J.J. Abrams On "Star Wars" Cast's Racial and Sexual Diversity 504
Yesterday at Comic-Con, director J.J. Abrams held forth on the racial and sexual diversity of the actors portraying the characters of the Star Wars franchise. From CNET's article:
For Star Wars, it's a complex debate. The franchise has included prominent and strong female characters, like Princess Leia, as well as central characters played by black actors, such as Cloud City administrator Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams, and Jedi Mace Windu, played by Samuel L. Jackson. On the other hand, Jar Jar Binks, a computer-generated alien in 1999's "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace," drew fire from some critics, who said he called to mind demeaning black film characters such as those played by Stepin Fetchit in the 1930s.
(Not to mention other cultural stereotypes that pop up in Episodes I, II, and III.)
Never heard that one before (Score:2, Insightful)
I have never heard of anyone who thought Jar Jar Binks reminded them of black characterisations. Nor has that ever occurred to me. Seriously how long is the bow they are stretching?
Jar Jar Binks made me sick to the stomach because of how he represented the complete destruction of something I loved with a character that I wanted to die in many many horrible and painful ways.
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Insightful)
Watch again, he's obviously a (bad) Jamaican stereotype. That said, that's not the reason I disliked him either.
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Yes, Jar Jar had a vaguely Jamaican accent, but his antics brought to mind the worst of Jerry Lewis, Jim Carey, Lucille Ball or any number of physical comedians, who in my recollection were mostly white. But then, I am too young to have been exposed to any of the black-face BS that the article refers to.
I always found the self-debasing form of 'comedy' to be profoundly embarrassing, and decidedly un-funny. The Star Wars arc was smeared with the use of such techniques. I suppose that if they same techniques
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if Star Wars needs diversity, but Episode I was rude.
It seemed to me that Watto the Slave Owner on Tatooine was a Jewish stereotype (look at his nose and listen to the accent), the Trade Federation were Japanese stereotypes (look at the eyes and accent), and Jar Jar was a Jamaican stereotype.
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Insightful)
And the bad guys were always white men with British accents. Oh noes.
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Insightful)
Watch again, he's obviously a (bad) Jamaican stereotype.
Not obvious to me. If anything, I thought he was vaguely Italian, maybe because I meet a lot more Italians than Jamaicans.
But really, he is just meant to sounds foreign to the others.
The worst negative stereotype in American cinema is the villains all having English accents.
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh BS. On all counts.
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Interesting)
He is Atepin Fetchit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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err Stepin
and seriously it's 2015 time to be able to edit these things
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also the japanese syndicate people. those were pretty blatant.
All in all, a really tasteless set of movies.
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Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Informative)
You would have been 14 or 15 when Episode I came out. Of course you don't remember what us slightly older people meant when we said it sucked. You were busy watching the podracing scene.
One of the major criticisms of Jar-Jar back then was they thought he was speaking with a Jamaican accent. It's so universal that everybody my age or older (and I'm only 34) knows precisely what the phrase "Jar-Jar racist" means. The flying dude with the nose was also widely considered to be a reference to either Jews or Arabs. And I believe there was at least one other group of aliens Lucas put in there that had everyone going "What the fuck George Lucas?"
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its fantasy... i dont to this day think about real life when watching fantasy. those who do IMO are wasting their time because whats the point of fantasy if you are going to do nothing but complain about how its close to X, if you squint real hard and spin around 3 times, it could be taken as racist
these people need to get lives
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Dude, it's a real world accent on a ludicrous creature, and we see at least three of those types of things in the prequels. Why use a real world accent at all?
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Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Insightful)
And why didn't Lucas do what he did for aliens in the original trilogy: Either make them speak some alien language with subtitles, or give them some not-easily-identified accent? Jabba didn't speak like an Italian guy - he spoke in Huttese. Greedo spoke in his own tongue. Chewbacca had his growls that Han and C3P-O translated. Aliens that spoke English (Yoda, Ackbar, etc) did so without any obvious dialect. You didn't have Ackbar shouting "It's a trap!" with a French accent. Yoda didn't speak with a stereotypical Indian accent. The original Star Wars trilogy did alien-speak right, why couldn't the prequels? (Not saying that this would have fixed all of the prequels' problems. Their issues go far deeper than offensive alien accents. Still, it would have been one less thing to cringe at.)
