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'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Negative Buzz Amplified By Russian Trolls, Study Finds (hollywoodreporter.com)
bestweasel writes: The Hollywood Reporter highlights an academic paper which finds that half of the criticism aimed at director Rian Johnson over Star Wars: The Last Jedi was politically motivated. From the report: [Researcher Morten Bay's paper] titled Weaponizing The Haters: The Last Jedi and the strategic politicization of pop culture through social media manipulation, examines the online response to the movie that has come to be considered controversial amongst the larger fanbase of the franchise. Bay suggests that reputation may not be earned, and instead "finds evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments." He continues, "The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement, as well as the Russian Federation."
The paper analyzes in depth the negative online reaction, which is split into three different camps: those with a political agenda, trolls and what Bay calls "real fantagonists," which he defines as genuine Star Wars fans disappointed in the movie. His findings are fascinating; "Overall, 50.9% of those tweeting negatively [about the movie] was likely politically motivated or not even human," he writes, noting that only 21.9% of tweets analyzed about the movie had been negative in the first place. "A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls," Bay writes of the negative tweets. In response to a tweet announcing the release of the paper, Last Jedi director Rian Johnson shared the tweet, adding, "Looking forward to reading it, but what the top-line describes is consistent with my experience online."
The paper analyzes in depth the negative online reaction, which is split into three different camps: those with a political agenda, trolls and what Bay calls "real fantagonists," which he defines as genuine Star Wars fans disappointed in the movie. His findings are fascinating; "Overall, 50.9% of those tweeting negatively [about the movie] was likely politically motivated or not even human," he writes, noting that only 21.9% of tweets analyzed about the movie had been negative in the first place. "A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls," Bay writes of the negative tweets. In response to a tweet announcing the release of the paper, Last Jedi director Rian Johnson shared the tweet, adding, "Looking forward to reading it, but what the top-line describes is consistent with my experience online."
"Russian Trolls" is code for "Straight white men".
Trump did collude with these people to win the election, and they were also upset to see one of their favorite childhood adventure epics reduced to leftist/feminist propaganda.
Well, actually in this case it sounds fishy, what's the purpose - a training of new cadre?
I hate Star Wars. Star Wars can eat a bag of dicks. I am not a Russian, nor any other flavour of Slav.
Or your trash movie was...wait for it...really trash!
Not the fact the movie was shit and just happened to piss all over one if the franchises most beloved characters, totally wasting any opportunity to use Luke Skywalker in any interesting capacity before unceremoniously killing him off.
For an example just look at the hearing last week.
Unless it's Russians all the way down.
They're trying to polarize both like and dislike for the movie and then cause both camps to draw an assumption about the political affiliation of the other camp. They're doing this with every element of pop culture that people disagree on. Like the summary says, the overarching goal is primarily to foster the public perception of increased social dysfunction from within and without.
Not interested in Disney's fanfic anymore. Made the mistake of seeing The Force Awakens. The plot was just a fan-service rehash of the original Star Wars and Rey was an annoying Mary Sue. So I just stopped giving Disney my money after that. Didn't make a YouTube video bitching about it or anything. I just stopped buying their toys and seeing their movies. Problem solved.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Hey look guys, I found one!
Is there anything we can't blame them for?
Messing with elections is one thing, but messing with Star Wars is going way too far.
Table-ized A.I.
"The paper concludes that while it is only a minority of Twitter accounts that tweet negatively about The Last Jedi..." Oh so everyone else's opinion is valid then. It was a crap movie.
"more than half are bots, trolls/sock puppets or political activists using the debate to propagate political messages supporting..."
Yeah I know, I've been flooded with posts of FeministComicNerd, GenderFluidMovieRanter, and MarySuePenisHater about how Last Jedi is the greatest movie ever and
that Asian chick is important to the story and not at all to pander to Chinese audiences.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
But we are made of sterner stuff than that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
they're trying to sow discord in American society in order to weaken us politically. That's it. Nothing else.
And you know what? It's working. Not that we needed very much, given how Balkanized we are, but it's like a vial of blood in a shark pool...
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I hated it. And yes, I 'm a russian troll that traveled back in time 15 years to get this username.
Red Letter Media: RED?! MUST BE RUSSIANS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Oh, so you're the one who outbid me when they auctioned off the nyet account in October of 2016.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I can confirm the movie was crap! I do not need any Troll or Russian bot network to tell me otherwise!! What kind of study was this anyways?! Did this study not study the actual movie and only study the reviews?! Sounds like the movie industry is trying to Troll us and tell people otherwise!!
4.49 rubles well spent, I assure you.
What possible benefit does Russia gain by spamming bad reviews for a movie?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
because that movie sucked ass.
Not being a movie maker I can't say why, but the younger folks at my job like it and the old timers who grew up with the 1st 3 movies hated it. That's the thing, it's mostly young folks going to see movies. So they make moves for them. Not us.
As for Luke, as last Gen's hero he pretty much had to die. Same as Kenobi. I suppose a much, much better writer could have bridged the gaps, but that's a risky and Herculean task I can't blame Disney, or Ryan Johnson, for not trying.
Oh, and if we could just get a decent Star Wars game that wasn't a platform for micro transactions all would be forgiven. I'll be you 2/3rds of the nerd rage is up to that.
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Had nothing to do with Leia flying through space.
I really never got The Last Jedi freak out, Sure, there was the admiral with blue hair who for some unexplainable reason left her crew hopeless rather than tell them where they were going. And sure, in a civilization with sentient robots for some reason she needed to piloted a suicide attack against the chasing fleet. And sure, if that attack is so devastating why aren't there weapons that do that?
In the end though, at least the movie wasn't a fucking carbon copy of one of the original trilogy movies. The second it came up they were going on a third fucking Death Star run in The Force Awakens (complete with: "another Death Star?", "No! It's bigger, see...") I have had no use for that movie. What a terrible ending.
Rogue One is still easily the best of the new movies (that scene where the rebel fleet warps in right on top of those two star destroyers!? And a hammer head corvette doing its thing in action!?) but Last Jedi really wasn't that bad. Especially relative to just fucking copying a classic.
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The main thing that really bothers me about The Last Jedi, is that all the hate and trolling has managed to pretty much taint any and all actual criticism of the movie. You're now no longer allowed to be critical of anything in the film, without being labeled a misogynist, part of the "toxic masculinity", or whatever the trigger words are these days. Heck, I've even heard that some characters were written in such a way that you'd automatically labeled "part of the problem" if you don't like them.
Do I think the movie had issues? Of course I do. Are there characters I didn't like? Yes. Did I at least somewhat enjoy watching it? Also yes.
But do I think it was a terrible pile of garbage that everyone involved should be ashamed of and harassed endlessly over? Absolutely not.
But I now somehow feel awkward and uncomfortable actually expressing any criticism.
