Whilst in every interview I’ve seen he’s been a terminal bore?
Antony Daniels is such a core part of Star Wars.
He’s the first main character on-screen, alongside R2. And from that moment? His mannerisms and cadence informed every other human shaped Droid. And from that fact, in his own way, defined Star Wars.
Something else that just occurred to me ... In the original Thrawn stories, he was using cloning to achieve his nefarious goal, specifically cloning an old Jedi Master, and Luke Skywalker.
Enoch, it has to noted, seems a little short to be a stormtrooper...
There has been a lot of cloning of late with Gideon. And going forward, the First Order solves its manpower problem by kidnapping kids by the thousands while nobody's looking. Mass cloning seems to be a dead end for the bad guys for the time being. Not sure if there is any desire on part of the writers to have Thrawn dabble in it, too, if it doesn't go anywhere in the long run.
It would effectively just give shiny mask guy a quirkyish backstory. Nothing wrong with that per se, but seems kind of pointless as a statement about Thrawn.
On a side note, hopefully he doesn't get phasmaed. He seems to have achieved instant popularity. It would be a shame to let that go to waste.
It would effectively just give shiny mask guy a quirkyish backstory.
I mean, if Shorty McGoldface was cloned from, say, some particularly handy material (as was the case with Luuke in the original Heir to the Empire series), he would potentially be the set up for a climactic saber duel with some combination of Ahsoka, Sabine and Ezra.
But, again, I'm probably reading far too much into it. Was just something that jumped out from the fact that he seems noticably shorter than pretty much every other trooper shown in Thrawn's gaggle.
Part of me wonders if Enoch is a blank character right now. A design long desired finally finding a place on the screen. And who or what is actually under that rather fetching helmet, is yet to be fully decided.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also? Enoch can’t be a Luke Clone.
Yes Luke’s hand is out there, somewhere. And we know the associated Lightsaber ends up with Maz Kanata.
But? Thrawn was cast into this exile before Luke joined the Rebellion. He likely doesn’t even know who Luke is, let alone that he had his had lopped off and where might be best to start looking for it.
Oh, I didn't realize that the suggestion was that shiny mask guy is literally Luke. Yeah, as explained above that's just not possible.
Not until we get Obi-Wan Kenobi 2: Attack of the Cloners, in which Luke is kidnapped by the selectively aware Empire in order to harvest a tissue sample and Obi-Wan must break him out of the cloning facility with the help of a slightly bigger coat. Luckily Luke is kept sedated for almost all of the season and we can all pretend that continuity is maintained.
But? Thrawn was cast into this exile before Luke joined the Rebellion. He likely doesn’t even know who Luke is, let alone that he had his had lopped off and where might be best to start looking for it.
insaniak wrote: Something else that just occurred to me ... In the original Thrawn stories, he was using cloning to achieve his nefarious goal, specifically cloning an old Jedi Master, and Luke Skywalker.
Enoch, it has to noted, seems a little short to be a stormtrooper...
Probably just a coincidence, though.
Enoch and Luke are both biblical names…
But according to subtitles it’s not spelled “Enooch”, so he can’t be a Thrawn clone.
Enoch, biblically speaking, is often considered to have entered heaven without dying, something about the Lord reached down and took him or some such.
Given what we've seen with the inquisitor and the now revealed heavy involvement of the Night Sisters (I saw a headline today pointing out one of the Mothers is Claudia Black, which I'd completely missed) it's not impossible that Enoch is some riff on that.
Given the Kintsugi visible on some much of the Stormtrooper armour, alongside the scarlet wraps, I wouldn't be surprised if Enoch is the only remaining living Stormtrooper, or is enchanted to a higher level than the other more zombie level grunts.
so, question for those who are familiar with the nightsisters stuff:
how much free will/original personality do those raised from the dead by night sister magic actually have? are they just he same person brought back to life? a simulation/facsimile of that person? The orginal person but under some sort of mind control that prevents rebellion?
The reanimated Nightsisters in Clone Wars and Jedi Fallen Order seem pretty mindless. They have enough intelligence to use basic strategy, but seem completely motivated by the orders they're given by a living Nightsister,
There are Nightsister spirits in Rebels that appear to be intact personalities looking to possess a body so they can get back to doing whatever they were doing when they were alive.
The impression I get is that Nightsister magic covers a lot of different things and has a wide range of possibilities. If shiny mask guy was too important to lose to death, I reckon it wouldn't go against what's been shown so far to bring him back from the dead with his personality intact.
Azreal13 wrote: Given what we've seen with the inquisitor and the now revealed heavy involvement of the Night Sisters (I saw a headline today pointing out one of the Mothers is Claudia Black, which I'd completely missed) it's not impossible that Enoch is some riff on that.
insaniak wrote: Something else that just occurred to me ... In the original Thrawn stories, he was using cloning to achieve his nefarious goal, specifically cloning an old Jedi Master, and Luke Skywalker.
Enoch, it has to noted, seems a little short to be a stormtrooper...
Probably just a coincidence, though.
Goldmask could be zombie Rhuk or something like that. Wouldn't really make a lot of sense given his death in Rebels and probably requires too much explanation to be worthwhile. My guess is he's just a new character with a cool design to serve as a more meaningful henchman to fight later.
No chance for Thrawn to have recovered Rhuk’s crispy corpse, as he’d been dragged into Hyperspace before the Dome had lift off, and Rhuk was a crispy critter in the shield generator reactor at that point.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Though I am wondering how Thrawn and Ezra survived that trip, given the Purgil had poshed the windows in!
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: No chance for Thrawn to have recovered Rhuk’s crispy corpse, as he’d been dragged into Hyperspace before the Dome had lift off, and Rhuk was a crispy critter in the shield generator reactor at that point.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Though I am wondering how Thrawn and Ezra survived that trip, given the Purgil had poshed the windows in!
Star Wars has a lot of 'open to space' stuff. Certainly no one seems to want to don suits during combat.
Star Wars humans are immune to sudden shifts in pressure. Ahsoka stepped outside of her ship above the cloud layer without even popping her ears.
I can’t even think of any incident where the void of space was a danger to a character outside of that one scene in The Last Jedi, and that movie had all kinds of issues with canon.
Again with people thinking that venting to space is immediately deadly. Its not. Not even close. Unpleasant yes. But no part of you is going to explode. What will kill you is suffocation, not temperature or pressure differences.
So assuming you don't get pulled away from your ship by the decompression or killed by debris, it is completely possible to get back inside before you die. Remember that space is not a negative pressure vessel, it is 0 pressure. Going from 1 atmosphere to 0 atmospheres is not an immediately deadly experience.
Ahsoka isn’t human though. Humanoid, yes. We know some species can canonically withstand vacuum for a period. And she was wearing her ear muffs which could’ve helped.
But to be kicking in a presumably extended vacuum?
Grey Templar wrote: Again with people thinking that venting to space is immediately deadly. Its not. Not even close. Unpleasant yes. But no part of you is going to explode. What will kill you is suffocation, not temperature or pressure differences.
So assuming you don't get pulled away from your ship by the decompression or killed by debris, it is completely possible to get back inside before you die. Remember that space is not a negative pressure vessel, it is 0 pressure. Going from 1 atmosphere to 0 atmospheres is not an immediately deadly experience.
Everything I’ve heard about sudden depressurization of airplanes makes me think we should see some kind of reaction to sudden exposure to space. Wooziness at least.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Ahsoka isn’t human though. Humanoid, yes. We know some species can canonically withstand vacuum for a period. And she was wearing her ear muffs which could’ve helped.
But to be kicking in a presumably extended vacuum?
Technically humans in Star Wars aren't specifically humans. Just incredibly similar in most ways like different crab evolutions.
No worries. Rebels was long enough ago that I've had to look up most of the details myself. I wasn't even certain Rhuk had died given how shy the show got about such things in the final season.
It’s off screen, but he’s definitely a crispy critter!
Very much looking forward to Wednesday’s latest entry. But, with just two more to go including that one? Seems timely to remind folk Ahsoka is expected to be multi-season, and building to a film cross over with Mando and Skellington Crew, so don’t expect anything terribly conclusive!
Grey Templar wrote: Again with people thinking that venting to space is immediately deadly. Its not. Not even close. Unpleasant yes. But no part of you is going to explode. What will kill you is suffocation, not temperature or pressure differences.
So assuming you don't get pulled away from your ship by the decompression or killed by debris, it is completely possible to get back inside before you die. Remember that space is not a negative pressure vessel, it is 0 pressure. Going from 1 atmosphere to 0 atmospheres is not an immediately deadly experience.
Everything I’ve heard about sudden depressurization of airplanes makes me think we should see some kind of reaction to sudden exposure to space. Wooziness at least.
Airplanes depressurizing is dangerous not because of the actual pressure difference. It is the debris/getting sucked out and not being able to breathe.
If anything, airplane depressurization is more dangerous because there will be high winds throwing stuff around and trying to suck you out even after the initial event. In space its one suck and then stillness.
Space decompression could be survived basically the same way as you survive a high altitude airplane one. IE: You get oxygen, somehow. Obviously airplane oxygen masks wouldn't work in space because they aren't vacuum sealed. But you could probably make emergency helmets which can seal around your neck(or potentially even just your nose and mouth) and give you a few precious minutes of oxygen. The rest of your body will be fine in a vacuum.
Any gaps in this logic can be covered by force powers if necessary. For actual pressure changes to be deadly, you need a change of multiple atmospheres. The famous Byford Dolphin incident was a decompression from 9 atmospheres to 1. That is many orders of magnitude worse than going from 1 to 0. The difference between those is suffocation/dodging debris and getting turned into hamburger over the course of a few milliseconds.
Very much looking forward to Wednesday’s latest entry. But, with just two more to go including that one? Seems timely to remind folk Ahsoka is expected to be multi-season, and building to a film cross over with Mando and Skellington Crew, so don’t expect anything terribly conclusive!
Grey Templar wrote: Airplanes depressurizing is dangerous not because of the actual pressure difference. It is the debris/getting sucked out and not being able to breathe.
Yep. What kills you in an airplane depressurization incident is usually the impact with the ground, not the immediate loss of pressure. What makes a pressure loss so dangerous is that the time of useful consciousness before hypoxia takes away your ability to function is measured in seconds at typical airline cruising altitudes. You have a few seconds to get your oxygen mask on if you want to have any hope of escaping to a safe altitude. If you fail you'll be alive for quite a while longer, you'll just be passed out in your seat as the plane loses control and breaks up in a vertical dive. You only die from lack of oxygen if the autopilot holds the plane at cruising altitude for quite a while. And if you get that mask on before you pass out and lose the ability to you can survive as long as the plane's oxygen tanks last.
The situation is roughly the same in space. There's a bit less oxygen but the available oxygen at 30-40,000' is so close to zero that it isn't going to make much of a difference. You'll pass out within 10-20 seconds but as long as someone else can bring you in relatively promptly you'll survive with minimal damage.
I always assumed your blood would start to boil in space, kind of like getting a bad case of the bends. But then again, if people's blood doesn't boil in an airliner decompression scenario, I suppose it might not in space either.
You guys are both right and wrong; vacuum exposure doesn’t immediately kill you, particularly not the cold. You’re very warm and there’s nothing to remove the heat from your body other than radiation and humans are pretty poor radiators, so the movie idea of people freezing solid in seconds or even minutes is nonsense. Unfortunately, you can’t just use an oxygen mask, it just doesn’t work at low pressure, you need at least a partial pressure suit that covers your head and lungs; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_limit
Automatically Appended Next Post: As far as I can tell, the scene in The Expanse where Naomi dives out of an airlock unprotected is a pretty accurate representation of the actual reality.
Very much looking forward to Wednesday’s latest entry. But, with just two more to go including that one? Seems timely to remind folk Ahsoka is expected to be multi-season, and building to a film cross over with Mando and Skellington Crew, so don’t expect anything terribly conclusive!
What the feth is Skellington Crew?
This here thingy:
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is an upcoming live-action American television series created by Jon Watts and Christopher Ford for the streaming service Disney+. It is part of the Star Wars franchise, taking place in the same time frame as The Mandalorian and its interconnected spin-offs after the events of Return of the Jedi (1983). Skeleton Crew tells a coming-of-age story.
Skeleton Crew is scheduled to be released on Disney+ in 2023,[10] and will consist of eight episodes.[5] White expected the series to be released in November or December 2023.[4]
Space decompression could be survived basically the same way as you survive a high altitude airplane one. IE: You get oxygen, somehow. Obviously airplane oxygen masks wouldn't work in space because they aren't vacuum sealed. But you could probably make emergency helmets which can seal around your neck(or potentially even just your nose and mouth) and give you a few precious minutes of oxygen. The rest of your body will be fine in a vacuum.
This is inaccurate. The absence of atmospheric pressure will cause your lungs to rupture, your blood will boil and other fluids near your skin (perspiration) will similarly boil/outgas through your pores, causing ebullism in the process (i.e. swelling, bruising, internal bleeding - can also lead to fatal embolism). Your death would not be instantaneous but it would be pretty painful over a period of several minutes (I would guess around ~5 minutes). Even if you did somehow survive, you would have long-term cardiovascular and neurological damage. That doesn't even begin to account for the impact of direct exposure to starlight and cosmic radiation, etc.
Actually, even with a helmet - breathing would be a bit of an issue. The pressure differential between the helmet and the surrounding environment would mean that the helmet would be trying to pop off (just like a mask would) in order to achieve pressure equalization. Even if you could find a way to prevent that, it probably would be uncomfortable as it will basically be trying to remove itself. On top of that, while you would be able to inhale - you would have issues exhaling, as the pressure is pushing into your lungs and there is no corresponding equalizing pressure outside of your body to assist with pushing the air back out.
When you're breathing you aren't really "sucking" air in and "blowing" air out. Whats happening is that your musculature expands or contracts the volume of your lung cavity. When you inhale, atmospheric pressure pushes air into your lungs to fill the expanded volume. When you breathe out, the compression of the cavity causes the air to be expelled back out. In atmosphere, its not an issue because the pressure differential between your body and the surrounding environment is nonexistent and your exhalation doesn't really impact the pressure of the surrounding environment and so your body does not need to do any significant work to exhale.
This is a different situation however, where your exhalation needs to push against the pressure of the air trying to fill your lungs through the mask, and in so doing you are expelling a volume of air from your lungs that is possibly equal to or greater than the volume of air in the mask, which results in the air pressure from the mask pushing against your lungs increasing as you exhale, probably to a point where your exhalation fails and the pressure backfills into your lungs again. Realistically, you would have to breathe by inhaling from the mask, removing it, and exhaling to vacuum, rather than being able to breathe continuously via the mask. Pressure-demand mask systems used for high-altitude aviation (such as those worn by fighter pilots) works this way and has the same issues, and thats while you still have some atmospheric pressure being applied to your body as cockpits are partially pressurized in order to reduce the pressure differential so that you *dont* have to wear a full pressure suit.
Space decompression could be survived basically the same way as you survive a high altitude airplane one. IE: You get oxygen, somehow. Obviously airplane oxygen masks wouldn't work in space because they aren't vacuum sealed. But you could probably make emergency helmets which can seal around your neck(or potentially even just your nose and mouth) and give you a few precious minutes of oxygen. The rest of your body will be fine in a vacuum.
This is inaccurate. The absence of atmospheric pressure will cause your lungs to rupture, your blood will boil and other fluids near your skin (perspiration) will similarly boil/outgas through your pores, causing ebullism in the process (i.e. swelling, bruising, internal bleeding - can also lead to fatal embolism). Your death would not be instantaneous but it would be pretty painful over a period of several minutes (I would guess around ~5 minutes). Even if you did somehow survive, you would have long-term cardiovascular and neurological damage. That doesn't even begin to account for the impact of direct exposure to starlight and cosmic radiation, etc.
No. Your blood is not going to boil. It's far too thick and your body's own internal pressure will prevent that. Again, you are only going from 0 to 1 atmospheres of pressure. Liquid on the exterior of your body will boil away, but not anything inside it. Your pores are going to leak a little, but nothing that will actually damage you unless you stay out there for extended periods.
Lungs can certainly get damaged in the initial decompression, but that is more of a luck of the draw on what point in a breath cycle were you. It could be severe, but it is nowhere near a guarantee.
Likewise, its not going to cause embolisms inside you for the same reason your blood won't boil inside you. The Bends is not a good comparison because that is caused by many orders of magnitude greater pressure differences. For it to do similar damage, Space would need to be several negative atmospheres of pressure. But its not. Its just 0. Another reason The Bends is a bad comparison is because what actually causes it is divers ingesting more nitrogen and other inert gasses into their bloodstream due to the higher pressure(which doesn't exist in space on a space ship), which means when they do return to normal pressure it boils out of their blood. This wouldn't happen in space as you'd have nothing extra to bubble out.
Direct exposure to cosmic radiation is a non-factor. If you survive getting vented there is no way you were exposed long enough for it to matter.
Actually, even with a helmet - breathing would be a bit of an issue. The pressure differential between the helmet and the surrounding environment would mean that the helmet would be trying to pop off (just like a mask would) in order to achieve pressure equalization. Even if you could find a way to prevent that, it probably would be uncomfortable as it will basically be trying to remove itself. On top of that, while you would be able to inhale - you would have issues exhaling, as the pressure is pushing into your lungs and there is no corresponding equalizing pressure outside of your body to assist with pushing the air back out.
When you're breathing you aren't really "sucking" air in and "blowing" air out. Whats happening is that your musculature expands or contracts the volume of your lung cavity. When you inhale, atmospheric pressure pushes air into your lungs to fill the expanded volume. When you breathe out, the compression of the cavity causes the air to be expelled back out. In atmosphere, its not an issue because the pressure differential between your body and the surrounding environment is nonexistent and your exhalation doesn't really impact the pressure of the surrounding environment and so your body does not need to do any significant work to exhale.
This is a different situation however, where your exhalation needs to push against the pressure of the air trying to fill your lungs through the mask, and in so doing you are expelling a volume of air from your lungs that is possibly equal to or greater than the volume of air in the mask, which results in the air pressure from the mask pushing against your lungs increasing as you exhale, probably to a point where your exhalation fails and the pressure backfills into your lungs again. Realistically, you would have to breathe by inhaling from the mask, removing it, and exhaling to vacuum, rather than being able to breathe continuously via the mask. Pressure-demand mask systems used for high-altitude aviation (such as those worn by fighter pilots) works this way and has the same issues, and thats while you still have some atmospheric pressure being applied to your body as cockpits are partially pressurized in order to reduce the pressure differential so that you *dont* have to wear a full pressure suit.
It would be harder to breathe, but assuming the person isn't a total invalid they could force themselves to breathe even if rest of their body was in vacuum.
What I was suggesting wasn't anything like a permanent breathing apparatus. It was more like an emergency oxygen mask for a hypothetical space ship to have.
If you have a ship in space, presumably the crew are not wearing fully pressurized suits at all times. But you could have them potentially carry a little "in case of emergency" thing they could put over their heads in the event they get vented. Potentially giving them a little extra time.
Jadenim wrote: You guys are both right and wrong; vacuum exposure doesn’t immediately kill you, particularly not the cold. You’re very warm and there’s nothing to remove the heat from your body other than radiation and humans are pretty poor radiators, so the movie idea of people freezing solid in seconds or even minutes is nonsense. Unfortunately, you can’t just use an oxygen mask, it just doesn’t work at low pressure, you need at least a partial pressure suit that covers your head and lungs; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_limit
Automatically Appended Next Post: As far as I can tell, the scene in The Expanse where Naomi dives out of an airlock unprotected is a pretty accurate representation of the actual reality.
Naomi also injected herself with a substance that increases oxygen uptake (she did breathe deeply several times AFTER injection and before exhaling before venting the lock. ) - the same thing they injected into Monica (the reporter) when they got her out of the container.
Wooo! Threepio to Hera’s rescue, with a clever way to have Leia’s presence felt.
Big Swears From Chopper, which has made my morning. For he is the sassiest of Droids and I’m here for it.
Ooof, ropey de-aging on Anakin’s holo though. Worse than his World between Worlds where it was actually kind of tricky to spot. But a necessary reminder for those not familiar with The Clone Wars just how close the pair were.
This is excellent. This is truly, truly excellent. The fight scenes were amazing, some of the best we’ve seen in my opinion.
Felt fairly short today, but not rushed. I’m guessing the finale is everyone sneaking aboard Thrawn’s ship, or doing a Falcon and sneakily landing somewhere upon it for the trip back.
We all agree Senator Objection is a secret Imperialist, right?
The moment I saw the droid I knew where that was going. Indeed good way to do that.
For frick’s sake, find better fighter pilots. They were on that ship’s tail Forever, shooting at it, it not shooting back, and couldn’t down it. They’re either The Worst Shots or that thing has truly OP shields.
Ground chase felt unneeded. Should’ve just had them circle up immediately and walked your OP space wizards out to face the mere bandits right off the bat.
This is a really good example of the threat Thrawn presents. Everyone is so worried about this person or that person specifically and Thrawn is worried about finishing the mission.
What a damming indictment of Disney though that so few can imagine Thrawn actually winning in any significant way. Would they be able to have him come back and unite Imperial fractions into a credible threat. On one hand Hollywood can mirror yank concerns (and they are ambivalent about authoritarian regimes currently), on the other they really want to flog stuff to said regimes.
Space decompression could be survived basically the same way as you survive a high altitude airplane one. IE: You get oxygen, somehow. Obviously airplane oxygen masks wouldn't work in space because they aren't vacuum sealed. But you could probably make emergency helmets which can seal around your neck(or potentially even just your nose and mouth) and give you a few precious minutes of oxygen. The rest of your body will be fine in a vacuum.
