What ruins Star Wars movies, games, comics, books is not SJWs...it's plot armor.

[sarahtasher]

There are recurring arguments that X or Y lopsided victory of the Rebels in SW is because of ''SJW'' or other drivel. I would say rather that the franchise, from it's roots to the current works, suffers more than any other of plot armor.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor

Countless other works have them, but it's was rather obvious in the ancien canon of SW-where there was dozens of novels with Luke, Leia and Han, with an ending that was truly a foregone conclusion (a deliciously tongue-in-cheek novel about Star Wars flesh eating zombies was ruined by the fact that two of the survivors were Han and Chewbacca. Considering that the rest of the non zombified characters included two brothers, a nice doctor who is immune to the plague and a sadistic Imperial warden, we have a ''oh no, zombies are devouring us'' novel where 3 characters are obviously going to survive and 1 obviously going to die, leaving exactly 2 whose fate is incertain. Imagine a slasher movie where two thirds of the cast are ''safe'' or obviously going to die )

I will give recent examples to show what I mean.

In the main Star Wars comic, there is the Last Fight of the Harbringer arc. It opens with an Imperial POV story. It's telling the tale of an elite unit of seven stormtroopers, down with customized equipment and call signs. They are ruthless special operatives that do everything to win. Okay, it's a paper thin characterization (they are like COD characters defined by their weapons more than anything else-sniper, sergeant, knife yielding dude, flamethrower, pilot hacker, heavy weapons), down with the Jack Bauer interrogation scene of rebel ''terrorists''. But it work. Plus, those are really elite stormtroopers, they are hitting rebels with their weapons

Then, switch to Rebel POV, where the big three capture a ISD in a hiliariously over the top way (and quite humilitating for the Empire) for a scheme that Rebels themselves consider insane. Suffice to say, guess which spec ops team is tasked with retaking the ship ?

And then, full plot armor. The seven Imperial massacre every Rebel they see, mowing them like chaff. For paper thin plot reasons, the seven guys split in nothing less than 4 different team, which are obviously going to meet Han and Leia, Luke, Chewbacca, Han's wife (complicated) and lose all the four times, while they kill like chaff several dozens rebels.

The dude going against Chewbacca have excuses for being mauled. The dude going against Luke have the trademark '' capture him alive and bring him to me'' orders from Vader. But the three guys going against Han and Leia, which includes Flamethrower and Sniper are ''inexplicably'' unable to hit the perennial couple bickering with each other despite them being without cover, busy piloting an ISD for a ramming attack, and with the attackers firing at them from 20 metres away. And ''Knife guy'' hands up on his vibroknife to Han's wife to make things fair.

So, TLDR, the super elite team of crack special force who was built up in the first section, they end up capturing C3P-0 (which is not exactly a feat).

Twice this season, Rebels shown us a crack Imperial pilot, the expy of Legends Baron Soontir Fel. He pilots a TIE interceptor in the first scenario, a TIE defender in the second. Inexplicably, this pilot is able to shoot with ease half a squadron of A-Wings in the first case, before being unable to shoot down a TIE bomber carrying three named characters minutes later (The TIE Bomber, for the phillistines who never played TIE Fighter, is the crummiest TIE of the entire series, which is something. It's considered a deathtrap BY IMPERIALS). This Sunday, the same pilot having the massively overpowered TIE Defender, shoot with ease 3 or 4 of the escort fighters of Senator Mon Mothma, then fails abjectly at shooting the two piloted by named characters...

[Deleted]

clicked a tvtropes link...

now i have to spend my night browsing dem mary sues and idiotballs

[Independent voter]

George R Martin kills off major characters, imagine spending years of effort on a character only to kill him off, it would be like building a house and then setting it on fire.

But game of thrones is a lot more interesting because of it.

[Theodarzna]

I agree that Plot Armor is an annoying feature of work, but wouldn't plot armor and Mary Sue-esque characters perhaps have a greater chance of emerging when the purpose of an artistic piece is to promote a particular political set of symbols or ideas?

But yes, Plot Armor is a problem in pretty much all fiction when the author really wants to play up the greatness of their main characters.

[Arenis]

In the other sense of armor, I dislike the weird outfits in general.... Dart Vader, superman, spiderman, wolverine, batman... any other given Marvel hero. Just no.

But as stated a lot of series coming up with disposable characters, so that's good.

[Endus]

George R Martin kills off major characters, imagine spending years of effort on a character only to kill him off, it would be like building a house and then setting it on fire.

But game of thrones is a lot more interesting because of it.

Martin has the opposite problem, where he kills so many characters, and characters who have whole plot threads tied up in their existence, that you never know when another plot thread is going to get snipped, and every time it happens, your investment as a reader/viewer into that plot thread ends up being wasted.

Stories are meant to go from A to B to C. There's a flow. A Song of Ice and Fire has a lot of As and Bs, but very few Cs. Plot threads get cut off more than they get resolved, and the two aren't synonyms. The TV show is arguably better about this than the books, but it's not perfect.

To use your analogy, on the one hand, it's unsatisfying having a plot where a house might get burned down when you know that it's never ACTUALLY going to get burned down. But it's equally unsatisfying when your complicated political plot is resolved with "and then their house burned down and everyone died" and you move on to the stories in the other eight extant houses, with construction crews frantically building new houses because you keep burning them down on the regular. The house burning down both leaves you unsatisfied due to the nonsensical end (not resolution) of plot threads, and it leaves you unshaken because the story's been an unending sequence of house burnings.