The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement
Just curious why the alt-right movement would bother creating discord & dysfunction? I'd think every political movement would want to send a narrative of "things are broken, and only we can fix them" and there are always countless examples that already exist, so there's no reason to create new ones.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
So the opening of TLJ has a serious tone, with the rebels escaping from the surface. A few minutes later a serious live or die attack on the dreadnought is turned into spaceballs. I honestly had to wonder whether I was in the right theater. Then the slow moving bombers drop bombs. No shields. And apparently the dreadnought attracts bombs. WTF?
Basically the entire story is that the entire rebel fleet is reduced to about a dozen people and a single small ship. Oh, and the supreme leader is killed - so the whole buildup was pointless. As was the whole of the first movie which revolved around delivering Luke's lightsaber to him and bringing him out of exile.
Oh, and the one part of the film that I thought might redeem it a little was destroyed; when Finn is prevented from sacrificing himself to save his friends, only to be sabotaged by some nutcase. If I were Finn I would have shot her myself there and then. And how did they get back? WTF?
Rotten Tomatoes and the results of Solo tell the story. Russian bots can fake those.
We don't need trolls to do this, Hollywood has long been in the business of producing films to influence political opinion in the US. I guess if they push liberal agendas its ok (The First Purge, The Trump Prophecy, and Fahrenheit 11/9 are currently playing at the theater close to me) .
But, personally my biggest complaints about the movie were just the shear number of times I was yelling at the screen for the characters to do the logical thing. You know, like tell the hot shot renegade and the whole crew you have a plan other than just sitting around. Or why didn't the empire just radio ahead and setup and ambush, you know like the police would do? Heck, why could the tie fighters engage the rebel fleet but the main ships couldn't get any more speed out, was Scotty on shore leave (sorry, mixing universes). The whole movie could be summed up as a very slow chase scene in space with explosions. I could go on but seriously who ever reviewed the script should not work in Hollywood again.
yeah, they present no actual evidence. This is literally the "Everyone I Disagree With Is A Russian Bot" mentality.
The Last Judi sucked ass. The box office reflected that only a little bit, because everyone had to see it for themselves. It had far fewer people seeing it multiple times, however.
The sales figures for the bluray (absolutely awful) reflect it.
The sales figures for the toys (absolutely awful) reflect it
The sales figures for Solo (absolutely awful) reflect it.
The sales figures for the Solo bluray (absolutely awful) reflect it.
If there's someone sewing discord in America it's people like Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson. These shitlords actively attacked fans and customers. They continue to double down on alienating the people who give them money when it doesn't work. Oh, the movie did poorly because we didn't listen to the fans and their concerns? Time to call our fans racist, sexist, etc. Time to say "the Force is female" and literally say we don't need male fans. Time to insult people for not "getting" that the new animated show (at a 10PM time slot) is shallow, bland shit because it's for kids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Disney doesn't understand Star Wars. They got a freebie with The Force Awakens because people wanted new Star Wars. They got a crappy ripoff of the original with major plot holes (who the fuck is making this map and why does R2 have a missing piece of it and if you have a portion of some map/tracking data why not just start searching in in the blank areas?). Adam Driver is a bad actor. Emo Darth Vader is a terrible character. Daisy Ridley is a plank of wood. Rey isn't a terrible character, but that's only because she isn't even a character. She's a foil, at best. A fucking Milhouse.
I won't see Episode IX in the theater. I'll wait for Redbox.
Everything Star Wars EU is shit. I don't care if some of it later "officially" became "canon". REAL fans don't even count the special edition edits as canon.
Canon = The original cuts of the first 3 films (maybe including the "A New Hope" title), the Holiday Special, and the various PSAs of the time.
I thought it was pretty darn clear from TFS. I suppose our ruling class does it too now that you mention it.
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Generations of fans will review a bad movie and tell the world about their thoughts. In real time using social media.
The real reviews by fans are shared and linked and show what the bad movie is all about.
Reviews did not make the bad political movie script the way it was.
What good reviews?
1. Write a great script and listen to the fans who will be happy to support a movie they enjoy.
Use the fan base. They really want to write good reviews and tell the world how much they liked a new movie.
A bad script and bad movie will not get good reviews. Find better people with real skills to make a much better movie.
2. Stay within what the fans want, expect and what the surrounding fiction supports.
Got a lot of past movies, books, comics surrounding the movie? Make sure the new movie fits with what is expected, published and understood. The fans can recall it all and will tell the world about what was done wrong.
3. Understand what has been published and what other movies had that audiences enjoyed.
4. Don't add strange new political topics that don't fit with years of past plots.
5. Understand who the movies is getting seen by. Dont add political topics that don't add to the story for that wider audience.
Want to make a new political space movie? Do it as a totally new project and see how it sells and reviews.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
the alt-right movement is just a bunch of guys who can't find good jobs and, as a result, women. It's not really a movement. It's what happens when you don't have enough decent paying work for men to have and raise families. Those men are being taken advantage of by what can only be called the American Aristocracy and a right wing propaganda machine. The goal is to talk them into supporting candidates who'll do the classic alt-right economics (trickle down economics, free trade, outsourcing, etc).
So far it's working. Donald Trump, who's essentially the lead for the movement, has staffed his admin with the same Goldman Sachs folks Obama, Bush Jr and Clinton did. Trump now supports all the provisions of the TPP (but he doesn't support "the" TPP) and he's busy deregulating Wall Street while giving them massive tax cuts (another $3.5 Trillion just passed the House while we were distracted by his SCOTUS nominee's scandals).
Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren are doing their best to reach out to them, but it's tough. There's a giant propaganda machine out to get them. Also the Dem's don't have Reagan's Eleventh Commandment so they eat their own (re: Al Franklin). Meanwhile the GOP is happy to give those angry guys any number of enemies to rail against (feminists, SJWs, basically "social" enemies that distract from economic issues). Not sure if Bernie & Liz are going to succeed, but they're definitely trying.
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I agree with sexconker.
This is a blatant case of "Russian bot delusion".
Twitter found less than 50 identifiable "Russian bot" accounts out of 200 million. And then it suspended a couple of million people for supposedly being "bots".
That alone should tell you that the Russian bot thing is nothing but BS conspiracy theory.
I should have clarified to start.
Being a "Russian bot" today is kind of like being a "literal Nazi" or a "racist".
You're not one, but you disagree with the Left.
Their attempts to label everyone they don't like under a few hateful labels gives away their agenda.
How could you have not liked the Holiday Special? Unthinkable! :p
This space unintentionally left blank.
This century is when Russia finally found what it's good at. Or, more to the point, it knew all along - but the skill was not in demand until now. Only with the world fully interconnected the last piece of the puzzle fell into place.
Russia has never been much for productive development. But ability to endlessly argue for the sake of an argument and troll is ingrained in the culture and the language. It was not of much use before when any information produced locally stayed local. Now that they have world-wide reach - things are looking up for them.
The rest of the world will just have to learn to live with it, and to pay less attention to the professional trolling. I fear that may not be an easy task.
