And this is one of the biggest problems with TLJ. By killing Snoke off (which again was just one of the many things that movie did to "subvert expectations"), it left a void for a central villain to glue the trilogy together. That's why they had to bring Palpatine's wrinkled ass back from the proverbial void, more or less undoing Darth Vader's sacrifice in Empire Strikes Back. Considering Darth Vader/Anakin is the one Skywalker with the deepest connection to Palpatine and the most blood on his hands due in massive part to Palpatine manipulating him for his power, it only made sense for Darth Vader to be the one to end him. Palpatine's supposed return in RoS more or less ruins all of that.
Is it subverting expectations when Sith pupils are known to betray their Sith Lord masters? Just as Palpatine betrayed Plagueis (sp) or Vader planned to betray the Emperor with Luke as his pupil, Kylo fulfilled that role and tried to gain Rey as his pupil. This has been the cycle throughout the series. It didn't leave a void, it made Kylo the big bad, a far more interesting character than Snoke. They didn't have to bring back Palpatine, a more skilled writer wouldn't need to anyways. There was a treatment for it where they did fill in the gap left by Snoke with a Sith that was the oldest living Sith hidden away on their home world (which is still seen in the final version when Kylo gets some MacGuffin device) it would be monstrous and was described as Lovecraftian, it would give Kylo his final Sith lessons. Even this is preferable to resurrecting Palpatine, but JJ only has two tricks up his sleeve and they are nostalgia and mystery boxes. Speaking of which they cut the scenes that explained better Snoke being alive because JJ considers explaining something that seems nonsensical unimportant.
It might be silly to you but for other, diehard/hardcore fans it might mean a lot. Consistency in these sort of things adds a TON to world-building and setting standards in fictional worlds that are reliable constants for all characters and events to be checked against. And that both helps characterization and whatever plot uses those sort of constants.
I don't care about diehard/hardcore fans or the dumb lore or Wookiepedias, I care about good film-making. I also have to laugh at the consistency idea, re-watch the OT, in every film a new force power is used without explanation.
I doubt it. Mainly because kid Anakin was actually quite bad in his delivery well and beyond anyone else. I also think Jar Jar Binks (particularly in the 1st of the prequels) being such a contrast to the dialect and demeanor of other characters in the films might've caused a magnified focus by viewers to see the dialog in a way they otherwise wouldn't have. But that's somewhat a different can of worms (FWIW Jar Jar never really irritated me, and he's tamed down in the last two films of the prequels while serving a more critical role insofar as supporting cast is concerned).
He isn't the worst child actor by a long shot and most people can forgive child actors easier than people who have won Oscars. Jar-Jar and Anakin were because the film was for a younger generation, and they appealed to that generation, the films got darker as they went, but that generation grew up as well.
Usually "send-off" refers to an exit for a character the majority of fans actually like or at least respect. That simply isn't the case with Luke in the Disney sequel trilogy.
This is wrong, a send-off is a send-off regardless of who likes it, you're debating good vs bad send-offs and in my time debating this film I tend to find even most haters think they did right by Luke by the end, they just don't like that he started off wrong and had to have an arc... because they hate good story-telling.
It's to do more with what characters like Luke and Joel represent in their respective stories. Representations of paragons of virtue, beacons (as best they can be) of the sort of values and virtues that a righteous character in their world setting should strive to be, examples of good that people can see pieces of themselves in, and get some inspiration from, in healthy measure.
Wait, in what way does Joel fill this role? Joel was meant to be a deeply flawed character who wouldn't even have much humanity to him without Ellie dragging it out of him. The tragic irony being that in humanizing Joel she makes it possible for him to go on the rampage he did, possibly dooming all mankind. The Joel at the start of the game would have let them do whatever they wanted to Ellie. BTW, don't come at me with anything about how the Fireflies are morally wrong, because I DON'T DISAGREE, the thing is that all the justifications for Joel's actions don't apply to HIM, if they had told Joel she had a 50/50 or even an 80 percent chance of surviving he'd probably behave the same way. Luke, btw was never this character without flaws, the dark clothes in Jedi and his arrogant demeanor were remnants of the first script where Luke went on a darker path, this is still there to an extent with his machine hand, the angry fit he throws at his father, cutting off his father's hand making him realize the parallel he had drawn. The darkness inside Luke was proven to be capable of being evoked at the idea of his friends being in peril, this same thing happened with Kylo, but he never struck at Kylo as he did his father, he simply briefly ignited a saber and then felt ashamed... but the damage was done for Kylo, who's mind had already been poisoned. The themes of us creating our own monsters is a great one, and also one that fits with the saga.
