A Deus ex machina, as it is understood today, is as vague and imprecise term as the Force. People use it to just describe things they don't like, for instance.
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Mark Hamill Once Again Expresses Unhappiness With New ‘Star Wars’ Sequels
- Thread starter Bor Gullet
- Start date
Lol just because it ends up long doesn't mean something can't be concise :P
If you have 100 examples, and clearly explain each one using one sentence instead of 3, I'd argue that's being concise imo.
People use it to throw shade at things yeah, but as it originally started it fits the Force to a tee in all of its forms across the IP.
I wouldn't really agree, atleast in story terms, but funny enough, if we're talking about it's original, ancient greek usage, it fits. Originally, the trope was meant to inspire wonder and awe in the audience by the manifestation of deities. That's what the force is meant to do in SW as well, as accompanied by the score and the characters acting appropriately in awe of it.
The only arguable contention is that greeks used greek gods, which they actually believed in. Other than being blasphemous, to ancient greeks, it would be somewhat nonsensical to them to use a Deus ex Machina to invoke not a just a non-god, but not even a mystical force that people don't actually believe in.
So, non-derogatively, using a definition literally no one uses contemprarily, yes, the Force is a Deus Ex Machina.
We're in agreement except for this part. People absolutely do still use the term in it's intended form. Maybe not usually in pitched battles of nerd dom though haha.
Empire, rebellion, Skywalker's etc. They really went pretty lazy. They also shrunk the universe instead of expanding it in an interesting way. They should have made their own story and let sleeping dogs lie. But they just couldn't. I personally have so far written this series off much like the prequels for many. This is probably better acted, and the characters aren't as Angsty. But at least the prequels had Obi Wan (based Obi) and expanded the universe for all it's faults. I genuinely struggle to see what value had been added to the universe with these films. Rogue one has contributed the most IMO as a film. Even though I wouldn't consider it a great standalone film.
Like...I'm sure academics do when analyzing ancient greek plays on ancient greek terms, but I literally haven't heard anyone reviewing any contemporary media reviews anywhere...basically ever. Language has kind of turned the term into an amorphous mess whose only consistent quality is that it's not a good thing.
Putting aside that from a technical and story perspective the prequels are literally worse in every way.
This view completely ignores the characters, which again are better than the prequels, and the only real world building the prequels did was showing different planets.
At least with the sequel movies an emphasis has been placed moving away from the prophecy shenanigans and the idea that the Skywalker family has a monopoly on galaxy changing events (which was introduced by the prequels and retroactively changed the OT).
Just in terms of how they treat the force the ST has made leaps and bounds improvement over the PT where it was turned into a video game boost to help people fight with swords better. And this change in the force has been in every new movie including Rogue One, even with characters that aren't confirmed force sensitive. I feel that alone adds so much more to the universe than anything that the PT did.
At it's heart the OT was carried by the characters, everyone remembers the RotJ throne room scene because of the emotions involved, same with the ESB duel etc. Those emotions were central to the conflict between the characters, and was what made them iconic.
The ST also follows this route compared to the PT which just had ridiculously over choreographed fights that left no real room to feel the character's emotion, struggle and flow.
At the end of the day, the PT had some cool ideas, and showed a ton of different planets, but planets that have no real impact on anything, it's not really world building when all you see is the outer layer, just a city etc.
I feel it's the difference between showing weird planets for the sake of it, vs something like mad max fury road, where it cuts to the swamp, and shows how people adapted to that particular environment.
I personally did not like TLJ, however, I hope they give Rian free reign to actually create something from the ground up and maybe something not focused on Jedi.
Well there was a time gap between the 2 movies, so isn't it reasonable to think his skills had developed through practice? I didn't see it as him thinking "hey it's a shot in the dark but maybe this is possible" and then doing it.
Well written post, but I don't agree with it completely. It really boils down to believability. I have conceded that someone like Rey is possible in this universe, however rare. But I also believe that something that is possible-but-rare in fiction requires some extra effort to make it believable. If at the end of Die Hard, John McClane jumped from the 50th floor and survived with no effort or explanation, how many people would be like, "Yeah right he'd be fuckin dead," even though in real life that has actually happened to a person? It depends on how it's written or filmed or acted.
