Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?

To clarify, I didn't actually mean that the title was chosen with any malice. I chose the word "unfortunate" and meant that literally, not in a deliberately understated way as a substitute for a harsher word. There's a slight connotation to "out of hand," (a phrase which brings issues of control to mind) but I don't think it was intentional.

No, neither do I.

"Female lead remakes vs. original scripts: FIGHT!"

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

This is arguably what it attempting to do but the manner in which it does it seems highly questionable to me. We basically have an authority figure behaving in a fashion that seems to demand that their authority is rejected only to have the plot bend over and tell us that actually they are behaving for the greater good. It really doesn't cast Poe as self absorbed or overly warlike to me, his crime is simply that he doesn't follow orders.

You end up with something that seems like a strongly pro establishment message to me and I think highlights how tokenistic political correctness has been co copted by the establishment for unearnt moral authority. Seems rather akin to the "Bernie bro" line to attack against figures like Sanders and Corbyn.

The problem I'd say is that blockbusters are an increasingly corporate driven enterprise. Rather than the likes of James Cameron driving them who actually had something to say politically you instead have execs who really don't have anything to say but believe that some positive PR will help their films. This often seems to go hand in hand with questionable rewriting of history in terms of the importance of new releases which is anything undermines the real issue of general representation, one female led film is not a breakthough anymore.

Honestly the Starwars sequels as a whole to me seem highly questionable when you actually look at this. Its black lead in Finn is ultimately cast as a clichéd bumbling sidekick coming from essentially working as a janitor. Rose the character introduced as a non classically good looking woman ends up playing a clichéd geek with a heart of gold rather than say a Jedi or an ace pilot which to me seems to reinforce not combat the issue of obsession with appearances its claiming to target. They actually seem more like films behind not ahead of the curve to me with rather clumsy attempts at representation.

I mean I remember JJ Abrams having Kirk and the audience oogle Carol Marcus in her underwear. I'v no problem with much more graphic sexuality onscreen(indeed a lot less problem than graphic violence) if its in service of some aim of substance but this felt as cynical and objectifying a moment as I can remember from recent mainstream Hollywood. The same man is then suddenly being lorded some hero of politically aware film making and personally I don't buy it at all.

My vote is for actual good films with a balance of male and female leads, unless the director wanted an all female main cast.
Remakes? That's just saying you don't have faith in your ability to create something new.
Some are okay, but changing the genders and ethnicities of characters in a remake is actually kind of offensive to the people who worked so hard on the original.

It does seem like I should try and hear you out at some point since you do seem so sure of yourself, but this thread is clogged enough as it is just by the on-topic posts.

Yeah, I'll admit I can't think of any films that fit that particularly outlook. At least you acknowledge the incongruity at play here, which is fine, I guess.

Why does it seem that way? This is another thing that probably deserves its own thread, but I don't necessarily think that a work's artistic value and political philosophy are always so mutually exclusive that you can appreciate it as art despite personally disagreeing with its messages (at least not to the favourite-movie-of-all-time extent that Sedai does with Blade Runner - I do wonder how far down a list of my favourites I'd have to go before finding a film where I had a similarly divided reaction).

The idea is that Holdo is fundamentally the same as Leia and the only significant difference comes from how they relate to Poe. In Leia's case, her long-established relationship with Poe (and, by extension, the audience) is built on a sense of mutual respect where she will chew him out for bad actions (e.g. disobeying orders and losing bombers at the start) but still ultimately like him at the end of the day. Meanwhile, Holdo is a stranger (to Poe and to us) who doesn't meet Poe's expectations of what a renowned vice admiral should be and, considering that the first impression he's made on her is the aforementioned bomber situation that got him demoted by Leia herself, understandably doesn't trust him with sensitive information. Of course, the audience doesn't know Holdo either so we side with the character we know over her and think she herself is an untrustworthy tyrant begging to be overthrown simply because...she didn't immediately become best friends with a character who has himself made himself look untrustworthy to her through his own bad decisions. Poe may have good intentions in launching his own mission, but it's still more a reflection of his own flaws (and how he hasn't earned his own authority) that he goes through with it rather than accept Holdo's authority in the same way that he accepted Leia's.

