Jumbie

I just read this book after I picked it up on my recent trip to Toronto. Here's my Hondo's Exclusive take on it. Short version of review: Amazing, evocative narrative art marred by suspect writing, political insertions and a sense of insincerity. Detailed review: Secret Path uses art by Jeff Lemire to tell a story put together by late Canadian singer Gord Downie. It's based on the true story of Chanie AKA Charlie, a 12-year-old who died of cold and hunger trying to escape a residential school for indigenous kids in Canada. Lemire's art is wintry stark for most of the book, but able to show softness in characters and focus in on fine details. He also uses color for flashbacks to good effect. There is only one word balloon in the whole book, so it relies on the ability of the art to tell a coherent story panel to panel while hinting or explicitly showing important aspects of what's going on. There are a few specific panels like a raven feather or a sequence of Chanie walking down the tracks while his matches run out that are skilfully put together while also being well placed within the larger sequence of the story. Lemire also knows how to strategically use zooms and pullbacks to channel emotion and mood. Top notch art in every way. The problem is in the half of the book contributed by Gord Downie. Most specifically, there is a sex abuse sequence that struck me as out of place the minute it appeared 'on-screen'. In addition, there's some far too on-the-nose Catholic church authority figures (nuns and a priest) doing other humiliating things to the kids like ear-pulling etc. These things don't spoil the book in itself, mind you, but this is a tale based on recent and controversial history, being used in schools even, so veracity is worth considering. Since I was bothered by the abuse scene's incongruity, I looked up the 1967 news magazine article it was based on and discovered that there was no sex abuse alleged to have been inflicted on Chanie or any of the residents at that specific school. What's more, the school was Presbyterian, with no clergy. I suppose you could justify including the sex abuse and clergy as making Chanie's story a stand-in for the overall Canadian Residential school system, which did contain those elements. But I think it cheapens Chanie's personal story which is quite powerful at a factual level. The magazine article, for instance, uses the scene of the inquest, where his 3 friends (who ran away with him) talk about Chanie and the school, to paint a dramatic picture of desolate loneliness amongst the students. The other thing I discovered is that Gord Downie used the publicity of the book to set up a foundation named after him first and Chanie second and it seems to be doing more for the memory of Downie than Chanie. It just makes the whole thing feel a little like the boy's life/death story is being exploited for Downie's ego. (Granted no one is making money off this as the proceeds are going charity) Anyway, my final take on the whole thing is that Secret Path is worth having in my collection, and I expect I will reread it from time to time, enjoying it as a well put together piece of art, but not quite history.

"Piracy is killing the music industry."

Yeah, that's the post issue 100 version. I didn't like it. Something about Wolvie being down on himself about looking like a beast seemed to take him in a more superficial direction. This was a guy who viewed himself as a beast already for his blood rages and being liable to hurt innoccents. I felt like he wouldn't care about looking ugly, because he'd still be more concerned about acting like a beast. Hank McCoy on the other hand, he viewed himself as a civilised man, so I could see why being viewed as a beast would affect him. Or Nightcrawler being actually abused over his looks as a child I could see being concerned about looking bestial.

No, I'm thinking more the Larry Hama wolvie. Are you thinking of the wolvie from post 100? When Apocalypse messed him up and he got a weird nose and acted like the phantom of the opera talking about don't look at his face? That one didn't last long I think. 4 issues and they kind of quietly dropped it and started depicting him as before. Physically, Hama's wolvie (Which was mostly Adam Kubert's art I think) was often depicted almost like a human wolverine hybrid. Reminded me a lot of Master Splinter in a way. Here's some examples of what I'm thinking of. Jackman pulled this stuff off really well in the movies, particularly that first bar fight, but he got the spirit right without the physical representation. I doubt you're ever going to get that kinda width to height ratio on a fit actor. I know there are guys who have the body, cuz I've seen them at gyms etc. But not many of them are acting.

Nah, the muscularity and speed is still required. It's not just short and hairy. Jackman played a pretty boy with bestial undertones, especially after the first one when he got the ladies all hot and heavy and became a sex icon. Just my perception, but they seemed to tone the ugly out of him after the first movie. I want the beastines front and center. The physicality would have to come from the actor. The hairiness would probably be best as a practical makeup effect. Not gonna happen though. They've seen the success of pseudo bikerboy Logan and are going to try and replicate it.

