Counter-Currents
1,599 words / 9:09
Warning: a few minor spoilers
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Rogue One is quite simply one of the best Star Wars movies ever. It has an interesting plot, a tight script, good pacing, uniformly good acting, excellent special effects, amazing sets, spectacular new worlds, and dazzling battle scenes. I really loved this movie.
When I first saw the teaser trailer I groaned. I thought it was going to be just a remake of The Force Awakens: a Mary Sue female lead, a multiracial cast, and another plot centering around the god-damned Death Star! Can’t these pathetic shekel-grubbing cynics at Disney come up with a single original idea?
My jaundiced reading was well-grounded, based on the last Star Wars movie, Jar Jar Abrams’ absolutely abysmal The Force Awakens, which was a cynical, mechanical, character-by-character, scene-by-scene, sometimes shot-by-shot remake of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, maximally pozzed with feminism and diversity, and completely lacking in the magic and humanity of the Lucas films. (See my review here.) The idea that Disney would follow this wretched remake with a remake of it seemed like a bad idea whose time had come.
But I was delighted to be proven wrong. Rogue One is set in the Star Wars universe right before A New Hope. A few characters are present from the other films, but they all have minor roles. Instead, Rogue One adds a whole cast of new characters and a novel plot to the larger Star Wars saga, rather than remaking other films in the series or dining out on nostalgia for the cast of the original trilogy, as Abrams did.
The female lead, Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is not a Mary Sue like Rey in The Force Awakens. Jyn was raised in part by Jedi rebel Saw Gerrera (Forrest Whitaker), who taught her to fight, and then left to her own devices at the age of 16, when she embarked upon a life of crime. It is a tough life, but Jyn remains a fundamentally feminine character. For instance, Jyn does not think in principles but in terms of personal relationships. She rejected the rebellion because she felt rejected by it. She rejoins it, because she hopes to reconnect with her father. But she is capable of heroism nonetheless. In truth, Jyn is not Mary Sue, but a plucky Frodo Baggins. (You’ll see it in the Council of Elrond sequence.)
Yes, the cast is multiracial, with two very appealing Asian characters among the principals. But this is an Empire, after all, and set a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. It also seems dumb to complain about Asians and blacks on the screen when there are far more exotic races. In short, casting non-whites in Star Wars is not the same as putting them in stories like King Arthur or Robin Hood. And there was no attempt to match up the white female lead with a black, as in The Force Awakens.
Rogue One is a movie for grownups. I would not take the younglings. The tone is dark and often quite moving, with touches of genuine humor that are never juvenile or crude. Mercifully, there are no Gungans and Ewoks, and nary a word of Nerf herders.
Rogue One really is a war movie. Basically, it is The Dirty Dozen in space. Lucas’ droid and clone armies were created to deprive war of real loss, but they deprive it of tragedy and sublimity as well. In Rogue One, death is very real, often sudden, and always final.
In the Lucas films, the rebels do nothing wrong. In Rogue One, they are every bit as ruthless as the empire. Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor is a battle-hardened spy, saboteur, and assassin. And he comes from the moderate faction.
In the Lucas films, the Gungans and Ewoks represent the Third Worldist fantasy that primitives can triumph over technologically advanced war machines with bows, arrows, and slingshots. In Rogue One, the rebels meet firepower with firepower, until the Death Star rolls up and vaporizes them.
Of course all that technological terror is no match for the Force, we are told in A New Hope. But in Rogue One, there is precious little Jedi swordplay, and it is not always superior to a well-aimed blaster.
Some other things I really liked about Rogue One:
- We learn that the Death Star thermal exhaust port was sabotage.
- The childish and petulant droid K-2SO, voiced by Alan Tudyk, was one of my favorite characters and provided most of the comic relief.
- Peter Cushing is digitally resurrected to play Grand Moff Tarkin, and it was uncannily well done.
- It has the best space battle ever.
- Director Gareth Edwards, who helmed the 2014 Godzilla remake, deserves enormous credit. This is arguably the best-directed Star Wars movie ever.
- The final act of this film is particularly intense, moving, and full of surprises. Where lesser films would have wrapped up, this film keeps pressing on to new heights — then topping them.
- There’s no “crawl” at the beginning, and frankly I did not miss it.
- Many of the lines and shots in the trailers were not in the movie. So if the trailers put you off, you have been mislead.
