Tag: Disney Star Wars

Johnsonian Delusion

Johnsonian Delusion – a state of mind in which a person is completely unable to comprehend that someone else dislikes something because it is low quality, and in which a person will try to deny the very existence of opposing points of view.

I was recently watching a video by Star Wars Theory, in which he goes through an article that claims that anyone who dislikes Rey from Disney’s attempt at Star Wars films must be sexist.

The article isn’t really anything new. It’s filled with the same kind of resentful, spiteful, hands-covering-ears-shouting-i-can’t-hear-you-la-la-la non-thinking that we’ve seen ever since the release of The Last Jedi. 

The arguments that are presented in the article were refuted years ago by YouTube critics. There are hundreds upon hundreds – possibly thousands of videos showing why they are flawed. It has been discussed to death, yet there are still people, six years later, desperately trying to cover for the idiocies of Abrams and Johnson.

And this reminds me of something I noticed the day after I first went to see The Last Jedi all those years ago. I went to see the film one evening – when it finished I remember being very confused, because it seemed like the story hadn’t even properly started. Afterwards I spent many hours thinking about the film, and came to the conclusion that it was utterly dreadful. The next day, I talked to some people about it, expecting others to have observed what I observed (the film’s many errors). But to my surprise, not only did they say that they liked the film, they were fervorous about it. Immediately, without hesitation, they dismissed any notion that it might have flaws. They didn’t want to even accept the possibility of it.

It’s a phenomenon that I’ve noticed in lots of other people when it comes to The Last Jedi. A lot of the people who like it can’t just like it, they cannot accept any suggestion that it’s not a masterpiece. Some will reluctantly accept that the sequence on Canto Bight is a waste of time – but it’s hard to get them to even accept that. I had never known any film have this affect before – to instil almost cult-like adulation among some of its viewers. With most films, we all accept that some people will like them and some people won’t – but with The Last Jedi, a great many of its devout cannot accept that anyone dislikes it – it’s bizarre!

Even more to my surprise, it’s something I’ve seen increasingly for other films and television shows since the film’s release. I see the same attitude in people who like Star Trek Discovery, or Star Trek Picard, or Chibnall’s Doctor Who – a complete unwillingness to consider that maybe people have good reasons to dislike them. 

I’ve seen this effect so many times now – and here we are seeing it again with this article – that I find I have to put a name to it. And I think I’ll choose: Johnsonian Delusion – after the Great Destroyer himself, Rian Johnson, who not only inspired it in so many, but seemed to exhibit it for his own film. 

Johnsonian Delusion – a state of mind in which a person is completely unable to comprehend that someone else dislikes something because it is low quality, and in which a person will try to deny the very existence of opposing points of view.

Kenobi – Episode 1 – Just Dreadful

I haven’t seen any of the Disney Star Wars television series’ up until this point. In my opinion, The Last Jedi was just awful, and killed the franchise. (And The Rise Of Skywalker did nothing to counter this.) I’ve generally held the position that I won’t return to the franchise unless they decanonise The Last Jedi. So I’ve not seen any of The Mandalorian or The Book Of Boba Fett. I haven’t seen the Han Solo movie either.

But I decided to watch (at least the first episode of) the new Kenobi series. I didn’t have high hopes for it, but I liked Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel films, and thought he might be able bring a similar magic to this show.

But it’s garbage.

Starting with the worst part of it: the dialogue. The dialogue is just awful. It’s some of the worst-written dialogue I have ever seen on television. It’s glaringly expository – so obviously trying to just inform the audience about who’s who and what’s what that it immediately pulls you out of the story. When the main villain says his first line, I actually laughed out loud, it was so badly written.

The villains spend an awful lot of time monologuing. (It’s like the writers have never seen The Incredibles.) Monologuing isn’t so bad in a melodramatic, somewhat flamboyant and romantic setting like the actual films, but it really doesn’t work in a show that’s trying to be gritty. It also doesn’t work as the opener for your villains. The villains in this show spend a ridiculous amount of time pacing backwards and forwards, surrounded by what must be 0.0001% of Mos Eisley’s total population (I assume it’s Mos Eisley – I don’t think it’s ever said). They desperately try to look menacing and evil, but the writers seem to have a cartoon idea of what evil is. These characters have no presence whatsoever, and do not appear threatening.

Moving on to the next-worst part: there’s basically no plot. One of the first rules of writing for television must surely be: in the first episode, establish what your protagonists want, and are trying to do, and establish what your antagonists want, and are trying to do, and create tension between them. I see so many shows ignoring this principle nowadays – including this one. What does Kenobi want? Well … just to sit around and work cutting up meat in the desert. Not very compelling. What do the Jedi hunters want? To find Jedi. Kind of obvious in the name. How are they going to do it? Just sort of walking around and occasionally smouldering. There are three of them, but they don’t seem to have individual motivations. Leia gets captured, but obviously we know she’s fine in the end, so no real suspense there.

These things alone are enough to condemn the first episode, if not the whole series (which is only going to be six episodes long, so they’ve wasted the first episode not doing the essentials). But there are various other weird things that the show does that pull you out of it.

The main one is that where Kenobi works – at some kind of thrown-together outdoor factory in the middle of the desert, next to the body of some large creature that they’re cutting up and getting the meat from – when all of the workers finish for the day (which, curiously, is when the suns are still high in the sky), they just leave all these huge slabs of meat out in the desert sun. They do this every day. I was staring at the screen thinking ‘You’re just going to leave raw meat out in the desert sun? And then you’re going to continue cutting it up for sale the tomorrow? What?!’. How switched-off do you have to be not to notice a problem like that when you’re writing? Did no-one mention that during the production? (Or worse, and more likely, someone mentioned it, but a bad culture on the production meant that that person was ignored or shut down.)

Another one: Leia’s toy flying droid has a circular saw attachment, which it uses to untie her hands after she’s captured. What the fuck kind of children’s toy has a circular saw attachment? This droid isn’t big either – there is limited space for what kind of attachments to give it, and apparently the manufacturers decided on a circular saw.

They’ve also decided to do a Luke Skywalker on Obi-Wan Kenobi – he’s now a bitter, reluctant old guy who doesn’t want anything to do with the Jedi anymore. I mean, for goodness’ sake, who’s writing this shit? People didn’t like that in The Last Jedi; they’re not going to like it here. Stop doing this – it isn’t a good character point.

So it looks like this series is going to be a disaster. It’s a shame, because I don’t think it had to be. The CGI on the show is mostly excellent (though there are a few weird moments where it falls apart completely). The music is not especially good, but it’s not dreadful either – it’s passable. McGregor does what he can with the lines he’s been given, but he’s been given shit lines and no character work. The young actress who plays Leia is quite good (some very unrealistic lines, but quite fun). But while I like seeing a lot more of Alderaan, I don’t think they’ve chosen a particularly interesting story path for Leia.

So it looks like Disney continues to have no idea how to make Star Wars stuff, and continues pumping out shit.