Well, that certainly proves you were telling the truth and didn't read what I wrote... That's alright, I know it's long. I said that one reason I was taking so long to write on this was not being sure I could distill it properly. This thread has been great for me to get things somewhat streamlined in my head, so hopefully by the time I put it in a blog post or something it flows and I can incorporate the back and forth in a way that is just flat statements. As for Drifter, I didn't try to speak for him. I just pointed out that HIS OWN clarifications spoke for what he meant and he was talking about characters' in-movie legacies, not their personal fates.

EDIT: This is posted in response to Baytor and his music. Yeah, I'm working on a reply to your posts. One thread I notice is your mocking of the alienated fans. You're making it seem like this is all about them being whiny, weak people for not liking something and voicing their opinion? I'm not sure what your beef is with them. May I ask, what should they have done in your opinion? These alienated fans, they don't control what they like or dislike, so you can't be asking them to start liking the movie. Are you saying they should not complain online? Are you saying they shouldn't make videos on youtube breaking down the things they see wrong in the movie? This is what I'm talking about when I say the supporters of this movie have taken a very unusual stance in discussions because they seem to think that liking or disliking it is a sign of personal virtue. Anyway, not sure when I'll get to replying to your comments, but you raised some issues I had not considered and I want to tackled them to shore up my thesis.

How tall is Eastwood? I know we've had a 6'1" Wolverine for 18 years, and to be honest, it's not a big part of the public perception of the movie character that he be short, but I want it. Stock, short, crouched low... I love what Jackman did with the character, but I don't feel like I'm seeing a comic adapatation without the shortness element. Also more hairiness.