Like I said before, it's a case-by-case basis. I could certainly make the case that James Cameron's "something to say politically" is no more complex or insightful than your average MCU movie (but hey he gets to chat sh*t about Wonder Woman not being feminist enough for him even though he hasn't made a film with a female protagonist in at least 20 years now). I will concede that it's some nonsense when people pay lip-service to being progressive without doing decent follow-through in the movies themselves (like creators saying a character is LGBTQ+ only for the finished film to not indicate that e.g. Thor: Ragnarok, Solo, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom).

But that feeds into Last Jedi's whole "anyone can be a hero" thesis and it's seeing them progress through that that works. It's straight-up character development for Finn to go from being a self-preserving survivor to being the hero standing up for something greater than himself, while Rose's humble status as a mechanic who nevertheless keeps a supposed hero like Finn on track throughout the film underlines (as with the whole Poe/Holdo conflict) that there's more to being a hero than just the Epic Moments.

It probably helps that Star Wars is a decidedly non-sexual franchise so there's virtually no way he could've pulled something like that anyway, but even so it's not like he can't change over the passage of time either.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

*slaps Sedai for Cat and the rest of the women in the world*

I hate sexist arseholes who dont know how to discuss on a human level...

Honestly the situation with the bombers earlier on really doesn't make much sense. I mean this is the same Leia that has sent large numbers of people to their deaths against evil superweapons how many times now? 3? it just seems like a totally arbitrary shift that really fails to make Poe seem excessively warlike or arrogant.

Holdo herself just seems to come across as arrogant and behaves in a highly illogical fashion keeping her plan secret in the face of open mutiny for the sake of the plot. Again to me it simply gives the message that your superiors are correct and should be obeyed without question.
Cameron has only made one film in the last 20 years or course so that's not really the harshest judgement and whilst it was male led(although disabled) the next two largest roles were female. I mean I think its politics were rather simplistic compared to his best work with but still there was some ambition to it.

You wouldn't call him the most incisive or deep political film maker but as far as action blockbusters go I do think something like Terminator 2 has a lot more substance to it than most of the examples you mention, the Russo's perhaps being an exception.

Very much I would judge things on a case by case basis, a film like Fury Road for example does clearly have more substance to it as well but I think we've seen a clear rise in the number of cynical blockbusters pushed in this fashion. The speed at which the defence of The Last Jedi turned to casting all criticism of it as bigotry for me highlighted that it was very much something that had been considered beforehand.

I think Cameron was absolutely correct in his comments on Wonderwoman personally, he did point out that actually by far the worst area of underrepresentation in Hollywood for women is in the directors chair for major productions. Arguably hinting that execs "letting" a women direct only films like Wonder woman or Captain Marvel comes across as a much marketing gimmick as sign of progress. Also going back to the idea of the film itself being some great shift forward as massive revisionism, personally I would say the product of both the drive towards profit for studios and a media keen to play up the idea of social progress in a fashion that isn't threatening to the current status quo. The degree of hostility he faced to me seemed driven mostly by the media being very defensive about the above.

That's a pretty basic theme of course that's always been present in the franchise and for a film looking to highlight its representation it seems like pretty dated choices of character. We still ultimately have the white good looking person saving the day.

Rose's character as well for me was just more poor writing looking to hide behind representation. We see her criticisize Finn's focus on helping Rey early in the film over the wide cause and then do exactly the same thing herself saving Finn at the expense of the cause before Jedi ex Machina makes things ok(ish). Indeed any talk about self obsession doesn't really make sense in the light of the ending were theres a jovial atmosphere because this tiny band of people are somehow "special" with a sense of destiny.

To be Abrams is pretty clearly a maker of entertaining diversions without any real political drive to him at all.

J.J. Abrams is to movie making...what salmonella is to hamburger.

I am not sure how the discussion devolved into a debate of capitalism, but I cannot disagree with you more. Capitalism has made the world a much, much better place. All other systems, feudalism, socialism, etc., are all far, far inferior to capitalism.

Oh no, not another one.

The difference being that in this particular instance, Leia's order was for the Resistance to retreat from the Order as quickly as possible with as few casualties as possible - by taking the time to launch his own attack on the dreadnought against her orders, Poe ended up causing unnecessary casualties.