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And why didn't Lucas do what he did for aliens in the original trilogy: Either make them speak some alien language with subtitles, or give them some not-easily-identified accent? Jabba didn't speak like an Italian guy - he spoke in Huttese. Greedo spoke in his own tongue. Chewbacca had his growls that Han and C3P-O translated. Aliens that spoke English (Yoda, Ackbar, etc) did so without any obvious dialect. You didn't have Ackbar shouting "It's a trap!" with a French accent. Yoda didn't speak with a stereotypical Indian accent. The original Star Wars trilogy did alien-speak right, why couldn't the prequels? (Not saying that this would have fixed all of the prequels' problems. Their issues go far deeper than offensive alien accents. Still, it would have been one less thing to cringe at.)
The target audience of the newer movies is a lot younger.
The folks that buy toys and games and collector cups and all that.
Do you think Star Wars (a new hope) was targeted toward kids originally? It wasn't, but it turned out to have tremendous appeal to kids. One they couldn't count on reproducing.
So they had to put in some slapstick comedy to keep the interest (or so they thought), they couldn't use other languages and count on the audience reading subtitles fast (because they aren't that good at re
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the main problem happens when people (movie directors, studio execs, marketing, etc) decides that "gearing X towards kids" means "adding lots of bodily humor, inserting slapstick everywhere, and dumbing everything down." There have been a lot of very successful "kids" movies that don't pander to kids and are quite watchable by adults.
A recent one that comes to mind is Inside Out. Disney/Pixar could have easily made the imaginary friend character (Bing Bong) a Jar-Jar Binks-esque disaster. They could have inserted tons of scenes of the emotions slamming into things. They could have had Anger release gas every time he got furious. They did none of this. Instead, they made a movie that my 8 year old loved, my 11 year old loved, my wife loved, and I (pushing 40) loved. They didn't assume that Kid = Only Appreciates Crude/Low Brow Humor.
I'm not saying there isn't a place for crude humor. Sometimes it works just fine. However, shoehorning that stuff into a movie because "this will appeal to kids" is a recipe for disaster.
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:4, Insightful)
Yoda and Ackbar were white? And displaying their sexuality onscreen?
Wow, I must have been hammered when I was watching those movies...
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Insightful)
> Unfortunately, that really limited the ability of the producers to pick inoffensive accents
Didn't stop them with Yoda.
Also, I guess someone should have mentioned that to the guys who did the Vulcan accent and speech mannerisms, the Klingon accent and speech mannerisms, and frankly almost every Star Trek race gets a speech pattern that is both distinct and not just a copy of something from Earth.
Also, there's a pretty big difference between "we chose an accent" and "we fitted a greedy merchant fly with a hat and a huge nose... you'll NEVER guess what accent he ended up with!"
Anyway, no, it being filmed in the real world didn't stop anyone from doing anything they wanted. This is obviously what they wanted, and it truly is a bit silly.
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Jar-Jar Racist is a term that I have never heard before. And I'm 37, so old enough to have come across it.
Here is a review from our most left leaning publication that would have pointed it out if it was noticed by them. http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... [abc.net.au]
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Interesting)
According to Lucas himself, the neimoidians were speaking with a transylvanian accent. Jar Jar was speaking in an accent Ahmed Best could do. Lucas felt it would make aliens seem more alien if they had accents, and actors only know how to do human language accents so he picked some of those. In retrospect it was a stupid decision, but it wasn't intended racistly.
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Funny)
I just want to know how "ganjadude" was still available to a 30-year-old with a user id pushing 1 million.
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Im a whole generation younger than Lucas and my god I saw it the instant he came on screen, that abomination might as well been wearing blackface and saying yes massa you no want me to sing for yas sir?
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I think whether people were offended really comes down to their level of familiarity with the minstrel show [wikipedia.org] portrayal of african-americans. Because Jar-Jar was a classic example, every last bloody detail except being an alien (and even at that they made sure to style him with a big bottom and lips). Actually, they went even further than a typical minstrel show, adding in your standard "spear chucker" stuff as well. If a person has little familiarity with that past presentation, then I can see why they would
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Yeah, Jar-Jar was definitely based on Jamaican stereotypes. But there's disagreement over whether Watto was Shylock or an Arab stereotype; I tend to think the latter.