This is inaccurate. The absence of atmospheric pressure will cause your lungs to rupture, your blood will boil and other fluids near your skin (perspiration) will similarly boil/outgas through your pores, causing ebullism in the process (i.e. swelling, bruising, internal bleeding - can also lead to fatal embolism). Your death would not be instantaneous but it would be pretty painful over a period of several minutes (I would guess around ~5 minutes). Even if you did somehow survive, you would have long-term cardiovascular and neurological damage. That doesn't even begin to account for the impact of direct exposure to starlight and cosmic radiation, etc.
No. Your blood is not going to boil. It's far too thick and your body's own internal pressure will prevent that. Again, you are only going from 0 to 1 atmospheres of pressure. Liquid on the exterior of your body will boil away, but not anything inside it. Your pores are going to leak a little, but nothing that will actually damage you unless you stay out there for extended periods.
Lungs can certainly get damaged in the initial decompression, but that is more of a luck of the draw on what point in a breath cycle were you. It could be severe, but it is nowhere near a guarantee.
Likewise, its not going to cause embolisms inside you for the same reason your blood won't boil inside you. The Bends is not a good comparison because that is caused by many orders of magnitude greater pressure differences. For it to do similar damage, Space would need to be several negative atmospheres of pressure. But its not. Its just 0. Another reason The Bends is a bad comparison is because what actually causes it is divers ingesting more nitrogen and other inert gasses into their bloodstream due to the higher pressure(which doesn't exist in space on a space ship), which means when they do return to normal pressure it boils out of their blood. This wouldn't happen in space as you'd have nothing extra to bubble out.
Direct exposure to cosmic radiation is a non-factor. If you survive getting vented there is no way you were exposed long enough for it to matter.
Actually, even with a helmet - breathing would be a bit of an issue. The pressure differential between the helmet and the surrounding environment would mean that the helmet would be trying to pop off (just like a mask would) in order to achieve pressure equalization. Even if you could find a way to prevent that, it probably would be uncomfortable as it will basically be trying to remove itself. On top of that, while you would be able to inhale - you would have issues exhaling, as the pressure is pushing into your lungs and there is no corresponding equalizing pressure outside of your body to assist with pushing the air back out.
When you're breathing you aren't really "sucking" air in and "blowing" air out. Whats happening is that your musculature expands or contracts the volume of your lung cavity. When you inhale, atmospheric pressure pushes air into your lungs to fill the expanded volume. When you breathe out, the compression of the cavity causes the air to be expelled back out. In atmosphere, its not an issue because the pressure differential between your body and the surrounding environment is nonexistent and your exhalation doesn't really impact the pressure of the surrounding environment and so your body does not need to do any significant work to exhale.
This is a different situation however, where your exhalation needs to push against the pressure of the air trying to fill your lungs through the mask, and in so doing you are expelling a volume of air from your lungs that is possibly equal to or greater than the volume of air in the mask, which results in the air pressure from the mask pushing against your lungs increasing as you exhale, probably to a point where your exhalation fails and the pressure backfills into your lungs again. Realistically, you would have to breathe by inhaling from the mask, removing it, and exhaling to vacuum, rather than being able to breathe continuously via the mask. Pressure-demand mask systems used for high-altitude aviation (such as those worn by fighter pilots) works this way and has the same issues, and thats while you still have some atmospheric pressure being applied to your body as cockpits are partially pressurized in order to reduce the pressure differential so that you *dont* have to wear a full pressure suit.
It would be harder to breathe, but assuming the person isn't a total invalid they could force themselves to breathe even if rest of their body was in vacuum.
What I was suggesting wasn't anything like a permanent breathing apparatus. It was more like an emergency oxygen mask for a hypothetical space ship to have.
If you have a ship in space, presumably the crew are not wearing fully pressurized suits at all times. But you could have them potentially carry a little "in case of emergency" thing they could put over their heads in the event they get vented. Potentially giving them a little extra time.
This is scientifically wrong. Your blood is 90% water molecules, water boils at room temperature at high altitudes, as it will in vacuum.
Theres no such thing as your bodies internal pressure. Your body is not a pressure vessel. It does not self-pressurize - otherwise you would quite literally explode when exposed to vacuum. Your body pressure is the environmental pressure. If you're tossed into a vacuum, then your "body pressure" gradually drops to zero and every water molecule in your body starts boiling as the boiling point decreases with the decrease in pressure. The idea that your blood won't is predicated on the idea that your cardiovascular system is a closed system and thus "pressurized" by the pump that is your heart, but one of the known effects of vacuum exposure on the human body is tissue rupture (again ebullism (not embolism - embolism is a side-effect of ebullism in this case) and internal bleeding) resulting from the boil-off of body moisture, as well as air escaping the lungs and your intestines. Your closed circulatory system won't stay closed for long (especially if you try holding your breath, which in reality will likely cause more tissue damage and take you out faster than if you didn't). Nobody said anything about the bends, ebullism is a vaguely similar but altogether different (and very real) phenomenon that does occur when the human body is exposed to low pressures at very high altitudes.
The argument of going from 1 to 0 is less damaging than going from high pressure to 1 because the number of atmospheres of change in pressure is smaller is not a good one. That assumes the pressure effects on the human body can be modeled linearly - they aren't. A submarine designed to withstand several atmospheres of pressure would not make a good spaceship, nor vice versa.
What you seem to have missed wrt cosmic radiation is that when exposed to direct sunlight in space, the temperature of the exposed object very rapidly heats to 248degF. That will cook you (and that will *definitely* make your blood boil) unless you happen to be wearing a full body light color/reflective suit.
Love Ezra's new combat style. In particular, Eman Esfandi nails the same kind of poses he used in Rebels for Force pushes and the like.
Ahsoka forgiving Sabine is a wonderfully quiet little moment. Both actors do a great job with that.
Thrawn, Baylan and Shin all really nail their roles in this. Baylan could probably carry his own show at this point, which makes the loss of Ray Stevenson hit all the harder each episode. Thrawn being primarily concerned with where the pieces are at all times is really well done as his frustration when one piece is out of place.
Anakin's perfect. Totally hits home and getting to see Hayden portray him as more as the whiny, insecure child from the prequels is an absolute treat I was not expecting.
All good stuff. Excited to see how they wrap up the season, but certainly going to be sad when its over.
I did enjoy the fight scenes with Ezra and Sabine, and my initial dislike of his costume has now vanished. The actor conveys his character rather well and his jedi aikido was fun to watch.
Now, what I didn't like is the fact that Shin is apparently just stupidly cruel and evil, but thankfully she is still around to develop into a more interesting direction.
I just hope Thrawn will not be foiled by some silly happenstance. He has the upper hand and should succeed at this point.
Thus far? We the audience know there to be but one hyperspace route between Here and There. Which means going from There to Here is going to be the same route.
With it kind of looking like Hera can get the support she needs, Thrawn’s ship being knackered, and Elsbeth’s ring not looking terribly well armed as such scale of ships go? Hera could very well picket the point of departure, ready to absolutely pummel anything coming back down that road upon arrival.
Now of course, having seen only one route and there being only one route is dodgy logic, especially as the Night Sisters, who left the original map, are in the mix. And even if it is true? We’ve no idea how quickly the ring ship can plot and execute a second jump.
Personally? I have to assume someone will have considered this. The ring ship may have a second, much smaller hyperdrive for that second jump. Because as hyperspace tracking doesn’t show up for a couple of decades yet, you really don’t need to jump terribly far. Just far enough.
Potentially into inter-system space, if you’ve thought and planned far enough ahead, and left some sort of marker buoy to assist with your next jump to wherever it is you need to get to.
But even so? Assuming a stop off, however brief, at the original point of departure? The New Republic has some chance to take Thrawn out upon arrival.
On the other side? Absolutely. What I meant is on their side of the galaxy with Ahsoka, Sabine and Ezrah somehow pulling off a last ditch maneuver to stop him and save themselves at the same time, possibly aided by a now redeemed Shin or something along those lines.
Thus far? We the audience know there to be but one hyperspace route between Here and There. Which means going from There to Here is going to be the same route.
With it kind of looking like Hera can get the support she needs, Thrawn’s ship being knackered, and Elsbeth’s ring not looking terribly well armed as such scale of ships go? Hera could very well picket the point of departure, ready to absolutely pummel anything coming back down that road upon arrival.
Now of course, having seen only one route and there being only one route is dodgy logic, especially as the Night Sisters, who left the original map, are in the mix. And even if it is true? We’ve no idea how quickly the ring ship can plot and execute a second jump.
Personally? I have to assume someone will have considered this. The ring ship may have a second, much smaller hyperdrive for that second jump. Because as hyperspace tracking doesn’t show up for a couple of decades yet, you really don’t need to jump terribly far. Just far enough.
Potentially into inter-system space, if you’ve thought and planned far enough ahead, and left some sort of marker buoy to assist with your next jump to wherever it is you need to get to.
But even so? Assuming a stop off, however brief, at the original point of departure? The New Republic has some chance to take Thrawn out upon arrival.
Spoiler:
Thrawn getting back, but losing the jump ring seems like a likely outcome. It brings him back but leaves him off the table for a bit until the hyperdrive on the Chimera gets working again.
I cant really see a scenario where the ring ship is lost, but the Star Destroyer remains. Especially when the Republic Fleet could very well summon support?
It’s going to be an interesting finale, that’s for sure.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Right, second watch through now I’ve downed tools for the day.
Spoiler:
The look on Thrawn’s face when he reads Ahsoka’s file, and finds out who her master was. That was magnificent!
But he recovered well, and at least pretended confidence he may not necessarily feel.
Ezra catching up on events, Sabine being sceptical Palpatine is definitely dead. Ezra’s actor is doing a fantastic job bringing the character to actual life.
Baylan is absolutely incredible. Ray Stevenson has such amazing screen presence in the role. And in his fight scenes a real sense of physical strength. And Baylan is so very enigmatic. Just what is he up to, really? He genuinely doesn’t seem Sith at all, so it’s a welcome new insight into Force Users and the various different philosophies.
AduroT wrote: We all agree Senator Objection is a secret Imperialist, right?
Very obviously. I only question the term "secret" here.
Also, a bit surprised he's not found chopped to bits in the morning.
Fun thought but what if he isn't actually obviously Imperial but his mandate and money come from assuring his constituents that unquestioning commitment to the New Republic is the way forward because THERE. IS. NO. IMPERIAL. THREAT!
Whether that's people who are just tired of conflict, afraid that the Empire might still be able to punish collaboration, or corporations that don't want to get too cozy with the new regime to maintain plausible deniability if the old one comes back, a clever senator could get a lot of votes and donations if he played his cards right and took a definitive, even hardliner position to assure everyone that the upheaval of the past stays in the past and now everything is shiny and chrome.
In other words, he might just be the usual kind of opportunist politician who has to appear convincing in public, regardless of what's actually going on.
It could also be a bloke in a new position of power, not wanting his thunder to be taken by military veterans who absolutely can and will Get Things Done.
In a sense, he’s pretty much an essential naysayer. The dissenting voice wanting to embrace peace, or at least ensure outright war/concerted combat is withheld for the last effort.
This is a Galaxy kind of tired of war and oppression. Many worlds, particular former Separatist Worlds finally have what they wanted. To potentially needlessly plunge it onto a war footing? You risk being seen as scaremongering your way to be a militarised government again.
Of course, those are all pretences to legitimacy for an Imperial Stooge as well.
I'd largely agree, but trying to court martial a general for following up on the theft of a Star Destroyer class hyperdrive goes a little beyond simply being a naysayer. He in no way acts like a man who believes there's nothing out there for Hera to find.
in some other, hypothetical sci-fi work, i'd agree theirs a chance he is Misguided, but Wrong.
In Star Wars? Hes either has a petty personal vendetta against Hera for some as yet unseen reason, or hes just a straight imperial collaborator. This aint that deep.
also, how are space whales, which seem to be a well understood natural phenomenon and witnessed by literally dozens of officers of the new republic fleet, being dismissed as "fanciful"?
also, we have confirmation that these events *are* happening after mando S3, given the events on mandalore are mentioned in passing.
The_Real_Chris wrote: What a damming indictment of Disney though that so few can imagine Thrawn actually winning in any significant way. Would they be able to have him come back and unite Imperial fractions into a credible threat. On one hand Hollywood can mirror yank concerns (and they are ambivalent about authoritarian regimes currently), on the other they really want to flog stuff to said regimes.
How is it an indictment of Disney that the series exists in a larger story? Knowing that Thrawn has to lose has nothing to do with any weaknesses of their writers or whatever you're trying to say about real-world political stuff, it's simply the fact that Ahsoka exists in a known timeline where only a short time remains before the sequel trilogy begins. There isn't enough time for Thrawn to win on any significant scale, he has to be quickly defeated so the Republic can stay in its state of peaceful ignorance and the First Order can begin to do its thing. It's like watching a WWII movie and complaining that the Germans are clearly being set up for defeat and nobody believes they will win.
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Geifer wrote: Fun thought but what if he isn't actually obviously Imperial but his mandate and money come from assuring his constituents that unquestioning commitment to the New Republic is the way forward because THERE. IS. NO. IMPERIAL. THREAT!
Whether that's people who are just tired of conflict, afraid that the Empire might still be able to punish collaboration, or corporations that don't want to get too cozy with the new regime to maintain plausible deniability if the old one comes back, a clever senator could get a lot of votes and donations if he played his cards right and took a definitive, even hardliner position to assure everyone that the upheaval of the past stays in the past and now everything is shiny and chrome.
In other words, he might just be the usual kind of opportunist politician who has to appear convincing in public, regardless of what's actually going on.
I hope that's what it is, and not sheer incompetence by the Republic's intelligence agencies in letting an Imperial agent reach the highest levels of government. And we know it's a thing that the Republic has a significant element that desperately wants to declare that war is over, move on with other concerns, and bury their heads in the sand if there's any suggestion that other threats remain. Wilful ignorance and stupidity, not treason.
Proper proper “pants on head, and the pants are made from tinfoil, and I’m sitting on a hat stand” theory?
Baylon is after a door to the World Between Worlds. He spoke of the cycle, and wanting to end it. And I think stopping it before it began.
If Disney wanted? This could create a divergent timeline. Baylon goes back. Somehow mediates between the extremes of Jedi and Sith philosophy, thus balancing things and ending that cycle.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also?
Sooner or later, we need a Choppervision episode.
One episode. Entirely from Chopper’s point of view.
And if you don’t like that? Well you can just go and watch Jersey Shore.
(No don’t do that I don’t want you to go insane and have your eyes melt and your brain dribble out your nose)
Disney isn't going to retcon the sequels. They're currently riding high on prequel nostalgia, so apparently you CAN polish a turd with enough time and effort. Current hires have been to get back Daisy Ridley to do Rey's Jedi academy after all.
Personally I find more and more people demanding every project completely reshape the foundation of the universe is just setting themselves up for disappointment. Next week I'm going to read some angry rant about how someone thinks Ahsoka sucks because it didn't turn out that Ezra was possessed by some all powerful Dark Side Force god that Thrawn sacrifices himself to save the universe from.
Which is why the pants perched atop my bonce are made from finest tinfoil on that one
And to be honest? The Clone Wars has been redeeming the prequel era since 2008 dude. 2008. I didn’t even need to pretend to be Not Old back then! 2008 man, LIVE IN THE NOW!
I do however entirely and uncomedically agree with your second point though.
I mean.... it took a bit for Clone Wars to really hit its stride, but we're still at the point where the Prequel era has had more years of great content than bad. It just doesn't make those make me want to sit through those films again.
A key element that made the prequels redeemable is that people didn't necessarily hate the story being told, they hated the execution. TCW was successful because it expanded that story while also being well executed, and contextualized a lot of the execution issues that had put people off.
When it comes to the sequels however, the execution isn't really the issue - it's mostly the story that people hate, and that's a steeper mountain to climb.
Are they disappointing? Kinda. I mean I totally get why others don’t enjoy them and fair enough.
Are they abominations? (Sorry to Chaos, this isn’t specifically aimed at your good self ) Maybe try watching some actually bloody awful films, those with no redeeming qualities at all, and thus expand your media literacy and get back to me.’
Star Wars, at its very, very worst? It’s just not plumbed certain depths of incompetence. No, not even the Ewok movies which remain a not-so-guilty pleasure of mine,
Go and watch objectively crap films. Which ironically can be subjective.
But I’m thinking Manos Hand of Fate, and Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things.
So for me? I don’t care if didn’t enjoy the latest Star Wars offering. I do care if you have something constructive to say in the way of criticism. And if you do? I may well respond with a counter point, but hopefully I won’t be a dick about that.
What I do object to are folks over egging their pudding of criticism and confusing the somewhat disappointing but still actually really well made with Utter Utter Crap Where They Couldn’t Even Steady The Shot And Keep It In Focus crap.
And given I’ve mentioned media literacy? I’m no graduate in anything. I’m now 43 years old* and despite my career path the highest qualifications are C grade GCSE’s from 1996. So I’ll freely admit I’m utterly unqualified.
But what I do do is watch and learn from those who are genuinely qualified.
Do something or ideally better? And get a grip of what Gakky Media actually is, and separate it from the merely disappointing.
*No, I don’t know when or how that happened. Getting old sucks,
chaos0xomega wrote: A key element that made the prequels redeemable is that people didn't necessarily hate the story being told, they hated the execution. TCW was successful because it expanded that story while also being well executed, and contextualized a lot of the execution issues that had put people off.
When it comes to the sequels however, the execution isn't really the issue - it's mostly the story that people hate, and that's a steeper mountain to climb.
and it helps that for all it's flaws people generally agree that the third act, ROTS, stuck the landing. The prequals ALSO brought in new concepts, new ways of looking at Star wars etc.
The sequals not only failed to stick their landing, but by and large also didn't give us anything new, Rise of Skywalker read like a mid 90s EU story in the worst way possiable.
Are they abominations? (Sorry to Chaos, this isn’t specifically aimed at your good self ) Maybe try watching some actually bloody awful films, those with no redeeming qualities at all, and thus expand your media literacy and get back to me.’
Pffft. You like Rocky Horror, your judgement on this is questionable at best.
But seriously (and unironically), one of my favorite movies, if you want to talk about bad, is The Apple - a movie so famously bad that the director tried to kill himself after the premier. I know bad cinema, and I'm comfortable saying that the sequels are gak. They all work fine as standalone films - well acted, well paced, okayish plotlines in isolation from one another and the broader franchise, gorgeous visuals, good special effects, etc. but thats the thing - they aren't standalone films. They exist within the context of a broader franchise and need to work in the context of the films that came before, as well as with the other elements of the trilogy. They don't, and thats why they are bad. Because they are disjointed from one another as well as the long-standing and well-established throughlines that have undergirded the series for 40 years. Its like if the Fifth Element was released as a Star Wars film - love the movie, lots of people do, but if you put a Star Wars label on it then people will have expectations of it. Expectations that the film cannot and would not meet, and as a result the reaction to it would be negative.
The_Real_Chris wrote: What a damming indictment of Disney though that so few can imagine Thrawn actually winning in any significant way. Would they be able to have him come back and unite Imperial fractions into a credible threat. On one hand Hollywood can mirror yank concerns (and they are ambivalent about authoritarian regimes currently), on the other they really want to flog stuff to said regimes.
How is it an indictment of Disney that the series exists in a larger story? Knowing that Thrawn has to lose has nothing to do with any weaknesses of their writers or whatever you're trying to say about real-world political stuff, it's simply the fact that Ahsoka exists in a known timeline where only a short time remains before the sequel trilogy begins. There isn't enough time for Thrawn to win on any significant scale, he has to be quickly defeated so the Republic can stay in its state of peaceful ignorance and the First Order can begin to do its thing. It's like watching a WWII movie and complaining that the Germans are clearly being set up for defeat and nobody believes they will win.
Which IS the fault of them continually producing stories in this ever narrowing era of the universe. As good a show as Andor was and Ahsoka is turning out to be, something like Thrawn is basically wasted here. It's cool seeing why he is such a good threat. It sucks there is no room for him to actually be one.
The_Real_Chris wrote: What a damming indictment of Disney though that so few can imagine Thrawn actually winning in any significant way. Would they be able to have him come back and unite Imperial fractions into a credible threat. On one hand Hollywood can mirror yank concerns (and they are ambivalent about authoritarian regimes currently), on the other they really want to flog stuff to said regimes.
How is it an indictment of Disney that the series exists in a larger story? Knowing that Thrawn has to lose has nothing to do with any weaknesses of their writers or whatever you're trying to say about real-world political stuff, it's simply the fact that Ahsoka exists in a known timeline where only a short time remains before the sequel trilogy begins. There isn't enough time for Thrawn to win on any significant scale, he has to be quickly defeated so the Republic can stay in its state of peaceful ignorance and the First Order can begin to do its thing. It's like watching a WWII movie and complaining that the Germans are clearly being set up for defeat and nobody believes they will win.
Which IS the fault of them continually producing stories in this ever narrowing era of the universe. As good a show as Andor was and Ahsoka is turning out to be, something like Thrawn is basically wasted here. It's cool seeing why he is such a good threat. It sucks there is no room for him to actually be one.
Which is a problem of the sequel trilogy as well. The background narrative that underpins the sequel trilogy heavily limits the stories you can tell over the intervening time period from RotJ to TFA. The sequel trilogy (in my view) made the setting very boring, stagnant, and small, rather than leaving it as a wide open realm of possibility. The prequel trilogy didn't really have that issue, even though we knew what the "destination" was, there was a wide open canvas filled with meaningful storytelling opportunities that had big stakes. Even though Ahsoka was never mentioned in the OT or within the PT itself, they still found a way to introduce her as a major fan-favorite character with deep plot relevance within the broader storyline in a way that works within the context of the broader franchise. Even though we know how the Prequel Trilogy ends and how the Original Trilogy starts, we really don't have much of a clue as to what exactly happened in the timespan in between and the storytelling that has arisen out of that knowledge gap has been surprising and deep. By contrast, we have a decently good understanding of the events that occurred in the gap between the Original Trilogy and the Sequel Trilogy because it is unreasonably well fleshed out even in the relative absence of media released detailing that time period, and as a result of that information we have a generally solid sense that not much of major consequence that we aren't already aware of can really happen in that gap, as it would push the constraints on the existing narrative in the absence of some big retcons.
