I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, provided you give it all a fair hearing.
Economics utilizes data enough that a few very general things can be established that can clarify what the disagreement is really about and (I'm very big on this) show people that the things they advocate still have downsides and the things they oppose still have upsides. That is very much the case here. And while I don't know that I'll change many people's minds about which upsides or downsides to prioritize or avoid, at the very least most of them come out the other side understanding that the things they want to change are pretty nuanced.
By all means, PM it to me when you feel like it.
For a couple of reasons, I think.
The first is that most art is very technical, which means someone can exhibit skill completely independent of message. Well-shot films can have "bad" political messages in the same way they can have crappy writing.
The second is that it suggests open-mindedness. Frothing partisans have a tendency to reduce all things to the political, and to make everything binary. If someone is able to express the nuanced position that X film is wrong, but still has merit otherwise, I'd imagine that strongly correlates with the ability to find common ground with ideological opponents, concede points where appropriate, or other things like that. Both stem from the same mindset of considering each thing fairly and independently, as opposed to the mindset of grouping things together and opposing people on all issues because of a disagreement on just some.
Perhaps, though I suppose it's a matter of weighing whether or not open-mindedness is the likeliest conclusion to draw from such a situation, and you don't find that out for certain without questioning it. Maybe it's cynical of me to immediately assume there's cognitive dissonance involved or that a person's interpretation is rooted in shallow misunderstanding based on surface-level elements, but I don't think I completely rule out such apparent open-mindedness either (if only because I find it so curious in these particular instances).
I agree, sometimes this is not really possible. Sometimes the work of art is constructed so they're difficult to parse in this way, and sometimes the idea being expressed is so bad (or just obnoxious) that it overwhelms other considerations. I'd say this is pretty rare, though. And I'd also say that for every film where this is the case, there are dozens where the viewpoint really isn't that awful, but the person watching it just has no tolerance for it.
Yeah, it is a question of what a person will or won't let slide.
I actually nearly asked this hypothetically, but decided it sounded too much like a challenge ("how many people here can say the same?"). I do think it's important, though.
There's an edge to this idea because frankly, as a conservative, you either get used to enjoying art from people who hate you, or you don't get much to enjoy. I'm not sure progressives really understand what this is like, since most of the art they consume comes from the like-minded. I know this concept isn't foreign, either, given the very similar points made about representation and exclusion in popular culture.
That is a good point - sounds like when I come across reviews for ostensibly progressive films that tear the film to shreds for not being nearly progressive enough (e.g. when acclaimed LGBTQ-themed films are heavily criticised by actual LGBTQ people for perpetuating harmful stereotypes and failing to tell worthwhile stories even by creators who "mean well"). It probably doesn't help matters that the first conservative film critic I can think of off the top of my head is Armond White of all people, who has demonstrated some capacity for good criticism that is all too often overwhelmed by his apparent eagerness to treat the bulk of Hollywood films as liberal con jobs (which is why I used to think he was worth reading as an alternate viewpoint but less so these days).
There is a lot to bite off in this thread but I guess my main question to @
Iroquois is would Blade Runner be such a different movie and change your enjoyment if the Tyrell Corp was switched out for the reigning government of the time? Would that change your mind about how big we should allow government to get? Because one of my biggest disagreements with anti-capitalists is not that corporations can't get too big and be corrupt. It's that they don't seem to think government can.
Considering that the "reigning government of the time" would've been the Reagan administration, I don't think it would've made a significant difference. If anything, I get the impression that anti-capitalists understand how corruptible governments can be
precisely because of how much government interests can overlap with capitalist interests (especially when capitalists themselves become politicians).
I will also add that as a Christian I constantly see the themes of a flawed humanity and the need for unconditional love played out in "progressive" art. This is the over riding theme of the oldest book there is and one that many of those same progressives call a fairy tale. So the idea that you can't fundamentally disagree with someone yet still engage with their ideas seems very silly and narrow minded to me.
Such themes do technically transcend political and religious divides, I suppose.
Oh okay, I would have to watch it again to see about Rose flying the ship into Finn's as I do not recall that part exactly.
