Ring composition in The Force Awakens

So, who's gonna talk first? Am I gonna talk first?
A question for the experts, this movie is linked to the Phantom Menace and A New Hope only? But then there's Mustafar on the snow, why? They want to go Obi Wan Anakin on reverse in one trilogy?
A penny for your thoughts!

Maria Antonietta wrote:So, who's gonna talk first? Am I gonna talk first?
A question for the experts, this movie is linked to the Phantom Menace and A New Hope only? But then there's Mustafar on the snow, why? They want to go Obi Wan Anakin on reverse in one trilogy?
A penny for your thoughts!

@Maria Antonietta

It's linked to more than those movies. I'd say pretty much every OT and TP movie has its moments in TFA. But since Reylo is my point of interest, they are mostly linked to ROTS:





This moment in TFA is mix of ANH (Vader/OB1 - hero loses mentor, ROTJ - Vader spares Luke, ROTS - Anakin commits his darkest crimes and cries).

Also, Kylo's face at the end of showdown with Rey vs Anakin's at the end of showdown with Obi Wan:





There are billion examples.

Darth Dementor wrote:

@Darth Dementor

It's not available for me

@maria antonietta

Try this link instead.
https://vimeo.com/160263943

Darth Dementor wrote:@maria antonietta

Try this link instead.
https://vimeo.com/160263943

@Darth Dementor

Thanks for sharing. The many many references to ANH can't be denied but what I find most interesting is that the video didn't include anything of Rey and Kylo's interactions. THAT is the new story being told here, and everyone complaining about how similar the two movies are must be missing it.

Darth Dementor wrote:@maria antonietta

Try this link instead.
https://vimeo.com/160263943

@Darth Dementor

Thanks!

BastilaBey wrote:

Darth Dementor wrote:@maria antonietta

Try this link instead.
https://vimeo.com/160263943

@Darth Dementor

Thanks for sharing. The many many references to ANH can't be denied but what I find most interesting is that the video didn't include anything of Rey and Kylo's interactions. THAT is the new story being told here, and everyone complaining about how similar the two movies are must be missing it.

@BastilaBey

Yep. There's never been anything close to Reylo in the SW movies. This will be the first time a Force Sensitive couple will be paired on screen.

So beautiful, you can feel the lack of a Kenobi, seriously. They say that this movie is a copy of anh, but no one has the courage to say that maybe rey is really a Kenobi.

This video is interesting as well.

https://vimeo.com/160504168

It's different from the previous one from Vimeo as well.

I can't embed it.

@vaderito & I have discussed all of the very sneaky use of elements from ESB that are in TFA, including setting up both the epic love story and obsessive hunt/duel between the two FS characters into one storyline. And two of the scenes with Snoke are basically Vader discussing Luke with the Emperor, where you suspect that both parties are lying to the other about having prior knowledge about who this person is.

snufkin wrote:@vaderito & I have discussed all of the very sneaky use of elements from ESB that are in TFA, including setting up both the epic love story and obsessive hunt/duel between the two FS characters into one storyline. And two of the scenes with Snoke are basically Vader discussing Luke with the Emperor, where you suspect that both parties are lying to the other about having prior knowledge about who this person is.

@snufkin

I have a question. How do you know a difference between a callback and a Ring Composition? For example, we see Hanleia on Hoth and reylo on SKB as Ring Composion. But Finnrey see forehead kiss and Ring Composition with Hanleia forehead kiss in ESB. So which is which? They can't do the same Chiasmus with 2 different things if I get it correctly. Either Hoth/SKB couples are Chiasmus or forehead/forehead are.

vaderito wrote:

snufkin wrote:@vaderito & I have discussed all of the very sneaky use of elements from ESB that are in TFA, including setting up both the epic love story and obsessive hunt/duel between the two FS characters into one storyline. And two of the scenes with Snoke are basically Vader discussing Luke with the Emperor, where you suspect that both parties are lying to the other about having prior knowledge about who this person is.

@snufkin

I have a question. How do you know a difference between a callback and a Ring Composition? For example, we see Hanleia on Hoth and reylo on SKB as Ring Composion. But Finnrey see forehead kiss and Ring Composition with Hanleia forehead kiss in ESB. So which is which? They can't do the same Chiasmus with 2 different things if I get it correctly. Either Hoth/SKB couples are Chiasmus or forehead/forehead are.

@vaderito

I probably don't have a good (meaning academically precise because I'm a nerd) grasp on the difference between the two. But chiasmus/Ring Composition is supposed to be phrased in a way that the pattern doesn't just repeat, but repeats in reverse order. Or being a RPCV, the line I know by heart is JFK's "Ask not what you can do for your country..."

Poetry and musical phrasing seem to be the two examples mentioned most frequently and from what I remember of reading the Making Star Wars site, the essays show how George Lucas set up both the cinematography and settings/action to be exact parallel repeating patterns of the corresponding original trilogy movie. So a battle Hoth at the beginning of ESB is reflected back with a battle on a hot desert planet at the end of AotC. That would appear to be repeating the pattern except in reverse order (and making some pretty boring storytelling IMO).

