![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sequelitis: Part 3: Dialogue
Nov. 23rd, 2019 07:45 pmGenerally and on the whole, fictional dialogue should be in-universe--it shouldn't break the fourth wall. So it should make sense within the context of the fictional setting, that this would be something the characters say to each other. When this fails, it can lead to clunky "as you know, Bob" infodumping to give the audience context for something the characters should already know
The OT and PT aren't perfect about this. The big example for me is with regard to the Clone Wars. In "A New Hope," Leia's recording says "you [Obi-Wan] served my father in the Clone Wars," and that helps establish a "lived-in" backstory to the universe--although presumably Obi-Wan already knows that, so reminding him is more for the viewers' benefit than his own. However, when the prequels come around with "Attack of the Clones," Yoda gets the last line with "begun the Clone Wars have." This...doesn't really make sense. They've just fought the first battle in that war--how is Yoda to know what the conflict will come to be known as? The answer, of course, is that he's lampshading it for the viewers who remember that line from ANH. So when I criticize the sequels on this, please don't think that means the earlier movies are above criticism.
However, I do feel that the ST has a lot more lines that semi-directly address the viewer, with a "oh hey, you are watching Star Wars." Or that don't hang together in the context of the series overall. In some cases that's just annoying; in others, it doesn't even make sense ICly. So let's go through them.
The Force Awakens
Rey and her backstory
"Classified. Really? Me too. Big secret." Rey talking to BB-8 about where she's from.
"What girl?" Kylo on hearing about Rey.
"Who's the girl?" *cuts away* Maz talking to Han.
One of the big questions running through TFA is "where is Rey from"? That's not just the audience's reaction to "hmm, a new protagonist! let's learn more about her!" but is explicitly brought up by the characters themselves. Rey jokes about her origins as if talking to the viewers, Kylo reacts strongly to hearing about a girl, and the movie doesn't reveal Han's answer to Maz, as if he's hiding something.
This doesn't make any particular theory thrown around by fans between TFA and TLJ's release right or wrong. (Ao3 lists Rey Kenobi, Rey Palpatine, Rey Skywalker, and Rey Solo as popular options, and those are just the freeform canonicals!) But it does suggest that there would be some relevance to her family beyond "she needs to accept that whoever left her on Jakku won't come back for her," a lesson she's taken to heart by the end when she's willing to move forward with the Resistance. If not, why keep poking at it? It wouldn't have been hard to mention "my parents were from Jakku and died there" if it wasn't supposed to be an important plot point. (It boggles the mind that, for one, the high-ups didn't just sit down and have a very small group take as long as they needed to to draft scripts for all three movies before beginning the first. Goose, golden egg, etc.)
"A good question for another time." -Maz on the lightsaber
Again, pointing out the weirdness of having Luke's lightsaber show up with no context for how it got there from Bespin (where's Lando in all of this??)...and then never coming back to it.
"Is there a garbage chute? Trash compactor?" Han to Finn re: Phasma
Phasma ultimately winds up being a minor enough character that we don't necessarily need a whole lot about her other than "the heroes knocked her out and left her for dead," but if I'm being consistent, I should point out that the only reason this is funny is if you've seen ANH. (And the fact that Phasma shows up again briefly in TLJ begs the question of...what was the point of dropping her off shortly before Starkiller Base exploded, if she emerges unscathed?)
The Last Jedi
"Tell your precious princess there will be no terms... there will be no surrender." Hux to Poe
This didn't stand out to me until I went looking for quotes to pull. But...Poe calls Leia "General Organa," not "Princess." Just like everyone else, except maybe Lor San Tekka ("to me she's royalty"), but he's dead and that thread went unexplained too. Why would Hux call Leia a princess? To remind the audience "this is Carrie Fisher from 1977"? Showing he's a bad guy because he refers to a woman as a symbolic figurehead rather than a military leader in her own right, and only a chauvinist would do that? Something else???
"You think what? I'm gonna walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order?" Luke to Rey
Does referring to a lightsaber as a laser sword inherently trivialize the Jedi's seriousness? No, of course not: contrast this line with Anakin from TPM. "I saw your laser sword. Only Jedi carry that kind of weapon."
Anakin is a young child who has never been around a Jedi or immersed in their vocabulary. He refers to the weapon as a "laser sword," because that's literally what he sees.
