Re: Box Office: ‘Rise Of Skywalker’ Turned ‘Star Wars’ Into A $6 Billion Wash
Posted: 2020-02-01 07:20am
You know. I'm glad you set me straight. All this time I thought Gold leader and Luke were having trouble making the shot to destroy the Death Star, and it all culminated in Luke's mastery of the force for the masterful shot to destroy it, making his training with Obi Wan mean something. Turns out, all the drama was them choosing on whether or not to destroy it, or go off to Canto Bight for a pint after choosing to miss and all their friends die horribly. There is drama in whether or not someone CAN do something, and if such training has paid off, or if they're not good enough.Vendetta wrote: ↑2020-02-01 05:48amI think you've misunderstood what character growth is in a story, having possibly confused it with levelling up in videogames.
Character growth in a story is not "character learns a skill", that's levelling up in videogames.
Character growth in a story is "character changes as a person in a way that causes them to behave in different ways".
That is, ultimately, why all the complaints about "Rey can do too many things" are irrelevant and wrong, because "can the character do the thing" is never the interesting question in a story, the interesting question is "will the character choose to do the thing", and character growth is the process of turning them from the person who wouldn't choose to do the thing to the person who would by resolving an internal conflict between what they want and what they need.
For a perfect example of this, where no-one would ever question whether the character can do the thing, look at Superman 2. In the movie Superman wants to be Clark Kent, he wants to be normal and accepted, but he has to accept the responsibility of being Superman. The movie is about him overcoming the internal conflict between those wants and needs until he accepts the difficult path of being Superman. Once he does that the physical confrontation with Zod and his goons is a foregone conclusion.
Likewise, when Han returns at the end of ANH there is not a tense scene about whether he is a good enough shot to nail the TIEs, because that would be a completely uninteresting question, the interesting question is whether he would choose to return.
Rise of Skywalker has no character growth because its characters do not process information and change their decisions. They just run around shouting and chasing macguffins and any consequences thereof are undone so nobody has to change at all. Having a "training scene" does not produce that if nobody ends the scene in a position that means they would make a different choice next time.
The Last Jedi is the one that has character growth because all three of its threads start with a character that makes wrong decisions, then they learn from the consequences of those decisions and change into the sort of people who make correct decisions.
People cried about it, of course, because they didn't want their shiny heroes to be people who made bad choices, but you have to have that to have room for them to actually grow.