Having a black stormtrooper who wasn't an ideological Nazi was a mistake. "Actually the Empire are just normal people who are misguided!" No you liberal fucks, they're space Nazis and they're ontologically evil in a straightfoward morality play where good and evil are literally existing magic forces that let you throw rocks with your mind.
Fuck Dave whatever his nuts couldn't even stick it with the Clone Troopers. No, they're not psychologically conditioned from birth to follow the orders of their commanders. No, they're not slave soldiers who were deprived of any chance of experiencing a life that would allow them to develop mature ethics and independent thought. No, they have a brain chip that makes them evil.
I mean fuck me.
Apparently the old stuff had lots of clone troopers refuse to follow order 66 and there was actually a small civil war between Republican loyalists and Imperial loyalists, but Disney is like "Nah, let's side-step the whole issue and just say they used mind control".
They never really needed to. It was all very straightforward in the OT; The bad guys genocide planets and shoot innocent farmers and torture the nice princess. The good guys try to stop or subvert them.
But they tried to massively expand the scope in the prequels, while still making it a goofy kid's adventure movie. You can't do "The fall of the Weimar Empire and the Rise of Nazi Germany" at the same time you're doing "Laser sword wizards go on a space adventure" and also shove "space world war I" in there, it's too many things at once in too many directions. And the sequesl are a mess. The first one is empty masturbatory nostalgia bait that only replicated the first movie on a purely aesthetic level. The second one actually did have some character and plot, and a little bit of reflection on the how the universe was going through a cycle of violence driven by more than just the space wizard battle, which at least made things a little complicated. And then the third one was just fuck awful.
idk, I was a big star wars fan at one point and it's been very disapointing. At least with the prequels they tried to do something cool and big concept. They did it pretty badly, but they tried, and kids liked it. But the sequels are just awful, and a lot of the TV stuff is just nostalgia garbage that makes the universe smaller and smaller instead of trying to tell new stories.
I'll always have a soft spot for The Clone Wars Multimedia Project. None of it's great literature or anything, obviously, but most of it is so much more interesting than The Clone Wars which would retcon almost everything in TCWMP. Though I especially love Matthew Stover's two novels: Shatterpoint and the Revenge of the Sith novelization.
Gotta agree that Clone troopers as fascist troops and a critique of modern military training is just a far, far more interesting idea than behavioral chips. But Filoni wasn't interested in those sorts of ideas and instead made the clones plucky heroes fighting for republican ideals alongside their friends the Jedi, who are mostly very warm and personable with their troops, and so then behavioral chips become necessary to explain how Order 66 happened.
Maul opens up with some dumb bullshit movie acrobatics nonsense, and Kenobi just slices his dick off in literally 2.5 seconds. Maul takes more time than that coming to terms with how he just got fucking owned.
Never once did he refer to the stuff that was indoctrinated in him since birth. He already knew something was wrong with what the empire was doing. He just had the wakeup call when a dead dude smeared characterization onto his helmet.
Instead of a journey anyone could've had, dismantling the real evil of the sith with hard work and introspection, he was just special. Once he got permission, he killed his former bunkmates like they weren't special. Because they and all of the other victims of imperialism were nothing to the writers.
These are the people who tell themselves that they'd refuse to applaud at Hitler's speech and say 'how dare you, sir' as they no scoped the entire SS.
People who know nothing about imperialism and fascism wrote Finn's character arc.
Why wasn't Finn distrustful of the Republic and the rebels? Why did they trust him so quickly? To fast track the retelling of episode 4?
A more interesting arc was in season one of the new She-ra.
Later seasons are hard for me to remember, but I was satisfied with a lot of it. And it definitely has more nuanced conversations about good and evil than this slop.
When I heard about Rey, I assumed her character would be something like this: an orphan girl who has grown up on a cutthroat world becomes a hardened and jaded loner. Bitter. Emotionally closed off.
I assumed that fate would throw her together with Finn, who would be in a similar place vis-à-vis fascist deprogramming. They'd have to learn to trust each other and yadda yadda yadda.
Instead, we don't really get a story. Maybe my idea was a little trite, but at least it was something.
Having a black stormtrooper who wasn't an ideological Nazi was a mistake. "Actually the Empire are just normal people who are misguided!" No you liberal fucks, they're space Nazis and they're ontologically evil in a straightfoward morality play where good and evil are literally existing magic forces that let you throw rocks with your mind.
