a profound wrongness in the world that man was not meant to know.

Tone isn't really the issue with say, Phantom Menace. It actually has a pretty clear theme it expresses in a variety of ways. The problem is everything else in the film has no focus and a very muddled identity, which the execution exasperates.

[Comrade]

"Meesa knows secrets dat would drive yousa mad! Mad! And meesa gonna giggle while yousa goes off da deep end!"


"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Jar-Jar Naboo wgah'nagl fhtagn... Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Jar-Jar Naboo wgah'nagl fhtagn... Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Jar-Jar Naboo wgah'nagl fhtagn... Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Jar-Jar Naboo wgah'nagl fhtagn..."

[warty goblin]

There's a difference between changing tone and inconsistent tone. When the tone of your piece changes it should be consistent with the changes in the narrative situation.

For example, let's look at the gold standard of Hollywood movie-making, the pacing/engagement chart for Episode IV New Hope:

http://a51274b2bfd36c9eba6f-b2cc59e0ef85511aa5ed3ad88986348d.r9.cf1.rackcdn.co m/10677/pacingchartfromextracredits__large.png

Notice that though tone is NOT called out on this graph, I can spot the tonal shifts easily - they happen every time the graph starts to majorly swing in a different direction.

- Rebels captured - tense, desperate action scene of the Empire basically crushing ants. Towards the end of that segment as the curve swings down, Leia hurls insults at Vader, providing comedy and also letting the audience know "things look bad now but she's not in immediate danger." With that tension dispelled, we can be introduced to Luke's parochial life in a calm setting.

- As the curve swings up again to Luke's parents being killed, we have drama - pathos for this protagonist who now has nowhere left to go and must venture out into the world.

- Curve swings down to humor as we fool stormtroopers, meet the easygoing Han and are introduced to a wretched hive of scum and villainy that has pretty sweet music.

- All right, we have an adventuring party! Curve swings up, things are looking great! BAM, Alderaan nuked. The sharp upswing in the curve mirrors our sharp change in mood as Obi-wan shares his horror with the audience. We may not make it after all.

- No more messing around, our enemy is serious business - time for Luke to train. Curve swings down and the audience has the breather to process what has just happened - an entire planet wiped out, and the hopelessness of the rebels to oppose such unstoppable power.

- Curve swings up; oh crap, tractor beam. Tone shifts again, from distant threat to very imminent danger.
- Curve swings down; Kenobi disabled the tractor beam, we have hope again.
- Curve swings up; sweet, we found Leia! Oh crap, Vader! Obi-wan dies.
- Curve swings down; calm before the storm at the rebel base. And of course, that calm gives the audience time to process Obi-Wan's death.
- Curve swings up; trench run! Climax! Tense action! USE THE FORCE!
- Curve plummets - denouement. Audience gets to reflect on what we've learned by journeying with these people through their world.

Disjointed tone happens when the tone is not married to the engagement swings the way it is above, such as when you have comic relief from a cartoon rabbit randomly stuck into a serious scene because it's getting boring or dark, not because the comedy actually signals a tonal shift to the audience. In New Hope, comedy is used in tense situations effectively, both to entertain the audience and to defuse tension, signalling when it's time for the tone to change. Leia insulting Vader after the rebels are wiped out, Obi-Wan punking stormtroopers after we leave Luke's charred home behind, Luke, Obi-wan and Han trading barbs during Luke's training after Alderaan is wiped out etc.
I do love plots like that. How is engagement measured? What's the scale? Who's engagement is that? Is that an average engagement, the engagement of a randomly chosen individual, the theoretical engagement, the target engagement, what? It's certainly not mine, the last time I watched A New Hope I found it a nearly uniform and remarkably dull experience.

(Somebody is doubtless going to say something about how you can't get all analytical and quantifiable on a thing like that. If you're making a plot of something you are explicitly quantifying it, I'm just asking for precision is all.)


No, of course not, but that doesn't mean that the erratic tone didn't contribute to the wrongness of these films even if there were other failures present.

Besides, tone problems are themselves a product of bad writing. They pull you out of the experience, throwing the other flaws into stark relief.
Speaking entirely for myself, I'd really put the original trilogy and the sequels as being pretty much even. Empire Strikes Back is the only good one, followed by Revenge of the Sith at mediocre. The others are just bad.

