NecronLord wrote:
Are you saying that the East India Company wasn't evil? Heh. I'm not going to bother rebutting it, I'll just say that yes, you can dial down into a level of relativism that will make the Empire look good - that doesn't mean that it's a probable or good idea to present them as good in major pop-culture movies. Just like the East India Company, their only recent appearance in big-budget Disney live action films is as villains to make pirates look sympathetic.
To us? Sure they did a lot of evil stuff. Contemporarily? No, even the people who hated it at the time did so because it was the target of what we would consider now its excesses, not because they had a particular problem with what or how it engaged in those excesses. Indeed many other powers had equivalent organizations and had no problem with what their version was doing.
The point, however, is that a certain category of viewer seems to think the Republic's institutions and its people are analogous to modern Western notions of morality and governance. I blame ham fisted Padme incomprehensible blabbering with Democracy sprinkled in. Even the most clueless of viewers should have clued in that Padme was written as naive, intentionally or not. Nothing we see bears her pontificating out in universe even if it rings true to us.
Note how this is a triumphant scene where the protagonists mercilessly gun down the East India Company and its sailors. The East India Company are exactly the sort of people who make good cinematic villains.
Did you just provide a Pirates of the Caribbean video as a counter against an argument made on historic fact? It looks like you did.
Shall we list the organizations, evil/good/neutral, that have been WRITTEN evil? Seriously, what a shitty movie anyway.
As for the Trade Federation, in the films, they cringe at the idea of murder and have to be pushed along verbally by Palpatine.
"This scheme has failed, we dare not go against the Jedi!"
"Kill them immediately..."
"Yes..." then faltering, then "yes my lord."
They cringe at murder, or did the cringe at murdering diplomats from the galactic government who also happen to be top law enforcement officers who also happen to be known to be on their starship by the Republic version of the FBI (who read minds, it is known) and who also happen to be space wizards.
Or they may not be concerned about any of that, but rather that this idiot hologram dude actually said it out load and has us thinking about it now, in the vicinity of people who can sense strong emotions. Which of course is exactly what happens.
Or maybe its not that either but rather "whats the rush grandpa? I kill babies for breakfast, I like literally eat them. But maybe we can just bluff these guys away? How about we just try and send them back all coed and stuff. I mean, we have gotten away with this type of shit for years, lets try a little finesse first. We can always kill them later."
Your reaction to that scene is self serving. The Trade Federation is about to invade an entire planet with the risk of god knows how many potential civilian casualties and you think they are concerned about murdering two more non innocents? Sorry, the most likely thing that gave them pause (if they did at all, can you read Neamodian facial expressions and vocal cues?) was 1.) whether they can actually physically pull that off given the targets are fucking Jedi and 2.) would they get caught doing it. Call me cynical, but if those were two space stowaways caught eating out of one of their clients cargo caches an airlocks cycle time is all that would have saved them from open vacuum. BTW, do people with a hang up for murder generally have purpose build deadly gas vents installed in random conference rooms?
There's no indications in the films (and given that Disney has done virtually no prequel EU material I imagine the nu-EU either) that they were murdering people before they met him.
Except for the fact that they are in the process of orchestrating a planetary invasion and the first thing we see them do is try and murder two people and then actually murder at least two more...
Well, they did offer tea first, but the very next thing after that! Are you drawing this wealth of morality and good feelings from this preliminary generous refreshment offer? Manners are important, don't get me wrong, but they do still try to gas them them to death in the same scene.
You are applying an in-universe standard of evidence, I'm not saying that. I'm saying the audience knows it. And if you think the average audience member doesn't think that the Jedi and Republic stood for justice, I want what you're smoking.
Did I say anything about making the Imperials the good guys from the audience perspective? Is that what you think an Imperial POV movie has to do?
When you watched the Godfather did you think any of the Corleones were the good guys? Did that stop you from ever so slightly rooting for them at times or being just a little bit interested on how the end up? The fact is plenty of movies are about bad guys, doing bad things. Audiences routinely routed for Tony Soprano day after day because if you zoomed in enough and controlled scene you can make him sympathetic. Or you know its wrong but you relish watching someone actually do what you sometimes wish even though you know its wrong Then at some point you suddenly zoom out and the full context snaps you back to reality and you remember just what a scum bag this guy is. That doesn't stop you from being invested in and caring about the character though, nor having conflicted feelings when he finally gets what you know he deserves.