So with the force, which has been treated as a skill/talent in the OT (Luke requires training, we know Obiwan was trained, etc) either one of 2 things should happen: it should be treated the same way in all future films, or the writer should spend a little extra time/effort in making a rare, very-force-sensitive person believable to us. I'm not going to offer any suggestions, because then I'd get a bunch of "lol that's stupid" replies, but this is why I feel many people saw it as unearned and "unrealistic."
So let me get this straight.
It's totally reasonable to you that Luke would somehow figure out force push on his own without ever being told that the force could do ANYTHING like that (in ANH as far as I recall the force was basically entirely metaphysical, it helped guide his actions and obi-wan tricked minds, but had no physical impact)
But it's not reasonable that Rey figures out she could do a jedi mind trick after:
1. Knowing about jedi and all their powers for her entire life;
2. Getting confirmation from a living legend that everything she heard about the jedi, the force, and their powers are true;
3. Getting a live demonstration from Kylo Ren who was trying to get her to reveal the resistance base; and
4. It's established that your mental belief in the force trumps training in things like ESB
????
Quite literally the movie provides NUMEROUS reasons why she's able to do it and figure it out, while your defense of Luke is literally "even though it's never mentioned, referenced, or even implied, maybe he figured out force pull off screen?"
I mean come on, especially when force pull is literally in a different realm compared to what was previously seen in ANH.
Err no? In ESB it's literally shown that it's way more mental rather than necessarily constant training. It's very much treated in the same way as something like KI/monks in the real world, it's the idea of mind over body.
They reason they train is because the repetition of the difficult training helps refine and strengthen their will. When Yoda is teaching Luke, Yoda asks him to lift the X-Wing. Under your logic, Yoda is being a huge asshole because Luke has only been training for a short time and is coming from a place where he could barely move a lightsaber, and there would be no way for Luke to succeed at the time.
But that's not the case, Luke fails, and tells Yoda that it's impossible to lift because it's too heavy. The Reply?
Luke didn't fail because he didn't train hard enough, or wasn't trained enough, he failed because he didn't BELIEVE that he could do it.
Which they did with about 4 times as many reasons compared to Luke pulling the lightsaber.
Nah, no way Disney removes them from the canon while keeping the prequels, and especially not when one is the second Best Star Wars movie since Empire.
He's Luke Skywalker and I respect his opinion, but I love The Last Jedi with all my heart.
I grew up with the OT in VHS, watched the prequels in my teens and waited since I was a kid the follow up to Luke's story.
It was not what I was expecting at all, but it was the movie and the Luke I needed to see.
I grew up with the OT in VHS, watched the prequels in my teens and waited since I was a kid the follow up to Luke's story.
It was not what I was expecting at all, but it was the movie and the Luke I needed to see.
Uh-huh. Sure. But what kind of skill? Because it's treated as a skill/talent in the sense that, say, some priests are better at believing in God than others.
So how do you, in real life, suss out who is the best believer in God? Is it whoever has the most experience believing in God? Do you go to the one that knows all the rites and rituals? Does the one who learned all the history of the church, is he the most skillful/talented believer of God? Or does one need answers to be a good believer in God? Does one need the church to be a good believer of God? Or follow church doctrine?
None of these metrics seem right to me, personally but at the same timeif you were to compare someone who just decided they believe in god right now vs someone who has been a monk for 15 years, almost everyone would argue that the monk is better at doing the thing he's been doing for 15 years than the new guy, right? Butnot because of any cultivated 'skill or talent' per se.
Like I said in the post your quoting, you think you know how the force works, and think you can apply terms like "realistic" to it. You don't and can't, except in the areas where the storyteller makes those explicit, which writers of SW avoid doing. There are very few rules to the force we know for sure, and none of them treat it in the terms you're describing. Nothing about the force is grounded or realistic. Or, assuming your religious and believe in a spiritual side of things, not earthly. It's not meant to be written in ways your trying to frame them as.