[Psyren]

Yeah, but the erratic tone of those films contributed to their flaws; erratic tone is not a flaw in and of itself and does not necessarily contribute to any other flaws and may even alleviate them.

Very well, we'll just have to agree to disagree.


I do love plots like that. How is engagement measured? What's the scale? Who's engagement is that? Is that an average engagement, the engagement of a randomly chosen individual, the theoretical engagement, the target engagement, what? It's certainly not mine, the last time I watched A New Hope I found it a nearly uniform and remarkably dull experience.

Audience pupil dilation maybe?

But you're missing the point really - the units of measurement or their absolute values are not actually important. It's like all those graphs in your microeconomics classes that measure "utility" or "enjoyment" - we already know those concepts will subjectively vary from person to person and that there is no meaningful way to measure them, so pointing that out is meaningless. Rather, it is the relative positions of each peak and valley, and the shape of the curve as a whole, that make the graph informative. And like just about every social model for humanity, it won't apply perfectly to everyone either.

As for ranking Revenge of the Sith over A New Hope, well... yeah, chances are we won't agree on many things (subjective ones, anyway) if those are your tastes.

[TheThan]

The lighthearted parts of A New Hope were fairly subtle and used to help generate characterization.

C-3P0 and R2-D2 trading insults sounds like two individuals that have been together so long that they know each other intimately (keep your minds out of the gutter people), they know they don't really mean what they say, they're just blowing steam or using it to show their affection for each other (again get your minds out of the gutter). It's something people do.

Through listening to the two bicker and argue, we learn that these two have been a duo for a really long time. The comedy comes from only hearing one side of the conversation, like listening in on a telephone conversation, we only really know what one person is saying and it's up to our imagination to fill in the other half.

Likewise the jabs Luke, Han and Obi-wan take at each other feel more like a conversation three people would have. While the conversation has a serious undertone about religion, it’s got a light hearted approach, what with Han’s various highly quotable quips. It's also is a fair bit of character development. Han doesn’t believe in the force and dilutes everything down to three things (simple tricks, nonsense and luck). Obi-wan believes in the force, not luck, which suggests that he thinks nothing happens by chance. Luke is stuck in the middle of both of them. He’s just learning about the force so he has to start changing the way he thinks and feels about life. It can be real difficult to change your thoughts and beliefs.

In comparison Jar Jar is designed to be funny, he does everything a clown is supposed to do, make you laugh. He dances, talks funny, honks his nose (gets it caught in the beam thing), makes a mess of things, juggles and makes out of character comments (pretty hot hun?). I’m honestly surprised he doesn’t sing.

The problem is that jar jar is not natural or subtle. He’s either in your face the whole time, or in the background trying to distract you from the otherwise important scene. There is no substance to the comedy; we literally learn nothing about any of the characters presented to us in the film through jar jar’s juggling. There’s no characterization going on, no plot points are brought up, there’s not even any awesome highly quotable quips.

The original trilogy’s comedy was rich and full and engaging. The prequel’s comedy was bland, empty and off putting.

[warty goblin]

Audience pupil dilation maybe? Could be an interesting measure, so long as one accounted for screen brightness.


But you're missing the point really - the units of measurement or their absolute values are not actually important. It's like all those graphs in your microeconomics classes that measure "utility" or "enjoyment" - we already know those concepts will subjectively vary from person to person and that there is no meaningful way to measure them, so pointing that out is meaningless. Rather, it is the relative positions of each peak and valley, and the shape of the curve as a whole, that make the graph informative. And like just about every social model for humanity, it won't apply perfectly to everyone either.

I don't think I'm missing the point at all. A plot of that sort is a method for comparing two forms of data; as the X variable varies, what is the Y variable doing in response? This is visually encoded by the distance of the Y value from the zero line. Entirely implicit in this is a meaningful definition of zero, and a measure of Y on which the Euclidean distance metric makes sense. Which in turn requires a stringent enough definition of the Y quantity for distance to make sense, and verification that the distance so defined is reasonable. A survey response with Strongly Agree/Agree/Neutral/Disagree/Strongly Disagree responses for instance clearly has an ordering. I would have to do some serious work to justify ever putting them on axes like that, because I have no idea what the distance between Strongly Agree and Agree really is, or whether it's the same as the other distances. Handwaving it is frankly bordering on the dishonest, because those concerns constitute the entire method of that data presentation.