Search Last Jedi
Apparently all the Russian Trolls have excellent English and live in America as American citizens.
Look, if you agree with Disney's and Hollywood's political agenda of feminist superiority, fine. But I know a lot of what the Russkies have done, and the meme is even getting tired for me. What is interesting is the same old same old blame everything but the possibility that you made a politicized movie with a not so good story line that simply isn't enjoyable to watch.
Especially since the people you now cater to don't go to your movies. Multiple times. And buy the critical profitable action figures and toys. I'm curious, did the Russian Trolls get China to pull "The last Jedi" out of theaters?
But enough of the sorry state of Hollywood social Justice driven films.
I've been Netflix watching the old "Star Trek Voyager"series, especially since I've become jaded lately. I for one reason or another never saw it when it was on it's run. And there isn't anything conservative about any Star Trek series. Female captain on a non-conservative Sci-Fi show. I should hate it, amirite?
It was like a freaking breath of fresh air, even if not the best of the ST series. Janeway is a great Captain, managing to be the captain without being what today passes for feminism, which is a lot of whining, complaining and misandrism. She does this while still being a female, not an ersatz male. She reminded me of many of the female scientists I worked with. No one's fool, but not a jerk. That's the kind of strong woman I can get behind. And any politics is very gentle, hidden in the story line, and not whining in your face. Just enjoyable to watch.
Now it is possible that Hollywood will continue their misandry with films that feel the need to replace mixed sex reboots with all female casts, and to make politicized movies espousing their hatred, but when you actively yell "Fuck You" at 49.2 percent of your possible viewers, well, hope they have very very deep pockets.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And people are surprised there was a backlash on political grounds? That film was asking for trouble.
Make SELinux enforcing again!
I notice you didn't throw specific criticism at Rogue One. I agree with you that Disney doesn't understand Star Wars, but I liked Rogue One anyway. It almost felt like Disney accidentally made a good one.
In this case it's a Canadian troll denying it. The idea that Russians care about American reactions to a movie in order to spur discord fails the sniff test on a few counts.
1) Americans are already tearing themselves apart quite handily on their own. The bi-party system is just fundamentally broken. What "your" party does is always ok, and what the other party does is demonized even when they are the same thing. The Republicans can block a democratic supreme court nominee by using control of the senate to block discussion on it, and for Republican supporters that is justified and the Democrats all cry fowl. The Democrats can demand an investigation into criminal allegations of a Republican nominee and the Republicans all cry fowl. If things continue like they are going, US elections will devolve into something like UK football match on a country-wide scale. There will be violence in the streets. At best.
2) The Last Jedi was patently awful all on its own, Russian trolls weren't needed. JJ Abrams' movies and their follow-ons have done what JJ Abrams' have always done throughout the Star Trek and Star Wars movies he's done, which is take all the old story lines, toss them in a blender, hit frappe, and pour out regurgitated Sci Fi shakes with sprinkles of new FX on top. They really are Star Wars for millennials.
Americans just take themselves waaayyyyy too seriously. Sure, a healthy ego is not necessarily a bad thing, but seriously.... listen to yourselves. "Russians are trolling our movie reviews in order to make us hate each other".
The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society.
So it was the trolls who argued that it was a good movie?
Because I've yet to meet a person who thinks it is, so that clearly is not the majority opinion of the non-trolls (or at least the non-paid trolls).
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Obviously this is a nefarious plot to destroy American culture by taking down the Star Wars franchise. Will the country survive?? /sarcasm
If Rocky and Bullwinkle returned to TV, this could be one of the story lines.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Because our perception of social disfunction is caused by disagreement over a movie.
And not, say, a broken healthcare system, a broken pension system, corrupt and stupid politicians, the church abusing small kids and then covering it up, the media actively, openly and much more aggressively reinforcing the split of society into camps, the economy being plundered by banks and the super-rich or everyone with a buck to make denying or opposing climate change.
Or any of the other issues of the day that nobody, least those whose fucking job it is, taking care of.
Sure, of all the real issues that divide and threaten society, a paid army of trolls picks movie reviews as their choice weapon to destabilise western society.
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Your missing 3 zeros there buddy.
They said they found 30,000. Not 30. Between them they logged in 570,000 times , removed 220,000 'suspicious' applications that had generated over 2 billion tweets. (According to twitter)
So...yeah, vet your sources man.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
If the conclusions are accurate, and more than half of the negative comments belong to trolls, I have to say that in this case, the trolls have it right. The current incarnation of Disney seems utterly devoted to sucking all the joy, edginess and originality out of their movies to deliver serviceable but soulless flicks that are barely adequate as a Friday night time-waster on any half-decent home entertainment setup. But after a Friday night out at the theatre, you leave feeling ripped off. I can see some bean counter with a clipboard going down a list of proven focus group pleasers, ticking off each one: leap from high place to extended leg squat landing...check. Sardonic eyebrow raise...check. Heroic death of expensive old actor to clear the way for cheap young replacement hero...check.
Anybody who has read my comments here know I'm far from conservative, but in this case the fans alleged to have a case of toxic masculinity (and the Russian trolls, apparently) have my complete support.
This movie disappointed me. It had no imagination, no spark of originality, no sense whatsoever that the characters had any purpose but to march along their pre-defined paths to a pre-defined conclusion. I'd call them shallow and undeveloped, but that would be a gross insult to puddles and fetuses. And the ending was simply the place where our dollars get directed to the next movie by way of the merch store. It has never been more obvious that Disney regards us as nothing but wallets with legs, and anything that gets between them and the contents is extraneous and a waste of money.
So yes, The Last Jedi sucked. It didn't suck because they made a girl the hero. It sucked because I am old enough to remember how I felt when I saw, on the biggest screen in Toronto, that Star Destroyer pursuing Princess Leia's little ship in the first minutes of the very first movie.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I would never have any reason to assume that opinions about pop culture products signaled political affiliation if critical reactions to things didn't always begin with "here is what sexism and racism have to do with this product" and end with "here is what Russian trolls have to do with this product." The trolls don't need to exist at all for this division to take place. Both producers and critics have declared that All Art Is Political, therefore all art has an arbitrary political alignment based on who likes it and who hates the people that like it. This is completely their fault.
"It's too bad there hasn't been "academic research" done to see who is paying for critics to leave positive reviews as if every movie is flawless."
Anyone who did that study would have a very short career as an academic...
Di$ney doesn't really give two shits about the quality as long as it brings in profits.
The Last Jedi was so bad I didn't even bother to see Solo. Just done wasting money on it at this point.
10/10 troll.
You kind of missed the bit where Russians are on average more into science fiction than Americans and thus proportionally would have been more put off by crap science fiction but of course if you are Russian and you hate something, express your opinion online you are a troll and of course if you are Russian and you like something, express your opinion online you are a troll and if you are Russian and you are indifferent to something and express your opinion online you are a troll.