As for Holdo, she is just doing what other male military characters do in other movies. In other movies, there is often a male military commander, who everyone one else thinks not thinking straight, and they feel they have to stop him. Movies like Crimson Tide or The Cane Mutiny.
So I feel that Holdo is just doing what normally male characters in other movies do. So I can't think that the movie was trying to make some sort of statement with her being a female character, cause she is filling in the 'my way or the highway' male military commander we normally see in other movies. Unless I'm wrong?
No, that's pretty much it - I do wonder how much scrutiny a male Holdo would have drawn for the exact same choices. Maybe it would've been the same, maybe considerably less. As for it being any kind of "statement", I don't necessarily assume so. Maybe a means of correcting/maintaining female representation, but I did already mention in another post how I considered Holdo to be a Leia-like character that the characters/audiences simply didn't know and thus would be inclined to side against less because she's a woman and more because she's the kind of stock character that you described above, which might well be how Leia would come across to a similarly unruly and unknown subordinate.
You have a deadly superweapon that we see could be used to wipe out the rebels, why is this different to what we've seen previously from Leia? the film does IMHO a very poor job of selling why it should be with her position coming across as hypocritical and arbitrary. As with so much of the film I think the real fault is in the execution, it feels as I said before like politics is being used as a shield for poor writing.
Because in those other instances the "superweapon" in question was capable of destroying a planet (or even multiple planets at once) and continued to present a galaxy-wide threat no matter where it was so it definitely had to be eliminated, whereas a single dreadnought was still ultimately a ship that could be eluded like all the other ships in that fleet and (as has been noted) the goal here is to escape as soon as possible rather than hang around and risk losing ships in a fight. If Leia doesn't react the same way, you can't necessarily assume it's hypocrisy on her part so much as her assessing that it represents a lesser threat and thus doesn't deserve the same attack-at-all-costs treatment as a Death Star. Besides which, enough has been done to establish that Poe's being more than a little reckless here (prank-calling General Hux, shutting down communications with Leia when she orders him to return) so as to drive home the idea that he's not completely in the right to be doing this. If anything, this is what comes across as "questionable pragmatism".
I mean we see that Leia won't suffer fools gladly in the originals and is a very confident person but that doesn't feel like what were seeing here. More importantly we don't see Leia engaging in secretive morally questionable plans.
The originals basically feel like there portraying an idealistic viewpoint in a heroic fashion. Rogue One feels like its showing idealism replace morally questionable pragmatism. Last Jedi on the other hand feels like its glorying that same kind of questionable pragmatism, I don't think it should be surprising that people take issue with that.
And yet this same concern over questionable pragmatism doesn't extend to anything Poe does (apart from calling off the cannon attack, of course).
I think Aliens is clearly focused around a female pragmatist.
Which is why it's called
Ripley Returns.
I would say I feel that yes not as many female lead blockbuster films happens as might have been expected post Cameron and indeed that those which did often lacked the clout his work did. I also feel that its revisionism for a single female lead blockbuster to be cast as revolutionary in terms of longer cinematic history and that really as with directors the problem is much more in overall numbers. There has often been talk about Hollywood having devolped a negative view of female superhero films in terms of box office success over the last 10-15 years.
Someone like Cameron basically being treated like an example of the bad old backward Hollywood that enlightened modern times were sweeping away by much of the media was I think a disgraceful and cynical situation.
It probably doesn't help that it's coming from a filmmaker whose current project is four consecutive sequels to
Avatar (and who endorsed
Terminator Genisys as being the best one since the second one) so his comments seem more than a little out-of-touch even if he is having a broken-clock-is-right-twice-a-day moment by pointing out this problem.
I'm not sure I do, its more that I'm holding films to their own hype, if something is talked up as having political weight I'm more likely to judge the lack of it more harshly.
I'm sure you are.
We see that whatever his rank Poe is very much privy to decision making in the rebellion and indeed we see all though the originals that the rebels are a naturally open about these kinds of decisions, people knowing what they are being asked to die for.
Yeah, when he's actually got something to contribute regarding fighter-pilot strategy...which is not necessary when the entire fleet is retreating from superior firepower and thus doesn't need fighter pilots like Poe at that point so there's nothing for him to do (and also, you say "whatever his rank" but do we actually see him get to make any decisions following the scene where Leia demotes him? Even him managing to rally other Resistance members into helping him mutiny against Holdo still results in him getting stunned by Leia).