In fact, its arguably not even the sequel trilogies fault as a lot of the narrative details and plot hooks (like the Galactic Civil War ending shortly after the Battle of Endor, the imperial remnant fleeing to the unknown regions en masse rather than going through an extended warlord era ala the old EU, and the Republic unilaterally disarming itself and living out the interbellum period in uneasy peace) aren't really even mentioned in the movies at all, those all come from supplementary materials released in support of the films, but were necessary as a means of explaining "how we got here" so that those movies would make sense in the context of the rest of the franchise - which IS a fault of the films, starting with The Force Awakens. Its not a reasonable or natural continuation of the plotline as we expected it to be. Our heroes won at the end of ROTJ, so why are they so unsatisfyingly on the back foot fighting the same enemy again like they were when we last left them? That requires a lot of narrative filler to explain and fill in the details so that it makes some modicum of sense, but a consequence of that is that it restricts your storytelling opportunities in a big way.
Had TFA gone in an even slightly different direction, you would not have needed all that background material, because the opening of TFA would have seemed like a natural continuation of how you might have expected the intervening 30 years to go, and that would have left open a huge world of possibility for what you can do in the "in between", because that narrative filler would no longer be a necessity.
The old EU is fantastic. Ok, it has lots of problems, issues, and stinkers. I'm okay with pretending that the Yuuzhan Vong war and everything that happened afterwards never happened - the words "Galactic Federation of Free Alliances" and "Galactic Federation Triumvirate" will forever haunt my dreams. As a piece of general storytelling advice - names that are a moutful to say like those are are trying too damned hard. If thats the direction your narrative is going, go in a different direction. If you've run out of good names for your factions, then you've leaned too hard into the concept of government instability to drive your narrative forward, and you need to dial it way back and explore other narrative directions rather than having a new character become a sith lord and overthrow the established galactic government every 5 years. The Old Republic stood for a thousand generations, you can let one of the subsequent successor states exist for longer than 30 years.
Anyway, yeah - I dig the EU. There was lots of individually bad aspects to the stroytelling, but bigger picture it all flowed together really well and made sense (...and then the Vong came....).
H.B.M.C. wrote: That was the penultimate episode? It feels like the story has only just got going.
Of the season.
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Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Maybe try watching some actually bloody awful films, those with no redeeming qualities at all, and thus expand your media literacy and get back to me.
Why? Why does it really matter whether a bad movie is terrible or really terrible? Once quality drops below a certain point it's all meaningless arguing for the sake of arguing, we don't need to come up with a perfect ordering of the 50 worst movies ever made. And the sequel movies are definitely below that point for most people. The plot is a mess, there's no internal consistency, nothing makes any sense unless you buy a bunch of tie-in products that give you the missing story pieces, the pacing is unbelievably bad, and somehow despite all the relentless jumping from CGI spectacle to CGI spectacle they commit the worst sin of a mindless action movie: they're boring.
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Lance845 wrote: Which IS the fault of them continually producing stories in this ever narrowing era of the universe. As good a show as Andor was and Ahsoka is turning out to be, something like Thrawn is basically wasted here. It's cool seeing why he is such a good threat. It sucks there is no room for him to actually be one.
I agree in principle but realistically there was zero chance Disney was going to do it. Or, ideally, declare the sequels non-canon and reboot the entire mess with room to properly follow the OT. The needs of the business dictate content between the OT and the sequels and it's not a strike against the writers that they're working with timeline constraints that were established before they started.
This is scientifically wrong. Your blood is 90% water molecules, water boils at room temperature at high altitudes, as it will in vacuum.
Theres no such thing as your bodies internal pressure. Your body is not a pressure vessel. It does not self-pressurize - otherwise you would quite literally explode when exposed to vacuum. Your body pressure is the environmental pressure. If you're tossed into a vacuum, then your "body pressure" gradually drops to zero and every water molecule in your body starts boiling as the boiling point decreases with the decrease in pressure. The idea that your blood won't is predicated on the idea that your cardiovascular system is a closed system and thus "pressurized" by the pump that is your heart, but one of the known effects of vacuum exposure on the human body is tissue rupture (again ebullism (not embolism - embolism is a side-effect of ebullism in this case) and internal bleeding) resulting from the boil-off of body moisture, as well as air escaping the lungs and your intestines. Your closed circulatory system won't stay closed for long (especially if you try holding your breath, which in reality will likely cause more tissue damage and take you out faster than if you didn't). Nobody said anything about the bends, ebullism is a vaguely similar but altogether different (and very real) phenomenon that does occur when the human body is exposed to low pressures at very high altitudes.
The argument of going from 1 to 0 is less damaging than going from high pressure to 1 because the number of atmospheres of change in pressure is smaller is not a good one. That assumes the pressure effects on the human body can be modeled linearly - they aren't. A submarine designed to withstand several atmospheres of pressure would not make a good spaceship, nor vice versa.
90% water is not 100% water. That additional 10% makes a big difference.
And yes, your body is a pressure vessel(anything that is air or liquid tight is capable of holding pressure). Otherwise your liquids would just leak out even in atmosphere. Yes, you will experience swelling. But your blood will not boil in your veins like you seem under the impression that it will. It would boil if you were actively bleeding(which is possible if you were injured from debris) but only as it left your body, though bleeding would be very very bad as the pressure difference would cause it to happen very fast.
Having read a little about Ebullism, it is again something that happens over hours and hours of exposure. It would not be an immediate thing.
So all of the issues you point out are correct, but over many minutes to hours of exposure. Not in the short term like 3-5 minutes which is what we are discussing.
What you seem to have missed wrt cosmic radiation is that when exposed to direct sunlight in space, the temperature of the exposed object very rapidly heats to 248degF. That will cook you (and that will *definitely* make your blood boil) unless you happen to be wearing a full body light color/reflective suit.
Season. Series. The last television show of all time. Doesn't matter. Painfully slow and badly paced is painfully slow and badly paced no matter how you cut it.
(Well, unless you cut these 8 episodes into 4, and then made another 4 equally paced episodes... that would have helped).
Season. Series. The last television show of all time. Doesn't matter. Painfully slow and badly paced is painfully slow and badly paced no matter how you cut it.
(Well, unless you cut these 8 episodes into 4, and then made another 4 equally paced episodes... that would have helped).
You can say you don't like the pacing of the show but it very much matters whether it's the penultimate episode of the season or of the series. If it was the final episode of the series it absolutely would be a very bad situation, with no realistic hope of wrapping up a satisfying ending to everything within the limits of a 30-60 minute episode. But as the final episode of the season it has much less ambitious goals and plenty of time to get there. It has to close the chapter but it is absolutely expected that there will be unresolved elements going into next season.
chaos0xomega wrote: A key element that made the prequels redeemable is that people didn't necessarily hate the story being told, they hated the execution. TCW was successful because it expanded that story while also being well executed, and contextualized a lot of the execution issues that had put people off.
When it comes to the sequels however, the execution isn't really the issue - it's mostly the story that people hate, and that's a steeper mountain to climb.
and it helps that for all it's flaws people generally agree that the third act, ROTS, stuck the landing. The prequals ALSO brought in new concepts, new ways of looking at Star wars etc.
The sequals not only failed to stick their landing, but by and large also didn't give us anything new, Rise of Skywalker read like a mid 90s EU story in the worst way possiable.
I actually quite enjoyed The Last Jedi, because it tried to do some new, interesting things (the relationship between Rey and Kylo is intriguing and delivered in a neat way), but then Rise spent 20-minutes retconning most of it out of existence, which meant that film lost me before it failed to do most of the rest of the things it was trying to do.
Are they abominations? (Sorry to Chaos, this isn’t specifically aimed at your good self ) Maybe try watching some actually bloody awful films, those with no redeeming qualities at all, and thus expand your media literacy and get back to me.’
Pffft. You like Rocky Horror, your judgement on this is questionable at best.
But seriously (and unironically), one of my favorite movies, if you want to talk about bad, is i]The Apple[/i] - a movie so famously bad that the director tried to kill himself after the premier. I know bad cinema, and I'm comfortable saying that the sequels are gak. They all work fine as standalone films - well acted, well paced, okayish plotlines in isolation from one another and the broader franchise, gorgeous visuals, good special effects, etc. but thats the thing - they aren't standalone films. They exist within the context of a broader franchise and need to work in the context of the films that came before, as well as with the other elements of the trilogy. They don't, and thats why they are bad. Because they are disjointed from one another as well as the long-standing and well-established throughlines that have undegirded the series for 40 years. Its like if the Fifth Element was released as a Star Wars film - love the movie, lots of people do, but if you put a Star Wars label on it then people will have expectations of it. Expectations that the film cannot and would not meet, and as a result the reaction to it would be negative.
This. This is the biggest crime of the sequel trilogy; it’s the third time that you’ve done this, AND you releasing films into the post-MCU mediascape, and you don’t even bother to have a half hour meeting about what the overarching themes and plot arc for your tent pole films are going to be?! A thousand facepalm emojis isn’t enough to convey the utter incompetence on display there.
Likewise, I respect The Last Jedi for trying. It would have been a great middle film of a different trilogy, or even a great middle film of the trilogy it was made for, if someone other than JJ Abrams had responsibility for its sequel (or if JJ Abrams had any integrity whatsoever and followed through on the conclusion that TLJ had set up. Shame Colin Trevorrow got pulled off the project, as his treatment for what would have been The Rise of Skywalker would have fit neatly after TLJ and capped both movies in a satisfying manner.
I am a huge fan of the original trilogy but not a big fan of the prequels. That said there were some great bits in them and I do not dislike them as much as many do. However, the last three movies were abysmal in my opinion. I struggle to find anything positive to remark about them. Even the Book of Boba Fett, which was overall terrible had some good stuff in it, like the Tuskens, but the final three Skywalker movies…. I really dislike them. The more I think about it the more irked I get.
The conclusion of an epic saga muddled by studio politics and poor writing.
But seriously (and unironically), one of my favorite movies, if you want to talk about bad, is The Apple - a movie so famously bad that the director tried to kill himself after the premier.
Love The Apple. More people should watch it..... maybe... I think?
I just want them to move forward. I don't even want to see Rey build something. I want to see 500-1000 years into the future when what Rey built has already come and changed and become something else and she is a legendary figure.
Get away from all this crap to tell us something new.
ThePaintingOwl wrote: There isn't enough time for Thrawn to win on any significant scale, he has to be quickly defeated so the Republic can stay in its state of peaceful ignorance and the First Order can begin to do its thing. It's like watching a WWII movie and complaining that the Germans are clearly being set up for defeat and nobody believes they will win.
I would be quite happy with 2-3 years of steadily growing power and lighting successes, uniting the Imperial remnants, taking the equivalent of western Europe and part of Russia before being taken out in the kind of small scale Jedi decapitation event the SW universe loves so much.
Having now watched the latest episode...
Bonus points for saying break off attack as the fighters can't cope, flushing them out, then sending them back in once it was safer.
Very disappointed in the stormtroopers though. It wouldn't have taken much to have a few disposable local allies be with the main characters for what are supposed to be veteran long serving troops to competently cut through, before being beaten off by the Jedi. As it was they went out as easily as any other mook stormtroopers (still trying to think of any time since they first time we saw them storming the corvette where they are actually shown as competent - even in rogue one where they got a better shake they still weren't all that). Again would have cost little and would have started to give the heroes a credible protagonist which in virtually every star wars media they now painfully lack.
Technically they were assumed to be competent in Empire Strikes Back, though you don't really see it.
Rogue One was eeeh. You had the Death Troopers who worked well, until some dude turned the cheats on, otherwise it's kinda fifty-fifty, as long as no protagonists are involved, anyway.
Bobthehero wrote: Technically they were assumed to be competent in Empire Strikes Back, though you don't really see it.
Rogue One was eeeh. You had the Death Troopers who worked well, until some dude turned the cheats on, otherwise it's kinda fifty-fifty, as long as no protagonists are involved, anyway.
Rogue one they went down like SS in a 50's/60's war film. Died in droves but took out plenty of allies in the process. For the films conventions that is fair enough I guess.
In empire? I assumed that was the fleet and armoured cav guys doing the heavy lifting... Then again they didn't let fleet and ground coordinate so no Ties backing up the walkers which was incompetent, inter services rivalry at its worse or the Rebs had Russian levels of air defence pointing skyward.
But still it is mind blowing for me that any vaguely competent writer doesn't understand you need something for heroes to triumph over. Unless they all grew up playing computer games on easy with headshot hacks on. I just really don't get it.
For blasting out the outer defenses of Echo base, maybe, but clearing out the inside was probably done by all the grunts, and a bit of Vader.
As for air support, at least it's present in Rogue Squadron - Rebel Strike, if delayed, mostly aimed at the transport, but it is lacking, I am chalking that one up to Lucas' lack of understanding of military strategy, but it is lacking nonetheless.
And I fully agree with your last sentence, the season finale of Mando season 1 actually turned me off the series altogether.
Bobthehero wrote: For blasting out the outer defenses of Echo base, maybe, but clearing out the inside was probably done by all the grunts, and a bit of Vader.
As for air support, at least it's present in Rogue Squadron - Rebel Strike, if delayed, mostly aimed at the transport, but it is lacking, I am chalking that one up to Lucas' lack of understanding of military strategy, but it is lacking nonetheless.
And I fully agree with your last sentence, the season finale of Mando season 1 actually turned me off the series altogether.
I blame Jon Favreau. Not that I have anything to back it up, mind. Not that I have anything against the guy in general. But I just can't imagine that the lead producer coming in after handling superheroes for a decade mixes well with the way Stormtroopers have traditionally been treated. You even have the superhero setup right there. All heroes with unbeatable plot armor on the good guy side surrounded by a boss enemy and his army of mooks on the other side. It went as predictably as one would expect.
I mean, they still managed to lower the stakes in Book of Boba, and that's saying something. But Mando proper really is a pretty sad show in that regard.
Add me to the list of people who don't see why you would want bad guys that take no effort to beat. It only makes the good guys look worse, and who wants that?
It's just a problem whenever you have a story with lethal conflicts and a Saturday morning rivalry conflict. The villains can't actually do the scary things they're capable of and the heroes mostly mop up jobbers before an inconclusive battle with the major villain.
I did think the last episode did a good job of making the Nighttroopers both jobbers but also JUST dangerous enough to turn the tide as long as Shin could back them up. They pretty efficiently established a pecking order and even that the villains are overall stronger than the heroes with Baylan in their ranks.
They’re also fighting against Jedi, and a Mandalorian. Two more or less functionally extinct cultures.
The Jedi in particular. When they can fling you around with a thought or gesture, know where you’re going to shoot before your shoot? Yeah you’re gonna look like a bunch of idiots. All the more so given how incredibly rare Jedi are, and so not exactly something you can properly train for.
Sabine is wearing Beskar, a material highly resistant to your weapon. Oh and she’s got one of those fancy laser swords as well.
chaos0xomega wrote: Likewise, I respect The Last Jedi for trying. It would have been a great middle film of a different trilogy, or even a great middle film of the trilogy it was made for, if someone other than JJ Abrams had responsibility for its sequel (or if JJ Abrams had any integrity whatsoever and followed through on the conclusion that TLJ had set up. Shame Colin Trevorrow got pulled off the project, as his treatment for what would have been The Rise of Skywalker would have fit neatly after TLJ and capped both movies in a satisfying manner.
I quite like 7, but it utterly fails to explain its world. The one attempt it makes is probably one of the clumsiest dialog exchanges in the film. What it does well, it does very well though and on second viewing Kylo quickly became one of my all time favorite characters.
8 contains multiple of my all time favorite moments in all of Star Wars and creates the compelling conflict that 7 really failed to. It ranks for me very very highly in the franchise, but has some series issues, some a result of 7's lack of world building and some of its own design. The broad stroke ideas that those in power abandon their principles to retain power are really strong, but it's so reliant on Leia's network of contacts that don't have any real presence in the film. It's maybe my favorite story in the series, but I desperately want it to be told better.
Then there's 9, which is just a huge dud in every regard, IMO. I honestly don't feel like it does anything well. It's not even a good sequel to 7, let alone do anything with the potential from 8. Trevorrow's outline is definitely more satisfying though its hard to say if it would have actually been a better film when actually created. The loss of Carrie Fischer definitely colors ever bit of this film and I really struggle with where to rank it. Maybe time will look fondly on it, but at the moment I think it might only stand above 2, and I'm not sure I care to sit through a definitive comparison.
But still it is mind blowing for me that any vaguely competent writer doesn't understand you need something for heroes to triumph over. Unless they all grew up playing computer games on easy with headshot hacks on. I just really don't get it.
I quite agree. Considering how often this is discussed it continues to amaze me that so many writers/directors do not seem to get it. (Edit: Kind of like I do not get how cinematography 101 students some how do not seems to universally get that it is better to be frugal with “showing the monster” too much, ie Jaws and Alien and you can over egg a pudding, ie Jackson‘s King Kong) There must be an angle to it that I am not seeing. Something producers and test audiences see that I do not perhaps?
It may be that so many folks working in TV and movies have no real understanding of how to portray military conflict in a narrative sense. Not enough Dale Dye type folks making command decisions while working in Hollywood it would seem…. which amazes me considering how many combat veterans are out and about right now.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I loved Rise of Skywalker. To the point I genuinely wonder if I watched and see a different movie to everyone else.
I got lost when they time traveled to Burning Man to find the thing that located the thing (that Luke and Lando apparently had previously just given up on looking for while standing on top of it). Which was an ancient thing that lead to a relatively recent crash that they could have just searched anyway (and honestly, you can't convince me that people wouldn't have looted the death star wreckage down to the ground). Tuned out for a bit and suddenly there was a cavalry charge on... spaceship turrets... for reasons.
The less said about the martyrdom competition and re-killing a dead guy the better, but at that point it felt like a very bad episode of late season Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Though C-3P0's 'emotional' farewell to complete indifference and open scorn was a fantastic microcosm of the whole endeavor.
But seriously (and unironically), one of my favorite movies, if you want to talk about bad, is The Apple - a movie so famously bad that the director tried to kill himself after the premier.
Love The Apple. More people should watch it..... maybe... I think?
Most people I've shown it to really enjoy it... until the ending.
No better time to introduce a brand new character that nobody has ever mentioned before to resolve all the plot conflicts for you, lol.
Most people I've shown it to really enjoy it... until the ending.
No better time to introduce a brand new character that nobody has ever mentioned before to resolve all the plot conflicts for you, lol.
I mean, the reason that "deus ex mechanica" is know by a Latin phrase is that this sort of the plot resolution was well known and well decried for hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. Its a very old trope.
on the sequels, I think TFA was a classic 3.4 rotogens, not great, not terrible. The Last jedi was very patchy, and had some pretty bad moments (the completely pointless gambling world arc, Admiral Holdos incompetence, etc) , but had some genuinely good moments (cut out the slapstick moment, and the scene with Rey and luke where Rey reaches out and connects to the force is one of the best descriptions of the Force, for example). the Rise of Skywalker was broken mainly by the unwillingness to work with the endstate that TLJ give them, and the hard "lol,nope" reset really screwed whatever chance it might have had.
I left the cinema after watching TLJ with...mixed...feelings, but i left the cinema after the rise of skywalker with destinctly negative ones. It just...sucked.
AduroT wrote: We all agree Senator Objection is a secret Imperialist, right?
He's the father of the main guy from that short lived Resistance animated show. My memory of that show is fuzzy, likely for my own protection, but I don't recall him being an especially bad guy in that, so if he is in anyway an Imperialist then he's got a journey to go on.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I loved Rise of Skywalker. To the point I genuinely wonder if I watched and see a different movie to everyone else.
I just wish they kept the Rey is nobody thing. We don't need magic bloodlines and whatever. Individuals can be powerful because individuals are powerful. Hate episode 8 or not or whatever. But the shot of the little slave boy holding his broom like a lightsaber staring off into space as a visual representation of anyone can end up the hero and lineage means nothing was fantastic.
I don’t disagree on that, especially as really Force wise? There’s but a single known bloodline of powerful force users, and that’s but four people long (Anakin, Luke, Leia, Ben).
But. And yes this is a big but the scale of which might caused Sir Mixalot to reassess his life priorities?
The messy bits about the sequels (and it is messy)? Provide a lot of hooks and latches and narrative Velcro strips for others to come along and add their take. Which is exactly what the old EU stemmed from.
Remember folks! Luke was able to fly an X-Wing competently because his T-16* happened to have an identical control system to the T-65b** because they happened to be made by the same company*** who were well into standardisation****, with the only mention of the T16 being from Luke, and Biggs saying Luke was a great bush pilot. We didn’t even know what the T-16 was***** for years afterwards.
*, **, ***, ****, ***** Thanks to the Old EU and varying sources backfilling.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I don’t disagree on that, especially as really Force wise? There’s but a single known bloodline of powerful force users, and that’s but four people long (Anakin, Luke, Leia, Ben).
But. And yes this is a big but the scale of which might caused Sir Mixalot to reassess his life priorities?
The messy bits about the sequels (and it is messy)? Provide a lot of hooks and latches and narrative Velcro strips for others to come along and add their take. Which is exactly what the old EU stemmed from.
Remember folks! Luke was able to fly an X-Wing competently because his T-16* happened to have an identical control system to the T-65b** because they happened to be made by the same company*** who were well into standardisation****, with the only mention of the T16 being from Luke, and Biggs saying Luke was a great bush pilot. We didn’t even know what the T-16 was***** for years afterwards.
