{"id":2679,"date":"2020-10-30T09:00:25","date_gmt":"2020-10-30T13:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/?p=2679"},"modified":"2020-10-25T23:54:08","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T03:54:08","slug":"the-rise-of-skywalkers-critical-flaw-what-happens-when-you-mistake-a-motif-for-a-theme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/the-rise-of-skywalkers-critical-flaw-what-happens-when-you-mistake-a-motif-for-a-theme\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of Skywalker\u2019s Critical Flaw: What Happens When You Mistake a Motif for a Theme"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Well that sucked.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

[Spoilers\nfollow, but come on\u2014who hasn\u2019t seen this movie by now?]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So right about a year ago, I speculated on how <\/a>The Rise of Skywalker <\/a><\/em>would<\/a> end based on the themes established in The Last Jedi<\/em>. Something like Rey becoming her own person and Kylo Ren coming to peace with his light and dark sides. That\u2019s sort of<\/em> what happened, but anyone could have guessed that based on how all Star Wars movies usually go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been trying to write this blog post for a while now – specifically, for about a year – but every time I did, it just turned into a bitch-fest about how much I hated the movie, and then I lost interest and stopped writing. I mean this movie\u2019s already been torn to shreds by basically everybody, AND it\u2019s now almost a year old, so why waste my time piling on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after ten months of reflection, I finally feel like I do have something to add to the conversation; specifically, what happens when you mistake a motif for a theme (…spoiler: The Rise of Skywalker happens). <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Instead of going on and on, here\u2019s the short version of my (year old) hot takes: the movie sucked hard\u2026harder than the best blow job you\u2019ve ever given or received; even though my love for Lost <\/em>will never die, I have to admit the reality that JJ Abrams is a bad director and shitty screenwriter; before the new trilogy I was apathetic at best toward the Star Wars universe due to its lack of complexity and vision; now I actively dislike Star Wars due to how much Disney has stripped away anything that made it interesting and conceded to the franchise\u2019s worst fans so they could milk the cash cow for all it\u2019s worth–<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I was writing the above, I had an epiphany. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months ago I watched the movie Cats<\/em> with my kids to see what was so horrible about it. A lot of people have even cited it as the worst movie they\u2019ve ever seen, so I wanted to see this train wreck for myself. Yeah it was bad, but I already dislike musicals (no shade to theater kids, it\u2019s just not my thing) and expected the movie to be bad, so it met my expectations. It wasn\u2019t the worst movie I\u2019d ever seen. Then I got to wondering\u2014what is<\/em> the worst movie I\u2019ve ever seen?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\nI started asking people what they thought was the worst movie they\u2019d ever seen.\nMy husband said for him it was Smurfs:\nThe Lost Village<\/em>, which he had to sit through with our kids. And that\u2019s why\nI don\u2019t take the kids to the movies. My best friend said it was mother!<\/em>, the one with Jennifer Lawrence\nand Javier Bardem where a mob of people eats a baby. I\u2019ve never seen the whole\nmovie (only read about it and seen clips), but I get the hate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nI had a hard time pinning down what my least favorite movie of all time was. Everybody\u2019s\ngot their own standards for what\u2019s good and bad art. I rate my dislike for a\npiece of art not on how objectively bad it is, but how far it fell below my\nexpectations and insulted me on a personal level. For instance, The Room<\/em> is frequently cited as the\nworst movie ever made, but also nobody expected it to be good. If I expect\nsomething to be bad, and then it\u2019s bad, I\u2019m usually apathetic toward it. For\nme, there has to be a component of rage\u2014of violation\u2014to my hatred to make\nsomething really<\/em> bad in my eyes. It\nhas to be personal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For\nexample, I can easily tell you the worst book I\u2019ve ever read is The Power<\/em> by Naomi Alderman (my\nfavorite, for some context, is Lolita<\/em>\nby Vladimir Nabokov). It\u2019s not objectively the worst book I\u2019ve ever read compared\nto, say, your average bodice-ripper romance novel (no shade!). But as a book\nthat was supposed to be high-brow and even won some literary awards, it fell\nWAY below my expectations on every level\u2014bad writing, shallow characters,\nnon-existent story, misogynist heart hidden in faux-feminist sheen, an entirely\ngratuitous and EXTREMELY DETAILED rape scene\u2026etc. Even thinking about that horrible\nbook now makes me angry\u2014oh how I could go on and on <\/em>about how much I fucking hate that book\u2014but that rant is for\nanother day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nit\u2019s in trying to finish this stupid blog post that\u2019s made me realize something:\nThe Rise of Skywalker<\/em> is the worst\nmovie I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Objectively,\nof course, it\u2019s not the worst movie ever made\u2014the visuals are top-notch as they\nare in all Star Wars movies, and the acting is decent. Frankly I feel bad for\nall the actors, who did the best they could with shitty material. But in my\nopinion, it\u2019s the most artistically bankrupt piece of massive, polished shit\nI\u2019ve ever seen put to screen, and that\u2019s what makes it the worst. