RE: Star wars: The portrayal of minority and female characters
January 22, 2016 at 2:17 pm
(This post was last modified: January 22, 2016 at 2:18 pm by Cyberman.)
Science fiction, let alone space opera, shouldn't be synonymous with anything goes. Gene Roddenberry once said that a fantasy story needs to have no more than one major fantastic thing, with two or three subsidiary and related fantastic things, in order not to stretch audience credulity. Like any other drama in any other genre, there have to be internal consistencies; as long as things play by the rules and everyone knows what they are, the drama will work regardless of how impossible it really is. Having spaceships roar past the camera pulling off unrealistic space dogfights comes from the same storytelling stable as laser swords and giant space stations. Maybe in this galaxy far, far away a parsec really is a measure of time; but mentioning it and having characters react to it the way they do demonstrates a directional choice about those characters.
When the Pixar animators were researching fish behaviour for Finding Nemo, the consultants they brought on board had issues with the characters using their fins the way we use our hands, saying fish wouldn't do that; then it was pointed out that fish don't often talk either. There's a trade-off between actual reality and the unreality of storytelling. Why is there sound in space? Because Lucas was making a WWII dogfight movie at that point and audiences expect to hear the battle - try watching it with the sound off. Even with the London Symphony Orchestra playing their hearts out, it's deadly dull.
When the Pixar animators were researching fish behaviour for Finding Nemo, the consultants they brought on board had issues with the characters using their fins the way we use our hands, saying fish wouldn't do that; then it was pointed out that fish don't often talk either. There's a trade-off between actual reality and the unreality of storytelling. Why is there sound in space? Because Lucas was making a WWII dogfight movie at that point and audiences expect to hear the battle - try watching it with the sound off. Even with the London Symphony Orchestra playing their hearts out, it's deadly dull.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