Rey, however, is familiar with the word "lightsaber" from Maz as well as Kylo Ren. So it's not like Luke, who's perfectly familiar with the term, has to dumb it down for her. Rather, he seems to be mocking us along with Rey for daring to believe that the previous trilogy's protagonist might...go do protagonisty things. Some will say that the fact that he (or his hologram) did in fact do that is evidence that he ate his words, but that should be balanced against his "success" in "I came to this island to die."
Not a line of dialogue, but I feel like this belongs here--Admiral Ackbar shows up again in order to...be killed off with all the other non-Leia officers when the bridge is bombed. What's the point? Bring back a very minor character for the sake of "all right, now get over your nostalgic self"?
Rey: The island. Life. Death and decay, that feeds new life. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence.
Luke: And between it all?
Rey: Balance. And energy. A Force.
Luke: And inside you?
Rey: Inside me the same Force.
Luke: And this is the lesson. That Force does not belong to the Jedi. To say that if the Jedi die, the light dies, is vanity. Can you feel that?
Rey: There's something else beneath the island. A place. A dark place.
Luke: Balance. Powerful light, powerful darkness.
-Has Rey ever claimed that the Force belongs to the Jedi? She's seen Maz say "I am no Jedi, but I know the Force," and Kylo Ren manipulating stuff. We don't know if she even considers herself a Jedi, as opposed to "someone who likes to escape from prison with mind tricks." Absent that, this seems like more talking to the viewers.
-Similarly, equating the Force as the Jedi have used it with "the light" seems out of sync with the other movies. In the OT there's no mention of "balance" or "light." Qui-Gon introduces the notion of "balance" in TPM, but it's not clear what that means--Obi-Wan says Anakin was "supposed to destroy the Sith." More broadly, claiming that "true power and freedom requires equal amounts of goodness and badness" reflects a...pretty warped usage of the words "goodness" and "badness." Like, how am I free or powerful if I have to do evil half the time just 'cuz?
"You've just hidden it away. You know the truth...They were filthy junk traders who sold you off for drinking money. They're dead in a paupers' grave in the Jakku desert. You have no place in this story. You come from nothing. You're nothing." -Kylo to Rey
Ooh boy.
Rey's desire in TFA is for her family to come back. She tells BB-8 she's waiting for her family, she tells Finn she needs to get back to Jakku, Maz tells her that whoever left on Jakku isn't coming back. We don't know if that's her parents, siblings, cousin, father's second cousin's aunt's college roommate! She doesn't express a desire to know who her family and/or parents are, she just wants them in her life. Maybe she already knows the names and identities of the people she's waiting for, although that's not clear given the "classified" line. But presumably, if she already knew her parents were back, or never cared about her in the first place, she wouldn't be waiting for them.
So "you wanted to know who Rey's parents were? Well too bad, they're nobody" is, again, directed to the viewers who dared to form theories (the horror!) And, it's not like we weren't encouraged to do so, again given the "classified" stuff from TFA. But Kylo's use of the word "story" is over-the-top in Kylo talking to us.
"That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love." Rose to Finn
What was Finn just trying to do before she stopped him? Save the rest of the Resistance from the big door weapon thing!
More broadly, the movie seems to be trying to contrast "good/selfless" (often but not always womanly) heroism with "bad/selfish" bravado (exemplified by Poe defying orders in the beginning and getting a bunch of people killed). In this sense, Holdo's sacrifice would fall into the first category. But taking out the First Order ship still seems to fall under the category of "fighting what we hate"!
---
I recognize that much of this might sound very nitpicky. And it is. But I wouldn't have gone looking for more examples of these quotes if TLJ (and TFA to a lesser extent) hadn't been so dissatisfying to begin with! In using "Star Wars" as its own mythology to poke at/tear down, the sequel trilogy awkwardly trips over the fourth wall. If the original trilogy's achievements are portrayed as transient to make the point that "everything is transient and meaningless," then okay. But if so, why should we waste time getting invested in these new characters?
The OT and PT aren't perfect about this. The big example for me is with regard to the Clone Wars. In "A New Hope," Leia's recording says "you [Obi-Wan] served my father in the Clone Wars," and that helps establish a "lived-in" backstory to the universe--although presumably Obi-Wan already knows that, so reminding him is more for the viewers' benefit than his own. However, when the prequels come around with "Attack of the Clones," Yoda gets the last line with "begun the Clone Wars have." This...doesn't really make sense. They've just fought the first battle in that war--how is Yoda to know what the conflict will come to be known as? The answer, of course, is that he's lampshading it for the viewers who remember that line from ANH. So when I criticize the sequels on this, please don't think that means the earlier movies are above criticism.