Countless movies are based on this. Black Mass. The Departed. Good Fellas. The Godfather Movies. Casino. American Gangster. This is continued in TV series like The Sopranos, Dexter, and Sons of Anarchy.
And this is for characters who know they are wrong and were not manipulated or conned into participating. They commit their heinous crimes with no delusions that its for the greater good or anything other their own usually material gain.
And yet, people are consistently shocked by the brutality of the Empire. Even children get it.
"I'm not that old, but I remember a time when things were better on Lothal, maybe not great, but... not like this."
Yeah, no.
Even children. Well if CHILDREN think something is bad then that's the penultimate indictment! I can convince a child that anything is bad, and that stealing their lolly is worse than murdering millions. Which is not to say something is not bad because children think so, but man could you possible have a less lame supporting statement?
And Lothal proves nothing. What happens on Lothal is as relevant as what happens in Sugar Loaf Wyoming to someone in the smallest village of India. Actually, thats not right. Its as relevant as what happens to a cockroach in Sugar Loaf Wyoming to a cockroach analogue living in the bottom most level of an undiscovered alien ecumenopolis orbiting a star dozens of light years away.
I live in Monterrey CA. The fact that there is a run down hovel full of people abused by police every day a mile away doesn't make the rows and rows of Carmel seaside mansions a mile in the other direction disappear. Or everything else in between that situation between them.
There isn't enough information to make the claims you do. However, the fact that the Empire continues to enjoy high technology, highly educated and trained military personnel who are pretty damn motivated from what I see, and are really suffering no material want point to there being a pretty dedicated base of people somewhere who have their back. I doubt people who can design and build kilometer long star destroyers live on Lothals.
Except Bail Organa. What with his having been in conversations where people talked about how he was the other sith lord, and having helped with the attack. Or do you think Bail Organa went in to rescue Yoda from Palpatine because he expected an unarmed normie politician to beat the Grand Jedi Master in personal combat?
Bail Organa, a leader of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. Interesting that.
The people I mentioned as being in the know was in the context of those who serve the Empire not knowing its origins or its top leaders true intentions. Palpantine, Vader, Dooku? These would not be sympathetic characters, though that doesn't mean you can't make a well received or at least financial successful movie about one of them (or three...)
People who do know the truth and refuse to serve the Empire are irrelevant to a discussion about a movie from the POV of people who are serving the Empire and are not in the know. They take Palpantine at his word, just like the likes of Bail Organa did earlier himself. If Bail Organa had died of a heart attack the day before he knew the truth would he suddenly be evil because he unknowingly served Palpantine for years. No, he would be a tragic, though perhaps judged gullible, character.
Good point I was talking about audience perspective hey?
That audience knowledge does not automatically lead to an unsympathetic audience. How many times were audiences agast at Tony Soprano betraying his own, even if the betrayed was little better than him. Do you think audiences were all thinking "good riddance" when Michael has Fredo killed? How may hookers had Fredo abused and/or murdered again?
Have you watched Star Wars Rebels?
Because Star Wars rebels is hours of televised Star Wars in part focusing on the ground-level experience of living in the Empire.
Much of it, but not all of it, its pure shit. However, Rebels its irrelevant to the OP question. Its cool for nerds to obsess over of course, but no studio executive will make a fill decision relying on Rebels whatsoever. To them its just a way to extract money from low quality tolerate super fans between printing money from feature films.
You are clearly setting a standard of evil that requires the footsoldiers of evil to conciously swear their loyalty to the Dark Lord. You can certainly see a perspective even for the orcs from The Hobbit as not seeing themselves as evil. That doesn't mean it's marketable to make a film about Lord-of-the-Rings orcs in their setting.
There is no equivalency at all because, again, you are talking about an openly identified Dark Lord. Palpantine is not a Dark Lord to anyone an Imperial POV movie is going to be made about if you insist it has to be about a straight sympathetic character.
