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 d-usa wrote:
Explain why Star Wars shouldn't have a female of black "hero" and we may be better able to understand why you think having them is s problem.

Because honestly, at this point it just seem like you are going to argue that any black actor is the result of SJWd unless a character HAS to be black (whatever that would mean). Or any women unless it HAS to be a woman.

And what about Dart Vader being voiced by a, very iconic, black guy, Lando being a black guy and blowing up the second Death Star, and Mace Windu being a bad motherjedi? All SJW castings to satisfy Disney?

The matter is not whether there should be, but why.

I don't disagree that companies can write, direct and produce movies that are less about political things, but in this case....

http://www.hitfix.com/harpy/most-progressive-moments-from-star-wars-the-force-awakens

This is not just, 'ah lets go with this' its 'nah we need to relate to these people now'.

As far as portraying a chick in a combat, beat-up anyone role, I'd usually disagree that's even a good, immersive fiction. Rather, I wager, it's deriving from a politcal and truth claim. If you want to have a discussion about how men and women are fundamentally indifferent, I'll be glad to listen and in-turn, hopefully enlighten you of the inverse related to the natural order on different levels - via PM. I don't mind having the discussion here, but I also don't want to derail the thread entirely.
In regards to how this more directly relates to my view on fiction, well, I believe great writers are at least influenced by truth claims (such as the aforementioned) that are least subjective in nature, so to at least reference consistently a matter of real distinction within their works. So yea, things like how believable certain genders are in roles are definitely an item, and one an author can neglect, so long as he compensates enough with other things.

Anyway, let's try and leave this as a context from where I'm coming from, kk?

Choosing races is not as much of an issue , but too much diversity in any scene could look out of place. Even in most armies there isn't much diversity and when there is some, it's not exactly unnoticed.
Uniformity is an important psychological factor in a military, so going off the rails in a fiction looks just like that: a train flying off the rails. In the case of EP7 its whatever, but I hope it isn't because producers felt like a black actor would be a better choice because... he's a black actor and would help avert political correctness. In that case, it's a fun oxymoron for such a political move - it is racist.

Hopefully this answers your question.

I'm happy that the lead character is female this time around because I simply like variety. All 6 previous Star Wars films have had male leads, it was long past time to change things up.

It would have been more socially progressive had Rey been male.

Cause you know, then Finn would totally be crushing on a dude, and gay love trumps female lead character on the SJW scale of social justice

EDIT: Of course, there's probably already a million slash fictions about the Finn/Poe Bromance by now, so I guess we get the best of both worlds

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I'm happy that the lead character is female this time around because I simply like variety. All 6 previous Star Wars films have had male leads, it was long past time to change things up.

If i heard a nickel for everytime I hear that...


I'd have maybe a dollar

Seriously though, having variety for the sake of, seems to ruins the thing they are attempting to spice up - at least in this age.

'New things' does not inherently make them really satisfactory. Now, Slaanesh would disagree

Sorry, I dropped out of this thread for a while. Has someone already noticed that in one of Rey's flashback visions you can see the ship with her family departing while her arm is held by someone with the voice of Han Solo (or so it sounded in the German version)?

Everything really made the most sense if she was another pupil of luke (and possibly Ben's sister) who got separated when Ben freaked out/turned over.
That would also mean she got jedi training from an early age on, and that that knowledge came back to her when faced with Kylo.

That could mean, for her whole stay on Jakku, or at least the first years she was being watched and guarded, with Han Solo checking in on her.
That would also explain why the falcon was there (it was not stolen but hidden there and to be kept as an exit vehicle for just such a moment), and why she knew so much about repairing and flying space ships.
Someone clearly tampered with her memory, before and maybe even after she came to Jakku.

Even in most armies there isn't much diversity and when there is some, it's not exactly unnoticed.

Things are probably a bit different when it's an actual galaxy full of different life forms rather than 1 planet with 1 dominant life from.

 treslibras wrote:
Sorry, I dropped out of this thread for a while. Has someone already noticed that in one of Rey's flashback visions you can see the ship with her family departing while her arm is held by someone with the voice of Han Solo (or so it sounded in the German version)?

That's the junk dealer, at least in English.

Everything really made the most sense if she was another pupil of luke (and possibly Ben's sister) who got separated when Ben freaked out/turned over.
That would also mean she got jedi training from an early age on, and that that knowledge came back to her when faced with Kylo.

The problem there is that Luke then needs to be accepting 5 year olds or less, since she's that age when abandoned. Even if Ren started his training a decade later than her at 15, he's still got 15 years worth of study on her.