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now we circle back to motifs and themes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First,\nlet me define the difference between motifs<\/em><\/strong> and themes<\/em><\/strong>. <\/em>In storytelling, a motif<\/em> is a set of images, ideas, or\nother features that intentionally repeat throughout a story. A theme<\/em> is what the motif means. For\ninstance, the color red might be a motif throughout a movie, but it could also\nrepresent the theme of the corrupting influence of violence if it\u2019s highlighted\nin scenes where people make a choice to indulge in violent behavior\u2026or it could\nrepresent passion, or danger, etc., depending on the context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had high hopes after The Last Jedi<\/em> that the Star Wars franchise was finally going to go somewhere different. Specifically: the themes of Good vs Evil would explore finding a balance between the two (via Kylo Ren realizing he can be both light and dark at the same time); that Family would embrace the end of bloodline legacies determining a person\u2019s worth (via Rey accepting that her parents were nobodies but becoming a badass Jedi anyway); and that Duty would explore the needs of the one versus the needs of the many (via some difficult choices for the heroes to either take a selfish path or do what\u2019s best for the Republic\u2026this is also a popular theme in the Star Trek universe, BTW).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, The Rise of Skywalker<\/em> essentially had no themes except \u201cStar Wars,\u201d like a kid\u2019s birthday party. In other words, The Rise of Skywalker<\/em> had the usual motifs<\/em> of a Star Wars movie, but with no depth behind them that would constitute real themes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This problem arose because the movie\u2019s central purpose wasn\u2019t to provide a satisfying end to a nine-movie saga\u2026apparently Disney hadn\u2019t even thought that far ahead<\/a> when they started producing these new BILLION-DOLLAR movies (\u2026WTF??<\/em>). The movie was about undoing all the forward thematic progress that happened in The Last Jedi<\/em> and circling back to old-school Star Wars\u2014the motif-only kid\u2019s birthday party version\u2014telling the same stories with the same characters and same big space battles, all to maximize profit at the expense of any artistic integrity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nfor that, I hate The Rise of Skywalker<\/em>\nfor what it represents more than what it actually is. Taken completely on its\nown, it\u2019s a mediocre sci-fi\/fantasy mashup with a crappy script but massive\nproduction values and cool CGI. Taken into context with everything that came\nbefore and after in the Star Wars universe as well as the real world, it\nrepresents everything that\u2019s wrong with the movie industry: the\nmaximize-profits-at-all-costs attitudes, the big movies sucking all the\nresources away from smaller movies, the kowtowing to asshole fans whining about\nhow feminism and diversity are ruining their childhoods, and the sameness<\/em> of all these giant movies that,\nnot un-coincidentally, now all fall under the Disney brand. I\nstand with Scorsese on this one.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s\nlike going to the nursing home to visit your grandma\u2014which isn\u2019t super fun, but\nyou love your grandma so you go\u2014and then saying goodbye to her at the end. In\nterms of mechanics it\u2019s just a regular farewell\u2014a hug, a kiss, a wave on the\nway out the door. But she\u2019s in hospice, dying, and you know this is the last\ntime you\u2019ll ever see her alive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rise of Skywalker<\/em>\nis that last goodbye. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Spoilers follow, but come on\u2014who hasn\u2019t seen this movie by now?] So right about a year ago, I speculated on how The Rise of Skywalker would end based on the themes established in The Last Jedi. Something like Rey becoming her own person and Kylo Ren coming to peace with his light and dark sides. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Rise of Skywalker\u2019s Critical Flaw: What Happens When You Mistake a Motif for a Theme”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[494,499],"tags":[697,703,701,696,704,507,699,702,700,698],"class_list":["post-2679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-themes","tag-cats","tag-disney-sucks","tag-motifs","tag-rise-of-skywalker","tag-smurfs-the-lost-village","tag-the-last-jedi","tag-the-power","tag-themes","tag-themes-vs-motifs","tag-worst-movie-of-all-time"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Vyi8-Hd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2681,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2679\/revisions\/2681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}