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Yes the force is a religious thing, but are you saying it's not also treated as a skill/talent? When Luke is training, he is doing more than believing. He is learning abilities that he earns from believing. The telekinesis is used as a visual device to indicate how strong a character feels the connection to the force, how much he/she can use the force to control physical objects that exist between it. And the longer Luke trains, the better he gets, like we do with skills we learn.
Not really. Again, mystics and the like do all sorts of things that aid in their religiousity. Priests pray, monks meditate, they tend to zen gardens or do martial arts.
These are skills you can train yourself to be better at, but the actual goal of these activities from a religious perspective is not to get better at them, it's to free up your mind. Theoretically, a monk who does martial arts could do it for years but not substantially improve, and it wouldn't matter because improvement at that thing isn't the goal. There's a certain mindset that you develop from doing some mundane activity over and over and over and that mindset is what religious people strive for in order to find a sort of inner peace for whatever religious framework they are using.
In Star Wars, entering this religious framework also gives you superpowers. So, like Reven has repeatedly explained, the goal of the training isn't truly the physical act of levitating rocks, but entering the mindset that allows you to levitate the rocks. I suppose you could argue, particularly in those who practice martial arts to achieve this state, that the body physically adapting to the demands of the physical work being done makes certain changes that also affect the mind going there, and you could argue that from THAT perspective Luke's physical training made some difference, but even then, it's all a conduit to get your mind where it needs to be.
From Yoda's wording, Luke could have lifted the X-wing the moment it sunk into the swamp in the first place. Like, within the first hour of getting there. Nothing was stopping him except his own willingness to believe he could do such a thing. And that's what the actual training actually is, stripping away Luke's sense of disbelief.
Which is why him redeeming Darth Vader was his final step to becoming a Jedi. Neither Obiwan nor Yoda thought that Vader could not be turned from the dark side. It was pointless to even try. But Luke, having learned Yoda's true lesson, understood that there is no try, and simply did what even Yoda, Jedi Master, did not believe. Luke did, and he succeeded.
Edit: Furthermore, there is also the fact that as far as training goes, while there is a correlation between training and skill, it's also not that simple. You could theoretically have a bad teacher or a good teacher that doesn't know how to best teach a particular student, or the teaching methods themselves might be off or incomplete, etc. And Yoda did indeed say that Luke's mind was an issue for learning the ways of the force, which would factor in to the fact that Rey is a different sort of person from Luke. Unlike Luke, Rey is more than willing to believe in the impossible ways of the Force because she believes in Luke as a hero. Hence, aside from her developed skill of observational learning, she would be much more receptive to advice like "Do or do not. There is no try." that a more grounded young Luke would reject if he didn't see these impossible things himself.
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At the end of the day, all I can think about with this trilogy is I just don't care about Rey as a character at all. I have no attachment to her or Finn. There was something there in the force awakens, but the last Jedi tossed anything interesting away.
We all cared about Luke, Han and Leia. We don't get that from any of the new characters. I think that's the overall consensus I get when I talk to people.
We all cared about Luke, Han and Leia. We don't get that from any of the new characters. I think that's the overall consensus I get when I talk to people.
People need to understand though the OT Star Wars trilogy is pretty unique for that. That's not easy to replicate (the prequels failed miserably too at that) and not very many action-adventure movies can really do that. Even Marvel films, I enjoy the films but am I *really* emotionally attached to them? Nah.
Star Wars OT is just lightning in a bottle IMO, it will never happen again.
While the actors may not have the charisma of Carrie, Mark, and Harrison (basically impossible) they are:
A) Better acted
B) Much more developed as characters in 2 movies than 3 of the OT trilogy
C) You're wrong they're great. I think Rey & Kylo probably have the best character arcs in the whole saga.
Which makes for a weird situation for me, because I'm more attached to Rey than I was with any of the originals.