To put it simply https://www.rbth.com/news/2015... and thus will use English language websites and they all are trolls, this is called rampant prejudice as is typical coming out of a very racist and prejudiced US, which is now also hugely sexually conflicted across multiple genders, I am going with Bunjil as my gender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., in preparation for more SJW bullshit coming out of the US, that or other ;D.
American main stream media, please fuck off with your racism and prejudice, one thing I have noticed, it is funny in American media for white men to be raped in prison but not funny anywhere for women of any kind to be raped, why is that?!?
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Plenty of left-leaning bots licking his "white cis male" balls for this "work". Facepalm.
The so-called russian trolls and bots have had their fun, playing fast and loose with lofty western ideals such as democracy, fairness, honesty, etc, and undermining our precious freedoms.
Now they've decided to fuck with the mouse. They should have sent someone to spend a few months embedded as cast or crew at a Disney resort or park, and learned just what happens to anyone tarnishing the image. They won't know what's hit them.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
there is a small core of genuine populist Democrats. Bernie, Liz, Orcasio-Cortez and the "Justice" Democrats. Their defining feature is that they refuse all corporate donations (you can't serve two masters after all). Yeah, there's also a lot of Pelosi style "blue dogs" but even they've been forced towards populist ideas by an increasing number of primary challengers.
I don't know any equivalent on the Republican side; e.g. a movement in their party to stop taking corporate cash. Dems also support Net Neutrality, Single Payer health care, the "New New Deal" (e.g. infrastructure spending and a jobs guarantee), free college, etc. There's solid policy there and not just more "Lets cut taxes and see what happens, and by the way no Medicare for anyone under 55".
There _are_ differences between the parties. Substantial ones. And when it comes to a party that can potentially be bent to serve the will of the people the Dems are the best chance. For the reasons I stated above that's just objective fact.
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Honestly, with all these trolls having such *based* opinion these "investigations" into their activities are just making me a fan of Russian trolls.
Shorter old neckbeard: "If I was gunna rob a bank, I'd do it differently than that, therefore that movie is impossible."
....yes? Oh, I was late for work the other morning - the Russians must have been involved. Justice League was a shitty movie - must have been the Russian's fault.
Because reasons.
Not that TLJ is an objectively shitty movie. The whole lightspeed ram that wrecks 40 years of continuity. Why build a Death Star when you can get a few junk freighters and use them as mass drivers against a planet? Why did the Alliance bother with those Death Star plans when a half dozen Kamikaze runs in quick succession could have disabled either of them? Why did Luke, who risked everything to save a mass murdering father he barely knew (and succeeded!!!!) decide to cut down his own nephew, who he's known his entire life, because he suspects the kid might be going to the dark side?
Riiight. In the same way that if you questioned Obama's drone strikes or bank bailouts, you were in the same camp as the people who questioned his birth certificate.
Because reasons, because false dichotomies.
A tip for Hollywood - if you want to maximise sales stop excluding half of your potential audience.
There were a considerable number of films made for that other half, unfortunately though Leni Riefenstahl and Veit Harlan have both passed away since then.
This sounds like reverse plot harvesting. Someone from the future goes into the past and sells plots from reboot movies from the future to people in the past, ie. Ghostbusters Reboot, Star Trek Reboot, Mad Max Reboot, etc. The Hollywood writers and directors in the past then improved the plots, creating what we call the "original" versions of these movies. It makes more sense then the currently held narrative that the reboots were created after the "originals". After all, how could the revised version of a script be so bad compared to the version it was based on?
So, by occum's razor, time travel must be possible.
When the Five Year Plans failed, it was never because Communism was stupid, no, it was because of "wreckers" (or 40 consecutive "unexpectedly cold" winters).
This is just the same tune with new lyrics. It's not because they were stupid, make drek and insulting fans directly, no it was because of "Russian trolls". Presumably when IX tanks it will be the unexpectedly cold winter.
The dysfunction will continue until the companies implode.
But no bad talk about Emo Darth Vader! Emo Darth Vader is best Disney Princess!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
https://www.wired.com/story/ho...
Yeah, you hit one one of the prime reasons. Why bother building expensive X-Wings and training expensive X-Wing pilots when you could take any thousand year old personal shuttle that can make lightspeed, put a thousand year old droid in control, and use them to disable/destroy a Star Destroyer. Why didn't Alderaan's defensive fleet (they must have had something) all go Kamikaze on the Death Star within a minute of it dropping out of orbit. Why bother building a Death Star when you could load up some ancient freighters and use them as mass drivers to exterminate all life on a planet.
And so on. This was a much more severe hurdle in the suspension of disbelieve than sound effects and aerial banking maneuvers ever were in space.
Indeed, it was much worse. Most of the primary characterizations were crap, like turning Finn into a coward after he defected from the First Order, knowing that was signing his own death warrant. But the real hairball of the movie was what they did to Luke Skywalker. They took a man who risked everything to save a mass murdering father he never knew - a risk that succeeded not just in saving his father but the rebellion itself - to one that would cut down his own nephew. Who he's known his entire life. Because he might be falling to the dark side.
GTFOH, Rian Johnson.
Fuck you BeauHD; you're a pidgeon shit of an "editor". a disgrace.
But it's too convenient to do away with any criticism on progressive politics with "How is Moscow today, Sergey?"
I have a really hard time getting my head around how these troll accounts work.
For reasons that have yet to be explained, someone - likely a government agency - has decided to put resources into making nerds hate something.
These troll accounts are identifiable by - what exactly? Do they wear furry Russian hats? Is there an objective way of determining which are Russian Troll accounts and which are idiots on the internet? And how do they get followers in the first place? They can't influence anyone if they just follow each other, surely.
Funny how people without arguments still feel the need to post something, so they go and make it personal - against a person of whom they know two data points - an arbitrarily chosen name and a sequential number.
Come on, try harder. If you want to attack a person, you should at least aim in the general direction of an actual person, not a string and an int.
Even the trolls used to be better.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
it is funny in American media for white men to be raped in prison but not funny anywhere for women of any kind to be raped, why is that?!?
Because despite the howls of anguish from the usual suspects it appears we still do need to teach people that rape is bad. This is not something people seem to pick up nearly as readily as one might think.
You can also see it in the comments here when some dude that people don't generally like might get sent to prison, there's distinct glee in the idea he might get raped.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
White men should rape more than any demographic, because they are the majority demographic. However, do the math per population and you'll find that Mexicans rape the most followed closely by blacks per capita. In fact, blacks likely rape the same as mexicans because clearance rates for rape in majority black cities is below 20% while nationally the clearance rate is much higher. There's your lesson in stats for the day, but hey, don't let that get in the way of your outrage followed by that homo fantasy you ended with.
Inconceivable!
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
It had a negative buzz because it was shit. Poorly written nonsensical bollocks.
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OK, let’s see who the real trolls are.