That doesn't mean these characters are perfect, not at all. But they are very clearly written in ways of emulating beliefs worth aspiring to be, regardless of whatever immutable traits you as a person have. They aren't meant to be replacements in that regard for real-life people who exemplify positive values and virtues, or God (for people who believe in God or an equivalent). But regardless, there will be folks who look to these kind of characters as paragons of virtue they'd want to aspire to be in the world these characters exist in, and at the very least, there are universal virtues these sort of character exude that can be utilized by people in their own lives within reason.
Joel is not exhibiting traits anyone should emulate, you can say "caring for your surrogate daughter is good" except he doesn't save Ellie for her, he does it for himself, it's very clearly selfish because he can't have the same thing happen again and leave him hollow like he was before. Anyone who sees Joel as a paragon of virtue is out of their mind.
The "desecration" I refer to is more to do with a very noticeable trend in a lot of Western storytelling the past several years or so that likes to sully certain characters, and invert the desired paradigms of virtues and values people should aspire to emulate and take inspiration from. This is too big a topic to contain to a conversation this narrow, but I hope you can see what I'm referring to here.
I see that you think something that was being done by Shakespeare is a new trend.
Well no shit, but that's hardly the only reason. The death of Joel, for example, is cheap because it's contrived. It's a convoluted sequence to get him in that situation that also runs counter to the learned intuition he's shown in the first game to have a keen sharpness for. But no, Neil writes him to be a dolt so that he can play Golden Tee Golf with Abby.
Yeah, again, it's the setup for the story, most stories have contrived setups because the whole point of it being a story worth telling is the events don't normally occur naturally. This is true for most types of fiction that aren't dramas but even those rely on such things, take a film like Mystic River, if you've seen it you know exactly what I mean here. Most narratives are borne from contrived circumstances, the good writer uses the story borne from this to deliver something that feels organically solved, however. The learned intuition he's known for? There are multiple groups of people he shacks up with in the first game throughout it, he had no choice, hence "contrived" it can't both be contrived and be him acting poorly, if it's just Joel making a bad decision then you can let go of contrived because that means he had legitimate options besides that... but he didn't. How was he written to be a dolt, exactly? I've seen the bad arguments involving him giving out too much info, they tend to ignore that Tommy had already told Abby who Joel was, that later parts of the game make it clear Jackson was beginning to try and get more people to join them, that Joel was changing as a person into someone kinder. Oh man and the golf jokes, you'd think any media where a baseball bat was used we'd get baseball jokes or something.
There's still a way to write it and produce it that doesn't come off as torture/gore porn though. TWD TV show failed massively in that regard when it came to Glenn's death. For starters, there's a way certain things come off in an illustrated black & white comic book that can take on a much more visceral (in some cases perhaps TOO visceral) fashion in a live-action flesh-and-blood television series. You can do gory deaths tastefully, or you can do it like Glenn's death.
Why? The comic has consistently been full of torture, gore and misery... why change how it is just for that one scene? Honestly Glenn's death was more brutal in the comic. Also I don't want tasteful, if you want tasteful again... consume different media, it's the distaste of it that makes it feel more real.
Yes it was accurate to the comic book but Glenn in the comic did not develop the level of connection to the reader that Glenn in the television show did with the viewer. Which, turns out, is part of what made his death that much more impacting for viewers at the time. However if you look at the general shock/discord over that death and the noticeable sharp ratings drop following it, clearly it wasn't something done in a way that sat too well with many viewers (the rather poor writing in that season and Season 8 didn't help, either).
That's just because the show has more padding, useless episodes so you feel like you know the characters better. People I knew reading the comic felt it was very impactful there as well. The ratings have been steadily dropping by the season because the show is too long in the tooth and needs to get to the point more often with less melodrama.
Trust me kid, I've watch some heavy stuff. Come and See. Irreversible. Rubber's Lover. So don't go trying to say I can't handle that type of stuff. With that said, there is STILL a right and wrong way to do it. Take Alien 3; people didn't so much have an issue that Newt and Hicks died (though for some it was an issue, considering the pseudo-family setup they and Ripley were building towards), it's HOW they were killed that pissed so many people off. Off-screen, right off the bat, with zero fanfare. Plus, outside of maybe Clemens and Dillon, virtually no likable soft-replacements for them, either.
Not a kid and besides whatever Rubber's Lover is I've seen the same media. Alien 3 killed Newt and Hicks off that way because Newt was too old to keep playing the role and Michael Biehn literally walked off the set. It was a troubled production. These were not the creative decisions they inherently wanted to make. You talk in these weird sorts of absolutes as well, as though the film needed likable soft-replacements and couldn't just simply exist as a film that is different to the prior film BECAUSE of how harsh and brutal it is.
Whether you like it or not people are going to react to those sort of big deaths badly if they are handled in a way that doesn't satisfy certain baseline emotional investments, even moreso if the deaths are contrived through happenstances betraying thematic, character and plot-based elements established in previous entries of the series. No one engages in a story solely for logical reasoning, otherwise everyone'd be reading thesis papers instead.