Callbacks would maybe be what's seen in TFA? Not just the sleight of trick references to the original movie to trick most viewers into ignoring the story being set up, but also as a mash-up (which is more the era we live in). The 'meeting with the Emperor/meeting with Snoke' discussion is maybe a callback? Because it comes from ESB and is exactly the same set up in terms of disturbance in the Force, we have a new enemy, Luke is mentioned (and we know Rey='the new Jedi'), but that Vader/KR have a personal conflict of interest with the enemy being discussed.

Maybe chiasmus would be your example, though not perfect of Han & Leia's love affair takes flight while they argue/fight in the middle of a battle on an ice planet = Rey & KR love affair sparks while they fight in the middle of a battle on an ice planet. To make it perfectly chiasmatic (is that a word?), they should be having the fight on a desert planet. But one is at the beginning of the movie and one is at the end.

Like I said, talking out of my a** but that would be my guess. And the callbacks in TFA are mostly to trick people from seeing the actual story that's being set up (everything with Finn comes to mind).

@snufkin Thank you!

vaderito wrote:@snufkin Thank you!

@vaderito

That was my best guess, hopefully not too wrong.

Duh, so thinking about about the set up of paralleling the meeting with the Emperor/Snoke scenes. We know the Emperor is dumb b/c ultimately, he screwed over Vader and led to the death of his wife/losing out on having a family/betraying the best friend who was like an older brother. So the scene with Snoke is a callback b/c his test is to do what Vader couldn't by ordering Han's death. Which happens. But if it's also setting up Luke's return and an overt reference to what we know Rey will become (the New Jedi), then we know that Snoke is equally as dumb. Because you told this guy to kill his father, that went horribly wrong and wounded him. Think he's gonna listen to you a 2nd time when you order him to kill the woman he's fallen in love with (the Force is tricky like that). Also might explain some of his paranoia and craziness in trying to keep her with him and not escape with Finn. He knows that she's seen the map (has the information on how to reach Luke) and once he figures out that she's FS, he can put two and two together. If she escapes and reaches the Resistance, likely his mother will appoint her to be the person to go find Luke, thus fulfilling the New Jedi part of Snoke's comments. And because he's already fallen for her, he knows that puts her in the enemies category, which Snoke will order him to kill her. So maybe (total conjecture here), he's trying to prevent that from happening because of how he already feels about her?

snufkin wrote:

vaderito wrote:@snufkin Thank you!

@vaderito

That was my best guess, hopefully not too wrong.

Duh, so thinking about about the set up of paralleling the meeting with the Emperor/Snoke scenes. We know the Emperor is dumb b/c ultimately, he screwed over Vader and led to the death of his/losing out on having a family. So the scene with Snoke is a callback b/c his test is to do what Vader couldn't by ordering Han's death. Which happens. But if it's also setting up Luke's return and an overt reference to what we know Rey will become (the New Jedi), then we know that Snoke is equally as dumb. Because you told this guy to kill his father, that went horribly wrong and wounded him. Think he's gonna listen to you a 2nd time when you order him to kill the woman he's fallen in love with (the Force is tricky like that). Also might explain some of his paranoia and craziness in trying to keep her with him and not escape with Finn. He knows that she's seen the map (has the information on how to reach Luke) and once he figures out that she's FS, he can put two and two together. If she escapes and reaches the Resistance, likely his mother will appoint her to be the person to go find Luke, thus fulfilling the New Jedi part of Snoke's comments. And because he's already fallen for her, he knows that puts her in the enemies category, which Snoke will order him to kill her. So maybe (total conjecture here), he's trying to prevent that from happening because of how he already feels about her?

@snufkin

I love that! Snoke is totally stupid. When she said "brring herr to meeeee" I was, like, oh you dumba**. I think he thinks that, because romantic love turned Anakin to the DS but familial to the LS, that only familial love is dangerous. hence trying to rid Kylo of familial connections. But he seems like planning to make rey an ally or die, which is what Palp planned with Luke. We know how that went down. So, in short, Snoke is underestimating romantic love because of past events with Anakin.

@vaderito Snoke is all about the Bloodline, so he has no clue that there could be anything other type of emotional (not to mention sexual) ties that are a threat to his control of the situation. She's not just a threat because of being FS and trained by Luke, she's a threat because she holds a way more primal emotional connection w/KR. That sort of works as chiasmus, doesn't it? Romantic love caused the fall and famlial love caused the return. In this case, what we think/hope is happening is that familial love caused the fall and romantic/sexual love will cause the return.

snufkin wrote:@vaderito Snoke is all about the Bloodline, so he has no clue that there could be anything other type of emotional (not to mention sexual) ties that are a threat to his control of the situation. She's not just a threat because of being FS and trained by Luke, she's a threat because she holds a way more primal emotional connection w/KR. That sort of works as chiasmus, doesn't it? Romantic love caused the fall and famlial love caused the return. In this case, what we think/hope is happening is that familial love caused the fall and romantic/sexual love will cause the return.

