Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, November 29, 2021
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118 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Ties that bind: Missouri Senate candidate hopes Trump notices neckwear
Reason # 1,276,322 for why I don’t have TV: The 2022 GOP Senate race.
Dancer, singer … spy: France’s Panthéon to honour Josephine Baker
I am thinking about how the conversation would have gone if it had been with tfg. My imagination is lacking.
Every now and then a headline results in a rapid shift of my perspective. A kind of reminder that we are not the center of the universe.
China’s ‘The Battle At Lake Changjin’ Overtaking ‘Wolf Warrior 2’ As Market’s Highest Grossing Film Ever
Heh.
Lin Wood is now claiming that “Stop the Steal” is run by Deep State operatives.
Every morning my wife has 2 eggs and an English muffin for breakfast. And every morning she gives Percy a bite of English muffin with sopped up yolk (well, not exactly every morning, some mornings such pedestrian fare is below his highness’ standards) and Billie Jean gets the pleasure of cleaning off her plate, which always holds a fair amount of egg my wife left behind. This AM my wife was in a hurry and told me it was my job to give the hounds their morning treat. Percy just turned up his nose. OK, ya stuck up little runt, then I’ll give it to Billie with the plate! I offer it to Billie Jean. She buries her head in her security blankie. I prod her with the plate. She goes deeper. Again I prod. Nothing. Apparently only from Momma’s hands will morning treats be accepted.
My feeling is hurt, and it’s the last one I’ve got.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ve never met a dog who wouldn’t accept food from anyone.
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s not failure of imagination, you don’t want to acknowledge that he would mock her.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well if you don’t believe in science, but do believe in magical thinking, how are you going to manage the technical details of securing a computing system.
@Sleeping Dog:
Either mock her, or demand that she be removed from his presence on the grounds that her speech impediment disturbed him.
@CSK: Percy is the pickiest eater in the world. That he wouldn’t accept that treat from me was not surprising. Billie Jean however, would gladly eat the ass end out of a dead skunk. I’m not sure what her deal was.
@Sleeping Dog: OK OK, you got me, it’s not a failure of imagination, it’s a lack of desire to imagine anything Turdblossom might do.
@Sleeping Dog: Jesus will fix it.
@OzarkHillbilly:
You named your grand-kids Percy and Billie Jean?
I finally saw Dune last weekend.
I don’t say “Meh,” but I suffered (if that’s the word) from an inability to completely suspend my disbelief. I guess I needed more construction cranes to do the job.
The planet where the action takes place sis simply impossible. We’re told it’s all desert. Ok. Mars is pretty much all desert, except for the poles. We’re told there are vast water reserves trapped underground. Ok. See Mars again*. But Mars also has zero free oxygen.
The other thing is we’re told of plants that exist in this world, but we never see one outside the abandoned terraforming station. So where’s all that oxygen the characters breathe coming from?
Next, we see three native lifeforms. An insect, a tiny desert mouse, and a gigantic sand worm. Question: what do the worms eat? They seem to exist solely to terrorize the spice miners and the Fremen. Next question: did the Fremen evolve on the planet (identical to H. sapiens, BTW), or are they descended from the early human colonizers of the planet?
The movie doesn’t go that far, but I don’t expect to see Fremen farms (what do they eat), mines, or factories in the second part (how do they amke the suits, tents, tools, etc.)
Other than that, I found the future to be, quoting Penny in The Big Bang theory, low-techie-techie. In particular, the massive military engagements using swords and knives, with not a visible firearm to be found. Sure, there are spaceships, personal shields, floating lamps, incredibly impossible not-helicopters (with 50s era avionics!), and holographic books. But we see no computers, phones, TVs, etc.
Last, the spice is a big McGuffin. We’re told it’s the single most valuable and essential substance in the universe, and see not one person making use of it. Imagine a movie where oil was the most valuable and essential substance in the world (not unlike today), yet we saw not one car, plane, truck, train, ship, or powerplant using oil, nor any plastics, asphalt, or synthetic fabric.
The story was ok.
In Dune, the most visible users of the spice are members of the Spacing Guild. It’s a while before any of them make an appearance in the book. They may show up in the next installment.
@Kathy:
IIRC Herbert’s Arrakis ecology was based on on the various stages of the sandworms, which produced oxygen; the larval sandtrout was carbon based, but tranitioned to an adult sandworm was largely silicon based, and processed silica sand into silicon and waste oxygen.
Whether it makes any energetic sense, heaven knows.
Let alone an organism capable of switching between different base biochemistries.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Every book has a god, the author (or a pantheon in collaborations). Movies have a god, too, the director. Since there were shots of spaceships, and one space trip important to the plot, we could have been shown the spice at work.
@Kathy:
The book answers all of those questions.
1) There’s actually a complex biodome on Dune–but most of the animals remain out of the sunlight. There are cactus-like plants and other small vegetation. I believe the worms create oxygen as part of their digestion process (I can’t remember for sure).
2) I didn’t make it through the entire movie, so I’m surprised they didn’t show the spice being used. In the book, it’s ubiquitous. It’s in the food. The Fremen drink spice beer. The Bene Gesserit use it, the Guild navigators inhale it as a vapor.
3) The Fremen are from Earth. They’re the descendants of “slow traveling” space-farers from very long ago (before spice allowed the Guild to fold space). They’ve been on Arrakis for thousands of years, and have adapted to the environment.
4) There’s no high-tech because it’s been outlawed. There was the Butlerian Jihad which ended with an anti-technocracy. “Machines that think” aren’t allowed.
5) The Fremen also live in the cities (there are lots of cities on Arrakis–Arakeen being the capital). That’s where a lot of the industrial stuff is done.
