ARCHIVE: Discussion: Tweets/Instagram - 8

BastilaBey wrote:@reynak

https://twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/751742466580250626

https://twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/751758309749817344

https://twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/719554876318085120

BastilaBey wrote:@Darth Dingbat

It’s true that, as part of the mythopoetic men’s movement, the influence of Bly has to relate to Rian’s understanding of Kylo’s journey. But if we also understand him as Rey’s shadow, Ben coming to terms with the dark and light sides of himself will fit into the wider story, of Rey embracing that unfamiliar aspect of herself.

The Jung references can’t be ignored either – he’s her animus, the masculine aspect of herself that she is yet to acknowledge and nurture in order to become a self-actualized young woman. It’s how their journeys will parallel and complement each other.

Darth Dingbat wrote:In fact, reading Bly hasn't made me 100% pleased either, because at some point a little voice inside me started wondering how much this story even is going to be a heroine's journey. How much is it, in fact, centred on Kylo's struggles and Kylo's character development instead of Rey's? To what extent is Rey supposed to stand for the Beautiful Maiden instead of a hero who gets to confront her own darkness?

But we shall see. I don't really want to doubt anything at this stage... I trust it will be good.

Saracene wrote:

Darth Dingbat wrote:In fact, reading Bly hasn't made me 100% pleased either, because at some point a little voice inside me started wondering how much this story even is going to be a heroine's journey. How much is it, in fact, centred on Kylo's struggles and Kylo's character development instead of Rey's? To what extent is Rey supposed to stand for the Beautiful Maiden instead of a hero who gets to confront her own darkness?

But we shall see. I don't really want to doubt anything at this stage... I trust it will be good.

@Darth Dingbat

I have my doubts about the films exploring Rey’s darkness. Thing is, our culture really likes to think of women as good, kind and nurturing, and is often uncomfortable with acknowledging women’s darker or violent side. I remember the reaction to that image from a while ago of a female soldier abusing an Iraqi prisoner – people seemed to be especially freaked out by the fact that it was a woman committing the act and it clashed badly with the deeply ingrained notion about the female gender.

Like, can you imagine a reverse story about Han and Leia’s daughter who joins the dark side and kills Luke’s students, then kills her father, then is eventually redeemed? I can’t imagine that happen at all. Which is why redemption stories are mostly written about male characters – they’re allowed to be violent and do really terrible things.

Saracene wrote:

Darth Dingbat wrote:In fact, reading Bly hasn't made me 100% pleased either, because at some point a little voice inside me started wondering how much this story even is going to be a heroine's journey. How much is it, in fact, centred on Kylo's struggles and Kylo's character development instead of Rey's? To what extent is Rey supposed to stand for the Beautiful Maiden instead of a hero who gets to confront her own darkness?

But we shall see. I don't really want to doubt anything at this stage... I trust it will be good.

@Darth Dingbat

I have my doubts about the films exploring Rey’s darkness. Thing is, our culture really likes to think of women as good, kind and nurturing, and is often uncomfortable with acknowledging women’s darker or violent side. I remember the reaction to that image from a while ago of a female soldier abusing an Iraqi prisoner – people seemed to be especially freaked out by the fact that it was a woman committing the act and it clashed badly with the deeply ingrained notion about the female gender.

Like, can you imagine a reverse story about Han and Leia’s daughter who joins the dark side and kills Luke’s students, then kills her father, then is eventually redeemed? I can’t imagine that happen at all. Which is why redemption stories are mostly written about male characters – they’re allowed to be violent and do really terrible things.

BastilaBey wrote:@Darth Dingbat Have you watched Rian's existing films? Because I have and...it's not such a surprise. Not to say his female characters aren't fantastic, they are - I adored Rachel Weisz in The Brothers Bloom - but the protagonists are young men with lots and lots of man pain. I think he was chosen for VIII precisely because they planned on delving heavily into Kylo's backstory and motivations.

ZioRen wrote:

Saracene wrote:

Darth Dingbat wrote:In fact, reading Bly hasn't made me 100% pleased either, because at some point a little voice inside me started wondering how much this story even is going to be a heroine's journey. How much is it, in fact, centred on Kylo's struggles and Kylo's character development instead of Rey's? To what extent is Rey supposed to stand for the Beautiful Maiden instead of a hero who gets to confront her own darkness?

