Meta-meanderings

[hazelk]

Reading reviews of the last of the Star Wars films is interesting. One of the most common reactions seems to be a certain disappointment with the story of Anakin Skywalker’s fall or at least with it’s execution. I’ve read people talking about how they’d looked forward to seeing this story since the first trilogy made it clear that Luke’s Father hadn’t always been evil and been reminded of a similar experience I had with the prequel to the Lord of the Rings. I must have read the book at least 20 times as a teenager and the thing that kept bringing me back after the first few reads was very much the desire to find out more about the back story, the battles of the First Age, the nature of the Great Enemy, the story of Beren and Luthien. So when The Silmarillion came out I could hardly wait to get hold of it and devour all that information.

I was never so disappointed in my life. The book delivered, I had all the answers but they felt so much better as questions. Perhaps some things are just better viewed through a glass darkly, put a spotlight on them and they shrivel and die, all mystery gone.

Another interesting thing about RoTS was the idea that part of Skywalker’s fall and the Sith’s evil was due to an inability to accept the inevitability of death, their own or other's. The desire for eternal life seems a common root for evil in fantasy. It’s there in Tolkein with the fall of Numenor, integral to U. K .LeGuin’s Earthsea series and present with Voldemort in Harry Potter. Not in Buffy though, there the villains already have immortality. What they seem to lust after is corporeality/mortality. The First, the Mayor even Angel/Spike with the desire to Shanshu. Is that an existentialist’s perspective? To be afraid not of death but of lacking reality?

Staying with Buffy but returning to the problems of prequels it strikes me that some of the issues people have with S7 may have to do with it being a complete failure in the prequel department. I mean chronologically it’s not a prequel but there was all that back to the beginning schtick and what looked like a return to mystical adversaries after S6 and the nerds. Being the last season maybe it wasn’t unreasonable to expect some clarification of the Slayer mythology and yet all we got was a deeply unsettling version of the origin story in GiD and further muddying of the issue with Beljoxa’s eye dropping hints about a weakness in the line and the arrival of the Guardian and the discovery of the Scythe. More new questions than answers, this season wasn’t an clarification of the Slayer myth but a critique.

Comments

[ludditerobot.livejournal.com]

RE Buffy: I suppose that makes sense. Explaining the myth demythologizes it. I don't believe half of it, though, but I'm the voice in the wilderness yelling that the First really won.

RE Star Wars: ROTS really brings up something for me. At the end of ROTJ, I got a feeling that Luke was dissatisfied, left somewhat adrift. I remember thinking that there was the possibility that the third trilogy could be about him becoming dark. Really, honestly, I believe this is his last film. I don't believe he'll be happy enough with anything for Indy Jones IV to be made (they were set to introduce Kevin Costner as brother Jones before talks fell through), and I don't think he'll be satisfied with a small movie like American Graffiti anymore. And yes, even with four intertwined plots, it's a small movie because it never leaves town, while it isn't an Indy movie unless there's at least two continents and it isn't a Star Wars movie unless there's at least two planets and preferrably three or more. This would be a kind of shame, because I want to see the decline and fall of Luke.

[fishsanwitt]

Season 7 was *such* a muddle. They should have kept it simple. The First, the original Watchers - dump Botox's Eye (or however it's spelled) and the Scythe - wt? was *that* about - and that old woman lurking - I really thought they were just playing it for laughs. And Caleb - Lord help me - he seems to have shambled in from that Robert Mitchum movie - where he's the creepy preacher!

[swsa.livejournal.com]

What was striking to me was the similarity in all the complaints about Anakin's fall to Dark Willow. Seriously, I felt like I could do a search and replace with the names. And it's made me wonder, why are there so many who don't buy either downfall even as they admit that the clues and buildup were so prevalent as to render the eventual outcome inevitable? There seems to be a problem in following along with that final leap from "tempted by the darkside" to "totally giving in to it."

As for S7, I have to admit, I have zero problems with the plot. None. There's nothing that doesn't make sense to me. I was rather stunned that people were upset by GiD just because I thought that revelation was obvious from at least Restless on. If anything, I could see being disappointed that it was so unsurprising. But the betrayal people felt over it always confused me. But anyway, I'm not sure if it's just because I'm so unconcerned with plot and generally tend to just look for the most obvious, surface-y answer and then let it be (There's a disturbance in the Slayer line that lead to the First Evil making its move, in Chosen Buffy makes the line irrelevant...good enough for me), but I just don't have the same issues that most people do.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

Thinking about reactions to S7 and RotS I found that that many resentment was rooted in both of the stories being last in the series. No more hope that things may work out any other way - and the expectations were vastly different, especially from BtVS.

No more canon, the last chance to get everything right- or wrong.

I notice a lot of similarity in reactions, and not necessarily in particulars, but in the mood. For me, personally,the difference was that I cared about Buffyverse and its characters, whereas Starwras is more like a cultural fenomenon, hence I am willing to cut more slack to Joss, because he does better what I care about - characters and dialogue.