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Star Wars: Andor (2022) - released episode spoilers allowed


Holko

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But Yavar! It's easier for me to blame the whole monolith instead of admitting there's a lot of moving parts within. An issue the old EU totally didn't have whatsoever!

 

(To be more serious, if more of the recent projects have kept having the same issues, then maybe there might be more mandates behind the scenes than we're really privy to (especially given the mess that was TRoS's production)).

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I dunno, I thought it was pretty clear that the "Rebel Alliance" was split between people advocating peaceful resistance and violent insurrection.  I took it to mean that Guerrera was even too hawk-ish/terroristic for the hawks in the Alliance.

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2 minutes ago, Stu said:

I dunno, I thought it was pretty clear that the "Rebel Alliance" was split between people advocating peaceful resistance and violent insurrection.  I took it to mean that Guerrera was even too hawk-ish/terroristic for the hawks in the Alliance.

That.

Gerrera is an extremist. They fleshed him a little more in rebels. Probably in this show the shor the cism between Mothma's Rebels and Gerrera's Renegades.

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44 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

Disney Star Wars is awfully bad at that political aspect of Star Wars. The first order was „bad“ by label and was just introduced as a pure military organization with no agenda for the galaxy. All administration seemed to be in the hands of the new republic, which was just blown to bits in episode 7. There are just leaders with armies and weapons coming out of nowhere, ready to fight. There is more political realism in Lego Ninjago than in Disney Star Wars.

 

Well, I think a lot of that comes from JJ. As I do tend to go on about, he has Leia leading the "Resistance". Resisting what, JJ? "I don't know. But I need a plucky group of underdogs and it starts with an R." It's preposterous.

 

Star Wars may be bare bones but it makes sense in a real world context. Big government. Small group trying to overthrow. Empire, Rebellion. If anything the First Order is the Rebellion in The Force Awakens.

 

18 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

 

I don't know why people keep going on about "Disney Star Wars". It's not a monolith.

 

Rian Johnson is different from JJ Abrams, and they're both different from the creative team behind The Mandalorian.

 

 

Building on the above: Rian then had to try and make JJ's nonsensical ideas make some kind of sense. And then he compounded JJ's nonsense with his own. (Wait. They blew up the capitol in the last movie. Isn't there like a whole government with it's own military? Why is the First Order winning by default here? Especially since they don't have their Death Star anymore? Why isn't there now a very VERY motivate Republic with big banners of "Never Forget!" and the like?)

 

26 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

 

This is being made by Tony Gilroy, who did Michael Clayton. I guarantee you he's going to handle the political aspect of Star Wars better than ANYONE has ever done before...particularly George Lucas, lol. I agree the First Order/Resistance stuff in the sequel trilogy was a dumb setup and absolutely the wrong approach (blame JJ), but there's no reason to think the politics will be handled as clumsily in Andor, which has a completely different vision and creative team.

 

I'm optimistic. The sensibility of Rogue One (which has been picked up in other quarters of Star Wars and not surprisingly looks like a template for Andor) seemed to be "Hey, what if everything from Star Wars was REAL? Maybe that's why I got kind of a thrill when I saw the Senate. I'm not a fan of the Prequels but to see what was happening in that world during the formation of the Alliance could be fascinating.

 

6 minutes ago, Brónach said:

I don't remember Rogue One well so maybe I'm wrong, but there's this bit like "we can't talk to Saw Guerrera, he's too radical" and I thought "but radical about what, what is going on??", and then it turns out into some setup for nothing. Also if they don't get along why not keep him in the group for later. Then again it's probably some "movie constraint" issue (they already had to shorten the entire climax because it didn't fit, turning the library and the antenna into the same location)

 

Saw was blowing stuff that the Alliance didn't want blown up and grabbing defecting Imperial Pilots and putting space squids in their brains. He had the attitude that to fight bad guys you had to be worse than them. I wonder if they a) talked to Lucas at all about that and / or b)  considered Saw's namesake.

 

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16 minutes ago, Yavar Moradi said:

 

I don't know why people keep going on about "Disney Star Wars". It's not a monolith.

 

Rian Johnson is different from JJ Abrams, and they're both different from the creative team behind The Mandalorian.