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He's blatantly a jewish stereotype. Greedy, yiddish accent, huge hook nose, and in later movies they even give him a round black hat and beard.
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Was this [wikipedia.org] the Wikipedia article you say you read?
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I have never heard of anyone who thought Jar Jar Binks reminded them of black characterizations./quoteI find that very hard to believe.
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If you see jar jar as a black stereo type, maybe you are a racist who sees black people as annoying assholes who can't speak properly?
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Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Insightful)
Jar Jar's speech sounds a lot like Jamaican patois to me. Whether that is racist or not is another story, but Jar Jar's general behavior; stupid, lazy, and addled, do conjure up the way blacks were portrayed in literature and films for a rather long time. I don't think Lucas is a racist, and I've long given him the benefit of the doubt that Jar Jar was yet another iteration of the whole Ewok concept, cute funny talking things that can be made into toys that say things like "E-chooda!", because in Lucas's mind, the kids love them.
The problem with Lucas's theory is that, at least the kids of my generation (what I'd call the Star Wars generation, who were 5-10 years old when the first film came out), we had no interest in any silly characters. The most desirable action figures were Darth Vader (because he was bad ass and could crush peoples' throats with his mind), Chewbacca, Han Solo and Obiwan, because they were the fighters who kicked ass.
I was eleven or twelve years old when Return of the Jedi came out, and I found the Ewok scenes to range from fucking insipid to, in the final battle scenes, be utterly improbable.
But I don't think Jar Jar was any more intentionally racist than the Ewoks (who, so far as I can tell, were heavily modeled on African bush people). It's just that Lucas has so little capability to portray nuance that you end up with broad caricatures that you have to forgive some for confusing with rather well known racist imagery.
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Jar Jar's speech sounds a lot like Jamaican patois to me. Whether that is racist or not is another story, but Jar Jar's general behavior; stupid, lazy, and addled, do conjure up the way Pot Smokers were portrayed in literature and films for a rather long time.
Fixed it for you.
Has anyone ever noticed that the black stereotypes are also the stereotypes applied to pot smokers?
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Insightful)
Jar Jar's speech sounds a lot like Jamaican patois to me. Whether that is racist or not is another story, but Jar Jar's general behavior; stupid, lazy, and addled, do conjure up the way Pot Smokers were portrayed in literature and films for a rather long time.
Fixed it for you.
Has anyone ever noticed that the black stereotypes are also the stereotypes applied to pot smokers?
Dude, don't go down this rabbit hole. There is a black stereotype that matches every single bad thing you could say about people. More then you can count. They range from perfect servant (who should be trusted with your beautiful daughter), to rapist who can only be stopped by vigilante justice (who should be trusted with your beautiful daughter, but only after Dylan Roof has shot him in the head).
The bad black Jamaican stereotype is related to weed, but if Lucas had wanted to make a bunch of weed jokes he didn't have to give the dude an accent. And if he had to pick an accent he could have used almost anything but Jamaica. Make it British, and not cockney, make it fucking Received Pronunciation. That contrast would be hilarious. Dude talks like the queen, acts like your buddy from High School who can't quite function in society. What we have with Jar-Jar is just a sad mix of annoying and anti-Jamaican racism.
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When you couple it with the mock Jamaican patois, it's not exactly an impossible correlation to make. I don't personally agree that Lucas wrote in a racist character, but I can certainly see why some people would see it.
Frankly, the character is so awful and out of place that accusations of racism only add an additional layer on top. Obviously Lucas thought so himself, as Jar Jar's screen time is greatly diminished in the last two prequels, and his most significant contribution to the third film was to be t
Re: Never heard that one before (Score:5, Insightful)
You're intentionally missing the point. there's a cultural history found in movies, tv and books that portray black people as subservient and uneducated stereotypes. This portrayal reinfoced class and racial structures of the day that served to keep black people "in their place". Long tradition of this. summary mentions stepin fetchet. uncle remus. blackface comedy. jar jar is a direct decendent of this line of humor. either you're being purposefully obtuse, or maybe you're from iceland or something and completely unexposed to american culture and history.
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You're intentionally missing the point. there's a cultural history found in movies, tv and books that portray black people as subservient and uneducated stereotypes. This portrayal reinfoced class and racial structures of the day that served to keep black people "in their place". Long tradition of this. summary mentions stepin fetchet. uncle remus. blackface comedy. jar jar is a direct decendent of this line of humor. either you're being purposefully obtuse, or maybe you're from iceland or something and completely unexposed to american culture and history.