*, **, ***, ****, ***** Thanks to the Old EU and varying sources backfilling.
counterpoint: we didnt need to know what a t-16 was, beyond the fact it was A) something luke was already familiar with, and B) the controls were similar enough to the fighter he was about to pilot. any extra knowledge added later was Cool(tm), but not needed to follow the plot. Frankly, thats not the case in the sequels.
as much as they are part of a larger narrative, these flims should be able to stand alone and not rely on assumed knowledge or exposition added in secondary material. Palpatines return should not have been hand-waved, it should have been arguably the focus of the first act.
The rest? Other than Biggs claiming Luke to be an excellent bush pilot?
Is all EU.
The old EU answering the question of how Luke, a farmboy from the arse end of nowhere, could just….sort of super competently pilot a highly advanced and superior space fighter.
That’s my entire point. The OT had such flaws and foibles and oddities and “wait…hold on” moments, which the old EU addressed, and so enriched the whole of the thing.
Now that is not to excuse and handwave away the issues in the sequels - because they are there. But I will argue it’s from such oddities and issues and “huh?” the true potential of the background is found. I’m not even going to argue said crap bits and unexplained are therefore part of a careful design. Just that from sloppiness and outright incompetence something truly brilliant can grow.
What? Your pieces of argument aren't related to each other at all.
The EU is completely irrelevant to Episode 4.
Luke is a bush pilot that can target 2 meter targets is all the information we're given and all the information we need. The protagonist can pilot the fighter for the movie's climax.
The 'T-16' is just an empty setting nothing to make the setting feel more lived in. Much like 40k with its Ryza pattern lasgun vs a Mars pattern lasgun. It doesn't actually matter, but makes the universe feel slightly bigger with no effort, because people put names and brands on things.
What you are talking about is pointless SW trivia, not movie making. The gobblegook in some source books about fighters and stunt fliers and cockpits is fandom obsession at its harmless worst (we had to wait a while for the fandom to show off its harmful side).
If you want to talk about media literacy, this is part that nerd culture (as a rule) gets completely wrong. Encyclopedic knowledge of in-setting names, brands, manufacturers, ship lengths, magic systems, and what have you isn't important. Its missing the forest for the trees. How the story flows, peaks and rises matters. How the characters are written matters. What proper names get inserted into blank spots in the script does not. It helps if they aren't swapped out willy-nilly, but it really does not matter if a mook is a Storm Trooper, Scout Trooper, Snow Trooper, Dark Trooper, Lightning Trooper, Jump Trooper or whatever. Or if Han has a jibber-jabber blaster mkX What matters is its an easily identifiable mook, and Han's gun is Han's gun. It does not matter if that ever gets named, just that audience gets a thrill when he pulls it out.
Because that's what matters in movie making- what the audience feels at the moment in the story, not the random made up 'facts' that they'll look up later in a sourcebook as obsessed teenagers or twenty-somethings (or later).
I dunno, as a kid watching ANH, Luke being able to pilot an X-Wing wasn't something that required explaining to me, and it still isn't. He drove a flying car and was referred to as being a pilot at least once in the movie. He lives in a galaxy where people fly around from planet to planet in mere moments and down-on-their-luck low-lives are able to afford their own personal spaceships. Thats all the exposition I needed. In this world, flying a starship is like driving a car in our world. Anyone can do it. Boom. Done. No need to think about it further.
That EU authors took the time to fill in all those details is kinda not relevant. They did it because they were pedantic nerds overly concerned with details that most people otherwise did not care for, not because it was necessary to fill in a gap in the story. The story didn't *need* that detail, the authors *wanted* that detail.
Going into The Force Awakens as a returning fan, however, was a different story. The story - as part 7 of an ongoing narrative - would not make any sense to me without the external material, because it requires a hell of a lot of exposition to explain why the story otherwise does not make any real sense within the context of the film that preceded it, to the extent that I would not be able to figure out how the films connect to one another with the information presented to me within The Force Awakens itself.
I definitely agree with that. Leia's Resistance organization made no sense at all, given that she was part of the government, and TFA didn't bother to explain (or even really hint) that the First Order wasn't a major threat that everyone knew about (because every single person the film introduced absolutely did).
Abrams didn't skip on trivia, he skipped on connective tissue (both times), and that's a huge difference.
That EU authors took the time to fill in all those details is kinda not relevant. They did it because they were pedantic nerds overly concerned with details that most people otherwise did not care for, not because it was necessary to fill in a gap in the story. The story didn't *need* that detail, the authors *wanted* that detail.
.
actually a lot of the time those details wherte filled in by Roleplaying books. where that kind of detail becomes a bit more important
Voss wrote: I definitely agree with that. Leia's Resistance organization made no sense at all, given that she was part of the government, and TFA didn't bother to explain (or even really hint) that the First Order wasn't a major threat that everyone knew about (because every single person the film introduced absolutely did).
Abrams didn't skip on trivia, he skipped on connective tissue (both times), and that's a huge difference.
Exactly and those issues plague all 3 of the films and just get worse and worse because they have such knock on events.
Another great example is Luke not being a hero. That whole storyline is perfectly plausible; but they don't show it. They hide almost his entire story after defeating the Emperor until we find him a shell of his former self hiding on a backwater world inhabited by puffins.
Honestly the whole film is several decades too late in setting itself up.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: They’re also fighting against Jedi, and a Mandalorian. Two more or less functionally extinct cultures.
The Jedi in particular. When they can fling you around with a thought or gesture, know where you’re going to shoot before your shoot? Yeah you’re gonna look like a bunch of idiots. All the more so given how incredibly rare Jedi are, and so not exactly something you can properly train for.
Sabine is wearing Beskar, a material highly resistant to your weapon. Oh and she’s got one of those fancy laser swords as well.
I do love for how little of it she actually wears they can only seem to shoot her where she’s covered.
AduroT wrote: I do love for how little of it she actually wears they can only seem to shoot her where she’s covered.
You can clearly see her moving to block the shots on armor plates.
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chaos0xomega wrote: I dunno, as a kid watching ANH, Luke being able to pilot an X-Wing wasn't something that required explaining to me, and it still isn't. He drove a flying car and was referred to as being a pilot at least once in the movie. He lives in a galaxy where people fly around from planet to planet in mere moments and down-on-their-luck low-lives are able to afford their own personal spaceships. Thats all the exposition I needed. In this world, flying a starship is like driving a car in our world. Anyone can do it. Boom. Done. No need to think about it further.
Exactly. Luke is established as a skilled pilot and we even see him fumble around a bit trying to make the jump from a space-Cessna to a space-F22. Who cares about the rest, the movie shows us on-screen everything we need to know for the events to make sense.
The sequel trilogy doesn't do that. It opens with the classic iconography of the Evil Empire vs. Rebellion, telling the audience that somehow after ROTJ the rebellion failed and the Empire returned to power. They have star destroyers and TIE fighters and storm troopers and a space wizard in black robes. The rebels have an x-wing and a droid companion and a heroic ace pilot. We don't know why the rebellion failed and the bad guys took over the galaxy again but ok, it's at least pretty clear what's going on. Except oops, that's all completely wrong. The Republic is still around, these Imperials are all LARPing fanboys in some backwater system nobody cares about, and a few seconds after this is revealed the new death star blows up the Republic and everything important. Except oh wait, that's also wrong, there's still a whole bunch of Republic space battleships just hanging around waiting for Lando to say "hey guys, maybe we should go do something about the people who just blew up half the galaxy", because apparently nobody bothered to figure out that if you bring a massive swarm of ships you can just shoot the bad guys and win? Good luck having any clue what's really happening unless you read the prequel novel, played the video games, etc.
I finally see this weeks episode of Asohka and I come to the thread only to find this instead:
"This will be the sixth time we have had this exact same discussion about the sequel trilogy, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it." - The Architect, probably. Maybe.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: They’re also fighting against Jedi, and a Mandalorian. Two more or less functionally extinct cultures.
The Jedi in particular. When they can fling you around with a thought or gesture, know where you’re going to shoot before your shoot? Yeah you’re gonna look like a bunch of idiots. All the more so given how incredibly rare Jedi are, and so not exactly something you can properly train for.
Sabine is wearing Beskar, a material highly resistant to your weapon. Oh and she’s got one of those fancy laser swords as well.
I do love for how little of it she actually wears they can only seem to shoot her where she’s covered.
Whilst I’d need to watch it again, there’s at least one bit where Sabine is in a position which is presenting as much of that armour as possible.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Whilst I’d need to watch it again, there’s at least one bit where Sabine is in a position which is presenting as much of that armour as possible.
And multiple times you see her bring her hands up to block a shot with the arm/wrist plates before resuming shooting.
I just wish they kept the Rey is nobody thing. We don't need magic bloodlines and whatever. Individuals can be powerful because individuals are powerful. Hate episode 8 or not or whatever. But the shot of the little slave boy holding his broom like a lightsaber staring off into space as a visual representation of anyone can end up the hero and lineage means nothing was fantastic.
Maybe we are the weird ones. Maybe everyone else prefers regal bloodlines. I mean Kings were a thing for ages. Perhaps this republic stuff is just wrong for humans... Honestly it is baffling and surely decreases generic appeal. As a kid watching star wars you can daydream you can be a character in it. Now? Sadly my old man was from Cork not Tatooine so that rules me out.
Can’t believe it’s the series finale of Ahsoka next Wednesday. Whilst my weekly watch slate is gaining pace (Generation V, Loki S2 and The Continental), I’m going to miss Ahsoka.
Of course the good news with the strike more or less resolved, any follow season shouldn’t be delayed. And we’ve Skeleton Crew to hopefully look forward to. And The Acolyte in 2024.
The funny thing about this argument is that Biggs doesn't even vouch for Luke in the original film. That's a deleted scene that was added back in the even hated Special Edition.
LunarSol wrote: The funny thing about this argument is that Biggs doesn't even vouch for Luke in the original film. That's a deleted scene that was added back in the even hated Special Edition.
Pretty sure it, like the introduction of Luke and Biggs, was back in the novelization that came out with the film.
Have to say have really been enjoying Ahsoka, really well put together show. I wouldn't say it's the force of nature that Andor was, but I would definitely put it up there with the Mandalorian. Although it's interesting to find that my suspension of disbelief is not broken by someone surviving a light-sabre through the torso, but was by someone giving themselves that haircut with a combat knife.
It's also made me go and watch the Clone Wars, which I completely missed when it was released. Did think it was a children's cartoon, as some of the plot lines are extremely two-dimensional (and the artwork style along with it) but then you have scenes like droids cutting through the hulls of immobile ships so the crew get sucked out into space! (Which felt a bit incongruous)
LunarSol wrote: The funny thing about this argument is that Biggs doesn't even vouch for Luke in the original film. That's a deleted scene that was added back in the even hated Special Edition.
Pretty sure it, like the introduction of Luke and Biggs, was back in the novelization that came out with the film.
It's definitely one of those things that was "known" long before the special editions. I always have to double check because I don't really recall how the movie went without it. Definitely one of the best additions.
Pacific wrote: Have to say have really been enjoying Ahsoka, really well put together show. I wouldn't say it's the force of nature that Andor was, but I would definitely put it up there with the Mandalorian. Although it's interesting to find that my suspension of disbelief is not broken by someone surviving a light-sabre through the torso, but was by someone giving themselves that haircut with a combat knife.
Real men shave with machetes. Mandalorians, being a warrior culture, cut their hair with a combat knife. Jedi should accordingly consider their lightsabers when it comes to grooming, but think better of it because nobody likes the smell of singed hair.
Pacific wrote: Have to say have really been enjoying Ahsoka, really well put together show. I wouldn't say it's the force of nature that Andor was, but I would definitely put it up there with the Mandalorian. Although it's interesting to find that my suspension of disbelief is not broken by someone surviving a light-sabre through the torso, but was by someone giving themselves that haircut with a combat knife.
It's also made me go and watch the Clone Wars, which I completely missed when it was released. Did think it was a children's cartoon, as some of the plot lines are extremely two-dimensional (and the artwork style along with it) but then you have scenes like droids cutting through the hulls of immobile ships so the crew get sucked out into space! (Which felt a bit incongruous)
Clone Wars can be a bit all over the shop in terms of tone. But, for my money? The excellent outweighs the ropey. Arguably not necessarily in quantity (D-Squad for instance is overly long, and really not terribly good), but certainly in just how high quality it can be.
Pacific wrote: Have to say have really been enjoying Ahsoka, really well put together show. I wouldn't say it's the force of nature that Andor was, but I would definitely put it up there with the Mandalorian. Although it's interesting to find that my suspension of disbelief is not broken by someone surviving a light-sabre through the torso, but was by someone giving themselves that haircut with a combat knife.
It's also made me go and watch the Clone Wars, which I completely missed when it was released. Did think it was a children's cartoon, as some of the plot lines are extremely two-dimensional (and the artwork style along with it) but then you have scenes like droids cutting through the hulls of immobile ships so the crew get sucked out into space! (Which felt a bit incongruous)
Clone Wars can be a bit all over the shop in terms of tone. But, for my money? The excellent outweighs the ropey. Arguably not necessarily in quantity (D-Squad for instance is overly long, and really not terribly good), but certainly in just how high quality it can be.
I consider it pretty similar to Dr. Who. You really do not need to watch the whole thing, but if you can find a list of the top 10 story arcs they are some of the best Star Wars content out there and absolutely worth watching without following the whole thing.
Pacific wrote: Have to say have really been enjoying Ahsoka, really well put together show. I wouldn't say it's the force of nature that Andor was, but I would definitely put it up there with the Mandalorian. Although it's interesting to find that my suspension of disbelief is not broken by someone surviving a light-sabre through the torso, but was by someone giving themselves that haircut with a combat knife.
That bugged me too. Not for the combat knife exactly, but the method. Hair doesn't cut well in a clump.
However, I mostly like the show. Well, the Sabine and Ahsoka show. Hera and the New Republic seems meandering and pointless beyond 'politicians bad,' and keeps interrupting the flow with no real payoff.
Baylon (Baylan? Baylin?) also feels like a side-story that's going nowhere. His cycle theory is pretty standard storytelling schlock but I don't think it fits well at all, as it implies somehow the Jedi create the Sith when they're on top rather than just being clueless. He's also just...
Spoiler:
gonna go camp out somewhere on this planet for reasons? And just abandoned his apprentice to do... whatever it is.
It feels like he's here to have the actor here, rather than a character with a meaningful role in the story. (Unless it was to set up a spin-off show)
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Unlike Shin, who's by far my favorite, for being half-feral and wearing a fantastic outfit. Needs more fleshing out beyond her Master claiming she's 'ambitious' however, because her reactions to everyone else on 'her side' hit me as deeply negative when they're doing shady stuff. There's an interesting story there for a random force sensitive from a hard life, partially trained by a bitter ex-Jedi.
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I like this Thrawn more than book Thrawn, because what's informing his decisions (who taught Ahsoka and how) seems more relevant than 'this species pre-space flight art magically lets me know that they turn right after exiting hyperspace.'
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My big bugbear? Ahsoka's out of body experience.
Spoiler:
Because 'fight, fight, fight, swordfighting, fight' seems like a weird approach for an enlightenment trip. Especially since it caps off with rising (as if from the dead) as Ahsoka the White. There were so many shades of Gandalf the White and (bizarrely) original Battlestar Galactica's devil/angel episodes in the back half of that little trip. And for a philosophy about being 'calm and at peace' for Force use, its really weird to use 'conflict all the time' as a framework and get holy enlightenment out of the deal.
Sabine is... fine. Her story arc puts her at too young for where she actually is in life (she's relearning teenage life lessons she already learned in Rebels), and it doesn't really seem like she's learning much, but in theory this isn't her show. But it feels like it is.
Ezra is happy and boring. Better than whiny brat Ezra, but still not a character I actually care about.
Because 'fight, fight, fight, swordfighting, fight' seems like a weird approach for an enlightenment trip. Especially since it caps off with rising (as if from the dead) as Ahsoka the White. There were so many shades of Gandalf the White and (bizarrely) original Battlestar Galactica's devil/angel episodes in the back half of that little trip. And for a philosophy about being 'calm and at peace' for Force use, its really weird to use 'conflict all the time' as a framework and get holy enlightenment out of the deal.
So, this sequence is very much an Ahsoka deep cut with very little explicit definition, but its really not about learning a lesson of calm and peace or anything holy as much as it is about accepting the darkness within as a part of the whole.
Ahsoka has a running theme of seeing herself as tainted and that her actions can only spread her corruption further. In her childhood the Jedi were counselors and mediators, but the order she joined was caught up exclusively in violence and death. She learned of the Force mostly as a weapon from a man who would go on to crush the galaxy with an iron fist and effectively wipe the Jedi order from existence. This is the legacy she feels she has to offer the galaxy and as a result largely tries not to interfere. Most of what she taught Sabine isn't really what she learned, but what she thought she should have been taught based on what she believed the Jedi were before the Clone Wars.
Anakin shows her the past that cannot be changed and then his own darkness not as the monster he became but as the man she knew. He then gives her a simple choice; live and act with the darkness or continue to do nothing until death. That darkness is a part of Ahsoka but it doesn't have to define her. She accepts it, her past and herself and opens herself up to the idea that she has good to offer, just as Anakin was able to mostly offer her the Light he carried. It's about her learning to stop fearing herself and being willing to open up to others again.
At least, that's my take on it. Admittedly, its very much not an explicitly defined episode and very open to interpretation, but that's what I think they're going for.
Ahsoka has a running theme of seeing herself as tainted and that her actions can only spread her corruption further.
Can you give examples of this 'running theme' outside this specific episode?
I'm not trying to be funny, I just don't see that as relevant to her character anywhere. Including 5 minutes later.
Most of what she taught Sabine isn't really what she learned, but what she thought she should have been taught based on what she believed the Jedi were before the Clone Wars.
Most of what she taught Sabine seemed to be sword forms and that she (Sabine) couldn't be trusted.
Jadenim wrote: There seems to be less misogyny in this version, so go us?
Amen for that. Personally, I think a lot of people who took the misogyny line in their complaints because they aren't deep/introspective enough to analyze the film with a critical eye and figure out the thing that actually bothered them. They looked for surface-level (non-)issues and latched on to them as a proxy for deep-rooted problems. Basically, "huh, I didn't enjoy that, but I can't put my finger on it.... must be the woke feminist agenda ruining am otherwise perfect movie!"
Ahsoka has a running theme of seeing herself as tainted and that her actions can only spread her corruption further.
Can you give examples of this 'running theme' outside this specific episode?
I'm not trying to be funny, I just don't see that as relevant to her character anywhere. Including 5 minutes later.
It's present in a lot of the post Clone Wars stuff. Generally pretty understated, but they like to have moments where she "doesn't want to get involved". A lot of this is an excuse as to why she's not in the OT and didn't train Luke, but the writers have weaved it into a lot of her appearances, particularly after the duel with Vader. Probably most notably when she's very unwilling to help train Grogu. It's also what shakes her resolve in the duel with Baylan when he talks about her legacy of unorthodox masters (2 of which became Sith lords within her lifetime). That's the real meat of the "few lived to see what he would become" speech.
chaos0xomega wrote: Amen for that. Personally, I think a lot of people who took the misogyny line in their complaints because they aren't deep/introspective enough to analyze the film with a critical eye and figure out the thing that actually bothered them. They looked for surface-level (non-)issues and latched on to them as a proxy for deep-rooted problems. Basically, "huh, I didn't enjoy that, but I can't put my finger on it.... must be the woke feminist agenda ruining am otherwise perfect movie!"
Nah, you're over-thinking this one. The "WOKE FEMINAZIS RUINED STAR WARS" nonsense wasn't people trying their best to understand why they didn't like the movies, it was politically motivated propaganda outlets starting from the premise the everything is "woke" and then looking for examples to complain about. They do the same thing with every piece of media no matter how much the critics and/or fans like it and none of it is worth taking seriously, it's just empty noise. Attempting to come up with any kind of rational thought process behind it is an exercise in futility.
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Voss wrote: Hera and the New Republic seems meandering and pointless beyond 'politicians bad,' and keeps interrupting the flow with no real payoff.
I think this is really where Disney's reluctance to just trash the sequels entirely is hurting the show. None of the Hera storyline matters much except in the context of trying to bridge the gap between the end of ROTJ and the incoherent mess of the sequels. I get why they're doing it but it's annoying that every post-ROTJ show has to spend at least some time trying to make up for bad writing elsewhere instead of focusing on its own story.
It feels like he's here to have the actor here, rather than a character with a meaningful role in the story. (Unless it was to set up a spin-off show)
My guess would be that he was originally there for a more significant story but because the actor died we're going to end up disappointed and his whole "my destiny is elsewhere" bit will end up being nothing more than a reference to fighting Ahsoka a few minutes later. It's really unfortunate because all the hints could have turned into something good but it's hard to judge the writers over something they had no control over.
Sabine is... fine. Her story arc puts her at too young for where she actually is in life (she's relearning teenage life lessons she already learned in Rebels), and it doesn't really seem like she's learning much, but in theory this isn't her show. But it feels like it is.
TBH it fits. Maybe it's less satisfying if you watched Rebels and you're tired of repeating the same arc but as a stand-alone show it makes sense. She lived through a lot at a young age and it's not surprising that a traumatic background would lead to not really growing up like a normal person.
TBH it fits. Maybe it's less satisfying if you watched Rebels and you're tired of repeating the same arc but as a stand-alone show it makes sense. She lived through a lot at a young age and it's not surprising that a traumatic background would lead to not really growing up like a normal person.
Actually my problem is more that she DOES feel like a normal person. But... a disaffected late 20s/early 30s American person, not a Star Wars person who's seen the war. (Or all the stuff that happened in Rebels, so yeah, that definitely played into it. She grew into her responsibilities there, but starts this show as more of a brat than when she was introduced)
Its not as apparent in the later episodes as it was in episode 1, but fething off from her responsibilities to take a joy ride and hang out with her cat was a huge debt to overcome, as well refusing to deal with Ahsoka and actually listen (though Ahsoka was just as bad).