As always, Spoilers below because the tags don't work right. (And no one should be in a SW discussion without seeing the movie under discussion anyway, so you deserve it if anything gets spoiled) Though, I should mention, spoilers for the movie LOGAN as well... In terms of 'Is that technically possible?' It's realistic. In terms of 'Is that likely given what we know going in, and thus believable?' it's not realistic. And in the suspension of disbelief, it is probable that wins out over possible. 'You can make me believe a man can fly, but you will never make me believe he would wear his underwear on the outside of his clothes,' (I forget who said that, but they were doing a fiction writing guide on how to get your readers to buy-in to stories.) So to adequately explain what Luke becames, what we know has to expand to justify the change. "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." -Carl Sagan And they whiffed it by using two elements: a vaguely presented dark side temptation scene about killing his nephew and an unexplained megapowered Snuke. Um Snoke. I don't want to spend time on this because Luke's shapechange wasn't part of my original explanatioon. I put forward that a broken an dejected Luke would be fine in some circumstances. It is failure to show an actual return of the Jedi that is the failed promise. One other reason Luke's character presents a storytelling failure is that they clearly started from a point of saying 'we want hermit Luke to be a contrast to Rey' and then traced a line from ROTJ to TLJ to get that regardless of how unlikely that shape was instead of taking a sound story telling approach like saying, "Given what we know, where would Luke be now?" or "Hey, if this catastrophe happened, what would it do to Luke?" They ended up with a shoehorned explanation that couldn't create the suspension of disbelief. Uh, there may be some confusion of terms here. By Republic I mean an organization and a functioning structure of government. So by an evolved Republic I'm thinking of seeing a 'country' so to speak. You seem to be thinking of the presentation of the locations on screen being rich or deep in a worldbuilding sense and that is not what I meant at all. The New Republic was a thing built by the hard work of Leia and the Alliance. It was the gift/legacy the Campbellian heroes brought back to their people. It was wiped out by a space laser in a scene that had been edited down to flashes of scared faces that lasted 20 seconds. George Lucas on the other hand, understood the role of a new Republic (Though he never called it that.) In an interview in Newsweek (or was it Time?) in 1983, he talked about what Eps 7,8 and 9 would be: The struggles of a young government to stay true to its values. This is exactly the opening we needed for a good look at the resurgence-of-fascism dynamic. A reset doesn 't do it! Because the reset skips over what happen. The drama is over. True drama comes from endangering the gains of the past. So, endanger the New Republic and threaten a reset and it's actually more tense than actually destroying the new Republic. And what would we need to do to fight a resurgence of nazism in the Star Wars universe? What happens when a Hux/Snoke/Darth Trump shows up to threated what you've spent 30 years buiiding? I would be SOOOOO into seeing these questions addressed. Instead we get 'Fascisms back, go fight it from the grassroots again. no lessons to be learned here.' I think what you wrote above was in response to me saying the Republic seemed to casual about the danger it was in. I'd like to point out that 50 years after WW2 was 1995. Israel was still hunting down war criminals. We were still giving awards to Schindler's List and Speilberg was doing Shoah documentation, US presidents were traveling to France to do D-Day commemorations, the death camps were still preserved and being used to educated people about how they were used, Germany still had laws about not displaying Nazi imagery, Nazi were still the baddest of bad guys in the public culture and conscience. 30 years after Vader and Palpatine fell and with a constant Empire continuing on the fringes, it seems ridiculous that there is a disarmed and helpless Republic sitting like a duck for the First Order to attack. Again, bad writing born out of coming up with a setup of 'weak Republic' first and justifying it flimsily after rather than asking, 'What would the Republic be, given what we know?" On a related note, the idea of the Force being forgotten is artificial too. If they had asked themselves, 'What would happen to the knowledge of the Force if Kylo destoryed it all?" the answer would never be, 'the public forgets it all.' For one thing, the rebuilding of the Jedi would have been very public, involving active recruiting. Luke was a celebrity at the end of ROTJ. (He was. TLJ ironically proves this. TLJ makes a big deal about how a phantom sword battle that only the First Order troops witnessed became a cultural phenomenon bringing hope and the legend of Luke Skywalker's Last Stand to slave children all over the galaxy who make action figures of him. Imagine how big a celeb he must have been at the end of the OT when he was going around publicly recruiting force sensitive young people to be cosmic cops?) So the idea that Han has to insist that it was all real, like some legend. Bullcrap. It's been 30 years since Nakatomi Plaza and no one's forgotten that. That Han speech on the Falcon was the moment I checked out of suspending disbelief in the new trilogy. THE PROBLEM IS NOT 'HAPPILY EVER AFTER'. Sorry to shout, but I've said that over and over. I know Drifter used the term because he had no better words, but I contend that the happiness of the characters is not an issue for the alienated fans. When Drifter himself details his opinion he's talking about purpose and accomplishments. The Campbellian heroes brought gifts and benefits to their world that have been erased. They could all die horribly and there would be no problem as long as ther accomplishments remained to build a story on. And I'm not talking about lasting an eternity. The things they build would only need to last long enough to be part of the new generation's heroics. We want to see Rey fighting to preserve a new Republic alongside the returned Jedi, not as part of a total reset where it is on her now to do the same thing Luke did and restart a new government and a new Jedi order. I'm not sure why you think any scenario but an underdog reset would be more boring. It's ultimatelly down to the writer. The most enthralling part of TLJ, which even harsh critics will admit to enjoying is