- The Schwartz was not with us. Aside from the casting issues already mentioned, this movie has no obvious Jewish subversion or propaganda, even though the screenwriters claimed it did.
- The main heavy, Director Krennic (played by Ben Mendelsohn — with distant Prussian-Jewish echoes), had a great visual style with his white cape and black-armored bodyguard, and was an interesting study in sardonic world-weariness and thwarted ambition. (As in The Dark Knight Rises, Mendelsohn has a great “Do you feel in charge?” scene, this time with Darth Vader.)
- Vader’s battle scene was incredibly intense and will be endlessly re-watched and analyzed.
- Forrest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera is fascinatingly realized: a Jedi turned terrorist, he is a wheezing cyborg like Vader, driven by murder and intrigue into gibbering paranoia.
Rogue One has a few flaws:
- John Williams did not write the score, and he is sorely missed. Honestly, they should have just done a pastiche of his scores from the previous seven movies.
- I really wish Darth Vader had more screen time. He’s the only character from the other films I really wanted to see more of. They should have given him some of Grand Moff Tarkin’s lines.
- If the planetary shield on Scarif could prevent Jyn from transferring the Death Star plans, why did it not prevent Bodhi Rook from contacting the rebel fleet to tell them to expect Jyn’s communication?
- The crystals being removed from Jedah were not really necessary for the Death Star, if it could show up on the heels of the last departing ship to blast the place.
- A much more plausible cover for the destruction of the holy city would have been an asteroid strike.
Rogue One is so superior to The Force Awakens that Disney should seriously consider just scrapping its new trilogy and instead focusing on making more “anthology” films set in the Star Wars universe. (But there needs to be an absolute moratorium on more Death Stars.) Jar Jar Abrams, of course, should never work in this galaxy again. But, frankly, Gareth Edwards will be writing his own ticket for many years to come.
At the end of Revenge of the Sith, one feels a certain knowing pleasure in seeing how familiar things were brought about. One feels the same pleasure at the end of Rogue One, as it dovetails perfectly with the beginning of A New Hope. But the ferocious battles and fearsome sacrifices of Rogue One give the rebellion a new seriousness and sublimity, which will forever change how we view A New Hope and its sequels. Thus Rogue One is not just a great movie in itself, it will also deepen and elevate Lucas’ original trilogy. This is a remarkable achievement.
Post Script
I decided to re-watch the original Star Wars (which I hate to call A New Hope), to confirm my hypothesis that Rogue One will significantly change one’s experience of the original trilogy. And I was correct. One interesting detail that popped out is that, aside from the Emperor himself, Tarkin was apparently the only person in the galaxy who could say “no” to Darth Vader. In Rogue One, he sends Vader into battle. In Star Wars, he tells Vader to stop choking a subordinate and is “holding Vader’s leash,” as Leia puts it. In The Empire Strikes Back, Vader is unleashed, and his chokings are no longer mere warnings but a method of execution.
I then went on to re-watch The Empire Strikes Back, and I must alter one aspect of my review above. (Pray I don’t alter it further.) The Empire Strikes Back really is the best Star Wars movie ever. Yes, the embarrassingly juvenile moments remain. Yes, Carrie Fisher is a princess only in the Jewish sense: spoiled, obnoxious, aggressive, and rude. But on the whole, the script, direction, acting, music, special effects, and overall feeling of darkness and dramatic seriousness are superior to any other Star Wars film — especially the third act in the cloud city, and the climactic “I am your father” scene, where Vader offers a proposition that, frankly, Luke should not have refused.
Note
Here’s my ranking of Star Wars films, from top to bottom:
The Empire Strikes Back
Rogue One
Star Wars (A New Hope)
Revenge of the Sith
Return of the Jedi
Attack of the Clones
The Phantom Menace
The Force Awakens
40 comments
So we’re supposed to ignore that it’s a deliberately anti-white movie?
http://acculturated.com/rogue-one-makes-white-guys-enemy-future/
No thanks.
Also, I think it’s fair to say, (correct me if I’m wrong,) that you’ve always been partial to feminism, or at least so-called “strong women,” and as a result, I treat your claim that the obvious Mary-Sue heroine of this film is not a Mary Sue with at least some critical doubt.
If I remember correctly, the Mary-Sue-ness of the horrible lead of The Force Awakens wasn’t even the worst thing about it for you, whereas it was for me — so again, difference of opinion on that score.
