Star Wars fans have it as bad as Sonic fans

[SupahBerry]

5 hours ago, DabigRG said:

So how would you rank them then?

This might baffle you, but I actually don't like ranking different subjects at all. Which is certainly a big problem when you come on here to express a negative sounding critique on how a certain subject had similar flaws. 

5 hours ago, DabigRG said:

I think this is a good time to point out that this is where movies can falter whereas other media prosper: everything has to be in a neat, conveniently paced package. That's not to say it isn't possible to work around those constraints, but there is indeed a deadline involved.

Though in a contextual sense, yes to answer your last question. 

I thought TV shows had strict deadlines too, but otherwise, this reasonable. I got the whole "shouldn't need to watch a show or read a book for this thing to be properly explained" idea from people like RedLetterMedia.

"And don’t any of you f*****s tell me that it was explained more in the novelization of some Star Wars book. What matters is the movie. I ain’t never read one of them Star Wars books, or any books in general for that matter, and I ain’t about to start. Don’t talk about them stupid video games, or, or novels… comic books or any of that f*****g crap. "
 - Mr. Plinkett on Phantom Menace

I'll admit his stance on that movie may be dated now, (I always found it being exaggerated for parody as much as critique) but he does raise another point. Some people just don't have the patience to read or watch one thing that gives vital information for another, especially when they felt like it should've been explain by the later to begin with. While I personally don't agree on those thoughts, I will admit that I haven't really watch any Star Wars TV show either, and I don't watch TV in general. But I would love to watch all the way through those shows, as I've enjoyed the first few episodes of Clone Wars and Rebels, but I never give myself the time to do that even when I have all the time in the world. 

6 hours ago, DabigRG said:

To be fair on Maul, those are technically two different things. Fans generally want to see more of anything they find cool and it just so happens that what happened to Maul(and arguably Boba Fett) left the door open for not only more appearances, but also ones subsequent to his defeat.

Plus he and Dooku come the closest to subverting the issue anyway given how they have an entire fight scene under their belt, which involves taking out a Jedi Master and lasting long enough to lead an entire war effort for a bulk of its duration, respectively.

You're right on that account too. I honestly don't have as big of an issue on any of them as I make it out to be. I did this as to show how there were more villains than just Kylo that had ended up like total jokes. (TBF, unlike Kylo, they're at least clearly more competent than he is before they went do) Plus, I found it amusing in how they all seemly shared the same issue, and seemed surprised that no one else has made that connection. That's likely it isn't that big of a convenience in the first place.

This is what I meant by shooting my mouth off. I go and start making an argument on how every villain ends up going down like wimps just like Kylo, yet I do that and then realize I could be missing out on a fact or just plain getting them all wrong. Whether it's because I've procrastinated on catching up with an outside story that redeems what happens in the movies themselves.  I probably shouldn't have made this out like a legitimate analysis and just admit it was more of my just throwing out what's been in my head with little real reason to do so. So I apologize if I have wasted your time. I might've wasted mine too.

6 hours ago, DabigRG said:

Oh? How so?

Well for a start, every Star Wars villain at least fit the Star Wars world, and have proper motivation on why they're evil. Sonic villains might do something to get their jobs done, but each one that isn't Eggman are usually this heartless beast, who may or may not be under Eggman's initial control, that wants to obliterate the whole world just because they're vessel of darkness, and they can. 

[BaronGrackle]

15 hours ago, DabigRG said:

Plus he and Dooku come the closest to subverting the issue anyway given how they have an entire fight scene under their belt, which involves taking out a Jedi Master and lasting long enough to lead an entire war effort for a bulk of its duration, respectively.

One neat thing about Dooku, in my opinion, is that he seems to have a rock-paper-scissors advantage over Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is otherwise a beast in the prequels.

Young Obi-Wan has a resume of beating Darth Maul, General Grievous, and Anakin/Vader (arguably at the height of Vader's potential). And then he has two decisive losses against Dooku/Tyrannus, who isn't NECESSARILY the best duelist because he himself couldn't beat the fully-trained Anakin.

