Watched the original Star Wars trilogy with the kid this weekend and it’s been a long time since I have seen it. One thing that really stuck out to me was… what, thematically, is the movie trying to *say* about droids? The message seems to be that they are regular people like everyone else, and also chattel slaves, and also that’s it’s fine and also kind of funny? Like both Han and Luke are repeatedly shown doing obvious villain shit to droids and I can’t tell why we are not supposed to care
@glyph My fave is how they operate totally autonomously and never need to be plugged in to power or get an update. Save that one time in Dagoba where Luke plugs R2 in or the fact that R2 is always shorting out you’d forget they need power. Also they operate seamlessly in sandy deserts, on ice planets, in space, under thick foliage, etc.
Basically, the droids are Laurel and Hardy, or Cagney and Lacey. The odd couple, in space, played for laughs. That’s as far as Lucas goes with it.
@cyberlyra @glyph otoh this is treated so much more seriously and beautifully in Andor though where there are continual questions of droid power and functioning, as so many of the questions about manufacturing and technology were taken much more seriously in that show! My favorite was the part where the droid lying was going to take extra power. Lost none of the original Star Wars droid poignancy and added so much with those choices
@grimalkina @cyberlyra I still haven't seen Andor largely out of spite for Episode IX, I should probably just get over it and watch the good star wars even if it came after the bad star wars
@grimalkina @cyberlyra I am still so, so mad about the squandered potential of TLJ
@glyph @grimalkina lol I am one of the very few humans on the internet that loved TLJ. All the rest of em, prequels, sequels, basically everything else I can’t stand, with exception of most of Rogue One and Andor.
(I realize them’s fighting words but I think I was just so, so mad about the squandered potential of literally everything released after ROTJ, that a movie that said, burn it all down, let the past die, don’t take any of this too seriously, made me feel seen ;)
@cyberlyra @grimalkina I loved TLJ! what I hated was RoS, a movie whose synopsis was so atrocious that I refuse to even see it
@glyph @grimalkina oh cool we have found each other then! The two people on the internet who loved it!
RoS was the worst. Like a toddler having a tantrum with all his Star Wars toys. You didn’t miss anything, just the sad sad ending of a movie series that long deserved better.
@cyberlyra @grimalkina my favorite part was when the skywalker said "it's skywalkerin' time"
@cyberlyra @glyph I liked TLJ too
@cyberlyra @glyph @grimalkina TLJ was my favorite Star War, unquestionably. I will not write an essay here about why because I can't decide how to keep it to 500 characters!
@powersoffour @cyberlyra @glyph I love that for you!!
@cyberlyra @glyph @grimalkina make it three! TLJ is great. The bad part is that ROS followed it. That was a huge slap in the face.
@algernon @cyberlyra @glyph @grimalkina While TLJ has its flaws, it retroactively improved the prequels for me, and it was genuinely exciting to see Star Wars pivot in anticipation of an endgame. They had a beautiful opportunity to do a break-the-cycle story and just completely wasted it.
@mpirnat @algernon @cyberlyra @grimalkina _yes_, absolutely. the implications of the big twist-reveal about the nature of the Dark Side were so thick you could cut them with a knife. and then nothing. Nothing!