If I may be permitted a follow-up:
“Jyn was raised in part by Jedi rebel Saw Gerrera (Forrest Whitaker), who taught her to fight, and then left to her own devices at the age of 16, when she embarked upon a life of crime. It is a tough life, but Jyn remains a fundamentally feminine character.”
A girl who has been taught how to “fight” (and can no doubt ludicrously overpower men in combat as a result) and “embarks on a life of crime” is, by definition, not a “fundamentally feminine character.” Or at least, your definition of “feminine” clearly differs from mine, and I see more commonality with your definition of it, and feminism’s definition of it, than I do with mine.
Go see the film. Then come back and apologize for this obnoxious sperging.
“Go see the film. Then come back and apologize for this obnoxious sperging.”
Yeah, go give Disney your money you dumb sperg!
It is star wars dark forces rehash with a woman playing the role of kyle katarn.
Nice vgame reference. I played that when I was 12 or 13.
I was holding off on seeing this because of that writer’s tweet, but if it’s this good I suppose I can wait until it comes out on Redbox. I’m still loathe to give Disney ANY of my money regardless of how good any of their products are.
I really hate to gush, but Rogue One made me feel the magic of Star Wars again. They really turned up the “gurrrl Power!” marketing for this movie but none of it was actually present in the final film. Even the line “this is a rebellion isn’t it? I rebel” which I hated every time I saw the trailer wasn’t in the final movie. White Nationalists can choose not to watch the movie if Disney’s marketing really did bother them but trying to make a campaign out of boycotting this movie will only end in failure and make us look silly.
That’s rather unexpected.
Nigga please..
This movie is a test pilot intended to measure whether there is any downside to sterilizing white males from lead roles. If it’s successful it’ll be the white male protagonist waterloo.
But what’s really strange is that you, of all people, are praising it, while the anti-white media, of all people, is trashing it (see below). This is doubly bizarre.
“The script of “Rogue One” is so flat and inexpressive, the direction of the actors so methodical, as to render these artists nearly robotic and synthetic.”
– New Yorker
“The first “Star Wars” trilogy had a fresh, insurgent energy, and learning the names of all those planets and galactic adventurers has seemed, to generations of fans, like a new and special kind of fun. Now, though, it is starting to feel like drudgery, a schoolbook exercise in a course of study that has no useful application and that will never end.”
– New York Times
“One of the many problems with “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” is that so much of that joy is gone. The movie is stultifyingly serious, as leaden and dead on its feet as the infamous prequels—both provided us with endless council meetings, charisma-free leads, and distracting technological innovations.”
– New Republic
Good review. I’m excited to see the film.
So is it likely that the writers were just using the anti-white posts just to gain attention for the movie?
Surprising, but Trevor Lynch has never steered me wrong. I recall the “community” prematurely flipping and wigging over Mad Max: Fury Road because it had a female lead. I wasn’t going to see that one either, but then Trevor gave it a good review, so I went and saw it. It turned out to be a solid film from a traditionalist standpoint despite the female lead. (One key difference between MM and RO is that every character that matters in MM is white.)
So, I had no plans to see this new Star Wars film, had zero interest in it for many reasons, but based on this review I think I will now find a way to see it without giving Disney money.
Nxxx makes a very strong point in his first paragraph too. That is no doubt the direction they want to go in, and this reality needs to be a consideration in our cultural commentary.
In my opinion we should not give money to Disney.
We need to try avoiding subsidizing Hollywood as much as possible and the entertainment industry in general.
Anyway, TFA was for me the last straw, for more reasons than I care to recount as it was a complete piece of shit.
I curse Jar Jar Abrahamic, a vile, soulless creature and perfect symbol of so much that is wrong with Hollywood today, Kathleen Kennedy, and all the producers, writers, editors, etc, that had a significant decision making role in creating that abomination.
I haven’t seen this yet, but I’m with the other commenter: it’s startling to see this praised here on CC when it’s getting ripped to shreds in hard-left outlets like the NYT and The New Yorker, especially since the scriptwriters are hardcore shitlibs who believe Trump supporters are bigoted white supremacists.