the Rey/Kylo dynamic and that exists outside of any consideration of stakes. In fact, such a relationship might be even more notable in a fight between two equal sides because they are being presented as two equal opposites. What's more, I challenge you to explain any part of the plot of TLJ that required the Republic or the Jedi students to be eradicated for it to work. I know they make a big deal about ALL THE REBELLION is on that fleet, the last hope etc. But think back to a superior film with a superior chase setup: The Falcon with a broken hyperdrive being chased by Vader through an asteroid field. We knew the rest of the Rebellion was safe. Only the people on that little ship were in danger. But almost all the people we cared about were on that ship. Likewise, in TLJ, we didn't need everyone in the Resistance to be on the endangered fleet. Just the people we cared about. Not only could the plot and excitement of the movie have been just as solid in a clash of equal forces scenario (to give one possible alternative, not my favored alternative), but many elements could have been stronger. The moral ambiguity angle would have real depth. When DJ points out that the Resistance pays arms dealers for weapons, our reaction is, 'Of course they do, they're being wiped out by bad guys.' No weight. But if the Rebellion is a hegemony itself, then that is complicity in warmongering. This goes back to Lucas talkinng about the struggles of a young government. You want to bring order back to the galaxy after a war, but how do you govern fairly, without violating sovereignty, without restricting freedoms yourself. All this praise I see for TLJ having depth infuriates me because it's actually quite shallow, choosing the most simplistic power dynamic to examine. I'm kinda stunned you'd say this. Looking at it in the frame of storywriting choices, are you saying the writers were considering ways to alienate sections of the fanbase when they were writing? Because if they were doing anything besides trying to write a fun adventure that made you engaged and want to buy toys, they were not doing their jobs. I mean, MY whole contention starts with granting that they were trying to be good writers and swung the pendulum too far on a reset unintentionally. You're accusing them of being bad writers. Also, you're doing this thing I've seen over and over in the debate about this movie which is make it a virtue test. Your statement doesn't allow for Drifter being a non-toxic fan. At the least, your implication is that most of the people who dislike this movie have suspect motives. I reject the whole premise. The people who have genuine problems with this movie are mostly not involved in the representation debate. I know there are loud voices on youtube and elsewhere who have made it a talking point, but to focus on them is to lose sight of the forest for a few rotten trees. Lastly, there is no reason that younger fans can't be brought in without cutting out the accomplishment and affection for the older characters. Star Wars OT has never had trouble finding new fans. Half the people complaining about Luke being etrayed etc are in their twenties. They never saw it in theaters. I bought my 5yo niece all kinds of Rey toys over the last 2 years. She made her own Leia outfit for Halloween instead. Those characters have a charm that exists beyond their old fans. The issue of preserving their in-story achievements and their legacy has nothing to do with the toxic elements. ============================== On a separate note one of the things I've been contemplating is this issue of aged/weak heroes. Particularly I've been thinking of Will Munny from Unforgiven and Logan from Logan. These characters work as decrepit old men who have lost most or all of who they were in younger stronger days. So why no fan backlash to old man Logan or the portrayal of 'the man with no name'? (Unforgiven is basically a sequel to those movies.) With Unforgiven, I think the answer is easy. Will Munny and his predecessors were never heroes. They were in it for personal selfish gains. They lacked clear morality. They were not Campbellian heroes of the monomyth class and thus they never had a legacy to their in-movie world. But a lot of people have brought up the idea that TLJ is only evolving characters or addressing issues of aging and limitations that tons of other movies have done. The key is that Star Wars and Luke Skywalker, in particular, was so bound up in the elements of the monomyth hero that you can't remove it without destroying it. Or at the least you can't examine it in canon. It's almost the same as satirizing Star Wars to give your audience a new understanding of the original. Spaceballs skewered Star Wars on things like it's merchandising, it's father-son pot complications, Lightspeed conveniences, ridiculous costumes, vague magic system, even it's over-reliance on superweapons. But it did that with stand-in characters in a stand-in universe. An examination of Luke as an old warrior could take place in a similar way. But when you go to a property with a set tone, set expectations, and then start to subvert expectation, you are messing with story foundations. Old Man Luke doesn't work in a monomyth universe even though the monomyth implies constantly that old heroes lose and come to bad ends because the myth has a role for old heroes as mentor figures. Obiwan was once a vibrant hero and he lost it all and became and old hermit, right? But backstory doesn't come with legacy gifts and we never have an emotional bond with the legacy of the mentor figure. Why is there no pushback on LOGAN? (And I want to point out that Logan went full out 'SJW' having a young Spanish speaking female with a multi-ethnic group of friends take over as the new generation while killing off our beloved LOGAN. Logan has hovered on the edges of being a Campbellian hero of the monmyth style. Especially in recent years when he has become less and less an outsider. But I think Logan fits more the role of a noir hero. he's a hard luck case. He's going to pull off some small-scae heroics to help a single person and suffer from the effort and gain nothing. That's been a pattern for him for a long time. Logan is just a culmination of those noir themes. (I also wish to point out that neither Logan nor Unforgiven needed world-shattering scenarios to be captivating, generally well-liked movies. Logan was about the life of a single girl (Not even her friends really mattered) and Unforgiven was about some wronged prostitutes and the house that Little Bill was building. So again, I have to say the TFA/TLJ reset was unnecessary.)

