From TV Tropes article on anti-heroes.Dazzle Novak said:
Since "you're done", I'll just say you have an extraordinarily non-traditional method of interpreting fiction, and we'll leave it at that.
Star Wars Force Awakens Spoiler Filled discussion thread (no spoiler tags, you've been warned)
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What is cooking my noodle is if Kylo Ren is looking to his dead grandfather for guidance, "I feel the callling of the light" and so on, why doesn't Hayden Christensen's blue glowey ass show up and say, "Yeah, so did I. Go to the light, you dumbass..."AccursedTheory said:
Anakin knows how to return, as shown in Ep 6, and Qui-Gon was able to return approx 20 years after his death when he talked to Yoda in Ep 3. Kylo is force sensitive, so he should be able to communicate with him like the others did with Luke.
Could have saved a lot of trouble.[footnote]But I guess we wouldn't have a movie then[/footnote]
This is absolutely nothing more than empty speculation, but have we ever heard of Dark Side Force users talking to Force ghosts before? It's possible it's a uniquely Jedi thing, and requires a measure of calmness/serenity.kris40k said:
Mind you they're always popping up out of nowhere to talk to Luke like bad pennies, so maybe that's malarkey. Still. I'm going with "Jedi specific thing".
In things like KOTOR dark-side ghosts are more common than light-side ghosts. However in the clone wars series they suggest that dark side ghosts are mostly echoes of their hate/emotions rather than the true soul.BloatedGuppy said:
So it depends how far you take expanded EU canon.
It's also possible the original trilogy ghosts have dispersed into the force by now.
kris40k said:
In universe, my guess is that Force Ghost can only communicate with people they mattered to in Life. Luke can talk to his Dad, Yoda, and Obi-Wan because they have a connection. Ol' Ben Skywalker, despite what he thinks, has zero connection to those three, and thus can't talk to them.BloatedGuppy said:
Of course, we all know the real reason - Force Ghost that can talk to anyone strong with the force is a game breaking ability that causes more problems in the story then it fixes.
EDIT:
In pure canon, only light side users (NOT Jedi) can become force ghost, and the only known force ghost are the weird theater masked ladies, Yoda, Obi Wan, and Anakin Skywalker.wizzy555 said:
In the EU, its a toss up and every things game. No real rules or limits.
TVTropes is a Wiki. It's user-edited. The User for that entry is using the term as it's commonly used now: to describe gruff heroes like Wolverine. I was using the classical definition. Like from Merriam-Webster:BloatedGuppy said:
Hence, my "original" qualification. That "lack" can be the presence of vices or the absence of positive heroic qualities. Being a vicious dick and being cowardly, for example, are both antiheroic traits.antihero
play
noun | an?ti?he?ro | \ˈan-t?-ˌh?-(ˌr?, ˈan-ˌt?-, -ˌhir-(ˌ
Simple Definition of antihero
Popularity: Bottom 40% of words
1
: a main character in a book, play, movie, etc., who does not have the usual good qualities that are expected in a hero
Also, you have an extraordinary knack for disregarding 95% of my posts to hark on the one point you think you've won. Almost disingenuous, really.
At least lose the argument gracefully, man.
I thought you were "done"? Was that just a "last word" thing? Why would I spent a lot of time replying to you?Dazzle Novak said:
Tony Soprano is an anti-hero. Luke Skywalker is not. Amusingly, I spent some time Googling "Luke Skywalker anti-hero" to see if anyone shared your perspective, and all I could find was a litany of arguments using him as an example of the opposite of an anti-hero.
Alas, there's little point in THIS reply either, as for all I know you're "done" again, and have already declared yourself as "won the argument" (imagine my surprise!). With your collegial and friendly manner of discussion I honestly cannot imagine why you've had so many disagreements.
The thermal exhaust port on the Deathstar was two meters, not kilometers, wide. Meaning it was roughly six and a half feet across rather than one and a quarter mile.Dazzle Novak said:
I meant regarding the section quoted arguing the particulars of space magic.BloatedGuppy said:
First of all, I never said Luke Skywalker was an anti-hero, so put that goalpost back where you found it. I brought up the definition of antihero to demonstrate that protagonists aren't required to have heroic traits, therefore my calling Luke a loser wasn't "ridiculous" based on your premise that he was "the central character."
Moreover, if going off the classical definition rather than the shift toward the Byronic that the term "antihero" has undergone, one could argue that Luke is an antihero. I'd describe Luke in terms of being whiny and impetuous before calling him particularly noble. Also, his "dark streak" is the crux of his character arc. Luke is more definied by his potential to "fall like his father" than he is by being pureness-personified.
This may shock you, but iconic characters and works get bowdlerized. The Luke of collective pop culture memory and Luke as portrayed in the movies are not a 1:1 match.
You only lost "most" of the argument and successfully buried those instances by snipping them out of your replies entirely. So there's that. Small victory.
I won by default. You replied to about 1-in-every-5 points that I made while insisting this discussion is so beneath you.