As I highlighted previously Poe doesn't actually "waste" bombers, he saves the rebellion which would have been destroyed without his actions and behaves in a fashion identical to that which we'd previously seen Leia in favour of. The shift into this behaviour being "wrong" seems highly arbitrary and the overall message to me becomes highly questionable. Basically that you cannot trust your own moral compass and judgement, your better off abdicating these things to your superiors, especially if they have rather thin identity politics on their side. I do absolutely see that as a reflection of negative aspects of the current political environment.
Yeah yeah, you want a reflection of negative aspects of the current political environment, try seeing it as the story of a (relatively) inexperienced man thinking he knows better than experienced women and going against their orders only to cause trouble each time he does it.
The kind of list like posting you favour does obviously mean that the same points end up being repeated a lot. To me the real judgement comes down to the quality of these films, I feel the likes of Force Awakens, Last Jedi and the Ghostbusters remake are all poor cinema that look to shield their mediocrity partly via a cynical use of politics(as well of course as a heft dose of nostalgia).
I guess I can't tell you to like them, but so far you haven't really given me reasons or arguments worth conceding.
We see that Finn has the chance to destroy the weapon flying into it only to be stopped by rose. Poe's appraisement of the situation again feels like arbitrary writing, he "learns his lesson" because Johnson has him do so not because he's shown a shift in character and a situation in which it feels natural for him to do so.
The idea of Poe being overly warlike and learning to value lives is I think perfectly fine but the execution of it for me fails totally.
I already broke down the readily-observable internal logic behind the situation and your response is just "it feels like arbitrary writing", which comes across as a cop-out more than anything.
The ending of ESB basically has the hints of hope for the future in it whilst staying true of the downbeat events that we've just seen. The ending of Last Jedi feels like a party on the Falcon when events have arguably been far worse than ESB. If the film is previously trying to speak out about self importance it does a really bad job of reflecting it here as the heroes come across as simply delusional to me, and once again it all feels very arbitrary.
Yeah, well, I'm not about to begrudge these people finally getting a breather after having spent the entire course of the film in the midst of relentless toll-heavy battles and pursuits and very nearly getting wiped out once and for all. You're acting like it's an Ewok party.
I think it very clearly would have been. I mean the film seems to spend so much of its runtime building up the idea that simplistic views of good and evil have led to the current situation but then seems to reject its own premise.
As it is what really is the message of the end of the film? that Rey is foolish for thinking Kylo can be saved? yeah that's obviously "unexpected" but ultimately I think a highly questionable message. As with the Holdo plot it seems more inline with the worst of establishment politics today "don't try and understand your enemies their just irredeemably evil".
I mean not that I think those involved were intending the film as being especially strong pro establishment political piece, I think its more that they were making it in that kind of environment and didn't care or notice too much about the messages they were sending.
I would've thought it was more along the lines of explicitly-stated ones like "failure is our greatest teacher" or "not killing what we hate but saving what we love", both of which are better reflected in the Rey-Kylo dynamic than the idea that she's a fool for thinking he can be redeemed (if anything, that seems like a failure-is-a-teacher moment more than anything else since she fails to turn Kylo). She's spent the whole film bouncing back and forth between whether or not to believe him or Luke (and then ultimately what to do with the "truth" of Luke almost killing Kylo) and ultimately starts to sympathise for him turning evil because of both Snoke manipulation and the trauma of Luke's mistake, but when he effectively stays evil even after both those issues have been confronted by Snoke's death and the revelation of what really happened with Luke, she realises that he's still making his own decision to be evil and thus no longer feels obligated to "fix" him, instead opting to rescue the remnants of the Resistance. If anything, it emphasises how trying to understand your enemies is not guaranteed to make them any less of an enemy to you and it also dispels the idea that one is obligated to put up with their flaws in the possibly-vain hope that they can change a person (which hews uncomfortably close to abusive-relationship logic). Also consider the real-world political message it sends of how trying to understand the seemingly-sympathetic reasons why people attach themselves to toxic ideologies/organisations still doesn't justify their continued attachment.
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