Put differently, if somebody hands you a spreadsheet that has an Engagement column and a Time column, you'd say there's no way that demonstrates anything and where the hell did those numbers come from. That plot is exactly the same information as the spreadsheet. Actually more, because the spreadsheet is a discrete number of timepoints, while the plot presents a smooth and continuous curve; which looks like it's based on a high-order polynomial regression.


As for ranking Revenge of the Sith over A New Hope, well... yeah, chances are we won't agree on many things (subjective ones, anyway) if those are your tastes.
What can I say, ANH I've found distinctly boring for years. Boring in concept, often boring and frequently terrible in execution. RoTS at least has an interesting concept with frequently terrible and often boring execution.

[Zrak]

But you're missing the point really - the units of measurement or their absolute values are not actually important.

I don't really think that's so much him missing the point of this chart as it is a case of the chart's authors missing the point of charts.



It's like all those graphs in your microeconomics classes that measure "utility" or "enjoyment" - we already know those concepts will subjectively vary from person to person and that there is no meaningful way to measure them, so pointing that out is meaningless. Rather, it is the relative positions of each peak and valley, and the shape of the curve as a whole, that make the graph informative. And like just about every social model for humanity, it won't apply perfectly to everyone either.
Except that if there is no meaningful way to measure those concepts, as you say, those relative positions must necessarily be entirely arbitrary. Anything involving relative positions, like the measurements on your chart, is based on Cardinal Utility, which is entirely defined by the attitude that utility can be measured in meaningful units; this is used primarily in decision theory to asses decision-making under risk. Ordinal utility theory, which states that utility cannot be measured in units with any economic meaning, instead only ranks goods and services in terms of a hierarchy of preference that gives no indication whatsoever of relative value beyond the preference order; assuming ordinal utility theory, macaroni and cheese cannot provide me twice the utility of nachos or half the utility of pizza, but instead provides simply more utility than nachos if compared with them and less utility than pizza if compared with pizza.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

If a chart doesn't have hard data attached to it, it's really nothing more than a visual depiction of someone's opinion. :smallsmile:

[russdm]

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Jar-Jar Naboo wgah'nagl fhtagn... Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Jar-Jar Naboo wgah'nagl fhtagn... Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Jar-Jar Naboo wgah'nagl fhtagn... Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Jar-Jar Naboo wgah'nagl fhtagn..."

I always found the idea of Cthulhu as being more like a weird interpretation of a cat or something. His way of speaking as sounds/looks like he has a cold or something. He looks so much like you could pet him and cuddle with him like the good little kitty he is. He is so cute looking. I don't understand why people are so frightened of you, you fuzzy little kitten. Come on, who's the cute little eldritch abomination that drives people insane by looking at it? Yes, it's you cute little kitty.

I think the problem with Jar-Jar was/is that he shows up around were the tension is starting to rise, meaning that we lose that sense of tension/concern. The film plays it this way: problem, problem, slowly rising tension, Jar-Jar, more rising ten-Jar-Jar-sion, tension, jar-jar, tension, jar-jar. There is no just no real feeling of there being any concerns here because as soon as something starts looking worrisome, Jar-Jar shows up to ruin it.

[Psyren]

Except that if there is no meaningful way to measure those concepts, as you say, those relative positions must necessarily be entirely arbitrary.

I'd still wager that, for most people, the engagement curve more or less follows the gist of that pattern. We're more invested in a film or other work at the climax than at the introduction, and there are peaks and valleys throughout as action scenes ramp up and are resolved. All the rest is window dressing.


What can I say, ANH I've found distinctly boring for years. Boring in concept, often boring and frequently terrible in execution. RoTS at least has an interesting concept with frequently terrible and often boring execution.

The concept could have been great - a noble peacekeeper's fall from grace and seduction by dark forces to save the woman he loved - except they bungled the concept horribly too by making the prequel Jedi every bit as vile and uncaring as the Sith they oppposed.

[Olinser]

I'd still wager that, for most people, the engagement curve more or less follows the gist of that pattern. We're more invested in a film or other work at the climax than at the introduction, and there are peaks and valleys throughout as action scenes ramp up and are resolved. All the rest is window dressing.



