Star Wars - We're ALL Being Tortured For No Reason

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Luke would have never tried to kill Vader if he had known the man was his father - which he didn't. And when he tries to kill him in ROTJ he does so because he is about to give in to the dark side, following in his father's footsteps.

But Luke overcomes all that when he rejects Palpatine and the dark side in ROTJ. The character develops ... and he is not going to make the mistakes those shitty writers had him make in those silly movies.

Yes, he is! Because people make the same mistakes all the fucking time. People struggle and regress and fight against their own heart all the time. 

5 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Not sure where all those ideas are in those Vader mask kink scenes. He clearly wants to be evil, that is the point of him killing his own father. There is no reason for this aside from him wanting to do it so he can prove to his hologram master that he can do what a villain has to do. 

He does it to prove to himself that he can. To put him down the path that he cannot come back from. 

5 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

There is nothing of that in the movies. No indication that he was abandoned or rejected by his parents. Leia and Han have problems after their ingrate son turns evil, not while he is still around and pretends to be a normal kid. At least that's what's implied.

Kylo disagrees in the movies.

5 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, so being the son of Leia Organa doesn't make you special? Or being the nephew of Luke Skywalker? As for hologram dude - we don't know what that guy told him, etc. because it isn't there in the movies.

We literally hear what he tells him over and over. 

5 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Not getting along with Luke Skywalker is no justification for being evil or wanting to destroy the Jedi - who didn't even exist at that time. Just as one can kill Luke Skywalker without murdering one's own father or becoming the silly slave of some hologram dude ... or turning oneself into some kind of Vader mask fetishist. Why didn't he hire a bounty hunter? Or poisoned the evil uncle?

Not getting along? HE FUCKING WAS ALMOST KILLED. 

5 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

And as for power - why emulate the silly weakling grandfather robot and not the political genius Palpatine? He was Leia's son, he could have gone into politics, taking over the New Republic and gaining power without turning into a bad comic book cliché. 

Because he's a skywalker and not a palpatine?

5 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Vader is a joke as a evil Sith role model for his grandson. He lost his potential when Obi-Wan cut him down to size and burned him, he never ruled the Empire but was but the lackey of its true ruler ... and, the most important point, he denounced the Sith and the dark side in his last moments. 

He spent 20 years killing every last jedi in the universe and ruling it with an iron fist.

 

[Jaxom 1974]

Kal, I get what you're saying. I do. But Kylo Ren is a terrible villain. Yes, he did apparently perceive that Luke intended to cut him down, bit the ideas that caused Luke to come to that conclusion feels so half baked and the lack of proper context is one of the significant failures of the writing and execution of the sequels. Really, it felt like JJ was simply throwing things at the wall that he thought sounded cool.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

Yes, he is! Because people make the same mistakes all the fucking time. People struggle and regress and fight against their own heart all the time. 

Not in a well-written story, they don't. There they make new mistakes, mistakes more appropriate to their age and experience. Luke could perhaps been afraid that he was a bad teacher, but he would have never been tempted to murder his nephew, no matter what he saw. He would have rejected such images out of hand because, due to his experience with Vader, he would have known that appearances can be deceiving.

And to be quite clear - the brat was never innocent or anything. He listened to that evil voice inside his head and would have turned evil no matter what Luke did or not, no?

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He does it to prove to himself that he can. To put him down the path that he cannot come back from.

Which is a silly motivation, especially if he actually dreams about murdering the guy he tries to prove something to by doing that. If you want power, take it, acquire it, but there is no reason to kill your parents over that. That is just a completely stupid concept.

In fact, now that I'm thinking about it the entire 'conflict' of that character is silly. The light side of the Force isn't a temptation, isn't something that seduces or tempts you, and there is no reason to reject it. To be a Jedi is hard ... but to follow your dark impulses is easy. The dark side tempts you, but the light doesn't.

And - to be perfectly clear - there is nothing you cannot come back from in this world. Vader proved that. He helped blow up Alderaan, murdered children, tortured his daughter, etc. - but Luke loved and forgave him anyway, and he did come back and is now in the heavenly afterworld.

Which is why the one thing the ST did right is to make the Vader wannabe a good guy in the end. That is what Star Wars is about.

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Kylo disagrees in the movies.

You would have to give me quotes for that.

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We literally hear what he tells him over and over. 

See above.

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Not getting along? HE FUCKING WAS ALMOST KILLED. 

He wasn't, because Luke never tried to actually kill him. It was a misunderstanding. And the guy's reaction was to slaughter most of his fellow Jedi. Who, of course, were accomplices of Luke's in this misunderstanding how?

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Because he's a skywalker and not a palpatine?

