Not Woke. Just. Awake.

I just read something about George Lucas' representation of Darth Vader. While it's common knowledge that Vader has Dutch and German translations as "father", it's also widely known that George Lucas did not know Vader was Luke's father until he scripted the second film. So then why tell people he deliberately named the villain "Dark Father"? George Lucas was essentially building his own myths. It could be argued he's what you'd call an unreliable narrator.

This made me look back at the prequels. While the general sense of the stories may touch on truths within the history of the Star Wars universe, there's no law to state we must hold them sacred. The reason the prequels seem so weird when compared to the OT is because they are just stories recounted to an interested listener by another unreliable narrator (possibly even Obi-Wan to Luke... or maybe it's the voice of Yoda). What we as an audience have to accept is that there is no such thing as a reliable narrator. Sentient narrators will insert bias while mechanical narrators cannot properly convey emotion. Multiple narrators worsen the problem rather than versa.

So if the prequels are relayed via unreliable narrator, how many other stories are being misrepresented by an unknown voice within said universe? The sequel trilogy may feel like a betrayal to some fans due to its handling of Han, Leia, and Luke. However, as Luke himself has stated, the truth about the Jedi, the rebellion, and everything is far less "shiny" than what we wish to remember. So then in watching the ST, we must accept the OT was itself told in the voice of an unreliable narrator.

Moving past Star Wars, I took this concept into other territory. Namely, Captain Marvel. I had problems with this film for a number of reasons. Poor storytelling, uninteresting protagonist, plotholes, and the sense of being left with weirdly uncomfortable questions (why are Skrull's good? Why the cat scratched Nick's eye?)

But from another perspective, if I watch this movie as narrated by a witness who lived through the 90s (maybe even Rambeau's daughter), it would explain some of the misleading concepts that occurred. A cat scratching out Fury's eye? Just completely non-canon. Danvers emotionless, arrogant melodrama? Just an exaggeration. As to the Skrulls. Don't even need an explanation. Cultures change. Good guys become bad guys. Even biblical angels have committed atrocities, why should mortals be any better?

So, I'm basically saying, while I will never laud them as brilliant, I no longer laugh at the idea of these films.

EDIT: mislabeled questions as plotholes. Fixed.

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Originally Posted by Mercen-X

plotholes (why are Skrull's good? Why the cat scratched Nick's eye?)

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I'm not sure what you think plot holes are but I'm pretty sure those two don't qualify.

Yeah, I wouldn't call those plot holes. Fury's eye story was meant to be an embarrassing thing played for laughs which he simply builds up as something more than it really was. As for the Skrulls being good, we are simply introduced to them now and frankly they are generally nicer than the Kree are in the comics. There is still time to give them a villainous bent, but even it they don't, it wouldn't be the first major change between the comics and MCU. I mean MCU Mantis is practically an original character compared to her comic version and Star Lord's dad is not Ego in the books, so there is no real issue here. If you want an actual plot hole it would probably be the retcon to the Tessaracts history within the MCU because the first Avengers movie gives the impression that it was discovered along with Captain America, but Captain Marvel now reveals SHIELD has had it for decades.

As for unreliable narrator, I feel you're off on what the term means narratively speaking because it only works when a story has an actual narrator or point of view character. In the case of Star Wars, Obi-Wan lying to Luke about his dad is explained in the film as him trying to protect him as well as hide his own shame. While the whole reason to add all of that in was simply because Lucas hadn't quite decided to that twist until then and needed to cover for what was stated in the earlier film because he was kind of writing the plot as he went and trying to avoid plot holes. So there is no actual unreliable narrator here especially since the Star Wars films don't really have a narrator like say... Big Trouble in Little China or Rear Window. The latter being a more pure example of what an unreliable narrator type story really is.

The issue with the prequel films... well that's a huge can of worms to really try to unravel in one post, but it's basically a combination of Lucas making some questionable retcons to the series and mostly the fact that he can't really write as well as he thinks he can, and the films needed some trained script writers to punch them up like what happened for Empire and Jedi. That love story is just a mess...

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Originally Posted by Slothy

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Originally Posted by Mercen-X

plotholes (why are Skrull's good? Why the cat scratched Nick's eye?)

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I'm not sure what you think plot holes are but I'm pretty sure those two don't qualify.

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yeah those should have been captioned separately. There were plot holes, but those questions were just "questions" and I should have labeled them as such.