I have to admit, your review is also a bit gushing and vague. You throw out a bunch of generic praise in the first paragraph (great directing, great script, great acting, I guess it sounds great then?), but the rest of your description doesn’t really make a coherent case. OK, it’s a dark gritty war movie, is that a good thing? Because it seems like it would actually clash pretty badly with the earnest, adventurous tone of the original trilogy.
And then look at the rest of your praise: There’s no opening crawl! The bad guy has a cool cape! The shitty dialogue from the trailers got cut out! There wasn’t any obvious Jewish subversion! It ends where A New Hope begins just like they said it would! Here’s a list of my favorite other Star Wars movies! I get that the robot was funny, everyone liked the robot in Force Awakens too but that movie still sucked (honestly when everyone comes away saying “the robot was the best character” it’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of the actors’ performances). OK, but tell us about the themes, the inspirations, the craftsmanship. What makes this one stand out in an era when most blockbusters are just overproduced, forgettable distractions with a hearty dollop of poz ladled over them?
I don’t doubt for a second that you genuinely liked it. Your review reads like you were eager to gush all your first impressions out without bothering to really organize them, which certainly says something about your experience. But you must realize that people are cagey about this movie for the way it shoehorns yet another all-mystery-meat cast into a previously majority-white series, casts White Male Space Nazis(TM) as the villains, and generally reeks of being a made-by-committee corporate product with no reason for existing beyond shoving money in Disney shareholders’ pockets (why do you think they brought in those Chinese guys? To boost the opening weekend overseas, not for any artistic reason. Why recap another Death Star story? Because it’s safe and familiar and gets asses in seats). It’s bizarre that you just handwave this issue away considering how you called out the (admittedly pretty awful) Hobbit movies for inserting a few token black people in throwaway crowd shots. Ultimately, is it OK if white people get shoved out of their own pop culture and get called “white supremacists” by sneering Jewish Hollywood execs if they complain about it, as long as the resulting product is sufficiently entertaining?
You’ll be embarrassed by this rant once you see the movie. I will accept your apology, though.
You missed my point. Here’s my point, again: whether it’s a good movie or not, your review gives us nothing substantial to shape our expectations, IOW it’s a bad review. It’s half bald assertions, half random trivia that amused you but is meaningless to the prospective viewer. You obviously liked it, but the things you say (Vader was “intense”, CGI Tarkin was “well done”, Saw Gerrera was “fascinatingly realized”) aren’t that different from a 10-year-old who just saw Transformers gushing about Optimus Prime and Bumblebee.
I asked before: beyond being amusing enough to watch for 2 hours, does the story have any weight or resonance? Were you invested in the characters? Did the cinematography and music complement the storytelling? What’s it actually about, thematically? Because if it’s about “how rebellions must begin with hope” like other reviewers are saying, that’s trite fortune cookie shit.
Believe it or not I am interested in your thoughts on these questions. I was curious what your “expanded” review said, but it was just more chatter about “Vader was great, needs more Vader”. Or just ignore them and snark at me some more, that’ll teach me to try engaging with you.
There’s an art to writing reviews. You have to give people enough to intrigue them, not too much to spoil the story. Surely you know that. Which leads me to think you are just being dishonest.
You can’t get me out of bed for Star Wars anymore. In case you haven’t noticed, the world is falling apart. Star Wars is the combination of techno-utopanism, Hollywood fakery, and liberal ideology, as is most of science fiction.
Good to hear, definitely seeing it now. To the great chargrin of white nationalists everywhere of course, after all, if only I didn’t give my jew bux to Disney, they’d close their doors tomorrow!
I believe the msm critics have become as bad as the movies have become. They honestly don’t know quality from derivative dreck. The liberal arts/humanities departments of colleges are so geared towards the cult Marx agenda that they fail to inculcate any true discrimination or cultural depth in students.
Case in point: war dogs. A perfectly entertaining and information, while not ground breaking, summer movie had less than 40% on rt through its entire screening. Don’t breath, an implausible and boring horror flick, enjoyed greater than 90% approval. War dogs would be a great subject for Trevor lynch to review–perhaps the negative reviews were more politically motivated.
Trevor is never wrong about movies. I’ve thot his taste may be off key, but I think he merely has a different taste from mine. I thot fury road was good but not as good as the 80s mad maxes, even beyond thunderdome, which was seen as something of a come down at the time.
It might be great, but I have been fooled too many times (and shame on me for that) to do that again. We also, I think, agree that there is a civil war going between two white factions and paying for this would be funding the other side.