That could mean, for her whole stay on Jakku, or at least the first years she was being watched and guarded, with Han Solo checking in on her.
That would also explain why the falcon was there (it was not stolen but hidden there and to be kept as an exit vehicle for just such a moment), and why she knew so much about repairing and flying space ships.

But then Han would recognise her. Or at least react when learning her name. But more importantly why would Solo- who seems to be spending his time going into debt to recover the Falcon- leave it on Jakku? What purpose does that serve?

Someone clearly tampered with her memory, before and maybe even after she came to Jakku.

What's the basis for this?

My money says she's Skywalker's daughter. Her mother becomes pregnant just before Kylo Ren slaughters everyone and is off doing whatever it is she does with herself when she's not hanging out with Skywalker. I'm sure she's plenty kick ass and her world doesn't revolve around Luke. The critical timing is that Luke goes into exile before learning of his expected child and the mother spends years looking for him, because you know, he didn't make it easy. Neither the Rebellion or the First Order could do it so it's hardly implausible any individual would fail. So her and the First Order are hunting Skywalker and talking to the same people. Years pass and the First Order gets intel she may have known Skywalker or they cross paths at some point but however it happens she becomes an intel target for them. There's probably a fight, an escape and a damaged ship that sets down at a tiny scrap settlement looking for spare parts. But of course the First Order and closing in so her mother tells her I'll be back, pays the scrap merchant whatever she has to look out for her and takes off to lead them away. If they want Skywalker they'll definitely want his daughter. The mother never returns and Rey stays on the planet until the movie.

That makes her Luke's daughter, deals with the missing mother and absolves Luke of being an absentee father. Darth Vader never knew he had a son until Fett told him so it's entirely possible Luke remains ignorant too.

This is not just, 'ah lets go with this' its 'nah we need to relate to these people now'.

And why is relating to 'these people' a terrible thing?

At a fundamental level you have to target your market in order to get their coin.

Why, when casting someone who isn't white, do they have to have an arc where their their ethnicity plays a role? or has to be mentioned or brought up?

 reds8n wrote:

Even in most armies there isn't much diversity and when there is some, it's not exactly unnoticed.

Things are probably a bit different when it's an actual galaxy full of different life forms rather than 1 planet with 1 dominant life from.

I guess when you're the human-centric Empire (and now First Order) it's more important that your employees are human than what else they are. Even if they for some reason looked down on women, wrongly colored people or some other group of humans those are still humans, not filthy aliens.

So no real reason against the casting other than "there is no reason not to have white males in those roles and the only reason they have a woman and black actor is SJWs".

I guess we can ignore that little tangent and go back to talking about Mary Sues?

Or we can talk about how "Stormtroopers cannot possibly be black!"

 Kojiro wrote:

 treslibras wrote:
Sorry, I dropped out of this thread for a while. Has someone already noticed that in one of Rey's flashback visions you can see the ship with her family departing while her arm is held by someone with the voice of Han Solo (or so it sounded in the German version)?

That's the junk dealer, at least in English.

Everything really made the most sense if she was another pupil of luke (and possibly Ben's sister) who got separated when Ben freaked out/turned over.
That would also mean she got jedi training from an early age on, and that that knowledge came back to her when faced with Kylo.

The problem there is that Luke then needs to be accepting 5 year olds or less, since she's that age when abandoned. Even if Ren started his training a decade later than her at 15, he's still got 15 years worth of study on her.

That could mean, for her whole stay on Jakku, or at least the first years she was being watched and guarded, with Han Solo checking in on her.
That would also explain why the falcon was there (it was not stolen but hidden there and to be kept as an exit vehicle for just such a moment), and why she knew so much about repairing and flying space ships.

But then Han would recognise her. Or at least react when learning her name. But more importantly why would Solo- who seems to be spending his time going into debt to recover the Falcon- leave it on Jakku? What purpose does that serve?

Someone clearly tampered with her memory, before and maybe even after she came to Jakku.

What's the basis for this?

My money says she's Skywalker's daughter. Her mother becomes pregnant just before Kylo Ren slaughters everyone and is off doing whatever it is she does with herself when she's not hanging out with Skywalker. I'm sure she's plenty kick ass and her world doesn't revolve around Luke. The critical timing is that Luke goes into exile before learning of his expected child and the mother spends years looking for him, because you know, he didn't make it easy. Neither the Rebellion or the First Order could do it so it's hardly implausible any individual would fail. So her and the First Order are hunting Skywalker and talking to the same people. Years pass and the First Order gets intel she may have known Skywalker or they cross paths at some point but however it happens she becomes an intel target for them. There's probably a fight, an escape and a damaged ship that sets down at a tiny scrap settlement looking for spare parts. But of course the First Order and closing in so her mother tells her I'll be back, pays the scrap merchant whatever she has to look out for her and takes off to lead them away. If they want Skywalker they'll definitely want his daughter. The mother never returns and Rey stays on the planet until the movie.