6) No guns because they’re useless against shields. “The slow blade penetrates the shield”. And shields react with lasers to create big-badda-boom.
Pet peeve.
Why doesn’t paint come in plastic cans? I replaced a bedroom door and went to paint it and the trim this AM. Among my supplies, there were 3 cans of the appropriate white paint, opened all of them and the rims had rusted away. The oldest of these cans is about 5 years. On the other hand, I touched up the dining room where the vacuum left a mark on wall. That paint in a plastic can was usable.
GRRRRR
@Kathy:
re Spice, again IIRC (it’s many decades since I last read it) it was consumed in food and drink i.e. literally as a spice.
It it tasted delicious, and enhanced other flavours, but it’s value as a drug was in moderate doses promoting health and extending lifespan considerably.
But it was also highly addictive, and fatal in withdrawal.
But can be maintained at a constant low dose.
Hence its value: the rich will pay enormously for the life-extension, and then must keep on paying and paying and paying to avoid a very unpleasant death.
@JohnSF:
My short rant on silicon life is that we’ve begun to create it when we devised neural networks.
So, you need carbon life to create silicon life 🙂
@Sleeping Dog:
Now I know another UK/USA difference.
Paint is mostly in plastic containers here.
Might even be all; certainly all I’ve bought lately.
@Kathy:
@OzarkHillbilly: is right. You have to read the book. A very long, boring book. And then Arakis, the Empire, and their societies and technology still won’t make sense, but in excruciating detail.
And the giant worms can burrow through sand faster than a man can run.
@Kathy:
Dune has the problem of too much exposition to too little action. The mythology is heavy-lifting in the books, impossible to deal with in a movie. Later the whole book series goes off the rails as is almost inevitable when you’re writing a messiah story with supernatural abilities.
I found the movie a bit distancing, which, again is an issue with all heavy world-building. You can’t take three pages to explain some fragment of lore and follow it with three pages of character-building backstory. A five gallon bucket will not hold ten gallons, so sci fi writers decide they need the world-building more than they need the character depth.
Part of what made Star Wars and Star Trek go down so easily is that (sorry, fanboys) SW’s world-building originated in a movie and is superficial at best. A light dusting of mumbo-jumbo, some FTL, and a lot of prosthetics and make-up. Trek came straight from TV, so again, the world-building is as thin as the atmosphere on Mars.
Movie adaptations take things that are explained in words, and try to explain them in pictures. Sometimes – Peter Jackson’s LOTR or The Expanse – it works really well. Other times, no. I give Dune three and a half out of five stars.
@Scott: Historical events are “safe” subjects for filmmakers in China, as long as care is paid to the Party interpretation of those events. Unfortunately, this means that when it comes to conflicts with the Koreans or the Japanese, those characters tend to be either incredibly one dimensional and evil or, if they have any sense of morality or conscience, are crushed by the evil doers at the top. Think about the way the Soviets were portrayed in James Bond movies during the Cold War. The big difference is that the Chinese are not at war with Japan or Korea, but are nevertheless constantly propagandizing against them in all media. I expect it will end in tears.
@gVOR08:
To paraphrase Heinlein, I don’t got to do nothin’ but pay taxes and die 🙂
The politics and geography make perfect sense: what if the Holy Roman Empire had a strong central monarch at a time when it proved necessary to colonize Saudi Arabia to get at the oil? All the rest is science fiction.
@OzarkHillbilly: All is back to normal. Billie Jean is now licking my breakfast plate clean.
@Sleeping Dog: My most recent paint purchase came in a plastic can.
I’d just add that the flip side of Star Wars’ initial superficiality in world-building, which made it easily-digestible, is that it also crippled the story-telling when they tried to build out the world. There was no world to build out. To the extent SW gained lore it was largely done in novelizations, fanfic and head canon. This is one of the points of conflict between the fanboys and Disney. The fanboys fleshed out the world that Lucas did not and Disney lacked the wit to take advantage of those contributions, choosing tight control over creativity. Hence repetitive story lines, circular story lines, a desperate effort to create some momentum out of deconstruction, all collapsing into Luke Skywalker sucking milk out of a giant alien titty.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think this tends to be more of a problem in fantasy than sci-fi, because fantasy tends to be denser in terms of world-building. But Dune is an example of a sci-fi series where the world-building is extremely dense, in a way that’s reminiscent of a lot of fantasy. Star Wars as it exists today begins to approach that level, but that wasn’t something that happened all at once–it was developed from the ground up. If you look at the original 1977 film and try to cast all the later mythos out of one’s mind, the world-building we see is mostly familiar space-opera tropes.
This is why I believe big-budget fantasy adaptations so often fail, and why they’re often better served in TV series than feature films. Even Game of Thrones did not immediately grab me the first time I saw it; I watched the first episode and it took me several weeks before I decided to go on. I still think that first episode is clunky and exposition-heavy. Shortly after I began watching HBO’s recent adaptation of His Dark Materials, which I’ve liked so far, I went back and rewatched the 2007 movie which was a major critical and commercial failure. It has its own unique problems (such as its attempts to avoid pissing off Catholics too much), but one thing that struck me was that the dialogue was almost entirely exposition. And it still wound up confusing to non-book readers.
@Mu Yixiao:
@JohnSF:
That’s what I was expecting to see. It wasn’t on the 80s movie, either, as I recall, or not shown clearly.
Oh, and I think it’s “No guns, because swashbuckling is way cooler,” IMO. This also explains the light sabers in Star Wars. It adds a more visible level of skill to individual soldiers, too, not that it would be of much use in war (but that’s a different discussion).