 

This is being made by Tony Gilroy, who did Michael Clayton. I guarantee you he's going to handle the political aspect of Star Wars better than ANYONE has ever done before...particularly George Lucas, lol. I agree the First Order/Resistance stuff in the sequel trilogy was a dumb setup and absolutely the wrong approach (blame JJ), but there's no reason to think the politics will be handled as clumsily in Andor, which has a completely different vision and creative team.

 

Yavar

It is not just an issue of JJ‘s scripts. It is all over the place. Also Kenobi was a desaster in that regard. And there they could basically rely on what was set up by Lucas. It starts with this just labeling the people as good or evil. And then whatever a good labeled person does to a bad labeled person is good and whatever a bad labeled person does to a good labeled person is good.

Yes, I remember, that Rogue One spend some effort in showing various aspects and moral conflicts within the rebellion, so there are some chances that Andor really works better. But I have as well the impression, that often good people are involved in those productions. But they are get overruled by producers. Or how we say in Germany: „Viele Köche verderben den Brei.“ Many cooks mess up the mash.

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1 hour ago, Yavar Moradi said:

This is being made by Tony Gilroy, who did Michael Clayton. I guarantee you he's going to handle the political aspect of Star Wars better than ANYONE has ever done before...particularly George Lucas, lol.

 

You can't guarantee that. Michael Clayton is an overtly political movie.  It's not an allegory for anything.

 

There's one easy way to tell if political allegory is being done well...if you can readily spot it, it's not. And if it looks like the show (or film) is primarily a vehicle for delivering a political message (as opposed to being created primarily to entertain), it's being done really poorly.  It all comes down to how deftly the material is handled, which is all about the quality of the writing. I don't mind a socio-political "message" in my genre entertainment, as a garnish. As soon as I think I'm being preached to, or it's being done in a heavy-handed manner, I'm out.

 

For example, old Star Trek (through Enterprise) usually handled this balance really well. NuTrek...not so much.

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So that clip I saw from Voyager about them discussing a species being considered statistically more likely to commit crimes isn't supposed to be on the nose?

 

(I'll admit I only make that connection because it was a topic in a class I took in college, so maybe it wouldn't stick out to more casual viewers.)

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I am not even talking about a political allegory. But when I write about a struggle with a galactic empire I should not do that without taking minimum aspects around society, administration, economy and history into account. Buzzword „world building“.

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25 minutes ago, HunterTech said:

So that clip I saw from Voyager about them discussing a species being considered statistically more likely to commit crimes isn't supposed to be on the nose?

 

(I'll admit I only make that connection because it was a topic in a class I took in college, so maybe it wouldn't stick out to more casual viewers.)

 

I did say old Trek usually handled it really well. And I don't think that bit from Voyager was particularly heavy-handed (especially compared to NuTrek). The Outcast, from TNG, I think is a good example of how well Star Trek can handle allegory in the hands of competent writers. The Orvilles recent A Tale of Two Topas does much the same. In fact, the NuTrek writers could learn a lot from Orville on this front.

 

On the other hand, DS9's Past Tense is way on the nose for my tastes, and it's probably Trek's most overtly political episode, that's done with all the subtlety of a jackhammer.  Conversely, DS9's Far Beyond the Stars tackled racism head on in a beautiful, moving way that always brings a tear to my eye. But that was more of an alternate reality episode and not really allegory.

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I wouldn’t worry about it unless it’s Gilroy himself talking about it being a modern contemporary allegory

 

People have some seriously distorted views of the US government and will happily project that onto media if they’re ideologically motivated

 

Contextually it doesn’t really make sense, Trump is no longer president so the allegory can’t really be contemporary anyway. 2016 would feel like decades ago to a modern audience thanks to all the fun global crisises that have occurred since

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5 hours ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

 

You can't guarantee that. Michael Clayton is an overtly political movie.  It's not an allegory for anything.

 

There's one easy way to tell if political allegory is being done well...if you can readily spot it, it's not. And if it looks like the show (or film) is primarily a vehicle for delivering a political message (as opposed to being created primarily to entertain), it's being done really poorly.  It all comes down to how deftly the material is handled, which is all about the quality of the writing. I don't mind a socio-political "message" in my genre entertainment, as a garnish. As soon as I think I'm being preached to, or it's being done in a heavy-handed manner, I'm out.

 

For example, old Star Trek (through Enterprise) usually handled this balance really well. NuTrek...not so much.