OK, either my computer is messed up or my nemesis the board software hates me, but I can't edit my previous post at anything less than 1 character per minute due to slowness. So I'll add my second part here. Also I didn't get to finish proofreading my original post before the board AI (which is surely skynet vintage) decided to freeze me out so I can't fix typos and badly worded statements in the last half. I may have phrased things badly and have to issue clarificatios later.

SPOILERS AHEAD. I'm not hiding it because the damned board goes weird when you open it because I posted a frikkin book. Here we go, exhibit A, the alienated fan who feels like TLJ broke his love of Star Wars. He's vilified by many as focusing on minor details like the origin of Snoke when Snoke's lack of a backstory is hardly an egregious sin in the world of moviemaking and he is often dismissed as selfish for wanting how 'own' Star Wars and not allow other interpretations. I think the truth is that this is a person suffering real pain which comes from a place he doesn't even understand and that he's going through the 5 stages of grief because his pain is so real and comes from such a psychologically deep place. What could cause such pain? Drifter touches on it with more self-awareness than most alienated fans. Or at least his wife does. The new trilogy negates much of the gains won by the heroes of the originals. She uses the phrase 'happily ever after' and for this reason people seem to think that the alienated fans are upset at the personal unhappiness or indignities of the OT main characters. Even Drifter's wife seems to think so. But there is a difference between reward and legacy. The legacy is what they built and will leave behind when they die. I'm talking about in-movie legacy. Not the legacy of Hamil, Fisher & Ford. To understand why this is the central source of all the heightened discontent, we need to touch on two sidebars first. And when you put a large fraction of your sense of self-worth into a modern franchise character, that character becomes a Harry Potter horcrux in the possession of a greedy corporation. NOT a good idea. What if that corporation decides to continue the story in a way that negates the accomplishments of your heroes? LET'S TAKE A TIME OUT HERE. I want to make clear that the Last Jedi is divisive, not generally a misfire. It is a misfire for SOME fans. A large segment of them. Casual fans seem fine with it. Likely because they didn't go through the bonding with the OT. All the alienated fans seem to have stepped onto the Star Wars train at the OT stations. Not to say that all OT fans are alienated. But if all the alienated ones are OT fans, that's a clear and concrete indication of where the discontent is coming from. So for those who are OT-bonded so to speak, whose sense of worth is tied up in the OT, what happens when you get to the new trilogy? When you start reading the opening crawl of TFA, a few things start to become clear. Implied promise have been missed. For one thing, no one seems vigilant about the rise of evil. The Republic is not fighting the evil First Order, so Leia has gone rogue to do it. Good for Leia, but why aren't the good guys installed by the OT heroes being good? They learned about this stuff the first time around when Palpatine used corruption to gain power and then took over slowly with military power! (Note. This is not me bringing in the prequels. The OT talked about the wiping away of the senate and the gradual rise of Palpatine through deciet and corruption and the elimination of the Jedi. When your Jedi are taken out, surely you know shit's about to go down and you get yourself strapped for a fight? So the vigilance the OT heroes brought to their community is negated.) Also, after 30 years the Republic is tiny and ineffective. That's not necessarily unrealistic, but with oppression overthrown and good people in charge and peace in space, plus the protection of the Jedi, we would have expected something more substantial. (This sense of the weak Republic is exacerbated by Abrams refusing to lay out the politics here. Just what are the borders and capabilities of the antagonists? We don't know so it's hard to get a sense of what the OT legacy is.) So that's another OT accomplishment negated. Partially. Luke's not here helping to fight? But he always fights. He forged himself into a weapon of defense as one of the Jedi- Oh wait, there are no Jedi! WTF!? Something terrible must have happened. Oh, this is horrible. What could have done this? What the Hell is a Snoke? PAUSE. This is not a simple mismatch of expectations. Three things we view as OUR accomplishments are just wiped away. But you're probably thinking, "Well, no one was throwing rocks during the title crawl of TFA, why do you think this matters?" Because the process is unconscious. It takes a while to set in. And most importantly, we are loyal to SW so we give it the benefit of the doubt. We want to see the whole movie first and get a clear picture of what happened. We hope the movie will show us that we didn't really lose anything. We're already wondering if Luke is off on some secret mission, because simple surrender would negate the promise of the OT that Luke and the Jedi will fight to protect the community. Ok, movie, what's next? Han Solo, space pirate. Well fuck. He's not with the Rebellion (uh Resistance), he's not a benefactor to his community. He's right back where he was the first time we met him, doing illegal deals in dirty space ships. So the whole emotional journey we took with him, watching him grow, nearly losing him to Jabba etc so we could see General Solo man of the community was for nothing? Man, this is bad news. So now, our not-yet-quite-alienated fan has had another earned gift negated, something that the psychological effect of storytelling has made him view as HIS accomplishment. If things have gotten this bad, there must be some amazing explanation. PAUSE: I understand that the story reason for Han to revert is quite sound. His son is a child murderer and the right-hand fist of the greatest threat to peace and freedom since Darth Plagueis. And when our fan finds out about this, they understand why Han is the way he is, but such a loss, it couldn't have just come from some random source. If the loyal fan is to lose this sense of accomplishment and worth tied up with Han Solo as a gift to the community, it better have some amazing, rewarding in-story explanation. NOTE: This fits in quite well with the grieving process idea. When our friend dies in some random accident, we get mad at the randomness of it. Humans, FOR WHATEVER REASON, want losses to have some special meaning. I don't advocate for that to be accommodated. I'm just saying that's how all of us work and you can't ignore its effects. Some of you might be tempted to say, 'A grown woman shouldn't have so much invested in fictional characters. It's the fangirls' own damned fault for being babies." But you're wrong. The phenomenon of SW is because it had a secret formula for prying open hearts. The fans can't help that they feel invested in their characters because that's what good storytelling is evolved to do over the centuries. It hacks our brains to create the links. So now the fan is thinking, 'Man, I really wish I knew what this Snoke guy did to turn Ben and negate Han Solo and all the Jedi!' Oh wait, the Republic just got 5 planets wiped out! Damn, this is bad. I bet the rest of the Republic stop pussy-footing around now and come help Leia. Thank God we have Rey. The way Luke left her there on Jakku, that's got to be part of the plan he had, some last minute play while he recovered. (Yes, I know Luke didn't leave Rey on Jakku, but that's what the movie presented, so it cannot be considered otherwise for what the audience would have been feeling at the time.) PAUSE. I'm getting tired now, so I'm gonna do a quick bullet of some things. -At the end of TLJ, the negations of so many OT gifts to the community would not be clear, just fearfully suspected. We would all turn to Episode 8 to show us that we didn't really lose all those legacies that feel like our accomplishments. Maybe Luke is off on a secret mission and Rey is part of it? Maybe Leia gets to lead the Republic now and get them mobilized properly? And at least we'll find out how Snoke F'd up the galaxy so bad. What did he do to Kylo? Where did he even come from? -But then in the opening crawl of TLJ, we learn that the Republic has been destroyed. So now another legacy of the OT heroes is negated. Luke is not on a secret mission. In fact, he's no sort of guardian of the galaxy, willing to let his sister die. So that's negated too. And if Luke isn't on a secret mission, that means the Jedi are truly gone. He hasn't been secrety training a new generation on the island or anything. So that''s 3 hard negations of major OT heroes' legacy items right there at the start. This mohas has cratered within 15 minutes for any fan with strong emotional investment in the OT. Any kid who ever felt like they accomplished something when Leia, Luke, Han, Ackbar, Wedge, Lando etc beat the Empire has had that sense of worth shattered. Most of this alienation was created in TFA, but it will be TLJ that gets the blame, because that is here it was co is where it was made concrete. -But none of the loss is felt consiously or immediately. We are still in the denial stage of grief. Because of the unconscious nature of our loss, we are even skipping over anger and getting to bargaining. We continue to hope that Rey is part of some secret backup plan. It's mostly inertia at this point, since that would not change all the negations, but it's one of the few hopes we have remaining from TFA when we first started to dread that this new trilogy was destroying our childhood. We want it without having a reason to want it anymore. And that brings us to this: All this man has left now is to find meaning in his loss. No ordinary evil man could have ruined his life's work. )I mean, the life's work of his heroes. Nothing less than a story of epic meaning and superlative consequnce can suffice to justify Disney eliminating the legacy of our beloved OT and all the work and effort we put into it. I mean, that the characters put into it. Indeed. We are going in circles. Because the ones laughing at the 'fanboys' can't see their grief and the 'fanboys' can't articulate what they feel because the source is so structural in the story. Most seem unaware of where their grief is coming from, but they keep saying overdramatic things like, "This killed my childhood" and "Star Wars is over for me." And they will soon get to the anger of grieving and start nitpicking the story to pieces and scapegoating all kinds of real and percieved faults for what went wrong. And the TLJ defenders will defend those nitpicks, pointing out that none of those flaws like purple-haired women, lightspeed mechanics, awkward lines etc are fatal enough to 'kill' a movie and this the fanboys are irrational. NZA can never feel the fanboy grief. He is too objective. He wasn't soulbound to this OT. It was never his thing and he didn't sit in cardboard boxes by himself at age 13 hoping he wasn't too old to be daydreaming himself as an X-wing pilot flying the trench run. He is a 1st class geek, but his sense of identity comes from Link and He-man and sometimes he still cries over the death of Optimus Prime late at night. But he's not a Star Wars OT geek. While he can't feel the grief, I think he can understand the mechanics of it however. I know I have little proof for the main point of my argument which is that the fans' sense of worth and identity is tied up tot he in-movie legacy of the characters (and the main reason I'm taking so long to put my thoughts together is trying to find psych papers or literature crits to back me up properly), but I think anyone who is a fanboy can appreciate how they are tied up with not just their characters, but their character's gifts to the community. ----------------- I have more to add, but baytor's quote is on the other page and this iteration of the page doesn't allow multiquite across pages. I'm going to come back and EDIT this SAME post once I type out the rest. If you've reached this point and are reading this, reload to get the rest.