The story arch of Palpantine, through three movies, is about how he convinced near everyone he was NOT a Dark Lord. It laboriously shows us how he built up decades of manufactured evidence, conducted intrigues and coopted/destroyed any threat to the narrative he is anything but a supper awesome civil servant who saved the Republic from its most dire threat in millennia. Oh, and while he was at it, he solved those however many centuries of societal rot and government decline everyone was whining about. Oh, but don't forget, it wasn't just him, YOU brave Clone Wars veteran and war weary citizen, share in the glory and success. The Empire is as much yours as it is mine! Your Senator voted for it, didn't he?
So now, after all we have been through together, the things you have endured and done (probably not above board all the time, war is messy) to save the Republic and now the celebrated Empire, some random dudes want undo all of it and rekindle civil war!? Who are you going to believe is the good guy: some Jedi traitor sympathizer who ran off with his tail between his legs when the Senate didn't vote his way? Did I mention I have an unblemished public record going back decades? I can't stress that enough. Unblemished. DECADES.
Perhaps if it is post Death Star things get a bit more dicey, not that Lucas would have ever come up with it himself but showing that Palpantine overplayed his hand by destroying a ancient and storied founding world of Galactic civilization and tipping his hand that be might start treating the core worlds like the outer rim and thus cracking is carefully manicured senior statesmen mask is a great undescribed plot point that can be assumed. But then we are not shown this, so no viewer HAS to assume that. And like Rebels the DS book doesn't matter to a new film discussion.
Likewise, it's simply not a viable proposition as a major motion picture, it's inconsistency with the direction Disney has taken, which is to emphasize the evil of the Empire even in very petty ways - threatening fruit-sellers in the street and stealing peoples' farms - and requires the audience to forget what it already knows about the evil of the Empire and its child-murdering leaders.
99% of audiences won't give two shits about Rebels. Its actually worse than them not caring what was in it, they won't even know that it exists at all. And in the end, as was proven in the prequels, Disney doesn't either. Disney will shit all over Rebels if they think there is a blockbuster movie out there. Any SW movie, Imperial POV or otherwise, will care only about previous feature film continuity if they care about continuity at all.
So while I know it probably took effort on your part to dig up all those Rebels clips they are irrelevant because 99% of any future Star Wars feature film audience doesn't even know they exist.
And again, an Imperial POV movie does not have to be good character in a good Empire. It could be good character in evil empire or even evil character in evil empire. Movies, big money making critically acclaimed movies, have been made with each formula.
Try and unfuck your head. I'm not saying the evidence suggests that the in-universe Empire is evil all the way down - I've even said I'd include Jerjerrod's deleted scenes in my cut of Return of the Jedi, which generally show him to be a humane person - nor anything so stupid. Do I think it's marketable as a major motion picture? No, not really. Do I think it has special merit as an artistic proposition? No. Could it be done - yes, concievably. But I don't think it should be the focus of their effort in any way.
Things like TIE fighter have been done and are good (in point of fact I was replaying TIE fighter literally yesterday after the steam bundle) but they're worthwhile in media like comics where you have endless resources, or games, where you want an excuse to fly the cool military gear of the bad guys. They're not working propositions as motion-pictures.
Someone should tell Netflix, they insist on greenlighting repeat seasons of a series about fucking Kubla Khan. Remember a little movie called Maleficent ($180M budget, $785M gross)? A movie where they literally take folklore archtype for evil over centuries and through creative storytelling make her not just sympathetic but actually good? It happens. A lot.
The topic is 'will we get an Imperial POV movie' - there's no indication of that, and as I've posted, there's every indication that Disney is doubling down on the evil of the Empire - they started their last movie with the Empire-successor randomly massacring people for literally no reason, and Rebels and the nu-EU show a whole wave of petty evil. If you want my answer of 'did any otherwise-moral people support the Empire' go post a new thread with that question.
Rebels is irrelevant to business decisions, TFA doesn't have an Empire to double down on. There could have been, but Abrahms happened.
You can't see a Imperial POV movie because you are not being creative. You have decided what that movie would have to be, which convieniently coincides with your biases. Use your imagination a bit, we would have no Good Fellas if we all thought like you. Who wants to watch a movie from the POV of murdering gangsters. BORING!