Star wars was never intended to be a political allegory, much of it was explicitly about politics.

5 minutes ago, DarthDementous said:

Contextually it doesn’t really make sense, Trump is no longer president so the allegory can’t really be contemporary anyway. 2016 would feel like decades ago to a modern audience thanks to all the fun global crisises that have occurred since

That's like saying the WWII allegory in LOTR wasn't contemporary because it was published in the 1950s.

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7 minutes ago, JohnTheBaptist said:

Star wars was never intended to be a political allegory, much of it was explicitly about politics.

That's like saying the WWII allegory in LOTR wasn't contemporary because it was published in the 1950s.


WWII allegory? Isn’t Tolkien famously on record for saying how he doesn’t indulge in allegory at all in his works?

 

I suppose the idea could be more of a ‘what if Trump stayed in power’ thing, but again I’d need to hear it from Gilroy’s mouth to not think it just the projection of an actor involved

 

By the way I meant contemporary from the perspective of the Western audience, not in the categorical sense

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1 hour ago, JohnTheBaptist said:

Star wars was never intended to be a political allegory, much of it was explicitly about politics.

That's like saying the WWII allegory in LOTR wasn't contemporary because it was published in the 1950s.

 

I’m not sure you understand what allegory is. Just because parts of Star Wars were political doesn’t mean they weren’t also allegorical. Even if it wasn’t apparent on the screen, we’d know because Lucas explicitly told us so. Multiple times. 

 

And there’s no WWII allegory is LOTR. Tolkien despised allegory (he explicitly told us so) and even if it was there, it would be about the First World War…the one Tolkien served in.

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…that’s…not what’s allegorical about it.

 

So you’ve told us that Star Wars, that the creator has said is allegorical, isn’t, but Lord of the Rings, that the creator has specifically told us isn’t allegorical, is. 
 

Well done you, well done. I guess Lucas and Professor Tolkien aren’t good “analysts of their own work”. 
 

Now, do tell us more about the WWII allegory in LOTR!

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I'm talking about the books, not the comic book movies that Peter Jackson made. It's obvious to nearly everyone who's actually read them. And George Lucas is the last person I'd believe about his creation process. He wants us to believe that the technology of putting rocks in front of R2D2 wasn't available in the 1970s.

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The U.S. paperback edition of LotR has an intro by Tolkien specifically refuting it as allegory in general, and of WW2 in specific. It’s really interesting and quite intellectually. In fact he goes into what would have happened in his story if it were a WW2 allegory.

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I think you're maybe being too stubborn if you're just full on dismissing the author's own words at this point.

 

But at the same time, enough people have made the connection with LotR that it's fairly easy to believe it subconsciously influenced Tolkien regardless of he intendeded on any of it. Death of the author can certainly be effect with having readings on a text, but that's just for each reader to decide on themselves.

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11 hours ago, HunterTech said:

(To be more serious, if more of the recent projects have kept having the same issues, then maybe there might be more mandates behind the scenes than we're really privy to (especially given the mess that was TRoS's production)).


There's a very interesting 2-part semi-documentary series on Youtube that I've seen recently called Star Wars Apocrypha that deep dives into the behind the scenes making of the Sequel Trilogy based on all the public primary source information that we have. There's a lot of information in it, but one of the main points of interest is that it seems like Disney was very hands free on the making of TFA and TLJ, they pretty much let JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson do whatever they wanted.

 

I don't know for certain how any of the more recent projects have been run, I guess it is possible that the Disney+ series' have been more controlled. But it does seem like the Mandalorian, the Clone Wars S7 and the Bad Batch have had mostly hands free development cycles. The only two entries I can think of to have explicit interference from Disney were Solo and TROS where the directors were replaced

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13 hours ago, Brónach said:

I don't remember Rogue One well so maybe I'm wrong, but there's this bit like "we can't talk to Saw Guerrera, he's too radical" and I thought "but radical about what, what is going on??", and then it turns out into some setup for nothing. 

 

That's because Saw appears in all the animated shows. And that is a reference to that. In those shows Saw is shown to be quite radical in his approach of the rebellion etc.

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I think art is incomplete without the perspective of the person on the other side of the artist - and as a result, there is no definitive experience of or explanation for art.  There’s something to be said about whether something is intended as an allegory vs. whether something SERVES as an allegory.   Tolkien says that he despises allegory and had no intent to create one.  To John The Baptist (no relation) and many, many people over the years, the Lord of the Rings books serve as an allegory to World War II.  Those things can coexist!