By the time I grew up, the SW trilogy was talked more about in terms of mythology than franchise and I knew about it, but wasn't really attached to it. And I actually didn't see any of the SW until I watched...episode 1. Which wasn't the greatest introduction to the series, of course. And by the time I got to episode 4, 5, and 6, I was in a kind of "What, that's it?" sort of mindset because by the time I saw SW, I've seen the films that the OT would inspire with it's narratives and just preferred the iterations than the originals. I mean, how are you supposed to feel about a series that is so ubiquitous that you were spoiled to it's "I'm your father" twist a hundred times over before you even knew where it came from? The original trilogy was so embedded into culture that now...they just seemed like generic movies to me. Well, made, charming, etc, but they are the base that everyone has since built on. Everything they did, at one point or another, has been improved. And I especially don't get the fawning over Han Solo in particular. He's either rough enough for a rouge for me, and his charisma just kind of....doofy? There are better done charismatic rouges is all I'm saying.
Really, if you asked me what was the point where I actually learned to like Star Wars, the real answer wouldn't be any of the movies...it'd be the Thrawn Trilogy. Timothy Zahn is the one who really gave these characters the energy that I needed to like them.
Meanwhile, I actually got pretty attached to Rey because of the meta-subtext of her being someone who grew up with SW legends. Moreso than Luke, she feels that she's a character like me, who has to both live up to and grapple with the legacy that SW has left behind, especially when it's not perfect. She has to reconcile the messed up world she lives in. And she's not like my favorite protagonist ever or anything, and you could even argue she's not as well written as Luke or whatever...but Rey is a character that was written for me, moreso than Anakin or Luke was.
On that note, it would actually be interesting to see if there is like a demographic preference to this. Like how do people who grew up with the OT, the PT, and NT all feel about the movies.
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Charisma goes a LONG way though. There's a reason why Schwarzenegger became an A-lister despite his acting talent being mediocre on the best of days.
So let me get this straight.
It's totally reasonable to you that Luke would somehow figure out force push on his own without ever being told that the force could do ANYTHING like that (in ANH as far as I recall the force was basically entirely metaphysical, it helped guide his actions and obi-wan tricked minds, but had no physical impact)
But it's not reasonable that Rey figures out she could do a jedi mind trick after:
1. Knowing about jedi and all their powers for her entire life;
2. Getting confirmation from a living legend that everything she heard about the jedi, the force, and their powers are true;
3. Getting a live demonstration from Kylo Ren who was trying to get her to reveal the resistance base; and
4. It's established that your mental belief in the force trumps training in things like ESB
????
Quite literally the movie provides NUMEROUS reasons why she's able to do it and figure it out, while your defense of Luke is literally "even though it's never mentioned, referenced, or even implied, maybe he figured out force pull off screen?"
I mean come on, especially when force pull is literally in a different realm compared to what was previously seen in ANH.
Err no? In ESB it's literally shown that it's way more mental rather than necessarily constant training. It's very much treated in the same way as something like KI/monks in the real world, it's the idea of mind over body.
They reason they train is because the repetition of the difficult training helps refine and strengthen their will. When Yoda is teaching Luke, Yoda asks him to lift the X-Wing. Under your logic, Yoda is being a huge asshole because Luke has only been training for a short time and is coming from a place where he could barely move a lightsaber, and there would be no way for Luke to succeed at the time.
But that's not the case, Luke fails, and tells Yoda that it's impossible to lift because it's too heavy. The Reply?
Luke didn't fail because he didn't train hard enough, or wasn't trained enough, he failed because he didn't BELIEVE that he could do it.
Which they did with about 4 times as many reasons compared to Luke pulling the lightsaber.
Nah, no way Disney removes them from the canon while keeping the prequels, and especially not when one is the second Best Star Wars movie since Empire.