Even if she had been "nice" to him (and it's not like she has any obligation to be because he's a subordinate who's done nothing but make a bad impression between the bomber situation and his overly familiar approach), he's a fighter pilot and they're in the middle of a retreat from considerably superior firepower so at that point there is literally nothing for him to do anyway, hence why she tells him to stay put (also, this is the same guy who got captured and successfully tortured for information at the beginning of Force Awakens so honestly it makes sense to keep him on a need-to-know basis).

Not really - there's a reason it was far too easy for critics and audiences alike to compare it to structurally/thematically similar works like Dances with Wolves or Pocahontas or Ferngully. It's technically ambitious, sure, but thematically it's aggressively basic (and having a human avatar become the aliens' hero is an obvious variation on the white saviour cliché anyway so how's that for cynical progressivism?). As for the 20+ year gap, that was meant to reflect that he may have created iconic heroines back in the day but may not be as up with the ever-evolving times as you think - he's like Joss Whedon in that regard.

How much substance does T2 have to it anyway? Some lip-service paid to the idea of nuclear war being bad and how humans will "destroy themselves" (complete with a heavy-handed image of two kids playing with real guns) or some wishy-washy talk about defying one's fate? I like the film and all, but I find it less and less substantial as time goes on.

Yeah, well, the speed at which people criticised Rose and Holdo at length for not simply acquiescing to Finn and Poe respectively highlighted what really bothers the people who hated the film the most (and does throw into question how much of the criticism regarding plot points or character decisions was concocted as a result - I did see one person suggest that Admiral Ackbar should've been the one to do the lightspeed ram, for example). That kind of nonsense really makes it hard to sort the legitimate criticisms from the bigotry so it's not surprising to see why people throw up their hands and simply conflate the two.

Alright, fair point. At this point, it just seems less like cynical marketing ploys and more like reparations for all the times when women didn't get to make blockbusters while getting passed over by studios in favour of mediocre or possibly even abusive men (speaking of which, did you hear that they announced the Red Sonja remake was going to be done by Bryan god-damn Singer?) and he's not some sort of genius cynic for pointing out how messed-up that is.

I'm starting to get the impression that there is very little any blockbuster could do that wouldn't meet your overly cynical standards. At least the white good-looking person is a woman, which isn't a problem for the likes of T2 or Fury Road.

You mean the bit where Poe quickly reaches the conclusion that none of them would be able to damage the giant cannon in time and orders everyone to back off, thus implying that Finn would've died for nothing if he'd been allowed to continue? I keep thinking of it in comparison to the scene at the end of Last Crusade where Indy is risking falling into a bottomless chasm to reach the Holy Grail only for his dad to talk him out of it. Besides, not sure where you're getting the idea that the survivors are all "special" when the fact that it ends on the child slaves being inspired by the events of the film is meant to imply that there's more to the Resistance than just the people left on-board the Falcon.

Tell that to kids living in trash piles. Well, they do have more things to pick through than they used to because of capitalism, so that might be a bad example.

My point was that Leia's position doesn't make sense, this is someone who has previously been willing to sacrifice lives to destroy a superweapon capable of causing large scale death and destruction. Indeed even within this film her position ends up making little sense, had Poe not destroyed the dreadnought with its powerful weapons surely it would have destroyed the Rebel fleet in the low speed chase?

Basically the film wants to cast Poe as arrogant and warlike but I find does a very poor job of doing so. It also looks to cast him as self important but then ends up with a climax brimming with highly questionable self importance in which the previous deaths of most of the rebellion are forgotten.

For her to do nothing in the face of open mutiny really does not make sense, it only happens so we can have a reveal of her rightness and Poe's wrongness.

The whole subplot to me just feels horribly confused in its tone and again I think reflective of the kind of viewpoints that seem to be increasingly pro establishment in the media. The idea of showing the Rebels in Starwars as being a military force more reflective of the real world in terms of making questionable calls was obviously explored in Rogue One but that film was basically the story of the movement towards the purer situation we saw in the original films, showing the original situation as a negative thing.

The Last Jedi actually takes pride in its postion, questionable internal politics and treating people arrogantly whilst keeping them in the dark needlessly is now something that should be celebrated and is considered in line with the larger than life heroic atmosphere of this film rather than Rogue Ones somewhat more serious tone. We weren't asked to get behind Gen Draven's methods were we?

As I said I'd agree it was a pretty standard rather simplistic political position it held but still it did hold a position.

