#The post-Lucas Star Wars transmedia franchise made the Jedi more central than they were originally meant to be; especially in the Prequels

[david-talks-sw]

What's 'Star Wars' about?

A while ago I got an 'Ask' that concluded with "what is Star Wars about, if not the Jedi, right?" And weirdly enough... I have to disagree.

I mean... to me? Yes. Star Wars is about the Jedi. A Jedi-less, Sith-less, lightsaber-less Star Wars movie or series will struggle to get me on board (which is why I was surprised that I loved Andor so much).

But if you read everything George Lucas said, if you think about the Jedi's place in his two trilogies... they're not front and center, right?

Sure, there's Luke Skywalker... but he's a learner, in the Original Trilogy. Same goes for Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, in the Prequels. They're going through character arcs.

Otherwise, the Jedi are either used as mentors to the protagonist...

... or to deliver exposition...

... but they're mostly vectors Lucas uses to present his thesis.

Functionally-speaking, the Jedi are important in that they embody the Buddhist philosophies the movie's themes are based on.

But when it comes to the plot, they're secondary. That's because the the themes of these films are bigger than the Jedi themselves.

So the question becomes... what's are the themes?

The primary goal of the Star Wars films is to inspire kids to start thinking outside the box and teach them a set of values and psychological motifs that have been passed down through mythology and fairy tales.

These values can be summed up in the dichotomy between greed and compassion / selfishness and selflessness / pleasure and joy.

We all have both aspects and need to strike a balance between the two. After all, being greedy ultimately comes from fear and being afraid can happen to all of us. Problem is, unchecked fear can lead to anger, hate and a whole lot of suffering.

The more selfish you are, the more you want things and the more you're afraid that you'll lose everything you have, you'll get angry when someone tries to take it and that will hurt everyone around you.

In other words, fear is the path to the tempting/addictive Dark Side.

Thus, seeing as we'll be inevitably tempted by the Dark Side and give in at some point (because nobody's perfect), we should aim to be as selfless and compassionate as possible for our own good... but also for the greater good, because we're all connected to a life energy. You can call it Qi or God; in Star Wars it's known as the Force.

As such, we all form a symbiotic circle and working with that in mind is better than putting ourselves first and draining from everything and everyone around us.

But we also need to be careful because there will be people who give in to that selfish side and will try to control everything. When the time comes, we must stand up for what's right.

So that's Lucas' thesis.

If I had to sum them up, the six movies illustrate it as follows:

The Prequel Trilogy is about the consequences of greed, explored through Anakin on a smaller scale and the Senate on a larger one.

The Original Trilogy shows the triumph of compassion, through Luke, Leia & Han and the Rebellion's fight against the Empire.

Lucas talked about it multiple times, the Prequels are about how Anakin becomes Darth Vader and how the Republic becomes the Empire, and in both those cases, it happens because they're greedy.

The Senate is greedy in the more classical sense. They could give a shit about "symbiosis", no they're taking bribes, letting corporations dictate policy, using loopholes to keep themselves in power and halting any meaningful progress out of fear that the new status quo will conflict with their own self-serving goals.

Anakin's greed manifests in a different way. He turns to the Dark Side because of his attachment. He wants to stop Padmé from dying... but not because he wants to save her, rather he wants to save himself from feeling the pain of loss again and will do anything to not have to live without her, her own wishes and the natural cycle of life and death be damned.

In both cases, they cave under pressure orchestrated by Palpatine, but nobody puts a gun to their head. They make a deliberate choice that comes from a selfish place, and neither one takes personal responsibility for it, they blame others, the Separatists in the case of the Senate and the Jedi in Anakin's case.

The Republic becomes an Empire with thunderous applause, betraying the people it was meant to protect.

And when faced between doing something he knows is right and giving in to his selfish desires...

... Anakin elects to do the latter, thus betraying his family and leaving the Force in darkness.

These selfish choices impact the galaxy as a whole, including the only characters in the trilogy who were doing their best to be compassionate and live in symbiosis: the Jedi, Padmé and Bail.

These champions of the Light Side are stuck playing catch-up or helplessly witnessing the events unfold, throughout the trilogy. They're playing by the rules and Palpatine uses this to his advantage.

Thus, as the galaxy tears itself apart because of Palpatine's manipulations, the Jedi and Bail are ignored and gradually weakened until they're either rendered irrelevant or killed.

A new order is born, one built on blood, lies and greed: the Empire.

But a new hope remains.

