Girls in Action Movies / Bad SW Spaceships

Just wait until I go off against China, the USA labor participation rate from 1990 to 2015, and the lack of creativity in spaceship design in the new SW movies.

 

I sure don't. So I'll just see myself out...

 

What I did probably did was fill in the "Asian culture" blanks in my mind. It's probable that Justin Lin wanted to leave those cultural aspects (Asian Fail, iPod for straight A's, Asian food, etc.) out of it to have a stronger plot or better pacing. Or perhaps he was keeping in mind Hollywood expectations ("Asian" typically does not sell, therefore making the movie more transplant-able would widen its appeal). Stephanie Vandergosh was probably used in the script to so some Hollywood executive wouldn't have been too "ching-chong-ed" out.

 

LOL, @OJneg puts it's succinctly for me.

In terms of gender roles and what qualities are traditionally assigned as masculine for feminine, that's totally another discussion. It's not an either or for me at all. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was a great example of this. Kind of a depressing and super violent science fiction anime. Instead of Paul Atreides, we get Nausicaä, the girl protagonist. She's a scientist, environmentalist, pacifistic, who is thrust into the middle of wars between states competing for scarce resources. There are big airships, explosions, guns, mega death weapons, etc. When my daughter was younger, she wanted to see this over and over. She could identify with Nausicaä.

 

This takes time and patience, especially since things are done in written form. I find your lack of faith (of the people engaged here being able to reach a understanding) disturbing. You also kind of jumped in when when things were concluding.

 

I know you and @MuppetFace don't like these conversations, but I like them because it allows us to really get to know each other, differences be damned. We learn a lot of little things about each other through these kinds of dialogues, however messy they can be. There are enough checks in place to prevent it from going overboard, like a few months ago when I was reminded that my suggestion that immigrants must swear to uphold the laws of the USA over any the law, including religious law was out of place on this forum.

I also feel the audio discussions have been too polite and too tame. Too boring. I wanted to rile people up with a topic that I didn't feel was too overly political (to but truthful, I didn't consider this political at all; but then again, everything is political these days with how super sensitive we've all been taught to be, from universities to the work environment.)

So can we talk about spaceship designs in The Farce Awakens and Bogue One?

 

Don't worry. I'm sure the SW franchise will correct itself. It will eventually end with Rey being the reincarnation of Quan Yin, Virgin Mary, Tara, etc. of SW universe. It will be revealed that the Jedi Order was actually founded on "feminine" energies, the "mother" and all that jazz; and that over time, the Jedi lost their way and became a bunch of mostly old senile monastic dudes like Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson (with the occasional hot lady minor-Jedi with tentacles on top of her head) who were more interested in building penis shaped Jedi temples, masturbating about "balancing" the Force, sparring with their long light swords, and mind-moving rocks, than actually taking care of the universe.

 

The sound aspects tie in with creatively bland vehicles and spaceships. It's just part of the modern movie-making chain. (For those who are not aware, I work in the big movie business, mostly in the post-production process.)

We don't get the sense that auteurs, in their respective fields of expertise, are behind the creative process. Instead, we get the feeling that "employees", utilizing cookie-cutter processes and templates are now doing this work. It's more about money and getting things done quickly than the art.

Take for example the land vehicles.

Luke's landspeeder was the shits! I mean take a look a this. Keeping in mind this was the late 70s of course.


I mean, that thing is fricking awesome. It's a space Corvette or Camaro. (Does anyone get the other movie reference?) The equivalent of something my wife back then as a teen (with her curly poodle-dog permed hair back then) would have loved to own. (The Camaro was her car).

And I would love to build a Lego of that too! As an aside, I was really looking forward to these new Star Wars movies, imagining all the new Lego sets I could build (the old sets are all discontinued), but unfortunately, all the new vehicles and spaceships suck. I have ZERO interest in building this for example:



Notice how Luke's landspeeder isn't just a more awesome design, but also executed in a much more realistic way, reminiscent of an actual beat up vehicle that a young person would have been driving in the late 70s. Also, what pisses me off is this: why does Rey get a space tractor-moped and Luke get a space Camaro? Oh, maybe it's because she's a girl and doesn't care about these things. This is bullshit. Rey would have had the spirit to build something awesome for herself. She certainly didn't lack the resources with her skills and the parts of a crashed Star Destroyer around. She didn't exactly have much else to do. Why couldn't she DIY something awesome like Anakin's podracer out of spare parts? This would make sense. Oh wait, that's because she's a girl.

Seriously, my daughter would not be caught dead in that POS space tractor-moped. She'd disown me if I ever tried to pick her up from school in that.