First and foremost, Disney/Hollywood themselves. Just like the banking crisis of 2009 does not make sense from economy point of view but makes perfect sense when viewed as a deliberate crime, TLJ makes no sense as a movie (since it breaks/ignores/shits on just about every rule of filmmaking/storytelling) but it makes perfect sense as a cultural subversion propaganda. They had a checklist of politically motivated issues they wanted to see in, and to hell with logic, reason, consistency, universe building, military strategy or basic common sense.
Now, the first mistake they make is to assume that the classical archetypal story of the hero on a journey has anything to do with the “patriarchy”. Unless you extend the patriarchy all the way back to lobsters.
So, in desire to demolish the oppressive (in their view) human mythology they offered new archetypes for the new millennium. Which they perfectly have the right to do. And we have the right to judge this new mythology and either accept it or reject it. Alas, Darth Kennedy does not offer viable alternative at all. Their version is: have pussy, will travel. That’s it. The female protagonists are perfect beings by inception, no needing hardship, training, education, struggle or any adversity whatsoever. Perfect.
I notice you didn't throw specific criticism at Rogue One. I agree with you that Disney doesn't understand Star Wars, but I liked Rogue One anyway. It almost felt like Disney accidentally made a good one.
Fuck off, Rogue One took a massive shit on Leia's legacy and made the opening of a new hope a joke. But like the other recent star wars films it looked and sounded the business while being very thin on substance.
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/. does not allow me to post my full story which I prepared in word and checked many times for errors. I get the lameness filter detected.
Then we have the baddies which are portrayed as angry, half-psychotic Nazis. Onlyone of the most dangerous things you can do is to dismiss the evil as lunatics and misattribute their evilness to fear and/or anger. Whereas the real Nazis were anything like that (disgust motherfuckers, not fear or anger). You don’t make them look like buffoons, because that diminishes the warning message to the viewer that such things should never occur again. And you never, ever portray them as incompetent, because real life evil men are always competent and intelligent. After all, if the real Nazis were so incompetent how come they almost conquered the world? Also, if the baddies are incompetent what is the challenge for the protagonists (none; that is why I repeat, it does not make sense as storytelling or a movie, only as propaganda)?
Then you have the sacrifice of consistency (ramming at light speed) simply to redeem admiral purple hair for her incredible stupidity and lack of viable strategy that left the rebels with a handful of people in one ship. But it was much more important to shame the men than to make sense or save lives. Utter desecration of Carry Fisher’s memory with that space Marry Poppins shite. Vile, deliberate, nasty, revolting assassination of the male’s archetypes – Solo and Skywalker. Nothing here is by accident. Nothing is “courageous filmmaking subverting audience’s expectations”.
Then trolls number two are the media. Obviously, the axes were already grinded and ready to swing when the reactions started coming in. Critics lied to all of us out of fear, conformism or being paid; the people did not take that shit and voted the movie down; immediate reaction – RT is highjack by bots, trolls, armies of alt-right, Russiansblah, blah, blah. The press is trolling us ALL THE TIME.
Trolls number three are the /. editors who would scour the net for click baits and present to our attention the opinions of absolute nobodies, if it guarantees an outrage that would rile us.
You see, the original archetypal story of SW does not belong to the West; it belongs to all humanity (that was the intention of George, right, consulting Campbell and so on..). Therefore, the reactions of outrage from China, Russia, East Europe etc.. have nothing to do with anti-west sentiments. Instead what is obvious to non-westerners is that most of the political discourse as well as the media in the West is highjacked by the PC, SJW, neo-Marxists scum who’s trying to replace the archetypes that are older than humanity itself with their murderous, racists, sexist, bigoted “point of view”. So, the push back is not against westerners as a whole but against the above mentioned plague that threatens to destroy the fairest and most humane societies on earth (they have flows, of course, but show me someone better and someone who is constantly improving themselves, I’ll wait).
... and alt-right and Russians are at fault. Sure. Maybe Disney needs several billions of compensation from the budget? Just in case.
Rey isn't a terrible character
Rei's biggest problem is her name. A more fitting name would be Mary. Mary Sue. Her character isn't terrible, but the plot of her character development is created by someone who must have missed the Writing 101 class titled "Don't Do This!"
Was bored out of my mind on a long flight and figured, "how bad could it be?". Turns out, pretty damn awful, got through maybe half of it and then decided it's better to wallow in boredom than to suffer any more of that butchery of film history.
Look at how they are destroying politics and culture by saying a movie is bad!
I thought this was a joke when I saw the article earlier this morning. I can understand them saying "political motivation" due to the "how dare you do SJB crap" some people are saying about non white and also colorful hair characters.... But at the same time, most everyone that I know that saw the movie considers it between "awful" and "ok." At best it was an ok summer action popcorn movie not worth more than one watch.
It is pretty great that part of their defense of the movie's bad ratings is: "Russia!"
Disney accidentally made a good one.
The funny thing is... the original ending supposedly was going to be happy, with everyone getting away alive and well. They decided to change it later on to the (better) more negative and hopeless ending.
I found this piece in the paper. Which one of these is true?:
Even if you don't count the pathetically small sample size the whole study falls apart as soon a you scrutinize it even a little bit.
First of all only 20% of all the comments in their dataset were negative and of that 20% half was clearly identified as disappointed fans. Of the remaining 10% about 2/3 were dismissed as coming from "politically motivated" accounts and when you finally reduced it down to the "Russian trolls" they only made up about 1.6% of the total dataset. Worse yet, these trolls were "identified" trough things like generic user names, grammatical errors in their posts (as if everyone who saw the movie spoke perfect English) and no pictures (as if everybody on twitter who isn't a troll has one).
If this and how widely it's been reported without as much as a glance towards the fundamentally flawed underpinnings tells us anything it's that the country is in the grip of another political hysteria much like the one whipped up by McCarthy's & Co in the 1940s and 50s.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
And yes, it does now mean that Star Wars is a matter of patriotism, and that not liking the movies approaches treason.
And you guys used to mock us for seeing "Reds under our beds".
Or, using Occam's Razor -- The Last Jedi was a shit movie. My personal experience agrees with this also. I am not a bot (and I'm not just saying that because I am a bot, even if that is something a bot would say).
It's for the russian development of suicidal drones which will approach their targets and then jump to hyperspace.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Wouldn't it just be easier to build a drone to open a hyperspace window at comicon?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
We made it PRECISELY according to the committee-approved 'Star Wars action film' formula, how could it not be perfect?
I mean:
When the focus groups showed kids found it stultifying, we added cute little things that were optimized for cheap production according to our Vietnamese factories. They are perfectly designed by slave-labor engineers to be adorable.
When the focus groups showed Asian viewers thought it was stupid, we bolted onto the story a pudgy Asian chick, hopefully snagging the 'all body images are positive' demo as well.
We made the lead character a woman because powerful vaginas are super-trendy now.
We added gay dudes because well duh, you have to have gay people in an adventure.
We employed only faceless mediocrities, pretty much just like George Lucas did (except we did it so we could lock them into lifetime contracts of servitude).
