[TV] Disney+ Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi

[Darththeo]

No we're not. We're talking about specific, exclusionary language used in reference to a work/setting/whatever you want to call it.

Again, what you you think of a, "The Force is male" shirt. You seem to want to keep dodging that.

The same as I think about The Force is Female, which is literally nothing because the Light Side of the Force has canonly been depicted as Female (Dark Side Male).
I do not see an exclusionary language in The Force is Female. I can only see if you assume such language is by definition exclusionary.

[Ghost of Cow]

Just once, I'd like to have a Star Wars thread where the main topic WASN'T complaining that there's girls in Star Wars now.

No one did that. Again, nice try. +social credits for you I guess.

[Endus]

No one did that. Again, nice try. +social credits for you I guess.

You are. People complaining about Moses Ingram's character are. See also complaints about Rey, complaints about Rose, any time someone brings up Kathleen Kennedy, etc.

[Ghost of Cow]

The same as I think about The Force is Female, which is literally nothing because the Light Side of the Force has canonly been depicted as Female (Dark Side Male).
I do not see an exclusionary language in The Force is Female. I can only see if you assume such language is by definition exclusionary.

So that shirt would be fine with you?

Honestly, I'd respect the consistency, or at least the admission of a lack thereof. Either one would be fine. It's this weird, "No, one is good and the other bad because something voting rights and stuff." that's super weird to me.

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You are. People complaining about Moses Ingram's character are. See also complaints about Rey, complaints about Rose, any time someone brings up Kathleen Kennedy, etc.

So if I don't complain about any of that but I think a shirt is stupid, I'm complaining about girls existing?

I mean, I expect that kind of weird logic out of you - and I expect you to retreat from it later when you decide that it didn't make sense after all - but hey.

[Orange Joe]

So that shirt would be fine with you?

Honestly, I'd respect the consistency, or at least the admission of a lack thereof. Either one would be fine. It's this weird, "No, one is good and the other bad because something voting rights and stuff." that's super weird to me.

My bad. Fuck those people. They shouldn't have any rights? We shouldn't care if they are treated worse or not. As long as this movie is what I want who gives a shit.


Is that better?

[Ghost of Cow]

My bad. Fuck those people. They shouldn't have any rights? We shouldn't care if they are treated worse or not. As long as this movie is what I want who gives a shit.

Is that better?

Oh, you got me again, clearly I don't want people to have rights? I said that? Must have forgot.

I mean, you guys can't even pretend like you're discussing it. It's just straight to implying I hate this or that or want to oppress this person or that person. It's like no one can discuss anything, the moment you don't toe the line just so it's straight to the gulag.

[Darththeo]

So that shirt would be fine with you?

Honestly, I'd respect the consistency, or at least the admission of a lack thereof. Either one would be fine. It's this weird, "No, one is good and the other bad because something voting rights and stuff." that's super weird to me.

Again, I feel nothing because there is no exclusionary language in the shirt. It is only exclusionary if you assume such language is.

If you could explain how such language is "exclusionary" you may have a point, but frankly I can't see you getting there without circular reasoning or begging the question.

To me the Force is Female is akin to saying Nature is Female or Life is Female or the Universe is Female. I am a guy, I do not feel excluded by those kinds of phrases.

[Endus]

Oh, you got me again, clearly I don't want people to have rights? I said that? Must have forgot.

I mean, you guys can't even pretend like you're discussing it. It's just straight to implying I hate this or that or want to oppress this person or that person. It's like no one can discuss anything, the moment you don't toe the line just so it's straight to the gulag.

People telling you you're being kinda misogynist over nothing is not you being sent to a gulag. It's minor criticism. That's it. You're complaining because people are critical of the views you're expressing. That's it.

[Ghost of Cow]

Again, I feel nothing because there is no exclusionary language in the shirt. It is only exclusionary if you assume such language is.

If you could explain how such language is "exclusionary" you may have a point, but frankly I can't see you getting there without circular reasoning or begging the question.

To me the Force is Female is akin to saying Nature is Female or Life is Female or the Universe is Female. I am a guy, I do not feel excluded by those kinds of phrases.

Ok, that's fine. Just as long as the reverse would be true, doesn't matter to me. Like I said, I don't really even view the shirt itself negatively and I don't take particular exception to "Mother Nature" or ships being called "she" or whatever.

It's just the weird lack of honesty about things and the instant jumps to, "You hate women! I gotcha!" that people predictably jump to, as seen here.

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People telling you you're being kinda misogynist over nothing is not you being sent to a gulag. It's minor criticism. That's it. You're complaining because people are critical of the views you're expressing. That's it.

And there it is, you already retreated from your initial extreme view. We went from, "You don't want girls to exist in Star Wars!!" to a minor criticism over nothing.