I just have no interest in it and it’s against my interests.
Agreed, but could you buy a ticket for another movie and sneak into Rogue One? My son and nephews wanted to see TFA last year and that is what I did (I have little interest in the whole Star Wars saga – though I do remember seeing the original as a kid with my dad in 1977 or 78).
I would say that don’t pay anything to them – any of them; they all have a message. I know the kids will feel the peer pressure, but if you realize that your money (and since you are here, I am assuming this stuff might matter to you at least a bit) will be used against you and your kids then that puts things into perspective. Making exceptions got us here.
It sucks, but that’s our reality.
Well, I may have to go see this. TFA soured me so bad on SW that I passed up a chance to go watch it yesterday with some friends.
TFA’s only merit was that it played really well on 3D IMAX. Not the as good as The Martian, but I’ll spend shekels to go watch it based on Trevor’s recommendation.
I mentioned to a friend that Disney has an incredible source for all kind of rich stories. The SW universe is very interesting and there is all sorts of fine material for making movies and tv shows if Disney chooses to use it wisely.
I’m sure all of us would love to see the Nolans do a couple of films as well. I’m really glad to hear that the movie is not targeting kids, but rather deals with adult themes related to war and violence.
I saw it with my wife tonight and have mixed feelings about it. I suppose I can best summarize my views of Rogue One by placing it in my own list of best to worst Star Wars movies.
The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars (A New Hope)
Return of the Jedi
Revenge of the Sith
Rogue One
Attack of the Clones
The Phantom Menace
The Force Awakens (did not bother based on Trevor Lynch review)
Rogue One, imo, was an OK film, superior to the worst of the Star Wars outings but inferior to the ones that burned the Star Wars universe into the cultural consciousness. With a few exceptions, it failed to deliver what I was hoping for as a Gen X movie goer who grew up with it — some of that timeless magic from 1977 to 1983. When it did the deliver the magic, it did so through Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader, and the various echos and nods to Star Wars in terms of setting and atmospherics at the end.
As a side note, I think someone ought to be taken out and shot for not having John Williams write the score.
I’ve never been into space nerds poking each other with their little space nerd sticks.
The aversion is strong with this commenter.
Disney is revealing its globalist end game. And what might the be?
It is the subconscious correlation in the consumer’s brain of annual Star Wars premieres with the Christmas season. Until the former eclipses the latter, via a near-perfected market saturation. Each box office success in this rejuvenated franchise serves a vicious cycle, so that each, next installment requires less and less legwork to build and sustain omni-awareness. Because three generations of fans can be relied on as a sort of Clone Army of marketing drones, pouring billions of dollars into merchandise, pouring unpaid manhours into video games, podracechats, web chatter, and content ancillaries. Star Wars monopolizes the collective imagination.
Consider how many hours Disney’s Star Wars universe and its similarly endless Marvel Uni are sucking from Western civilization. Take a second to consider: when the very last Star Wars movie in this Disney assembly line is released, what might our world be like? We’re talking 20-50 movies after Rogue One, possibly delivered, by then, to an in-home VR lifestation. And I’m sure Disney has mapped out this trajectory. By then, we will have official global holidays celebrating these properties. Star Wars will be a top religion to be reckoned with. The empire (us) will finally be defeated.
Star Wars is indeed a battle up above.
And it’s a living nightmare that this heavyweight pop-culture vision of the future is already incredibly antiquated and weirdly anachronistic. A steam punk opiate that blinks kawaii-like at you, a marketing vessel promoting a future where marketing vessels don’t exist, where Disney movies can’t exist, because the world so needs saving and precious life must be lived.
Disney is the final boss. Pirate its output if you must. Or maybe kys.
In short, casting non-whites in Star Wars is not the same as putting them in stories like King Arthur or Robin Hood.
In both cases the multiracial casting would be an attempt to remove us from, or marginalize us within, our own popular culture.
Many people have sentimental feelings about the original Star Wars movies. I don’t myself, but many people do.
Today those old movies seem far too white in the eyes of liberal multiracialists and Jews. Hence the multiracial casting. If we are so weak that we tolerate being removed from our own popular culture, then they are more than willing to do it to us. It is part of their deliberate campaign to immerse us in a popular culture that embraces and promotes the demographic changes currently underway throughout the West. We could end their propaganda simply by refusing to pay for it, but they’re confident that we won’t.