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8 hours ago, enderdrag64 said:


There's a very interesting 2-part semi-documentary series on Youtube that I've seen recently called Star Wars Apocrypha that deep dives into the behind the scenes making of the Sequel Trilogy based on all the public primary source information that we have. There's a lot of information in it, but one of the main points of interest is that it seems like Disney was very hands free on the making of TFA and TLJ, they pretty much let JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson do whatever they wanted.

 

I don't know for certain how any of the more recent projects have been run, I guess it is possible that the Disney+ series' have been more controlled. But it does seem like the Mandalorian, the Clone Wars S7 and the Bad Batch have had mostly hands free development cycles. The only two entries I can think of to have explicit interference from Disney were Solo and TROS where the directors were replaced

 

As a current huge Star Wars hater and acting over the top about how messed up and totally broken the story and canon is, I think the focus on canon at all is a huge mistake. 

 

Back in MY DAY (:peepwall:)we had movies, and then tons of other bullshit. The bullshit had the room to be bullshit. It was a legend from a long time ago. If it didn't quite line up with the movies, that's okay. We can just pass it off as a not exactly right interpretation of events. Different levels of canon, you could say. Nowadays, in the obsession with pretending every piece of media matters as much as every other, canon is a mess because the creators and storytellers aren't good at keeping track of it in the first place, but also there's that passive consideration of canon so nothing interesting ever really happens in the stories. 

 

Maybe media needs to set a hierarchy so there's room for creativity or shooting for the stars, with room for falling flat. I know that since a lot of this fiction is people's replacement for religion they need it to all line up and be gospel, but it makes it hard for people who want to see fun and interesting stuff. 

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21 minutes ago, SilverTrumpet said:

I know that since a lot of this fiction is people's replacement for religion they need it to all line up and be gospel

 

Of course, the Gospel doesn't line up at all in glaring ways and has been a source of consternation and conflict among Christians for millennia.  Let's just hope that people replacing religion with corporate IP doesn't result in Holy Wars down the line :lol: .... :) ... :unsure: ... :eh:

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7 hours ago, mstrox said:

I think art is incomplete without the perspective of the person on the other side of the artist - and as a result, there is no definitive experience of or explanation for art.  There’s something to be said about whether something is intended as an allegory vs. whether something SERVES as an allegory.   Tolkien says that he despises allegory and had no intent to create one.  To John The Baptist (no relation) and many, many people over the years, the Lord of the Rings books serve as an allegory to World War II.  Those things can coexist!

 

Well, yes. This goes without saying. People are free to, and do, read whatever they wish into any work of fiction. That's part of the joy of experiencing a book or film.

 

But I think this is distinguished from authorial intent, which matters when we're talking about something like allegory. Allegory is deliberate, it doesn't happen by accident. When it comes to Lucas, we know, for example, that he intended Star Wars to at least partially be an allegory for the Vietnam War and Watergate-era political corruption. And while I know Lucas has spun all kind of tales over the years about the allegorical elements of Star Wars (i.e. Lucas lies), as far as the Vietnam/Watergate allegory, he was writing about that in relation to Star Wars as far back as 1973, so for that at least we're on pretty firm ground. And of course how well this allegory in Star Wars "works" is a matter of opinion. I always found the idea of the Ewoks being stand-in's for the Viet Cong to be a bit eye rolling personally.

 

In Tolkien's case on the other hand, we know he wasn't interested in creating an allegory, because he told us so, and specifically as it relates to WWII. That said, he did concede that there may be some similarities to certain events in LOTR and the "Great War" (i.e. WWI, which he served in), because, well, like most people of his generation,  especially those who were in those trenches, how could he have not been influenced by it? But that doesn't mean he set out to create an allegory.  It also doesn't mean there's anything wrong with those who see parallels to either World War in LOTR.  

 

 

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55 minutes ago, SilverTrumpet said:

 

As a current huge Star Wars hater and acting over the top about how messed up and totally broken the story and canon is, I think the focus on canon at all is a huge mistake. 