Absolutely not. The best source of war movies we have ever had is WW2 which is a giant battle of roughly equal sides with shifting alliances divergent goals, covert underdog missions, huge set piece battles, political intrigue, personal intrigue, spies, technology and arms races, superweapons... Any competent writing team could take world war 2 as a template and pick out the elements of good story to make the heroes underdogs for the duration of the trilogy. The whole 2 years after Pearl Harbor comes to mind on the US side. Or you could make the main characters 'Egyptians' caught between the British (Republic) 'helping' on one side and the Italians and Nazis (First Order) invading on the other. Disney mistakenly decided to ape rather than remake and they ended up having to negate the first trilogy. And THAT is when they were painted into a corner because nothing they did with Han, Leia or Luke could undo that negation. (Not to mention that so many great stories where the HEROES and their community are underdogs or are placed in great danger are based on Vietnam or the War on Terror. where the US protagonist comes from a side with huge military, economic and political advantages ) Note that the word I use is 'negate'. You can have Han, Leia and Luke all die painful, horrible deaths and it would be fine for most fans as long as the deaths 'meant something' in the long run because they left the galaxy a better place for having lived. None of our 3 OT main characters seem able to say that at the start of TFA and that is confirmed and solidified by the end of TLJ. I'm gonna do a post after this using Baytor, Axel and Drifter's conversation to illustrate what I mean and why each of them is wrong in their own way. Gotta go eat dinner first.

