It seems weird, and I'm wary of ascribing every awful thing to Russian trolls (after the travesty of a farce of an injustice that was The Force Awakens, I didn't bother with The Last Jedi and don't plan to). But at the same time it feels like plausible low-hanging fruit. If you want to keep people angry, attacking their culture is a very easy way to do it.
https://www.indiewire.com/2018/10/star-wars-last-jedi-backlash-study-russian-trolls-rian-johnson-1202008645/
It really was terrible, though.
ReplyDeleteThe New Russian information war on the West is something pulled straight out of a dystopian SF novel written by a disgruntled McCartyist disappointed that the USSR folded and quit - somehow collaborating with an angry Trotskyist writing strawmen about how capitalist democracy is a vile farce to the service of oligarchs and criminals for the US part.
ReplyDeleteAnd frankly, they don't write that well.
Aaron Gilliland I respect that (surprisingly common) opinion, but I really enjoyed it - I expected it to be as bad as the previous one, while instead it did its best to be its own film and actually build something worth on the broken mess that it had inherited.
Not saying it was perfect (yes, that one arc was way too long, everyone agree on it, for example), but it takes some risks (in a Star Wars film produced by Disney, of all things), which pays.
The next one being committed by Jar-Jar Abrams, though, will most probably just demolish everything interesting that had been put together and turn them back to the ruined waste they were made from.
In particular, I liked how it actually demolished the myths that were created (I suspect inadvertently) by the original trilogy and the countless works it influenced. Especially grating:
- Super-Efficient Fascist Military: Like IRL, it has a toxic hierarchy stifling initiative run by an incompetent, micromanaging general that has explicitly been put in charge because he wasn't threatening. In fact, the Resistance even has a file on him and plays his ego to pull off an operation. Anyone who studied WWII will recognize the inspiration
- The brilliant, maverick pilot who is ready to Do the Things that Have to be Done when the milqueteast hierarchy is too witless to Act... well, military hierarchy exist for a reason. Those things are a recipe for disaster, as has been known since Agricourt. (Fun fact: Agricourt is where, in the long run, France won the Hundred Years War: by decimating the nobility, it let the Crown later centralize the army and left enough space on the top for competent, experimented commanders to actually run it.)
The Angry Staff Officer blog has interesting analysis on those aspects.
I loved the Last Jedi and felt it redeemed most of the sins committed by the Force Awakens. But I'm a prequel fan, so what do I know?
ReplyDeleteIt was a terrible film. Very pretty battle (with absolutely terrible tactics), a washed up Jedi destroying a Jedi library, a figurehead commander who is completely non-inspirational, and a jump down their throats attack that would surely have been the basis for a weapon system before now.
ReplyDelete