That makes her Luke's daughter, deals with the missing mother and absolves Luke of being an absentee father. Darth Vader never knew he had a son until Fett told him so it's entirely possible Luke remains ignorant too.

Good points, and indeed Han Solo should have reacted differently. Mybe I misheard the voice then.

God we went so long without casual racism and sexism reminding us how shameful it still is to be into nerd gak.

 reds8n wrote:

Even in most armies there isn't much diversity and when there is some, it's not exactly unnoticed.

Things are probably a bit different when it's an actual galaxy full of different life forms rather than 1 planet with 1 dominant life from.

Maybe but the Squirrels time will come.

 Ahtman wrote:

 reds8n wrote:

Even in most armies there isn't much diversity and when there is some, it's not exactly unnoticed.

Things are probably a bit different when it's an actual galaxy full of different life forms rather than 1 planet with 1 dominant life from.

Maybe but the Squirrels time will come.

It already has in Gal Civ 3. Not sure if that was your reference.

-----

Hopefully not delving into another bad subject but for anybody suggesting some nerds have issues with race or sex of main characters I'd like to state one fact. How many people complained when Link from Zelda had a different hair color in Twilight Princess and James Bond had a different hair color with the most current James Bond? Hardcore fans hate change no matter how small. Unless some will state people are racist against hair color now. ****in' hairists!

 kveldulf wrote:
Regarding to those who replied to my thread:

I don't need to watch the actual movie to determine I won't like it. For example, I don't need to watch 50 shades of grey to determine that it's garbage for the mind.

Regarding whether it is SJW maneuvering:

Listen, if you want to get caught up in the extremity of what that word means in your mind, fine but lets not deconstruct the essence of my argument that was made pretty darn clear:

I am sorry but I have talked to alot of gamergaters and even they don't do something like this. Just watch the damn movie. If you haven't seen it. Then you really can't defend yourself. SJW? Really? Thats your critique of the movie? You do realize this more egalitarian Than feminist right?

The movie has simply changed a paradigm in SW, and I don't think this revision is something as innocent/creative under the hood as Disney would make you believe.

Objectively, the film may just stand on its own merit despite the political inferences inserted. However, because these do exist within the production, I doubt the longevity of the series, or the immersion its attempting to create, will actually be there or last.

Wow. Someone is fear mongering here. How could this be anything but?

IT does! So bloody watch it.

***

On a more specific note:

If you fundamentally think that independent women characters can be as iconic as men, then define your terms. The template I usually see portrayed in these roles revolves around super imposing reality to fit an ideology of women = men, when it comes to abilities.

It's almost like a subconscious thing, that invokes men as a referent to then put back into place. It's something I don't think will ever go away until humanity all becomes hermaphrodites Some films don't do this as much, but its still there. It's an immersion breaking mechanism - if you're not deluded, that is, unaware of the order of nature.

Well heres the thing. That is completely sexist to say. I am sorry but there is no way that can't be seen as sexist. A woman and men can have the same roles. Its a stereotype they can't. Gender is a social construct, made by idiots.

What does this have to do with men? Men have leading roles in this film. Infact there is 1 main female protoganist. and you think that is a problem? That says alot about your argument and how faulty it is. The problem that I see with your argument is it based on assumption and absolutely zero facts. You can't prove any of these statements. Because they work almost just as well for the Egalitarian argument.

An iconic woman or character. Is one that is relatable and engaging. Similar to how morgan la fey in the original Arthur myths is a widely loved character. Or the Green Rider series or many other books that center around a female character, most of who are written by men!

Also, on matter of race - in fiction, I don't care so much as to what color a lead character happens to be, just so long as there is intention driven within the universe that at least defines/alludes to the culture associated to skin color. I'd much more believe an all black galactic empire as it resembles a common thing in RL - races tend to congregate. There are exceptions, but the generality is an observation that most in RL see first hand, thus, seeing it in a fictional setting spurs immersion (just an example). Going into the realm that skin color doesn't matter could be justified in some manner like conscription, but that can only go so far before it just looks convoluted to what we compare it with - reality.

Clearly you do care because you don't believe in something cultural explosion.

Automatically Appended Next Post:


Yes TFA is deliberately diversely cast. I have no problem with this. In fact if I had any problem it was with the age of the cast, as they all appear to be quite young except for our old heroes (duh).

Uhuh.....





