The Gamers Arms

I think the point really is that if you're doing diversity right it shouldn't even need to be a bullet point on your white board. Come up with a fantastic story with great characters and cast people of all races and sexes who are good at acting. The historical and realism angle doesn't really fly with something like Star Wars because there is literally no basis to argue from. Unless of course someone wants to advocate that all humans on Tatooine are white working class or some other nonsense.

The problem I think big productions have with trying to drive home the diversity angle is that none of them ever do anything other than pay lip service to it, then they make a big deal out of how diverse they're being.

I agree, despite not having seen this. It is the same as the Ubisoft splash screen proclaiming how "this work of fiction was designed, developed and produced by a multicultural team of various beliefs, sexual orientations and gender identities", it feels engineered rather than just a thing.

The point I'm trying to make is that diverse hiring and casting practices should have absolutely no effect on good storytelling, so to say let's get the latter right by not worrying about the former doesn't make sense. If you blame the story problems that episodes 7-9 had on diversity practices, then you're just missing the point.

And while I agree that diversity practice shouldn't need to be pointed out, it's difficult to change attitudes unless you show that new ideas are the norm. Frankly I'm alright with companies pointing stuff like this out, even if it's cynically motivated.

I think we are all in agreement here - get a bloody good story first and worry about the other things later but when the group think came up with "diversity" and "no war" for a franchise about a galactic war as major plot ideas....than...yah...

Ep 7 - 9 are shite not because its a mixed race cast, or all white cast or all black cast or all asian cast. It was shite because it had no fucking narrative arc unless the arc was anything goes and nothing matters.

As I say I haven't seen the last one - I haven't been fussed enough to even download it - but again I agree. The original trilogy gave you a nice black and white good vs evil fairy tale. Hell half the fantasy stories I read feature the farmboy who has a destiny to save the world. They loaded it up with mental aliens, a nice bit of swashbuckling, massive space battles, magic and sword-fights. It really isn't a hard story to write but the Disney films have left me cold for all the reasons above.

I couldn't care less what race or gender the protagonists are, all I am looking for is a good story well told in a backdrop that was formative on my childhood. Visuals ain't enough without context and story, no matter how well done they are.

Now that this is "available", I've finally watched it.

I didn't hate it, but I didn't enjoy it, that's for sure. I think maybe I'm just... apathetic? By the half way point I was mostly just checking Twitter and the news on my phone because I didn't really care what was going on. I don't really have anything to add beyond what's already been said; the story was a mess but I think a crucial moment for me was when Chewie was suddenly Not Dead about 20 seconds after being Not Exploded. At that point I think it lost any tension because I didn't believe they would kill off anyone (other than Leia obviously). They didn't even kill off C-3PO after his emotional speech (which was of course just boring because you already knew it wouldn't mean anything). Nothing meant anything, even from the beginning. When your third act in a three part series begins with "Here's that guy who is Not Dead and he's secretly got an armada!" it means everyone knows that anything is possible and so nothing has any meaning.

I didn't hate it, but worse than that, is the reason I didn't hate it - I just couldn't bring myself to care any more.

Star Wars has always been a great idea, but so rarely executed well.

(The stories in some of the games have been so much better than the films; I wish they could do some decent shows following those plots. The Mandolorian was been good fun, so I still hold out hope that something good will come of the Star Wars universe.)

Strudel wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 20, 2020 4:32 pm

The stories in some of the games have been so much better than the films; I wish they could do some decent shows following those plots.

I know what you mean.

I'm so happy the carbonite is gone.

watched the first 10 minutes of the film

switched off and watched something else infinitely better

what an absolute waste of a trilogy. The first 10 min was so fast paced and related to nothing to the other 2 movies. Yeah I am done with Star Wars. RIP

Wait, so you happily watched that 70 minute video shitting all over it but only watched 10 minutes of the actual film?

It takes all sorts.

yep

I've been listening to an exceptional podcast series called Star Wars Oxygen:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4E1Gh ... BfqLeDgGzC

It's a deep-dive analysis of John Williams' Star Wars scores, taking many hours per film to consider everything in immense detail. It's not for the faint hearted, but if you stick with it there are insights that are genuinely astonishing - things that show what a master of subtlety Williams can be, and how closely he worked with Lucas to convey the story through the music.

It's also refreshing to listen to something positive about Star Wars that isn't particularly interested in the politics around it (admittedly most of it was recorded before episode 7). Because regardless of what you think of the more maligned Star Wars films, surely everyone can agree that John Williams is the man.

Just finished watching it. As advised I went in with low expectations and truth be told I somewhat enjoyed it, better than the last film anyway. It was still a streaming pile but it had its moments.
The opening crawl did make me think I had missed a film somewhere but it seems they just threw a major plot point into a bit of text and you just have to deal with it, fuck it. Actually "Fuck it.." appears to have been the attitude of whoever wrote the script.

I watched ROS. It's rubbish. Less rubbish than TLJ by far but still rubbish. I hope that's it for skywalker related nonsense and they stick with marginally more interesting subject matter like the Mandolorian.