Ahsoka has a running theme of seeing herself as tainted and that her actions can only spread her corruption further.
Can you give examples of this 'running theme' outside this specific episode?
I'm not trying to be funny, I just don't see that as relevant to her character anywhere. Including 5 minutes later.
It's present in a lot of the post Clone Wars stuff. Generally pretty understated, but they like to have moments where she "doesn't want to get involved". A lot of this is an excuse as to why she's not in the OT and didn't train Luke, but the writers have weaved it into a lot of her appearances, particularly after the duel with Vader. Probably most notably when she's very unwilling to help train Grogu. It's also what shakes her resolve in the duel with Baylan when he talks about her legacy of unorthodox masters (2 of which became Sith lords within her lifetime). That's the real meat of the "few lived to see what he would become" speech.
She's not in the OT because she didn't exist (both in a meta sense at the time of the OT and she also time traveled) and also she and Sabine went to look for Ezra. She was also Fulcrum, which is the opposite of not being involved.
Grogu... I don't see it- she has stuff to do that doesn't involve raising a feral baby. I don't think there was much self-doubt or soul searching there.
The Baylan thing hit me weird, because as neither fish nor fowl, he's got no room to talk. Unorthodoxy was also one of the few positive traits of Obi and Ani, given how the Jedi order was consistently portrayed as lunkheads.
She's also basically the Chosen of the Incarnation of the Light Side, so... yeah. As stupid as that was, it doesn't leave much room for doubt as to which side she's on.
Voss wrote: Actually my problem is more that she DOES feel like a normal person. But... a disaffected late 20s/early 30s American person, not a Star Wars person who's seen the war. (Or all the stuff that happened in Rebels, so yeah, that definitely played into it. She grew into her responsibilities there, but starts this show as more of a brat than when she was introduced)
Its not as apparent in the later episodes as it was in episode 1, but fething off from her responsibilities to take a joy ride and hang out with her cat was a huge debt to overcome, as well refusing to deal with Ahsoka and actually listen (though Ahsoka was just as bad).
I think it fits. She accepted some responsibility during the war but that was with the pressure to be a good soldier and do her job, with severe consequences for failing. At the start of Ahsoka the war has been over for a while and she's free to say " all this, I've done my part and now I'm going to go have fun". And why not? What's the worst that can happen if she blows off a ceremony? Some annoying politicians whine about it? Once Ahsoka shows up and gives her something serious to worry about she clashes with Ahsoka and wants to do things he way but doesn't just blatantly blow off her responsibilities. Each thinks they're right and the other is hopelessly wrong but she's still doing what she thinks is the best thing for the goal of finding Ezra, not blowing it all off and telling someone else to worry about it.
Another thing to consider is Sabine's likely suffering from an EXTREME case of "survivor's guilt" I mean first Ezra then her entire culture?
That should mess someone up
BrianDavion wrote: Another thing to consider is Sabine's likely suffering from an EXTREME case of "survivor's guilt" I mean first Ezra then her entire culture?
That should mess someone up
Sure. But again, that's not the kind of 'messed up' that comes across from the character. She's a young person that doesn't want the bother of being an adult, not someone dealing with guilt or psychological issues.
She wants her friend back for herself, not for him or what they sacrificed, or anything like that.
She doesn't want to ruin the joy of the moment with all the problems she absolutely should tell him about. She just wants that moment. And the next morning. And the casual 'relocate the camp' trip. She wants to put off her responsibilities until the universe kicks them both in the face.
It's also worth keeping in mind that liberation day on Lothal marks the day Ezra was lost. That makes it a day everyone else wants to celebrate, but Sabine decidedly does not. I would expect that sentiment to get worse with each year Ezra remains MIA, so I had no issues with how Sabine was portrayed in the first episode.
Star Wars related, and some pretty telling quotes in there about the success(Mando) or lack thereof (everything else) regarding newer stuff.
RIP Galactic Star Cruiser, this weekend is the "final voyage". I didn't even know you existed until I heard you were going out of business!
Looking at the price, holy feth. No wonder it closed.
Also (for context, floaters and swimmers are terms for certain types of guests, as explained in article)
:
According to Lanzisero, Disney could have made the hotel more attractive for the floaters and swimmers by bringing in more of the original cast of characters, rather than just characters from newer movies.
“So many people have that idea of the Star Wars universe that was formed by those earlier films. And I think we’ve had kind of an oversight on Disney’s part not to let people spend more time in those worlds, choosing those worlds from the earlier films and those characters from the earlier films,” he told News 6.
Article :
Spoiler:
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – Disney announced earlier this year that the company would be closing its Star Wars-themed “Galactic Starcruiser” hotel, with its final voyage scheduled from Sept. 28-30.
The announcement came as returning CEO Robert Iger implements his plan to cut back on an estimated $5.5 billion in costs for the company, including thousands of job cuts and the cancellation of its Lake Nona project.
While the hotel wasn’t spared in the company’s cost-saving measures, former Disney Imagineer Ryan Harmon told News 6 that there were steps Disney could have taken to make it work better.
Harmon worked as a show writer and concept designer for several Disney projects before taking on the role of president at Zeitgeist, a California-based production company that helps design attractions for entertainment brands.
He discussed the Galactic Starcruiser hotel with News 6 and pointed out that the project wasn’t exactly budget-friendly.
“They created an experience that only can host up to (about) 400 guests... When you have that few guests, you cannot operate with a large staff because those people cost a lot of money,” Harmon said. “And the concept they developed is very heavy on employees — employees who wear costumes and are part of the story.”
The hotel features an immersive experience that allows guests to role-play as characters in a unique story within the fictional Star Wars universe. However, that acts as a double-edged sword, Harmon explained.
“The hotel did not have a pool, not sure it had a gym. It was kind of Star Wars all the time, 24/7,” he said. “And for somebody who is a floater and probably even a swimmer, it’s too much!”
A standard cabin rate for two guests in 2022 would cost $1,209 per guest per night — or $4,809 total.
Harmon’s colleague, Joe Lanzisero — another former Imagineer who worked with Disney for nearly 40 years — explained that “floaters” are those who know about a certain franchise and might even like it, even though they haven’t seen many of the movies. Meanwhile, “swimmers” are bigger fans of the franchise who are more invested than the floaters — but they still aren’t the biggest.
That title goes to the “divers,” but there just aren’t enough of those sorts of fans to sustain the hotel, Lanzisero argued.
“I think where Disney kind of lost their way with the whole Star Wars book — with the Galaxy’s Edge and with the hotel — is that they went in with this assumption that everyone was an Uber fan, everybody was a diver,” Lanzisero said. “That everybody coming into the experience would have a deep, deep, deep understanding and connection with the brand.”
Harmon added that the cost of the hotel was too much for those who aren’t huge fans of the original source material.
Harmon and Lanzisero argued that not enough classic characters appeared at Galactic Starcruiser to appeal to a wider variety of fans.
“It’s really hard nowadays to justify spending anywhere near $1,000 to $2,000 a night to stay in what’s not even a very nice hotel to be part of the story,” Harmon said. “It’s just, it’s beyond people’s reach, I think, especially during the pandemic.”
According to Lanzisero, Disney could have made the hotel more attractive for the floaters and swimmers by bringing in more of the original cast of characters, rather than just characters from newer movies.
“So many people have that idea of the Star Wars universe that was formed by those earlier films. And I think we’ve had kind of an oversight on Disney’s part not to let people spend more time in those worlds, choosing those worlds from the earlier films and those characters from the earlier films,” he told News 6.
As an example, Harmon noted that he visited Galaxy’s Edge in California years ago around when “The Mandalorian” TV series had initially been released. At that time, he couldn’t find any Baby Yoda dolls for his young daughter.
“The employees literally told us that Grogu — or Baby Yoda — does not exist in that world,” Harmon explained. “That land or place exists between this story in this film this year, and that character doesn’t exist at that time.”
Harmon argues that because the resort tried to emphasize the franchise’s canon by removing characters that didn’t belong — much like how Galactic Starcruiser omits characters to let guests explore the modern films — they were leaving money on the table.
“Let’s fast forward to about a year or two ago. And guess what? Everywhere in Galaxy’s Edge — Baby Yoda dolls,” Harmon said.
Lanzisero mirrored Harmon’s thoughts, discussing a Winnie the Pooh attraction he helped work on in Tokyo.
“When we first sat down to do that attraction, we kind of made a list of what were all the things that people remember from the Winnie the Pooh films. And this is not about telling a story of the film,” Lanzisero said. “It was those moments and those places that we knew people expect to see. ‘I want to go to the 100 Acre Wood. I want to bounce with Tigger. I want to hear that Heffalumps and Woozles song.’”
Between the steep prices, the lack of typical hotel amenities, and the reliance on modern characters in the franchise, the hotel was a tough sell for many guests.
Despite the shortcomings, however, Harmon said he had to give credit where credit is due.
He explained that while the hotel wasn’t necessarily the success that Disney wanted, it did give fans something to be excited about.
“I would definitely applaud Disney and the management and the team for taking the risk to create an overnight immersive experience because until then, it really didn’t exist,” Harmon said. “And it’s definitely what people want and where things are going. If you look at the success of Comic Con, for example, people want to roleplay, they like to dress up, they want to be immersed in the story, and they want to have agency.”
chaos0xomega wrote: I dunno, as a kid watching ANH, Luke being able to pilot an X-Wing wasn't something that required explaining to me, and it still isn't. He drove a flying car and was referred to as being a pilot at least once in the movie. He lives in a galaxy where people fly around from planet to planet in mere moments and down-on-their-luck low-lives are able to afford their own personal spaceships. Thats all the exposition I needed. In this world, flying a starship is like driving a car in our world. Anyone can do it. Boom. Done. No need to think about it further.
That and we are directly told by Obi-Wan that Luke is actually the son of a powerful Jedi Knight & like his father the Force is strong in him.
●Luke is the main hero in ANH.
●Its mentioned how he's allready a good (T-16 - whatever that mught be) pilot & good at targeting.
●And he's inherited his father's Force powers.
So yeah, of course he's going to be able to fly that X-Wing in the 3rd act. Its how movies & stories work. It wasn't hard for 7 year old me to figure out or accept....
Though here in 2023, after having watched 3 prequels, SW: Clone Wars, Rebles (having watched Chopper pilot & gun the Ghost), etc? One has to wonder how much of what we ascribe to Luke as a rookie X-Wing pilot should really be credited to R2-D2.....
R2 is afterall a 20 year combat veteran, has participated in ground combat, fought/flown in 2 Wars & multiple side adventures by the time he serves with Luke in that X-Wing.
And that's what we've seen on screen.
Luke's got quite the advantage in the battle of Yavin.
Natural talent + combat veteran riding shotgun + magic + storytelling trope = Success!
The internet tends to amplify negativity. When you were a kid no one was posting a constant feed of “Top 10 Plot Holes in Star Wars” and jumping into every excited conversation with a dissenting opinion.
“You may be the hottest bush pilot this side of mos eisley, but those little skyhoppers are dangerous. Keep it up and one day whammo, you could end up a dark spot on the downside of a cavern wall”
Hopefully they’ll find a way to develop the intended Baylan story line, in a book or something.
Sabine refusing to disclose critical, need-to-know information to Ezra just so she can pretend to be happy for a few more hours… is so incredibly off-putting I find it hard to believe Sabine isn’t supposed to be turning heel. We’re supposed to like this character?
ccs wrote: ●Its mentioned how he's already a good (T-16 - whatever that might be) pilot & good at targeting.
The T-16 skyhopper was a personal repulsorlift airspeeder manufactured by the Incom Corporation (who also manufactured the T-65B X-wing).
Spoiler:
Lol. Seriously, what makes you think that by now here in 2023 I don't know what a T-16 is?
(that mystery was solved a few weeks after I 1st saw the movie in '77. I opened a pack of SW trading cards from Topps. One of the cards showed Luke playing with the model & named it as the T-16 Skyhopper)
You also completely missed the point though.
What exactly a T-16 was wasn't important to 7 year old me. At least not as far as understanding how Luke could easily pilot that X-wing. He was said to be good at piloting T-16s. And that X-wing controls weren't much different than them. So....
That no toy of the T-16 was available? THAT was the important part.
His meaning was clear: that’s the information the movie itself gives you. Watching the film, he might not know what a T-16 is but he does hear Luke say he’s not a bad pilot himself and the X-Wings are not too different from T-16s, and he bulls-eyes wamprats.
Ahhh, but! X-Wings and T-16’s being made by the same manufacturer, with near identical controls is 100% expanded universe info.
And it’s like suggesting that someone who’s not bad at flying a Cessna can therefore pilot an F16 with identical aplomb. Which is silly.
But to get back to the true core of this spin off topic?
Folk on the Internet were apparently upset that Rey could do things without us knowing a detailed history of Rey. Whilst not appreciating that many of Luke’s exploits were clarified in external media. And yes, that does include the novelisation of the film.
Likewise in Empire Strikes Back? We see Luke use The Force to summon his lightsaber to his hand in the Wampa cave. A feat first shown in that scene.
Yet…..when Rey uses The Force to resist Kylo Ren’s mind probe, the same weirdos at least pretended to be upset that she couldn’t possibly have done that without someone training her, because how else could she possibly just sort of…..figure it out,
Don't forget Luke doesn't just know how to fly T-16s. Remember in the bar when they are hiring Han, Luke notes that the amount of money that Han wants is enough to get close to buying a starship; and shows no qualms about being able to fly it.
This suggests that Luke is potentially skilled at flying more than just a T-16 and has at least trained to fly space capable craft. Most likely considering his intention to join the fleets, he's been involved in youth training programs and other schemes that the Empire runs so that they can have a ready body of able recruits by the time they mature.
The T-16 is simply famous as its the only specific craft he mentions flying and whilst also using it to shoot with.
Honestly a lot of what Rey does is kind of shown in the early part of the first film she's in and a lot of what she does is fine. My issue is the state of everyone else. All the character who's back history we know from the first 3 films have changed, sometimes drastically. Plus the state of the Galaxy itself has changed. Rey is fine, she's new, she's fresh and we don't know her past and that's fine. It's all the loose ends of everyone else that's the problem.
MDG, I think you have things twisted and backwards. No one needed that stupid EU canon because the movie told you the important stuff. Luke says he’s not a bad pilot. We see spacecraft treated as stand-in-automobiles in terms of accessibility. Luke mentions the T-16 when it comes to shooting womprats, with the implication that an X-Wing should be able to hit anything a T-16 can. NOTE: I don’t mean in some extra canon geek way. It’s world building that shows Luke is confident and knowledgeable about shooting a target with a spacecraft. We are given enough information to know Luke and those around him feel confident that he can at least fly an X-Wing, if not excel as a pilot.
You keep harping on the EU as if it was written to close plot holes. You do this as a take-that! against anyone who points out plot holes in the ST. But these are not comparable situations since the EU stuff for the OT was not written to fill plot holes. This was not a plot hole. They were written to fill out role playing sourcebooks and novel series. The ST makes no sense without outside information, whereas the OT made perfect sense without the extraneous info. You are not addressing the actual complaints.
Lord Damocles wrote: People are putting more effort into post-hoc writing the show than Filoni did
nah this is just looking at what we're giving and drawing the conclusions from it
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LunarSol wrote: The internet tends to amplify negativity. When you were a kid no one was posting a constant feed of “Top 10 Plot Holes in Star Wars” and jumping into every excited conversation with a dissenting opinion.
the thing that baffles me about this is these people think doing this proves they're FANS LOL.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: We really need another term for people who are still engaged with a story product long after story product has run out of story.
Why? "Fan" is an already cromulent word for them. It *IS* short for "fanatic", after all.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: We really need another term for people who are still engaged with a story product long after story product has run out of story.
Why? "Fan" is an already cromulent word for them. It *IS* short for "fanatic", after all.
That’s the joke.gif
I was just responding to someone claiming the people still talking about Star Wars shouldn’t call themselves “fans”.
I suppose it does complicate things when there are only 5 forms of movie product available for consumers anymore.
Folk on the Internet were apparently upset that Rey could do things without us knowing a detailed history of Rey. Whilst not appreciating that many of Luke’s exploits were clarified in external media. And yes, that does include the novelisation of the film.
The problem is with execution. Luke and Rey share similarities, but Luke is just characterized way better.
Likewise in Empire Strikes Back? We see Luke use The Force to summon his lightsaber to his hand in the Wampa cave. A feat first shown in that scene.
Yet…..when Rey uses The Force to resist Kylo Ren’s mind probe, the same weirdos at least pretended to be upset that she couldn’t possibly have done that without someone training her, because how else could she possibly just sort of…..figure it out,
ESB takes place years after Luke meets Obi Wan and starts learning about the Force. I can believe that, in that time, he continued to practise and became capable enough to pull a lightsaber out of the snow.
Rey on the other hand goes from not even believing the Force exists to resisting a mind probe from a guy who learned all about space wizardry from Luke himself when he was still just a kid and has clearly been using space magic for years.
See the difference?
This applies to other things that Luke and Rey have in common. Luke going from farm boy to fighter pilot is insane, but again we see him struggle. He nearly crashes his X Wing into the Death Star. He has to get help from his buddies when a TIE Fighter gets on his six.
Rey? Nah, no struggles. This chick who has to scrounge parts for food, with no vehicle of her own, who carries everything she owns on her person, just hops into the Falcon's cockpit and makes a total mockery of the TIE pilots chasing her.
Similar idea for both characters, very different execution. Having a preference for the way Luke was written does not make me a 'weirdo.' I just prefer it when the characters in my media aren't amazing at everything for no reason.
-Rey resisting a mind probe is less about showing how strong Rey is and more showing how weak Kylo is. In general, TFA's narrative and dialogue repeatedly makes points about him not being fully trained, being impulsive, struggling to attune to the force, being raw and unfocused, etc. This is somewhat skewed by the opening moments of the movie when he stops a blaster bolt mid-air (oh hey, we've never seen anyone do that before, Kylo is a mary sue!), which gives the impression that he must be pretty powerful - but every other jedi or sith we've seen would've just batted it aside effortlessly with their lightsaber, or in Vaders case quite literally just caught the bolt in his hand. My interpretation of the "force stasis" moment was always that Kylo was too weak to do more than that, he's focusing his energy on holding the bolt in place and doesn't use his powers for anything else while he's holding it, he has to hold it there the entire time and only releases it after everyone is moving on, which speaks to the idea that he wasn't able to redirect it or neutralize it in any other manner except to hold it and release it. In addition, when he freezes the bolt, he also kinda freezes Poe - Poe looks like he is resisting Kylos force ability, and has to be taken into custody by Stormtroopers, whereas we've seen Vader on multiple occasions just pull folks right into his grip from the other end of the room, etc. Kylo appears unable to do this himself judging by Poe's movements.
-Rey is mentioned as having been a pilot as well prior to her flying the Falcon (also, come on - Anakin never flew anything other than a podracer but managed to destroy the droid control ship), she literally refers to herself as a pilot as her and Finn are running towards the quad jumper on Jakku - whether she was lying or not isn't clear, but she also seems to know enough of what she's doing in the cockpit to believe she has flown something before (safe to assume that she's flown the quadjumper before, and later tie-in fiction confirmed that) - Finn refers to her again as a pilot later, and Rey again refers to herself as a pilot when speaking with Han. Even still, she wasn't particularly good at flying the Falcon - she clips and collides with a lot of stuff while flying around in it and quite visibly struggles with the controls, as well as quite obviously getting lucky on several occasions. She also owns a speeder bike or whatever - clearly it must have been manufactured by the same guys that manufactured the Falcon.
-Rey resisting a mind probe is less about showing how strong Rey is and more showing how weak Kylo is.
Assuming this was the intent, that is not a great place to start their rivalry. Having your protagonist struggle against the villain and rise to the challenge is how you get the audience to cheer for your hero. That's just storytelling 101.
In general, TFA's narrative and dialogue repeatedly makes points about him not being fully trained, being impulsive, struggling to attune to the force, being raw and unfocused, etc. This is somewhat skewed by the opening moments of the movie when he stops a blaster bolt mid-air (oh hey, we've never seen anyone do that before, Kylo is a mary sue!)
This doesn't make Kylo a mary sue. Doing something we haven't seen before doesn't suggest that he's amazing at everything, just that he's got a different skillset than we've seen from other evil space wizards.
-Rey is mentioned as having been a pilot as well prior to her flying the Falcon (also, come on - Anakin never flew anything other than a podracer but managed to destroy the droid control ship)
And it's equally stupid in Phantom Menace.
she literally refers to herself as a pilot as her and Finn are running towards the quad jumper on Jakku - whether she was lying or not isn't clear, but she also seems to know enough of what she's doing in the cockpit to believe she has flown something before (safe to assume that she's flown the quadjumper before, and later tie-in fiction confirmed that) - Finn refers to her again as a pilot later, and Rey again refers to herself as a pilot when speaking with Han.
Regardless of what the characters say, the audience is presented with a look into Rey's life that is totally at odds with her actually being a pilot.
Even still, she wasn't particularly good at flying the Falcon - she clips and collides with a lot of stuff while flying around in it and quite visibly struggles with the controls, as well as quite obviously getting lucky on several occasions. She also owns a speeder bike or whatever - clearly it must have been manufactured by the same guys that manufactured the Falcon.
This is borderline insincere. She pulls off some pretty spectacular aerial acrobatics with a ship she's never seen before, threading a needle in some pretty tight quarters at breakneck speed. If Rey's piloting 'wasn't particularly good' then I have to wonder how piss poor First Order pilot training must be.
I think fundamentally issues with Rey are the same as issues with all 3 of the newer films - the films do an abysmal amount of actually telling the audience what's going on; why things are happening; where we are; what the state of play is; who characters are and anything.