I like the idea of characters being strong against some opponents but weak against others, instead of a straight tier list. Maybe that's what they were going for with Rey beating Kylo, but I felt like we didn't have enough background for that.

[DabigRG]

16 hours ago, SupahBerry said:

This might baffle you, but I actually don't like ranking different subjects at all. Which is certainly a big problem when you come on here to express a negative sounding critique on how a certain subject had similar flaws. 

Oh. Okie day then.

That was meant to be more about personal opinion than any hard science[ fiction].

16 hours ago, SupahBerry said:

 

I thought TV shows had strict deadlines too, but otherwise, this reasonable. I got the whole "shouldn't need to watch a show or read a book for this thing to be properly explained" idea from people like RedLetterMedia.

"And don’t any of you f*****s tell me that it was explained more in the novelization of some Star Wars book. What matters is the movie. I ain’t never read one of them Star Wars books, or any books in general for that matter, and I ain’t about to start. Don’t talk about them stupid video games, or, or novels… comic books or any of that f*****g crap. "
 - Mr. Plinkett on Phantom Menace

I'll admit his stance on that movie may be dated now, (I always found it being exaggerated for parody as much as critique) but he does raise another point. Some people just don't have the patience to read or watch one thing that gives vital information for another, especially when they felt like it should've been explain by the later to begin with. While I personally don't agree on those thoughts, I will admit that I haven't really watch any Star Wars TV show either, and I don't watch TV in general. But I would love to watch all the way through those shows, as I've enjoyed the first few episodes of Clone Wars and Rebels, but I never give myself the time to do that even when I have all the time in the world. 

Well, yeah.

In other news, it's been a while since I last listened to Mr. Plinkett himself, so I'm honestly not sure what he was referring to in context there. 

16 hours ago, SupahBerry said:

 

You're right on that account too. I honestly don't have as big of an issue on any of them as I make it out to be. I did this as to show how there were more villains than just Kylo that had ended up like total jokes. (TBF, unlike Kylo, they're at least clearly more competent than he is before they went do) Plus, I found it amusing in how they all seemly shared the same issue, and seemed surprised that no one else has made that connection. That's likely it isn't that big of a convenience in the first place.

This is what I meant by shooting my mouth off. I go and start making an argument on how every villain ends up going down like wimps just like Kylo, yet I do that and then realize I could be missing out on a fact or just plain getting them all wrong. Whether it's because I've procrastinated on catching up with an outside story that redeems what happens in the movies themselves.  I probably shouldn't have made this out like a legitimate analysis and just admit it was more of my just throwing out what's been in my head with little real reason to do so. So I apologize if I have wasted your time. I might've wasted mine too.

I understand.

It's ultimately indeed due to how poor the First Order establish themselves in some people's eyes that leads to the discrepancy. Though there are people who clown Boba and Grievous long before that, they aren't as fresh.

It's cool either way.

16 hours ago, SupahBerry said:

Well for a start, every Star Wars villain at least fit the Star Wars world, and have proper motivation on why they're evil. Sonic villains might do something to get their jobs done, but each one that isn't Eggman are usually this heartless beast, who may or may not be under Eggman's initial control, that wants to obliterate the whole world just because they're vessel of darkness, and they can. 

.Oh yeah. Fair point.

Chaos, Nega(sort of), and the Zeti are the exceptions.

7 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

One neat thing about Dooku, in my opinion, is that he seems to have a rock-paper-scissors advantage over Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is otherwise a beast in the prequels.

Young Obi-Wan has a resume of beating Darth Maul, General Grievous, and Anakin/Vader (arguably at the height of Vader's potential). And then he has two decisive losses against Dooku/Tyrannus, who isn't NECESSARILY the best duelist because he himself couldn't beat the fully-trained Anakin.

I like the idea of characters being strong against some opponents but weak against others, instead of a straight tier list. Maybe that's what they were going for with Rey beating Kylo, but I felt like we didn't have enough background for that.

Oh! I never really thought about it that way.

The Last Jedi does try to make the point that Rey's raw power is just that--raw power. Untrained, unrefined, unfamiliar with the previous standards of the Jedi and the Sith, but unusually strong.