I'm being a dick in response to your winning personality, yes, but I've addressed you on a point-by-point basis which was a courtesy you felt you needed to emphasize was beneath you. What's that if not a win by forfeit.
Still bigger than a womprat.twistedmic said:
My sense of scale was thrown off trying to imagine how big the Death Star was. I don't disagree it's ridiculous horseshit, but it was ridiculous horseshit the movie telegraphed and set up for the entire movie.
Dazzle Novak said:
I probably shouldn't stick my neck into this argument, but Dazzle is actually correct on this one. If we must use TvTropes for this discussion, then I'd suggest you look at the "Classical Anti-Hero" article which describes basically what Dazzle laid out in regards to the character Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion and mentions how the definition shifted to a "grittier" style of protagonist from there.BloatedGuppy said:
I'm confused. Are you done, not done, do you want replies? You're all over the place.Dazzle Novak said:
It's POSSIBLE that your insistence that discussions about the relative quality of characters in space-fantasy movies boil down into "winners and losers" is contributing to the hostile reception some of your posts are getting. Just a hunch, feel free to discard it angrily.
Fair enough. I will point out, however, that it is an extension of an ongoing discussion in which he summarized the character of Luke Skywalker through two films as "A loser" as a rebuttal to the assertion that Luke and Rey share similar heroic arcs.Austin Manning said:
As someone who was in here a couple of weeks ago arguing that Luke actually went to the dark side, a discussion that his character had more prominently ominous beats might have been fruitful. Alas, Dazzle is Very Angry At Me, and is still in hyperbole land.
Ah, he's going to read this and think I'm being a dick. I'm not besmirching you, Dazzle! You just seem really upset!
Ahahahaha oh good lord. Okay, I concede. You're clearly NOT being angry and hyperbolic. What was I thinking?Dazzle Novak said:
That's how you perceive the audience is being treated, is it?Dazzle Novak said:
I'm taking you at your word this time! This is twice now you said you were done! I'm trusting you Dazzle!
PS - I think Rey at times got an overly clean hero edit in Force Awakens, with possibly one or two too many "success" beats. It's important that protagonists are show to be vulnerable and susceptible to harm, and they need to make sure they don't carry her over a line where she reads as infallible. Due to some of the mystery surrounding her origins childhood, it's also very difficult to determine just what we should reasonably expect from her in terms of Force sensitivity, which leads to speculation...some of which will naturally be negative in tone.
Overall though, I feel her heroic arc mirrors Luke's very closely. She shows many of the same aptitudes, although she doesn't echo his...we'll call them his "Vader-isms". Which makes sense, they don't want to just tell that identical story again. They've given her some manner of repressed memories/abandonment complex in its place. Like Finn, and most particularly like Poe, she's going to need extensive fleshing out in Episode VIII so she can graduate from "heroic archetype" to "fully textured character". As Force Awakens was an extremely busy/overstuffed film, there was no quiet time for character building.
I suspect I walked out of the theater with SOME of the same questions/concerns about Rey as you. We just went to very different places with them.
PPS - I'm leaving work now so if you want to break your word again like a scoundrel and yell at me some more about this space fantasy movie, this is quality window.
My wife thinks she's his younger sister (with Han and Leia splitting before Han knowing she was pregnant) or half-sister, and perhaps it was she being sent to train with Luke and precipitated Kylo's fall--like he was being replaced/upstaged by a new Solo.BloatedGuppy said:
Honestly I really wanted to like this movie. I mean it's Star Wars for Pete's sake! But, I just wasn't really entranced by it and the more I thought about it after leaving the theatre, the less I actually liked it. Every major plot point in it is ripped wholesale from A New Hope, but done poorer. It's incredibly poorly written, with very little being done to give you a grasp of the stakes, the strengths and objectives of the factions, and of the individual people within them. It constantly breaks the rule of "Show don't tell" in regards to character development, with each scene feeling like it's saying "this will be covered in another movie, preorder your tickets now!". The result is that it makes so many moments of drama, tension and tragedy just fall flat on their face. The whole thing plays like someone pulled a bad New Hope fanfiction off the internet.
The thing is, when the movie tries to do something new it actually comes to life a little and you can see the potential a project like this had. That's the really tragic thing for me, there is a good movie here buried underneath all of the padding, pandering, and poor writing.
I will say this though, it made me go back and appreciate the great things in both the original trilogy and the prequels, because all of those movies are better than this one.
The thing is, when the movie tries to do something new it actually comes to life a little and you can see the potential a project like this had. That's the really tragic thing for me, there is a good movie here buried underneath all of the padding, pandering, and poor writing.
I will say this though, it made me go back and appreciate the great things in both the original trilogy and the prequels, because all of those movies are better than this one.
Thought, yes. Anger, no.Silvanus said:
It's one thing when people pop their tops and start flinging insults in one of the politically charged threads, there are deeply held beliefs being challenged and expressed. This is a movie. If someone doesn't share your opinion of a movie and your response to that is to bluster and accuse them of "white knighting", you've lost the plot.
All IMHO, of course.