WE EVEN MADE THE BAD GUY A WHITE MAN. How could that possibly be wrong in 2018?
We clearly hit all the IMPORTANT mechanics needed to make a perfect film; it had to be Russians that fucked this up.
-Styopa
Overall, 50.9% of those tweeting negatively [about the movie] was likely politically motivated or not even human...
Or - I don't like that they didn't like the movie, so I'm going to blame bots an Russians just because and provide no proof, instead saying likely so I have an out when someone punks out that I did no research.
The sales figures for the bluray (absolutely awful) reflect it.
Um, it was the best selling Blu Ray of 2018 to September: http://screencrush.com/blu-ray...
Note that the second most popular Blu Ray was Black Panther, another movie that vocal online critics claim is complete shit and a terrible, failing movie.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Fuck off, Rogue One took a massive shit on Leia's legacy and made the opening of a new hope a joke.
What the actual fuck? Can you please explain that one.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Fuck off, Rogue One took a massive shit on Leia's legacy and made the opening of a new hope a joke.
What the actual fuck? Can you please explain that one.
Love to.
Because Leia's main big thing was building the rebels death star understanding through the expanded universe. They first learn of it in the force unleashed (with the original starkiller whos family crest became the rebel alliance emblem) then over the course of years they built up their copy of the plans by multiple missions, raids and operations all orchestrated chiefly by Leia. The empire knew of the potential and didn't keep all the plans in one place, the people building the engines had the plans for that, the weapons only knew the weapons and so on. There was no one place or group that had the whole picture. Look up operation skyhook. Anyway, rogue one wiped all that out and just had the plans neatly handed over on a platter with relatively little fuss. Leia's contribution is now essentially a courier.
As for the start of A New Hope the whole I'm a diplomat on a peaceful mission line should be followed by vader saying 'Bullshit! We just watched your little ship coming out of that big one that just attacked that base that we blew the fuck up'
That's not to mention The Last Jedi making the whole thing fucking pointless because they should've just rammed a few x-wings at hyperspeed into it because that's now an established legit tactic, but that's a different rant.
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Was a lifelong SW fan. Saw the trailer for TFA and... I just didn't care. That was odd as I had continued to watch (and sometimes be frustrated with) the prequels and the Clone Wars series. TFA *looked* like Star Wars, but I just didn't care, so I never watched it.
A friend highly recommended Rogue One, which I thought initially starred the girl from TFA since they look alike at a very casual glance. It seemed like mediocre generic scifi until about 2/3 through. Neither of the two primary characters seemed to have any personality; the only ones I thought were memorable were the blind guy and his warrior buddy. Those two were fun.
The only distinct impression made by it was when the scrawny, powerless main character (I don't remember her name), bare fist punched out an armored Storm Trooper. That had me doubled over with laughter at how bad it was.
This is the movie that's supposed to be the best of the new SW. So, no thank you.
CNET's take is "No, half of The Last Jedi haters were not Russian trolls". They're position is that it's a lot more complicated: the sample set was only 1k tweets directed at Rian Johnson, and so missed all the others (eg: those to Mark Hamill, who has way more followers); the researcher manually "cleaned" the tweets, removing ones he didn't think applied; he decided himself what was a negative vs positive vs neutral, leaving it open to argument; and the media reporting is distorting the numbers and conclusions.
A recursive sig
Can impart wisdom and truth
Call proc signature()
The so called "study" is a study only in piggybacking on sensationalism and stirring up division.
Author, one "Morten Bay, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Center for the Digital Future USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism" is himself, functionally, a troII.
Whether he is also intentionally peddling and hyping fraudulent studies to increase his media exposure or is just a victim of his own incompetence... that's up to debate.
But let's just say that he didn't pick a less popular franchise for his "study".
Anyway...
The Fraudulent Study found following...
Examining 967 tweets (that's TWEETS - not accounts), made "between December 13, 2017 and July 20, 2018." on a platform where around 6000 tweets are made each second, "206 expressed a negative sentiment towards the film and its director, which is 21.9% or a little more than one in five fans."
Out of those 206... "Using the Botometer mentioned in the Method section, 11 out of the of 206 accounts expressing negative sentiments were identified as bots."
But that's not all!
Our boy Morten also claims that through his spider senses he "identified 33 of the 206 negative accounts as troIIs and/or sock puppets."
Out of those 33 trolls and socks...
16 of these 33 troII/sock puppet accounts appear to be Russian trolls, or at least possess several of the Russian troII characteristics presented above.
Anyway... author claims he looked through some 967 tweets aimed at Rian Johnson, over a period of 6 months, finding 11 tweets made by probable bots, and 16 he thinks may be Russian.
Cause their language skills were poor, their names were generic and they had no profile photos.
7 of the 16 had auto-generated handles consisting of a very common, English name followed by a series of seemingly random digits, and five of those seven had not uploaded a profile image, a combination which according to the studies mentioned above, is a typical characteristic of Russian troII accounts.
Out of those 16, 4(?) were actually identified as Russian troIIs.
@1popculturefan, @MarcoSo94862885, @VPalmera and @ThatNikkaGeeked.
Also, there is another account retweeting @1popculturefan which is, maybe, also a Russian troll/sock.
It doesn't help that the author keeps interchangeably referring to tweets as accounts.
Or that there is no summary of tweets or accounts.
Thus one can't tell if he's referring to some of the same accounts (or tweets) when he says that "6 of the 16 accounts have an extremely high retweet rate" and "9 accounts have been through the "resets"" while "4 accounts present themselves as a type of news source".
Are those 6 among the 9? 4 among 6? Who knows!
On a side note, TIL that using the word "troII" more than a certain number of times in the text activates Slashdot lameness filter.
Luckily, bitches don't know about my upper case i.
Oh, and the movie did suck.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In Soviet Russia, Last Jedi pan YOU!
Adam Driver can act perfectly fine when he has a character whose motivations aren't completely moronic. He was fine in Logan Lucky.
I am not a russian troll and I approved this message.
Who think their parents' lives are over, too (Oh! Carrie Fisher! Too Old!)
And, having just seen Solo last month, I say it's a good story, and I suspect Lucas had his fingers in it... up to the elbows.
And if you disagree with me, you're wrong, and you're not going to change my mind, because your *opinion* is bs except for you.
So...yeah, vet your sources man.
Ok. Let's see what a programmer at Twitter has to say about the threshold for bot detection.
In other words, Twitter still investigated itself. They are not a credible source either.
You know, it's interesting that my opinions of films don't get tainted by social media... because I don't use social media.
I've noticed "from the outside" that people who are "clued into" what social media tells them they should think, by golly, they think it.
And I'm not talking about either side of the political divide, but both sides.
I've seen how paying attention to twitter, FB, etc does nothing but incite idiocy.
My opinion of social media users goes lower by the day.
I don't know if Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson are sowing discord(FTFY). And I don't care.