There's so much information that clearly went into the background which never made it film-side. I suspect that to the writers it made a lot of sense; but by the time we get to the film we see on the screen so much of that information got cut out and so much happens off-screen (all that time after Return of the Jedi and the start of the film) that the audience gets lost.
The audience has to start filling in a lot of blanks and when that happens some people are good at it and enjoy the film because they enjoy filling in the gaps and others get confused and others utterly hate it. It's also not a "smarts" thing; part of a films whole role is to give enough for the audience to keep up and when the audience has to invent too much the film is generally failing (unless its a very artistic bit of work and that's the whole intention - which is a very different kind of film).
Honestly for me the issue with Rey flying the Falcon is less that she can fly it; its more that its so convenient that Han and Chewy picked it up on tracking and were in the area on that very day; the same day that their entire supporting cast of characters on their alien hunting ship got killed and the same day two of their creditors come looking for them to kill them. To me it felt like such a forced sequence of events. It didn't feel like a natural progression, which is another of my issues with the film. So many things happen that feel convenient to the story rather than evolving from the story happening.
Edit - Luke as a farmboy - I feel its important to note that Luke is clearly more than just a farmboy. He's a farmboy who grew up with aspirations to join the fleets and has clearly trained in flying ships of several different classes even if he's never left his home world. Heck we see him argue with his uncle about wanting to leave the farm and this is clearly not just a spur of the moment thing but a long running friction in the family dynamic. One that Luke is clearly winning on and its pretty clear that he was going to leave the farm soon and was going to become a pilot.
He's most certainly still green and does need help, but he's very far from untrained.
I don't think Kylo was ever actually intended to be the villain. Even after 3 movies, its still not entirely clear to me that he ever really was a villain, so much so as a misguided petulant child allowed to make bad decisions with lethal weapons.
The point of me calling Kylo a mary sue was to illustrate what I perceive as a logic gap. You're cool with him having the ability to stop a blaster bolt mid-air. Its a skill he has. Why aren't you cool with Rey being able to pilot a starfighter?
Regarding Rey being able to fly a starfighter being at odds with the film - you're right. You would not expect her to really be much of a pilot based on what little the film shows you. The tie-in stuff released in the lead-up to the film, as well as the film novelization itself, basically bends over backwards and jumps through hoops to emphasize the fact that she actually did have extensive piloting experience in both simulators (which she evidently found in the wreckage of a star destroyer or something and brought back to her wrecked AT-AT home) as well as in the cockpit of a number of different craft. Seems kind of unlikely and shoehorned in, personally.
Regarding "insincerity" - what? Within seconds of starting up the Falcon she almost crashes it back into the ground (the only reason she doesn't is because the landing gear is still deployed) and she takes out a pair of moisture vaporators/antenna in the process. Then she actually *does* crash it into the ground, giving it a full 90 degree roll to put the cockpit nacelle into the dirt and taking out the "arch" at the edge of town, and then bounces it into the dirt a couple more times before she gets it fully righted and airborne. The next flight sequence doesn't show her doing anything particularly exciting except for what looks like a bit of an immelmann, which is actually a fairly basic flight maneuver - even then, she almost crashes the falcon again and barely manages to right it in time. From there, she almost collides with the FO Ties, who very easily maneuver in on her 6 without any real effort whatseover. From there, they tail her for a pretty extended period and successfully land a number of hits on her. She verbally expresses lack of confidence in her ability on a couple of occasions through this sequence. She puts one side of the falcon back into the dirt while banking into a turn, collides with wreckage while trying to level off from that turn, continues to fail to shake the tie fighters, takes some more hits, bounces off the deck one more time, and then Finn mercifully manages to shoot down one of the TIEs before his wingman hits Finns gun turret and disables it. She continues to fail to shake the remaining TIE fighter, "threads the needle" into the Star Destroyer structure, where she continues to take hits and collide into stuff, makes asudden turn out which again fails to shake the TIE, and then only manages to evade it because she cleverly cut the engines on the Falcon to pitch it into a position where Finns disabled turret can pull a shot off, which he succeeds in taking.
Rey's flying is fancy, but its not particularly good. She had those TIEs on her 6 the entire time and failed to outmaneuver them. It was Finns shooting that really saved the day more than anything else - why isn't he getting hate? He had no training or experience as a ball turret gunner, operating a gun turret with limit and narrow firing arcs using a non-visual targeting system while being tossed around by an inexpert pilot is not easy, yet in 5 minutes he managed to score as many kills as my Grandpa managed as an anti-aircraft gunner in the entirety of World War 2? Come on, Finn is clearly OP.
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Overread wrote: Honestly for me the issue with Rey flying the Falcon is less that she can fly it; its more that its so convenient that Han and Chewy picked it up on tracking and were in the area on that very day; the same day that their entire supporting cast of characters on their alien hunting ship got killed and the same day two of their creditors come looking for them to kill them. To me it felt like such a forced sequence of events. It didn't feel like a natural progression, which is another of my issues with the film. So many things happen that feel convenient to the story rather than evolving from the story happening.
This is a good point. In reality, Star Wars is *filled* with convenient coincidences like this, but the writing in the prequels and originals generally did a pretty good job of making it seem like less of a coincidence.
The point of me calling Kylo a mary sue was to illustrate what I perceive as a logic gap. You're cool with him having the ability to stop a blaster bolt mid-air. Its a skill he has. Why aren't you cool with Rey being able to pilot a starfighter?
Because nothing they show me about Kylo's life is at odds with what he's able to do onscreen. He's clearly not some homeless hermit trudging around a backwater planet doing stuff that makes me wonder how the hell he knows how to do those things. He's with a bunch of stormtroopers, has a lightsaber, is wearing some very Vader-inspired garb - clearly he's got some sort of imperial association. It doesn't stand out as instantly ridiculous that he can do any of the things he does.
Regarding Rey being able to fly a starfighter being at odds with the film - you're right. You would not expect her to really be much of a pilot based on what little the film shows you. The tie-in stuff released in the lead-up to the film, as well as the film novelization itself, basically bends over backwards and jumps through hoops to emphasize the fact that she actually did have extensive piloting experience in both simulators (which she evidently found in the wreckage of a star destroyer or something and brought back to her wrecked AT-AT home) as well as in the cockpit of a number of different craft. Seems kind of unlikely and shoehorned in, personally.
On this we're fully agreed. It does seem unlikely and shoehorned in.
Regarding "insincerity" - what? Within seconds of starting up the Falcon she almost crashes it back into the ground... *snip*
I'm just gonna have to straight up agree to disagree with you on this. Rey might stumble for the first like... five seconds of this chase scene, but everything after that it might as well be Han flying the Falcon.
Rey's flying is fancy, but its not particularly good. She had those TIEs on her 6 the entire time and failed to outmaneuver them. It was Finns shooting that really saved the day more than anything else - why isn't he getting hate? He had no training or experience as a ball turret gunner, operating a gun turret with limit and narrow firing arcs using a non-visual targeting system while being tossed around by an inexpert pilot is not easy, yet in 5 minutes he managed to score as many kills as my Grandpa managed as an anti-aircraft gunner in the entirety of World War 2? Come on, Finn is clearly OP.
Finn has been a stormtrooper for years. I think pretty much his entire life if I recall. It isn't silly to me that he can hop into the gunner seat and press a trigger.
This is a good point. In reality, Star Wars is *filled* with convenient coincidences like this, but the writing in the prequels and originals generally did a pretty good job of making it seem like less of a coincidence.
Again, fully agreed here. Stories often have some things that are convenient for the plot and the characters, but Star Wars - especially under Disney's tenure these last eight years - takes it way too far.
Being an infantryman and being what is more or less an aerial/ball turret gunner are entirely different skills. Aiming accurately from a platform that is maneuvering aggressively in 3 dimensions against other targets also maneuvering aggressively in 3 dimensions, and doing so when you can't directly aim the gun yourself but instead have to rely on a sensor/remote viewing system to orient yourself to their motion and aim, requires a very different skillset from shouldering a rifle and aiming down the sights as you squeeze the trigger.
Besides, whats that old joke about stormtroopers not being very precise shooters?
Though I'll note that at least in Canada, a lot of our helo's door gunners are infantrymen to begin with. So having Finn trained as a gunner on some turret is not too far fetched.
@Chaos0xomega: My single favourite section of the sequel trilogy is the throne room fight in TLJ with Kylo and Rey working together and the best bit of that is after the fight when Kylo is just “you know what, feth the Sith. And feth the Jedi. They’ve brought us nothing but trouble, let’s go do our own thing”. It’s one of the most honest, believable, character driven moments in the entire franchise, and it really sets Kylo up to be an interesting antagonist, rather than a villain, because Rey essentially feels the same way, but has a massively different perspective on what they should do.
There’s hints of it again towards the end of Rise (and probably earlier in TFA, now that I think about it), but the rest of the trilogy is such a poorly executed mess that it gets lost in the noise. If they’d made that the core arc of the entire trilogy, they could have had a really interesting emotional tension driving the whole thing (akin to Luke and his relationship with his father)
Finn is trained pretty much from birth to be a warrior. When you consider how readily children learn things, spending all his formative years focused purely on combat training would mean that there'd be ample time for him to be trained in quite a wide variety of disciplines.
If we accept that the First Order is on the small side then having cross trained warriors would make even more sense. That way their armed forces can adapt to different roles and tasks with a decent to high level of skill rather than having infantry that only know one very specific role and which cannot adapt.
He's basically elite trained on multiple methods of battle.
My problem with him is him turning on his first deployment. We should have seen a montage of him witnessing many combats, many encounters; multiple fights and being involved in them before he broke.
Or a montage of him rebelling against his training whilst a youth. Again something to suggest a reason for him breaking on the battlefield when his entire life was training for the battlefield.
Again I suspect there WAS that content in the storyboard/structure behind the scenes. I suspect there's quite a bit of it; however like many aspects it never makes it into the film that we see.
Ahtman wrote: Coming out of hyperspace into an Imperial minefield gave me strong X-Wing on the PC flashbacks.
Ha, talk to me when you have cleared a minefield in an unshielded Tie!
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Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: And it’s like suggesting that someone who’s not bad at flying a Cessna can therefore pilot an F16 with identical aplomb. Which is silly.
Well to be fair he does just crash it into the alien ship.
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Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Folk on the Internet were apparently upset that Rey could do things without us knowing a detailed history of Rey. Whilst not appreciating that many of Luke’s exploits were clarified in external media. And yes, that does include the novelisation of the film.
Likewise in Empire Strikes Back? We see Luke use The Force to summon his lightsaber to his hand in the Wampa cave. A feat first shown in that scene.
Yet…..when Rey uses The Force to resist Kylo Ren’s mind probe, the same weirdos at least pretended to be upset that she couldn’t possibly have done that without someone training her, because how else could she possibly just sort of…..figure it out,
Luke got the occasional training montage. There was enough done to convince the audience he was learning. Rey's character skips all that, or at least if she didn't it made little impression on the audience.
All we see of Luke’s training is against the Remote. At no point in the film does he see any use of the Force beyond Ben doing the mind trick, and turning into rags when Vader strikes him down.
Ben appearing to him on Hoth? That’s the earliest canonical appearance of an actual Force Ghost. Ben does say “use the force” over Yavin, but doesn’t exactly say what that means.
Rey has Ren probe her mind. In resisting, she finds that link goes both ways. This is what catches Ren off guard. Her first attempt to mind trick a Storm Trooper takes a couple of goes to get it right.
Her piloting skills are no better or worse explained or previously demonstrated than Luke’s. When she and Finn are looking for a ship to get away in? Finn says “we’ll need a pilot”, to which Rey simply responds “we’ve got one”.
We later find she’s very familiar with the Falcon, as she knows what Plutt did to it, why it was a stupid modification, and how to bypass it.
Remember though, this isn’t “therefore Rey am spectacular character and anyone who not think that am the wrung”. Rather, this is an attempt to show that Rey was subjected to a level of scrutiny not applied to Luke or other characters.
creeping-deth87 wrote: Rey? Nah, no struggles. This chick who has to scrounge parts for food, with no vehicle of her own, who carries everything she owns on her person, just hops into the Falcon's cockpit and makes a total mockery of the TIE pilots chasing her.
But that seems to fit the modern SW ethos of anyone who wants to fight the Empire can, its easy. You just have to believe!
As opposed to the original films that (ewoks aside) that show a difficult struggle turned around by individual acts.
Can't find this great strategy article about 'catastrophic success' where it talks about the rebellion winning the war but lacking the manpower and organisation as an aerospace centric force to stop things falling apart afterwards (it was drawing on lessons from Iraq et al). Very amusing sadly though my search fu has failed. But i guess Disney doesn't like the messy side of such things, which is a shame because they keep solving the problem the heroes are ostensibly fighting against.
Folk on the Internet were apparently upset that Rey could do things without us knowing a detailed history of Rey. Whilst not appreciating that many of Luke’s exploits were clarified in external media. And yes, that does include the novelisation of the film.
The problem is with execution. Luke and Rey share similarities, but Luke is just characterized way better.
Likewise in Empire Strikes Back? We see Luke use The Force to summon his lightsaber to his hand in the Wampa cave. A feat first shown in that scene.
Yet…..when Rey uses The Force to resist Kylo Ren’s mind probe, the same weirdos at least pretended to be upset that she couldn’t possibly have done that without someone training her, because how else could she possibly just sort of…..figure it out,
ESB takes place years after Luke meets Obi Wan and starts learning about the Force. I can believe that, in that time, he continued to practise and became capable enough to pull a lightsaber out of the snow.
Rey on the other hand goes from not even believing the Force exists to resisting a mind probe from a guy who learned all about space wizardry from Luke himself when he was still just a kid and has clearly been using space magic for years.
See the difference?
This applies to other things that Luke and Rey have in common. Luke going from farm boy to fighter pilot is insane, but again we see him struggle. He nearly crashes his X Wing into the Death Star. He has to get help from his buddies when a TIE Fighter gets on his six.
Rey? Nah, no struggles. This chick who has to scrounge parts for food, with no vehicle of her own, who carries everything she owns on her person, just hops into the Falcon's cockpit and makes a total mockery of the TIE pilots chasing her.
Similar idea for both characters, very different execution. Having a preference for the way Luke was written does not make me a 'weirdo.' I just prefer it when the characters in my media aren't amazing at everything for no reason.
Okay. Luke just found out about the force. Obi starts teaching him while they are on the Falcon flying to Alderan. He tries and fails to deflect the little training droid shooting him with his visor down. They are on the ship for like... a week. After only a single week of training with Obi Wan Luke was able to use the force, without struggle, to make the shot that destroyed the Deathstar without any targeting computer. Something he has never seen the force do, or been told the force was capable of.
Remember, Rey was raised on stories about the force and the great Jedi Luke Skywalker. Luke was raised in complete ignorance of the force. He knows the word Jedi, but doesn't actually know anything about what it actually means or anything about their "religion".
Okay. Luke just found out about the force. Obi starts teaching him while they are on the Falcon flying to Alderan. He tries and fails to deflect the little training droid shooting him with his visor down. They are on the ship for like... a week. After only a single week of training with Obi Wan Luke was able to use the force, without struggle, to make the shot that destroyed the Deathstar without any targeting computer. Something he has never seen the force do, or been told the force was capable of.
Remember, Rey was raised on stories about the force and the great Jedi Luke Skywalker. Luke was raised in complete ignorance of the force. He knows the word Jedi, but doesn't actually know anything about what it actually means or anything about their "religion".
Also, we see that kid at the end of The Last Jedi, who is able to use the Force to pull a broom to him, who is clearly untrained in the Force but is able to use that specific power that Luke used in ESB.
Qui-Gon Jinn speculates that part of young anakin's piloting skill is an instinctive precognition ability, hes literally seeing thing before they happen.
Clearly, the force is not limited to use only by trained peoples. The Jedi and Sith orders are ways to channel and improve peoples ability, and pretty good at it, but not the sole manner in which someone can learn.
I'm sure in the Empire Strikes back we have Yoda saying that the Force acts through people. That its not always about commanding it, but letting it flow through you and work with you.
Also in the Clone Wars its important to note that the Jedi had been having a waning period in force power. Potentially that means fewer and fewer "native talent" people would be being discovered. So Anakin is super special at that time.
Meanwhile events of the main series of films should have left a balance in the Force which would allow more native instinct to arise within the galactic population.
Overread wrote: My issue is the state of everyone else. All the character who's back history we know from the first 3 films have changed, sometimes drastically.
I really adore 7, but Han and Leia explaining the other person's past directly to them is hilariously clunky and pretty much the epitome of this problem.
Overread wrote: I think fundamentally issues with Rey are the same as issues with all 3 of the newer films - the films do an abysmal amount of actually telling the audience what's going on; why things are happening; where we are; what the state of play is; who characters are and anything.
This is not a Star Wars problem, this is a modern movies problem.
It is amazing to me how much information older movies can get across in a single sentence, quick scene, or even the framing of a shot. Yet, modern movies seem to struggle with this.
It must be something to do with the modern process of movie-making as opposed to the way they did it in the 40s-80s. Perhaps it is the rise of writer's rooms and not having writer's on set anymore?
Jadenim wrote: @Chaos0xomega: My single favourite section of the sequel trilogy is the throne room fight in TLJ with Kylo and Rey working together and the best bit of that is after the fight when Kylo is just “you know what, feth the Sith. And feth the Jedi. They’ve brought us nothing but trouble, let’s go do our own thing”. It’s one of the most honest, believable, character driven moments in the entire franchise, and it really sets Kylo up to be an interesting antagonist, rather than a villain, because Rey essentially feels the same way, but has a massively different perspective on what they should do.
There’s hints of it again towards the end of Rise (and probably earlier in TFA, now that I think about it), but the rest of the trilogy is such a poorly executed mess that it gets lost in the noise. If they’d made that the core arc of the entire trilogy, they could have had a really interesting emotional tension driving the whole thing (akin to Luke and his relationship with his father)
creeping-deth87 wrote: Rey? Nah, no struggles. This chick who has to scrounge parts for food, with no vehicle of her own, who carries everything she owns on her person, just hops into the Falcon's cockpit and makes a total mockery of the TIE pilots chasing her.
But that seems to fit the modern SW ethos of anyone who wants to fight the Empire can, its easy. You just have to believe!
As opposed to the original films that (ewoks aside) that show a difficult struggle turned around by individual acts.
Can't find this great strategy article about 'catastrophic success' where it talks about the rebellion winning the war but lacking the manpower and organisation as an aerospace centric force to stop things falling apart afterwards (it was drawing on lessons from Iraq et al). Very amusing sadly though my search fu has failed. But i guess Disney doesn't like the messy side of such things, which is a shame because they keep solving the problem the heroes are ostensibly fighting against.
But yeah, the idea that the Rebellion won the war but lost the peace because they were effective guerillas but not necessarily effective administrators is not a particularly new concept. The flip side though is that (at least insofar as the old EU is concerned, but also to an extent the new EU with Mon Mothma, etc.) the Rebellion had the support of many veteran politicians and planetary governors/executives/sovereigns, etc. so the idea that they did not have the experience or knowledge base to administer and govern isn't a particularly well founded one within the context of the lore. They may not have necessarily had the resources or the infrastructure to support a galaxy scale government in place though, even with that knowledge and experience, as the Old Republic was a somewhat loose and open structure and itself lacked much of the resources and infrastructure to hold the galaxy together once a push for secession arose, and was on the back foot through much of the war despite the Confederacy being a much smaller power, whereas the Empire was reliant on an overwhelming and crushing bureaucracy and military power to hold itself together, which the Rebellion/New Republic did not have or want.
Overread wrote: I think fundamentally issues with Rey are the same as issues with all 3 of the newer films - the films do an abysmal amount of actually telling the audience what's going on; why things are happening; where we are; what the state of play is; who characters are and anything.
This is not a Star Wars problem, this is a modern movies problem.
It is amazing to me how much information older movies can get across in a single sentence, quick scene, or even the framing of a shot. Yet, modern movies seem to struggle with this.
It must be something to do with the modern process of movie-making as opposed to the way they did it in the 40s-80s. Perhaps it is the rise of writer's rooms and not having writer's on set anymore?
I very very much do agree that its a modern movie problem. Starwars highlights it a lot because its part of a huge running saga so we come with a LOT of preloaded info and the gap and lack of info is very striking. But I do agree there are a lot of films these days which do an abysmal job of actually telling their stories and where movie pacing is just terrible. Many superhero films often feel like they start of slow and good and then rush like a madman at the end and cover vast amounts of time and events with hardly a moment for any of them
LunarSol wrote: The internet tends to amplify negativity. When you were a kid no one was posting a constant feed of “Top 10 Plot Holes in Star Wars” and jumping into every excited conversation with a dissenting opinion.
the thing that baffles me about this is these people think doing this proves they're FANS LOL.
There's some cool psychology around this and the need to "prove" empirical quality with the same kind of objective measurement used for scientific reasoning.
You’re right that film quality is entirely subjective with no possibility for quality comparison. No one could ever argue persuasively that the OT is a better made set of movies than the ST just like no one can argue Star Wars is a better film than The Room. Totally impossible.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: You’re right that film quality is entirely subjective with no possibility for quality comparison. No one could ever argue persuasively that the OT is a better made set of movies than the ST just like no one can argue Star Wars is a better film than The Room. Totally impossible.
So what makes the Room bad? Is it the plot holes per second? Perhaps the Dutch angles per scene? That's a pretty wild misinterpretation of what I was talking about.
What you were posting was a pretty big misrepresentation of other people’s criticisms. Your response now sounds bizarrely off, like you don’t actually understand why people find bad movies bad.
To recap, given I dug this rabbit hole, at least on this occasion?
I’m pushing back against hyperbole. That weird Internet thing where a film someone didn’t enjoy, or found underwhelming, is reported as being Awful Bad Poor Drivel etc. and not simply….disappointing.