Do I need to remind people of the famous noodle incident and that Heir to the Jedi is a part of the new StarWars cannon. :P Luke was training and learning the force between ANH and ESB. Heir also has him deducing levitation and push/pull by proxy when he determines how a Lightsaber must have been built. Him finally managing to move that noodle was a bfd and left him exhausted, as he practiced, he was able to lift heavier and heavier objects. I'd also be shocked if someone managed to scrounge up anything new cannon or old that said that Luke's development with the force 'sucked', because it's canon that his growth rate with it was at the very least exceptional.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Heir_to_the_Jedi
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Noodle#cite_note-HttJ-1
To be fair I'm not following this argument, so I don't know who this helps or hurts, I just caught the words force push and the gif of 'this is why you fail' gif and had PTSD flashbacks to CrossingEdens utterly lamentable argumentation on the subject to do with the Force. ;)
please don't hate me ;p
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That might be your experience, but the word is still used correctly the world over. It being a trope now considered mostly a copout as a matter of taste doesn't change that.
https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies...luke-star-wars-episode-ix-last-jedi-backlash/
If you leave the echo chamber, you'll find about 50% of people didnt like TLJ.
They fired Lord & Miller 6 months before Solo released. RJ will set the framework for the trilogy, and probably receive a writer or producer credit, but Solo bombed due to the negative backlash from TLJ, so I would be very surprised if Di$ney actually wants that to happen again.
Also I find it funny that just because someone didn't like TLJ, they automatically have to hate Captain Marvel now? I hated TLJ and loved Marvel, because one was actually a good movie. People who hate TLJ aren't hive minded like the people who love it so much but can't seem to defend why.
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I'm sorry, but I'm struggling to think of who would use the term in it's original meaning these days. DEM is specifically a term that was positive among a framework where gods coming in and helping out the protagonist in their time of need was generally considered a good writing. The Greeks wanted gods in their machines. That's not really the case these days, which is why the term's meaning has changed. And I'm not sure if you meant to imply it wasn't a trope in ancient times with your wording, but...well, it was always a trope, as that is what storytelling patterns are, but time changes our perceptions of tropes and, yeah, that effectively changes the nature of the trope itself.
It's ultimately just language, and language is decided by it's usage. Enough people used "Literally" to mean something that is NOT literal, and it was incorrect for a time..until it being used to mean something exaggerated got so popular that it came to mean exaggerated as well. So as absurd as it is, Literally is defined by MW dictionary as both accurate and exaggerated. Such it is with tropes. It doesn't change what it was, but what it is now different because we're different. That's how it works.
As for people who use the original meaning, I'm not sure who your referencing. The only people who even have use for this term are wierdo's like me that analyze storytelling mechanisms. Like, the casual audience member doesn't think about how a story works, they just either like it or don't and move on (and I don't say that derogatorily, I just mean that not everyone is a fan of a thing is enough of an enthusiast to learn about it. I'm like that with music.)
So, the only time I really hear this term is either A. in a class room that is analyzing the classics or B. a casual critic is using it as short hand for the very broad definition of 'bad writing'. I can't really think of anyone who would have any use for this term. And because the meaning of the term has changed as throughout time to a more negative perspective, even people who know the original definition of the term won't too often whenever viewing modern work because stories are nowadays generally written to avoid DEM both of the godly variety and the bs writing, so that narrows down the usage of such a term even further. Maybe theater goers still do, since I'm not especially familiar with that territory?
But as far as the casual audience goes, as in the general population, they might have heard of DEM and may even be able to get the raw translation, but I'm fairly sure most people would just see it as shorthand for 'when writers BS to make the ending happy'. And that's mainly because as causal viewers, they have no reason to know it as anything beyond that.
Even with the strict reading, there are still Jedi with different skillsets, aptitudes, and specializations with elements of the force. Further to that, entering the mindset to do so? No real argument. But the brain functions very similarly to a muscle, and in SW we see that skill relative to time invested is a factor and is taken into consideration by every faction seen that uses the force. If we entirely ignore the physical component of the brain (reasonable) and only the spiritual/mental component, the religions drawn from in creating the 'Force' as a fictional concept function similarly in reaching spiritual enlightenment. They have organizational structures to denote levels or degrees of progress.
'The path to enlightenment'... has a path for a reason.
Unless you're a Buddha esque figure.
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Your misuderstanding the argument. Nowhere did I say that its impossible for a particular user to be less proficient at doing a thing than another user at the force.