 

Back in MY DAY (:peepwall:)we had movies, and then tons of other bullshit. The bullshit had the room to be bullshit. It was a legend from a long time ago. If it didn't quite line up with the movies, that's okay. We can just pass it off as a not exactly right interpretation of events. Different levels of canon, you could say. Nowadays, in the obsession with pretending every piece of media matters as much as every other, canon is a mess because the creators and storytellers aren't good at keeping track of it in the first place, but also there's that passive consideration of canon so nothing interesting ever really happens in the stories. 

 

Maybe media needs to set a hierarchy so there's room for creativity or shooting for the stars, with room for falling flat. I know that since a lot of this fiction is people's replacement for religion they need it to all line up and be gospel, but it makes it hard for people who want to see fun and interesting stuff. 

There is just

  • too much fan service 
  • too few new ideas
  • no writer and director with brain and balls (I mean courage, don’t need to be male) who get a creative chance
  • no mature and competent management of Star Wars overall.
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On 05/08/2022 at 2:24 PM, JohnTheBaptist said:

I've already said my piece. Authors are rarely the best or most reliable analysts of their own works. 

You're right, random people on the Internet are far more reliable. Let's do away with this whole 'author/audience interpretation' distinction and focus on what actually matters - the evidence and reasoning given for a claim. Death of the author doesn't mean you ignore the author entirely, it just means their word doesn't get to supersede the work itself by virtue of them being the creator. I'm probably with the idea that allegory needs to be deliberate, but aside from that I think I'm more inclined to trust Tolkien on the matter because he actually cited the text to support his point whereas you haven't given me any reasons as to why your interpretation holds up instead. 'Authors are often unreliable' is a very easy way to avoid having to engage in any specifics on the matter
 

On 05/08/2022 at 3:29 PM, enderdrag64 said:


There's a very interesting 2-part semi-documentary series on Youtube that I've seen recently called Star Wars Apocrypha that deep dives into the behind the scenes making of the Sequel Trilogy based on all the public primary source information that we have. There's a lot of information in it, but one of the main points of interest is that it seems like Disney was very hands free on the making of TFA and TLJ, they pretty much let JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson do whatever they wanted.

 

I don't know for certain how any of the more recent projects have been run, I guess it is possible that the Disney+ series' have been more controlled. But it does seem like the Mandalorian, the Clone Wars S7 and the Bad Batch have had mostly hands free development cycles. The only two entries I can think of to have explicit interference from Disney were Solo and TROS where the directors were replaced

Loved this series, it presents a very interesting hypothesis for what actually went down behind the curtains of the selling of Star Wars and the filming of the Sequel Trilogy

Highly recommend checking out this YTer's video on his refutation of A New Hope being saved in the edit despite George Lucas, it's a very annoying and popular misconception that was very satisfying to see debunked

 

On 06/08/2022 at 12:04 AM, SilverTrumpet said:

 

As a current huge Star Wars hater and acting over the top about how messed up and totally broken the story and canon is, I think the focus on canon at all is a huge mistake. 

 

Back in MY DAY (:peepwall:)we had movies, and then tons of other bullshit. The bullshit had the room to be bullshit. It was a legend from a long time ago. If it didn't quite line up with the movies, that's okay. We can just pass it off as a not exactly right interpretation of events. Different levels of canon, you could say. Nowadays, in the obsession with pretending every piece of media matters as much as every other, canon is a mess because the creators and storytellers aren't good at keeping track of it in the first place, but also there's that passive consideration of canon so nothing interesting ever really happens in the stories. 

 

Maybe media needs to set a hierarchy so there's room for creativity or shooting for the stars, with room for falling flat. I know that since a lot of this fiction is people's replacement for religion they need it to all line up and be gospel, but it makes it hard for people who want to see fun and interesting stuff. 


Agreed. Nu-Lucasfilm set themselves the logistically unfeasible goal of flattening the hierarchy by doing away with the EU's tier system for a binary distinction of 'canon' and 'non-canon', but in doing so made the more public-facing films subservient to relatively obscure pieces of fiction, gradually making it more and more necessary to have experienced other works in completely different mediums to get a satisfying experience from the main content which in turn alienates a mainstream audience

The tier system worked perfectly fine before and made it that the movies got the final world on everything, which helped them stay standalone. There was no reason I can see to change how things worked, and the outcome of doing so has been disastrous

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9 minutes ago, JohnTheBaptist said:

It's not "my" interpretation. It's the interpretation of nearly everyone who's read the books since they were published.