But we shall see. I don't really want to doubt anything at this stage... I trust it will be good.

@Darth Dingbat

I have my doubts about the films exploring Rey’s darkness. Thing is, our culture really likes to think of women as good, kind and nurturing, and is often uncomfortable with acknowledging women’s darker or violent side. I remember the reaction to that image from a while ago of a female soldier abusing an Iraqi prisoner – people seemed to be especially freaked out by the fact that it was a woman committing the act and it clashed badly with the deeply ingrained notion about the female gender.

Like, can you imagine a reverse story about Han and Leia’s daughter who joins the dark side and kills Luke’s students, then kills her father, then is eventually redeemed? I can’t imagine that happen at all. Which is why redemption stories are mostly written about male characters – they’re allowed to be violent and do really terrible things.

@Saracene

I keep hoping that this isn't true because otherwise Kylo is going to intensely outshine Rey. Very flawed characters with arcs of struggle and redemption, particularly villains, are always the more interesting stories. Honestly, if they don't explore Rey's dark side to some degree, I'm going to have about zero interest in her character going forward. I've no desire to watch the story of a beacon of light heroine, especially when she's meant to be the protagonist and our connection into the universe. Some people may like that, or appreciate it because they have a role model for little girls, but that's not the kind of story I care about.

But from what they've set up, I feel like they'll explore a darker part of her to some degree. Otherwise where does her tension and story come from? Despite the ridiculousness of some complaints, I can see why people think some avenues of tension were lost when Rey beat Kylo in the first movie and when she displayed such big potential and quick grasp of the Force. If she can so early on overcome outside obstacles, than her main tension has to instead be internal.

Spoiler:

If you’re not convinced more Star Wars movies is a good idea, then the news that Rian Johnson will be writing and directing Star Wars Episode VIII should win you over. Johnson knows structure, action, comedy and character, making him the ideal filmmaker to make Star Wars fresh and exciting again. Not only do his talents make him the right filmmaker for the job, but so does his thematic interests.

Looper and Johnson’s second picture, The Brothers Bloom, are about how much control someone has over their own narrative. Bloom (Adrien Brody) feels like he’s living a story written by his brother Stepehen (Mark Ruffalo), while Old Joe (Bruce Willis) and Young Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) battle over the course of their shared, separate life. In short, a franchise focused on creating your own destiny is right up Johnson’s alley.

“When you write the script you have a notion of what the movie is, how it’s going to feel, and what it’s going to be. When you get into the editing room, to a certain extent, you have to let that go. You have to find what the material wants to be now, because all these incredibly talented people have come in and done their own thing with it. What you originally had in mind can’t be the be-all and end-all. Sometimes that means you lose a lot of stuff you like.”

Looper takes the conversation a step further, daring to argue that pop culture — particularly film — renders us complicit in our own entrapment in the loop of violence. As a result, it’s the most subversive mainstream blockbuster in years, a movie that not only spins a good time travel yarn but challenges traditional Hollywood modes of storytelling, which it calls out as being morally bankrupt and symptomatic of a larger problem.

In Looper, Johnson isn’t just acknowledging the cycle of violence we’re trapped in, he’s interested in exploring why it exists and how it can be ended. Looper’s attitude towards conflict may stem from Gandhi, but it’s closer in spirit to that of theologian Walter Wink, who famously coined the phrase “the myth of redemptive violence.”

What makes Looper even more layered is that it simultaneously critiques Hollywood’s other big lie: that a morally gray anti-hero can be redeemed by love or money. Think, for example, of the plethora of movies about murderers and thugs who leave their life of crime after they meet a beautiful woman (and a climactic gunfight, of course). Or those in which the protagonist just has to do “one last job” so he can retire and live the remainder of his life on the beach guilt-free. If we’re to believe the movies, it’s possible to simply quit a life of violence and ride off into the sunset, past sins forgotten (or at the very least, ignored).

Looper exposes that cliché for what it is: a fantasy that will never come true for us no matter how many times it does for our big-screen heroes.

