Official: STAR WARS THREAD. These are the droids you're looking for. **WARNING MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

[javyn]

Seems like his character was perceived as a negative stereotype of black people. I could see that.

I didn't think that at the time, seeing it. I just thought he was a dumbass muppet.

 

[wojt]

Seems like his character was perceived as a negative stereotype of black people. I could see that.

I didn't think that at the time, seeing it. I just thought he was a dumbass muppet.

Perhaps that's because you don't think of blacks as of dumbass muppets. You have to look very deep and assign some malicious intent to George Lucas.

First of all Jar-Jar is not even human but some lizard idiot who is considered by his people to be an idiot. Secondly there's captain Tanaka and Mace Windu who are rather competent characters. If Lucas was some covert ***, we would know it already and he would just have Jar-Jar be human and black, because he could.

 

[javyn]

I love Samuel Jackson, but sorry not sorry, Mace Windu sucked I do remember that haha

 

[wojt]

I love Samuel Jackson, but sorry not sorry, Mace Windu sucked I do remember that haha

he defeated some of the evil guys in the movie, but he sucked like most characters due to mediocre dialogues

in other news StarWars racism is one thing, but it's still better than what Deep Space 9 did to Jews:



I take this is your favourite series? Hitler would be proud

 

[javyn]

Hey now. DS9 made right by that. It was TNG that was problematic with the Ferengi/Jewish stereotypes.

DS9 gave them their own unique culture, which was superior to the Federation in several ways even. I loved hearing Quark so eloquently call out "hooman" hypocrisy haha

 

[Texasmade]

he defeated some of the evil guys in the movie, but he sucked like most characters due to mediocre dialogues

in other news StarWars racism is one thing, but it's still better than what Deep Space 9 did to Jews:

View attachment 1366795

I take this is your favourite series? Hitler would be proud

It's my favorite Star Trek series.

 

[javyn]

That's because it's the best

 

[wojt]

Hey now. DS9 made right by that. It was TNG that was problematic with the Ferengi/Jewish stereotypes.

DS9 gave them their own unique culture, which was superior to the Federation in several ways even. I loved hearing Quark so eloquently call out "hooman" hypocrisy haha

You mean how they made great traders and accounts? Oh that's okay then

When creating Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the show's writers decided to introduce the Ferengi bartender Quark (Armin Shimerman)—and subsequently his brother Rom (Max Grodénchik) and nephew Nog (Aron Eisenberg)

I guess you'd call that a coincidence

 

[javyn]

Oh Jeez LOL

 

[Texasmade]

Rom and Nog were brilliant engineers. Rom also managed to marry that one Bajorean waitress that Dr. Brashir dated.

 

[javyn]

Nog also got Sisko to acknowledge and drop his prejudice against Ferengis too

 

[Texasmade]

Also, RIP Aron.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

I really don't know why I bother sometimes... my brief (re)review of The Phantom Menace is only two pages back: https://www.styleforum.net/threads/...ontain-spoilers.321243/page-358#post-10136768

The racism is not the product of some kind of weird imagination as @wojt would have you believe. It's not just Jar-Jar, who was such a disliked addition that Lucas abandoned his own plans for the character and reduced him to a bit part; it's his entire dim, sub-aquatic people. It's also the Trade Federation, who are pathetic, treacherous schemers, and talk like a racist stereotype of East Asian people (Chinese, Japanese, hard to tell - anyway, they all look the same, amirite?). It's also the avaricious, slave-owning Toydarian with his (wink-wink) huge proboscis, and not-at-all stereotype Jewish accent.

In short, just about any alien race of consequence in the film is a racial stereotype. It's a consequence at least partly of Lucas's decision to have them speak in English, instead of using subtitles for imaginary languages as in the original trilogy. No-one thinks Wookies or Jawas are racist stereotypes, right? Imagine if Lucas had had Chewbacca speak English with a 'hilarious' Jamaican accent or something... I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be thinking of Star Wars in the same way.

 

[javyn]

I really don't know why I bother sometimes...

Sorry for the tangent. I need to remember this isn't a Star Trek thread.

I'll stop posting about it until there' a crossover

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Okay, the film I will always think of as Star Wars, but which my son insists on being called A New Hope. The first thing you notice about this film coming straight to it from Rogue One, is how it now really does seem to be be in the middle of something. Lucas failed to achieve this with his prequels. You now know the true power of Darth Vader, and so he seems to be imbued with a lot more menace throughout, as if he's holding back (or more often than not, being held back by nominal superiors). Mark Hamill's Luke is whiney at first but you do actually grow to like him. Alec Guiness does a very good job of pretending to take everything very seriously as Obi-Wan. Harrison Ford as Han Solo comes across as much more of an smarmy asshole than I remembered. Princess Leia really looks like the only one who actually knows what's going on half the time. And the final attack on the Death Star is as thrilling as it ever was. I expected I would find it slow in comparison with later films, but it's actually very well-paced. It has time to dwell on some quite beautiful landscapes on Tatooine (AKA Morocco).

It's noticeable how the proposed storyline is different: Lucas had intended for Luke's father and Darth Vader to be different people, and 'Darth' isn't a title in this one, it's just his first name, as Obi-Wan keeps emphasizing. And of course, Leia isn't Luke's sister and isn't going to be. Of course the later Lucas digital additions are annoying and pointless like all of his messing about, and add nothing to the film, particularly the laughable Jabba the Hutt sequence in which he appears to change size several times - but it's interesting that the one thing he didn't do was the go in and edit for continuity. I'm glad he didn't because I like it that really he and most of the cast didn't have a clue where they were really going with all this (and of course Ford and Fisher and Hamill were off their heads most of the time too). It all makes it much more enjoyable.

Is it a good film? It's difficult to say how good it is in relation to the other SW films, because none of them would exist without it, and because technologically so much more can be done these days. But it's certainly not the best for a couple of reasons. One is that neither the chemistry between the characters nor the sense of a whole galaxy out there are really present yet, and second, without the actorly grounding provided by Guiness, it would have across as a lot more lightweight.