Empire Strikes Back Opinion?

[Takhisis]

I have heard the books are good. but like I said they seem to be targeted at children.

*marketted at, rather than targetted at. Like Star Wars.

You can read them as an adult and still enjoy them -I suggest you try it.

And J.J. Abrams was not involved in any way as far as I know.

 

[warpus]

Haha. Well, that's a big plus, but I don't really think JJ's style would translate very well to books. With a book you have an opportunity to stop and think about how stupid what you just read was, before moving on to the next chapter.

You'd think they'd also market these books at me though, if I might enjoy them. But they really do seem like the books i used to read when I was a kid. Meaning that it doesn't mean that it's not for me.. but.. I'm not really that eager to pick up a book like that. There's just a lot more on my list that seems more interesting

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Sorry Valka but the pandemic has been a crazy time and I don't always have time to read every single post. I do try to always make sure I read every single post I'm responding to, but I can often be in a rush and not actually address every single point. This isn't personal, but these days it's easy for me to miss this and that.

Honestly, it's enough to say you've been busy. I know you have a job that gets you stressed at times, and you have a family that probably gets you stressed (just going by the Swimming Pool Incident you related some time back). But please don't cite the pandemic. I'm sick of hearing that, even though I know it's true in many cases. Apparently the pandemic is to blame for everything that's gone upside-down in my life, according to the Customer Lackofservice agents on the phone. Hello, Canada Post has been pulling their we-don't-really-have-to-bother-delivering-your-parcels-if-we-don't-feel-like-it BS for YEARS. Don't blame the effing pandemic. /rant

If we disagree on this point then that's fine by me and franky I don't even remember the exact point this would be (see what I mean?)

Please try to realize that I tend to have triggers that get activated by certain expressed views not because it's me being personally angry with you, but because I've been through YEARS of arguments about these things either elsewhere online or in RL. Whether it's the merits of Dune, some Trek argument that has never been resolved over the last 54 years and probably never will be, or whether I should burn my Marion Zimmer Bradley books because her husband was a convicted child molester, or many other things, some things just set me off (in the latter case, I can abhor his crime but still enjoy her books).

And I really am not saying that just because I'm older that means I'm right. I am saying that I've had more experience with some aspects of fandom than you have, so please grant me the courtesy of accepting that I know what I'm talking about. If I'm unsure of something, I'll say so. If I have no clue at all, I'll ask for an explanation. If anyone is curious about something I know about or have an opinion on, say so. I love conversations like those. Or if it's just links or recommendations, I can either provide them or might have good suggestions on where to find them.

I am also very incredibly super hesitant to listen to all those Trek and SW fans with extreme opinions. I mean, I will listen to them, but these people are so entrenched in these franchises that their opinions are very.. insular? Also often very dismissive of differing opinions or even questions. Not everyone is like that of course, but the overall cut of their jib rubs me the wrong way, if you know what I mean. And no, I am not including you in this group, even though I know you've been a Trek fan for a long fan and hang out on places like TrekBBS (or used to?)

I'm not sure what you mean by "extreme opinions." I would define it as "my opinion is right and don't bother with factual evidence that I'm wrong." Or something like a complete intolerance of any story of Classic Doctor Who that takes place anywhere on Earth other than the UK. There's a Who fan over on TrekBBS who will go into a huge rant at the mere mention of "City of Death" because how DARE they film it on location in Paris? He refers to that story as "Tom Baker's home movie" and I don't know what he finds worse - the Eiffel Tower or the fact that the Doctor and Romana are holding hands part of the time as they run through the streets of Paris. That, to me, is extreme.

But then I've got my own triggers for things that outrage me, so whatever.

I don't care about the decades-long argument over what color Kirk's tunic is. It's somewhere on the spectrum between green and gold. We know what the production people meant to do, and we know that it didn't turn out as planned. The only people who really need to get this right are the fan film producers, and most of them did a very good job (having acquired some of the original costumes and/or the patterns and leftover fabric from a studio insider).

Wanna stir up a Trek argument? Just mention that nobody uses money in the 23rd century. My response: That's BS. And I can find numerous examples to prove I'm right. But the other half of the argument just goes "but-but-but Kirk said they don't in STIV and Picard said they don't..."

It's still BS. They might not use cash, but they still use money. No society as advanced and complex as the Federation can exist without some kind of economy. Even Voyager, cut off from the Federation, developed a shipboard economy (replicator rations and holodeck time). And Beverly bought a bold of ugly cloth in "Encounter at Farpoint" (told Zorn to "charge it to my account on Enterprise"), so I have no idea what little fantasy bubble Picard exists in.

One of the reasons I hang out at TrekBBS is because there are pro authors and fanfic authors who hang out there (I highly recommend Alpha Flyer, on fanfiction.net; she writes terrific post-Endgame Voyager stories). As mentioned, there's someone who used to write essays for Trek who hangs out there. And Greg Cox, who wrote some of my favorite later TOS novels, is friendly and pleasant to chat with.

And of course, there are the people who love to stir up trouble. That's par for the course on any forum. But it's not just Trek. There's a dedicated Doctor Who subforum, and another for Star Wars. I got into a Dune discussion there that had me reaching for my copy of the Dune Encyclopedia and writing some very long posts, explaining stuff about the Fremen and the Butlerian Jihad that most fans weren't aware of (which resulted in an argument with the site admin who <crabbed> at me for said long posts, informing me that they were boring and nobody would read them, whereupon I was left wondering why people wrote to say "thank you" posts and PMs about those posts that nobody liked or would read).

None of this is personal to me in any way either, so i won't get upset over it. As far as I'm concerned we are talking about a made up story about space wizards and/or aliens. A lighthearted discussion about something that dosen't even exist.

Yes, it's a made-up story. But there are some things that are always true and some that are always false. Example: It is always true that there is no character called "Doctor Spock" in Star Trek. It will always be true that in the original, non-Lucas-mucked-up version of Star Wars, Han shot first. I have to wonder who got the vapors over that, after Han got popular and seen as a hero - can't have a hero shooting first, right? Boom, retcon.

I could never get into Harry Potter. I tried watching the first movie twice. The first time I feel asleep about 20 minutes in (this *never* happens to me) and the second time I got bored and just left. Cries of: "But a really cool part where they play this game where they fly around like witches is coming up!" did not really convince me.

The first movie is about a group of 11-year-old children. Many of the 'jokes' are meant to appeal to children, like a spell that makes bats fly out of people's noses. I don't get why that's funny. But apparently kids do. I don't think Rowling meant for all of the jokes to appeal to adults.

That's something I've noticed about British SF/F. Doctor Who was - and still is - considered a children's show. There was some busybody who, back in the '70s, would constantly complain to the BBC about how some aspect or other of Doctor Who was too "adult" or too "scary" for children. I don't think TPTB every really understood the appeal of that show to North American adults. And it seems to change with every new producer/showrunner team. I gave up on the show completely after Peter Capaldi's second season, because the stories were that stupid (see the Doctor Who thread here for an argument I got into with Plotinus over that; he was put out that I eviscerated a script written by a friend of his; even a child could point out the egregious science errors and plot holes).