However, I do feel that the ST has a lot more lines that semi-directly address the viewer, with a "oh hey, you are watching Star Wars." Or that don't hang together in the context of the series overall. In some cases that's just annoying; in others, it doesn't even make sense ICly. So let's go through them.
The Force Awakens
Rey and her backstory
"Classified. Really? Me too. Big secret." Rey talking to BB-8 about where she's from.
"What girl?" Kylo on hearing about Rey.
"Who's the girl?" *cuts away* Maz talking to Han.
One of the big questions running through TFA is "where is Rey from"? That's not just the audience's reaction to "hmm, a new protagonist! let's learn more about her!" but is explicitly brought up by the characters themselves. Rey jokes about her origins as if talking to the viewers, Kylo reacts strongly to hearing about a girl, and the movie doesn't reveal Han's answer to Maz, as if he's hiding something.
This doesn't make any particular theory thrown around by fans between TFA and TLJ's release right or wrong. (Ao3 lists Rey Kenobi, Rey Palpatine, Rey Skywalker, and Rey Solo as popular options, and those are just the freeform canonicals!) But it does suggest that there would be some relevance to her family beyond "she needs to accept that whoever left her on Jakku won't come back for her," a lesson she's taken to heart by the end when she's willing to move forward with the Resistance. If not, why keep poking at it? It wouldn't have been hard to mention "my parents were from Jakku and died there" if it wasn't supposed to be an important plot point. (It boggles the mind that, for one, the high-ups didn't just sit down and have a very small group take as long as they needed to to draft scripts for all three movies before beginning the first. Goose, golden egg, etc.)
"A good question for another time." -Maz on the lightsaber
Again, pointing out the weirdness of having Luke's lightsaber show up with no context for how it got there from Bespin (where's Lando in all of this??)...and then never coming back to it.
"Is there a garbage chute? Trash compactor?" Han to Finn re: Phasma
Phasma ultimately winds up being a minor enough character that we don't necessarily need a whole lot about her other than "the heroes knocked her out and left her for dead," but if I'm being consistent, I should point out that the only reason this is funny is if you've seen ANH. (And the fact that Phasma shows up again briefly in TLJ begs the question of...what was the point of dropping her off shortly before Starkiller Base exploded, if she emerges unscathed?)
The Last Jedi
"Tell your precious princess there will be no terms... there will be no surrender." Hux to Poe
This didn't stand out to me until I went looking for quotes to pull. But...Poe calls Leia "General Organa," not "Princess." Just like everyone else, except maybe Lor San Tekka ("to me she's royalty"), but he's dead and that thread went unexplained too. Why would Hux call Leia a princess? To remind the audience "this is Carrie Fisher from 1977"? Showing he's a bad guy because he refers to a woman as a symbolic figurehead rather than a military leader in her own right, and only a chauvinist would do that? Something else???
"You think what? I'm gonna walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order?" Luke to Rey
Does referring to a lightsaber as a laser sword inherently trivialize the Jedi's seriousness? No, of course not: contrast this line with Anakin from TPM. "I saw your laser sword. Only Jedi carry that kind of weapon."
Anakin is a young child who has never been around a Jedi or immersed in their vocabulary. He refers to the weapon as a "laser sword," because that's literally what he sees.
Rey, however, is familiar with the word "lightsaber" from Maz as well as Kylo Ren. So it's not like Luke, who's perfectly familiar with the term, has to dumb it down for her. Rather, he seems to be mocking us along with Rey for daring to believe that the previous trilogy's protagonist might...go do protagonisty things. Some will say that the fact that he (or his hologram) did in fact do that is evidence that he ate his words, but that should be balanced against his "success" in "I came to this island to die."
Not a line of dialogue, but I feel like this belongs here--Admiral Ackbar shows up again in order to...be killed off with all the other non-Leia officers when the bridge is bombed. What's the point? Bring back a very minor character for the sake of "all right, now get over your nostalgic self"?
Rey: The island. Life. Death and decay, that feeds new life. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence.
Luke: And between it all?
Rey: Balance. And energy. A Force.
Luke: And inside you?
Rey: Inside me the same Force.
Luke: And this is the lesson. That Force does not belong to the Jedi. To say that if the Jedi die, the light dies, is vanity. Can you feel that?
Rey: There's something else beneath the island. A place. A dark place.
Luke: Balance. Powerful light, powerful darkness.