The creators of the new Star Wars movies are hoping that twenty years from now young viewers from 2016 will have the same sentimental feelings about non-white Star War characters that older viewers today have about Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. They do not want white film heroes for our future; they want non-white heroes. Unfortunately they have, at the moment, the media power to make their wishes a reality.
I can’t see any reason to be pleased by a film that carries so sinister a purpose. If the film is good, then its qualities are bad for us and good for all those who favor the destruction of the West.
It would be great if _Rogue One_ turns out to be a box-office disaster. I’m crossing my fingers.
Go see the film. Then come back and apologize for this obnoxious sperging.
Why should he waste his money paying a Jewish studio for the privilege of watching a multiracialist children’s movie? We’re not talking about Touch of Evil here; the movie under review can be nothing more than a high-tech, CGI-intensive version of an old Flash Gordon serial, with Asians and Negroes playing roles previously assigned to Europeans.
Everyone should save money and watch Emily’s Wizard of Poz instead. I am sure it is much better than Rogue One, and it’s free.
https://youtu.be/aOxv7klZK-Y
It’s promising to see another reader set sights on the Star Wars franchise’s “sinister purpose.” And I agree that each generation of fans will be applied like multi-culti paint layers onto a traditional foundation, until a NWO mud planet remains, jutted with the bo staffs and sabers of interchangeable Mary Sues.
Tweets from the ‘Rogue One’ screenwriters:
“Please note that the Empire is a white supremacist (human) organization” – Chris Weitz
“[…] Opposed by a multicultural group led by brave women.” – Gary Whitta
‘Star Wars’ is the finest example of (((Hollywood’s))) long game. The way they create a map that keeps growing until it envelops the territory with inky predatory revisionism. But the world is quickly changing course; perhaps ‘Star Wars’ sputters and crashes in a decade, the biggest relic of SFWs, utopian fantasy, and one-size-fits-all blockbuster entertainment. Either way, it’s a barometer of the future. Study it, don’t support it.
Poll: The Rising Tide of (((Star Wars: Rogue One))) Reviews for hWhite World Supreemacy
Which alt-Right personality’s review of Star Wars: Rogue One is the winninger & more unpresidented?
Greg Johnson:
https://counter-currents.com/2016/12/rogue-one/
Richard Spencer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWCpVZEdwl0
Take Poll Here:
https://goo.gl/9ot3mW
Whichever reviewer is adjudged the winner by his folk will assume the mantle of Leader of the alt-Right from Natt from the Winter Solstice all the way to the Spring Equinox, with all the privileges & responsibilities thereto accruing.
On Spencer! On Johnson!
On Spencer! On Johnson!
My inclination is to vote for neither, and to avoid watching the movie as well.
Sorry to sound obnoxious, but it seems bizarre to me that two grown men, both of whom read great books and can spell big words correctly, are babbling away about a children’s movie, a worthless piece of pop entertainment that was deliberately conceived as an attempt to multiracialize a revered film franchise.
We know that racial hostility toward us has shaped both of the new Star Wars films. That should be enough to keep WNs far away from them.
Even when they were innocuous politically, Star Wars movies were never worth the trouble of learned analysis. The only justification for watching this particular movie would be to analyze its racial politics and to encourage others to stay away from any movie theater screening it.
If I had to vote, I would choose Spencer, since he eventually gets around to the real political purpose of this latest piece of anti-white propaganda. I figured it out without actually seeing it, which wasn’t difficult.
As a Radix reader pointed out over at Youtube, if anyone desperately needs to watch this film, it will eventually be available on a torrent. Hold your breath for a while, and then get it for free. Think of your theft as a minor act of rebellion against people who hate us.
— Irmin
two grown men … are babbling away
“Babbling away” was dumb and impolite. With apologies, I’ll revise it to “talking about.”
The “boycott popular culture” mentality is self-defeating. A few dozen or a few hundred White Nationalists cannot affect the bottom line at Disney. But they can affect our movement, and deflect it toward marginality and irrelevance, which is the end point of all too many attitudes, unfortunately. The alienated, embittered, and permanently triggered are pretty much useless to us. We won’t change the world without engaging it. If we don’t pay attention to pop culture, we can’t communicate with our people. As for the propaganda in pop culture: if we teach our people to see through it, then every time our people see the propaganda, it reinforces our message not the enemy message. Since the enemy has invested billions in their propaganda machine, and we have bupkiss, that is the best-leveraged form of asymmetrical cultural warfare I know.