And that’s because I find it intensely irritating. I genuinely don’t particularly care if someone didn’t enjoy a movie I enjoyed. We all have our tastes and preferences after all. But I do object to misrepresentation, and has happened on Dakka? Folks criticising a piece of media they’ve not watched, based purely on comments from others. Especially when their comments are really really obviously coming from someone who didn’t watch what they’ve decided is crap.
Example?
Cats.
I saw the televised version of the stage musical many many years ago, and I found it bloody awful. I’ve not watched the film because of that initial experience, and the fact it involved two of my least favourite humans. Here’s a hint. One of them is James Corden. The other is Rebel Wilson.
But other than freely and happily advising I have absolutely no interest or intent on ever watching it? I’m not gonna slag the film off. Despite its Bloody Awful Reputation.
The sequels of Star Wars? They’re not great. Some may not even find them adequate. And that of course is absolutely nothing for me to moan about. Provided you’ve actually seen them. And you’re honest in your criticism. And for heaven’s sake don’t call anyone who enjoyed them silly names or insult them.
I’m happy to have discussions and even debates about their relative merits. But such things kind of need everyone to engage honestly, and be open to being persuaded by the other.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: What you were posting was a pretty big misrepresentation of other people’s criticisms. Your response now sounds bizarrely off, like you don’t actually understand why people find bad movies bad.
Who's criticisms are we talking about here? I was replying to a reply about my comment about how the internet tends to amplify negativity. It had nothing to do with whatever people don't like about the latest era of Star Wars outside of a general "the internet makes things harder to enjoy without criticism than when we were kids".
I have not seen any of the new series as I do not have Disney+
These are my subjective opinions.
I watched Episode 7 - it was a poor remake of the first Star Wars film - it was ok entertainment - but much less than the original - note that I consider the first Star Wars as no more than a good entertaining film = nothing super special but good.
I watched Episode 8 - it was dull, nonsensical, awfully written gakshow that I regret having wasted several hours of my life sitting through - the characters were laughably bad, the plot (and thats a generous phrase) was complete nonsense from start to end, with not even any internal logic holding up to causual scrutiny. The worst thing was that it was for much of the run time - simply tedious - a film that turns a space chase into some of the most boring, wasted time I have ever seen. Because so often nothing interesting happened on screen you could sit there and consider just how stupid the story and what was happening was. If you are going to make a dumb film - at least make some of it entertaining.
I did not watch Episode 9 and have no real interest in doing so.
I’m happy to have discussions and even debates about their relative merits. But such things kind of need everyone to engage honestly, and be open to being persuaded by the other.
This is hilarious coming from someone who ascribed the words 'Internet weirdos' to people who think Rey is terribly written. If you want to argue in good faith then lead by example.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Why not try not quote mining, and reading the whole of the thing, not just the bit you felt might provoke a reaction?
You mean the part about Cats? Or maybe you mean the part where you assume people who don't agree with you haven't actually watched the things you like?
Are you saying I haven’t seen Ahsoka or the Sequels? I’m confused what your last bit is about.
Ahsoka is a pretty good Star Wars show with one (well, more if you count the Hera subplot) really insufferable character. If the villains weren’t compelling, if the ostensible main character and her supporting droid weren’t so enjoyable, then I wouldn’t be complaining about Sabine since I wouldn’t be watching.
The Sequels I’ve seen more than once, except for ROS. You’d have to pay me to watch that one again.
I’ve watched every Live Action Star Wars movie and series, excepting a few episodes of Kenobi, which again you should pay me if you want me to watch every one.
I’ve tried to watch TCW. My son really wanted to get into it. We got a season and a half into it, and they are a no-go. We can’t get into the cartoons any more than we could get into the new EU novels, and any Live Action media that expects homework deserves to be mocked for being poorly written or conceived. It’s great that you like the cartoons, but they are like anime to the rest of us, and you would (or at least should) never tell people that anime and live action movies are the same experience.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: His meaning was clear: that’s the information the movie itself gives you. Watching the film, he might not know what a T-16 is but he does hear Luke say he’s not a bad pilot himself and the X-Wings are not too different from T-16s, and he bulls-eyes wamprats.
I think it was also pretty obvious that I was talking about me, as a 7 year old at the time (summer of '77), not knowing what a T-16 looked like.
i mean, all you have to do is read about 3 sentences further down in what I wrote.
I’m all caught up. I had been waiting to let the episodes pile up before I dove in.
My tldr, spoilered to prevent semi wall of text review :
Spoiler:
Let me say it up front, its a pretty mediocre product. But for my money, its the 3rd best Disney+ Star Wars season. (Mando1, Andor, Ahsoka, Mando 2, Mando 3, Kenobi, Boba).
Stream of thought, no particular order :
-Episode run times. 56, 44, 36 (the feth?) 40, 51, 48, 45. My first thought right out of the gate, that kind of inconsistency doesn’t bode well for a coherent well paced story. Had I been waiting a week after the 2 episode premiere and been given a roughly 30 minute 3rd episode, I’d have been pissed.
-I did not watch the cartoons, nor will I. But I do think this would’ve been better received had it been a cartoon like its predecessors.
-They should not have named this show Ahsoka. Something more that stokes the imagination or evokes the severity of Thrawns threat would have been better served.
-Its got some cool visuals, gotta give them that.
-Music seemed generic and stirred no reaction.
-Acting seems on par with a sci-fi channel movie , aside from Baylan, who is the breakout character of this show. RIP Titus Pullo. All else seem wooden or poorly written and directed. Mary E Winstead was amazing in her season of Fargo, but is hampered here by corny dialogue.
-Thrawn doesn’t impress. As someone who read the Heir to the Empire trilogy back in the day, I expected much more. The dialogue has him contradicting himself at times.
-Marrok was lol. Saw quite a few fan sites and channels that were hyping up and theorizing who that guy was and he ended up just being a cartoon fart in a body suit.
-Sabine is a grown ass adult petulent child. Also, getting impaled by a lightsaber and surviving with no ill effects immediately set the tone that there will be no hard consequences.
-Speaking of consequences, no ones going to say anything about the two X-Wing pilots killed in the course of Hera’s barratry?
-Huyang seems like he’d be an excellent resource for someone who was rebuilding the Jedi Order, if there is anyone out there doing such a thing at this point in time.
-Kind of glad Hayden got some more work I guess, but that episode was a plate full of memberberries, key jangling and poor nonsensical dialogue.
-Ezra : ‘I’m not using the lightsaber, the force is my weapon’. Few seconds later, picks up a blaster and shoots a dude.
-Night Troopers. A relabel and rebrand of the Stormtrooper we know and love. Some battle damage, gold pieces and red fabric, same old results.
-The witches can track a Jedi, but didn’t bother to do that the entire time they were stuck on the planet to get Ezra?
-Googled “Ahsoka Ratings”, as I do after finishing a show to compare how I liked it vs. the world, and 3.1 of 5 audience score popped up. I’d put it at 2.5 myself.
I’ll echo what I believe HBMC said pages ago. Paraphrasing, as I can’t be bothered to go back to find it and quote : ‘There is now more bad Star Wars than there is good Star Wars”. But at least this is better then some of the worst offerings.
Mediocre, uneven and sometimes strangely slow show, with a few bright spots.
Here’s a hot take to close this out : Disney’s handling of the Star Wars IP after acquiring it for $4 Billion, has been just as bad as Warner Bros handling of the DC superhero movie properties. Maybe not as financially disastrous(yet), but the brand feels badly damaged and I don’t think Disney will course correct.
Naming the show something else would have been interesting - but I guess 'Thrawn' runs the problem of not enough screen time for villain and also only appealing to a small subset of customers
The_Real_Chris wrote: Naming the show something else would have been interesting - but I guess 'Thrawn' runs the problem of not enough screen time for villain and also only appealing to a small subset of customers
That's also not just a criticism of Ahsoka, but of all the single name D+ shows, with Book of Boba Fett being the outlier (but also making no sense). All the rest with just 1 name don't really work for me. The movie titles evoke a visual & a narrative just by being what they are. If these D+ shows were deep character studies/deconstruction (see 2017's Logan), it'd work.
Another example, I believe "Solo" was Disney's worst performing Star Wars movie, and I think a different name could've helped it, something more fanciful, pulpy and to keep it in line with the main Star Wars movies. Tacking on "A Star Wars Tale" just made it cumbersome. It also came out at a bad time for the franchise, to be fair.
Agreed with the point about "Solo: A Star Wars Tale". It really was a fantastic movie IMO, deserved better box office than it got and sequel IMO. Don't know if calling it "12 Parsecs To Kessel" or whatever would have necessarily changed its fortunes, but its certainly a thought.
chaos0xomega wrote: Agreed with the point about "Solo: A Star Wars Tale". It really was a fantastic movie IMO, deserved better box office than it got and sequel IMO. Don't know if calling it "12 Parsecs To Kessel" or whatever would have necessarily changed its fortunes, but its certainly a thought.
I don't think in the post-Last Jedi climate a name change would have made an appreciable difference. Solo's performance or lack thereof isn't generally attributed to the quality of the actual movie, as far as I've seen.
As a film, I’d say there’s nothing terribly wrong with it. I mean, it’s not gonna win any awards for acting, and it didn’t revolutionise and revive a genre. But what’s there is fun at the end of the day. I’d say its worst crime is being pretty disposable, compared to Rogue One where the content genuinely added to the whole of the thing, whilst not being something you need to see to understand what follows.
Solo is a lot better than it gets credit for but its also just not great. It's biggest problem is just that Star Wars street effect of taking a character's entire life and condensing it into one eventful weekend. It's just neither a particularly bad, nor particularly good film, which is often worse than either.
LunarSol wrote: Solo is a lot better than it gets credit for but its also just not great. It's biggest problem is just that Star Wars street effect of taking a character's entire life and condensing it into one eventful weekend. It's just neither a particularly bad, nor particularly good film, which is often worse than either.
Also falls into the trap of trying to explain every single thing about the character. It is so odd. Not bothering with that, playing it more for sly fun, would have been a better pulpy fun film.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mr Morden wrote: I enjoyed Solo as an adventure romp - as I did the second half of Rogue One - despite the awful first half of R1
It is impressive just how little people who like the film remember the first half. I rewatched it a while back with someone who loved it and I realised that good gods it ain't as great as I remember. Something which doesn't need a second viewing...
Mr Morden wrote: I enjoyed Solo as an adventure romp - as I did the second half of Rogue One - despite the awful first half of R1
It is impressive just how little people who like the film remember the first half. I rewatched it a while back with someone who loved it and I realised that good gods it ain't as great as I remember. Something which doesn't need a second viewing...
Act 3 is great, but the build up to it is pretty haphazard. There's a ton of characters who's arcs are kind of all over rather than building to anything particularly satisfying. Even in act 3, the main cast's role isn't nearly as memorable as the space battle that isn't really directly connected to the main cast in a meaningful way. It's just a super well done lead in to ANH.
The discussion of Solo and the Sequels reminded me of these parody videos, Star Wars Reimagined, by Auralnauts. What if the original trilogy were made today?
There are also videos for the first Star Wars and for Return of the Jedi. Return of the Jedi Reimagined is glorious.
As I said previously, would’ve been better as a cartoon and it was a firm 2.5/5 stars.
Post viewing stream of thought:
-Zombie Stormtroopers are as good a shot as live stormtroopers oddly enough.
-Elsbeth v. Tano 2 : Fisticuffs in the Fortress was lame. Had Elsbeth been fighting Ezra and/or Sabine, and kicking their ass until they learned to work together or something, it would have been more tense. We already saw this fight in Mando, minus the fatality.
-Why the feth would you be wearing the stormtrooper helmet when landing on a Republic ship? I want the writers to go back on strike.
-Gratuitous Lord of the Rings visual. Made me wish I had spent these hours watching that superior product.
-Wonder who will replace Ray Stevenson.
-Force ghost of Anakin was silly and uh… forced. I guess that is Hayden’s fate now, to be de-aged and trotted out like El Cid to rally the fan base in their time of need.
Am I to understand that actually nothing happened this season? I've followed the synopsis and it looks like nothing really happened other than Ezra and Thrawn being 'back'. Baylon and Shin may as well have not existed? Nothing about them is revealed?
Funnily enough, I feel like the first 3 episodes didn’t even need to happen, now that I think about it.
trexmeyer wrote: I Am I to understand that actually nothing happened this season? I've followed the synopsis and it looks like nothing really happened other than Ezra and Thrawn being 'back'.
Ezra and Thrawn switched places with Sabine + Ahsoka, essentially. They are stranded in a galaxy far, far away from the other galaxy thats far, far away.
trexmeyer wrote: I Baylon and Shin may as well have not existed? Nothing about them is revealed?
Baylon goes in search of some power thats calling to him, last seen standing on a repurposed LotR set. Shin seems to take control of a group of raiders by hoisting her lightsaber in the air.
I'm being facetious when I say 'nothing happened'.
I'm just amazed that they spent 8 episodes to get to this finale.
It feels like whoever is in charge is intentionally dragging things out as long as possible. The third season of the Mandalorian could have been cut in half and nothing of value would have been lost.
As I said previously, would’ve been better as a cartoon and it was a firm 2.5/5 stars.
Post viewing stream of thought:
-Zombie Stormtroopers are as good a shot as live stormtroopers oddly enough.
-Elsbeth v. Tano 2 : Fisticuffs in the Fortress was lame. Had Elsbeth been fighting Ezra and/or Sabine, and kicking their ass until they learned to work together or something, it would have been more tense. We already saw this fight in Mando, minus the fatality.
-Why the feth would you be wearing the stormtrooper helmet when landing on a Republic ship? I want the writers to go back on strike.
-Gratuitous Lord of the Rings visual. Made me wish I had spent these hours watching that superior product.
-Wonder who will replace Ray Stevenson.
-Force ghost of Anakin was silly and uh… forced. I guess that is Hayden’s fate now, to be de-aged and trotted out like El Cid to rally the fan base in their time of need.
Have an exalt, this post spoke to my soul. I'd give it 2.5 as well.
In before the damage control fanboy crew swoop in and decry you all as haters that lack literary media taste.
With the diminishing returns for a lot of the SW live action shows and the quality being mediocre at best, I'm curious how Disney thinks doing a Rey focused movie series is worth moving towards when it sounds like just doubling down on all the things people don't like about the Disney approach to the franchise.
Undead Stormtroopers were fun. And a nice metaphor for Thrawn’s coming role in trying to resurrect The Empire.
Shin and Baylon? I am wondering if Shin’s ending was rejigged due to Ray Stevenson passing away. But Baylon? He’s seeking The Ones, the seemingly living emodiments of The Force we met in Clone Wars, and to whom Ahsoka seems mystically tied. Or, he’s seeking another entryway to the World Beyond Worlds, to attempt some kind of time tampering.
I’ve really liked the visual language of Thrawn’s forces. Tattered, but repaired. Some seemingly reanimated corpses, some presumably still alive. A melding of Imperial and Nightsister aesthetic, which I guess we’re going to see more of in the upcoming series.
Ezra coming aboard the Republic ship was a nice reflection of the show’s opening scenes, though I do agree there wasn’t a need for Ezra to be wearing his helmet.
Satisfying enough “until next time” finale. The combat I really enjoyed, with our three heroes working well together and everything being nicely choreographed.
And interested to see now Skeleton Crew slots into all of this.
Duel was good. Don’t care if it’s a pairing we’ve seen before, they were in a different environment with different weapons.
Thrawn mostly made the smart choices for the situations he was presented.
Father, Son… where’s Daughter?
I will agree keeping the helmet on, much less the armor, was stupid. Disappointed they didn’t even use it to at least reference his collection.
Do we think season two involves Thrawn at all, or will it be entirely in Narnia? It would legit be interesting if Ahsoka and Thrawn never do actually meet.
I like the moments where just a mere flicker of doubt crossed Thrawn’s face, before you could see him mentally calculating possible plans and solutions. It’s a really nice bit of characterisation, and makes him feel all the more threatening in my opinion.
Because it’s absolutely not panic, just a level headed acceptance of changing parameters, and how one might best turn it around.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, I really liked the speed of the Star Destroyer. I think I was expecting it to be lumbering, but…nope. Really quite speedy, at least in a straight line.
Was the giant, bearded, statue in the background at the end of the episode actually of Baylan Skoll? In the shot where he is looking out into the distance with the statue's head behind him, it did look like the statue was him? So, does he somehow manage to go waaaay back in time? I could be totally wrong, but I'm sure the beards were the same, lol.
Edit: Turns out I need to have watched more Clone Wars......
Spoiler:
However, could it be that somehow Baylan ends up being The Father?
Was the giant, bearded, statue in the background at the end of the episode actually of Baylan Skoll? In the shot where he is looking out into the distance with the statue's head behind him, it did look like the statue was him? So, does he somehow manage to go waaaay back in time? I could be totally wrong, but I'm sure the beards were the same, lol.
Edit: Turns out I need to have watched more Clone Wars......
Spoiler:
However, could it be that somehow Baylan ends up being The Father?
Spoiler:
I could’ve sworn that Huyang, when he ID’d the duo by their lightsaber, had said it was 500 years old. I remember hearing that and raising an eyebrow. Like dude has been around for a loong time. Edit: correction, just rewatched that scene to confirm, huyang actually says “in the last 500 years, I’ve only seen one that matches then correctly id’s Baylon.
Also, I want to re-iterate how incredibly silly that Huyang isn’t with Luke, with all the knowledge that he has.
I mean, you still need to hire an actor, and have them perform the role, then pay someone else to do the digital trickery, in a convincing way.
Whilst every use of the technology sees it improve? I don’t think it’s quite up to use beyond short scenes.
So recasting overall just sounds the better option.
I remember reading one of the initial studio offers was to be able to pay a background actor one day’s pay, scan them, and have full rights to use that for whatever they wanted from then on. The fact that was just a couple weeks after the episode of Black Mirror dealing with such an issue was perfection.
Someday there will be a Wilhelm Scream of background actors. :(
Spoiler:
I find it kind of funny that the big complaint leading into this was "knowing that it couldn't go anywhere" and now the biggest complaint is that it left us with too many places to go.
Baylan's setup for more is definitely the hard pill to swallow. It's a super compelling narrative thread and I certainly hope they can salvage whatever they had planned. Shin was notably absent through the entire episode though, so it felt like whatever they decided to do with her was decided pretty early.
Lars really sells Thrawn throughout in a way that Rebels really didn't capture. Monologuing after he's already won is a nice Ozy touch.
Stormtrooper extras looked like they were having fun, though there's some notably dumb moments throughout. Standing around watching the duel is funny on its own, but trying to track where Sabine is in the fake out is just weird. The duel itself was well choregraphed though and I enjoyed the videogamey nature of the whole thing.
Ezra's helmet thing is absolutely silly. I get why he was in uniform, but wearing the helmet to surprise his armed friends was pretty silly.
Overall I'm excited to see how they continue. This one is definitely on the positive side of Star Wars content. Not quite as good as Andor, but probably a bit better than Rogue One for me.
The scene isn't really framed that way. If there's any motive behind it, its entirely "I wanted to surprise them" which to be fair, is kind of an Ezra thing and probably supposed to be a callback to Rebels.
AduroT wrote: That’s one of the things the Strikes have been about isn’t it? Not letting the studios own rights to use your appearance in digital forms?
To the Father's right, but with her head missing and therefore blending into the side of the mountain a bit. But she's there.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Also, I really liked the speed of the Star Destroyer. I think I was expecting it to be lumbering, but…nope. Really quite speedy, at least in a straight line.
We've known since 1977 that Star Destroyers are speedy. At least if we take Han's word for it.
As I said previously, would’ve been better as a cartoon and it was a firm 2.5/5 stars.
Post viewing stream of thought:
-Zombie Stormtroopers are as good a shot as live stormtroopers oddly enough.
They were just slightly worse (and some didn't even bother to pick up their guns). Given how they posed no threat whatsoever the first time, the whole thing lacked any tension whatsoever.
But Sabine got shot in the helmet a couple times, because magic space armor means the bad guys are allowed to not miss occasionally.
Honestly I think this show got worse as it went along. We even got 'there's more to Jedi than lightsabers' trotted out, followed by even more swording.
It looked like it was setting up for something interesting with different force philosophies, but... the 'gray jedi' just sort of wandered off, and the witches felt like pointless 'memberberries.
The New Republic stuff wasted time the show didn't actually have, but was setup for something that... didn't happen.
The fight choreography went to utter crap in places. Not sure what happened there (since there were several jumps and turns where you couldn't see faces (and a couple brief moments where you could) where it seemed like they were using stunt doubles, but... yeah.
The episode felt 'done' about 20 minutes in, but just kept going. And end with a LotR style endless cutscenes, to re-establish exactly where every single character was standing when the credits roll.
Wet fart ending, in this case.
AduroT wrote: Thrawn mostly made the smart choices for the situations he was presented.
Father, Son… where’s Daughter?
The random bird that popped up is the Daughter.
She basically teases Ashoka from time to time.
Thrawn... yeah. He mostly did smart things. But also rather boring things.
I think Thrawn's magic in the EU was being able to work as the underdog and come out on top through clever (if somewhat absurd) strategies. Against three people, with limitless soldiers and some form of space magic, the tension is gone.
Eh, Thrawn always fights sideways, with all sorts of cheats and supertech. I actually really liked the idea of him having limited resources, and thus being unable to win any of the battles- just stay focused on the war. So many of their skirmishes would have been settled if he'd committed everything- but he never did, always keeping a reserve. He comes across as very cautious.
It was also really, really satisfying to see TIE fighter pilots be effective- even if it was short lived.
Gitzbitah wrote: Eh, Thrawn always fights sideways, with all sorts of cheats and supertech. I actually really liked the idea of him having limited resources, and thus being unable to win any of the battles- just stay focused on the war. So many of their skirmishes would have been settled if he'd committed everything- but he never did, always keeping a reserve. He comes across as very cautious.