I guess they just have different ideas over there of what should appeal to kids and what should appeal to adults. I really don't understand the whole "hiding behind the couch" thing when it comes to Doctor Who. Kids seem to like the child characters and the action of HP. Adults seem to like the adult characters and their interrelationships a bit more. At least that's how it is with me.

I've read a lot of fanfic and right now I'm working my way through the 4th book (Kindle version). There's a lot that's in the books that didn't make it into the movies. Quidditch is like a cross between football and basketball and it's played on brooms. Since I don't really like either of those sports, I just skim any part of the books or stories that get into the minutiae of Quidditch. It was funny, therefore, to see a fanfic writer who described it in terms of hockey (his stories were posted back in 2003 and he must have been enrolled in junior hockey at the time - no kidding, the "He shoots, he scores!" cry was a line in the story, and I now have this crazy image of a wizard version of Don Cherry doing a Coach's Corner segment on Quidditch).

I don't get the big deal with this franchise. Maybe the books are better? But they're always in teen reading sections in the book store. Not that there's anything wrong with that.. the last book targeted at teens that I read.. was a book I read when I was a teen.

Who cares what section of the store they're in? I still re-read my Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators mystery novels, and those are aimed at teenage readers (specifically teenage boys; I got hooked on them when I was 9 and started collecting a year later - to the surprise of everyone in my family who wished I'd read "girl books" or dog stories or Nancy Drew...). There's a Yahoo group devoted to this mystery series, and most of the members are at least 40 years old, if not actually in the 50-70-year age range.

I honestly don't get why you wouldn't read something just because you liked it, instead of letting some publisher/marketer decide for you. I still have a pile of Archie comic digests I re-read every couple of years, and I'm about 45-50 years older than the target demographic for those.

So I mean, maybe one day I'll try to read the first book anyway, but I still don't really get what the big deal with all this is. And I'm probably coming across like a hipsterish elitist, but hey - I gave this thing a chance and it just seemed super boring. So maybe it's just not for me.

It took me a loooooong time to get into HP (wasn't until the third time I tried the holiday weekend marathon that things started to click). I remember when the hype started for the novels and went into overdrive for the movies. There were commercials and print ads and even billboards all over the place. When I saw an ad for Harry Potter toilet paper, I decided that's it, I am NOT going to read this stuff, I'm not going to watch the movies, I am going to ignore it completely. And of course that meant I was left out of all the HP references when I finally went online in 2004 and saw HP avatars on the gaming forum I joined. I had no idea who any of them represented. And now that I'm caught up on that, HP fandom has moved to niche sites, rather than the general SF/F subforums on larger sites. I'm almost always at least a decade behind the trends; I was 10 years behind on Firefly, and discovered I love that as well.

Anyway, the science fiction channel here runs a Harry Potter marathon about twice a year on holiday long weekends. They chose to do it in a confusing way - #1-3 shown 3 times, then #4-6 shown 3 times, and then the last two 3 times. When you don't know the storylines, and go from watching Prisoner of Azkaban (#3) and it cycles back to #1 it's a case of waitaminute, where's this character, and why are the kids so much younger... I've never actually seen the movie series one after the other, from #1-8. But that can be remedied now, since I have the DVDs. I've actually been able to piece most of the overall story together by watching the YT videos that explain the characters and storyline and how everything fits together.

There are some fantastic fanfic stories that pack a much greater emotional wallop than Rowling managed... since she was primarily writing for a tween audience and some things had to be understated or couched in metaphors (ie. Remus Lupin's lycanthropy is a metaphor for AIDS and the blatant discrimination suffered by AIDS patients when it came to being denied housing or fired from jobs when their status became known, and both Harry Potter and Sirius Black endured horrific child abuse when they were young kids). And then there's the whole Wolfstar controversy; Rowling says Remus and Sirius aren't gay, but that's not the subtext some people picked up on in Prisoner of Azkaban (personally I don't care either way, as long as the story is well-written).

I haven't read all the books yet, but those who have both read the books and watched the movies say that quite a bit of material that was in the books didn't make it into the movies. And there were some scenes that would have gone a long way to adding character development that were cut. Some fans are incensed that many of Ron's lines from the books were given to Hermione, resulting in the perception that Ron isn't very smart and Hermione is a genius.

The truth is, I don't actually like most of the child characters in this franchise. I like the adult characters - Hagrid the gamekeeper, Minerva McGonagall, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and a few others (not a Dumbledore fan, though). One of my favorite characters isn't even human. Dobby the House-Elf is a character I just want to pick up and hug, because he's that adorable (most of the time).

I love the Marauders-era stories people write, and there are some decent fan films based on those characters (Remus, Sirius, James Potter - Harry's father - and Peter Pettigrew).

So yeah, it took 20 years to get into this stuff, but now I'm enjoying it immensely. If you can get past the first couple of movies, the third one gets into more adult themes and explains a lot of the questions people are left with in the first two.

When you say "nuTrek", is that anything produced after Voyager?

NuTrek is the abominable movie series begun by JJ Abrams. Enterprise is not nuTrek, nor is DiscoTrek or Picard or anything else produced recently. The prefix "nu" is often used by soap opera fans, to differentiate between the actors playing the same role. Soap characters are recast fairly often in some cases, and people sometimes use "nu" to indicate that they're talking about the current actor's version of the character as opposed to the previous one. So when I talk about nuKirk, I mean the Chris Pines Captain Frat Boy version, rather than William Shatner's version.

Hell yeah, the Harry Potter books are good. It's not Umberto Eco or Thomas Mann but they're still definitely worth reading. The films? Please. They're some of the stuff that I actually move away from when channel-surfing.

Parts of the movies are boring as hell, I'll grant, and parts are actually stomach-turning. Draco Malfoy is one of the creepiest kids I have ever seen. I zone out during the Quidditch scenes and skim over them in the books and fanfic. But there are some parts that are enjoyable, and I cry when Dobby dies. Every. Single. Time. And Hedwig the Owl actually got me to see snowy owls in a new way. I just want to hug these characters.

And dammit, like many other fans, I am NOT happy about what Rowling did to Sirius. Thankfully fanfic authors have provided a fix for that.

So I have heard the books are good. but like I said they seem to be targeted at children. Which is fine, but my reading list is full of things targeted at an adult audience. I also usually read sci-fi and not fantasy. I also have The Golden Compass lying on my bookshelf, waiting to be read.. My friend lent it to me and I just haven't had time. There's always some sci-fi that wants to be read first.

You sound like me in 1985. [nose in the air] "I don't read fantasy, I read SCIENCE FICTION!" [/nose in the air] . And then a friend loaned me her copy of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, I fell instantly in like with Tanis Half-Elven and Raistlin, and now I have a shelf crammed with Dragonlance novels and another shelf crammed with gaming modules, calendars, and source books. I learned to play some of the songs from the novels (the sheet music was included in the modules and source books), and I've started writing fanfic.

I realize that this isn't the thread for this, but maybe somebody could tell me what' so good about these books? It might convince me to pick up the first one. I was considering buying these for one of my nieces, but I don't think she's into wizards. More like princesses.