Fuck Dave whatever his nuts couldn't even stick it with the Clone Troopers. No, they're not psychologically conditioned from birth to follow the orders of their commanders. No, they're not slave soldiers who were deprived of any chance of experiencing a life that would allow them to develop mature ethics and independent thought. No, they have a brain chip that makes them evil.
I mean fuck me.
Apparently the old stuff had lots of clone troopers refuse to follow order 66 and there was actually a small civil war between Republican loyalists and Imperial loyalists, but Disney is like "Nah, let's side-step the whole issue and just say they used mind control".
For a setting that flips out over good and evil, they don't really have conversations about what good and evil are, or where they come from.
They never really needed to. It was all very straightforward in the OT; The bad guys genocide planets and shoot innocent farmers and torture the nice princess. The good guys try to stop or subvert them.
But they tried to massively expand the scope in the prequels, while still making it a goofy kid's adventure movie. You can't do "The fall of the Weimar Empire and the Rise of Nazi Germany" at the same time you're doing "Laser sword wizards go on a space adventure" and also shove "space world war I" in there, it's too many things at once in too many directions. And the sequesl are a mess. The first one is empty masturbatory nostalgia bait that only replicated the first movie on a purely aesthetic level. The second one actually did have some character and plot, and a little bit of reflection on the how the universe was going through a cycle of violence driven by more than just the space wizard battle, which at least made things a little complicated. And then the third one was just fuck awful.
idk, I was a big star wars fan at one point and it's been very disapointing. At least with the prequels they tried to do something cool and big concept. They did it pretty badly, but they tried, and kids liked it. But the sequels are just awful, and a lot of the TV stuff is just nostalgia garbage that makes the universe smaller and smaller instead of trying to tell new stories.
I'll always have a soft spot for The Clone Wars Multimedia Project. None of it's great literature or anything, obviously, but most of it is so much more interesting than The Clone Wars which would retcon almost everything in TCWMP. Though I especially love Matthew Stover's two novels: Shatterpoint and the Revenge of the Sith novelization.
Gotta agree that Clone troopers as fascist troops and a critique of modern military training is just a far, far more interesting idea than behavioral chips. But Filoni wasn't interested in those sorts of ideas and instead made the clones plucky heroes fighting for republican ideals alongside their friends the Jedi, who are mostly very warm and personable with their troops, and so then behavioral chips become necessary to explain how Order 66 happened.
Dave Filoni is overrated, he writes bland fanservice
Nonetheless, I'll give him a ton of credit for writing the most realistic sword fight in the entire franchise to date. (Rebels Season 3 finale spoilers, I guess)
spoiler
Maul opens up with some dumb bullshit movie acrobatics nonsense, and Kenobi just slices his dick off in literally 2.5 seconds. Maul takes more time than that coming to terms with how he just got fucking owned.
Never once did he refer to the stuff that was indoctrinated in him since birth. He already knew something was wrong with what the empire was doing. He just had the wakeup call when a dead dude smeared characterization onto his helmet.
Instead of a journey anyone could've had, dismantling the real evil of the sith with hard work and introspection, he was just special. Once he got permission, he killed his former bunkmates like they weren't special. Because they and all of the other victims of imperialism were nothing to the writers.
These are the people who tell themselves that they'd refuse to applaud at Hitler's speech and say 'how dare you, sir' as they no scoped the entire SS.
People who know nothing about imperialism and fascism wrote Finn's character arc.
Why wasn't Finn distrustful of the Republic and the rebels? Why did they trust him so quickly? To fast track the retelling of episode 4?
A more interesting arc was in season one of the new She-ra.
I haven't finished She-ra but what I saw was pretty good. And refreshingly gay.
Later seasons are hard for me to remember, but I was satisfied with a lot of it. And it definitely has more nuanced conversations about good and evil than this slop.
When I heard about Rey, I assumed her character would be something like this: an orphan girl who has grown up on a cutthroat world becomes a hardened and jaded loner. Bitter. Emotionally closed off.
I assumed that fate would throw her together with Finn, who would be in a similar place vis-à-vis fascist deprogramming. They'd have to learn to trust each other and yadda yadda yadda.
Instead, we don't really get a story. Maybe my idea was a little trite, but at least it was something.