-Has Rey ever claimed that the Force belongs to the Jedi? She's seen Maz say "I am no Jedi, but I know the Force," and Kylo Ren manipulating stuff. We don't know if she even considers herself a Jedi, as opposed to "someone who likes to escape from prison with mind tricks." Absent that, this seems like more talking to the viewers.
-Similarly, equating the Force as the Jedi have used it with "the light" seems out of sync with the other movies. In the OT there's no mention of "balance" or "light." Qui-Gon introduces the notion of "balance" in TPM, but it's not clear what that means--Obi-Wan says Anakin was "supposed to destroy the Sith." More broadly, claiming that "true power and freedom requires equal amounts of goodness and badness" reflects a...pretty warped usage of the words "goodness" and "badness." Like, how am I free or powerful if I have to do evil half the time just 'cuz?
"It's a terrible place filled with the worst people in the galaxy...I wish I could put my fist through this whole lousy, beautiful town." -Rose on Canto Bight
"the worst people"--capitalists and war profiteers. Okay, I can see why Rose would not like them. But are they the worst, really? Worse than the First Order troops who annihilated Paige's squadron a few hours before?
"lousy, beautiful town"--you called it "terrible" five minutes ago and now it's beautiful? We know you don't like it, why explain you want to punch it? (Show vs. tell.) Seems more likely directed at RL military-industrial complexes/late capitalism. ("Beautiful" in that the writers/directors benefit from allowing this system to exist and, like, let them spend lots of money on making films? But also trying to virtue signal and portray onesself as above it.)
Luke: Now that they're extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified....At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.
Rey: And a Jedi who saved him. Yes, the most hated man in the galaxy. But you saw that there was conflict inside him. You believed that he wasn't gone. That he could be turned.
-Who is romanticizing the Jedi in-universe? Seems more targeted at RL fans.
-Who is Darth Sidious? Sure, we know that's the Emperor's Sith name, but does Rey?
-What does she know about Obi-Wan?
-Rey knows that Luke redeemed Anakin, but Kylo Ren still thinks of Anakin as Darth Vader? What does the rest of the galaxy know about those two?
"OK. We get in, we find this codebreaker, we get out." -Rose
"Without a codebreaker to break us onto Snoke's Star Destroyer.... what do we do?" -Rose to Finn (DJ, asleep, conveniently overhearing)
Let's allow the plot device of "a talented codebreaker just happens to hear the plan;" why is Rose even saying this out loud? Finn knows what the plan is. So do we, for that matter! Why do they need to keep reminding each other?
"Page-turners they were not." -Yoda to Luke
-Has Yoda read them?
-Does he care?
-Is this an implicit way of saying "actually our old Order way of doing things was terrible, you and/or Rey can do much better"?
"You have no idea how much that medallion means to her." -Finn to DJ re: Rose
Again, we know the medallion is significant because we saw Paige with the other half. What does Finn know about it??
"You go on. I've said it enough." -Leia to Holdo re: "May the Force be with you"
Pointing out that it's become a cliche phrase (in both universes)? (In contrast I thought Finn's usage of it when he's trying to get away from Rose in her first scene was great. Reflects the struggle they might have between his newfound fame and her hero-worship, but still feels in-character.)
"She was more interested in protecting the light than she was seeming like a hero." Leia on Holdo
"the light"=the Resistance survivors? (Most of whom are about to be wiped out anyway.) Again, usage of "light" feels weird. And are these goals really incompatible? Luke "protects" the last few stragglers and also manages to look like a hero doing it; Rose gets knocked out protecting Finn.
"We got caught, I cut a d-d-d-deal." -DJ
When?! In his last scene he, Finn, and Rose were all together when they got captured. Did they get split up to offer separate deals? Has he been planning to sell them out since before they left Canto Bight? How do you get from point A to point Q?
"After the Rebels are gone, we will go to his planet and obliterate the entire island." -Snoke
When did he learn about Ahch-To/that Luke was on an island?
"the worst people"--capitalists and war profiteers. Okay, I can see why Rose would not like them. But are they the worst, really? Worse than the First Order troops who annihilated Paige's squadron a few hours before?
"lousy, beautiful town"--you called it "terrible" five minutes ago and now it's beautiful? We know you don't like it, why explain you want to punch it? (Show vs. tell.) Seems more likely directed at RL military-industrial complexes/late capitalism. ("Beautiful" in that the writers/directors benefit from allowing this system to exist and, like, let them spend lots of money on making films? But also trying to virtue signal and portray onesself as above it.)