What I am saying is that the mechanisms of those things, as described by the OT, aren't things you can pin down. Your noticing there are differences between force user A and force user B and making the leap that there is some concrete governing rule you can grab onto to explain it, and you can't because the narrative of Star Wars defies you from that. It doesn't offer any rule. It's just mysticism mumbojumbo of believing in the heart of the cards and in this story, superpowers actually happen when you do.
So you can NOTICE difference and you have some basic, broad concepts as to how that works, but you can't actually explain why they are there. Luke can't lift rocks because he doesn't believe hard enough, which he can't because he's a simple, salt of the earth farmer while Rey is a wide-eyed dreamer who believes in the impossible and therefore can lift rocks. What the pulleys and levers of how they acquire that power actually are is not going to be explained, so there is no point where you can stand and declare "Luke was able to do this because he worked out his brain muscles to that point".
Yeeeeeaaah I read all of that and I'm gonna hard disagree. Recall that Greek gods were, to put it lightly, assholes, who did whatever they wanted with no concern for humans outside of being playthings to them. DEM could be used to help the protagonist OR the antagonist, we are talking about Greek tragedies as well. The Force is such a mechanism and fulfills the same role. It is a canon DEM to further the plot with no real structure or sense to its workings. It isn't like that's automatically a damning thing to say about it either, that's intentional, but let's call a spade a spade yeah?
Attributing Solo's sales to primarily TLJ backlash is ridiculous. It was a spin-off movie that nobody asked for and wasn't even advertised until the last couple months before it released, which was entirely too close to the previous film's release date, and the only notable news about it beforehand was mostly negative (directors getting axed). I'm sure a lot of people who hated TLJ boycotting it had some effect but let's not pretend it was anywhere near the main cause.
They made him a coward the entire movie.
Imagine you're a new Star Wars fan, a 6 years old, never seen any Star Wars stuff and the new trilogy is your start, how would you feel about Han and Luke after these movies? Do you consider them heroes as OT fans did? The first one left his wife and his son, the second one left everyone to die and tried to kill his nephew in sleep.
A one minute scene can't make anyone hero.
That would help my point overall, that Luke learns about the force at a pretty astonishing rate, especially considering he never even heard of it before, wasn't taught, and his only examples involved non physical feats.
I will say I disagree with your implications that Eden had poor arguments, especially since it directly references events and dialogue from the movie.
Sure, but there's no denying that there are those that grow feeling significantly more intuned with that sort of thing compared to others.
Repetition is often key to mental discipline, and it's not exactly a stretch that the need to survive in a dangerous environment can foster habits that lead to repetition.
I mean, Rogue One was a spin off even less people asked for and everyone loved that movie, though. Solo was also a better film than TLJ, it would have done marginally better in the BO if everyone wasn't still saying "what the fuck did I just watch?" After seeing TLJ.
It is literally strewn throughout StarWars cannon (old and new alike) that this is due to their focus in particular aspects. Count Dooku for instance, was renowned for his Saber v Saber combat because of being a great swordman but also in how he so finely was able to use the force to anticipate. There aren't hard rules presented, but there are guidelines. We already had a reasonable explanation for Reys feats in the ST: she is stated to be the chosen one of the Force in TLJ and was awakened in TFA. That's satisfactory enough for me when combined with her belief in the force and having raw power that Luke has only seen once before (in Kylo). I just don't view how they went about it as the best form of storytelling, and kind of lame if we're being honest.
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I'm confused, because we're talking about the history and popular knowledge of the term, not whether the trope itself is present in works. Like, it's not about whether such things exist in other stories, but whether people know to call it what by ancient (and kinda outdated) terms.
And besides that, when a god comes in and solves a problem, that's a deus ex machina. When a god (or anything) CAUSES a problem, that's a call to adventure. It's not to say that greek gods didn't throw shit around and DEM wasn't implied to do that, but a DEM is specifically when plot problems are resolved by gods, not when gods introduce new problems.