[Nestor]

On 5/14/2019 at 12:59 AM, Knight56 said:

Scavenging ability does not equal mechanical knowledge. She might know a good part from a bad, and what could be valuable, but how can she be expected to know how they work together just from jumbled pieces?

And again, scavenging does not equal piloting experience. She is seen riding on a speeder, but that is two-dimensional. It's like comparing driving a car to controlling a plane; they are very different from one another.

While a scavenger could just be someone who just picks up or breaks off random pieces, it's established in Rey's opening scene that she is obviously aware of the individual components and is inspecting the insides of machinery for them, and her later line on the Falcon indicates that she's worked on Unkar Plutt's ships before; a scavenger who is actually aware of how the machines work is going to be significantly more successful at scavenging components than one without that knowledge (and indeed my understanding is that the ancilliary materials expanding Rey's backstory actually do explicitly go down this route). The fact that she is a competent mechanic shouldn't be unusual given the context.

Her piloting experience is a bit sketchier, with the main implication being that Plutt uses Rey to test pilot the ships he has her work on (again something that I believe is more explicitly stated in the additional stories), but it least is a somewhat logical extrapolation from her working on his ships. Compare and contrast with Luke's piloting ability; why would a farmer (and one who hasn't yet been to the Academy) have any piloting skills whatsoever, let alone be able to immediately jump into a frontline military starfighter? How does he even know how to operate the Falcon's gun turrets? There are explanations built up for this in the ancilliary materials (the T-16's controls have the same layout as an X-Wing's and he races it against his friends on Tattooine), but from the film alone it's even more of an informed ability than Rey's without as much logical grounding.

 

On 5/14/2019 at 12:59 AM, Knight56 said:

Maybe I should rephrase what I meant by 'instantly good at everything'. She fails initially, sure, but in the next scene or something like that, she usually rebounds and proves that she learned from her mistake--despite having little-to-no training beforehand.

...

Again, Rey isn't instantly good at whatever she does, but the failures she has tend to only bring her where she needs to be, and in the scene directly after, she is as good as she needs to be to succeed.

I don't think you can say that rebounding from failures negates or lessens the failure; the protaganist will generally always recover from adversity in some way. Consider Luke; his aunt and uncle are killed, but it enables him to follow Obi-Wan and begin his destiny. He ignores Yoda and goes to rescue his friends, gets his hand chopped off by Vader and learns his true parentage - but he receives a near identical replacement hand immediately and sets on the path of  redeeming Vader instead of killing him like Obi-Wan and Yoda had intended, ultimately leading to the defeat of Palpatine. He's captured and almost eaten by Ewoks, but manages to escape and recruit them, and they ultimately turn the tide in the Battle of Endor. If you look at each adversity Luke faces, he overcomes each one in some way that is ultimately beneficial.

 

On 5/14/2019 at 1:09 AM, Azzy said:

For a flaw to work it has to have at least some consequence to her character. The only time she shows any real sign of failure or reflection is her first encounter with Kylo Ren and first finding the lightsaber. Which leads to her getting caught and she breaks free by herself anyway. Best might be an exaggeration, inexplicably good at everything is entirely fitting because even she doesn't know how she's doing half the stuff she does.

As per my previous post, she isn't abnormally good at everything; she makes mistakes that cost her, albeit not fatally. The only skills she can be considered good at are her mechanical aptitude, her fighting ability and her strength in the Force; the two former abilities are plausibly explainable by her life and work on Jakku and the latter is deliberately inexplicable, forming a large facet of her character's journey. She's also a fair pilot, but not exactly Poe Dameron or Han Solo; the maneuvres she does on Jakku are able to be duplicated by a random TIE pilot after all.

Regarding her flaws that have consequence to her character, her naivete and desperate need for validation regarding her parents is a major weakness present through both films; in the first, it almost makes her leave Han Solo and the others and return to Jakku for a rendevous that would never come, and in the second, it drives her away from Luke and towards Kylo Ren, and ultimately into Snoke's trap. That was a major failure that would have been fatal save for Ren's intervention; even after Snoke's death, the meaninglessness of her parentage is used by Ren to try and turn her to join him; while Rey ultimately resists, it doesn't come easily and she is reduced to a point of emotional weakness by it.