You never know until you try. The first novel is available via Kindle Unlimited (I think you can get the first month for 99 cents or somesuch; there may be a Black Friday deal on now where you can get 3 months for 99 cents). Just download the book either on a Kindle or Kindle for PC (can read it on your computer) and let her have at it. There aren't any princesses in the books, but there are some very smart witches (ie. Hermione and Minerva McGonagall, and I like the character of Luna Lovegood).

As for reading them yourself... please try to get away from the marketing and where they're located in the bookstore. Booksellers don't always know best, as they insist on sticking Margaret Atwood's dystopian SF in the Canadiana section instead of the science fiction section, and one of the local bookstore owners is clueless as to why it would be beneficial to have a specific section for historical fiction - so I could find what I'm looking for instead of having to wade through thousands of other books I'm not interested in.

*marketted at, rather than targetted at. Like Star Wars.

You can read them as an adult and still enjoy them -I suggest you try it.

And J.J. Abrams was not involved in any way as far as I know.

If Abrams had anything to do with HP books, there would be lens flares on every page, and no character would ever have dialogue that was more than two sentences, and preferably just smirky one-liners that would be neither funny nor intelligent.

I hate one-liners for the most part, because so few writers know how to actually make them both funny and relevant to advancing the plot at the same time.

Haha. Well, that's a big plus, but I don't really think JJ's style would translate very well to books. With a book you have an opportunity to stop and think about how stupid what you just read was, before moving on to the next chapter.

You'd think they'd also market these books at me though, if I might enjoy them. But they really do seem like the books i used to read when I was a kid. Meaning that it doesn't mean that it's not for me.. but.. I'm not really that eager to pick up a book like that. There's just a lot more on my list that seems more interesting

If I were to write and market a book to you, specifically, it would have to include hiking, biking, interesting scenery, and weird food.

Come to think of it... the school in HP has a lot of stairs, Sirius Black had a flying motorcycle, some of the views around Hogwarts are really nice (love the long shots of the lake), and they definitely eat weird food there. Oh, and the pictures move.

 

[warpus]

Please try to realize that I tend to have triggers that get activated by certain expressed views not because it's me being personally angry with you, but because I've been through YEARS of arguments about these things either elsewhere online or in RL.

This is exactly why I quit TrekBBS, or at least one of the reasons why. So many arguments there were so toxic and usually revolving around things that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Instead of that toxicity I prefer an environment where we can casually discuss these topics without it leading to emotional turmoil or anxiety. That includes disagreeing on key subjects and aspects of the franchise. It's perfectly fine to like the new shows and dislike TOS for instance. This doesn't describe my position, but if somebody shows up who holds that position, who cares? A lot of Trek fans would, but to me it's simply an opportunity to discuss an interesting pov.

I'm not sure what you mean by "extreme opinions."

I honestly find that community toxic. Imagine going to a book club, where you want to discuss the stories you've read, but the people there instead yell at each other, because they disagree with what colour hat one of the characters is wearing. They come up with silly names for shows they dislike, which seems childish to me. Maybe "extreme" is not the word here, but that's essentially it. Instead of thoughtful discussions (which exist in that community for sure), a lot of it is just people yelling about things that don't matter to me.

I've found a more accepting and open community over at the various Trek subreddits, even though aspects of this toxicity still seep through there every once in a while. But it's more than bearable.

I read the rest of your post, but don't really have anything else to add. And it's fine to use the pandemic as a descriptor of my current state of mind, because it has for sure impacted it.

 

[Takhisis]

If Abrams had anything to do with HP books, there would be lens flares on every page, and no character would ever have dialogue that was more than two sentences, and preferably just smirky one-liners that would be neither funny nor intelligent.

I hate one-liners for the most part, because so few writers know how to actually make them both funny and relevant to advancing the plot at the same time.

One-liners are like sex scenes: best not used unless they advance the plot.

Parts of the movies are boring as hell, I'll grant, and parts are actually stomach-turning. Draco Malfoy is one of the creepiest kids I have ever seen. I zone out during the Quidditch scenes and skim over them in the books and fanfic. But there are some parts that are enjoyable, and I cry when Dobby dies. Every. Single. Time. And Hedwig the Owl actually got me to see snowy owls in a new way. I just want to hug these characters.

And dammit, like many other fans, I am NOT happy about what Rowling did to Sirius. Thankfully fanfic authors have provided a fix for that.

About Sirius, the fifth book of Harry Potter is the weakest one and, even by Rowling's own admission, needed some extensive editing.

 

[EgonSpengler]

One-liners are like sex scenes: best not used unless they advance the plot.

What's wrong with a one-liner just being funny? For instance, I've rewatched the odd episode of Firefly lately, almost just for the witty dialogue. The strict adherence to plot mystifies me. Plot is only one part of a story. I just watched an amazing movie that basically didn't have one at all (Lovers Rock).

 

[Patine]

Once upon a time in a galaxy far far away......

When the ESB was released it's reception was mixed. It wasn't a happy film like Star Wars or have cute teddy bears like RotJ

Over the years opinion changed and it's now generally seen as the best movie of the saga.

Any guesses to why/when?

My personal theory is when the kids of the 80s grew up the movie was the least cute with adult themes.

I watched the movies out of order back in the day and started reading the Star Wars books around 1993. They were rereleased iirc as a trilogy on VHS in 1995. This is before I started using the net so somewhere around 1993-95 personally for me.

Thoughts?

Empire is easily the best film in the entire franchise, it's not close.

A New Hope was a technological breakthrough, but it isn't really a great movie. Definitely watchable though.

Jedi is worth watching just to see how it ends.

I haven't liked a single thing about Star Wars since and I don't even bother. The fact that people bother to get into these huge tribal internet flaming wars over them boggles my mind. The stuff's C- at best and barely worth watching let alone expending any serious contemplation or comment upon.

Opinions (besides the fact that there's a perfectly good Star Wars thread in A&E)?

I was 14 when I saw Star Wars in the theatre, in 1977. I still remember the occasion: It was on my mother's birthday, and her family and her new in-laws (she'd married husband #2 a month earlier) were having a party and they decided to shoo the kids out to see a movie.

We opted for Star Wars, which is how I had the experience of standing in a looooong lineup that stretched about 3 blocks, and we didn't get into the early showing. So we had to spend a couple of hours in line and that's how my cousin and I got to know the new step-cousins.

Anyway, the movie itself... The music blew me away. It was incredible. And when that very large ship first came into view... everyone in the theatre leaned back in our seats to look for the rest of it. It was that real-seeming at the time.

Of course the storyline followed a classic hero/damsel/rogue/villain theme, along with the hero's quest that had an element of revenge (avenging the deaths of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, not to mention Luke's father - obviously before he knew his father's real identity).

Star Wars was fun, and part of my fannish activities at the time included spending my Christmas money from my great-grandmother on a record album that had the Star Wars soundtrack on one side and "space music" (including the theme from 2001) on the other side. My mother was disgusted by my choice; she never approved of my interest in science fiction. And when the first set of 12 action figures came out, I'd save my babysitting money (got a whopping 50 cents/hour in those days) and when I had $3.00 I'd head down to the Bay toy department and get another one in the set. Eventually I had quite a little dramatic display on my bookshelf, with Obi-Wan and Darth Vader having a light sabre duel next to my Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators mystery novels.