The concept could have been great - a noble peacekeeper's fall from grace and seduction by dark forces to save the woman he loved - except they bungled the concept horribly too by making the prequel Jedi every bit as vile and uncaring as the Sith they oppposed.

'Every bit as vile and uncaring as the Sith'.

WTF movies were YOU watching?

Sure the Jedi had lost their way. They forgot that peace isn't an end in and of itself, and they dedicated themselves to the idea of peace to the point that they forgot WHY they fought for peace. They allowed the Republic and the Senate to languish in 'peace', in simply a slow downward spiral into corruption. They closed themselves off from the world and convinced themselves that any emotions (even positive ones) were weakness. The training of recruits had also gotten somewhat extreme, with only children too young to really know anything about the galaxy accepted as Padawans.

But nowhere do any of the Jedi not named Skywalker come anywhere close to the actions of the Sith, who traffic in assassination, killing helpless children and oh by the way, orchestrating a galactic war that conservatively resulted in billions of deaths, so they could ascend to power.

[Psyren]

WTF movies were YOU watching?
...
But nowhere do any of the Jedi come anywhere close to the actions of the Sith, who traffic in assassination, killing helpless children and oh by the way, orchestrating a galactic war that conservatively resulted in billions of deaths, so they could ascend to power.

You know, you're right, what was I thinking? Say, any reason they couldn't just buy Shmi Skywalker? No spare credits stashed away in that lavish temple of theirs? Save her from a lifetime of abject slavery? Come to think of it, why do the Jedi even tolerate slavery anyway? They don't even have to fight a war, just destabilize the tyrannical government enough that the people can rise up and overthrow it. It'd be a hell of a lot better than sitting on their asses doing nothing, or blah blah trade disputes blah.

Okay, maybe slavery isn't a big deal for them. It's not like the Force symbolizes respect for all life or anything. So let's put that aside. Could the kid maybe go see her once or twice? No? Video chat? Also no? Deliver some letters between them? Still no? Send a totally different jedi to carry a message, maybe?

What about all those other kids stashed in their little funhouse? Every last one of them come willingly, then? No family around, no friends except other jedi students, trained to become little emotionless robots - no running, no playing, no screaming or shouting or singing? Can their folks visit? Can they go home? What about the ones whose parents don't want them to go to Brain Camp? Anything about that? No? How about the teenagers - no love, no emotion, no anger or fear, none of that? In short, no humanity?

The Sith are asses, not disputing that for a second, but the Jedi were little better. Scrap the lot, I say.

[MLai]

One thing y'all haven't yet mentioned regarding Jar Jar's tonal clash...

In for example ANH, sure there's tension-comedy-tension, but it was all directed towards a single audience. That keeps it consistent. In TPM, Lucas can't decide who he's speaking to. Is it an adult audience who won't be bored out of their minds? Or a children audience who won't be bored out of their minds?

Trade disputes only work on 1 level (barely): adult sensibilities. There's nothing in it for children.
Vice versa for Jar Jar. Adults don't find him funny.

[Olinser]

You know, you're right, what was I thinking? Say, any reason they couldn't just buy Shmi Skywalker? No spare credits stashed away in that lavish temple of theirs? Save her from a lifetime of abject slavery? Come to think of it, why do the Jedi even tolerate slavery anyway? They don't even have to fight a war, just destabilize the tyrannical government enough that the people can rise up and overthrow it. It'd be a hell of a lot better than sitting on their asses doing nothing, or blah blah trade disputes blah.

Okay, maybe slavery isn't a big deal for them. It's not like the Force symbolizes respect for all life or anything. So let's put that aside. Could the kid maybe go see her once or twice? No? Video chat? Also no? Deliver some letters between them? Still no? Send a totally different jedi to carry a message, maybe?

What about all those other kids stashed in their little funhouse? Every last one of them come willingly, then? No family around, no friends except other jedi students, trained to become little emotionless robots - no running, no playing, no screaming or shouting or singing? Can their folks visit? Can they go home? What about the ones whose parents don't want them to go to Brain Camp? Anything about that? No? How about the teenagers - no love, no emotion, no anger or fear, none of that? In short, no humanity?