I don't want to start throwing stuff out until I have my head organised. The more I start thinking about this stuff and what I want to say, the more it I see it at the nexus of a larger creative philosophy discussion about the hero''s journey and the way stories and archetypes are part of social and personal psychology plus the rise of commercial sequel culture and the rules of story-writing and capturing an audience. I don't think I can really explain myself without a long form piece right now (But then again, what else is new, right?) But I'm NOT saying that the deep and unique pain some particular viewers of TLJ was because Luke was humiliated or grumpy or lost hope of contemplated killing Kylo. I believe those things to be problems, but they don't make this film any worse than say AotC with its mischaracterisation of Yoda, its neutering of the Jedi, its laughable 'romance' and morality etc. I'm saying there's a meta cause that hurts some SW fans directly in a mostly unconscious way and these faults are scapegoated for it. Problem is, the meta concept is kinda nebulous in my mind and I'm trying to pin down the borders of it and the main arteries of its function. I can summarize it as 'lost legacy leading to lack of audience investment and refusal to suspend disbelief,' but I can't YET lay out the cause and effect in a way that I feel is complete. I'm actually at the point of feeling like I'm back in university writing papers again... I mean, I've written three novels and this feels like it's taking more effort to organise and plot out right now. Well, I see no true cause of discontent originating from the movie not matching fan theories. That's part of the scapegoating I was talking about where an alienated fan decides to act out the anger stage of their grief process by throwing the nearest rock at the object of distaste and for a lot of SW fans, the nearest rock is a fan theory. Sadly for some people, the nearest rock is resentment of representation. But I don't see that resentment as a driver of the higher level of anger with TLJ. However, as a separate issue, I don't think the anti-representation reaction is more severe than other properties, just that since the audience is so much bigger for SW that the sheer volume of disruption a small percentage can create seems overwhelming on the calm ocean of people who are fine with minority representation. A 1 meter rock dropped in a 100 meter pool is not gonna hurt anyone. But a 1km asteroid in a 100km lake is gonna destroy towns on the shore. 3 Once again, I have no idea how to undo a quote. I was supposed to end the NZA quote and ended up starting a quote within a quote and now I can't change it. No one else ever makes these mistakes and has to fix them?

Cool. Thanks. By the way, have we met? I know we have a poster Stillbored...but I've been away for a while.

No I absolutely disagree. SW fans are no more complainy than Dolphin's fans or Star Trek fans or Spiderman fans. I looked back at other SW disappointments and there really is a different source to the TLJ emotional wreckage. To me, the prequels had even more of the same faults that people complain about with TLJ, like boring sections, useless characters, giant plotholes, characters acting senselessly etc.And these have been pointed out by fans since the beginning. But they weren't a dealbreaker for a lot people the way TLJ seems to be. I think people who laugh at the TLJ nerds for being butthurt over small details are also missing the same point the nerds themselves aren't self-aware enough to see. There is a real emotional disconnection that has taken place and I think it's nothing to do with hyperdrive rules or minority inclusion or tonal changes and everything to do with story/structure choices that are part of relaunching and rebooting big properties. I've gone and compared things that were relaunched successfully like Superman in 1986 or Avatar Korra and compared them to failed/controversial relaunches like Kyle Rayner's Green Lantern or Star trek or Ghostbusters and there are certain choices that are in common with what gets rejected by older fans. Number one is, "Don't negate or destroy the successes or legacy of the original characters." Viewed that way, oddly enough, most of the bad choices of TLJ happened in TFA by hitting the reset button on so many things and negating the victories'/legacy of the Rebellion and the three main heroes leaving only fan-antagonistic choices possible for the TLJ script.