[Endus]

And there it is, you already retreated from your initial extreme view. We went from, "You don't want girls to exist in Star Wars!!" to a minor criticism over nothing.

You misunderstand.

Me pointing out all the whining that there's girls involved in Star Wars now is "minor criticism".

You're just playing the victim over criticism. That's all you've faced. Basic criticism.

[eschatological]

Quit this derailing, immediately. All of you know this is offtopic for this subforum. Go take your complaining about social agendas to GenOT.

[Theangryone]

Holy shit boys, time to let it go. Nothing is going to change with Disney. They said they wanted to move past the Skywalker saga but keep giving us shows set right dab in the middle of said saga. Could save themselves a lot of headaches if they would just go back a thousand years or jump ahead a couple hundreds and poof all their troubles would go away. Other than they seem to have forgotten how to make things fun

[Biomega]

Could save themselves a lot of headaches if they would just go back a thousand years or jump ahead a couple hundreds and poof all their troubles would go away.

That's probably not what their market research says. There's a reason they stick to the OT like glue - they're afraid that people won't be interested if there isn't something familiar to draw them in. Gotta have references to something established to anchor everything else, or people might get confused and not want to risk investigating the unknown. Or something.

Whether or not that's ACTUALLY the case is a different story of course. But that's generally why franchises are reluctant to depart too far from their original roots. Why Harry Potter has to involve Hogwarts in everything even if a story is set on another continent, and so on - it's what people know, and people are more likely to pay money if it's something they know they like.

[Ghost of Cow]

Holy shit boys, time to let it go. Nothing is going to change with Disney. They said they wanted to move past the Skywalker saga but keep giving us shows set right dab in the middle of said saga. Could save themselves a lot of headaches if they would just go back a thousand years or jump ahead a couple hundreds and poof all their troubles would go away. Other than they seem to have forgotten how to make things fun

I can't agree with that, been plenty of "fun" in recent Star Wars offerings.

Sure, some things fall flat, but no one bats 1.000. I had my gripes with Obi-Wan but it has it's moments. Also, I usually absolutely hate the "shockingly precocious child" trope, but I didn't even find myself thinking about it with Leia this time around, so I guess it worked. Maybe because they didn't make it absurd the way they did with Anakin in TPM.

[Jastall]

Holy shit boys, time to let it go. Nothing is going to change with Disney. They said they wanted to move past the Skywalker saga but keep giving us shows set right dab in the middle of said saga. Could save themselves a lot of headaches if they would just go back a thousand years or jump ahead a couple hundreds and poof all their troubles would go away. Other than they seem to have forgotten how to make things fun

People reward the nostalgia milking, tho. Mandalorian was one of the few Star Wars works that had nothing to do with the Skywalkers but even so people cheered when they shoved Luke in it.

[exochaft]

People reward the nostalgia milking, tho. Mandalorian was one of the few Star Wars works that had nothing to do with the Skywalkers but even so people cheered when they shoved Luke in it.

Sadly, that's true. However, there's diminishing returns over time, especially now that they're probably going to have to start making repeat appearances like Luke. Even the people most susceptible to the nostalgia bait will eventually get bored of it or notice that it's bait.

Just once, I'd like to have a Star Wars thread where the main topic WASN'T complaining that there's girls in Star Wars now.

The problem isn't that the characters are female, the problem is that characters are written terribly. I just so happens that all the females in the Kenobi show are written terribly, but so are all the men in the Kenobi show (aside from Owen, but he's tainted a bit in episode 6). The Kenobi show heavily focuses on Reva and Leia, so they're going to get the most attention because Disney wants people to pay attention to them. In the end, every character at one point or is constantly stupid or their actions are contrived in the Kenobi series. By how people react to legit criticism when it comes to character writing, plot, structure, etc. with stuff that should be in GenOT is pure deflection from the main issue: the people making and in charge of the Disney Star Wars content are doing a terrible job. Doesn't help that Disney's agenda, which they openly talk about, doesn't focus on good storytelling and character writing. This mistreatment of the Star Wars franchise is finally being picked up by the normies at this point, and this is completely independent of whatever political persuasion someone might have.

The reality is that we could've had great shows about a female Inquisitor, or Leia in her youth, or a new female Jedi. Almost no one has an issue with that, and it's been done in the past where there's basically no legitimate complaints. Ahsoka is a prime example of a female Jedi who was initially not popular to many people but grew on the fan base over time. However, you almost certainly are never doing to see that with characters like Rey or Reva because their character writing is awful while Ahsoka's writing is generally much better.

Again, this isn't about the gender of the characters that's bad, it's the character writing itself that's bad. It's not anyone's fault here if Disney likes to deflect away from the actual issues with their shows and movies, but we shouldn't accept nor propagate their gaslighting of the situation either.