So, if you see a subservient and uneducated non-human character on screen, that makes you think of black people?
Interesting. But with such a mindest, I wouldn't complain about other peoples "racism".
Re: Never heard that one before (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no... he's not black. George Lucas simply cast a Caribbean-descended (Barbados and St. Thomas) voice actor to give him a Jamaican-flavored accent. To the most ridiculous character in the movie, who's behavior just happens to strongly resemble the blackface minstrel characters.
Re: Never heard that one before (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear you, and if it was just Jar-Jar I would probably write it off. But the Jewish/Arab caricature in Watto and the Japanese caricature in the Trade Federation just makes it hard to ignore.
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I have never heard of anyone who thought Jar Jar Binks reminded them of black characterisations. ... Seriously how long is the bow they are stretching?
Watch the South Park movie some time.
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Jar Jar Binks rolling, ungrammatical voice sounded like a caricature of a beach living, laid back, ganja smoking Jamaican. And yes, the parody was so horrible that it made me think of the remnants of the last of hte "blackface" shows and minstrel performances from when I was very young.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fil... [telegraph.co.uk]
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The black face is an interesting comment. In Australia we had a variety show called "hey hey it's saturday" it's crap but it had a revival 2 years ago and they got back in the most popular act they had. This act was a bunch of guys pretending to be the jackson 5.
Harry Connick JR was on the judging panel and he completely flipped out because of how awfully racist it was and it was disgusting. The performers, the crowd and the host were caught totally by surprise. The issue, the performers had put on blac
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You thought this because to you (and Lucas) no racism was implied or intended. It was just a silly accent.
But the fact is, it's an exaggerated Jamaican accent. The haggling greedy fly is mideastern, etc. They didn't go and make Klingon for these races, they just took something in the real wold and modified it a little to get their point across.
It's clearly not meant to be offensive but like... really, they couldn't do any better than that?
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Informative)
I have never heard of anyone who thought Jar Jar Binks reminded them of black characterisations. Nor has that ever occurred to me.
The racist nature of the Jar Jar character was a big story back in 1999, when the movie came out. Here's an opinion piece from the late Baltimore Sun columnist Gregory Kane [wikipedia.org], that was published back then: Seeing racism in Jar Jar is seeing phantom menace, June 5, 1999 [baltimoresun.com]
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Seriously? How could you miss the "I'm an uneducated Jamaican" accent -- it was so overt I was absolutely amazed I was seeing it on the screen.
Anecdotal, but opposite to you, EVERYONE I know who saw it immediately thought is was a bad, cheesy Jamaican accent.
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Might be my cultural background. I don't think I have ever met a Jamaican so my only exposure to the accent is on tv...
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Seriously? How could you miss the "I'm an uneducated Jamaican" accent -- it was so overt I was absolutely amazed I was seeing it on the screen.
Anecdotal, but opposite to you, EVERYONE I know who saw it immediately thought is was a bad, cheesy Jamaican accent.
And as we all know, there are not white people in Jamaica, so a green and brown alien creature with a Jamaican accent must be some kind of racial stereotype.
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jamaican creole is overwhelmingly spoken by black people + couple of backpacker hippies.
only thing missing was jar jar smoking a big 'ol fat joint, really. even his ears are meant to flow around like rastas and he goes around as if he was high all the time.
watch some grittier travel shows sometime..
note: this is not why episode 1 sucks though or why the jar jar character sucks.
Re:Never heard that one before (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed, Jar Jar was awful, but anyone trying to make this into any kind of race issue should be tied and quartered. Really, nothing better to think about? Fuck them.
Can Jar Jar please be transsexual?
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Agreed, Jar Jar was awful, but anyone trying to make this into any kind of race issue should be tied and quartered. Really, nothing better to think about? Fuck them.
Can Jar Jar please be transsexual?
Why do you think they are not?
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Agreed, Jar Jar was awful, but anyone trying to make this into any kind of race issue should be tied and quartered. Really, nothing better to think about? Fuck them.
Can Jar Jar please be transsexual?
Why do you think they are not?
George Lucas wouldn't have had that much imagination.