Whether you like it or not plenty of people liked how the deaths were handled and thought they enriched the stories/franchises. Again with these damn contrived complaints, you know the Terminator would have killed Sarah Connor in Tech Noir if Kyle Reese wasn't there as well, right? This is how stories work, the droids end up on the planet with fucking Luke Skywalker on it, sent there by his TWIN SISTER WITHOUT KNOWING IT. I'd love to know what thematic, character or plot-based elements were betrayed lol. Have you ever watched Cinema Sins or a MauLer video essay? Some people just watch for logical BS, in fact most your argument is logical BS, anytime you bring in the word contrived you're delving into logical BS.
No, this is bullshit. If your story, as an example, is based on real-world things (historical, scientific, etc.) and takes liberties to the point of getting actual core details wrong right off the bat (and thus preventing suspension of disbelief), then it's easily possible to have a poorly-written story right at the beginning.
Um... nope. We engage with stories based on the rules they establish, not real-world rules. Unless it's a true story. By not engaging with a story at the level it wants you to you're the problem, not the media. It's like saying you didn't like a Disney film because animals can't talk.
TLOU2's plot, it can be argued, is somewhat poorly set-up at the very start because in a lot of ways it doesn't really forward the main big elements of the plot (the infection) and exploring ways of resolving them. Letting inter-character drama take front-and-center of the main plot can work in ways but it also feels like TLOU2 wastes a good deal of its setting by doing so at the expense of ignoring the larger conflict. TWD's had a lot of that same problem; a lot of plot arcs throughout the show have felt more like the group meandering from spot to spot dealing with stuff not much different than a soap opera, with the zombies being an afterthought.
The second game's main plot isn't about the infection. Now you're asking for a completely different story, this is not how you judge media.
Of course that's probably more of a personal opinion. But it would be like me writing a story with giant spaceships, Dyson rings and black holes, but the plot's really just a slice-of-life of a gardener who waters plants and muses about them. You can make that work with the aforementioned setup, but you can't constantly relegate said major elements to background fodder.
Yes you can... you can do what you want.
Welp I'm sorry but that's what you get when you're a creator stepping into a universe another creator has already made and established lore in. Even moreso if you're jumping into the fray of a series of interconnected films.
That's true of everyone besides George Lucas. George retcons and changes his own lore at his whim, even editing films that already existed, he's never respected strict rules on the lore or how things work, so why should anyone else?
You can do what you want so long as you respect the work of those who came before you and respect the lore that has already been established. Otherwise you end up with stuff like the Disney sequel trilogy (especially TLJ) and Netflix She-Ra.
TLJ arguably respected the lore better than the entire prequel trilogy. It returned the Force to its more mystic roots established mostly by Yoda in ESB, the best film in the franchise. I don't consider JJ just riffing on past films without much new to add "respect". Rian had far more respect, because he believed it could evolve and become more, Lucas did as well if you read up on his ideas for the sequel trilogy, they retcon the lore and the force completely, btw.
Low shot, and also highly inaccurate. If you think TLOU2 is something indicative of an epitome of "adult fiction", you're fooling yourself. I could talk more about the game's narrative flaws but at a later date.
I didn't say the epitome of adult fiction, but your reactions to it suggest adult fiction scares you, you talk like you need things sanitized and you need it to be Hollywood-ized or MCU-ized or Disney-ized instead of being something actually new and interesting and dark. I wonder if you even got that TLOU 1's ending wasn't happy and was at best bittersweet. Whenever I see people revering Joel as you do that's what I think of, Joel is more akin' to the classic anti-hero who reluctantly gets involved in shit. You can point out in such media the classic anti-hero usually has more "respect" or "dignity" in his death if he even has one, but it's not a rule and in this case it had more reason to be done than for shock value or subverting expectations, the game had a thematic goal about revenge, hatred and how your point of view shapes things. All these things are harder for some people to handle than the budding relationship between father and surrogate daughter, though the first game had plenty of hard stuff as well most people glossed it over because they were just happy Joel and Ellie got to live at the end. They didn't need to think too hard about Joel murdering a wounded woman begging for her life or whether or not Joel considered for a second the other side of the moral dilemma Ellie's immunity created. You can be on the side of that moral dilemma that says you don't kill the 1 person for the many but Joel never even entertained the other side because he didn't take some principled stand against that idea, he wanted his new daughter selfishly and regardless of her own wants and needs. You can say she had survivor's guilt or was too young but those are not JOEL'S excuses, those are not JOEL'S reasons, they're yours. They're how you rationalize Joel into a good person when Joel himself isn't going to rationalize it, doesn't even believe it, he's just glad Ellie is alive.