Hah... I should explain (Rogue 1 Spoilers) (Gaming)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Tuesday, March 20, 2018, 18:45 (2225 days ago) @ Cody Miller

My confession: I did like it better on second viewing. After my first viewing I was confused and ambivalent. It's the best looking Star Wars ever, but it wouldn't let me turn off my critical brain. It seemed calculated to frustrate expectations, maliciously so. And I just couldn't buy Luke, whose instincts to help and pursue the good had been so intrinsic to who he was.

Did you not pay attention in Jedi?! Luke goes full on dark side as he rages at Vader and cuts off his hand. Watch the scene again. He's just wailing on him in anger. Thankfully for him he realized this and stopped himself, but it's very clear he has darkness in him.

Of course! I take your point, and I didn't mean to imply that he was an angel. But his anger had to be stoked. It wasn't his set point. It was the other side of his passion, a side of it he had to conquer. What was dominant through a big chunk of TLJ were characteristics utterly alien to my understanding of him as a character--apathy and dismissiveness. It was if you took the big five personality traits and inverted at least three of them. THAT's why I'm incredulous.

What the second viewing bought me is a clearer understanding of the plot. That helped me enjoy it, but I thought a lot about one of the first posts I made here about it, where I said I don't know why they're making these movies now, and they don't seem influenced by Joseph Campbell's work on archetypal stories the way the first one was. Star Wars got me interested in Campbell, and then Jung, and many other things besides. And I was reading something recently about archetypal stories that made this point: you remember them! That's how they got to be archetypal stories in the first place.

Why is this important? Campbell's Hero's Journey is not a blueprint. It's a form based on the dramatic principles of storytelling. The underlying dramatic principles are what's important, not the form. It's a description of the similarity in forms that have worked before. That doesn't mean it's the only way, nor is it even the best way. I remember plenty of stories that do not fit into those molds.

Actually, it kind of is a blueprint. It's hardwired into our species if you believe Jung, one of Campbell's primary influences.

I care about those things, too (although I might not agree on the diagnoses or prescriptions). For me Star Wars was always about something bigger, more fundamental to the human experience than our current named obsessions. It was both an escape from 1970s ennui, and a reminder of higher, more transcendent values. We have such an divided culture right now. I guess part of my disappointment was not wanting Star Wars to become another thing we fight over--another weapon in the culture war.

This is because there is a sickness within geek culture in general. It's not the film's fault.

Maybe.