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Yup. It sticks out like a sore thumb. It's obvious the change was made long after the story was written and edited. It's really bad when the whole story is butchered in the process (making Thor a woman for ex, or replacing Wolverine with X-23).
Re: Never heard that one before (Score:4, Insightful)
Saying "It's Inuit" is like saying all Native Americans are Sioux.
Who gives a fuck (Score:2, Insightful)
Getting extremely tired of this overanalytical pussification of society. Time for the rude assholes to take charge again and kick these SJWs to the curb.
Re:Who gives a fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Because being an anti-social prick is so very superior. If it's gone too far in one direction, it's because it started too far in the other. It's time for the PCers and rude assholes to take a seriously needed chill pill. Being civil is what decent people do, and spurning hysterical people, whether because they are overly sensitive, or overly sensitive to overly sensitive people, is what decent people should do.
Grow up. Racial stereotypes, like farting in public, is just plain bad behavior, and it isn't "pussification" to call out incidents of either.
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> Because being an anti-social prick is so very superior.
No because enough already. PC mush heads are making BFDs out of nothing. They are straining as hard as they can to find something victimizing in every innocent thing people do. And it really is insanely annoying, and people get along less, not more.
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That's an almost word-for-word quote from Hermann Göring. I trust this was intentional?
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Navel gazing about cast ratios isn't going to make people to respect one another. It's just grievance mongering and if the Star War franchise wants to indulge all the little hates you've been trained with that's fine, but the audience walk away. I know I'm not paying to be lectured to.
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No. In other words, we are rational people that do not need the state or anyone else to police our thoughts for compliance with particular ideologies and their assumptive positions. This new age 'social justice' stuff reeks of cultish brainwashing.
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the only difference is that our bad guys use the media to do their dirty work while isis just cuts off heads
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Anyone who has to make up a word for "someone who doesn't want to change their sex (with surgery/hormones and/or gender presentation (with behavior/dress/etc)" is pretty clearly demonstrating a rather fucked up brand of intolerance themselves.
Re:Who gives a fuck (Score:4)
Let me guess, you are offended if someone calls you “straight” instead of “normal”. Or white.
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Today I leared 'exert power' is another way of saying 'attain equality'.
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Today I leared 'exert power' is another way of saying 'attain equality'.
If "attain equality" means attacking, doxing, harassing, throwing death threats and getting people fired from their jobs because they have a different viewpoint or because they make a joke you don't like. I don't want anything to do with them, and that is how the fast majority of SJW's are.
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You lot use the term 'SJW' to describe waaaay more people than those you listed in your post.
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Got something specific in mind?
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obvously, minorities would get much more respect if only they stayed in their place
Boycott it for tolerance (Score:5, Funny)
Unless there's a short-haired lesbian wookie I'm boycotting. We need to stand strong for tolerance.
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Young Anakin (Score:5, Funny)
from Episode I is clearly mocking every horrible child stereotype. It is because of these kinds of caricatures that birth rates have been dropping.
Star Wars VII: Revenge of SuperShadow (Score:2, Insightful)
I once was a big Star Wars fan, then I took a these just suck now to the knee.
J.J. Abrams is a fucking idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
Let us recall his previous shitty TV shows and movies:
What do these all have in common? Yes... pushing the viewer's buttons, setting up interesting premises, promising to reveal answers to unexplained events, but never delivering on those promises (Lost, ugh) and leaving us viewers hanging. In general, Abrams' material is nothing but a thinly veiled vehicle for pushing advertisements designed to entice people to tune in for the next episode, with a complete absence of any actual substance or meaning.
Fringe was especially horrible. Every time the protagonists got in trouble, Dr. Walter Bishop would pull something out of his "from a project he worked on the 70s" and mumble a lot, and things would sort of just drag on.
So... thanks but no thanks, Mr. Abrams. Please eat a bowl of warm shit, and retire from Hollywood.
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Or his movies.
I spent probably the last half-hour of his most recent Star Trek movie going "shit, that was a perfect ending, let's see the credits" every five minutes. And then the fight scene would go on some more.
On the other hand, with these movies he's probably got a story arc already mapped out, and most of the appeal of Star Wars is poorly drawn yet compelling characters involved in endless extremely cool action sequences. So this could easily work.
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Star Wars is unashamedly a space opera. It doesn't have to be high culture, it just has to be grand, sweeping, and theatrical.
