well... (Off-Topic)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Sunday, December 04, 2022, 20:46 (719 days ago) @ EffortlessFury

All the best, man. [Insert a Yoda-ism here.] Seriously, reach out if you want access to some old ears (not quite as big as Yoda's, but getting there). Sometimes that helps.

The offer is appreciated.

My suspicion is that the writers were too lazy to fill in that background, they prioritized subverting expectations as a good in itself, and they felt that Luke's struggle hadn't been presented with sufficient complexity before, but that now, as superior 21st century denizens, the audience could finally handle moral relativism and understand that there was actually no difference between the Empire and the Republic, because their guns came from the same place. These are the kind of epiphanies that, in the haze of a late-night dorm room, seem like the height of sophistication (but aren't).

I don't know if I'd agree about the laziness, that may be your distaste/bias speaking. I don't think there's enough information to confidentially determine that "subversion for the sake of it" was so driving a force that it explains all shortcomings and led to ignoring the substance necessary to achieve that goal. In fact, I rarely believe anything that goes wrong in creative endeavors is the result of laziness, but that's a separate conversation.

Oh, I'd love to have that conversation. I certainly believe in a group effort like filmmaking, there's often many handmaidens to failure or success. I think in TLJ, many other aspects of it were great--a lot of talented people did the best they could with what they had. Writing is kind of unique, though. It's not as dependent on outside restraints. I guess I'm speaking for myself on some level, but when I've had something not work in a short story, it's usually because I was lazy. I wanted to get to the next scene or the ending (an example in TLJ might be that they loved writing the scene where Luke ditched the lightsaber, but getting him to the point where it was believable was hard). I would know in my heart a section was weak, but I couldn't think of a way to make it better right away. I didn't want it to be as hard as it is.

I took a lot of creative writing workshops in my 20s, and it was my experience that many people wanted writing to be easier than it is. They got defensive when receiving criticism. (I certainly was guilty of this!) The strongest writers seemed to ask questions or get quiet. If something didn't work for someone, that was a data point. The trick was figuring out what was behind that data point. In really competitive workshops, it was possible it was just competitive sniping (I was fortunate not be exposed too much to that). More likely, it was a legitimate sign that something could be improved. As you got to know your readers, you might realize that if something doesn't work for Laura Ann, that's okay because she's not the reader you're writing for to begin with.

All valid and all makes sense. I still, however, rebuff the concept of laziness. It is an umbrella term with a negative connotation for more detailed, reasonably explained reasons that can be better understood and directly dealt with.

I would know in my heart a section was weak, but I couldn't think of a way to make it better right away. I didn't want it to be as hard as it is.

You faced an obstacle that you did not find yourself capable of overcoming with the level of effort you were willing to put in. That's a matter of priorities and interest, not of a lack of caring, no? You wanted to fix it, yet laziness is typically viewed as a lack of desire to do anything. You had that desire to fix it, you just lacked the desire and/or willpower to put in the effort necessary to overcome your deficiency; it just meant that you didn't care enough about fixing it to put the effort in. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Don't be offended on my behalf because I called myself lazy. I was. I took shortcuts. I didn't treat every part of my story with the same attention. And I've never been in a group of writers who didn't concede that there was such a thing as lazy writing. A character walks into a scene and dumps a load of exposition on the reader, out of the blue. That's lazy writing. That's really what I'm talking about, not personal laziness (although I have no problem talking about the latter either--hell, I embody it a lot of the time!).

In the case of TLJ, they have deadlines. They did not have the capability to execute on it properly, IMHO in large part, as I said before, I believe that they bit off more than they could chew trying to tell the story they wanted to tell. It was already a difficult task, even a decently skilled writer on a deadline would struggle to make it work. That's not laziness, that's not realizing the obstacles and limitations involved early enough to course correct. Whether or not they realized the flaws, they likely did the best they could with the decisions they'd made. I doubt that they looked at the flaws and decided they didn't even care to fix them.

This is all just my outlook on people's struggle to achieve their goals. There are many psychologists who believe that few people are truly lazy, there is simply an obstacle they struggle to overcome, not that they don't care about what they want to achieve, and I don't think the writers of TLJ didn't care, I just don't think they had the talent/skill to execute on what was already a difficult concept to convey, at the point in the story they were writing for, in the timeframe they had. I would not classify that as lazy.

Sure they cared, sure they had deadlines. I again draw a parallel with Tony Gilroy, who I see as quite similar to Rian Johnson. Both directors had a reputation based on working on very different kinds of projects. Gilroy dug into the lore and found something that resonated with him and the stories he likes to tell. Johnson is a more subversive, indy filmmaker. Both men had similar constraints, did what they found interesting, and created what I'd call fresh takes. To me--let me emphasize to me, one feels true to the spirit of the Star Wars, the other is more interested in, what the academics might call, interrogating the suppositions of Star Wars. It made for a more challenging project--perhaps too challenging.