So being a Skywalker means you emulate a moron and a failure? A guy who was tricked with a lie - 'I know how to defeat death' - into turning against his friends and wife by a true evil genius, and who in the end turned against the Sith and destroyed them (sort of)?

I mean, come on, that's like a Hitler wannabe idolizing Stauffenberg. You ain't one of the bad guys if you actively turn against them - and Vader did that.

And there is no way at all that the Skywalker-Solo family didn't know all that. Luke would have told them everything. To them, Anakin Skywalker would be a shining example for the power of the light, how forgiveness and love can cause even the greatest monster into rediscovering his good side and doing the right thing to redeem himself. No grandchild of Anakin's would develop some kind of weird Vader mask fetish, associating that stupid mask with power and dread.

There you see how the people doing the ST don't understand the basic concepts. Vader looks impressive, but he is not. He is a cripple. There is a reason why Darth Sidious, Darth Maul, and Darth Tyranus do not walk around in some kind of cyborg armor.

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He spent 20 years killing every last jedi in the universe and ruling it with an iron fist.

Emperor Palpatine ruled the galaxy with an iron fist, Vader was just his errand boy and enforce. And again, Vader didn't kill the Jedi. The clones did, right there in ROTS, on the command of Darth Sidious. Vader may have hunted down some survivors afterwards, but the power of the Jedi is broken in ROTS, not afterwards.

To be clear, Vader is no complete failure. But he still isn't the kind of guy anyone would want to emulate because he lost what he could have been ... the most powerful Force user of all time when he allowed Obi-Wan to cripple him. The ruin in the suit is completely stands no chance against Darth Sidious ... which is why he is little more than his lap dog.

I mean, rewatch ROTJ with ROTS in mind. Palpatine is using Vader the same way he used Darth Tyranus in ROTS, having Vader play the role poor Dooku played back then ... with Luke acting as Anakin Skywalker. And he cannot do anything about it. He mindlessly follows his master's script because he has no other choice. He is a broken, ruined shell of a man.

The one thing he can do, in the end, is go completely against the script. But for that he needs to see the strength of character in his son - who rejects the offer of the Emperor to rule at his side - and he has to see that Sidious is killing his son.

[Lord Varys]

55 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Kal, I get what you're saying. I do. But Kylo Ren is a terrible villain. Yes, he did apparently perceive that Luke intended to cut him down, bit the ideas that caused Luke to come to that conclusion feels so half baked and the lack of proper context is one of the significant failures of the writing and execution of the sequels. Really, it felt like JJ was simply throwing things at the wall that he thought sounded cool.

That whole thing wasn't something JJ came up with, no? That was the other movie.

2 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

Kylo was also never a Sith or trying to be one.

Well, that we don't know what he wanted to be, or what his weirdo hologram master was supposed to be in TFU, is another indication how the writing sucked. If those folks are not Sith then we should know what they are/want to be ... and also why they are behaving like Sith despite them not being called Sith.

It is the same with the ridiculous 'First/Final Order' crap - those folks were the evil Galactic Empire, plain and simple, just as 'the Resistance' was 'the Rebel Alliance'. Using different names for the same concept is just cheating. One wonders why there weren't any good guys with lightsabers in those movies who weren't named Jedi...

[Jaxom 1974]

7 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

That whole thing wasn't something JJ came up with, no? That was the other movie.

True. Luke's story of Kylo Ren is the second movie, but Kylo Ren the villain was a JJ thing and it's nothing but throwing anything and everything.  And it made for a terrible villain.  

[Lord Varys]

8 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

It was made very clear at the time TFA came out that neither were Sith.

Sure, but who cares about that, if they look and behave like Sith, and one guy is a Vader wannabe. That's like guys walking around in Nazi costumes not calling themselves Nazis. You can do that, but nobody has to take that kind of self-description seriously. If to looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

And Vader wannabe and Evil Hologram dude are Sith in that sense ... just like Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader are Sith in the OT despite the fact that nobody ever calls them 'Sith' in those movies considering the term is not mentioned in the OT at all.

In fact, the term Sith not being used in TFA may actually be part of the movie being as much of a ANH/OT copycat as possible. After all, Sith stuff was not mentioned in ANH to ROTJ, either.

1 minute ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

True. Luke's story of Kylo Ren is the second movie, but Kylo Ren the villain was a JJ thing and it's nothing but throwing anything and everything.  And it made for a terrible villain.  

Yes, and it is also JJ's fault that the motivation of this guy is unclear. Especially in light of the fact that he is all about this Vader fetish thing. This is 'the JJ explanation', which can be drawn from the fact that we see the mask shit in the JJ movies. The first thing Johnson did was to get rid of the silly mask, while JJ spent valuable screen time on the guy reforging the stupid thing.