As for The Empire Strikes Back... well, the first movie could have stood alone if it had to. It had a satisfying conclusion. But when the story was continued, I'd have to say I prefer ESB. It's the most adult of the movies, and the one that has the best character development.

Oh, and it's entirely possible to be a die-hard Han Solo fan without the retconned nonsense that Lucas did when he started mucking around with the movies. I'm grateful to have seen them as they were originally meant to be seen, in the theatre, without the extra crap and the changed crap.

Han shot first.


I never got into the rest of the movies. To this day I have never been able to fully sit through any of the prequel movies. They're godawful boring.

And for the final trilogy... as I said, Han Solo fan. Once he was killed off, that was it. I don't care about the rest.

If one is talking about the whole franchise, Return of the Jedi and Attack of the Clones were the best in my opinion, but the Empire Strikes Back is not too far off. Anything made in the Star War franchise by Disney is low-grade crud not worthy of the label, "Star Wars," frankly.

 

[EgonSpengler]

If one is talking about the whole franchise, Return of the Jedi and Attack of the Clones were the best in my opinion, but the Empire Strikes Back is not too far off. Anything made in the Star War franchise by Disney is low-grade crud not worthy of the label, "Star Wars," frankly.

Rogue One and The Mandalorian are both better than I expected them to be. I think I'd rank Rogue One with Jedi and Empire. The Mandalorian has been more hit-and-miss, but because it's a series, there's at least a movie's worth of good stuff in there. There was a small dialogue scene between two ex-Imperial Scout Troopers in an ep of The Mandalorian that was one of the funniest things Star Wars has ever produced.

Also, I'm like 98% sure that I saw Solo, but I remember almost nothing about it. I think it was okay. Not great, but not a dumpster-fire, either. Sort of pointless, maybe, but I don't think it ruined anything.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

One-liners are like sex scenes: best not used unless they advance the plot.

About Sirius, the fifth book of Harry Potter is the weakest one and, even by Rowling's own admission, needed some extensive editing.

I'm still working my way through the fourth book (will likely finish it faster, now that NaNoWriMo is over for the next four months). I think I downloaded the fifth one, so I'll likely get that read fairly soon (as in by Christmas).

I've read some articles and seen some of the YT videos that discuss The Order of the Phoenix, and... wow. I'm glad I'm not out of step in being upset that Sirius was killed off. Given what a difficult life he had for most of the time he was alive, having a happy ending within reach only to die like that... it's not fair, either for him or for Harry, as the last person who was some kind of parental figure in Harry's life is taken from him.

But as mentioned, fanfic writers are doing AU versions where he lives, or never gets into that situation in the first place. Of course I can't give my own impressions of how the book should have been edited until I've read it.

What's wrong with a one-liner just being funny? For instance, I've rewatched the odd episode of Firefly lately, almost just for the witty dialogue. The strict adherence to plot mystifies me. Plot is only one part of a story. I just watched an amazing movie that basically didn't have one at all (Lovers Rock).

For me, a one-liner should be funny, and do something to advance the plot... or at least contribute something to enhance character development. Give us something besides snark delivered with a smirk that basically breaks the fourth wall in a "we're so edgy, we have to rub your nose in it" way. One-liners don't have to be obnoxious and insulting, yet it seems like that's the sort of thing that's popular now.

Regarding humorous lines in Star Wars... in general, they were decently done. I don't remember sitting in the theatre wondering why people were laughing, because most of the time I got the humor. The one time I didn't was over the "I love you." "I know." exchange between Leia and Han. That wasn't meant to be funny, in my opinion. Just look at the expression on Harrison Ford's face when he delivers that line. Those two characters are completely serious there, but the audience for the most part just doesn't get it.

 

[warpus]

IMO one-liners can work well for characters who have the sort of personalities that would dispense clever one-liners. So.. proper character development is key. If you have somebody who hasn't been developed at all in any way.. let's say.. Darth Maul in the prequels. Does he have clever one liners? I don't think so, but he's so forgettable I could very well be wrong about that. That character might as well have shown up to fart and leave and it wouldn't have altered the story or impact on the audience any. A throw-away character of sorts, since he wasn't developed in any way. Give somebody like that clever one liners and it can feel forced.

On the other hand, look at somebody like Han Solo. This is the sort of guy who dispenses clever one-liners.. This is who we (i.e. the audience) know him as, so we expect these things from him.

Same with somebody like Deadpool - a character who has been introduced to us and properly developed as the sort of character to dispense clever one-liners. They can't just be thrown in, you have to set the stage properly. It's a non-SW example, because lately SW has not really cared to develop most of their characters, so it's not easy finding examples.

 

[Patine]

IMO one-liners can work well for characters who have the sort of personalities that would dispense clever one-liners. So.. proper character development is key. If you have somebody who hasn't been developed at all in any way.. let's say.. Darth Maul in the prequels. Does he have clever one liners? I don't think so, but he's so forgettable I could very well be wrong about that. That character might as well have shown up to fart and leave and it wouldn't have altered the story or impact on the audience any. A throw-away character of sorts, since he wasn't developed in any way. Give somebody like that clever one liners and it can feel forced.

On the other hand, look at somebody like Han Solo. This is the sort of guy who dispenses clever one-liners.. This is who we (i.e. the audience) know him as, so we expect these things from him.

Same with somebody like Deadpool - a character who has been introduced to us and properly developed as the sort of character to dispense clever one-liners. They can't just be thrown in, you have to set the stage properly. It's a non-SW example, because lately SW has not really cared to develop most of their characters, so it's not easy finding examples.

Which reminds me, the tragedy of those Spider-Man movies by Fox. In all the comics, and all the cartoon series, starting with the '60's one with the cheesy stock animation, the psychodelic sky, and the iconic theme song onward, Spider-Man is a notorious and dastardly one-liner and wise-cracker, as a trademark, though his Peter Parker guise is a bit timid. In those horrid movies, the characters is, for some inexplicable reason, turned to an emo sop...

 

[EgonSpengler]

IMO one-liners can work well for characters who have the sort of personalities that would dispense clever one-liners. So.. proper character development is key. If you have somebody who hasn't been developed at all in any way.. let's say.. Darth Maul in the prequels. Does he have clever one liners? I don't think so, but he's so forgettable I could very well be wrong about that. That character might as well have shown up to fart and leave and it wouldn't have altered the story or impact on the audience any. A throw-away character of sorts, since he wasn't developed in any way. Give somebody like that clever one liners and it can feel forced.

It's been a while since I've seen it, but I don't remember if Darth Maul even spoke. That was part of his thing, iirc. Ray Park was a skilled martial artist and a novice actor, so I think they used him well.