Camerons point was that Wonder woman was being talked about as a singular advancement in cinema in terms of feminism yet I think there is a very good argument that compared to Aliens or Terminator 2 its really nothing of the sort, a simpler much less interesting film that falls back to rather dated views of female heroines.

Honestly I think if a female led blockbuster being hyped to that degree perhaps shows that the times haven't been as "ever evolving" as their often talked up as and that his work in the 80's and early 90's was not followed up on as well as it might have been. Superhero films especially have seemed like a step backwards in terms of representation over the last decade.

Again I wouldn't say Cameron is the deepest political film maker you'll ever find but for blockbuster cinema I would say yes theres substance to it. The idea of science run amok put to destructive use, Sarah's character being tempted to resort to brutal pragmatism killing Miles Tysons character and indeed showing that character could actually be enlightened rather than just treated as a faceless villain.

I mean the film clearly went fishing for and got some bigoted responses but I would say most of the criticism went back to what I mentioned above. Basically that it felt like the films attempts at politics were being used to cover poor writing. it didn't careful draw us into supporting characters taking questionable actions in Poe and Finn it merely had their actions proven wrong via plot alone whilst attempting to tell us we were actually seeing some kind of demonstration of male warlike arrogance simply because it involved a woman in a position of power. That the film thought it could sell this to me seems like a much smaller reflection of the environment in todays media that also overestimated how well it could sell Hilary on her gender.

I'm not seeing the mention of Ackbar as being relevant to any kind of bigotry so much as just fans a little obsessed with a cult character.

Honestly if anything I think the film as a whole just feels gutless to me, is not actually prepared to have Poe really show the faults it claims he has, it hints at the the idea of a simplistic view of good and evil might be questionable but the retreats to it with Rey and Kylo's characters.

I would say it feels cynical in that we have female directors put in place for films sold as carrying heavy political weight due to having female leads in them. It feels more like tokenism and marketing that it does a push towards actually addressing the lack of female directors given big projects.

My point certainly isn't that a blockbuster film must have some political weight to it but rather that I think were seeing cynical claims to the above made to promote films that are actually lacking in much weight along with a good deal of revisionism. I see this as very much part of the same climate that exists in politics today were tokenism increasingly is pushed as substance in itself.

This conclusion by Poe in itself again feels totally illogical to me just as Leia's position did at the start of the film. The situation is actually setup that the attack of the weapon is needed to save the rebellion and indeed we see Finn in what looks like the position to do just that. The remaining Rebels are then only saved by the totally unexpected appearance of Luke..I don't see that as at all similar to the situation in Last Crusade were nobodies life is directly at risk should Indy fail to claim the grail.

Given that the film is pushing the idea that it isn't worth sacrificing lives for the greater good and talking against excessive self importance having the remaining Rebels celebrating on the Falcon and then selling the importance of the moral boosting "victory" makes little sense to me. Surely it should be a a far more solemn situation akin to the end of ESB? the idea that events of TLS would be especially inspiration to future rebellion relative to what had happened previously doesn't really make much sense either, "we barely escaped with a handful of lives as Luke Skywalker created a diversion and then died".

To me the film as a whole just gives the impression of being massively underwritten, something that might have made an effective first draft but needed to be tighted up and improved massively but wasn't due either to time constraints or just general hubris from those involved. I do personally still suspect that whatevers is claimed that the whole ending was probably studio mandated as well and that Johnsons original idea was to follow though on the Rey/Kylo teese and have her either join him or at least leave the situation uncertain.

They didn't know the Order had the technology to track them through hyperspace at that point so they were more focused on making a clean getaway than wasting time and resources on further battle. Poe managing to destroy the dreadnought first manages to come across as dumb luck more than anything else.

I think the problem is that we don't really have a point of comparison for this particular situation within the original trilogy - we don't know what OT-era Leia would do in the exact same situation as Holdo (ST-era Leia obviously sides with her, but who knows how relevant you'd consider that) so the best we can do is a pre-Alliance general setting up a fail-safe for a mission involving a valuable asset who is to be recovered or killed if necessary, which is considerably different from the matter of keeping everyone as alive as possible. For all we know, what Holdo does is exactly what would happen in "the purer situation".

Lots of films hold some position, including Wonder Woman.