The Sith are asses, not disputing that for a second, but the Jedi were little better. Scrap the lot, I say.

In the first place, I already said that yes, closing themselves off from the world had caused them to somewhat lose their way. However, the bulk of their recruits also came from the poor classes on various planets, who jumped at the chance to give their child a better life. Nowhere in the movies is the suggestion that induction into the Jedi Order is anything but totally voluntary. Heck, Anakin had to BEG to be let in. Funny, I didn't see a whole lot of kids screaming and crying to get away.

Regarding Shmi, at no point have anybody claimed that the Jedi had any obligation to right every individual perceived wrong in the galaxy. They're peacekeepers, not local law enforcers. Heck they can barely even get themselves OFF the planet, much less make any kind of sweeping change to the way the planet operates.

The Republic basically didn't even exist on Tatooine, it was de facto ruled by the Hutts. Got a problem? Take it up with the Republic for failing to police their systems properly.

Also, if you were paying attention, Qui-Gon attempted to, but was unsuccessful, at freeing her while they were there. You have no idea what may or may not have happened between Episode 1 and Episode 2. I find it extremely likely that once he finally had a chance months/years after all of the business associated the with Naboo crisis was done, that Obi-Wan went back to Tatooine alone to check on Shmi and found that although she had been 'sold' to Lars, that she was happy, and left it at that.

But hey, you're right, failing to free a slave and cloistering their recruits off from the world totally puts them in the same league as genocidal maniacs and murderers that slaughter billions for power.

When you make absurd comparisons like that people seriously just stop listening to you.

[Psyren]

In the first place, I already said that yes, closing themselves off from the world had caused them to somewhat lose their way. However, the bulk of their recruits also came from the poor classes on various planets, who jumped at the chance to give their child a better life. Nowhere in the movies is the suggestion that induction into the Jedi Order is anything but totally voluntary. Heck, Anakin had to BEG to be let in. Funny, I didn't see a whole lot of kids screaming and crying to get away.

Anakin had to beg because he was "too old to train," not because they are some ultra-exclusive Chuck E. Cheese for young psions. If he was a baby with a midichlorian count like that, they'd have whisked him off in a heartbeat.


Regarding Shmi, at no point have anybody claimed that the Jedi had any obligation to right every individual perceived wrong in the galaxy. They're peacekeepers, not local law enforcers.

"All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Thank you for proving my point.



Also, if you were paying attention, Qui-Gon attempted to, but was unsuccessful, at freeing her while they were there. You have no idea what may or may not have happened between Episode 1 and Episode 2.

"Hey Watto, can I gamble for that other slave too?"
"No."
"Well, I've exhausted all options. I have no further moral obligations here. Yay me!"

And I do know what happened between E1 and E2 - her ass stayed on Tatooine in slavery!


I find it extremely likely that once he finally had a chance months/years after all of the business associated the with Naboo crisis was done, that Obi-Wan went back to Tatooine alone to check on Shmi and found that although she had been 'sold' to Lars, that she was happy, and left it at that.

If we're going to invent our own canon to try and explain their jerkish behavior, I read somewhere that Palpatine was actually creating his clone army to save the galaxy from an imminent Reaper invasion.



When you make absurd comparisons like that people seriously just stop listening to you.

Okay fine, they are slightly less vile and uncaring, is that better?


One thing y'all haven't yet mentioned regarding Jar Jar's tonal clash...

In for example ANH, sure there's tension-comedy-tension, but it was all directed towards a single audience. That keeps it consistent. In TPM, Lucas can't decide who he's speaking to. Is it an adult audience who won't be bored out of their minds? Or a children audience who won't be bored out of their minds?

Trade disputes only work on 1 level (barely): adult sensibilities. There's nothing in it for children.
Vice versa for Jar Jar. Adults don't find him funny.

I did mention this exact point actually.

[Aedilred]

"All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Thank you for proving my point.

That's a rather twisted interpretation of that line. Burke's point wasn't "anyone who doesn't spend their whole lives actively fighting evil is just as evil as the evildoers themselves." It's just an argument for constant vigilance and proactive do-gooding, taking the fight to evil where you find it, rather than sitting back and assuming everything will work out. Even by using that quote in the first place you're pretty much agreeing that the Jedi are "the good guys", even if they're not doing much to demonstrate it.