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Las wrote:
God we went so long without casual racism and sexism reminding us how shameful it still is to be into nerd gak.

Ugh don't remind me. There is quite a bit of it. I remember hearing about a complaint how a female jedi was against the jedi code. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
So no real reason against the casting other than "there is no reason not to have white males in those roles and the only reason they have a woman and black actor is SJWs".

I guess we can ignore that little tangent and go back to talking about Mary Sues?

Hahahaha. Yeah that is even a solid argument now.

Mary sues by definition are authors making themselves the characters and making themselves the best and greatest.

I don't think that argument has any weight if you look at the actual definition of the phrase.

There is something else called an unrounded character, or a 1 dimensional character.

But in classic writing no one uses the word Mary Sue. It was made by a bunch of fans of a star trek episode, not by accredited writers and authors.

I'm as scornful of "SJWs" as anyone but I'm really not seeing the connection here.

There are fair criticisms to be made (not that fair=correct) of the movie's pacing and depth or lack thereof, but the idea that the movie is SJW propaganda simply because the lead happens to be female and wins a fight is absurd.

 Asherian Command wrote:


Uhuh.....

If you've got a charge to make, make it. My comment applies- if I had to pick one- to casting choices, not the script. Do not conflate the two.

 kveldulf wrote:
he's a black actor and would help avert political correctness. In that case, it's a fun oxymoron for such a political move - it is racist.

So when the entire cast is white, it's just coincidence, or a reflection of the standard deviation? But when there is one black guy then it's racist, because he was probably shoehorned in by SJWs?

This is starting to sound a lot like the "when I win it's skill, when other people win it's luck" kind of doublethink. But yeah, you're totally not harbouring any deep-seated resentment or bias...

You know what I always found odd about star wars. For sci-fi it has plenty of different alien species but most are basically super few in number and largely irrelevant to the actual plot. Pffft species'ist scum!

----

You know I'm not thrilled about SJW's either and am not super thrilled about the 'We need everybody 100% represented esp. if they're minorities!' thing esp. when it's advertised as being more open-minded and thus makes people feel un-equal (making groups equal should be done naturally and not be pointed out constantly as that makes things awkward for all). However good characters tends to override that sort of thing. You can have good characters/actors of various races or genders and that matters far more esp. when it actually does make sense to the story.

Far as Finn goes I felt it was a move by certain people to make a main black character but then I saw him in the movie and felt he wasn't even close to that good of a character. I mean if nothing else make him more awesome. Even Lando's actor was charismatic. I actually felt bad for Finn as the character just wasn't that good at anything. Sure he did a couple things (freed poe and found the robot that helped the rebels) which is considerable but he didn't really do so well at fighting. If anything he's more like luke from 'A New Hope' than rey is. Hopefully he becomes a better fighter at some point.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
For sci-fi it

But it isn't sci-fi, it is fantasy that happens to be set in space.

 Ahtman wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
For sci-fi it

But it isn't sci-fi, it is fantasy that happens to be set in space.

Ugh do we really need specifics. I've heard some call it a space opera too.

--------

Back to Finn I just ugh I can't like his character. Even go on to mace windu. He wasn't a super main character but he was on the jedi council and whether by luck or not managed to knock emperor palpatine (The Main Bad Guy) on the ground and held him back and caused him to scar himself. Keep in mind without Anakin's intervention he would've died and mace windu would've walked out wearing shades against a background explosion.

This isn't a SJW issue at all. It's not a coincidence that the new main actors are black and female, in the contrary, it's just a marketing play / pick to cater to a broader audience, but that does /not/ make it a SJW case. As I said above - it's not a SJW issue, get over it and get to the movie's real problems as already done multiple times, i.e. unoriginal script, bad character development (Mary Sue etc.) and so on.

 Sigvatr wrote:
This isn't a SJW issue at all. It's not a coincidence that the new main actors are black and female, in the contrary, it's just a marketing play / pick to cater to a broader audience, but that does /not/ make it a SJW case. As I said above - it's not a SJW issue, get over it and get to the movie's real problems as already done multiple times, i.e. unoriginal script, bad character development (Mary Sue etc.) and so on.

Yet again not a mary sue. By the standard definition the characters are not mary sue! They are 1 dimensional, not 3 dimensional characters.

By its definition a mary sue is a character that is good at everything and loved by all. It is also self insertion character/fic. MEaning the character is just a representation of the author.

I don't see these characters good at everything they do. They are merely apart of the world .

I feel like Rey is much closer to a Mary Sue than the characters from the previous movies. Mostly because the formula for the past movies was that the characters would grow in order to overcome the bad guy, not just simply beat them right out, with the exception of Darth Maul of course, but that was also done by others than the hero of the story.