 

On 5/14/2019 at 10:59 AM, BaronGrackle said:

Starting with Force Awakens, it was more the villains that bothered me than the heroes. The villains did not seem to be a compelling obstacle.

They made Kylo Ren weak on purpose. And I know why they did; it was part of his characterization. "Never as good as Darth Vader." And I get that, but it has consequences. He displayed extreme levels of angst. He got shot by a blaster (bowcaster), the first Star Wars villain jedi to be shot on-screen. He lost a fight against a rookie and barely escaped alive.

And the First Order was garbage. They lost and retreated from every on-screen battle against the "Resistance" in Force Awakens. Their red-headed general screamed like a shrill child. And all they had was their superweapon... when they destroyed "the Republic", it felt more like a terrorist group getting lucky with a dirty bomb, and not like a military power.

Interestingly, Darth Maul actually did get shot in the (magical robotic) leg by a bunch of pirates in Clone Wars, so there is precedent in the right circumstances....

I think though I'd disagree with you on the idea that Kylo getting shot and the scenes afterwards make him weak - I'd argue actually quite the opposite. Consider - he's hit in the abdomen by a sniper shot whilst he's (quite significantly and understandably) distracted. Despite getting hit in the kidneys by a weapon that had previously been shown to throw fully armoured Stormtroopers six foot backwards through the air, he chases after the heroes through an arctic forest and lays into them despite being pretty badly wrecked; it's snowing and he's sweating buckets while having to punch his wound to stay conscious. Despite all of this (and receiving another lightsaber wound from Finn) he knocks Rey unconscious in seconds, seriously injures Finn and manages to dominate Rey once she wakes up, forcing her to a cliff edge. He only ultimately loses when she taps into the Force and comes back stronger; by this point, anyone else with those sort of wounds would be able to be taken down by a strong breeze, let alone a competent fighter who suddenly discovered she has martial precognition.

Compare and contrast with Obi-Wan fighting Dooku in AotC - a cut on a leg and an arm and he's completely down. Anakin and Mace Windu lose an arm, and that's them taken out of the runnings. Kylo Ren meanwhile, doesn't even make a sound when he's wounded; about the closest he comes at any point is sharp intakes of breath when he's punching his own abdomen wound.

Kylo Ren isn't weak, he's a freaking tank.

 

The First Order, meanwhile, really is more akin to a terrorist group or a snappier version of something like ISIS than a full military power; they lack the strength and coverage of the Empire at its prime and effectively have to go for a leadership decapitation strike and then storm the Core Worlds whilst everything's in chaos. I think you're right on the money about the dirty bomb comparison; without it, they haven't got the legs to brute force blitzkreig the galaxy.

I actually don't mind the fact that the First Order are portrayed as having structural and experiential weaknesses; they're obviously supposed to be analogous to a Neo-Nazi resurgent group and consequently populated by fanatics and people pining for the 'good old days' who may not have necessarily actually experienced them, so their misteps and lack of experience do actually make them a bit more realistic rather than simply being an unstoppable juggernaut without flaw. It should be noted that despite the lacklustre leadership of Hux (ancilliary sources seem to be suggesting he and Phasma got their positions through fanatacism backed up with nepotism and corruption), the First Order have actually been remarkably successful in destroying the New Republic leadership and military capabilities, seizing the Core Worlds and almost fatally weakening the Resistance (albeit pyhrrically with the loss of their leader and the crippling of their de facto capital, The Supremacy).

 

12 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

One neat thing about Dooku, in my opinion, is that he seems to have a rock-paper-scissors advantage over Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is otherwise a beast in the prequels.

Young Obi-Wan has a resume of beating Darth Maul, General Grievous, and Anakin/Vader (arguably at the height of Vader's potential). And then he has two decisive losses against Dooku/Tyrannus, who isn't NECESSARILY the best duelist because he himself couldn't beat the fully-trained Anakin.

I like the idea of characters being strong against some opponents but weak against others, instead of a straight tier list. Maybe that's what they were going for with Rey beating Kylo, but I felt like we didn't have enough background for that.