I'm absolutely in favor of killing beloved characters, but the way you do it is the way they did it in the Firefly movie, Serenity. Shepherd's death mattered because it establishes the Operative as a serious threat. Wash's death works to shock the audience (because it isn't forecasted), and to establish that yes, they really could die here; once Wash died, the floor was open to more of them dying, it demonstrated that "plot armor" didn't exist. It was most effective with Wash, because he was the one who least deserved it, arguably.

If you just regularly killed people off, your audience stops investing in characters at all, because it's not worth it.

[Afrospinach]

But game of thrones is a lot more interesting because of it.

Game of thrones is nearly the polar opposite. I knew Oberyn was going to die vs the mountain. That is how obvious the series is getting with it's contrarian take. You can just see these things coming.

[Eazy]

GoT became boring after so many deaths, it's no longer worth caring about characters.

While on the other hand - what did you expect? Star Wars is finished story.(I meant the Anakin part)
They cannot change anything, but they are still making plenty of plot-twists, new side stories, etc, which makes it interesting.

You just didn't read a good SW book I see. Read Lost Stars from the new canon, it's target are teenagers, but it was voted as the best book from the new canon even by the older fans.

[Templar 331]

This is one of the reasons why I didn't get into "Rebels" to much. I understand it's targeted towards teens but there's way to much "plot armor" and over the top shenanigans.

[sarahtasher]

I concur that the work without the ''big three'' were the better in the previous canon (Wraith Squadron had quite a turnover of pilots, for instance)

[Wyrt]

Well, everyone kind of died in the last one.

[Orange Joe]

I hate this trope myself. It's to easy to apply it to anyone that lives(or insert good thing here).....

[Sunseeker]

GoT has plenty of mary-sues, just look at the roster of who hasn't died, even when others have died in far less dangerous situations or from far less damaging wounds.

Yes, Rebels has a degree of plot armor on the main characters, this is pretty common in 99.9% of TV shows with a small cast. There have probably been times where characters should have died in Rebels, and frankly I don't know why on gods green earth they brought Rex back and after having written off Sabine the show is now a fucking sausage fest (since Hera has like, no goddamed role anymore).

There are good reasons to be upset over what happens in Rebels. The fact that the good-guys have plot armor is not one of them. This is Star Wars. Read any Star Wars material, if you can't see that at least the main 3 characters have serious plot armor, you're totally missing it.

[Garnier Fructis]

I agree that Plot Armor is an annoying feature of work, but wouldn't plot armor and Mary Sue-esque characters perhaps have a greater chance of emerging when the purpose of an artistic piece is to promote a particular political set of symbols or ideas?

Why would it? Mary sue's and plot armor is a problem of bad writers, you'd have to demonstrate that political stories are written with greater frequency by bad writers than good writers.

And even then, it's only a problem if it's blatant or overrides some other aspect of the story. Mary sues and plot armor are acceptable on occasion.

[Varitok]

The fandom around star wars is what ruined it for me and has driven me to the point of not wanting to associate with any of it. I get that people like it but holy shit, the fanboys of Star Wars are the worst and try to hijack every movie discussion i've seen. You like what you like but I just can't handle it anymore.

[Darththeo]

GoT has plenty of mary-sues, just look at the roster of who hasn't died, even when others have died in far less dangerous situations or from far less damaging wounds.

Yes, Rebels has a degree of plot armor on the main characters, this is pretty common in 99.9% of TV shows with a small cast. There have probably been times where characters should have died in Rebels, and frankly I don't know why on gods green earth they brought Rex back and after having written off Sabine the show is now a fucking sausage fest (since Hera has like, no goddamed role anymore).

There are good reasons to be upset over what happens in Rebels. The fact that the good-guys have plot armor is not one of them. This is Star Wars. Read any Star Wars material, if you can't see that at least the main 3 characters have serious plot armor, you're totally missing it.

Yes, the future General Syndulla has no role ... got it.

We may or may not have seen the last of Sabine, it is returning for a 4 season (which will likely be its last as Disney tends to kill shows are 3 or 4 seasons.) We don't know what is going to happen or what is in store for the Rebels cast.

Keep in mine, this was also done by the people of Clone Wars ... Rex was pretty much untouchable. The only characters that "died" off were second or third string characters even though some early stuff HEAVILY hinted Ahsoka was going to die ... and we don't even know if she is dead at this point.

[Garnier Fructis]

If you just regularly killed people off, your audience stops investing in characters at all, because it's not worth it.

It's a delicate balance. Abrupt endings of this sort carry a sense of absurdism; there's value in that.

But if you're killing off characters left and right then it does go too far in the opposite direction. If I wanted that I would just turn on the news.

[eillas]

Rebels always had this issue.

For those who don't watch the show. The ever present threat to the Rebels is rarely truly felt. The enemy is just too incompetent to pose any true threat. When true foes appear, they did their cameos and dance off the stage.

Quite a few time it's an eleventh hour save. Even when they complain they are losing as much as they win, the show always failed to deliver that urgancy.

[GennGreymane]

Yeah plot armor is annoying. It at least should be entertaining

Thts why Jojo Part 2 is best Jojo

[Very Tired]

It's the SJWism only in the new Star Wars movies now that Disney is taking over?

Personally I've always disliked how Rey is a Mary Sue.