In short look at how the other movies played out:

Episode 4: They run from Vader, Obi Wan gives his life so they can escape.
Episode 5: Vader crushes Luke in combat and he retreats.
Episode 6: Luke beats Vader but almost goes to the dark side doing so.

Episode 1: Nothing really happens.
Episode 2: Duku beats up Anakin and Obi Wan, Yoda has to save them.
Episode 3: Anakin goes berserk and defeats Duku.

That's really it, while in the other movies the hero preformed great feats, they were generally more mundane feats such as being able to hit an impossible target or racing, they never straight up went god mode in combat before they underwent a lot of training :/.


Edit: And no, I'm not claiming this was intentional SJW propaganda or whatever, just that it wasn't particularly good design that resulted in the main hero being too good too early, to the point of almost becoming a Mary Sue.

Anakin is Star War's greatest Mary Sue.

 Scrabb wrote:
Anakin is Star War's greatest Mary Sue.

Well yea, he's very much a Mary Sue, but the movies he's in (pre-Vader) are also just bad, and even then he at least loses enough to give the mild appearance of growth in his training and such.

 Tinkrr wrote:
Mostly because the formula for the past movies was that the characters would grow in order to overcome the bad guy, not just simply beat them right out, with the exception of Darth Maul of course, but that was also done by others than the hero of the story.

First of all, no, that's not really how it went. Remember how the first movie had Vader spinning off into space yelling "I'll get you next time!" just like Kylo Ren? He might not have been defeated in a duel, but he was still defeated. And second, how do you know that the heroes already overcame the main bad guy? Maybe the "emperor" equivalent in the new series will take a more direct role in the story compared to Palpatine in the original trilogy.

 Asherian Command wrote:


Yet again not a mary sue. By the standard definition the characters are not mary sue! They are 1 dimensional, not 3 dimensional characters.

There is no standard definition of the term. The problem with Rey is that she is /far/ too good. It's the first movie in the trilogy and is already adapt at pretty much all critical main character skills including easily defeating the first movie's main villain, defying all logic. She's good looking, fast, agile, unrealistically strong (check her arms...come on...) and also seems to be clever while, again, seemingly being an already adapt space wizard. How much more boring can this get? Luke, at the very least, was shown to be had /some/ training and he still got his sorry butt kicked hard. Even Han Solo, a seemingly badass pilot with lots of experience got played by a former friend an frozen in carbonite. Rey just waltz through the movie. Yeah yeah, I get it, female lead must be super good, but I cannot root for such a character. She's way too "overpowered" and I cannot see how they want to realistically put her into danger in the next movies without resorting to Swiss Cheese plot writing. Good characters have /weaknesses/, they /change/ and /get good/.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Tinkrr wrote:
Mostly because the formula for the past movies was that the characters would grow in order to overcome the bad guy, not just simply beat them right out, with the exception of Darth Maul of course, but that was also done by others than the hero of the story.

First of all, no, that's not really how it went. Remember how the first movie had Vader spinning off into space yelling "I'll get you next time!" just like Kylo Ren? He might not have been defeated in a duel, but he was still defeated. And second, how do you know that the heroes already overcame the main bad guy? Maybe the "emperor" equivalent in the new series will take a more direct role in the story compared to Palpatine in the original trilogy.

Except Vader was defeated in the first movie in the most indirect way possible and really Luke played almost no part in his defeat. The whole first movie is Luke running from Vader, even during Vader's "defeat" Luke is running from him and is only saved by someone else, when Vader's ship is shot, so they defeated Vader's Ship I guess? By that logic Luke defeated a planet worth of soldiers with two torpedoes when he blew up the Deathstar, but we don't really consider that a victory against every soldier on the ship, more a victory against the ship itself.

Kylo was defeated directly, by someone with zero training, just imagine if Luke defeated Vader in the same way in Episode 4? Like I said, the first movie is them running from Vader, and the only way the defeated him was by not fighting him directly, but rather his ship, which evens the playing field massively since all of his special powers don't extend to that ship, then in Episode 5 Luke has had training and Vader still just slaps him around casually. At least in the case of Darth Maul it was the combined efforts of two highly trained Jedi, and at the expense of one of their lives, and even then I thought it was a bad move since they could have done so much with Darth Maul, since we knew almost nothing about him.

Honestly, it just seemed like every time there was a problem Rey would show up and save the day, with it all culminating in her beating the villain who was incredibly powerful on her first try. I get it, he was injured, and she wasn't alone, but even with that it really took me out of the movie since it just didn't make sense.