Anyways, I think a way more successful version of Kenobi wouldn't have a kid Leia, wouldn't have a Reva, wouldn't have Kenobi leaving Tatooine, wouldn't have Vader and Kenobi fighting, wouldn't have a ton of things. If anything, they kind of hit it on (but dropped the ball): have the series explore the relationship between Kenobi and Anakin more in the Clone Wars era. If you don't want to blatantly rip off TCW episodes (which they could and people probably would be fine with that if the show was decent), have them be flashbacks that are relevant to Vader and Kenobi in the current time that the Kenobi series took place. Have Kenobi dealing with new life in seclusion while reflecting on the past, and you could even have Vader hunting down Jedi or doing Sith-related things while recollecting the times with Kenobi. You could have each flashback be important or tie into what the current version of each character is doing, similar to the 5th episode of Kenobi... but actually have a logical connection. Ultimately, while I think this version of the show would be received better, it would still have to contend with the content creators at Disney turning out trash. If your show has bad writing, no matter the premise, it's going to be terrible.

As a slight aside but related to this topic, I actually had a conversation today with someone who works for Disney that was in charge of Star Wars merch for many years until he got moved to another IP. He was actually involved with the designing of Ahsoka's lightsabers, which was actually kind of cool to hear about, but the main takeaway was that he understood how much fans actually like attention to detail and tried his best to get the merch to reflect that. Recently, he got moved back to the Star Wars IP for the same division, but requested to get moved away to where he was after a little while. His reason was that Disney stopped caring about the attention to detail that he knew the fans wouldn't like, and the company would actively fight against similar-minded employees who wanted to keep things accurate despite the objections. He actually took a moral stand on things, which is pretty gutsy, but his view was that although he was employed by Disney he was ultimately responsible to the fans.

If anything, what he experienced working for Disney is what is being reflected in the content they release. Series like Kenobi aren't a love letter to the fans, it's a slap in the face (or just pure incompetence at best). Disney isn't trying to expand the Star Wars fan base... if anything, they're trying to reduce/overhaul their fan base to what they want, all while getting them to subscribe to D+.

[Ghost of Cow]

Whether or not that's ACTUALLY the case is a different story of course. But that's generally why franchises are reluctant to depart too far from their original roots. Why Harry Potter has to involve Hogwarts in everything even if a story is set on another continent, and so on - it's what people know, and people are more likely to pay money if it's something they know they like.

I know people often cynically chalk this up "fear" or "lack of creativity" or "milking nostalgia" but it can also simply be the creators honestly trying to create things people like using the only points of reference they have - the things the fans said they liked.

[Biomega]

I know people often cynically chalk this up "fear" or "lack of creativity" or "milking nostalgia" but it can also simply be the creators honestly trying to create things people like using the only points of reference they have - the things the fans said they liked.

I get where you're coming from, but this is a multi-billion dollar franchise. There's no semblance of "creators honestly trying" anything. It's calculated and streamlined from top to bottom. And let's be real: we're not talking the occasional reference to the familiar here; it's whole-cloth pattern repetition and structural carbon copies, and a by-now pathological inability to move on. We've gone way, way past honesty in any meaningful way here.

This is pandering for marketing reasons, not creative referentiality.

[Endus]

I get where you're coming from, but this is a multi-billion dollar franchise. There's no semblance of "creators honestly trying" anything. It's calculated and streamlined from top to bottom. And let's be real: we're not talking the occasional reference to the familiar here; it's whole-cloth pattern repetition and structural carbon copies, and a by-now pathological inability to move on. We've gone way, way past honesty in any meaningful way here.

This is pandering for marketing reasons, not creative referentiality.

Star Wars has literally always been about that. From the time when Lucas was signing off on contracts to make Star Wars, before it was ever called "A New Hope", and Lucas made sure the get the merchandising rights locked up because he had some pretty keen foresight. Star Wars has always been a product aimed at making money, not art. And even if you want to make some arguments regarding the first film, by the time they were prepping to make Empire, the corporate machine was in full grind. Hell, look at the creative notes Lucas had for the first films; there's so many godawful ideas in there that some smart cookie who had the clout (originally, his wife, of all people) to edit Lucas' "creative" impulses down to something marketable. When he got full creative control back for the prequels, that's how we got midichlorians and "I hate sand" and "NoooOOOooOOooo!"

Star Wars has always been a heavily marketed product, from pretty much the moment the first film's effects rocked the audience's socks off and corporate decided the series needed to be carefully managed to make even more moolah.

[Biomega]

Star Wars has literally always been about that.

Yes.

That's sort of the point. When I'm saying it's unable to move on, the implication is that it's... always in the same place.

"But it's always been like that!" is a point to criticize, not a feature to praise.