@Michael Reynolds:
Overall I’ve the impression that Dune is a thick, complex book, and that those who get through it will praise it rather than admit they might have found a better way to spend their time. This is not to say the story is not worth reading, as there’s more to making an impenetrable book.
Not having read the book, I can’t say for sure.
World-building can be fun to read. Niven went very far with “The Integral Trees” and “The Smoke Ring.” But he also adds a couple of interesting stories to go along.
I wonder if those will ever get filmed. It shouldn’t be hard on CGI. Lots of strange creatures and plants, plus much takes place in weightless conditions.
@MarkedMan:
Hardly at all, IIRC.
In From Russia With Love they are sort of an antagonist, but only secondarily, with both them and the Brits being manipulated by SPECTRE.
In Goldfinger the Chinese are the titular villain’s clients; but Soviets don’t feature.
In most others they are pretty much off screen entirely.
In fact, it always struck me that Bond’s primary antagonists were usually capitalists, 🙂
Either SPECTRE or various megalomaniac billionaires.
@Kathy:
It’s shown (and mentioned) in the Lynch Dune several times.
The Guild Navigator is shown floating in the spice vapor (and it’s commented on). When they first get to Arrakis, there’s a scene with Paul being shown a “tube” of spice and commenting on never having seen it raw. And Paul comments on the fact that all the food in the seitch is filled with spice.
I’ve been working my way through the complete series of Night Court. With the exception of s03–which was all “very special episodes”, and utterly un-funny–I’ve been laughing my ass off.
And so much of what the do couldn’t be done on broadcast TV anymore. Which makes me wonder what the reboot/sequel show is going to be like. I can’t imagine the stereotype that stand before the bench to be allowed–much less a letch like Dan Fielding.
@Mu Yixiao:
What about Barney Stinson in How I met your Mother?
That wasn’t so long ago. If anything, he was more Dan Fielding than Dan Fielding.
@JohnSF: My bad. I was reaching for a generic evil Soviet paradigm and vaguely remembered it from Bond. Of course, Bond lost me sometime in my adolescence as the wisecracks dominated all. I swear there was a scene from one movie (maybe Roger Moore?) where he is flying around in a hot air balloon making wisecracks like a 13 year old adolescent and I remember thinking, “whatever happened to the intelligent and urbane Sean Connery?” (And, no, I’ve never rewatched the Sean Connery films. I don’t want my pre-adolescent memories shattered.)
@Sleeping Dog:
Dutch Boy has paint in plastic tubs. Even has nice pour spout built in, and a twist off cap.
I’ve also had that type of paint go moldy much more quickly than paint in metal cans, although I really don’t know if that’s just coincidence. I don’t have the inclination to set up a control and test.
@Michael Reynolds:
“all collapsing into Luke Skywalker sucking milk out of a giant alien titty.”
You say that as if that scene was the nadir of the third trilogy. It was the zenith.
(Unrelated, no more blockquote or font formatting options for me. Weird.)
@CSK:
Mein Gott in Himmel! What is he smoking, and where do I buy some?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Actual thanks for the update, as for a very brief moment I thought I should post that maybe she is sick, but a dog scarfing up people food means the world is back to normalcy and is not going to spin of its axis anytime soon, thank goodness for that. Lol.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m so relieved.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
If I find out, you’ll be the first to know.
@Kathy:
I haven’t seen that show, so I can’t comment. But… I’d be surprised if the character is worse than Dan. It’s not just that Dan is a horn-dog, it’s the things he says directly to women (and Christine–a work college–gets the brunt of it).
“They’re all begging me.”
That’s Trump, on the parade of alleged supplicants marching into Mar-a-Lago just pleading with him on bended knees to put them in the vice-presidential slot for 2024.
Via Politico and Raw Story.
Yay!
Just been and got my booster (third) jab.
Moderna this time; first two were Astra Zenca.
“Fight me now, Omicron!”
@Michael Reynolds:
Sure you can, Melville spent dozens of pages describing cetology.
@Sleeping Dog:
And let’s not even start with Dante.
@OzarkHillbilly:
bought a fresh quart this AM and still metal. Previously I’ve looked at the two other local sources and both were still metal and cheap metal. I seldom had problems with rusting rims back in the old days.
@Sleeping Dog:
Well, he was getting paid by the word.
@Neil J Hudelson:
I’ve bought Valspar in a similar container and that bucket is the bee’s knees. Alas it is about a 25 mile round trip for me to a Valspar store. Nice to know about Dutch Boy.
Also, if you buy in 2.5 or 5 gallon pails, it is plastic. Pretty much all the ceiling paint that I buy is in larger pails. I’ve never had any go moldy on me.
@Michael Reynolds:
Giving me rememberences of Woody Allen’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex…
@Neil J Hudelson: That’s more along my line of thinking. Definitely a minority, and yet, for me, The Last Jedi was a standout. I really relate to “failed Luke”, who has accomplished amazing things, but can’t get past his failure to fulfill the trust put in him by his sister and his best friend.
AND, the film highlights the failure of the Jedi to even understand what the Dark Side is, and why it exists, but instead live in fear of it, as Luke has. But Rae does not.
However, since this film lost maybe a third of the audience, who outright rejected it, I think it’s ok to highlight how it has problems. It might be that those problems are rooted in the very, very shallow world that Lucas first built.
@CSK:
LoL. Moby Dick, was a book that I had tried to avoid, but it was assigned in an American Lit class that was a requirement for my major. First day of class, the prof reviewed and took questions as to why certain books were selected and when he finished discussion Melville, he asked, has everyone at least seen a picture of a whale? We all nodded affirmatively and then told us that we wouldn’t be held responsible for reading the cetology chapters. Moby Dick was fine reading after that.