Again,I don't think your understanding. Not saying that there is no difference in skill or profiency in using the force, but merely that the force, ineffable, numinous phenomenon that it's described as, does not allow itself to be measured in concrete terms. As such, while there is such a thing as getting better at something, you will never really understand the nuts and bolts of how the Force works the way you do, say, gravity. So yeah, saying Rey is the 'chosen one' is fine and all, but no body actually knows what that is supposed to mean other than she is good at doing that also inexplicable thing, which isn't really an explanation at all.
Didn't happen mate.
Didn't raise the sabre, hell he didn't even intend on having it in his hand. Arguing attempted murder is dishonest.
The gods solve the plot whether or not it's in favor of the protagonist or antagonist. The story ends. A force outside of the realm of comprehension. You're attempting to put the Force as only strictly defined by its classical usage and that is strange to me, and also strange is the assertion that absolutely nobody but academics uses it as it was intended, and then go further to try and define it strictly into an extremely specific set of circumstances. But even with all that the Force actually does fit the bill. Through all of that I'm seeing an apparent attempt to say that the Force is in fact not a DEM.
I do understand the argument, let me try to make my statement on this clear. True, we can never literally begin to know the innerworkings of this fictional construct, but such unknowing means that, in leu of concrete measures, we ought to appraise its working through how the application of the concept impacts narrative, as well as if it is consistent with prior depictions, and if not, we therefor ask 'has it justified inconsistencies, perceived or otherwise, through its texts'. In practice, this doesn't mean that anything goes (Of course anything CAN be done with it!) but it's neither knowable nor unknowable, consistent nor inconsistent, it simply is in service to the story, to which, suspension of disbelief, or narrative tension are elements to be considered.
I understand that the force is unknowable and as a concept it is vague enough to be exceptionally mailable in meeting the needs of whatever story the author wants to tell, but (unless I have misunderstood you, and where you have been going with this point) I don't agree that because of that, we should be fine with 'a wizard did it' in all instances, or rather, to the degree that you are suggesting. I don't agree of the degree to which you are ascribing 'unknowable' to it, because from my perspective what we have gotten and what it is based on does not meet the necessary threshold, but it could be completely numinous, as you say, and it would be still be bound by its servitude to the narrative.
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Solo has a 64%, TLJ has 44%. The audience score is more accurate with what people think than the absurd 91% critics gave it after Disney lined their checkbooks.
I don't even hate TLJ, I'd put it above many Star Wars films. But it's not a 91% by any stretch of the imagination.
RO was also the first Star Wars spin-off and the second new SW movie released. It told a story with new characters that led into the most well known story of the saga, and featured cameos from well-loved characters like Darth Vader and Leia. There was also a full year between it and the previous film. It, like the episodic films, was an "event movie".
Solo on the other hand was an origin story for a character that didn't really need one. That in itself isn't a bad thing but Han in particular is a character that you can't really separate from Harrison Ford. Nobody wanted to see someone who doesn't look like Harrison Ford try to act like a young Harrison Ford in a story explaining how he got his dice. Couple that with the very real Star Wars Fatigue that Disney's rapid fire releases have started causing and you can see that even if VIII was the best film ever Solo still wouldn't have done very well.
Oh, you're one of THOSE conspiracy guys. Forget I tried to answer you in good faith then
Fatigue + lack of marketing definitely didn't help, but at least in my personal circle, many people saw TLJ, hated it, then when the Solo trailers started coming out it looked like more mediocrity from LucasFilms, so they didn't bother. I believe that if Solo released before TLJ, it would have done much better. I could be wrong though.
Why not go by the imbd score? Because that certainly tells a different story compared to what the alt right trolls that bombed RT would have you think.
Edit: while also having SIGNIFICANTLY more reviews.
I don't disagree. What annoys me is how the story has been executed thus far and the tendency to demean Luke (different than simply downplaying) in defense of Rey. I hold no special affinity towards Luke, in fact as a template I prefer Rey (let's be honest, neither of them have a ton of characterization), but it rubs me the wrong way to see THAT being a tactic so often resorted to. Granted, goblins are fervently attempting to tear down Rey for far less noble reasons, and in the end the two of them are distinctly not alive, but I digress...