Wait, nothing on how to revert strikethrough text or spoiler tag?

Yeah. I disagree with NZA in that so much of the last half felt deflated and stretched out. Stilly Edit: I tried to fix this as best as I could. It seems there's no way to get rid of a misplaced spoiler tag reliably. I will look into this.

I don't think I'm approaching it from a place anyone else has. When I say thesis, I don't mean a comprehensive listing of existing critiques or the irrefutable explanation of a particular critique. I'm pulling back to look at the meta-process which created the controversies and the stumbling blocks of disconnection from the audience that are an inherent risk in any relaunch/reboot. And how these manifested in talk of character disrespect, SJW agendas, poor plotting, being too cerebral or too subtle, disrespect to fans, fanboys being sore about pet theories getting disproven etc, even though those things (whether real and not) are not causes of alienation, but merely scapegoats. One reason I'm delaying so much in writing my piece is that I think I may need to do a generalized look at rebooting without structurally alienating your audience before I can properly address the specifics of TLJ. As for accepting that 'this is not my Star Wars', I reached that place in 1999, so I'm way into the 'I have so little emotion left for this that I can pick it apart without sentimentality' stage.

A Star Wars thread and Jumbie hasn't posted yet...this will not do. I actually have a thesis on this movie that I've been formulating the last month. Gonna try and put it together soon.

There was a special between seasons 5 and 6 of The Venture Brothers called All this And Gargantua Too. Anybody know where it might be found?

Sorry man, I figured if we'd gotten the movie here in Guyana's wilds everyone else must have too.

For Disney to buy WWE? Why would they though? It's not good clean family fun. It's got a problematic past, problematic gender portrayals, plays to racial stereotypes, has concussion issues and requires ruthless handling of talent. (Star Wars spoiler below...) Ultimately I don't think WWE is valuable enough or enough of a growth industry to get Disney's notice. Vince is pretty much making the most that can be made from it and it's not a lot.

Last night the Road to Wrestlmania began. Nakamura won the men's rumble. Asuka won the 1st ever women's rumble. Japanese are taking over yo! (also the women's rumble was in my mind a notch better than the men's. Felt like more was happening and also there were more in-match narratives.) WWE finally acknowledged the feelings of the crowd and made sure Roman was the last one in with Nakamura so Nakamura's win got a great big pop. Nakamura is 37 and the Champ Styles is 40 and so their window for putting on a great match at WM that plays to their styles is closing. I'm told they have a long history of great matches going back to Japan. Hope they recreate it. Also making big news... after Asuka won, Ronda Roussey came out wearing Roddy Piper's actual jacket and pointed at the WM sign. Reports are she has a full time contract with WWE now. So between Asuka, Roussey and the two champions, Bliss and Charlotte Flair, we might have two women's title matches. Carmella and Sasha Banks seem to have no matches on the main show. Roman Reigns seems to be on a railway line to a match against Brock at WM. Braun Strowman seems to be getting screwed for WM given the great match he just had with Brock. No apparent plans for him once Brock switches to Reigns. He's just too big a character to fit with a fight for the US title but the main event is occupied. Matt Hardy is into it with Bray Wyatt. Matt is doing a version of his popular Broken Matt character called Woken Matt. Undertaker made an appearance last week on RAW, but I missed it. I hear it was crappy, but it seems to indicate he's going again this year. Rumors are it's the long-delayed Cena match. Shane Mcmahon seems locked into a fight against Kevin Owens one more time, but they're hinting it might actually be Daniel Bryan that takes the spot. I doubt it. WWE would have let Bryan wrestle long, long before this if they were willing to risk his neck (literally). Signs are Bryan will serve out his contract as a manager and go wrestle with some other company that has less stringent medical concerns. Seth Rollins is being set up to fight Jason Jordan, a newbie doing a gimmick as Kurt Angle's son. Speaking of Kurt, there's been some groundwork laid over the last few months for him to go up against HHH. Notable ABSENCES for WM 2018: Dean Ambrose, injured, Big Cass, injured, Samoa Joe, injured (He had been scheduled to be in the Rumble), Enzo Amore, fired for not telling WWE he was under investigation for an accusation of rape and drug use, Neville, who has contract issues, Jeff Hardy injured (though he's said before that he will be in fighting shape for WM)

link? or is just dnoid.com?

epub copies of S.E. Hinton books, specifically outsiders, that was then this is now and rumble fish. No luck at Piratebay and KAT. I'm scared to go anywhere else because it all seems to be fake DL buttons and membership requests.