Perhaps the Jedi should have been more proactive in curtailing slavery, leaving aside the logistical difficulties (as implied in Clones, the Jedi only really have the manpower to keep up with their normal responsibilities) and that Tattooine was basically outside their jurisdiction anyway. But their failure to take action to eradicate it doesn't make them as bad as the people actively perpetrating it, or by extension the Sith and all the shenanigans they get up to.


"Hey Watto, can I gamble for that other slave too?"
"No."
"Well, I've exhausted all options. I have no further moral obligations here. Yay me!"
Qui-Gon had nothing further to bet with. He tried to get both of them against the ship but Watto would only let him have Anakin, and that was the sum of his resources. They wouldn't even accept credits, recall. Sure, he could have stuck around after the race and bet again, but that would just be an irresponsible risk and waste of time. The only reason he took the risk with Anakin was because he believed he was The Chosen One; his mission was to GTFO and back home to sort out a war, not free slaves on Tattooine. That he managed to free even one was a bonus.


And I do know what happened between E1 and E2 - her ass stayed on Tatooine in slavery!
Initially, then she was freed, and apparently living happily. We don't know how soon after E1 that occurred. She wasn't stuck in slavery the whole time between films.

[Olinser]

Anakin had to beg because he was "too old to train," not because they are some ultra-exclusive Chuck E. Cheese for young psions. If he was a baby with a midichlorian count like that, they'd have whisked him off in a heartbeat.



"All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Thank you for proving my point.



"Hey Watto, can I gamble for that other slave too?"
"No."
"Well, I've exhausted all options. I have no further moral obligations here. Yay me!"

And I do know what happened between E1 and E2 - her ass stayed on Tatooine in slavery!



If we're going to invent our own canon to try and explain their jerkish behavior, I read somewhere that Palpatine was actually creating his clone army to save the galaxy from an imminent Reaper invasion.



Okay fine, they are slightly less vile and uncaring, is that better?



I did mention this exact point actually.

And what, pray tell, did you expect Qui-Gon to do? We've already established that the Republic, and Qui-Gon, have no authority there (and the Hutts were far more likely to sell them to Sidious than help them). As far as the local 'authorities' are concerned, Watto owns her, and Watto wasn't interested in betting her. Given the Chance cube, he was extremely willing to bet Shmi against the pod, implying not just he thought he had great odds of winning, but that the pod is worth more than she is (and Anakin was worth more than either - not surprising given his previously demonstrated technical/repair abilities). We'd previously established that Qui-Gon had nothing of value Watto wanted, or he would have given it to him for the hyperdrive. So Watto won't bet her, and Qui-Gon can't buy her. So what exactly did you want him to do, pull out his lightsaber and put it to Watto's throat?

You're suffering mightily from 'protagonist centered morality' in this case. Namely, anything that you can see on the screen is terrible and they're terrible people for not doing anything about it! Because it's his precious little mother, and he's a terrible person!!

Meanwhile ignoring the rampant crime, corruption and lawlessness that plagues the entire rest of the city. Heck, their slavery doesn't even appear to be unusual. Again, fault the government, not the person that happens to be on the ground. Jedi aren't beat cops, they can't police the planets.

There's also a big difference between 'doing nothing' and 'prioritizing'.

I doubt Qui-Gon could have gotten a block into Mos Eisley in a week if he'd stopped and righted every wrong he came across. There is such a thing a setting priorities, and in this case they had a rather urgent mission, one that involved their ACTUAL job as peacekeepers - namely, trying to stop a war on Naboo that was going to result in probably millions dead. Not going around on a slave-freeing crusade.

Oh, but hey, I guess Amidala is a terrible, horrible, Sith-like person as well, considering she's a QUEEN, and she never bothered to send somebody over to Tatooine to buy Shmi either, right?

[russdm]

We have a title and some more confirmation!!! The New star wars movie is called "The Ancient Fear" and is related to Max von Sydow's villainous character. So what does mean then? How exactly does this work here or imply in star wars? That some old bad guy is coming back to cause problems?

[Olinser]

We have a title and some more confirmation!!! The New star wars movie is called "The Ancient Fear" and is related to Max von Sydow's villainous character. So what does mean then? How exactly does this work here or imply in star wars? That some old bad guy is coming back to cause problems?