I don't pay attention to sales figures, for the box office or Blu-Ray, etc;
Since I don't pay attention to social media, I had no fucking idea there was some kind of flame war about Last Jedi.
I have been a SW fan since the first film. I can remember with fondness the SW doldrums of the late 80s-90s when we would watch all three films back to back on VHS.
We had no idea that SW would continue and become the cultural La Brea tarpit that it has become.
And yes, you can get the fuck off my lawn.
I do know this:
I had a feeling from the beginning that Disney would cheez the fuck out of SW, which they have, and that Lucas, for all his faults should have kept the rights and done the films he wanted to do.
I knew that if Abrams had anything to do with it then it would really suck, and I won't get into the finer points here but I will say that Force Awakens is a much worse film than Last Jedi. Abrams is a curse to all sci-fi.
But after all is said and done I still went to see the films and will see the next one. I realized that after the muppet show on Endor in Episode VI, the cheez had set in nice and thick, and my hopes were dashed. So I've been jaded about SW since, oh... 1983.
So my(and probably many other SW fans who saw the original films in the theatre) opinion about SW now, after the prequels, the edits Lucas made, the social media wanking, etc, I just look at these movies as entertainment.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Really! Russian Trolls should have made the movie.
It couldn't be worse.
There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't.
And of course, John Wayne is long gone.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I didn't like Rogue One. It wasn't bad, but it was completely unnecessary. I call it Star Wars Vietnam.
You're trying to rationalize a movie that involves space magic, and deflecting bolts of plasma energy with sword play.
Put the plot in the context of being just a loose framework in order to tie visually stimulating CGI action scenes together within a reasonable amount of time, then it might begin to make more sense.
it was a pretty major win and paves the way for the progressives. They can still screw us over on a second ballot, but those are so rare (last one was in the 70s) that it's not really a victory.
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I was really hoping we could come together as a nation in shared pain and camaraderie over how awful The Last Jedi was. I mean, if you had a SECRET PLAN to solve everything by using FTL as a weapon -- that apparently nobody tried before -- the entire movie was just everyone going on misadventures because they didn't believe you had a SECRET PLAN. And the prior movie was reduced to Luke Skywalker throwing a light saber into the ocean.
But no, now I can't blame the movie and bond with fellow Americans because of the damn Ruskies!
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
I think you managed to insult everyone; SJW, Incels, Star Wars fans, the media, the government,... so very American. I have to say it seems unlikely with this level of outrage that you could be Russian. I figure you must be an unpaid American troll.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Emo Darth Vader is best Disney Princess!
To be a Disney Princess you have to:
1 - Wear a dress.
2 - Have an animal sidekick / companion.
Ah, we're in non-geek holy war territory here. Disney was trying to have it both ways with that quote, but they had dropped the whole "animal sidekick" thing before Moana, with Frozen before that and IIRC Brave before that. He has the hair, the bad attitude, and the lack of parental supervision that are the core hallmarks of a Disney princess.
Both Kylo and the alien from Alien are Disney princesses now. Bout time we had an emo/goff princess, too.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The sales figures for the bluray (absolutely awful) reflect it.
Um, it was the best selling Blu Ray of 2018 to September: http://screencrush.com/blu-ray...
Note that the second most popular Blu Ray was Black Panther, another movie that vocal online critics claim is complete shit and a terrible, failing movie.
Why are you comparing it to other bluray releases in the same month? You need to compare it to The Force Awakens. Go ahead and try that, then get back to us.
Black Panther wasn't bad, but it wasn't good. It had tons of flaws that I still can't figure out. The bad dude's entire mission and rant is COLONIALISM BAD! BLACKS SUPPRESSED!! Okay, a bit simplistic but certainly a valid motivation for a character. As social commentary it's more than heavy handed, it's pretty much breaking the fourth wall. And he has this plan that involves using these people to FIND Wakanda, yet he ends up killing them and just traipsing on over anyway, because he didn't need them at all to FIND it. Did I miss something? Not only do you need to know the location, you need to know how to get in. It's veiled. Was it just a magic helicopter that anyone can fly? Or was it his Wakandan blood? If so, why did he need those people at all? Why not just fucking go himself like he ended up doing anyway?
The bad guy sees his shot at power and immediately turns into a colonizing tyrant hell bent on suppressing whites while still shouting about how bad it is. Was that supposed to be intentionally stupid and hypocritical? Is that the message? If so, nobody really addresses it. The best we get is some lame jokes about "another white boy for me to patch up" after some consternation about whether or not they should help the guy who saved what'sherface's life. Oh, and at the end there's a commitment from Wakanda to open up and share their technology with the world, but it comes with the smug superiority that only deus ex vibranium can provide.
If Wakanda was so secretive and isolated, and actually physically hidden, why did they have western clothing and vehicles? How did they pay for them? Why was their king out and about in foreign countries wrecking up the place fending off assassination attempts? There's supposed to be a juxtaposition between Wakanda as seen by the outside world and the technologically advanced true Wakanda. But that true Wakanda and its King are all over the outside world, influencing and impacting things while crying about how they need to remain isolated to prevent being influenced or impacted. Not only is this hypocritical bullshit the same we see from the bad guy, but it makes no logical sense. Other people would see this and say "Hey. How come Wakanda has all this shit and why are they stirring shit up over here I thought they were an undeveloped, tribal country?" or "Where'd this guy get that car or learn to drive it? They're still actively refusing our offers of food, medicine, agricultural development, etc.".
The biggest flaw, however, is vibranium. It's basically magic, but without being magic. This was more of a Harry Potter move than a super hero movie as far as the actual setting and basis. They don't attempt to explain or detail anything. Drinking up vibranium opium gives you super powers. Vibranium technology is magic and can do anything. You can disable vibranium with sound waves somehow. You may as well have Stan Lee come out and wave his hands while saying "GAMMA RADIATION" and "MUTANT POWERS" for 2 hours.
Adam Driver can act perfectly fine when he has a character whose motivations aren't completely moronic. He was fine in Logan Lucky.
The only other thing I remember him from is jacking off on camera in HBO's Girls.
I couldn't even hate watch the last season of that show.
That's what I liked about the "next generation" Star Trek series. Sometimes you don't even realize how awesome an individual woman is because she FITS with the ensemble. They don't need to stick out 100% of the time to be an essential part of the crew because they (as most strong women) are confident in themselves.
This depiction of confidence has been lost in more recent years.
Very insightful. I think this points to something that is perhaps jarring about modern female Leads. More on that below.
It's been replaced by this strange NEED to stick out and be prominent above being part of a team, unable to work in the background for no fanfare and yet know you are doing something important.
And this would put a firm understanding on what I was originally saying was obnoxious about the modern female characters. While I wasjust thinking they were obnoxious, this concept nails it. They are insecure, and overcompensating for it. That only makes admiration alomst impossible.