You're absolutely right - Dooku's lightsaber style (Makashi) is supposed to be focused on fencing-style dueling while Kenobi's style (Soresu) is better suited for defense, but can be pried apart by the sort of fancy blade-work of Makashi. Conversely, Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber syle (Djem So) was based on brute force blocking and counter-attack, and so simply smashed through Dooku's more fancy lightsaber technique when he finally tapped into the Dark Side and let loose; it was weaker however against Obi-Wan's defensive Soresu, allowing him to continually hold off Anakin and give ground, leading him into dangerous terrain that could tip the balance.

I think Ren is supposed to be using Vader's Djem-So power style, but I've no clue what Rey's doing, and I'm not sure she does either; it's interesting to note that when she first duels Ren but before she taps into the Force, she wields her lightsaber awkwardly as if it's a staff (understandably as that seems to be the weapon she's most familiar with).

[BaronGrackle]

13 hours ago, Nestor said:

While a scavenger could just be someone who just picks up or breaks off random pieces, it's established in Rey's opening scene that she is obviously aware of the individual components and is inspecting the insides of machinery for them, and her later line on the Falcon indicates that she's worked on Unkar Plutt's ships before; a scavenger who is actually aware of how the machines work is going to be significantly more successful at scavenging components than one without that knowledge (and indeed my understanding is that the ancilliary materials expanding Rey's backstory actually do explicitly go down this route). The fact that she is a competent mechanic shouldn't be unusual given the context.

Her piloting experience is a bit sketchier, with the main implication being that Plutt uses Rey to test pilot the ships he has her work on (again something that I believe is more explicitly stated in the additional stories), but it least is a somewhat logical extrapolation from her working on his ships. Compare and contrast with Luke's piloting ability; why would a farmer (and one who hasn't yet been to the Academy) have any piloting skills whatsoever, let alone be able to immediately jump into a frontline military starfighter? How does he even know how to operate the Falcon's gun turrets? There are explanations built up for this in the ancilliary materials (the T-16's controls have the same layout as an X-Wing's and he races it against his friends on Tattooine), but from the film alone it's even more of an informed ability than Rey's without as much logical grounding.

 

I don't think you can say that rebounding from failures negates or lessens the failure; the protaganist will generally always recover from adversity in some way. Consider Luke; his aunt and uncle are killed, but it enables him to follow Obi-Wan and begin his destiny. He ignores Yoda and goes to rescue his friends, gets his hand chopped off by Vader and learns his true parentage - but he receives a near identical replacement hand immediately and sets on the path of  redeeming Vader instead of killing him like Obi-Wan and Yoda had intended, ultimately leading to the defeat of Palpatine. He's captured and almost eaten by Ewoks, but manages to escape and recruit them, and they ultimately turn the tide in the Battle of Endor. If you look at each adversity Luke faces, he overcomes each one in some way that is ultimately beneficial.

 

As per my previous post, she isn't abnormally good at everything; she makes mistakes that cost her, albeit not fatally. The only skills she can be considered good at are her mechanical aptitude, her fighting ability and her strength in the Force; the two former abilities are plausibly explainable by her life and work on Jakku and the latter is deliberately inexplicable, forming a large facet of her character's journey. She's also a fair pilot, but not exactly Poe Dameron or Han Solo; the maneuvres she does on Jakku are able to be duplicated by a random TIE pilot after all.

Regarding her flaws that have consequence to her character, her naivete and desperate need for validation regarding her parents is a major weakness present through both films; in the first, it almost makes her leave Han Solo and the others and return to Jakku for a rendevous that would never come, and in the second, it drives her away from Luke and towards Kylo Ren, and ultimately into Snoke's trap. That was a major failure that would have been fatal save for Ren's intervention; even after Snoke's death, the meaninglessness of her parentage is used by Ren to try and turn her to join him; while Rey ultimately resists, it doesn't come easily and she is reduced to a point of emotional weakness by it.

 

Interestingly, Darth Maul actually did get shot in the (magical robotic) leg by a bunch of pirates in Clone Wars, so there is precedent in the right circumstances....

