Response to Plague of Gripes' "Darth Maul [Art Gripe]"

So, Plague of Gripes talks about the new Star Wars movie, and starts with bitching about the people who are bitching that the new movie is shit. And he also goes on to say that their complaints are non-constructive and related to the ‘power fantasy’-esce nature of star wars with lightsaber battles and shit I guess. But there’s also a lot of nitpicking and needless complaining coming from the fans about The Last Jedi, which I’m sure there’s plenty of on the internet, I can’t argue with that. He also explains that he finds himself in the middle on the subject of the new movie and the SJW-ish politics that have now seemed to try to hijack the new Star Wars movie. And how he can’t discuss gripes about the movie without either political side attacking him, which is true. And he admits that the films try to wedge in too much politics, which is important because this is where I start to find an issue with Plague’s argument here.

He then starts with his first real criticism of the film by saying there wasn’t enough characterization, the casino scene was baffling and the main character is way too Mary Sue. And I agree with him, but I think he fails to see the connection between these problems and the politics that have been forced into these films by their creators. There seems to be a certain arrogance exuding from these new main characters, Finn and Rey, that they don’t need characterization, that they deserve to be the heroes just as much, nay, more than Luke or Han or Chewy or Leia as they one by one get killed off around these new nobodies that are hamfisted into the role of ‘saving the galaxy’. And it doesn’t matter if they aren’t actually as good or as well established or as well developed as the last heroes, because we (the SJW’s) are in charge now, and we’re going to force these characters down your throats whether you like them or not, whether they are good or not.

It’s the arrogance that they expect the viewer to accept what they’re told instead of trying to convince the viewer to think for themselves. These new people at the helm of star wars should instead try to make art that’s actually well written and have the characters be self-evidently good, instead of, “well, our main characters are a woman and black man, what more characterization do you need?”. It reeks of identity politics (which inevitably leads to racial stereotypes as you group people based on how they identity instead of their actual character), it reeks of SJW mentality, it’s plainly there for anyone to see, and it’s the primary reason the films bother me.

Plague says that the political arguments surrounding the Last Jedi are weird and bizarre because it’s Star Wars, “It’s just a little dumb story about a green man in a forest teaching a man to move things with his head and that’s all it’s ever been…” The way he just briskly says this after admitting that there are politics wedged in the film kind of pisses me off, because he’s outright dismissing the negative consequences these politics have had on the writing of this story. And he’s angry at the people who are bothered that their star wars has been politicized, and he views their counter-arguments of the film politics as just another unjustified political squabble. Plague is somehow managing to bitch about every cultural mass around this film regardless if they actually have any validity to what they’re saying or not. He doesn’t care who’s right or wrong, he’s just angry the conversation exists in the first place. He questions the validity of the political discussion, but it’s not the fans that politicized it, it’s the people who wrote the damn thing that opened this can of worms. If you don’t care about star wars in general, why do you care about this legitimate conversation between some of the people watching the movie and the people who make the movie?

This brings me to Plagues next contention; the new Solo film flopped because it had even more SJW politics surrounding, like a cloud of fart gas, and that’s apparently an issue that lies close to Plague’s heart, but he hasn’t actually seen the movie. Yeah, seems legit. You have no problem morally grandstanding above the entire star wars community, shitting on people for not seeing a movie they don’t want to see, before you’ve even seen the movie yourself. At what point does the failure of a movie fall on the heads of the people who made it and not the people who are ‘supposed’ to consume it? But Plague wants the fans to specifically outline exactly what they want fixed as scientifically as possible, instead of the fans just saying, “maybe someone else should make Star Wars”. Apparently that’s not a valid opinion, that’s just stupid consumers whining. Imagine if some company bought the rights to Lord of the Rings and just started making sequels with a team of people that were more interested in pushing an agenda than actually creating a story, the fans of Lord of the Rings might just generally say, “Hey, maybe those people in particular are a bad choice to create this. Maybe someone else should.” I would personally view that opinion as valid, even without ever seeing this new Lord of the Rings movie. I wouldn’t bitch about the unfairness of fans not liking what they made.

Another minor point I disagree with Plague about is his issue with people enjoying the lightsaber fights in Star Wars, likening it to a ‘toy mentality’ as he phrases it. He didn’t like the fight between Yoda and Palpatine, and holds this up as his primary example of what Star Wars shouldn’t be. Here’s my problem with that, that fight actually is necessary and here’s why; Palpatine just turned the most promising Jedi Knight in the order into a Sith Lord, killed every Jedi in the Jedi Temple in Coruscant and across the galaxy with Order 66, and eliminated the senate making him emperor of the galaxy. Palpatine has performed a Hitler, Nazi Germany-esce coup d'etat of the galactic government, he’s played every card in his hand. This leaves Yoda as the most powerful Jedi left in the galaxy, as well as the oldest. If anyone has a dog in this fight, it’s Yoda, and he thought that he could take Sith Hitler out before his reign really began. And it’s his failure that explains why Obi-wan and Yoda go into hiding, why they start consolidating what little power remains in their grasp. They can’t win a head-on fight with Palpatine, if they could, there would be no original trilogy. And if that was excluded and never talked about, that would have just been another gaping, gaping plot hole people beat George Lucas over the head with. I think the only reason Yoda didn’t fight to the death against Palpatine is because it was a prequel that couldn’t be written that way.That fight demonstrated in the most plainest way possible why Palpatine is in power and there was little in the way of opposition; Palpatine had a fucking plan and executed it flawlessly and it was the hubris of the Jedi that guaranteed his victory. And this is what pisses me off about the people that hold up the original trilogy as the be-all end-all of Star Wars, they think that a Star Wars movie has to be like the original trilogy and any evolution to that is heresy. Adding better and more engaging lightsaber battles is not a bad thing, and is grossly misrepresented by the idea that it’s just ‘kids playing with toys’ mentality. And I’d like to say, this is all coming from a guy who says he’s not a fan of star wars, but he thinks he gets to tell everybody else what star wars should be instead of, I don’t know, the guy who wrote and directed the first six star wars movies.