@snufkin

That's totally Chiasmus if there was ever one.

And as with Luke and Vader, it goes both ways with these two characters. He's gonna break ranks because of her and she's gonna rescue him same way she rescued BB-8 and Finn but it's even more personal because of how well she knows him/what he's been through and the reciprocal feelings. The Force Bond and emotional bond is more powerful than anything Snoke has going on.

I was putting this together for the Rey Kenobi Thread. But here you go. Small qoutes.. for context and clarification


Now, according to George Lucas, the similarities were deliberate. And during the making of the prequels, he actually spoke fairly often about this use of repetition in Star Wars. “I create themes,” he told Entertainment Weekly back in 2002, “and I repeat those themes, in different chords and different arrangements.” Just like a piece of music. On The Phantom Menace’s audio commentary, Lucas stated, “It’s very, very clear in the two trilogies that I’m putting the characters in pretty much the same situations, sometimes even using the same dialogue so that the father and son go through pretty much the same experience.”

So, just as George Lucas borrowed from a multitude of ancient sources in crafting the story of his modern myth, the use of multiple types of parallelism suggests that he also borrowed from ancient sources in creating the structure (or form) of his myth. But now that we know a little bit about the concept of parallelism

In her 2000 essay, “The Phantom Menace: Repetition, Variation, Integration,” she argues that with the prequels, George Lucas was creating something unique in popular film:

Not a series of narratively independent sequels and prequels (the normal mode in movie sequelization), focused on film genre conventions and/or on specific actors/roles, nor an old-fashioned serial with (merely) narratively interlocking episodes, but an epic mythological saga—full of exotic locales and monsters, like the sagas of old—consisting of at least six mutually-dependent parts interrelated in an intricately designed narrative, mythological, and metaphoric whole. 5

This means that Lucas was expanding the original trilogy into an “epic sextet, with patterns of plot and structure, cinematic allusions, and visual imagery acquiring meaning above all from [their] interrelationships.” 6 So, according to Lancashire, each film should be read in terms of its part in the larger, unified whole.

Lucas himself alluded to this in an interview following the release of Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones (2002): “Each episode has to stand on its own and have meaning on its own—except that it’s only one chapter in the book. It’s not the book. I can’t sacrifice one for the other, so I’m constantly balancing between the now and the larger picture. The now has to be engaging, but the larger picture is what’s really important.” 7


Repeating the patterns of plot and myth, Lancashire argues, gives the saga, among other things, “a sense of repeating, increasingly complex cycles of human experience,” within individual lives, from one generation to the next,

Because here’s the thing: The “intertextual patternings,” while critical to reading the films the way Lucas intended, are actually small pieces of a much larger, more complex puzzle. And while many have unknowingly stumbled upon some of the pieces over the years, no one has discovered the underlying pattern and discussed how all of the pieces fit together and what the completed picture looks like (and possibly represents)—until now.
A ring composition, according to Douglas, is essentially a “large-scale, blown-up version of the same structure.” 18 (It’s also commonly referred to as “chiastic structure” or “inverted parallelism.”)

@spacebaby45678 Can you write a meta on exact Reylo scenes where chiasmic structure is applied? I think that Mustafar/SKB would be it (Anidala ends, Reylo begins) but I don't want to be biased.

vaderito wrote:@spacebaby45678 Can you write a meta on exact Reylo scenes where chiasmic structure is applied? I think that Mustafar/SKB would be it (Anidala ends, Reylo begins) but I don't want to be biased.

@vaderito

Sure, not a problem, but I think that reverse or inverted Anidala begins in the Takodona forest.

spacebaby45678 wrote:

vaderito wrote:@spacebaby45678 Can you write a meta on exact Reylo scenes where chiasmic structure is applied? I think that Mustafar/SKB would be it (Anidala ends, Reylo begins) but I don't want to be biased.

@vaderito

Sure, not a problem, but I think that reverse or inverted Anidala begins in the Takodona forest.

@spacebaby45678

Agreed. Write a meta!

Based on Ring Comp theory, I think that Finn is a Calarissian, which makes TFA Finn's character come together for me and I understand why  Rey ask for the "Bonding Tape"  aka  "quick friendship"  between Rey & Finn. ( Kasdan's writing style) . Based on this theory you can add BFF to the things the Rey ends up with that should have been Kylo's...


Lando was Han's Best Friend
Obi was Anakin's best Friend

Now in a reversal by the end of TFA a Calarissian and a Kenobi hate Ben Skywalker Solo,

spacebaby45678 wrote:Based on Ring Comp theory, I think that Finn is a Calarissian, which makes TFA Finn's character come together for me and I understand why  Rey ask for the "Bonding Tape"  aka  "quick friendship"  between Rey & Finn. ( Kasdan's writing style) . Based on this theory you can add BFF to the things the Rey ends up with that should have been Kylo's...


Lando was Han's Best Friend
Obi was Anakin's best Friend

Now in a reversal by the end of TFA a Calarissian and a Kenobi hate Ben Skywalker Solo,

@spacebaby45678

So in tfa there's even esb?