If it's such a common interpretation then surely it would be trivial to support it with evidence from the work? Many people believing something does not make that thing true either

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19 minutes ago, DarthDementous said:

Agreed. Nu-Lucasfilm set themselves the logistically unfeasible goal of flattening the hierarchy by doing away with the EU's tier system for a binary distinction of 'canon' and 'non-canon', but in doing so made the more public-facing films subservient to relatively obscure pieces of fiction, gradually making it more and more necessary to have experienced other works in completely different mediums to get a satisfying experience from the main content which in turn alienates a mainstream audience
 

I'm not sure how much they've done this actually, yes you probably should watch the animated shows if you want to watch some of their more recent content but they haven't really referenced the books or the comics or any of that other shit at all. In many ways it's very similar to the old EU except that the official canon policy is no longer honest about what really matters.

 

In fact I can think of multiple times recently where Disney canon stuff has been explicitly retconned, for example the 2015 supposedly canon Kanan comic series showed what he was doing in Order 66 which was completely contradicted by The Bad Batch. The 2016 supposedly canon Ahsoka book had tons of information that was already retconned a bit by S7 of the Clone Wars and I've read is likely going to be completely invalidated by Tales of the Jedi whenever that comes out

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14 minutes ago, DarthDementous said:


If it's such a common interpretation then surely it would be trivial to support it with evidence from the work? Many people believing something does not make that thing true either

No need for "would", there's no shortage of essays doing exactly that. Literary criticism isn't science, popular opinion is the only thing that matters. The idea of a work belonging to a single owner for perpetuity is a relatively new idea.

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1 hour ago, JohnTheBaptist said:

It's not "my" interpretation. It's the interpretation of nearly everyone who's read the books since they were published.

 

"Nearly everyone" who has read Lord of the Rings since it was published thinks it's metaphor for WWII? For one, how could that possibly be true, and more to the point, how could you possibly know that?

 

I mean, anyone who read Tolkien's Forward to the second edition (i.e. anyone who read a post-1966 edition, which for all practical purposes is nearly everyone) would have read this before they even got to the story:

 

As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical....It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in the war that began in 1939 or its sequels modified it...The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion.

And yet nearly everyone who has read the book still insists it's a WWII metaphor? Is that really what you're stubbornly clinging to? And why WWII? What about WWI, which Tolkien actually fought in?

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9 hours ago, enderdrag64 said:

I'm not sure how much they've done this actually, yes you probably should watch the animated shows if you want to watch some of their more recent content but they haven't really referenced the books or the comics or any of that other shit at all. In many ways it's very similar to the old EU except that the official canon policy is no longer honest about what really matters.

 

In fact I can think of multiple times recently where Disney canon stuff has been explicitly retconned, for example the 2015 supposedly canon Kanan comic series showed what he was doing in Order 66 which was completely contradicted by The Bad Batch. The 2016 supposedly canon Ahsoka book had tons of information that was already retconned a bit by S7 of the Clone Wars and I've read is likely going to be completely invalidated by Tales of the Jedi whenever that comes out


Yup, that’s the really telling thing that in practise they’re still using the old framework because of how unsustainable the alternative is. Except they’ve invited far greater criticism when there is a contradiction because of what their mission statement is

 

8 hours ago, JohnTheBaptist said:

No need for "would", there's no shortage of essays doing exactly that. Literary criticism isn't science, popular opinion is the only thing that matters. The idea of a work belonging to a single owner for perpetuity is a relatively new idea.


Popular opinion is the only thing that matters eh, then that would surely make the Sequel Trilogy a fantastic set of films? And if you try and tell me that isn’t the popular opinion then I’d like to see what you’d use as evidence to the contrary, and if that’s difficult then that’s exactly my point as to why this appeal to popularity is foolish

 

Lets entertain the idea that it is in fact the popular opinion LOTR is a WW2 allegory, link me one essay that talks about this that you’ve actually read 

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19 minutes ago, JohnTheBaptist said:

Croft, Janet Brennan. "'The young perish and the old linger, withering': J.R.R. Tolkien on World War II." Mythlore, vol. 24, no. 2, summer-fall 2004, pp. 58+.