For me, Darth Maul was one of the few things in that movie I actually enjoyed. His unsheathing the double-bladed lightsaber was a classic, "Ohh [stuff]!" action-movie moment. And there was a nice bit when Maul and Qui Gon Jin were momentarily separated by a forcefield; Qui Gon placidly sits down to meditate and Maul paces back and forth, seething with rage. You can see he's actively working to stay angry, the same way Qui Gon is trying to 'center himself.' Each of them is focusing his connection with the Force in his own way. The overall scene was a plot development, because Maul killed Qui Gon, but the moment when they were separated by the forcefield was character development and the reveal of the double-bladed lightsaber wasn't either one, it was just cool. Of the three moments in that scene, I thought the one that advanced the plot was the least fun or interesting, because it was the most predictable.

On the other hand, look at somebody like Han Solo. This is the sort of guy who dispenses clever one-liners.. This is who we (i.e. the audience) know him as, so we expect these things from him.

Having watched some Firefly recently, my mind is stuck on that crew, and it's much the same (of course Firefly is practically Han Solo: The TV Show). Jayne and Mal and Wash are the funny guys. Shepherd Book has a dry wit and River is the stoner who's read too much William S. Burroughs and blurts out jarring-yet-funny lines.

Firefly ep 9, "War Stories":

Spoiler :

River: "The sun came out, and I walked on my feet and heard with my ears. I hate the bits, the bits that stay down and I work, I function like I'm a girl. I hate it because I know it'll go away! The sun grows dark and chaos has come again. It's... fluids. What am I?"

Simon hugs River: "You are my beautiful sister."

A beat, then River: "I threw up on your bed."

The stream of near-gibberish is nice character development, although it's deliberately hard to understand and doesn't make any sense at all until later, when we learn more about River*. But then the one-liner at the end is just funny, breaking the tension and subverting the tone of the scene.

Anyway, yeah, if the script had a line come out of the wrong character's mouth, it wouldn't work at all. If Luke delivered one of Han's or Leia's lines, it would completely fall flat.

Same with somebody like Deadpool - a character who has been introduced to us and properly developed as the sort of character to dispense clever one-liners. They can't just be thrown in, you have to set the stage properly. It's a non-SW example, because lately SW has not really cared to develop most of their characters, so it's not easy finding examples.

Now you mention it, I think one of the issues I have with The Mandalorian is that the central character is the least interesting thing in the whole show. Sometimes that works, using the central character(s) kind of like audience guides or surrogates. Law & Order was like that, where each episode was a new story, with new characters. The detectives and attorneys were kind of bland and underdeveloped by design, to serve as the vehicle by which each individual story was delivered.

* I know this isn't a Firefly thread, but now I'm reminded of the scene where River says something weird and 'all poetical-like' about some cows, and then Mal says, "Is it weird that I understand her perfectly?" The audience, like Mal, comes to understand River over the course of the series, and lines like the one above only made sense to me when I watched it the second time. The whole show is about River, really.

Which reminds me, the tragedy of those Spider-Man movies by Fox. In all the comics, and all the cartoon series, starting with the '60's one with the cheesy stock animation, the psychodelic sky, and the iconic theme song onward, Spider-Man is a notorious and dastardly one-liner and wise-cracker, as a trademark, though his Peter Parker guise is a bit timid. In those horrid movies, the characters is, for some inexplicable reason, turned to an emo sop...

I still haven't mustered the courage to watch those.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

It's been a while since I've seen it, but I don't remember if Darth Maul even spoke. That was part of his thing, iirc. Ray Park was a skilled martial artist and a novice actor, so I think they used him well.

Two lines - "Tatooine is sparsely populated. If the homing trace is correct, I will find them quickly, Master," & the one he's most known for, "At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last, we will have revenge." Oddly, though, with only those two they chose to dub his lines anyway. Iirc it was Peter something that did the actual voicework. I much prefer Sam Witwer's voice in TCW, Rebels, & Ranger Solo.

 

[Patine]

Honestly, it's enough to say you've been busy. I know you have a job that gets you stressed at times, and you have a family that probably gets you stressed (just going by the Swimming Pool Incident you related some time back). But please don't cite the pandemic. I'm sick of hearing that, even though I know it's true in many cases. Apparently the pandemic is to blame for everything that's gone upside-down in my life, according to the Customer Lackofservice agents on the phone. Hello, Canada Post has been pulling their we-don't-really-have-to-bother-delivering-your-parcels-if-we-don't-feel-like-it BS for YEARS. Don't blame the effing pandemic. /rant


Please try to realize that I tend to have triggers that get activated by certain expressed views not because it's me being personally angry with you, but because I've been through YEARS of arguments about these things either elsewhere online or in RL. Whether it's the merits of Dune, some Trek argument that has never been resolved over the last 54 years and probably never will be, or whether I should burn my Marion Zimmer Bradley books because her husband was a convicted child molester, or many other things, some things just set me off (in the latter case, I can abhor his crime but still enjoy her books).

And I really am not saying that just because I'm older that means I'm right. I am saying that I've had more experience with some aspects of fandom than you have, so please grant me the courtesy of accepting that I know what I'm talking about. If I'm unsure of something, I'll say so. If I have no clue at all, I'll ask for an explanation. If anyone is curious about something I know about or have an opinion on, say so. I love conversations like those. Or if it's just links or recommendations, I can either provide them or might have good suggestions on where to find them.


I'm not sure what you mean by "extreme opinions." I would define it as "my opinion is right and don't bother with factual evidence that I'm wrong." Or something like a complete intolerance of any story of Classic Doctor Who that takes place anywhere on Earth other than the UK. There's a Who fan over on TrekBBS who will go into a huge rant at the mere mention of "City of Death" because how DARE they film it on location in Paris? He refers to that story as "Tom Baker's home movie" and I don't know what he finds worse - the Eiffel Tower or the fact that the Doctor and Romana are holding hands part of the time as they run through the streets of Paris. That, to me, is extreme.

But then I've got my own triggers for things that outrage me, so whatever.

I don't care about the decades-long argument over what color Kirk's tunic is. It's somewhere on the spectrum between green and gold. We know what the production people meant to do, and we know that it didn't turn out as planned. The only people who really need to get this right are the fan film producers, and most of them did a very good job (having acquired some of the original costumes and/or the patterns and leftover fabric from a studio insider).

Wanna stir up a Trek argument? Just mention that nobody uses money in the 23rd century. My response: That's BS. And I can find numerous examples to prove I'm right. But the other half of the argument just goes "but-but-but Kirk said they don't in STIV and Picard said they don't..."

It's still BS. They might not use cash, but they still use money. No society as advanced and complex as the Federation can exist without some kind of economy. Even Voyager, cut off from the Federation, developed a shipboard economy (replicator rations and holodeck time). And Beverly bought a bold of ugly cloth in "Encounter at Farpoint" (told Zorn to "charge it to my account on Enterprise"), so I have no idea what little fantasy bubble Picard exists in.

One of the reasons I hang out at TrekBBS is because there are pro authors and fanfic authors who hang out there (I highly recommend Alpha Flyer, on fanfiction.net; she writes terrific post-Endgame Voyager stories). As mentioned, there's someone who used to write essays for Trek who hangs out there. And Greg Cox, who wrote some of my favorite later TOS novels, is friendly and pleasant to chat with.