@Michael Reynolds:
To be fair, most of those novels were utter crap. Fanboys tend to idolize the few that were good and ignore the fact that cherry-picking decent parts out of the remaing crap means having to fill in the leftover holes. For instance, you want Thrawn? You need to bring in his backstory or his character makes zero sense – a hidden alien military genius that succeeded in the bigoted Empire that nobody seems to know or care about till it’s too late. They can add him to Star Wars Rebels because he (barely) makes sense there but in the movies? Nope – he’d need to be main villain and you’d either waste him on the first motive as the Disc One Boss (leaving who to take his place??) or the arc Big Bad leaving you to having to come up the new sub-boss and fit him into Thrawn’s mythos.
Star Wars world-building is also rather personal with a kinda toxic fandom. People can agree on the generalities like the Force but when you start asking exactly *what* the Force can do or what it is, you get a bunch of nerds with opinions and “evidence” to back it up. Look at how pissy they all got when Rey’s parents were supposed to be nobodies and that anyone could be a Jedi regardless of who they were in society, something supported by the original trilogy and books. Oh hell no – she needed to be Someone Important of a Bloodline just like the other main characters despite the fact that’s completely opposite of what the Jedis wanted or worked for. No families, no kids, no attachments means no lineage to cling to or boast on; you’re not X, son of Y as a Jedi or a Sith by design. A basic established tenet of the previous world-building was meet with screaming fans who wanted Rey to be the new Luke, including the complicated family history.
I once saw a meme that noted the reason why SW fandom is constantly angry and bitter compared to Star Trek’s is because one had Anakin Skywalker as a model and the other had Spock. Disney was gonna step in it no matter what and likely decided to play it safe with brand “new” stories rather than play with existing canon and risk landmines.
The basic problem with the sequels is there was no more story to tell. Disney just tried to cram 3 more movies in because Lucas had maintained (the liar) that he always had 9 movies planned. The final 3 were basically just remakes of the original 3, only worse (it’s the middle episode, time to have rebels running into a trench and fighting walkers!). Worse, the final 3 movies basically required the original 3 to be written off. We go from “the Emperor is dead” and the galaxy celebrating, to the New Order has taken over and everything is reset to the beginning of episode 4, with nothing in between. “We won!” to “Just kidding!”. Ugh.
I’m not sure I would agree that the SW universe isn’t fleshed out though. It’s just that all the best work since the original 3 movies has taken place outside the main “Skywalker” story. Rogue One, Clone Wars, Mandalorian…there’s a big, sprawling, and enjoyable universe there. Just not in the prequels or sequels 🙂
The prequel’s problems are totally different. There’s a heck of a good story-even prescient in many ways-there about a society falling to fear and choosing the illusion of security over liberty (to mangle Ben Franklin). In those movies its the actual dialogue and acting (and directing) that need to be taken out and shot. But there was a good plot line there, however poorly executed. The sequels though, started out with whiplash and never made sense except as a nostalgic money grab. Bah humbug!
@Jay L Gischer:
A lot of them rejected it because it tried to be more realistic in outcomes rather than just accept certain tropes. So many of my friends *hated* that Poe got busted and I was like, he screwed up a major operation by playing Maverick. It cost them dearly so of course he got punished for it! The replacement commander didn’t know or trust him, a lowly pilot so of course he’s not gonna be involved in major decisions – Leia was the one that allowed him to run around playing Hero and she’s in a coma because of his actions. He decides to lead a frickin’ mutiny that nearly kills them all because he feels left out for god’s sake but each and every one of them decided it was the movie being PC instead of what would really happen.
Rey being a nobody? Canon as Jedi and Sith aren’t supposed to have children; that’s what made Anakin and Padme’s marriage a secret no-no in the prequels. Absolutely nobodies arising from nowhere to galactic prominence because of the mysterious Force is normal and expected in this universe. Kids are regularly taken away from family structures to be raised in ideologies as the First Order explicitly notes it took the baby-stealing Stormtrooper program from the Jedi Council’s methods. So why is Rey not allowed to be nobody? Because she can’t have a complicated backstory and drama, that’s why! The Skywalkers have a tangled family history so she must too…. and ends up a damn Palpatine because only certain families are apparently allowed to run the galaxy.
Luke effing off to be a bitter old man hermit? Pfft – they’re just made he’s OLD. You would not beleive the amount of rage I saw posted that he was shown as “old and weak” when Yoda was flipping around in his hundreds. Luke’s a human and yes, he got old… just like the fans who still think of him fresh and naive in the minds. Last Jedi made the mistake of having some realism and man did it pay for it.
@KM:
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
A story about setting up a democratic republic (It’s A Democracy!) on a galactic scale, would perhaps be interesting to some of us here, but not conducive to big box office special effects extravaganzas.
That said, an Imperial remnant fighting on makes eminent sense. Change Grand Admiral Thrawn to an over-ambitious, mid-level Commander Thrawn, who seizes power after the death of the emperor throws the military in disarray, and the whole thing makes more sense. And does away with the need for a backstory to explain why he wasn’t commanding he fleet at the Battle of Endor.
@Kathy:
Well, of course he was Commander Thrawn in the original… self-promoted to a rank of G.A. in the way of so many over the course of history (“Captain, excuse me, Generalissimo”). And since nobody’s left in the original group to gainsay his story…
But that aside, I’ve been actively “meh” about the whole thing after the first movie, which I saw in Cinemascope on the day of release, with maybe 20 people in the whole theater. Two days later, the line was around the block in Seattle, which was a long-ass double block, IIRC.
@Jay L Gischer:
Sorry, let me clarify what I meant by it being the zenith. Your critical take reflects my thoughts as well, but what I meant was “Hehe, I really like Luke drinking milk out of a giant alien titty.”