Luke: Now that they're extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified....At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.
Rey: And a Jedi who saved him. Yes, the most hated man in the galaxy. But you saw that there was conflict inside him. You believed that he wasn't gone. That he could be turned.
-Who is romanticizing the Jedi in-universe? Seems more targeted at RL fans.
-Who is Darth Sidious? Sure, we know that's the Emperor's Sith name, but does Rey?
-What does she know about Obi-Wan?
-Rey knows that Luke redeemed Anakin, but Kylo Ren still thinks of Anakin as Darth Vader? What does the rest of the galaxy know about those two?
"OK. We get in, we find this codebreaker, we get out." -Rose
"Without a codebreaker to break us onto Snoke's Star Destroyer.... what do we do?" -Rose to Finn (DJ, asleep, conveniently overhearing)
Let's allow the plot device of "a talented codebreaker just happens to hear the plan;" why is Rose even saying this out loud? Finn knows what the plan is. So do we, for that matter! Why do they need to keep reminding each other?
"Page-turners they were not." -Yoda to Luke
-Has Yoda read them?
-Does he care?
-Is this an implicit way of saying "actually our old Order way of doing things was terrible, you and/or Rey can do much better"?
"You have no idea how much that medallion means to her." -Finn to DJ re: Rose
Again, we know the medallion is significant because we saw Paige with the other half. What does Finn know about it??
"You go on. I've said it enough." -Leia to Holdo re: "May the Force be with you"
Pointing out that it's become a cliche phrase (in both universes)? (In contrast I thought Finn's usage of it when he's trying to get away from Rose in her first scene was great. Reflects the struggle they might have between his newfound fame and her hero-worship, but still feels in-character.)
"She was more interested in protecting the light than she was seeming like a hero." Leia on Holdo
"the light"=the Resistance survivors? (Most of whom are about to be wiped out anyway.) Again, usage of "light" feels weird. And are these goals really incompatible? Luke "protects" the last few stragglers and also manages to look like a hero doing it; Rose gets knocked out protecting Finn.
"We got caught, I cut a d-d-d-deal." -DJ
When?! In his last scene he, Finn, and Rose were all together when they got captured. Did they get split up to offer separate deals? Has he been planning to sell them out since before they left Canto Bight? How do you get from point A to point Q?
"After the Rebels are gone, we will go to his planet and obliterate the entire island." -Snoke
When did he learn about Ahch-To/that Luke was on an island?
"You've just hidden it away. You know the truth...They were filthy junk traders who sold you off for drinking money. They're dead in a paupers' grave in the Jakku desert. You have no place in this story. You come from nothing. You're nothing." -Kylo to Rey
Ooh boy.
Rey's desire in TFA is for her family to come back. She tells BB-8 she's waiting for her family, she tells Finn she needs to get back to Jakku, Maz tells her that whoever left on Jakku isn't coming back. We don't know if that's her parents, siblings, cousin, father's second cousin's aunt's college roommate! She doesn't express a desire to know who her family and/or parents are, she just wants them in her life. Maybe she already knows the names and identities of the people she's waiting for, although that's not clear given the "classified" line. But presumably, if she already knew her parents were back, or never cared about her in the first place, she wouldn't be waiting for them.
So "you wanted to know who Rey's parents were? Well too bad, they're nobody" is, again, directed to the viewers who dared to form theories (the horror!) And, it's not like we weren't encouraged to do so, again given the "classified" stuff from TFA. But Kylo's use of the word "story" is over-the-top in Kylo talking to us.
"That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love." Rose to Finn
What was Finn just trying to do before she stopped him? Save the rest of the Resistance from the big door weapon thing!
More broadly, the movie seems to be trying to contrast "good/selfless" (often but not always womanly) heroism with "bad/selfish" bravado (exemplified by Poe defying orders in the beginning and getting a bunch of people killed). In this sense, Holdo's sacrifice would fall into the first category. But taking out the First Order ship still seems to fall under the category of "fighting what we hate"!
---
I recognize that much of this might sound very nitpicky. And it is. But I wouldn't have gone looking for more examples of these quotes if TLJ (and TFA to a lesser extent) hadn't been so dissatisfying to begin with! In using "Star Wars" as its own mythology to poke at/tear down, the sequel trilogy awkwardly trips over the fourth wall. If the original trilogy's achievements are portrayed as transient to make the point that "everything is transient and meaningless," then okay. But if so, why should we waste time getting invested in these new characters?