Link?

Also, sweet, I totally called Sydow as the villain. He already looks the part.

If we're talking about 'ancient fear', then presumably Sydow is going to be some Ancient Sith Lord (perhaps frozen/suspended animation/time warp whatever preserved him) attempting to take over the galaxy? Old apprentice of Palpatine finally ready to conquer the galaxy?

Or perhaps by 'ancient fear' we're talking exterior invasion. They don't have to use the Yuuzhan Vong themselves, but the same principle can apply.

[Legato Endless]

Ain't it Cool News reported it. Note that this is just a working title; its not official. Especially given the last minute title change for Return of the Jedi. But yes, this does certainly point toward that idea.

[Psyren]

Didn't they already say the big bad for this one won't be a Sith?


And what, pray tell, did you expect Qui-Gon to do? We've already established that the Republic, and Qui-Gon, have no authority there (and the Hutts were far more likely to sell them to Sidious than help them). As far as the local 'authorities' are concerned, Watto owns her, and Watto wasn't interested in betting her. Given the Chance cube, he was extremely willing to bet Shmi against the pod, implying not just he thought he had great odds of winning, but that the pod is worth more than she is (and Anakin was worth more than either - not surprising given his previously demonstrated technical/repair abilities). We'd previously established that Qui-Gon had nothing of value Watto wanted, or he would have given it to him for the hyperdrive. So Watto won't bet her, and Qui-Gon can't buy her. So what exactly did you want him to do, pull out his lightsaber and put it to Watto's throat?

Coming back sometime in the intervening decade would have been nice.

And if he couldn't, or did and nothing came of it, the movie should have explained why. In a way that made sense.


Oh, but hey, I guess Amidala is a terrible, horrible, Sith-like person as well, considering she's a QUEEN, and she never bothered to send somebody over to Tatooine to buy Shmi either, right?

YES! You're finally getting it!

[Jayngfet]

YES! You're finally getting it!

One of the things I liked about the end of season five of TCW is that it shows exactly the kind of people the Jedi would need to be in order to let this kind of thing go on. They screw over a whole bunch of other people close to them through omission or convenience, simply because as far as they're concerned the jedi and the temple come first and everything else is implicitly expendable. The normal workers running maintenance, the clones doing the actual legwork of the war, the actual civilians who's lives are in pieces after an attack. The actual Jedi don't really care so much as see it as an issue to deal with in most cases, with the Jedi interested in actually helping the city they live in being few enough to count on one hand.

Would the Jedi leave a padawans mother into slavery and never check on her? Yup. Because they're the kind of guys who pay the technicians and workers keeping it all together minimum wage, ignore the families of an attack's victims if any jedi get hurt, throw their own apprentices under the bus to maintain temple order and reputation, and generally pretend everything outside the temple doesn't exist until an emergency flares up.

Which makes the next season and episode 3 make even more sense. The Jedi miss the obvious hints, because they don't even try to look or process the information around them. To every Jedi except Anakin, Palpatine is still basically just some dude who occasionally makes paperwork difficult. They don't realize Anakin is spending a liiiittle too much time with Padme, even though other people do, because none of the Jedi bother to even turn up to the senate unless needed. They don't bother checking out the clones in depth, because the clones barely even count as people at the very best of times and any questions have convenient smokescreen answers.

[TheThan]

The Jedi come off as your typical super heroes.
Check it out. They fly in, save the day and rescue the princess, then rush off on the next high adventure without stopping to deal with the collateral damage of their adventure, what sort of adverse effects their solution has on the situation.

Its arrogance and complacency combined with an insular perspective.
Of course there’s a ready built clone army ready for us to wage a war with, we’re the good guys. Of course the “chosen one” with the ambiguous prophecy will be on our side, we’re the good guys. Of course the government should listen to our obviously wise counsel, we’re the good guys. Of course a thread can't go undetected and spread it's influence like a sickness, without us knowing, we're the good guys.

see what i mean.

[Legato Endless]

Didn't they already say the big bad for this one won't be a Sith?