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
Just because JJ Abrams didn’t tell a story doesn’t mean there was no story to tell.
Even The Last Jedi found a story to tell, despite The Force Awakens being a complete retread of Episode IV. The Mandalorian is finding stories to tell.
The first trilogy was about the fall of the Republic. The second trilogy was about the fall of the Empire. The third trilogy could have been about trying to create peace and stability.
Alternately, the first trilogy is about the fall of the Jedi. The second trilogy is about the fall of the Sith. The third trilogy is about forging a middle path avoiding the extremism of both sides.
Both of those sound a bit more Star Trek than Star Wars.
My real preference would have been for the third trilogy to be Han, Chewie and a medical droid in the Millennium Falcon, abducting Han and Leia’s kids and fleeing Luke and resurgent Sith, trying to find a cure for the midiclorians that are giving people superpowers and have destabilized the known galaxy twice in the past two generations, leading to the deaths of billions. All while Han’s kids are finding their powers.
I mean, the last thing anyone should want is a small number of superpowered freaks fighting out their superpowered freak battles and killing billions in the process. At that point, someone is gathering force sensitive kids and killing them, while others are trying to harness their powers.
It could be The Force as Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Bonus points if you can go all Fantastic Voyage and have the Millennium Falcon and various star fighters flying through the kid’s bloodstream, shooting Midichlorians.
@Kathy:
It’s not so much the science fiction but his characters that irritate me. Much easier to suspend judgement on the science than it is for characters.
The duel at the end in which Paul gains Fremen status. It says the baddest dude gets to lead, which is Stilgar. Anyone can challenge the leader to a duel to the death for control, but then states Stilgar can not fight because he is the leader. He then goes on to assert that the leader can choose a champion to defend his leadership, and Stilgar chooses someone he’s just captured…and stakes his future on a captive everybody thinks has no shot…
He imagines an Emperor deciding the best place to have a battle with a House he wants to destroy is the most important planet in the universe…
I find myself wondering if this stuff actually made sense to Frank Herbert or if he was simply too lazy to give a damn . When trying to enjoy a movie, ungood.
@Jay L Gischer:
Here’s a thought: Luke got a really bad case of impostor syndrome.
I remembered enjoying this critique of TLJ when it came out, and thought others might enjoy it here. The Last Jedi is Subversive AF and I’m Here For It:
@dazedandconfused:
I hate scenes like that because I know how they’ll end up. Also perhaps I’ve been consuming too many superhero video recently, and I tend to lose interest in physical combat.
I found that reasonable, given the very incomplete information. As in, how else will you get the Duke, his aides, his military leadership, and a chunk of his army, cut off form support form the rest of his realm (whatever that is), of any allies he may have?
Conceivably knowing the whole political situation of the empire, there are many other means. Then either the emperor chose one of the best, or he’s an idiot or a trump and went for a stupid option. Either way, the planet will still be there afterwards.
I rather liked the Duke. He seemed an effective leader, concerned for the people he led, and he wasn’t stupid. He knew taking over the spice planet was a trap, but he thought it was something like being set up to fail, as it’s made plain is the case. Perhaps he’d incur a loss of money and prestige and manpower. he didn’t expect a military attack, but neither did his military advisers.
@dazedandconfused: “I find myself wondering if this stuff actually made sense to Frank Herbert or if he was simply too lazy to give a damn .”
I think there are plenty of valid ways to criticize Frank Herbert, but somehow “lazy” feels like an odd way to describe an author whose first four books total 2300 pages…
@Scott:
I would take Chinese ticket sales figures with a bucket of salt. You can find plenty of reports on the internet about Chinese movie theaters ringing up tickets for movie X as tickets for movie Y depending on which movies the state wants to do better or worse.
Wow. A comment thread to equal the maple syrup one. I salute everyone who participated!
(big smiley emoji)
@dazedandconfused:
Considering it’s based on historic happenings, I’m going to say that it made sense to him.
@Kylopod:
Certainly would be our preference for Animorphs, Everworld, Remnants, Gone or Front Lines, though that last I could see condensed into 120 minutes. BZRK is deliberately cinematic in construction. But Animorphs we openly modeled on TV, the show Combat! was a template.
@Sleeping Dog:
Have you read Moby Dick? Sorry, let me rephrase that. Have you read all of Moby Dick?
@KM:
One of the smartest moves we made, right from the start, was rejecting the idea that we have any say over fanfic, and we equally reject the idea that are deities handing down chiseled stone tablets. Some of these creators got trapped in living god mode. I made a misstep in Gone and rather than try to retcon it I left it out going forward and just said, yep, that was a mistake and I changed my mind.
@Kathy:
Because if the Space Guild doesn’t like House Atreidis, and they most definitely don’t, containment isn’t a problem. I appears House A is sworn to obey the Emperor, so the Emperor can order them to go anywhere. Preferably a galaxy far-far away and then suggest to the Guild they forget where…
@Neil J Hudelson: That’s a good piece.
However, I have one quibble. I never, ever, once believed that Rae was “nobody”. The films, from the first, were telling me something else. Because of their vagueness. If we had wanted to establish conclusively that they were useless junk traders that sold Rae for money for booze, then we could have shown that scene.
I mean, yeah, I’m using “genre-savvy” all over the place here, but this is as hard and fast a rule as “no body, no deady”. You talked about her parents, you made it an issue, and yet you never answered the question.
I think the answer (she’s a Palpatine, but that isn’t destiny, it comes down to choices) was a solid one, but was marred by bringing back The Palpatine in a way that seemed completely pulled out of someone’s ass. I mean, you must have planned this all along, right? Right!?
