Playing Whack-a-Mynock
Sep. 17th, 2023 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerUnderstanding I’d be visited around Thanksgiving rather than going visiting myself, I got started on my once-a-year viewing of my Star Wars Blu-Ray set a bit earlier than usual. When I watch them might still be a relic of what month the Revenge of the Sith DVD went on sale in; I’m at least daydreaming now about “summer movies.” So far as “you always find the time to watch those movies, but for all the other weekends in a year you’re frittering time away...” went, I had at least managed to watch The Searchers for the first time a few weekends before, conscious among other things of how it’s been invoked in Star Wars more than once. Thinking back months rather than weeks to how I’d been able to see Return of the Jedi at the movies, I’d decided to “not get clever” and just go through the set in numerical order, reprising a closed gap of more than a decade in just those few months.
In making that decision I was thinking a bit of certain unrelievedly hostile interpretations of The Phantom Menace, and how in recent days I’d considered an accusation or two or three and come up with non-hostile explanations in my head without too much fuss. I do have an unfortunate temptation to think back and suppose a certain, perhaps indeed considerable, number of people around my age had been viscerally offended by the silly comedy relief, such that in short order they were left in a hostile mood towards everything. I can also imagine being lectured that while of course the comedy relief is one of many problems identified, all the others are just as valid. One inadequate thing I can say is I do recall being apprehensive beforehand, having seen the visceral negative reactions just in advance of the movie itself, and having to some extent “braced myself.” I could also try and include some of those personal explanations mentioned before, but wonder if they’d be convincing to anyone in a different mood.
One other potential danger I am conscious of is how certain interpretations of the “Disney Space Movies” can begin to seem just as intent on finding fault with every moment. I did go so far as to try and “hand-wave” an explanation or two of certain moments, but there I seem to go straight back to “having come around to not supposing myself offended before, I was not just ready but happy to think in terms of ‘a complete saga’; the sense of the older movies being venerated but the older characters themselves only getting thin or indeed ‘hand-waved’ successes and happiness made it all too easy to detach from the new material straight off.”
In making that decision I was thinking a bit of certain unrelievedly hostile interpretations of The Phantom Menace, and how in recent days I’d considered an accusation or two or three and come up with non-hostile explanations in my head without too much fuss. I do have an unfortunate temptation to think back and suppose a certain, perhaps indeed considerable, number of people around my age had been viscerally offended by the silly comedy relief, such that in short order they were left in a hostile mood towards everything. I can also imagine being lectured that while of course the comedy relief is one of many problems identified, all the others are just as valid. One inadequate thing I can say is I do recall being apprehensive beforehand, having seen the visceral negative reactions just in advance of the movie itself, and having to some extent “braced myself.” I could also try and include some of those personal explanations mentioned before, but wonder if they’d be convincing to anyone in a different mood.
One other potential danger I am conscious of is how certain interpretations of the “Disney Space Movies” can begin to seem just as intent on finding fault with every moment. I did go so far as to try and “hand-wave” an explanation or two of certain moments, but there I seem to go straight back to “having come around to not supposing myself offended before, I was not just ready but happy to think in terms of ‘a complete saga’; the sense of the older movies being venerated but the older characters themselves only getting thin or indeed ‘hand-waved’ successes and happiness made it all too easy to detach from the new material straight off.”