[Lord Varys]

Just now, Mr Meeseeks said:

Maybe you should rename this to Star Wars hate thread.

I like Star Wars, just not those ST movies. The fact that I don't find arguments convincing which try the Vader wannabe into a great character is just one of my issues with the ST.

And to bring it back to the PT - I don't think those are great movies, either, I just find the story behind them had the potential for better movies, especially if Lucas had had the guts to make them somewhat longer and take his time with the story by not only going with three movies.

Compared to that, the ST movies are just a rehash of the OT, aimed at the old guys who grew up with the OT and like watching remakes of those movies. To a point I understand that ... but it is not what I expect of or want from from Star Wars.

[Relic]

7 hours ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

Maybe you should rename this to Star Wars hate thread.

No, the title is very fitting. Reading your posts, especially, feels like torture 

[Caligula_K3]

16 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Of course the vote of confidence works - because it is Darth Sidious who claims 'the bureaucrats control everything'. He is controlling everything, the Trade Federation and the Senate, and that's why Padmé's vote of confidence works. I mean, the head/only bureaucrat we see is Senate Speaker Mas Amedda, and he is Palpatine's crony in the next two episodes.

 

 

I don't know that the movie (or future movies) show this in any way. Yes, Palpatine controls the trade federation; but has he really engineered it that as soon as a vote of no confidence is raised, everybody immediately comes on board? We don't see Palpatine interacting with anything political until he's been Chancellor for 10 years.

I also don't understand what Palpatine hoped to gain from the trade federation invasion of Naboo. It worked out in his favour because the queen escaped, but it really does seem throughout the movie that his number one goal was to keep Amidala on Naboo, get her to sign the treaty, etc... So things only worked out because he failed. Even after he's become supreme chancellor he still sends Darth Maul to Naboo to get the treaty signed. Why?

As for these movies needing to be three hours... That really wouldn't have helped. I think that would have made them worse, in fact.

Also, count me in on those who thought Kylo Ren was a great villain and who really enjoyed the move to turn him into the big bad in The Last Jedi. But the Rise of Skywalker had to bring Palpatine back...

[Slurktan]

11 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I also don't understand what Palpatine hoped to gain from the trade federation invasion of Naboo. It worked out in his favour because the queen escaped, but it really does seem throughout the movie that his number one goal was to keep Amidala on Naboo, get her to sign the treaty, etc... So things only worked out because he failed. Even after he's become supreme chancellor he still sends Darth Maul to Naboo to get the treaty signed. Why?

 

Had the Queen not escaped, the vote of no confidence would still have happened as he is the senator from Naboo and would have brought it up.  He still would have taken over and probably played even more on sympathy from other systems to gain power.  Maul is sent presumably just to take out Qui Gon and Obi Wan ie the only Jedi to actually fight and witness the Sith in a thousand years.

[Ghostlydragon]

12 hours ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

The biggest mistake TRoS did was in actually making Kylo Ren redeemable. He should have been the big bad. We should have seen that some people's choices do have consequences and that TLJ was the turning point for him, with no going back. And that, in turn, was fostered by Luke's biggest failure. 

I guess you have to appeal to those Reylos and turn him into some sort of Disney Prince 

[Poobah]

11 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

And - to be perfectly clear - there is nothing you cannot come back from in this world. Vader proved that. He helped blow up Alderaan, murdered children, tortured his daughter, etc. - but Luke loved and forgave him anyway, and he did come back and is now in the heavenly afterworld.

Which is absolute bullshit by the way. No amount of deathbead confessions or heroic sacrifices can make up for fucking genocide. He should be in sith hell or whatever, not chillaxing with Yoda and the boys.

2 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I don't know that the movie (or future movies) show this in any way. Yes, Palpatine controls the trade federation; but has he really engineered it that as soon as a vote of no confidence is raised, everybody immediately comes on board? We don't see Palpatine interacting with anything political until he's been Chancellor for 10 years.

I also don't understand what Palpatine hoped to gain from the trade federation invasion of Naboo. It worked out in his favour because the queen escaped, but it really does seem throughout the movie that his number one goal was to keep Amidala on Naboo, get her to sign the treaty, etc... So things only worked out because he failed. Even after he's become supreme chancellor he still sends Darth Maul to Naboo to get the treaty signed. Why?

Presumably he wanted to engineer the same situation that ends up happening - political instability he can use to seize power and eventually a galactic civil war where he's pulling the strings on both sides so he can centralise more and more power into his own office while straining the resources of all the involved worlds to breaking point making it all the easier for him to solidify his power as an absolute ruler over the known galaxy. The Trade Federation annexation of Naboo was a stepping stone to the wider conflict, but Palps was savvy enough to make it work even with the plan didn't go strictly the way it was intended to.