If we were to return to ST Voyager, Captain Janeway is faced with multiple dilemmas, such as half her crew being Maquis, her ship thrown to the other side of the galaxy, trying to return home with limited resources at base, and new dilemmas every day, many with no good answer. Yet here in the slightly goofy world of positron reflection matrixes and temporal scattering networks, you have a character that you grow to love as a character.
This is similar to Sigourney Weaver's Ripley in the Alien series.
But now in Star Wars, the Last Jedi, No one gives a damn about Rey, Vice Admiral Holdo, and Rose Tico is sort of a latter day JarJar Binks. They aren't empathetic characters, and they are pretty obnoxious to boot.
Also, you must make a woman the most important character, even so far as to have the other male characters admit that they are inadequate (which is rare in reality, why put yourself down when you're also part of the team?)
The other half of the equation. Rather than have an inferior character be inferior as part of the plot, they are inferior bacause they are male. This detracts from the story line.
It's like as women are being told they're this much more important in our culture, a kind of subconscious "imposter syndrome" is happening with the way female roles are written. I don't like it because the confidence feels shoehorned in, probably by people who have no idea what it feels like to be a confident person in the first place.
Exactly. This is beginning to sound a bit like an extension of the self esteem movement welded to narcissism for girls. And it simply does not work.
So a lot of the failed movies and TV series and such are being written by people who are hoping that no one will notice they can't write truly confident women, only aggressors and sarcastic assholes, because that's the passive-aggressive way of getting power.
There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but in all the female roles I disliked the most, they had the same weaknesses of character covered up with an asshole mask. (And yes, I mean to critique the roles, not the actresses themselves... sigh...)
The way these roles are written, they look like some sort of mistaken concept of male leadership, a world in which being an asshole is somehow a core requirement, coupled with pointless aggression toward others, and always toward the male of the species.
And they are failing. The message is being rejected. And yet the social justice warriors who have hollywood by the short hairs have a litany of excuses, always based on their declared arch-enemy, the White male.
I will point out some of the incredible character flaws of some of these people As incredibly racist and sexist bigot Mindy Kaling says from The Wrap:
“If I had to base my career on what white men wanted I would be very unsuccessful,
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I stopped reading right there
You might as well, disney deleted it all so they could retell the stories in the laziest way possible.
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What? Someone had to say it...
the Sharks won't turn on each other. It doesn't take much, but it does take _something_.
Like 9/11. It barely had an impact on the US until we made it impact us by going nuts and invading several countries that didn't attack us or our allies. Those wars have wrecked our country for generations and made us hated on the national stage. Mission accomplished.
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the expanded universe isn't canon, but your points about Leia being more than just a courier, and that the beginning of the original film (I still can't bring myself to call it "a new hope", when I saw it, it was just "star wars") was invalidated by the end of Rogue One, are still valid. Moreover, this could have been fixed with a little work on the script, by replacing "death star plans" with "a key component of the death star plans" (say, the location of the vent) and a couple of additional scenes (ship-to-ship transfer at some remote location) at the end. As for fitting into the rest of the films, it was lazy writing.
Nevertheless, Rogue One as a stand-alone film is one of the best of the star wars films released this century, despite the continuity screw-up, although I realize that's probably damning with faint praise.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
or why it didn't do gangbusters. It just made the point that the Russians were using it to try and drive another wedge between communities.
Didn't you have that one kid who always tried to start shit between people in grade school? This is like that, except between nations. If America didn't have so many bombs and so much blood thirst it would be funny.
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Mark f'n Hamill criticized the movie. I think it's pretty safe to say bad things about it in the nerd community when you've got a Jedi Master on your side.
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When the next progressive darling cucks out to the establishment favorite, because reasons, I'll try to contain my surprise.
This is a blatant case of "Russian bot delusion".
Ahhhh.. That's exactly what one would expect a Russian bot to say.... ;)
Ah right, so you mean that it shit on the non-canon expanded universe stuff that the movies have specifically decided to leave behind because it would ruin all the surprises and most of it is complete BS anyway.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So with the film canon then, why does Leia deserve her position and what has she done? A new hope is still canon by the way and there were different levels of stuff in the EU some was canon some was semi and some was not, it really depended on the source.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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You had me until this:
> Adam Driver is a bad actor
No. Adam Driver is not a bad actor. Star Wars is idiotic from the get go. It's an idiotic juvenile shitstory that got randomly selected to reach the level of positive feedback "cult" status that only needs shitty producers to invest.
Every cinephile worth his salt would like to stay away from bullshit like Star Wars, Marvel Universe and other bullcrap lo-end sci-fi crap. And if they had to write critics of these it's only for money.
The actor who fit perfectly into Paterson did it for money. You got shitty result because pearls do not come from shit.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
It does not take much for people to argue. The problem is that people argue about crap like Star Wars.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
That's an interesting question. She is a princess and the rebellion seems to recognize that to some extent. But she seems to be more of a politician around the time of ANH. She is there at the major battles but seemingly not in a command role, more of a civilian oversight kind of thing. Which makes sense, as the Empire is essentially a kind of military coup and the rebels stand for the rule of law.
At some point between the end of RotJ and TFA she seems to have taken on a more active military role, or perhaps she was just landed with it because of her prior experience with superweapons and because by the time TLJ comes around there aren't many other people left.
It's a shame that she wasn't more involved in the finale of A New Hope, but they actually removed some of the female pilots whose footage was then used in Rogue One. I won't speculate why, except to point out that through the whole of the first trilogy Leia was the only woman with any significant screen time or lines and they never really developed any of her force powers or role beyond the damsel/love interest. So really TLJ did more for her character than all the other movies combined.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"Overall, 50.9% of those tweeting negatively [about the movie] was likely politically motivated or not even human,"
So the movie was so bad that even non-humans hated it?
Trolls or not, this movie was so bad on so many levels, and that is why I didn't like it. Not because of anything anyone anywhere said.
I feel bad for all the people who worked so hard on it, and Rian Johnson just made so many crappy decisions, particularly almost the entire story.
Agree, the whole article sounds bogus, like people have never argued about Star Wars vs Star Trek, Atari vs Commodore, Amiga vs PC, etc. Unless Russia has some kind of AI, which picks any topic automatically and trolls it just for the sake of doing so I'd say it's another "modern" style PR.
With regard to new SW, a good movie for me is always about characters, story and created world integrity, it's all gone, at best they are infantile.
With Ray's force development speed by the end of the third installment she will have resurrected everybody, recreated Alderaan, wiped out all the bad and made the galaxy a paradise, when asked "How'd you do it?", she will answer "I don't know".
;-)
Ironically there won't be balance in the force unless she dies.
Thanks for the link. I've followed Red Letter's SW releases with great interest. I've held off on the last two because I haven't seen them yet. But perhaps I'm not missing anything. After all, 1.4 billion people *can't* be wrong, can they?
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
They can write something, which does not make it true, to make something valid one has to provide some evidence. Are you telling me that disagreement about Star Wars is going to impact US society? Why would they spend resources on such a meaningless activity?