While before, the Jedi and people like Bail stood alone as everything around them became willfully corrupt... now, a Rebellion inspired by their legacy has banded together to overthrow the current order. But they don't fight for power or personal glory, they fight for altruistic, compassionate reasons. There's a sense of general responsibility that moves them, they're all doing their part.

On a larger scale, we focus on the Rebels, who are tired of seeing people suffer and decided this needs to stop. They have gone from being passive, to proactive.

On a more personal scale, we see the evolution of Luke, from naive farmer to a hero, and guess what? More and more selfish people - like Han or Lando - are inspired to join the Rebellion, after seeing the exploits of Luke, Leia, or even Ben.

It all culminates in the final film, wherein:

The Rebels band together with the Ewoks - literal teddy bears whom the Empire, in their arrogance, never even considered to be a threat - to destroy the Second Death Star and free the galaxy from imperial tyranny.

At the same time, Emperor Palpatine pressures Luke, who is tempted by the Dark Side like his father was.

But instead of giving in to his selfish desire to kill Darth Vader for all the horrors he's done...

... he finds the strength to rise above it, instead showing compassion for his father, which, in turn, inspires Anakin to do the same.

He faces a choice, like he did in Palpatine's office, two decades prior...

... and this time he chooses right.

Children teach you compassion. Anakin lets go of his fear and anger, and saves his son at the cost of his own life, finally bringing balance back to the Force.

Good triumphed over evil. Its champions achieved victory by being selfless, hopeful and fighting together / helping each other.

And that's it, that's how the movies thematically tie together.

As you can see, the Jedi aren't that directly impactful on the overall plot, because it revolves around Anakin, Luke and the respective factions/institutions around them.

But what the Jedi do bring to the table is their ability to teach and inspire others, both in-universe and out. They're spiritually impactful.

The Jedi are the epitome of compassion, and it's partially through them that George Lucas teaches his values to the audience.

#to be clear: Star Wars doesn't HAVE to be about all this #This is just me trying to summarize what Lucas said in all his interviews and speeches #The post-Lucas Star Wars transmedia franchise made the Jedi more central than they were originally meant to be; especially in the Prequels #You see this in interviews from current SW creators /writers #but also small stuff like renaming the Prequel era “Fall of the Jedi” when it was originally named the “Rise of the Empire” era #meta #george lucas #star wars #jedi order #the force #anakin skywalker #luke skywalker #prequel trilogy #original trilogy

[biofunmy]

The Rise Of Skywalker” Misinformation Hell Is The New Future Of Everything #ReleaseTheJJCut

Woody Harrington for BuzzFeed News

Last week, a post on the r/SaltierThanCrait subreddit — a forum that started as a place for Star Wars fans to pick apart 2017’s The Last Jedi — caused an eruption. Written by a user named egoshoppe, the message claimed director J.J. Abrams’ original cut of The Rise of Skywalker was 40 minutes longer than the film’s two hour, 22-minute theatrical runtime and contained a large chunk of material that would have made some fans happier, including a scene featuring actors Hayden Christensen and Samuel L Jackson, reprising their roles to help fellow Jedi Rey defeat the resurrected Emperor Palpatine.

Why would Disney, the media conglomerate that bought the science fiction franchise from its creator George Lucas in 2012, cut huge chunks out of Abrams’ final edit? According to egoshoppe, the reasons were twofold: to make the film more palatable to the Chinese government and to damage the professional reputation of Abrams, whom Warner Brothers was courting to work on films set in the DC Comics Cinematic Universe, which includes characters like Batman and Superman.

“Marvel’s biggest threat is a well-operational DC. They want to keep DC in the limbo that they’re in right now,” the post reads. “Abrams jumpstarting that franchise with something like a successful, audience-pleasing Superman movie makes them nervous. Their goal is to make JJ look bad to potential investors/shareholders.”

The post inflamed long-running Star Wars fandom paranoia that Disney has been using social media to manipulate fans. In it egoshoppe warns that all previous leaks about the The Rise of Skywalker were shared by users “tied to Disney directly.” (Fans have accused Disney of molding social media for years.)

It was impossible for Redditors to ascertain whether egoshoppe was telling the truth, trolling for fun, or lying to help Abrams, whose film has faced a critical and fan backlash. Regardless, #ReleaseTheJJCut trended on Twitter as fans pieced together links and quotes from the cast, screenwriters, and directors that seemed to prove a different cut of The Rise of Skywalker existed.

The Star Wars fandom is now a nesting doll of speculation, paranoia, and anxiety about corporate overreach — growing more insular and reactionary in the eight years since Disney took over Star Wars.