[TrueMetis]

Who knows what kind of relationship Kylo had with his parents he's an unreliable narrator. We see three separate versions of the "Luke tries to kill Kylo" scene and it happens different ways each time. With Kylo's putting things in the worst possible light. And when he's not being an unreliable narrator, he's just explicitly wrong. Like despite people wanting to believe so "you've got to kill the past" isn't the thesis of TLJ. The opposite is. So "Kylo disagrees" doesn't mean much. So what kind of relationship did Ben have with his parents? No idea. Not that it matters all that much, he's like 20 when that shit went down. Time for him to put on his big boy pants.

That said I do like Kylo Ren as a villain, incel fanboy wannabe Darth Vader is a great set up. Him buying into the hype of the story rather than the reality of the man. Pity they messed it up with that redemption nonsense.

Luke fucking up is totally believable to me, his pullback in RoTJ wasn't a Back to the Future "hero explicitly shows he's gotten over his hangup" thing like Marty being called chicken at the end. It was a "he just barely managed to stop himself from making a mistake" thing.

Vader's redemption only works if it's a "redeemed in the eyes of the force" deal, I like to think he's (rightfully) still considered a monster in the wider galaxy.

Palpatine's plan with the invasion of the Naboo was basically engineer a crisis for sympathy, how it ultimately played out didn't matter much. Pretty basic Xanato's gambit.

[RumHam]

3 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

Vader's redemption only works if it's a "redeemed in the eyes of the force" deal, I like to think he's (rightfully) still considered a monster in the wider galaxy.

He is, according to one of the books Leia's political career was pretty much ended when word got out she was his daughter. 

[DaveSumm]

3 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

Palpatine's plan with the invasion of the Naboo was basically engineer a crisis for sympathy, how it ultimately played out didn't matter much. Pretty basic Xanato's gambit.

So why did he angrily say to Nute Gunray “I want that treaty signed!”? I’ve never seen any evidence that Lucas had a coherent plan written out for Palpatine in the PT. All theories are just conjecture, the trilogy just fundamentally doesn’t make sense.

[Vaughn]

15 hours ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

Maybe you should rename this to Star Wars hate thread.

Hey, I listed something I liked from every movie up thread, all 10 of them.

[TrueMetis]

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

So why did he angrily say to Nute Gunray “I want that treaty signed!”? I’ve never seen any evidence that Lucas had a coherent plan written out for Palpatine in the PT. All theories are just conjecture, the trilogy just fundamentally doesn’t make sense.

Maybe it was just because that's the character he was playing with Gunray. After all Nute only knew him as Darth Sidious, he had no idea he was actually Palpatine and what he really wanted. So why would he be like "Nah fam, it's fine I'm getting what I want"? Why do you expect that the character who's entire thing is he's manipulating everything behind the scenes to his own end is being honest?

[Vaughn]

Zola was very honest about all of Hydra's nefarious plans so it's possible.

[Caligula_K3]

11 hours ago, Slurktan said:

Had the Queen not escaped, the vote of no confidence would still have happened as he is the senator from Naboo and would have brought it up.  He still would have taken over and probably played even more on sympathy from other systems to gain power.  Maul is sent presumably just to take out Qui Gon and Obi Wan ie the only Jedi to actually fight and witness the Sith in a thousand years.

I appreciate the attempt to save the plot, but there's still something that makes no sense about the New Republic simultaneously not giving a shit about the Naboo situation (to the point where Valorum can't get anything done immediately about it) while also being willing to vote no-confidence for a chancellor over the same issue and electing a senator from that planet.

Also, at this point, Qui Gon and Obi Wan have reported the Sith exist to the council. Why does it matter if they survive or not? Why move even more into the open if you're trying to hide the Sith again?

Plus what @DaveSumm said.

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I appreciate the attempt to save the plot, but there's still something that makes no sense about the New Republic simultaneously not giving a shit about the Naboo situation (to the point where Valorum can't get anything done immediately about it) while also being willing to vote no-confidence for a chancellor over the same issue and electing a senator from that planet.

This feels, IMO, exactly like the kind of performance politics democracies do. They won't do anything, but they'll elect someone from a stricken place to show how sympathetic they are to those horrible things that are happening, and boy do they wish they could do something about it. 

5 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Also, at this point, Qui Gon and Obi Wan have reported the Sith exist to the council. Why does it matter if they survive or not? Why move even more into the open if you're trying to hide the Sith again?

Plus what @DaveSumm said.

The only way I can rationalize this is that he wanted Maul specifically to kill Qui-Gon, as he was one of the only Jedi that was actually vaguely useful and he saw an opportunity.