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He did the Star Trek reboots... those are kind of fun.
trans-hispanic-muslim (Score:2)
And no one cares (Score:2)
The least concerning thing about starwars is the racial diversity. The most concerning thing is them fucking it up again like they did last time.
Would the phantom menace have been better if they were all minorities? Nope.
Does not fucking matter. Further, it is in space and half of the fucking characters are aliens or robots... so... who gives a shit.
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I suspect Abrams is less likely to fuck it up then Lucas.
His Star Trek films have pissed me the fuck off, but that's because they'd be great Star Wars films. Highly dramatic action sequences, great visuals, better acting then either franchise had the first go around, lots of references to shit that's happened before, etc. As Star Trek they were annoying because he doesn't seem to get the details of what makes references to past work cool (ie: Khan is supposed to be so alpha-male sexy that straight guys woul
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We'll see... he could reboot the whole universe and have actors from past films make appearances through visions and shit.
I think if he did to starwars what he did to startrek... you'd understand why the trekies didn't like it.
You don't reboot some franchises. You just don't.
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We have a lot of progressive idiots that like to make everything into a gender/race issue.
Abrams and diversity in Star Trek??? (Score:4, Insightful)
...given his track record of helping build a diverse cast as director of the "Star Trek" reboot films
Uh, was Abrams really going to have white people play Sulu and Uhura? And the only other major female character I remember were the green chick in her underwear and the blond chick in her underwear, so Abrams didn't exactly help along the fairer sex in his films. I think the writer had no clue about the history of Star Trek.
Media continously baiting public with nonsense (Score:2, Interesting)
When people compare Jar Jar to Black peeps they are not really being serious.. it is all a faux argument intended to stoke controversy and whore attention for fame and profit. No matter how repetitive and stupid it becomes people still fall for it over and over again. I am outraged by *** please give me another 15 minutes.
USA white bread break it down (Score:2)
Pandering (Score:2, Insightful)
The cast's "Racial and Sexual Diversity" is more important than having a plot, hiring good actors, making a good movie.
The funny thing is that people that bitch about such things aren't even the target audience for this kind of media. They aren't going to go see the movie anyhow, they are just going to post to tumblr and youtube about how "fair or unfair" it is and ignore it's content.
How Star Wars ruined Hollywood .. (Score:2)
Did ‘Jaws’ and ‘Star Wars’ Ruin Hollywood? [nytimes.com]
The Decline and Fall of Adult Movies [motherjones.com]
How The Blockbuster Ruined Hollywood [soundonsight.org]
Droids? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the Star Wars universe, Droids like Artoo and Threepio and, presumably, millions of others, are self-aware and intelligent. They appear to feel physical pain and have emotions like happiness, fear and sadness.
Yet as near as I can see in the canon, droids have no rights whatsoever. They can be bought and sold, ordered to their death, kidnapped by Jawas, melted, sent to the spice mine of Kessel or smashed into who knows what.
Get a grip (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a grip. It's a movie. It's fantasy. It's not reality.
Sheesh.
The FUD spewed by the "discrimination" crowd is just mind-boggling sometimes.
WTF would it take to satisfy you all? Vader cross-dressing in his apartment?
Are there any... women here? (Score:5, Insightful)
The franchise has included prominent and strong female characters, like Princess Leia
And...? You make it sound like that's just the start of a long list, so let's hear the rest of it.
J. J. Abrahms needs to stop making movies (Score:3)
Posted as Anonymous Coward because I'm certain there are enough JJA fanbois out there that will flame me to the point of being subatomic particles, regardless of being flat-out wrong, and I just don't need to put up with that sort of bullshit.
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Well considering the original Khan was played by a white dude as well (Ricardo Monteban's parents are spanish), there's nothing new there.
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He won't do anything different to Star Wars. But it will work because it's Star Wars.
He doesn't have to be in the movement to get why Boba Fett is cool, he just has to know that a dude in that armor with that last name will make fans very happy in between action scenes. Then he has to deliver on a) cool world-building, b) cool scenes, and c) over-dramatic everything.
Perfect for the guy who cut his teeth giving Sydney Bristow new family members every season on Alias because the "Which Dad is hers?" story-lin
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The trope is "Jews in Space" I believe, and yea. Like a middle-ages racist cartoon or something.
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Why does Star Wars still use Kung Fu fighting?
Man, those cats were fast as lightning.