From the introduction of that essay:

Quote

 

 

Some of the earliest critics of The Lord of the Rings saw the work as an allegory of World War II, so much so that Tolkien felt it necessary to deny any such intent in the Foreword to the second edition. The Lord of the Rings was, after all, begun in 1936, while the "awful rumour" of war was building; parts of it were sent in serial form to his son Christopher, serving in the Royal Air Force in South Africa; and it was finished in 1949, several years after the end of the war. It is understandable that these critics viewed the Ring as an allegory for the Bomb. But as Verlyn Flieger points out, "[t]o subject it to such a reading is to ignore chronology" (7); Tolkien's work on Middle-earth actually began years earlier, during World War I.”

 

 

I am fully willing to accept there was subconscious influence there, and analysing that would be interesting indeed which I assume the rest of the essay does. However, ‘subconscious influence’ does not an allegory make, and this essayist seems to agree by bringing up that it would be chronologically impossible for it to be intentional and thus allegory. If what you meant was that you could draw some thematic parallels to WW2 then that’s perfectly reasonable, but saying LOTR is a WW2 allegory implies something different entirely, and offers a contradicting statement of the author’s intent rather than a statement independent of that which is focused on the outcome

 

I think proving allegory is the same method of proving influence, look for corresponding hyper-specifics between the source and the representation of it in the work, and also the words of the author

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1 hour ago, DarthDementous said:

Popular opinion is the only thing that matters eh, then that would surely make the Sequel Trilogy a fantastic set of films? And if you try and tell me that isn’t the popular opinion then I’d like to see what you’d use as evidence to the contrary, and if that’s difficult then that’s exactly my point as to why this appeal to popularity is foolish

 

Is there even anyone who fully enjoyed TRoS unironically? Let alone the amount of TLJ positivity videos getting even close to half the amount that exist from the critical side? Even TFA was pretty quick to garner scrutiny once the rehash and Rey being overpowered arguments started pouring in.

 

The only way you could even think the sequel trilogy has generally remained well liked (on the internet at least) is if you sectioned yourself off to the part of fan Twitter that eats up everything Disney SW/MCU.

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1 hour ago, HunterTech said:

Is there even anyone who fully enjoyed TRoS unironically?

 

What are we calling "fully"? By some standards I didn't even"fully"enjoy Return of the Jedi. I had a really good time watching RoS. There is nothing I can object to in it that wasn't laid down in Force Awakens.

 

I consider Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith unwatchable. I was in tears at the end of Sith and not in a good way. I didn't feel like that at the end of Skywalker. 

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With TRoS, I've been used to people either merely enjoying the production work put into the film, or finding it so silly it makes it rather entertaining for them. Otherwise, it tends to be a resounding meh at best from a lot of people who has seen it.

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1 hour ago, HunterTech said:

 

Is there even anyone who fully enjoyed TRoS unironically? Let alone the amount of TLJ positivity videos getting even close to half the amount that exist from the critical side? Even TFA was pretty quick to garner scrutiny once the rehash and Rey being overpowered arguments started pouring in.

 

The only way you could even think the sequel trilogy has generally remained well liked (on the internet at least) is if you sectioned yourself off to the part of fan Twitter that eats up everything Disney SW/MCU.


Criticism videos are a rather poor metric for popular opinion because of negativity bias, someone who values appealing to popularity would likely look to aggregate review scores and box office. I'd agree TROS is a bit of a stretch though, however that wouldn't change my point. Just replace it with any film that you have an opinion on that goes against the grain, it's going to be highly unlikely you're going to align with the popular opinion on every film you've seen
 

1 hour ago, HunterTech said:

The only way you could even think the sequel trilogy has generally remained well liked (on the internet at least) is if you sectioned yourself off to the part of fan Twitter that eats up everything Disney SW/MCU.


That's likely the majority fanbase because that's what Disney is currently appealing to and is enjoying continued success as a result, with Boba Fett being an abnormality but hopefully a sign that people are starting to get less complacent on the whole

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You admit TRoS is a stretch, yet it apparently has a higher audience rating on RT than TLJ.

 

It's hard for me to fully trust aggregate sites with at least audience ratings, given the reports of key projects being targeted for mass downvotes (IX from above specifically being verified for example, while TLJ curiously isn't). Then again, I suppose it's the individual impressions where the real meat is found, since it'll better inform you of what the casual audience liked or didn't like about a movie.

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