And of course, there are the people who love to stir up trouble. That's par for the course on any forum. But it's not just Trek. There's a dedicated Doctor Who subforum, and another for Star Wars. I got into a Dune discussion there that had me reaching for my copy of the Dune Encyclopedia and writing some very long posts, explaining stuff about the Fremen and the Butlerian Jihad that most fans weren't aware of (which resulted in an argument with the site admin who <crabbed> at me for said long posts, informing me that they were boring and nobody would read them, whereupon I was left wondering why people wrote to say "thank you" posts and PMs about those posts that nobody liked or would read).


Yes, it's a made-up story. But there are some things that are always true and some that are always false. Example: It is always true that there is no character called "Doctor Spock" in Star Trek. It will always be true that in the original, non-Lucas-mucked-up version of Star Wars, Han shot first. I have to wonder who got the vapors over that, after Han got popular and seen as a hero - can't have a hero shooting first, right? Boom, retcon.


The first movie is about a group of 11-year-old children. Many of the 'jokes' are meant to appeal to children, like a spell that makes bats fly out of people's noses. I don't get why that's funny. But apparently kids do. I don't think Rowling meant for all of the jokes to appeal to adults.

That's something I've noticed about British SF/F. Doctor Who was - and still is - considered a children's show. There was some busybody who, back in the '70s, would constantly complain to the BBC about how some aspect or other of Doctor Who was too "adult" or too "scary" for children. I don't think TPTB every really understood the appeal of that show to North American adults. And it seems to change with every new producer/showrunner team. I gave up on the show completely after Peter Capaldi's second season, because the stories were that stupid (see the Doctor Who thread here for an argument I got into with Plotinus over that; he was put out that I eviscerated a script written by a friend of his; even a child could point out the egregious science errors and plot holes).

I guess they just have different ideas over there of what should appeal to kids and what should appeal to adults. I really don't understand the whole "hiding behind the couch" thing when it comes to Doctor Who. Kids seem to like the child characters and the action of HP. Adults seem to like the adult characters and their interrelationships a bit more. At least that's how it is with me.

I've read a lot of fanfic and right now I'm working my way through the 4th book (Kindle version). There's a lot that's in the books that didn't make it into the movies. Quidditch is like a cross between football and basketball and it's played on brooms. Since I don't really like either of those sports, I just skim any part of the books or stories that get into the minutiae of Quidditch. It was funny, therefore, to see a fanfic writer who described it in terms of hockey (his stories were posted back in 2003 and he must have been enrolled in junior hockey at the time - no kidding, the "He shoots, he scores!" cry was a line in the story, and I now have this crazy image of a wizard version of Don Cherry doing a Coach's Corner segment on Quidditch).


Who cares what section of the store they're in? I still re-read my Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators mystery novels, and those are aimed at teenage readers (specifically teenage boys; I got hooked on them when I was 9 and started collecting a year later - to the surprise of everyone in my family who wished I'd read "girl books" or dog stories or Nancy Drew...). There's a Yahoo group devoted to this mystery series, and most of the members are at least 40 years old, if not actually in the 50-70-year age range.

I honestly don't get why you wouldn't read something just because you liked it, instead of letting some publisher/marketer decide for you. I still have a pile of Archie comic digests I re-read every couple of years, and I'm about 45-50 years older than the target demographic for those.


It took me a loooooong time to get into HP (wasn't until the third time I tried the holiday weekend marathon that things started to click). I remember when the hype started for the novels and went into overdrive for the movies. There were commercials and print ads and even billboards all over the place. When I saw an ad for Harry Potter toilet paper, I decided that's it, I am NOT going to read this stuff, I'm not going to watch the movies, I am going to ignore it completely. And of course that meant I was left out of all the HP references when I finally went online in 2004 and saw HP avatars on the gaming forum I joined. I had no idea who any of them represented. And now that I'm caught up on that, HP fandom has moved to niche sites, rather than the general SF/F subforums on larger sites. I'm almost always at least a decade behind the trends; I was 10 years behind on Firefly, and discovered I love that as well.

Anyway, the science fiction channel here runs a Harry Potter marathon about twice a year on holiday long weekends. They chose to do it in a confusing way - #1-3 shown 3 times, then #4-6 shown 3 times, and then the last two 3 times. When you don't know the storylines, and go from watching Prisoner of Azkaban (#3) and it cycles back to #1 it's a case of waitaminute, where's this character, and why are the kids so much younger... I've never actually seen the movie series one after the other, from #1-8. But that can be remedied now, since I have the DVDs. I've actually been able to piece most of the overall story together by watching the YT videos that explain the characters and storyline and how everything fits together.

There are some fantastic fanfic stories that pack a much greater emotional wallop than Rowling managed... since she was primarily writing for a tween audience and some things had to be understated or couched in metaphors (ie. Remus Lupin's lycanthropy is a metaphor for AIDS and the blatant discrimination suffered by AIDS patients when it came to being denied housing or fired from jobs when their status became known, and both Harry Potter and Sirius Black endured horrific child abuse when they were young kids). And then there's the whole Wolfstar controversy; Rowling says Remus and Sirius aren't gay, but that's not the subtext some people picked up on in Prisoner of Azkaban (personally I don't care either way, as long as the story is well-written).

I haven't read all the books yet, but those who have both read the books and watched the movies say that quite a bit of material that was in the books didn't make it into the movies. And there were some scenes that would have gone a long way to adding character development that were cut. Some fans are incensed that many of Ron's lines from the books were given to Hermione, resulting in the perception that Ron isn't very smart and Hermione is a genius.

The truth is, I don't actually like most of the child characters in this franchise. I like the adult characters - Hagrid the gamekeeper, Minerva McGonagall, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and a few others (not a Dumbledore fan, though). One of my favorite characters isn't even human. Dobby the House-Elf is a character I just want to pick up and hug, because he's that adorable (most of the time).

I love the Marauders-era stories people write, and there are some decent fan films based on those characters (Remus, Sirius, James Potter - Harry's father - and Peter Pettigrew).

So yeah, it took 20 years to get into this stuff, but now I'm enjoying it immensely. If you can get past the first couple of movies, the third one gets into more adult themes and explains a lot of the questions people are left with in the first two.


NuTrek is the abominable movie series begun by JJ Abrams. Enterprise is not nuTrek, nor is DiscoTrek or Picard or anything else produced recently. The prefix "nu" is often used by soap opera fans, to differentiate between the actors playing the same role. Soap characters are recast fairly often in some cases, and people sometimes use "nu" to indicate that they're talking about the current actor's version of the character as opposed to the previous one. So when I talk about nuKirk, I mean the Chris Pines Captain Frat Boy version, rather than William Shatner's version.


Parts of the movies are boring as hell, I'll grant, and parts are actually stomach-turning. Draco Malfoy is one of the creepiest kids I have ever seen. I zone out during the Quidditch scenes and skim over them in the books and fanfic. But there are some parts that are enjoyable, and I cry when Dobby dies. Every. Single. Time. And Hedwig the Owl actually got me to see snowy owls in a new way. I just want to hug these characters.

And dammit, like many other fans, I am NOT happy about what Rowling did to Sirius. Thankfully fanfic authors have provided a fix for that.