The misinformation and anger inside the Star Wars fandom is what happens after decades of corporatization and anonymous decentralized networking. It is a glimpse of a future in which anxieties over the motives of the megacorporations that drive our culture — down to our very mythologies — set off conflicts between warring information tribes who inhabit their own artificial narratives. What began with small but vocal insurgent online communities like 4chan or the alt-right has now come for the mainstream.

Except there is no “mainstream” culture — just as there is no central Star Wars fandom anymore. Today, popular culture is just Gamergates of varying size.

Frank Trapper / Getty Images

A Star Wars fan works on a computer while waiting in line to see The Phantom Menace in Los Angeles on April 15, 1999.

Fandom isn’t new. Most of the tropes we associate with modern fan communities, like fanfiction, letter-writing campaigns, zines, conventions, and infighting entered the American consciousness in the ’60s, thanks to the female audience of a different star-based sci-fi franchise: Star Trek. The girls and women who loved the show were excluded from male-dominated fan spaces and so created the networks that built the foundation for how communities now find each other online. Women all over the US started creating zines and sci-fi clubs as a way to share Star Trek fanfiction. Star Wars, released in 1977, was a late entrant.

But Star Wars fans have used the internet to socialize (and bicker) since the beginning of the franchise and the internet. The earliest archived Usenet posts about the movies date back to at least 1983, the year that Return of the Jedi came out. “Are you sure other scenes showed an abnormal (or no) star field while in hyperspace,” one user writes in a thread — which wouldn’t look out of place on Reddit in 2019 — titled “Continuity error in STAR WARS – the ANSWER.” Through every stage of internet development, Star Wars fans have been at the forefront — two of the first viral memes were “Star Wars Kid” and “It’s a trap!”

And for as long as there have been Star Wars fans, there have been discontented Star Wars fans. According to a 1999 Empire interview with George Lucas, some have been angry with him since A New Hope. “Fans absolutely hated R2 and C3PO in the first film; in the second film they hated Yoda,” Lucas said.

In 1997, Lucas, still the owner of the franchise, released a remastered version of the original trilogy. The most infamous change in the special edition concerned a shootout between the smuggler Han Solo and the Rodian bounty hunter Greedo. In the original version, Han shot first. In 1997, Greedo shot Han first, missed, and then Han shot back. Fans were outraged. The “Han Shot First” meme spread on early blogs, via novelty T-shirts sold at conventions, and in forwarded emails. The issue is still debated. (In the version of the film just released on Disney+, a new change was added. Greedo now shouts the word “maclunkey.”)

A Han Shot First moment occurs when a previously unified fandom is suddenly given two realities to choose between. Once an HSF moment occurs, it’s impossible to bring the fans back together. And Star Wars has experienced many such HSF moments since.

The Phantom Menace and the subsequent prequels Attack of the Clones and Revenge Of the Sith were never going to appease every fan, but the frenzy around the lead-up to the movies, led by early internet communities, imploded when they arrived in theaters.

There was no longer a central agreement about what Star Wars actually was. There were older fans who thought Empire Strikes Back was the only good movie, younger fans who thought the podracing in Phantom Menace was wizard, fans who thought Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith should have been edited differently, and critics who retroactively decided the whole series was just embarrassing. The actor Topher Grace cut the prequels down into one 85-minute movie. There’s also the Machete Order, a way to reorder all the films. There’s even an infamous 20,000-word “Ring Theory” blog post, in which a fan spent two years writing about how the prequels and the original trilogy “rhymed” with each other when viewed within a concatenated structure. There was also Red Letter Media’s viral-before-viral 70-minute demolition of The Phantom Menace, uploaded to YouTube in seven parts, most of which have been viewed over 9 million times each.

Walt Disney Co. / Courtesy Everett Collection

Daisy Ridley as Rey (left), and Adam Driver as Kylo Ren in The Rise of Skywalker.

Things move a lot faster now. Something like Baby Yoda from the Disney+ show The Mandalorian can balloon into a worldwide phenomenon in days. And fandom toxicity can now manifest instantaneously. In 2016, fans of Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe harassed one of the show’s artists off Twitter because they were upset that an episode didn’t confirm a same-sex romance between two characters.

Disney, the current owner of both Star Wars and Marvel, has, more than any other company, figured out how to harness this chaotic energy into a massive financial engine. Marvel’s 23-movie, $22.5 billion cinematic universe is a direct descendant of Star Wars. The studio made $13 billion in worldwide box office in just 2019. And once The Rise of Skywalker crosses the $1 billion mark, Disney will have released seven movies last year that grossed that amount. Armed with a nearly unlimited portfolio of intellectual property, an integrated network of theme parks, and the new Disney+ streaming service, Disney is inching closer and closer to a completely seamless transmedia reality its audiences can live inside. Once fans would have had to travel to Disneyland for that immersion — now it travels to them online.

