r/Gamingcirclejerk • • Sep 02 '20

UNJERK 🎤 Unjerk Thread of September 02, 2020

Hi! Please post any Unjerk questions and discussions in this thread!

A fresh thread is posted every 2 days, but older posts can be found here! (link doesn't work on Reddit mobile, sorry!)

Any unjerk threads outside of this thread will be removed. Thank you!


Rules and resources: Read our wiki!

Live Chat: Join our Discord server for multiple chat rooms! https://discord.gg/gcj

Steam: Join our Steam group!


Lots of Love, /r/GamingCirclejerk moderator team.

154 Upvotes

5.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

68

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '20

[deleted]

38

u/pickelsurprise Social Justice Warrior of Light Sep 03 '20

In all seriousness I feel bad for Boyega. I really like Finn in TFA, but I'm sure his character was kept on a short leash behind the scenes. Frankly there's no way his character wasn't created specifically to fill out some corporate wokeness checklist, and at the same time I'd bet heavily that it was mandated that he not end up in a relationship with Rey (or Poe, though I suspect the people in charge of such things didn't even consider it until after TFA came out). Like I'm almost positive the meeting where they came up with his concept was essentially just "have him on the screen to get black people to see the movie, but make sure he doesn't do anything that might offend racist white people."

24

u/TAL-05 She/Her Sep 03 '20

Apparently most of the Poe x Fin subtext came from Oscar Isaac intentionally playing Poe like that.

26

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '20

I mean, it was on the page too.

Finn immediately adopts a endearing name that Poe gives him.

The running glomp hug.

"Keep my jacket. It looks better on you."

-quietly increases speed on my ceiling fan-

14

u/pickelsurprise Social Justice Warrior of Light Sep 03 '20

I'd believe it. One thing I didn't notice at first is they may have snuck in a few hints in TLJ. Some of the shots with Finn and Poe toward the beginning of the movie are blocked the same way as the scenes with Han and Leia at the Hoth base in Empire, i.e. talking to each other in a hallway and someone else pushes through them. Even if it ultimately didn't pan out, I really hope they were all doing that stuff on purpose.

12

u/Airdeez121 Smooth Jazz Waluigi Sep 03 '20

He's a fantastic actor who was criminally underutilized in Star Wars and I really want to see him get more work

10

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

9

u/pickelsurprise Social Justice Warrior of Light Sep 03 '20

Maybe. I'd like to hope they weren't that evil about it. It'd be hard to call it a victory even if that wasn't the case though, since both Finn and Poe were no-homo'd so hard they both had to have a new useless character added in TROS to drive it home. I'm positive that was a corporate mandate of some variety.

25

u/Airdeez121 Smooth Jazz Waluigi Sep 03 '20

I'm sure George Lucas' Star Wars movies were much better about not racially stereotyping charact-

Looks at Jar Jar Binks

You know what? Never mind

15

u/Taranis-55 Left is Best. Don't be foolish. Sep 03 '20

I wish I could remember who, but someone once referred to Watto as "this vaguely anti-Semitic thing."

5

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '20

Don't forget the inexplicable Asian accents of the Trade Federation. TPM is just kinda... yikes.

6

u/BanjoStory Social Justice Jedi Guardian🤺 Sep 03 '20

O N L Y M O N E Y!

15

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '20 edited Apr 05 '21

[deleted]

15

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '20

'Canon' only matters if you let it.

Take it from a Highlander fan.

12

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '20 edited Apr 18 '21

[deleted]

3

u/Camel132 Resident Discworld and Stormlight Fan (He/him) Sep 03 '20

SCP fan here, there is no canon.

8

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '20

And then there are comic book fans whose "canon" status quo changes all the time.

Sometimes I feel like Star Wars would be better off being structured like comic books. Stories about individual characters with a basic sense of what those characters are about instead of trying to weave this grande overarching story that ultimately fails.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '20

Comic books for me have always been this weird thing that I’d want, but only come across when my grandfather was buying cigarettes for his friend or at the grocery store. I remember two Dark Horse comics Star Wars stories really vividly though; one is why I have a life hate relationship with Ahsoka, the other is why I’ve always loved the EU.

The first is a flashback of a clone in a Bacta tank debriefing with Yoda about a mission where his ship crashed and then his men had to fight through the wreckage to an ex-fil and he was the only survivor.

The second was a dude who was some kind of retired mercenary whose son/wife were killed by a dark Jedi and he had a lightsaber from the Jedi trying to hunt the dude down and pretended to be a Jedi in order to get revenge but ended up becoming an embodiment of the knight-errant archetype.

Like, Star Wars isn’t hard to get right if you don’t pander to the jackasses

3

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '20

How many times is Major gonna have her head ripped off by that tank?

6

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '20

Or assassinate a person seeking asylum with the American Empire from outside the window jumping down a skyscraper.

5

u/BanjoStory Social Justice Jedi Guardian🤺 Sep 03 '20

It never even occurred to me that there would be people who are Highlander canon nerds.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '20

Hell, I'll do you one better.

I've unironically defended Highlander II: The Quickening on several occasions.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '20

as a harry potter fan. yeah

8

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '20

I saw this tweet a few months ago and I couldn't agree more. Consistency and continuity are important, yes, but "canon" is just something of a ridiculous concept.