You sound like me in 1985. [nose in the air] "I don't read fantasy, I read SCIENCE FICTION!" [/nose in the air] . And then a friend loaned me her copy of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, I fell instantly in like with Tanis Half-Elven and Raistlin, and now I have a shelf crammed with Dragonlance novels and another shelf crammed with gaming modules, calendars, and source books. I learned to play some of the songs from the novels (the sheet music was included in the modules and source books), and I've started writing fanfic.


You never know until you try. The first novel is available via Kindle Unlimited (I think you can get the first month for 99 cents or somesuch; there may be a Black Friday deal on now where you can get 3 months for 99 cents). Just download the book either on a Kindle or Kindle for PC (can read it on your computer) and let her have at it. There aren't any princesses in the books, but there are some very smart witches (ie. Hermione and Minerva McGonagall, and I like the character of Luna Lovegood).

As for reading them yourself... please try to get away from the marketing and where they're located in the bookstore. Booksellers don't always know best, as they insist on sticking Margaret Atwood's dystopian SF in the Canadiana section instead of the science fiction section, and one of the local bookstore owners is clueless as to why it would be beneficial to have a specific section for historical fiction - so I could find what I'm looking for instead of having to wade through thousands of other books I'm not interested in.


If Abrams had anything to do with HP books, there would be lens flares on every page, and no character would ever have dialogue that was more than two sentences, and preferably just smirky one-liners that would be neither funny nor intelligent.

I hate one-liners for the most part, because so few writers know how to actually make them both funny and relevant to advancing the plot at the same time.


If I were to write and market a book to you, specifically, it would have to include hiking, biking, interesting scenery, and weird food.

Come to think of it... the school in HP has a lot of stairs, Sirius Black had a flying motorcycle, some of the views around Hogwarts are really nice (love the long shots of the lake), and they definitely eat weird food there. Oh, and the pictures move.

A funny thing about audience between children and adults, and the humour, were the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoon shorts and Hanna-Barbara's Flintstones and Jetsons series. When they were first released, their content, tenor, and humour were, by social norms and broadcasting standards of the day, considered "adult material," and they were seen as analogs in that light to modern adult cartoons like the Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, etc. However, by the late '70's onward, in syndication, they were put in timeslots, and marketed, as being much more accessible to children, despite a lot of still very adult humour references, just much more subtle and by implication (and often knowledge of '40's to '60's cultural idioms), because broadcasting standards of the day did not allow them to come out and just say these things, like the aforementioned modern adult cartoons often can. Thus, cartoon short punchlines as, "we rabbits don't do much adding or substracting, but we sure know how to multiply," goes over the heads of many '80's children watching them syndicated (it certainly did for me at the time).

 

[Takhisis]

What's wrong with a one-liner just being funny? For instance, I've rewatched the odd episode of Firefly lately, almost just for the witty dialogue. The strict adherence to plot mystifies me. Plot is only one part of a story. I just watched an amazing movie that basically didn't have one at all (Lovers Rock).

The one-liners have to be funny to start with.

And they cannot replace the plot. Not if you are going to pretend that it's a plot-centred work.

E.g. Terry Pratchett's early Discworld books are gag-driven and it works. To pretend to have an overarching, trilogy-spanning plot and insert random jokes and anticlimaxes is just one of the many ways in which Disney!Star Wars managed to be crap.

I'm still working my way through the fourth book (will likely finish it faster, now that NaNoWriMo is over for the next four months). I think I downloaded the fifth one, so I'll likely get that read fairly soon (as in by Christmas).

I've read some articles and seen some of the YT videos that discuss The Order of the Phoenix, and... wow. I'm glad I'm not out of step in being upset that Sirius was killed off. Given what a difficult life he had for most of the time he was alive, having a happy ending within reach only to die like that... it's not fair, either for him or for Harry, as the last person who was some kind of parental figure in Harry's life is taken from him.

But as mentioned, fanfic writers are doing AU versions where he lives, or never gets into that situation in the first place. Of course I can't give my own impressions of how the book should have been edited until I've read it.

Take your time. I can wait.

 

[warpus]

It's been a while since I've seen it, but I don't remember if Darth Maul even spoke. That was part of his thing, iirc. Ray Park was a skilled martial artist and a novice actor, so I think they used him well.

My issue with him that he isn't just a throwaway one-time flashy thing from episode 1, he's supposed to be one of the main baddies in this movie... Not only that, he's the main baddie we see (right?). To give a character like that zero character development is a crime from a storytelling pov.

If he were instead some one-time flashy throwaway thing, then yeah, I agree with you completely. But you can see how they backpedalled almost right away and fleshed out this character after the fact in the Clone Wars cartoons. If they had instead realized the potential of this character ahead of time and fleshed him out properly in the movie, it would have made the story flow a lot better. You don't just completely ignore character development for one of your main baddies.. if not the main baddie in the movie. Makes no sense.

The way Darth Maul was written for that movie, he was essentially a prop that can move and not a character. BUT he was also written as a main character. That's bad writing.

In summary: They should have decided whether he was a main character or just a prop and written him accordingly. But instead they decided to make him a major character with zero character development.

So it's not that I didn't like him, he just barely registered for me.. but he was one of the main characters.. so.. that's not great.

Now you mention it, I think one of the issues I have with The Mandalorian is that the central character is the least interesting thing in the whole show.

Yeah, they haven't done much character development with him at all. The character also seems to lack a lot of emotions, and we always see him in a helmet/mask, so it's harder to connect with this character on a more personal sort of level. i.e. it's not easy to understand who this character is. With somebody like Han Solo, we know who he is. He's a scoundrel, and so on. It's clear, because there was more than enough character development done there.

So see, I'm big on properly written characters, and not just random toasters with legs and arms thrown into the story because they look cool. That's one reason why I liked Firefly so much. All the characters there are very well written - and the dialogue is top notch. I did not fall in love with the story - I fell in love with the characters.

In the case of Darth Maul, it might as well have been a toaster that we saw for 2 minutes, who looks flashy for that duration of time, but does nothing of consequence to the overall story. That's how he was written. If he was meant to be a big baddie and major character he should have been written that way. But he wasn't so now I get to complain about it.

edit: A point about one-liners. The MCU universe has done them very well from what I've seen. I just watched most of these movies so they are fresh in my mind. The writing here is superb.

The latest Star Wars movies have seemingly tried to copy this approach.. It's hit/miss. They need to hire better writers, it seems. or just not try to cram everything with one-liners. They do not belong everywhere.

 

[EgonSpengler]

My issue with him that he isn't just a throwaway one-time flashy thing from episode 1,

Ha. See, in my memory, that's exactly what he was - the equivalent of Boba Fett in the original trilogy - and I thought he was great as that.

he's supposed to be one of the main baddies in this movie... Not only that, he's the main baddie we see (right?). To give a character like that zero character development is a crime from a storytelling pov.

Well, yeah. Like I said, Maul was one of the few things about that movie I liked at all. For the most part, I put that whole trilogy behind me pretty quickly.