It isn’t just Disney. As corporate monoliths amass more money and power, consumers become more feverish, fanatical, and paranoid. Supreme hypebeasts, Fortnite players, PewDiePie commenters, VSCO girls, K-pop fans, Tesla evangelists — there seems to be a divided fan community for nearly every form of media or product or service.

And as quickly and strangely as modern fandoms form, so are they mutated by Han Shot First moments. These schisms are rarely deliberate — rather, they are sparked by a director’s cut of a popular film, an offhand remark made in an interview. They are willed into existence by conspiracy theories, by fanfiction, by leaks of material never intended to be seen.

Since Disney took the reins of the Star Wars franchise in 2012, fans had a racist meltdown over the casting of a white woman and a black man as the leads of the sequel trilogy. Some of them brigaded against 2017’s The Last Jedi because they thought it was too woke. (This campaign was amplified but not created by Russian trolls.)

These campaigns have had real consequences. Vietnamese American actor Kelly Marie Tran, who played mechanic Rose Tico in the film, suffered so much racist abuse she deleted her Instagram. Tran ended up with significantly less screentime in The Rise of Skywalker. Disney has been accused of caving to a racist and misogynistic vocal minority of fans. The film’s cowriter, Chris Terrio, said that Tran’s character Rose appeared in fewer scenes because of the difficulties that arose in repurposing footage of the late Carrie Fisher.

Walt Disney Co. / Courtesy Everett Collection

Writer Chris Terrio and director J.J. Abrams consult on the set of The Rise of Skywalker.

On websites like Tumblr, vicious fights have broken out about which characters should be shipped, or romantically paired together. Those who believed the villain Kylo Ren and the Jedi hero Rey should end up together — Reylos — have waged extensive flamewars, and in the wake of the Kylo Ren’s death at the end of The Rise of Skywalker, are sending Abrams death threats.

And it’s not just the fans: Star Wars actors have gotten in on the HSF moments too. Oscar Isaac, who played pilot Poe Dameron, has told every news outlet who will listen that he thought he and John Boyega’s character, former stormtrooper Finn, should have had a romance. Meanwhile, Boyega spent New Year’s Eve trolling Reylos on Twitter, arguing that his character should have ended up with Rey.

Any one of these things could be true. Or they could all be false. It doesn’t matter.

Whether it’s fans of the K-pop group BTS believing there’s a missing eighth member of the group, fanatical Facebook groups for enthusiasts of smart home devices like the Ring surveillance cameras, the near-constantly forming pockets of misinformation on TikTok, or the DC fans who purchased an ad at the FA Cup demanding Warner Brothers “#ReleaseTheSnyderCut” — a reference to that group’s struggle to see a different cut of the Justice League movie — we’re awash in our own home-brewed misinformation.

Seventy-one days before the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, a Reddit user named JediPaxis published a post titled “The Rise of Skywalker: Reshoots and Edits (Story Summary v3.0)” on the r/StarWarsLeaks subreddit. The post was JediPraxis’s fifth post documenting information gleaned from what they claimed was a “trusted source.”

JediPraxis’s story summaries nailed down details with shocking accuracy. They knew the name of the planet Emperor Palpatine was hiding out on. They guessed the movie’s twist — that Rey was his granddaughter. They even knew about Babu Frik.

As with egoshoppe’s #ReleaseTheJJCut conspiracy theory, JediPraxis’s predictions meant one of three things. They’re telling the truth and had a source involved with the film’s massive production who was comfortable leaking. Or JediPraxis was actually working for the production. Or JediPraxis’s leak was sanctioned by Disney, as part of a meta-campaign by the film’s producers to fuel a grassroots hype cycle.

“I’m pretty sure [LucasFilm] is feeding a ton of [bullshit] to leakers,” one commenter wrote under the post, two months before Rise of Skywalker had hit theaters.

“It’s now MORE likely this than anything else,” another commenter replied. “What’s more likely, that a Reddit user has a direct line to the top .01% of people involved in one of the most anticipated films of the last several years, and this person is still employed despite leaking the ENTIRE plot, AND that they managed to reshoot this much of the movie AND cut it in — or that someone is taking the piss?”

Any one of these things could be true. Or they could all be false. It doesn’t matter. There will be fans who believe whatever gets posted and fans who don’t. Every leak or fan theory creates a new reality. Han shot first. Or he didn’t. ●

Sahred From Source link Technology

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