Also, I disagree with the idea that The Force Awakens was a retread. There is a very clever bit of writing going on there. The sort of “big” plot has an even bigger Death Star which is even scarier and the action revolves around daring pilots who eventually succeed in taking it out. But to me, that’s just window-dressing.
The primary story – with Rae and Kylo, and Han and Finn – has entirely different themes and is highly engaging. The fight in the snow is dreamy and wonderful.
@wr:
Laziness comes in many forms.
I actually LIKED the last three Star Wars movies. They seemed more complex intellectually to me, less black and white. I really liked the “Rey’s parents weren’t notable” aspect, and the addition of characters like Rose and Fin.
The original trilogy was fine, and The Empire Strikes Back was a great film, but going back and watching the first (Ep. 4, A New Hope) again was jarring in the lack of women (at all, other than Leia and Luke’s Aunt). Luke was kind of whiny, and the dialogue between Leia and Han Solo in the Ewok one was cringe-worthy.
@Mu Yixiao:
It’s definitely not the way Auda Abu Tayi would’ve handled it.
@Neil J Hudelson:
I like good literary, or in this case I suppose it’s filmic (is that a word?) analysis. So far with our oeuvre* we’ve been on the good side of the nostalgic reassessment. But I do worry people may stumble upon an early work of mine titled, Bobby Lee, America’s First Saint.
*Le mot juste.
All we really know so far about the Omicron variant of the trump virus, is that it has several mutations in the spike protein, the area targeted by antibodies, and that it seems more transmissible than the Delta variant (as we can tell because it overtook Delta in new infections in Johannesburg and Pretoria).
The good news is that evolutionary pressures select for a more transmissible variant, not a more deadly one.
The bad news is that a virus that’s very adept at transmitting can grow deadly without suffering a decline in reproductive ability. The worse news is that another selective pressure is to evade existing antibodies. It’s simple math. A virus that gets stopped by antibodies, be they from vaccine or prior infection, can’t reproduce. A new variant that gets around antibodies, again from whatever source, can reproduce.
The mixed news is the spike protein fits a given cellular receptor and no other. If it changes too much in response to antibodies, it may no longer be able to enter the cells it needs to infect to reproduce.
The means to fight it remain the same: get the vaccine and boosters (and variant specific boosters if it comes to that), wear a mask, stay away from other people, maintain social distance, and observe good hygiene.
On a related piece of good news, the Mexican government has released Pfizer vaccine doses for teens 15 to 17 years old. Prior to that, only teens 12 to 17 with comorbidites or high risk factors could get them.
This all means there aren’t enough doses to goa round, but at least we’re advancing a bit.
@Jen:
I liked the first two new movies (because Rey), and was massively disappointed by the third.
It’s not that bad, but again I fell victim to insufficient construction cranes for my disbelief. A big part was they are under a tight deadline, and yet the movie manages to visit half the galaxy and take the time to make wisecracks, not to mention to delete, reboot and restore 3PO.
That, and the retread of the rather unimpressive cackling villain. I kind of hoped when Rey and Ren confront him, he’d reveal himself to be Snoke.
But IMO the big failing in the latest trilogy (it won’t be the last), was the lack of even an outline of where the story should go, or that’s how it feels. this reminds me of a Simpson’s scene about a commercial for the nuclear power plant:
Homer: There were script problems from day one.
Bart: It didn’t look like there was a script.
Homer. Yeah. That was one of the problems.
@wr:
Who is credited with the line about I apologize for the length of this, I don’t have time to write anything shorter?
@Kathy:
What I heard was that there was a clash between J.J. Abrams (director of 1 and 3) and Rian Johnson (director of 2) in their vision of how the trilogy should go.
@Kylopod:
This is why you need someone like Kevin Feige to run the show.
@Kathy:
They’d be OK as long as they avoid popular vote partisan nominating primaries.
@Mu Yixiao:
I’m not into the Marvel mythology, but I wonder how much coordination there is between the movies and the new limited TV series. Thus far, they seem to be following the continuity.
@Kylopod:
That makes sense. But there should have been a story arc developed and approved before filming.
@Kathy: “The good news is that evolutionary pressures select for a more transmissible variant, not a more deadly one. ”
Those can go together. I’ve heard that the reason that malaria is so deadly is that the transmission vector (mosquitos) requires an extremely high level of protozoa in the bloodstream.
And small pox was pretty nasty, despite it afflicting Eurasians for millennia (?)
And if this variant combined any level of vaccine evasion, then that transmissibility could could give it the lead, even if extra lethality hurt it.
@Kathy: Remember, this was the guy who did Lost. He may be even worse than Lucas when it comes to making stuff up as he goes and then claiming it was planned all along.
@gVOR08:
I think that would be ok with a proportional allocation of delegates, ranked choice voting, and multi member districts.
@gVOR08:
Mark Twain, and unlike some of his quotes I believe this letter still exists and thus isn’t apocryphal.
@Barry:
Lethality and infectiousness are not related.
A virus that kills or disables a host quickly, likely won’t get transmitted much, but this depends on how it’s transmitted. Malaria, which is a parasite, is carried from one person to another by mosquitoes. A disabled host can be bitten by these as easily, or more easily, than an active and alert host.
All things in biology wind up in the same place: it’s complicated.
Being more of a gamer than a movie watcher, my preferred Star Wars setting is The Old Republic. There is a huge amount of world building done across the three games, and the story telling has a lot more nuance due to the scope of the games and the fact that TOR was the creation of BioWare, which has long-perfected the story-based RPG.
Despite getting moved into the Legends category by Disney when they acquired Lucas, The Old Republic has largely been left alone. Mostly because Star Wars: The Old Republic (an online multiplayer RPG) continues to make money despite running since 2011, and it exists in its own little corner that doesn’t threaten movie and Disney+ revenues.
