They are THE MAIN CHARACTERS in the movie you’re watching. I think that’s a big enough reason to try to make them interesting.

What would make a character interesting? Motivations, conflict, maybe seeing someone change in any way as a result of things that happen in the story?

This is why I said people that enjoy the movie cannot have seen good movies, because some of the defenses are just absolutely ridiculous. “Why do characters need backstories to make them interesting?” Like do I really need to answer that?

Luke at the start of ANH is literally a farmboy with little direction in his life. That’s much closer to the “just people” type of character you’re describing than anyone in R1, again except for Jyn. Every supporting character in R1 feels like they were designed to be interesting, but everything interesting in their lives happened before the events of the film, and we just get to hear about it a little.

I also think the ending of the movie where we get a big fanservice Darth Vader scene gives the lie to this perception of the movie as a gritty, realistic look at the dark side of the franchise. The movie is pretty transparently just Disney pandering to the adults that grew up with Star Wars and wanted to feel like they could still enjoy it through more adult media. Andor does what Rogue One was trying to do much better, and it’s telling that by doing so it barely feels like Star Wars any more.

I’m not talking about the whole movie, I’m saying that the opening 30 minutes of ANH have more character development than the entire movie of R1. We’re not “getting to know the every man” in R1, we’re told a one-line backstory for each character and they are basically static entities until the time comes for their death scene. Also, none of them are “standard soldiers” except for Jyn. Everyone else is clearly supposed to be an interesting character, they just don’t do any of the supporting legwork to actually build the backstories or characterization, they just insist upon them.

Lmao insinuating that you can’t have any character development over 4 days is hilarious. Luke and Han Solo were drastically more compelling characters who we learned a lot more about before they even took off from Tattooine in A New Hope.

I don’t see how there’s drama or emotion when there’s absolutely no character development. It’s a snoozefest for nostalgic manchildren who have never seen an actually good movie and think characters dying pointlessly is “dark” and thus artistic.

Red Letter Media are obvious and I would guess they were the channel being referenced, but I’m not sure because they don’t do the misogyny angle.

My favorite YT critic is YMS, his output is less frequent these days but I always enjoy his takes even if I don’t agree with all of them, and he covers a lot of more artsy and niche movies, including foreign stuff that I wouldn’t even hear of otherwise.

Jenny Nicholson is the biggest source of the essays on stuff I’ll probably never watch – her video on The Vampire Diaries, for example, is unhinged and very funny. She also outputs less and less these days, but seemingly largely because her video lengths keep ballooning, her last one was a 4+ hour video about the massive failure of the Star Wars hotel.

Rogue One is possibly the worst new Star Wars movie… At least RoS was entertaining to make fun of.

It’s so flabbergasting that people can see the problems with the new trilogy but still enjoy the hollow shell of a movie that is R1

I think this is a dumb trope to parrot. Media analysis and critique is valuable artistic output in its own right, and using it to process media that’s more complex, or with additional context and research, is a totally valid way to consume and engage with the content. Hell, there are plenty of video essays that I’ve watched for content that I never watched in the first place, because the analysis was highly entertaining and is much less time consuming than watching an entire several seasons of a TV show or whatever. In some cases that has made me want to go watch the content in its entirety with new appreciation, e.g. House MD.

Yeah I hate it when my ideals collide with the real world as well.

mpv is better

You’re right, Kruschev was an asshole.

Best way to make it better is to not use subtitles… Although some speaker setups make it so much worse

Yeah this isn’t actually a change in tactics or goals, it’s just a recognition that they can go mask off with full paternalistic authoritarianism instead of trying to disguise it to sell to the public.

deleted by creator

Sure I’m not arguing that, but it’s framed as the noble, beleaguered EU standing up to the bully of China, which is pretty comical when you look at the big picture.

The sheer level of doublethink to label a coordinated effort by dozens of countries to force a single country to export its natural resources as “anti-coercion” is impressive.

Yeah that’s clearly working out great.

Western leftists only like failed socialism.

It’s exactly as relevant as anyone else’s, and if you can’t infer that I was offering a personal anecdote you shouldn’t be participating in a public forum.

Also, if you take legitimate advice offered in good faith as flippant and dismissive that’s a you problem. Try phrasing your problems more clearly, if you just say “I have a lot of trouble staying organized and keeping track of time” and get mad when people suggest a planner, your problem isn’t ADHD.

As someone with ADHD, it’s actually excellent advice. The problem isn’t the advice, it’s not sticking to it and developing a habit. Now that I use one regularly it’s great. The trick is finding what works for you. I kept putting calendars and planners near my computer, where I could see them, but once I put it actually on my second monitor which is up all the time, it clicked.