They’ve all bought into the same lie, that violence arising from noble intentions can heal past traumas, and in doing so they’re damned to repeat the same cycle of destruction over and over. But they’re not completely lost. Johnson argues that there are two ways in which the cycle can be stopped and order can actually be restored: nurturing love and forgiveness (personified by Sara) and a refusal to respond to violence with more violence, even if doing so results in death.

Looper isn’t just a lament for our violent world, it’s a call to action. It’s a direct challenge to Hollywood tropes that glorify violence as a righteous endeavor that also practices what it preaches and offers us a better way. If Walter Wink is right, then we’re trapped in millennia-old patterns of self-destruction disguised as salvation, and our movies are both a symptom and a part of the problem. It’s time we asked ourselves if the debate about whether violence in movies causes violence in real life is worth having at all — it doesn’t matter if the chicken or the egg came first if both are poison.

CienaRee wrote:It's very frustrating that we have so very limited types of multi dimensional characters in movies because the females have to be eother angelic and innocent or one dimensionally evil.Like everytime I watch the Rogue One trailer and there's the scene of Jymm preaching about how rebellions are built on hope I want to throw something because I've heard a similiar kind of speech from women in other movies so many times that I've grown tired of it when it should be the opposite,IMO.

Saracene wrote:

CienaRee wrote:It's very frustrating that we have so very limited types of multi dimensional characters in movies because the females have to be eother angelic and innocent or one dimensionally evil.Like everytime I watch the Rogue One trailer and there's the scene of Jymm preaching about how rebellions are built on hope I want to throw something because I've heard a similiar kind of speech from women in other movies so many times that I've grown tired of it when it should be the opposite,IMO.

@CienaRee

Yeah it’s like, I’m reading reviews for Moana (which BTW I do look forward to), and so many of them are basically parroting the same thing about how wonderful it is to have another great role model for little girls who refreshingly doesn’t have any love interest. Yes yes it’s great but… ehh. How about a female character who is just allowed to be, without a burden of having to set a good example?

ZioRen wrote:

Saracene wrote:

Darth Dingbat wrote:In fact, reading Bly hasn't made me 100% pleased either, because at some point a little voice inside me started wondering how much this story even is going to be a heroine's journey. How much is it, in fact, centred on Kylo's struggles and Kylo's character development instead of Rey's? To what extent is Rey supposed to stand for the Beautiful Maiden instead of a hero who gets to confront her own darkness?

But we shall see. I don't really want to doubt anything at this stage... I trust it will be good.

@Darth Dingbat

I have my doubts about the films exploring Rey’s darkness. Thing is, our culture really likes to think of women as good, kind and nurturing, and is often uncomfortable with acknowledging women’s darker or violent side. I remember the reaction to that image from a while ago of a female soldier abusing an Iraqi prisoner – people seemed to be especially freaked out by the fact that it was a woman committing the act and it clashed badly with the deeply ingrained notion about the female gender.

Like, can you imagine a reverse story about Han and Leia’s daughter who joins the dark side and kills Luke’s students, then kills her father, then is eventually redeemed? I can’t imagine that happen at all. Which is why redemption stories are mostly written about male characters – they’re allowed to be violent and do really terrible things.

@Saracene

I keep hoping that this isn't true because otherwise Kylo is going to intensely outshine Rey. Very flawed characters with arcs of struggle and redemption, particularly villains, are always the more interesting stories. Honestly, if they don't explore Rey's dark side to some degree, I'm going to have about zero interest in her character going forward. I've no desire to watch the story of a beacon of light heroine, especially when she's meant to be the protagonist and our connection into the universe. Some people may like that, or appreciate it because they have a role model for little girls, but that's not the kind of story I care about.

But from what they've set up, I feel like they'll explore a darker part of her to some degree. Otherwise where does her tension and story come from? Despite the ridiculousness of some complaints, I can see why people think some avenues of tension were lost when Rey beat Kylo in the first movie and when she displayed such big potential and quick grasp of the Force. If she can so early on overcome outside obstacles, then her main tension has to instead be internal.

AppleCrumble122 wrote:Reminds me of the "Undesirable Number 1" posters from Harry Potter for some reason. Maybe The FO will start issuing wanted posters for Resistance members in VIII lol.

ISeeAnIsland wrote:Another cryptic Instagram post from Rian:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BNDE-ouh6WR/