This guy gets it... (Off-Topic)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Monday, April 20, 2015, 16:27 (3310 days ago) @ Kermit
edited by General Vagueness, Monday, April 20, 2015, 16:35

Permanently being someone is NOT good character development.

I think you're misunderstanding me, I'm not arguing that he was or should've been the same throughout, I was saying that I don't think he was or should've been someone who would kill someone without an absolute need before and after all that happens to him.

I see little difference between saying someone is permanently a certain way and saying they are the same before and after.

I'm not arguing that. I was trying to say, I'm pretty OK with him changing, and I just would prefer that he be the kind of person that wouldn't kill if he doesn't have to.

No matter, this whole debate is dumb, and we wouldn't be having it if Lucas had not made his stupid change and had not later made his idiotic statement about Han originally being misinterpreted as a cold-blooded killer.

I agree the debate is dumb, but mostly because it's about a few seconds from a movie-- a movie that was a formative experience in many people's childhoods, including mine, and a good piece of art, but still a movie.

Add to that mix a particularly modern and naive view of conflict, a moralistic and condescending need to "set an example" and you end up with the prequels--movies that were a depressing mix of Saturday morning cartoons, ABC after-school specials, and, worst of all, political allegory. (I'm being kind here by not characterizing them as long-form ads to sell toys.) Lucas isn't the only mega-successful Hollywood bigwig to infantilize his audience--witness the removal of guns from E.T.

The most dangerous kind of person (other than perhaps someone completely out of touch with reality) is an angry parent.

I give these guys credit for being visionaries on this--they were in line with the current obsession with trigger warnings. God forbid that anyone is exposed to anything that could potentially upset them. Ultimately, though, that's a terrible approach to making art.

There's going to be a better person to do this than me, because I'm not a psychologist and I don't have personal experience with this, but I feel I should correct you on "trigger warnings". It's not supposed to be about someone just getting upset. If someone uses it that way to try to protect themselves from things they just find distasteful they should receive a verbal (if not literal) smackdown. The idea is that some people have PTSD or a similar mental issue, and seeing or hearing certain things will cause them to partially or completely relive whatever caused it, without them being able to control it. It's a well-attested phenomenon.

I'd also contest there's a widespread obsession with it, I've seen it literally a hundred times more on the Internet than all other media combined, and I don't think I've ever actually seen anyone talk about it in person (and even on the Internet, I've seen it much more in things sourced from Tumblr and things making fun of Tumblr than anything else by a wide margin).

I agree that it has limited relevance to art, though. People should make what they want, and people who can be "triggered" should seek professional help and be careful in what they consume until they can live a more ordinary, full life.

This static view of characters informs several key "revisions" to the mythology, from the Greedo crap (Greedo didn't shoot at all in the original--we're not talking about a few frames)

Huh, I didn't know that. I originally saw it on VHS before the prequels or even the special editions, so I figured what I was seeing was the original, other than the added title and episode number in the opening crawl.

Do you remember what you saw at this point? Look it up on Youtube.

To be quite honest, I haven't watched the movies in a long time, it's hard to find like 6 hours to sit and watch them (or even 2 hours to watch one of them). Apparently what I saw wasn't as original as I thought anyway (and to continue being honest, I didn't know the subtitle and episode number weren't always there until some years after I first watched the first movie).

to the Midi-chlorian malarkey,

I don't know why people get so up in arms about that. To me it's like being mad electricity is technology and not magic-- it still works the same way and it's still cool.

Actually, no. The Force was originally something akin to a spiritual discipline, something that could potentially be mastered by anyone with the will to master it. That's not 100% true--natural affinity had a role, clearly. Lucas changed it, though. Now biology equals destiny. Huge difference.

It's not a huge difference to the story. The Force is still linked to thoughts and feelings and it has the same capabilities. I do agree bringing destiny into it even more is significant, and bringing in biology more is possibly even more significant, but that's more a thing for the prequels onward, it doesn't really affect the stories already told. (Of course, I was still a pre-teen/teenager when the prequels came out, and I was the kind of kid that thought science was cooler than magic, so your mileage may vary.)