@Kathy:
We don’t even know this, as Delta infections were pretty low in SA to begin with, so there’s a question whether Omicron is more transmissible than Delta, or if (like the Lambda variant in South America during early 2021) it’s a less transmissible variant that’s just filling a vacuum where it doesn’t have to compete with Delta directly.
@Jay L Gischer: “I mean, you must have planned this all along, right? Right!?”
Well, that’s the problem. Apparently when he came on board to write and direct The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson asked JJ Abrams all the obvious questions about the story he was supposed to be telling — like, for instance, who is Rey. And JJ, who had written and directed the previous one, had no idea. He just made shit up as he went along, and told Johnson to do whatever he wanted. Then he took over again in the third film and made up a bunch of stuff that didn’t track with the second.
I try to imagine the arrogance of launching into something like a new Star Wars trilogy and not thinking out where it’s going before I start writing… but I just can’t. And someone here keeps saying Frank Herbert was lazy!
@Kathy: “I’m not into the Marvel mythology, but I wonder how much coordination there is between the movies and the new limited TV series. Thus far, they seem to be following the continuity.”
Total.
@wr:
Depends on this show: prior to last year, the movies pretty much ignored the TV shows (Daredevil, Agent Carter, Agents of Shield, etc.) because the TV shows were produced by a different part of the Disney Corporate structure and the guy in charge of Marvel TV did not like Kevin Feige and was deliberately refusing to coordinate with him.
That changed right before the Pandemic when Marvel TV was moved from Marvel Corporate to Disney Studios corporate, so that both the Marvel Films and the Marvel TV are under Kevin Feige’s control now.
The shows produced since that restructuring (Wandavision, Loki, Falcon and Winter Soldier, etc.) are much more tied into the film continuity.
@wr:
How the fan theories about Rey flew in 2015-16, when officially in the canon Rey wasn’t defined.
there were plenty: Luke’s daughter, Kenobi’s daughter, the reincarnation of Darth Vader (for some reason not of Anakin Skywalker), Han and Leia’s daughter…
Me, I’d hoped she’d be the offspring of Ahsoka Tano and Chewbacca. Why not? They’re the smartest and most noble characters in the saga. Of course, then Rey wouldn’t look at all like Daisy Ridley…
@wr:
If you’re going to be that way about it, someone now opines dismissal by contempt is also a form of laziness.
@Michael Reynolds:
Wouldn’t that just limit the types of story, rather than crippling story telling?
I mean, if you keep the mystical force and the technology internally consistent, then it doesn’t matter that it’s kind of dumb, so long as that isn’t the focus of the story.
If you’re delving into the economics of shipping a single crate of mass produced blasters across the galaxy through hyperspace versus locally constructing blasters… you’re telling the wrong story.
Get onto themes of good and evil, corruption and redemption, or something like that, and the price of a blaster is pretty much irrelevant. We don’t spend time discussing what the spice was that Han Solo dumped that got Jabba to put a bounty on him, or the laws he was evading — it’s just a means to an end.
(Also, it is just “spice” suggesting that it is the only spice, and that everyone eats bland, unspiced food. Or it is heroin.)
Instead you have a story about a man who has a deathbed conversion, after committing massive war crimes and genocide, and still finding redemption (and escaping any and all consequences for his actions). The classic story of born-again religions.
Ok, you might need a lot of explosions and brightly colored lasers to try to hide the injustice of it all. Unless he really was taken over by mind-eating midichlorians…
Meanwhile, Dune tries to be bigger than that, but just creates a world where the apex predator is way too big, but has to be taken literally — the sand worms aren’t just a monster to be fought, they are the key to everything.
@Gustopher:
Oh, hell yeah. Now I’ve got a mash up of Fantastic Voyage/Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea/ Star Wars stuck in my head.
Cracker and I have got to head down your way (you’ve got the better front porch, I suspect) to sit there, drinking, smoking cigars, and enjoying multiple chuckles
@Jay L Gischer:
It suggests that whether Rey is or is not related to someone important is going to be a theme that will be developed.
The question was answered very well in The Last Jedi, much to her disappointment. And then reiterated with the ending scene with Broom Boy.
It was a much more satisfying answer than “oh, only these few bloodlines are important”, and fit better with the prequels and the large numbers of jedi there, only about a third of which are related (Yoda got around…).
It’s still a bit of “you have to be born into greatness”, but at least your parents didn’t have to be.
I might have enjoyed turning it on it’s head with the jedi hero being basically a useless distracting object who keeps failing (perhaps Finn), while the real, successful heroes are everyone around them who are cleaning up after the mistakes.
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t think your imagination is lacking. Where are there any examples of people repeating what FG said to their children–inspirational or otherwise? (This is the guy who consoled Hope Hicks by reminding her that she was
“the best pinope not gonna go there.)–@Sleeping Dog: At Lowes. For what it’s worth.
@Gustopher:
In Western culture, spices came largely from Asia. These were expensive, and traveled overland in caravans with other trade goods like silk (spices don’t take up much room). At some point, various empires centered in Persia dominated this trade between East and West. Later it was taken over by Arab and Muslim traders.
Given the enmity between Christendom and Islam, European kings spent fortunes looking for a sea route to Asia in order to bypass the Muslim middlemen. You may recall Columbus had the notion that the distance sailing westward from Europe to Asia was short enough (he had the wrong data for the Earth’s circumference, and he lucked out that the Americas stood in the way).