RE: “The ‘boycott popular culture’ mentality is self-defeating. A few dozen or a few hundred White Nationalists cannot affect the bottom line at Disney”
The alt-right’s tech-savvy trolling campaign directly affected the ‘Ghostbusters’ franchise. It’s dead. And all of Hollywood def took note. And we didn’t pay a cent to see the film. You won’t see another fem-nazi franchise makeover in the Trump era. You won’t see director Paul Feig be quite as vocal against white males when plugging his next film. When people remember 2016’s ‘Ghostbusters,’ the alt-right’s trolling will always be a prominent part of the discussion.
The complaints this weekend about MTV’s “NYE Resolutions for White Guys” video is drowning out the video itself. Alt-right trolls plunged its approval ranking on YouTube, hijacked the comments, and created so much Twitter chatter that even Joe Rogan took note.
One can stay hep to ‘Star Wars’ without paying and supporting it. The alt-right has considered meme’ing the Empire into Nazis online, so that Disney will be offput selling Empire toys. These types of campaigns are the future, and how we destroy this Jewish muppet space opera.
Do you have any proof of these claims, or do they have the same status as talking credit for Trump’s election and similar grandiose nonsense?
Hi Greg
You asked for “proof” to support “my claims” that the coordinated trolling and social media raids of the alt-right (namely 4chan’s /pol) 1) hurt ‘Ghostbusters’ financially on the domestic front 2) came to overshadow the film itself, so that our efforts are forever intertwined with the film’s perception in popular culture, and its release history
A Google Search of “Ghostbusters 2016 trolls” is all you need, mainstream samples below, all of which equate alt-right politics with the “trolls” m.o.:
Toronto Sun (Headline): After ‘Ghostbusters’ flop, are the trolls winning?
The Nation (Headline): The ‘Ghostbusters’ Trolls Were Right
Esquire: The 2016 Canon: I Was Rooting for Ghostbusters. I Didn’t Think the Trolls Could Win.
Learning some tough lessons about strength and power in 2016.
Forbes (Headline): Thanks Trolls, You Turned ‘Ghostbusters’ Into A Cultural Event
I saved the best for last, because it was written in a sarcastic tone, predicting that ‘Ghostbusters’ would ride an impassioned SJW-wave to success; instead it was indeed a “cultural event,” a display of the alt-right’s savvy collectivism online. And Hollywood’s shekel-counters took note.
In regard to Trump’s election, yes, I’d argue that Pepe the Frog being wallpapered on CNN after Hillary vocally criticized the alt-right did play a small part in it. It was the surreal cherry on her wobbling bowl of crazy. Using a funny cartoon as a mascot for a dead-serious movement is next level nimble navigating. Unlike Stay Puft, we won, and we will keep winning, sperging in the shadows.
Movies are a segue for talking to people, especially in the coffee room. Since Star Wars has been around for ever, it is a proper means for questioning interpretations and planting seeds of doubt in leftist minds. Just who are the good guys and why?
They’ve given us hope…hope that Star Wars can be good again!
It’s really something that ranks with the original trilogy. Smartly scripted and the only thing missing was a great John Williams score. I loved the competition between moff Tarkin and the Death Star architect. They sort of channeled Edward tellers rationalization for building the hydrogen bomb–if I hadn’t done it someone worse would have! And the Death Star blast was more like an atomic bomb too.
Nor was the multicultural bs all that bad, for this political environment, as little as could be expected. There’s not a negro genius behind every door(excuse me, portal). Certainly, if one stands back, the empire is all middle aged white dudes and the rebellion a brave new world of cute young whites and browns and aliens.
I found this movie to be just ok to good. Not the total joy you describe. The best since Episode 5. The acting was flat, but it was a well told short story with excellent special effects, visually tremendous. The biggest weakness: In Ep 4, the existence & capability of the Death Star was a total surprise to all concerned, but based on the events in this film, it is clearly a well understood entity with survivors to its potency aplenty (from the final scene).
The stormtroopers might as well be naked…their armor is worse than decorative. Completely worthless. There are other flaws, but they’ve been addressed elsewhere.
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