I get being defensive in the face of bad faith actors. But we could simply say that she is the new chosen one, that both she and Kylo are super duper powerful beyond prior reckoning (lines from the actual movies!) and be done with it. The goblins will still shout 'Mary Sue', but they would do that anyway, the upside being that we wouldn't need to have these elongated mental exercises where reasonable people find ways to create wedges over disagreeing on 1 fraction of a point to do with a fictional property.
But, to be even fairer, apotheosis between a handful of people on a message board won't wash away the larger narrative and (sometimes very toxic) discourse around StarWars, so my calls are therapeutic at best.
I think I'm sick of arguing about StarWars XD
True, I suppose, and that's contemporarily and informally known more as a diabolus ex machina, but generally speaking, when gods appeared, they were there to do good or atleast neutral shit. When they did bad shit, that was generally the call to action, like Hercules' labors and so forth.
Anyway, I'm not defining the force at all by strictly DEM at all. We were talking about DEM's, I commented how it's as poorly understood a term as the Force itself, and made a side observation that it's technically a DEM in the classical sense of the word rather than the modern, which started an argument about who would know DEM's in their classical sense, which I argue is "Not that many people" since it's an out-of-use term for a storytelling trope that is actually not that prevalent ever since we stopped believing in actual greek gods, so why WOULD a given modern day person know about it unless they were a scholar or something. Atleast that's what I thought the debate was about, since you were saying people 'all over the world' knew the classic, original usage of DEM as though it were a commonly understood thing, which I feel it's not.
It's not so much that my main point comes down to having "A wizard did it" be an acceptable excuse, but more so "A wizard is doing something, what does it mean". By which I mean, so many of these Rey discussions come down to "How can she do that without training? Why was she able to do it while Luke was not?", fans often get buried in bickering over not just powerlevels, but powerlevels that we were never given in the first place. It's not a useful debate to have to try to work out why Rey was able to lift a bunch of boulders when Luke, a different person in a different time with a different mindset, was only barely able to move a lightsaber because the answer to that is always either going to be the diegetic "The force works in mysterious ways" or undiegetic "Because they didn't have the special effects we have now in the 1980's."
So, what I am proposing instead is that the force be viewed from the lens of how it informs the story. That's how it was actually originally used in the first place anyway. In ANH, Luke wanted to learn about the force because his father was a jedi knight, so the force, as a storytelling device, was him becoming his own man by taking the role his father left. If Luke wasn't a force sensitive for whatever reason, but still got dragged into the adventure, it would be missing that symbolic "son becomes the father" element because his father is defined by being a jedi above all. But then, in ESB, the force became somewhat hostile to towards Luke, plaguing him with nightmare visions, informing the audience not just in terms of foreshadowing of the twist later, but a manifest representation that the last films idealization of Luke's twisted ideal. He wanted to be his father in the first movie and thinks he still does, but he doesn't truly, and the dark nature of how the Force acts around Luke is how that isn't merely foretold, but actively shown before Vader ever says his famous line.
Do you see the difference? The force isn't best explained by pedantry of who can do what by how much training. It's about how this magical system represents the inner character of the force user. As such, Rey's ability to out-mindbend Kylo Ren and then use the force mind trick is better explained by her survivor background, intelligence, and intuition than any "she's the chosen one!" nonsense. The force acts this way around her because that's who she is. And Kylo Ren failed because that's who he is. His ego is fragile, therefore his force use is fragile. Look at the force from this framework, and everything snaps into tight focus.
Which is also why the Force is such a boring feature of the prequel trilogy. There, it actually is a neutral tool that's used by whoever has the proper training for it. It's like a policeman's gun. It's standard issue, everyone has one, and while it's certainly important, there is no personal attachment. It's so utilitarian and bland that it never actually informs anything about the character using it. The closest we get is that evil dudes use force lightning while good guys don't and it makes evil people look ugly and....that's it I think. I've seen arguments saying that it's more consistent in terms of abilities to the OT, and discrepancies can be explained by Jedi training being institutionalized, but who cares about that when it's so boring and lifeless because it only serves as a plot function in the story instead of being a portal by which we understand the characters?
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