The Portuguese meantime went south, rounded Africa, and then went North into the Indian Ocean. Absent Columbus, they’d have stumbled upon Brazil eventually, as they slung out west of Africa looking for better winds.}
Anyway, since then, “spice” has stood large as the motivator for the Age of Exploration, and the idea of a unique source of spices has kind of remained in the collective consciousness. Many spices eventually were grown in other regions, as was silk, the other unique Asian commodity. I think that was what Herbert had in mind in Dune, and others have stolen the word “spice” from him since then as a stand-in for “valuable commodity.”
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Heh.
@Kathy: “… those who get through it will praise it rather than admit they might have found a better way to spend their time.” At a later time in my life, I did finish reading Dune. Watching paint dry is a better way to spend one’s time. Reading Atlas Shrugged is even a better way to spend one’s time FFS.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Actually, Trump told Corey Lewandowski that Hope was “the best piece of ass” he’d ever have, and Hope fled the room sobbing.
@flat earth luddite: I can’t remember whether I bought reserved seating for Star Wars or whether I passed on a day’s sleep to go to a 9 am performance with a short line anymore, but I do recall there being talk about multiple sequel movies shortly after Empire. I just assumed that Lucas’d either been full of it or something when I didn’t see any sequels for decades.
I can’t recall where I watched the prequels. I must have watched Phantom in a theater, but I think I watched the other two on a large-ish screen TV in Korea, and saw Episode 7 in flight because I never sleep on the plane for longer than 30 minutes at a time and had passed on seeing it in a theater. I can’t remember which movie was worst–SW, the DC universe feature, or whatever Marvel Universe feature was showing, but they were all terrible. In recent years, the only good comic book/fantasy/space opera movie I’ve watched was Wonder Woman. The rest I wouldn’t have watched if I hadn’t been on 14-hour flights.
@Michael Reynolds:
I read everything but the cetology chapters, those are not part of the story, but describe what a whale is to those who would have no opportunity to see one. Let’s say, that I read the book and comprehended enough that I aced 19th Century American Lit.
@dazedandconfused: Now I’m dazed and confused. I thought Frank Herbert had died before the first Dune movie (looked it up and he died 2 years later) and didn’t have any role beyond having written the original story.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Paint from a metal can or a plastic one? 🙂
@Stormy Dragon: “Depends on this show: prior to last year,”
Sure, but I understood Kathy to mean the current run of shows appearing on Disney+, which are entirely part of the continuity.
@dazedandconfused: “If you’re going to be that way about it, someone now opines dismissal by contempt is also a form of laziness.”
Hope you didn’t feel I was expressing contempt towards you — nothing was further from my mind!
@Gustopher:
Depends. Writing a series is like being marooned on a desert island, but you get one last shopping trip. You want to pack heavy because backstory is your survival food. Backstory is the foundation. Well-done and it props everything up, allowing you to expand. Otherwise you’re improvising and very few writers can do that reliably over distances. Backstory is like your constitution, it informs all subsequent laws and regulations. But you carefully construct your backstory so that it’s more help than limitation.
@CSK: Then it was just a well that I didn’t get involved with detailing the story.
@Kathy: Either kind. To the best of my knowledge (which I WILL admit is sorely lacking) they both dry about the same.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
IIRC, that’s when I was attending SCC, and working at 7/11, and drove by and thought, ‘hey, $2 matinee, and I’m too wired to sleep.’
But pay retail for any of them? I’m too cheap, as you well know. But I remember reading Dune and Moby and Atlas during my teen/machoistic days. I was a miserable young sh** then, as opposed to the happy old sh** I am now.
@Flat Earth Luddite: If you ended up having to read all three of them, I can see why you were miserable. Then again, not a “literature” guy, never was one. I have often thought that one of the reasons that I was popular with my comp students was because I was willing to help them write “X is the worst book I’ve ever read” essays. Not many of them ever did that kind of essay, but the fact that it was a possibility was refreshing for many.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I thought the scenes were as-written in the book. Been a long time since I read Dune and I quit reading it a few chapters from the end because I got tired of characters whose actions made no sense to me. I can apparently grant significant suspension of believe for the science part of the fiction, but not much at all for the characters. The ridiculousness of the characters, handled per the book in the first movie, earning it the rep as one of the most unintentionally funny movies ever made.
This second film does a decent job of cleaning this issue up for the author, both in writing and casting, but there is only so much that can be done.
@Michael Reynolds: I’d say the light world building in Star Wars is what allows characters like Darth Vader, Yoda, Luke and the Emperor to be somewhat mythical and larger than life. If you attempt to ground them in reality too much, they become ridiculous.
I’m not sure that’s either a strength or a weakness, it’s just a choice.
(A choice partly reverted in the prequels, which is perhaps why so few characters in the prequels were so instantly beloved — the characters remained cardboard cut-outs, but the story Lucas wanted to tell didn’t really work without more grounded characters. Oddly, the animated Clone Wars series made those stories work better, by giving the characters a lot more space to be more realistic, all despite being animated)
@Gustopher:
I think a lot of that had to do with overreliance on exposition. Qui Gon at one point refers to Obi Wan as “headstrong,” but we never see it. The few traits they do display are largely those dictated by the plot, and in some cases may even be unintentional due to bad writing–does Anakin seem like a creeper because that’s how he was written, or because of the screenplay’s use of the most hackneyed and childish romantic cliches in the dialogue?
In contrast, the original trilogy reveals the characters’ personalities through their behavior and in how they interact with one another (Luke’s naivete and impulsiveness, Han’s cocky cynicism, Leia’s bossiness), and much of the time it isn’t strictly necessary to the plot, it just makes it more entertaining.
@Kathy:
I don’t know if Herbert was aware of it, but it would fit if he was: one of the main reasons oriental spices were so prized by Medieval Europeans was that they were supposed to have medical benefits.
IIRC opium was regarded as part of the spice trade.