Plague’s direct quote on what Star Wars should be; “It should never be about power sets and characters getting into big fights with each other and like, badass dark moments, IT HAS TO BE SO DARK. No, don’t do that. It should be always be, foremost about loving the characters, having fun with the characters, going through the conflicts and desires of those main characters in a way that make you care about the outcome, but also fear the potential outcomes that it can create.”

My main response to this is that those, big fights and DARK MOMENT’S that are SO DARK, as you like to refer to them, are those scenes in which you should be FEARING THE POTENTIAL OUTCOME, as you just stated that’s what Star Wars should be about. It’s like you are purposefully being daft about this just to sound smarter and to shit on the collective, anonymous ‘internet’ that you’ve carefully constructed.

I don’t know how Plague sees the force as a limitless thing that has no predefined move-set, as he frames it, and that the prequel films made the force more ‘video game-y”. He also apparently has an issue with Palpatine even having a lightsaber, saying the original movies framed the lightsaber as a ‘jedi’ weapon and it doesn’t make sense for non-jedi to have it. He goes on to say that the force shouldn’t be this light-side roster versus dark-side roster, it should focus more on the grey area in the middle, which I don’t necessarily disagree with, but it’s everything else surrounding what he’s saying. I’m actually surprised to hear Plague say that The Last Jedi is a good movie because Luke doesn’t actually intervene, he’s not the hero, he doesn’t save the day, that’s a good thing because Star Wars shouldn’t be about Luke Skywalker, apparently? He was only the main character for the (better) half of the movie series. I’m all for making room for new characters and moving on to different concepts, but jesus christ, why are you so allergic to the idea that a good guy and a bad guy might actually physically fight each other. Some of the most pivotal moments of the original trilogy are the lightsaber fights, i.e. Vader VS. Ben Kenobi, Luke VS. Vader, and Luke VS. Vader & Palpatine.

The Last Jedi wasn’t a trash heap but it certainly doesn’t deserve praise. Not after the last one was a carbon copy of episode 4 that somehow managed to bother everyone, even though that’s the exact path that the star wars fans put Disney on; “Don’t make it like the prequels, those were horrible, make it more like the original trilogy!” Now everyone’s flipped to “Don’t make it like the original trilogy, make something new and interesting and better.” But The Last Jedi is none of those things. It has cool moments, like the Throne room scene, but that’s it. They butchered Luke’s character to fit in with this “focus on the grey in the middle” bullshit which was completely unnecessary. I would have rather had Luke completely excluded from the film, it wouldn’t have changed a single thing about the actual events that are happening in the galaxy, he’s so removed his presence in the movie doesn’t make any sense, other than to burn down what once was to ‘clear the way to new stuff’, but the burning it all down was completely unnecessary; just move on and start doing your own thing without shitting on the past movies. I think that’s one of the more primary reasons they’ve faced backlash; they can’t just make new star wars, they have to go back and fuck with every single thing that was already established for ‘shock’ value I guess.

It strikes me as the same mentality Plague exudes when he shits on people for liking Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace. “He started out as a dumb toy… Like, he has no lines, he’s not a person.” You don’t need lines to characterize people, Plague, for fuck’s sake, even children understand that. They understood he was a “badass”, as you phrase it, because he killed Liam Neeson, and he had a new weapon that was harder to wield than a normal lightsaber, and proceeds to have a 2 on 1 fight and basically win save for main character bullshittery(very similar problem to Rey beating Kylo in Force Awakens). He was a powerful, cool looking character and yes, that is characterization. That’s not “OOHH, HE LOOK LIKE ACTION FIGURE, I SUCK HIS DICK”. Competency generates admiration, and Darth Maul was competent until he got sliced in half. And by the way, I think it’s bullshit the way they brought him back from the dead, even if I do like what they do with him after that point. It was obvious pandering, and it was more about selling toys than giving him an actual character, as you criticize other people for the same thing you’re engaging in.

So those are all of the thoughts that popped up in my head after watching his video. I think Plague might have hit this subject a little too hard, as he said himself he’s not a fan of star wars. Ultimately I don’t want to silence him with my rebuttal, I want to reach out with my ideas in a similar way that he reached out to his audience with his ideas. And, at the end of the day, I appreciate good conversation and argument, and that’s all I tried to do with this response.