Speaking of bad writing, there was a scene with Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman that had such bad dialogue it gave me stomach pain. I was literally embarrassed for the actors. I think the scene was meant to be romantic, which was making me itchy to begin with, because she was supposed to be falling for the kid she babysat a minute ago. I could understand him having a crush on her - in fact, I might have called bullshirt if he didn't have a crush on her - but her having feelings for him didn't sit with me, at all. That was perhaps a fantastic example of where strict devotion to the plot overrode all sense and trampled other important features of the movie - the characters, in this case. And then on top of that, the dialogue was possibly the worst ever put to film. Admittedly, I haven't seen Showgirls yet.

But you can see how they backpedalled almost right away and fleshed out this character after the fact in the Clone Wars cartoons.

I never really watched the cartoons, so I'm sure there's a Bantha herd's weight of stuff I've missed. When Bo Katan and Asoka Tano each appeared, I could almost feel the disturbance in The Force as fans of the previous shows all leapt off their couches with their arms in the air like their team had just scored, but I was just thinking, "Hey, cool, Katee Sackhoff and Rosario Dawson. Dig the white lightsabers." I didn't even recognize the Darksaber was something notable, I read about it later.

edit: A point about one-liners. The MCU universe has done them very well from what I've seen. I just watched most of these movies so they are fresh in my mind. The writing here is superb.

Yes, the MCU have found a wellspring of behind-the-scenes magic that other people haven't been able to tap into. Their casting directors, their 2nd-unit directors, their stunt choreographers, their screenwriters, their costume designers, their set designers - all amazing, especially when you stop and compare them to other, similar efforts. The CW's stretch of shows based on DC Comics properties have struck gold in casting and their costuming and makeup has been almost perfect, but their scripts are uneven and their fight scenes, SFX and stunt choreography can be dime-store. The Mandalorian has hit a homerun with their FX and action scenes, but their plotting has been wobbly, to say the least. What the MCU has pulled off in the last 12 years is such a blindingly-bright miracle that I suspect a lot of people won't even know what they were seeing until their vision clears.

 

[warpus]

Ha. See, in my memory, that's exactly what he was - the equivalent of Boba Fett in the original trilogy - and I thought he was great as that.

Similar how? Boba Fett was a random bounty hunter - easily replaced in the story.

Darth Maul is supposed to be the main baddie in the first movie and one of the main baddies in the whole trilogy.

Surely you see this difference.

It's like.. Okay, consider the show Breaking Bad. Pick one of the main baddies in the first or second season. Now compare this character to a random throwaway drug dealer from one of the episodes, who only has 1-2 lines, or none at all.

If you're saying: "Well they both don't say much", then sure that is a similarity between them, but makes no difference to my argument. It is essentially the meat of my argument - he's supposed to be one of the main baddies - but is instead written like a throwaway prop.

If Darth Maul were some random throwaway drug dealer or general or what have you, then that's a different story entirely. But he wasn't

 

[EgonSpengler]

Similar how? Boba Fett was a random bounty hunter - easily replaced in the story.

Darth Maul is supposed to be the main baddie in the first movie and one of the main baddies in the whole trilogy.

Surely you see this difference.

It's like.. Okay, consider the show Breaking Bad. Pick one of the main baddies in the first or second season. Now compare this character to a random throwaway drug dealer from one of the episodes, who only has 1-2 lines, or none at all.

If you're saying: "Well they both don't say much", then sure that is a similarity between them, but makes no difference to my argument. It is essentially the meat of my argument - he's supposed to be one of the main baddies - but is instead written like a throwaway prop.

If Darth Maul were some random throwaway drug dealer or general or what have you, then that's a different story entirely. But he wasn't

I'm saying that, in my memory, Darth Maul was (a) cool and (b) moved the story by killing Qui Gon, and that's it. Boba Fett did the same thing, except that he didn't kill Han, he just took him away for a bit. Because I haven't seen the prequel trilogy for years, I was going to take your word for it that Darth Maul was "supposed" to be more than I remember him being, but your confrontational approach is getting on my nerves.

 

[warpus]

I am not trying to be confrontational. Maybe it's the way I write? Let me try to be a bit more like yoda

Darth Maul was the only apprentice of the main baddie in the whole trilogy, and in the first movie he was the only face of these 2 characters to us (the audience), as well as our first look at them. He ended up killing one of the leading goodie characters in the 1st movie. Boba Fett would work as a comparison here if he was the apprentice of Dath Vader or something (I know that he probably couldn't have one), being trained to eventually replace him sort of deal. But he wasn't anything like that, he was just a random bounty hunter. I'm fine with throwaway characters not being given character development or dialogue - that's fine. What I don't like is important to the story characters not getting any sort of character development - it's lazy and bad writing... and bad storytelling.

That's my only problem with the character, he is presented to us as being 2nd in command in terms of the baddies, he's a key character in the story, and yet he is written as a prop - something that shows up in the story that advances the storyline of another character (Obi Wan). With zero character development and almost no dialogue. If he was just a random bounty hunter who did not play this sort of role in the story, and just showed up for 1 mission sort of thing, like with Bobba Fett. Then I wouldn't have written any of these posts. I have zero problems with the way Bobba Fett was written originally - a mysterious bounty hunter we know almost nothing about who shows up to hunt down Solo. Works very well for the story - he's not a key character in the story, just a mysterious one off. Darth Maul is supposed to be mysterious too, but he's written as a mysterious prop and not a mysterious character. That is what I take issue with. It'd be like Obi-Wan not saying anything in any of the prequels, maybe a line or two. He didn't get a ton of character development really, but they actually tried to flesh him out as a character a bit, so we could relate to him.

I also don't like the way they dealt with Darth Maul in episode 1, because it's a dynamic that they have repeated since that movie. Instead of properly developing key characters, with backstories, proper character development, dialogue, and so on.. They don't do any of that for most of the key characters on screen anymore. Instead they try to get you to buy into the "supplementary materials", if you are interested in that part of the story. I don't think Darth Maul is when this started (although maybe?), but it is a great example of this sort of thing in action.

Think back to the last trilogy. How many characters got properly developed along the way? Kylo Ren - He got the best treatment in the trilogy wrt to proper character development. This character truly had a proper journey/arc throughout the trilogy, you could see a clear progression of his personality throughout the movies. It wasn't perfect or even amazing, but it was perhaps actually 'great'. Next up is Rey. She gets plenty of screen time, but her character development doesn't really work from movie to movie. I found it hard to relate to her, since her character arc from 7 to 9 wasn't really fleshed out ahead of time, it seems. So her journey makes sense in episode 7, it makes sense in episode 8, and 9, but if you look at the trilogy as a whole, her journey as a character isn't fleshed out very well. Aside from these characters, who else is there? You could argue Poe got an okay amount of character development, I'd agree with that. He's basically the new Han Solo. but then.. even though there is a huge ensemble cast. Nobody else really gets a respectable amount of character development, not im the proper storytelling way anyway.

I see Darth Maul as a prime example of "this sort of thing". They pack the movies full of all these characters and don't bother to flesh most of them out, even if they are key parts of the story. Then they push "supplementary materials" on you, if you want to get at that character development.

I hate this approach, it's poor storytelling.. and a money grab.