Not as yet. There was a rumor floating around that the original script tightly followed the original characters and their scions, but with the rewrite it's gravitating elsewhere. The plot is still basically an enigma sans the title. Apparently Disney is in preproduction for 8 and 9, but that could basically mean anything at this point. A

Source (http://metro.co.uk/2014/05/02/every-fact-you-need-to-know-about-star-wars-episode-7-ranked-4714909/)

[Olinser]

One of the things I liked about the end of season five of TCW is that it shows exactly the kind of people the Jedi would need to be in order to let this kind of thing go on. They screw over a whole bunch of other people close to them through omission or convenience, simply because as far as they're concerned the jedi and the temple come first and everything else is implicitly expendable. The normal workers running maintenance, the clones doing the actual legwork of the war, the actual civilians who's lives are in pieces after an attack. The actual Jedi don't really care so much as see it as an issue to deal with in most cases, with the Jedi interested in actually helping the city they live in being few enough to count on one hand.

Would the Jedi leave a padawans mother into slavery and never check on her? Yup. Because they're the kind of guys who pay the technicians and workers keeping it all together minimum wage, ignore the families of an attack's victims if any jedi get hurt, throw their own apprentices under the bus to maintain temple order and reputation, and generally pretend everything outside the temple doesn't exist until an emergency flares up.

Which makes the next season and episode 3 make even more sense. The Jedi miss the obvious hints, because they don't even try to look or process the information around them. To every Jedi except Anakin, Palpatine is still basically just some dude who occasionally makes paperwork difficult. They don't realize Anakin is spending a liiiittle too much time with Padme, even though other people do, because none of the Jedi bother to even turn up to the senate unless needed. They don't bother checking out the clones in depth, because the clones barely even count as people at the very best of times and any questions have convenient smokescreen answers.

True. As I've already been willing to admit, the Jedi were slowly sliding downward.

But they were still worlds above, and nowhere comparable to, the Sith. Which Palpatine and Vader both proved over and over and over again.

[Jayngfet]

True. As I've already been willing to admit, the Jedi were slowly sliding downward.

But they were still worlds above, and nowhere comparable to, the Sith. Which Palpatine and Vader both proved over and over and over again.

Hey, say what you like, but the Sith knew what they wanted and how to accomplish this. It's just that their goals were the reverse.

The jedi claim to protect and serve the galaxy, but their methods prove to be total crap time and again. The sith want to control it, and Palpatine managnes that pretty well, given his plan had plenty that went off perfectly and he only died due to a series of one in a million chances and a last minute betrayal.

[warty goblin]

Hey, say what you like, but the Sith knew what they wanted and how to accomplish this. It's just that their goals were the reverse.

The jedi claim to protect and serve the galaxy, but their methods prove to be total crap time and again. The sith want to control it, and Palpatine managnes that pretty well, given his plan had plenty that went off perfectly and he only died due to a series of one in a million chances and a last minute betrayal.
Didn't the Republic last for something like a thousand years, and only fall because of a series of one in a million chances and a last minute betrayal?

Besides which, even if the Jedi aren't all they are cracked up to be, really that just makes their fall, and the fall of the Republic more interesting, not less.

[Jayngfet]

Didn't the Republic last for something like a thousand years, and only fall because of a series of one in a million chances and a last minute betrayal?

Besides which, even if the Jedi aren't all they are cracked up to be, really that just makes their fall, and the fall of the Republic more interesting, not less.

Hey, the defending team has to win every time, the attackers only have to win once.

In any case, it wasn't so much one in a million chances so much as a ridiculously convoluted plan. Like, needlessly so.

[Lord Raziere]

Hey, the defending team has to win every time, the attackers only have to win once.

In any case, it wasn't so much one in a million chances so much as a ridiculously convoluted plan. Like, needlessly so.

Palpatine: Just as keikaku....
*Tzeentch Seal of Approval*

I need to go make a demotivator out of those two things....

[warty goblin]

Hey, the defending team has to win every time, the attackers only have to win once.

In any case, it wasn't so much one in a million chances so much as a ridiculously convoluted plan. Like, needlessly so.

Operationally I'm unsure of the difference between a ridiculously convoluted plan and a million to one chance. After all if you're banking on a series of events occuring just so, when they easily could not, you are in essence relying on a million to one chance. And I would note that the same was true of the Empire, which lost inside of thirty years. Generally in most fields being a thirtieth as durable is considered a significant flaw.