I grant that Wonder Woman is a technical advancement more than anything else - when was the last time a film like it came along (a major blockbuster with a female star/director that is wholly centred around its female protagonist instead of, say, a monster like Aliens or Terminator 2 are)? Even films that fit that criteria like Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey still get criticised over their reductive plots and characters. Wonder Woman is different enough in that regard to warrant a degree of recognition, though exactly what degree is debatable (as is the question of what does or doesn't qualify as "dated" - Cameron's heroines being defined to a significant extent by their connection to motherhood makes them questionable in this regard).

Also, just to see if I'm following you right, on one hand you say that Wonder Woman being hyped so much due to a lack of female-led blockbusters is an indictment of the system that didn't allow them to happen, but on the other hand you constantly "feel" that any recent attempts to correct that come across as cynical displays of tokenism?

It seems like we keep going back and forth on what qualifies as "enough" substance for these kinds of movies.

We've been over this. Poe's used to dealing with Leia (who will admonish him but ultimately let him off the hook) so having to deal with Holdo, who is effectively Leia without the friendly relationship to Poe that allows him to get away with not growing as a character, takes him out of his comfort zone by not meeting his expectations. Also, like I said before, he's a fighter pilot and they're retreating instead of fighting so there is literally nothing for him to do in this situation, but he chooses to reject the idea of not getting to do something in favour of a decision where he does get to do something - and that backfires on him and everyone else.

Also, what more would it take to show Poe's faults? He wastes a bomber squadron and stages a ship-wide mutiny because of them. I also question what use your suggested level of moral ambiguity has in Star Wars, especially when the character who makes the best case for it also turns out to be a greedy traitor who sells out the heroes to the villains.

You should try feeling cynical about whether or not you're too cynical. I've read the word so many times now it's lost all meaning (and I think the points are starting to repeat, especially your constant accusations of empty tokenism).

Like you said about Avatar, "at least it has a position". Also, how do you know that you're not writing off rejections of the status quo by reducing them to "tokenism"?

And we are also told/shown that the ships they use are old, slow and falling apart anyway so there's a significantly increased risk that Finn wouldn't have made it anyway and explains why expert pilot Poe judges the situation and decides to abort the attack. Also, in Last Crusade everyone is literally in the middle of a crumbling temple with bottomless chasms everywhere so...yeah.

Also, how solemn is ESB's ending anyway? The film's final scene involves Lando and Chewie heading off to find a frozen-but-not-dead Han, Luke gets a brand-new hand and is finally reunited with Leia, and the Special Edition even ends with a massive pan over a sizeable Rebel fleet - if anything, it ends on an even more optimistic final note than TLJ (and both films end in narrow escapes to fight another day anyway). Besides, I'd make the case that "legendary Jedi master comes out of hiding to clown the #1 fascist in the galaxy" would be a popular story among Resistance-sympathisers for reasons that I would think are obvious.

As for the idea of actually teasing a Kylo/Rey cliffhanger, eh, I don't hear it and immediately think it would automatically be better than what we did get. Maybe if it's done right, but I'm not overly convinced.

There a whole new thread to argue TLJ?

Sweet

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Tell that to the kids in Venezuela (the socialist paradise) who have to prostitute themselves (along with Doctors and teachers) just in order to have food to eat. And that is when they are not breaking into zoos to eat the animals.



Yes, there are people who are poor and fall through the cracks in capitalism. However, the vast majority of people in a (relatively) free capitalist system like the USA have enough to eat and do fairly to very well. There is food aplenty in grocery stores, toilet paper and other basics are available aplenty. So are luxury items.



Compare that with socialist countries like Venezuela where everybody starves, where toilet paper is an incredibly scarce commodity and where even police officers have to dig through garbage cans to eat. Where the 2018 inflation rate is over 1,000,000%.



A few people can go hungry, do without and be miserable in a capitalist society or nearly everybody can go hungry, do without and be miserable in a socialist society. I will take capitalism each and every single time.

I like how your passionate defence of American capitalism still involves referring to it as "{relatively) free".

It is, to the best of my knowledge, the freest place on Earth. (And I have traveled quite extensively.) However, we are still very heavily over-burdened by regulation, taxes and incredibly expensive and invasive government programs and laws from 100 years of socialist government creep. Thus, I think that my description is accurate and I am glad that you like it.