I think though I'd disagree with you on the idea that Kylo getting shot and the scenes afterwards make him weak - I'd argue actually quite the opposite. Consider - he's hit in the abdomen by a sniper shot whilst he's (quite significantly and understandably) distracted. Despite getting hit in the kidneys by a weapon that had previously been shown to throw fully armoured Stormtroopers six foot backwards through the air, he chases after the heroes through an arctic forest and lays into them despite being pretty badly wrecked; it's snowing and he's sweating buckets while having to punch his wound to stay conscious. Despite all of this (and receiving another lightsaber wound from Finn) he knocks Rey unconscious in seconds, seriously injures Finn and manages to dominate Rey once she wakes up, forcing her to a cliff edge. He only ultimately loses when she taps into the Force and comes back stronger; by this point, anyone else with those sort of wounds would be able to be taken down by a strong breeze, let alone a competent fighter who suddenly discovered she has martial precognition.

Compare and contrast with Obi-Wan fighting Dooku in AotC - a cut on a leg and an arm and he's completely down. Anakin and Mace Windu lose an arm, and that's them taken out of the runnings. Kylo Ren meanwhile, doesn't even make a sound when he's wounded; about the closest he comes at any point is sharp intakes of breath when he's punching his own abdomen wound.

Kylo Ren isn't weak, he's a freaking tank.

 

The First Order, meanwhile, really is more akin to a terrorist group or a snappier version of something like ISIS than a full military power; they lack the strength and coverage of the Empire at its prime and effectively have to go for a leadership decapitation strike and then storm the Core Worlds whilst everything's in chaos. I think you're right on the money about the dirty bomb comparison; without it, they haven't got the legs to brute force blitzkreig the galaxy.

I actually don't mind the fact that the First Order are portrayed as having structural and experiential weaknesses; they're obviously supposed to be analogous to a Neo-Nazi resurgent group and consequently populated by fanatics and people pining for the 'good old days' who may not have necessarily actually experienced them, so their misteps and lack of experience do actually make them a bit more realistic rather than simply being an unstoppable juggernaut without flaw. It should be noted that despite the lacklustre leadership of Hux (ancilliary sources seem to be suggesting he and Phasma got their positions through fanatacism backed up with nepotism and corruption), the First Order have actually been remarkably successful in destroying the New Republic leadership and military capabilities, seizing the Core Worlds and almost fatally weakening the Resistance (albeit pyhrrically with the loss of their leader and the crippling of their de facto capital, The Supremacy).

 

You're absolutely right - Dooku's lightsaber style (Makashi) is supposed to be focused on fencing-style dueling while Kenobi's style (Soresu) is better suited for defense, but can be pried apart by the sort of fancy blade-work of Makashi. Conversely, Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber syle (Djem So) was based on brute force blocking and counter-attack, and so simply smashed through Dooku's more fancy lightsaber technique when he finally tapped into the Dark Side and let loose; it was weaker however against Obi-Wan's defensive Soresu, allowing him to continually hold off Anakin and give ground, leading him into dangerous terrain that could tip the balance.

I think Ren is supposed to be using Vader's Djem-So power style, but I've no clue what Rey's doing, and I'm not sure she does either; it's interesting to note that when she first duels Ren but before she taps into the Force, she wields her lightsaber awkwardly as if it's a staff (understandably as that seems to be the weapon she's most familiar with).

Ah, the lightsaber styles! Killed with the old EU. Maybe they'll be canon again someday.

I agree that Kylo is a "Tank", but I'm using the RPG battle term. He soaks the hits! But man, he needs a Damage and a Support behind him.

[Nestor]

8 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

Ah, the lightsaber styles! Killed with the old EU. Maybe they'll be canon again someday.

Happily they have in fact returned! According to Wookieepedia, all seven styles (including the variants like Shien/Djem So and Juyo/Vaapad) have been referenced in the new canon, albeit not in quite as much detail as the old EU.

8 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

I agree that Kylo is a "Tank", but I'm using the RPG battle term. He soaks the hits! But man, he needs a Damage and a Support behind him.

Maybe Hux could be a bard or something....

Kylo definitely needs someone to buff his poor Will saves....