It was also really, really satisfying to see TIE fighter pilots be effective- even if it was short lived.
They... weren't effective. They were sadder than usual.
They temporarily damaged a functionally stationary (for a ship; it was trudging along at the pace of the wagons), _unpiloted_ shuttle (or at least everyone called it a shuttle).
Gitzbitah wrote: Eh, Thrawn always fights sideways, with all sorts of cheats and supertech. I actually really liked the idea of him having limited resources, and thus being unable to win any of the battles- just stay focused on the war. So many of their skirmishes would have been settled if he'd committed everything- but he never did, always keeping a reserve. He comes across as very cautious.
It was also really, really satisfying to see TIE fighter pilots be effective- even if it was short lived.
They... weren't effective. They were sadder than usual.
They temporarily damaged a functionally stationary (for a ship; it was trudging along at the pace of the wagons), _unpiloted_ shuttle (or at least everyone called it a shuttle).
That's honestly embarrassing, especially given how many times the ship got the crap kicked out of it in 8 episodes.
@AduroT- the lack of Shin infuriated me a bit. She was the most interesting character in the show, imo. She wasn't bound to any of the tropes of Sith or Jedi, and had real reactions to the people around her, whether they were on her side or not. They just... didn't explore her character, history or motivations. And then took the lazy way out as a warlord-in-the-making stuck on Planet Exile, where she can eventually rule over a pittance of knock-off samurai and Crab Ewoks.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the republic stuff is more setting up for other series (Mando 4 or Book 2).
On the noticeable (ish) absence of Baylan and Shin in the final episode, I do wonder whether it originally had some scenes of them meeting up again and heading to wherever Baylan’s going, but they decide to cut and rejig after Ray’s unfortunate passing. I could quite believe that Shin was originally stood beside him on that mountaintop.
Thrawn mostly did smart things... except for his inability to find the guy who lives almost within sight of his star destroyer for years on end, and who was discovered within hours by a total newcomer to the galaxy...
Lord Damocles wrote: Thrawn mostly did smart things... except for his inability to find the guy who lives almost within sight of his star destroyer for years on end, and who was discovered within hours by a total newcomer to the galaxy...
That easily explainable in that it was really Sabine’s dog who found the lead to him, and Thrawn is more of a cat person.
Ezra mentioned that after Thrawn awoke the Night Sisters, that area became too dangerous to visit.
Of course, we don’t know when that was in the wider timeline. But once Thrawn had those allies? Why bother hunting Ezra at all? He’s a dangerous foe, and going after him might be to invite disaster. Especially given the Great Mothers demonstrated some kind of feasible plan to get Thrawn back to the main Galaxy.
About the only thing I think has a question mark for me is the loading of the cargo from the catacombs. Could that not have been done well in advance?
Though I suppose one reason could be time sensitivity, such as it taking a while to prep them for moving, and them being safer where they were, until they were sure the Eye of Sion actually worked?
Deal might have been you get the catacombs after you provide a way off this rock. And he clearly doesn't want to mess with the space magic people.
And yes - the Tie fighters, two passes while missing the stationary ground target. Maybe the simulators were broken by space whales and they didn't get any air time the last 10 years?
Still don't get why stormtroopers advance while firing. Personally I would want to walk backwards. I also wouldn't be sporting about taking it in turns to fire at the jedi. I would get all my buddies to mash the trigger manically and create a wall of laser bolts.
We did laugh in final battle - the second she lost her superfluous second blade we predicted despite never training with just one she would now get better.
The more I think about it, the more just leaving Ezra be makes sense for Thrawn.
His task is to get back to the main Galaxy. And despite his deal, he has inherently finite resources to do that with. Fuel, ammo, troops. All a fixed resource which is only going to reduce in stock.
With the strong position Thrawn had? It makes greater sense in husbanding those resources to let Ezra come to you. To do otherwise risks a gradual erosion of force and fuel. And at some point you know you’re getting out of there, and that Ezra is likely to make a concerted effort to thwart you once it becomes clear you’re leaving.
Save your resources for that fight, so you have the numbers to sacrifice when it really matters.
If we look at Thrawn’s actual defence plan, I think it would’ve worked had Ezra been alone. Jedi are good, but they’re far from infallible.
Thrawn would also be looking to the future. It’s one thing getting back. It’s another having some kind of resources to be taken seriously. Rocking up in a knackered Star Destroyer with few troops and TIEs? There’s no guarantee you’d be able to requisition replacements.
Anyways. Online sources to Skellington Crew being released this year, so I’d imagine we’ll be getting trailers for that fairly soon!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
AduroT wrote: It’s why I’ve commented before they need anti Jedi protocols where everyone fires on the same count/pulse so it’s just walls of bolts coming in.
I’m not sure that would work. Jedi (or at least some, it’s really not clear if Anakin’s precognition was a common or unusual manifestation) can see things before they happen, giving them incredible reflexes.
So everyone aiming in the same body shaped space, and firing at approximately the same time may well easier for the Jedi to dodge. Whereas a mad blizzard of blaster bolts, where the Jedi is now trying to keep track of lots of stuff still seems the best way.
So everyone aiming in the same body shaped space, and firing at approximately the same time may well easier for the Jedi to dodge. Whereas a mad blizzard of blaster bolts, where the Jedi is now trying to keep track of lots of stuff still seems the best way.
Could call it the Zap Brannigan gambit. From his big book of war.
The New Republic stuff wasted time the show didn't actually have, but was setup for something that... didn't happen.
Yet.
Or are you assuming this is a 1 season show or there won't be carry over elements in future shows?
In theory... sure, they might. That may even have been the intention.
In practice... between streaming policies, strikes, actors and management, well... I don't think its very likely. For several elements, a sequel is going to have to start from scratch.
But, I don't think its too much to ask for a show to introduce AND handle its own plot points rather than farm them out in a nebulous way that's virtually identical to forgetting them.
Consider all the things this show introduced in the first half. It resolved... basically just the set-up from Rebels (Ezra and Thrawn) and Sabine coming to terms with the master she didn't have until this show decided she did. (She and Ashoka left Rebels as buddies on a quest).
Voss wrote: [ (She and Ashoka left Rebels as buddies on a quest).
not *a* quest, but this quest.
the end of episode 2 is explicitly a shot for shot remake of that scene, and is clearly intended to say "what you are watching now is the same event we ended Rebels with, and this is the story of how that went".
My minor thought on Thrawn’s defenses is instead of shooting at the Jedi, smaller moving targets, on their initial run for the door, have them target the area in front of the door where you know they’re going to be going and blanket that with fire. Or even preemptively seal the doors. Heck all the interior doors were left open and it was the Jedi closing them to slow people down.
As an old fan of “bigatons” Star Wars, those pathetic turbolaser blasts made me sad. Where’s the kt per second? Where’s the Base Delta Zero crust-melting? Those are sadder little puffs than the photon torpedo the Enterprise shot at God.
As for the fighting, to me it swung wildly between really good OT-style fighting and really silly PT style sword-spin-and-walking. The video game escalation of the battle didn’t help sell me on the stakes.
Other than the fighting, I don’t recall anything annoyingly stupid in this episode. Granted, they had the big conversation between Sabine and Ezra off screen to accomplish this, but still nice.
Thrawn is shaping up to be the Thanos to the next wave of streaming Star Wars…or the next Kang. This series had a lot of build up and not a lot of satisfaction.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: That’s true! Though Ezra was able to get aboard, and thus alert the New Republic that Thrawn is back, potentially cutting his lead time.
Ezra may also have been able to see or otherwise find out he was headed to Dathomir first.
If only ol' Bluey had eliminated Ezra during the YEARS that he had the opportunity...
Again, that takes resources, which are finite for Thrawn. Fuel, ammo, troops. All you’d need to expend to find Ezra.
Or, your castle up, safe in the knowledge Ezra would have his work cut out for him getting to you. If he does that? Brill, blaze away as we saw. If he doesn’t? Get back to the Galaxy and never have to worry about him again.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: As an old fan of “bigatons” Star Wars, those pathetic turbolaser blasts made me sad. Where’s the kt per second? Where’s the Base Delta Zero crust-melting? Those are sadder little puffs than the photon torpedo the Enterprise shot at God.
As for the fighting, to me it swung wildly between really good OT-style fighting and really silly PT style sword-spin-and-walking. The video game escalation of the battle didn’t help sell me on the stakes.
Other than the fighting, I don’t recall anything annoyingly stupid in this episode. Granted, they had the big conversation between Sabine and Ezra off screen to accomplish this, but still nice.
Thrawn is shaping up to be the Thanos to the next wave of streaming Star Wars…or the next Kang. This series had a lot of build up and not a lot of satisfaction.
The entire Star Wars brand is built on "Turbolasers are bad at hitting small targets". Also, "May the Force be with you" is a very literal concept in the setting. 3 Jedi somehow not getting hit by a barrage of fire is very much how the Force is supposed to work; moreso than the overt displays of specific powers that have come to define it.
Also, those weapons are intended for planetary bombardment as part of a task force, so likely aren’t calibrated for any particular precision. They can probably hit something the size of a building, but any smaller and it’s just not what they’re designed to do.
Voss wrote: [ (She and Ashoka left Rebels as buddies on a quest).
not *a* quest, but this quest.
the end of episode 2 is explicitly a shot for shot remake of that scene, and is clearly intended to say "what you are watching now is the same event we ended Rebels with, and this is the story of how that went".
No.
It may be a callback to that scene, but the show is very clear that Sabine and Ahsoka were together (as master and apprentice) for some time, split off, and years passed before the events in this show happened.
The end of Rebels happened, and they gave up (having no way of knowing where the whales went). Then years went by, and Ahsoka found the map and went back to Lothal and so on. They returned to 'this quest' after a decade or so with new information.
Yes there are clear similarities between the scenes, no dispute there.
But Ahsoka was dressed entirely differently, had that nifty staff thing. Add in that Sabine spent a currently undisclosed period as her Padawan, and it’s not the same scene.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Anyways, watching the finale again.
I really cannot describe just how much I adore the portrayal of Thrawn.
Physically and emotionally you can see the iron in him. When the current stage of a plan doesn’t work, there’s a moment of upset visible, but only a moment. Then his facial muscles relax, and he’s decided upon the next step there and then.
I really cannot describe just how much I adore the portrayal of Thrawn.
Physically and emotionally you can see the iron in him. When the current stage of a plan doesn’t work, there’s a moment of upset visible, but only a moment. Then his facial muscles relax, and he’s decided upon the next step there and then.
It’s so understated I love it.
Would he have liked the old chap from Andor as his Int chief? Seems to be more his style of management than the waves and waves of my own men style.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: As an old fan of “bigatons” Star Wars, those pathetic turbolaser blasts made me sad. Where’s the kt per second? Where’s the Base Delta Zero crust-melting? Those are sadder little puffs than the photon torpedo the Enterprise shot at God.
As for the fighting, to me it swung wildly between really good OT-style fighting and really silly PT style sword-spin-and-walking. The video game escalation of the battle didn’t help sell me on the stakes.
Other than the fighting, I don’t recall anything annoyingly stupid in this episode. Granted, they had the big conversation between Sabine and Ezra off screen to accomplish this, but still nice.
Thrawn is shaping up to be the Thanos to the next wave of streaming Star Wars…or the next Kang. This series had a lot of build up and not a lot of satisfaction.
The entire Star Wars brand is built on "Turbolasers are bad at hitting small targets". Also, "May the Force be with you" is a very literal concept in the setting. 3 Jedi somehow not getting hit by a barrage of fire is very much how the Force is supposed to work; moreso than the overt displays of specific powers that have come to define it.
Small target being fighters than can dodge the actual turbolaser bolt. In the case of a planetary bombardment, the actual explosion would mean it's a lot easier to hit smaller target, don't need a direct hit, just let the splash of the laser's explosion do its work.
As for the Force, unfortunately yes, as per the worst bit in Rogue One, it's apparently a plot armor switch you can toggle on. Darn shame the masters in Revenge of the Sith forgot about, though. Edit: Now that I think about it though, a grenade seem to counteract the will of the Force well enough
Eh, that was fine but I'm not too interested in another season and I really, reaaaally don't want to see a movie that brings all the same era shows together as some sort of sequel-prequel.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Also, those weapons are intended for planetary bombardment as part of a task force, so likely aren’t calibrated for any particular precision. They can probably hit something the size of a building, but any smaller and it’s just not what they’re designed to do.
I think you both misunderstood me. A turbolaser that hit like a standard artillery shell or Heaven-forbid a modern battleship shell, any one of those misses would have blasted both Jedi and their mounts into fine mist. The weapons on this Star destroyer would struggle against modern armor. Actual grenades would have done the job. It is hard to keep suspension of disbelief for a galactic empire with a mile-long battleship that might be able to wipe out the forces of Napoleon, maybe, after a few hours’ bombardment.
“Planetary bombardment” you say, with firepower insufficient to take a parking lot rally.
The explosions at 0:39 could match that of a hand grenade, maybe a little bigger. The first strike would have annihilated the biker guy, however, such a close shot. But...
They really do seem like they're just wheeling out Hayden Christensen as much as they can for the memberberries nostalgia before the diminishing returns kicks in. The problem with showing him that ubiquitously is how it (unsurprisingly) further undermines the shaky foundation of the sequel trilogy:
Now before you say, "Oh but Luke cut himself off from the Force", you'd think Anakin would either appear to Luke at some point regarding Kylo before he did his little "not murder" whoopsie in the tent OR he would show up shortly after Kylo burnt down the second Jedi Temple, especially since it's already been established in the ending of Episode 6 that Luke saw him as a force ghost. Hell, you would think he would potentially show up for Kylo himself when he gets stabbed by Rey in RoS, rather than Han, given that Kylo's been idolizing him as the Sith Lord he wanted to be.
As a film, I’d say there’s nothing terribly wrong with it. I mean, it’s not gonna win any awards for acting, and it didn’t revolutionise and revive a genre. But what’s there is fun at the end of the day. I’d say its worst crime is being pretty disposable, compared to Rogue One where the content genuinely added to the whole of the thing, whilst not being something you need to see to understand what follows.
Solo's cardinal sin is to hand out an iconic name in such a dismisive way. Way to break the inner struggle of the main character by having basically an extra name him. I guess the writers were going for a subversion of expectatives too.
Grimskul wrote: They really do seem like they're just wheeling out Hayden Christensen as much as they can for the memberberries nostalgia before the diminishing returns kicks in. The problem with showing him that ubiquitously is how it (unsurprisingly) further undermines the shaky foundation of the sequel trilogy:
Now before you say, "Oh but Luke cut himself off from the Force", you'd think Anakin would either appear to Luke at some point regarding Kylo before he did his little "not murder" whoopsie in the tent OR he would show up shortly after Kylo burnt down the second Jedi Temple, especially since it's already been established in the ending of Episode 6 that Luke saw him as a force ghost. Hell, you would think he would potentially show up for Kylo himself when he gets stabbed by Rey in RoS, rather than Han, given that Kylo's been idolizing him as the Sith Lord he wanted to be.
Dead masters appearing to their apprentices is not a new thing for Star Wars. Having him pop in to check on Ahsoka works fine.
As for why he doesn't appear in the sequels, apparently that's explained in a recent novel - his ghost is damaged/depleted/whatever protecting Luke from some Sithy Shenanigans on Exigol.
As for why he doesn't appear in the sequels, apparently that's explained in a recent novel - his ghost is damaged/depleted/whatever protecting Luke from some Sithy Shenanigans on Exigol.
As for why he doesn't appear in the sequels, apparently that's explained in a recent novel - his ghost is damaged/depleted/whatever protecting Luke from some Sithy Shenanigans on Exigol.
That's so much worse than just not mentioning it.
I was about to say exactly this! Actually that gakky explanation fits right in with the dumpster fire sequels, so maybe it's perfect.
A couple of posters beat me to it, but wow, that's the explanation? Having to resort to a novel to explain it and this badly, man we really need to skip like 5000 years ahead for SW or something because the current era of the post Galactic Civil War era just keeps making things worse and worse.
It would be just as incoherent as it is now, just with different characters. Well, they'd probably still wheel Anthony Daniels out, and maybe somehow Palpatine would return again.
Meh, different strokes, and all that. Anakin's ghost being 'injured' seems like a reasonable explanation to me. They've established elsewhere that force ghosts can interact with the world of the living, so it seems reasonable that some things could in turn affect them as well.
The fact that the explanation is in a book is only a problem if you are expecting every little detail to be explained in the movies. And that's never been Star Wars' thing. This was something that didn't even need an explanation until newer stories made it an oddity... so they provided an explanation. Which has always been a Star Wars thing. The EU was used rather extensively for plugging plot holes.
I’d argue the Old EU existed because of people wanting to plug those gaps. Likely by authors who had the toys a kid. Silly named random background “blink and you’d miss them” characters, who started their creative Star Wars careers inventing backstories in their backyard.
Those who developed their childhood imaginings into a more refined creative process, leading them into creative writing and from there? The Holy Grail of being allowed to add to actual Star Wars Canon.
I would have just said Yoda or perhaps even Obi Wan were the better choice as they were Luke's teachers rather than the father he didn't know and sort of helped kill.
creeping-deth87 wrote: It would be just as incoherent as it is now, just with different characters. Well, they'd probably still wheel Anthony Daniels out, and maybe somehow Palpatine would return again.
Yeah, that's sadly true, though my preference for it being that far out is for selfish reasons where it's harder to taint the earlier legacy of the previous movies with that level of time gap, but knowing Disney they'd butcher it somehow with either force ghosts or some weird retcon where they make them look bad anyways to try and make their self-insert OC's better by comparison.
As for why he doesn't appear in the sequels, apparently that's explained in a recent novel - his ghost is damaged/depleted/whatever protecting Luke from some Sithy Shenanigans on Exigol.
That's so much worse than just not mentioning it.
I was about to say exactly this! Actually that gakky explanation fits right in with the dumpster fire sequels, so maybe it's perfect.
Just to be fair, the rightfully beloved Heir to the Empire novel opens with Obi Wan's ghost fading away from Luke for no real reason just to write him out of the story as well.
to be fair, we've never seen, in the new canon at least, a force ghost older than 20 or 30 years. I think the oldest one we've seen is Yoda in The Last Jedi, whos been dead for like 30 years by that point.
its not impossible that they just fade into the wider Force as they get older, and stop being distinct beings that can be interacted with.
Unless theirs some thousands year old ghost in the later Clone Wars or Rebels i haven't seen.
I think current canon is it’s not a thing all Jedi/Force users even can do? Like Qui Gon was the first, who after he died taught it to Obi, who taught it to a reluctant Yoda. And Anakin… Well Skywalkers cheat I guess?
AduroT wrote: I think current canon is it’s not a thing all Jedi/Force users even can do? Like Qui Gon was the first, who after he died taught it to Obi, who taught it to a reluctant Yoda. And Anakin… Well Skywalkers cheat I guess?
Right. And there is the rub. Anakin gets a free pass? So who else?
If Starwars was EVER in better hands that maintained any kind of rules for this crap then we could maybe argue that Anakin was the exception because "chosen one". But the truth is we are another 10-15 years away from Rey appearing to somebody she never met as a force ghost.
Also, wasn't there a thousand year old evil force ghost guarding a temple with a holocron in clone wars?
If Starwars was EVER in better hands that maintained any kind of rules for this crap then we could maybe argue that Anakin was the exception because "chosen one". But the truth is we are another 10-15 years away from Rey appearing to somebody she never met as a force ghost.
Dude... don't give them ideas.
On the other hand, I almost want this to happen so I can see the mental gymnastics of the fandom to justify it.
The prequels made the whole Force Ghost thing a mess the instant Qui Gon didn't vanish when stabbed by Maul. Everything since has been a jumble of retcons.
And I'm still mad we didn't get Luke Ghost Trolling Kylo in 9.
I don’t agree the prequels wrecked it. The only Jedi we’ve seen be “laundried” are Kenobi and Yoda. Oh, and Luke
But. Qui-Gonn figured out how to actually manifest post-mortem. So the process can comfortably be said to be different there. It’s something he managed whilst already One With The Force. The others presumably got their souls or chakras or whatever aligned before they shuffled off this mortal coil.
We didn’t see Vader laundried. And we did see him immediately after he snuffed it, and his body was still robust when Luke burned it. So presumably Anakin’s physical shell was still in there.
The only thing I’d like to see added to Rise of Skywalker would be the Force Ghosts of the Jedi speak to Rey kind-of manifest in the background when she’s fighting back Palpatine’s force lightning.
Also, Palpypoos really should’ve done something else. Every time we’ve seen him do Force Lightning, it’s gone a bit wrong. From being electrocuted by his own power, being lobbed down a shaft, to his physical body discorporating. Oh, and that’s not counting Yoda having none of it either!
We didn’t see Vader laundried. And we did see him immediately after he snuffed it, and his body was still robust when Luke burned it. So presumably Anakin’s physical shell was still in there.
Did we? I remember a full body suit of armor on a pyre. I don't remember seeing any portion of his skin.
We see Vader/Anakin pass away. And nothing happened to his body.
Kenobi was instant - arguably immediately prior*. Today about as instant as anyone can really tell.
But Anakin/Vader?
Clearly dead. Not laundry.
However….for the sake of open and honest conversation? I concede it is somewhat plausible it was his cyborg gubbins responsible for that. But I still think it shows you only Laundry if you’ve been previously taught to Laundry.
If Starwars was EVER in better hands that maintained any kind of rules for this crap then we could maybe argue that Anakin was the exception because "chosen one". But the truth is we are another 10-15 years away from Rey appearing to somebody she never met as a force ghost.
The truth is that Star Wars has never been in those kind of hands. Lucas himself put continuity behind what looked good on screen at the time, and he's said as much and is completely unapologetic for it. Continuity is just not something he cares about. The rules are made up, and subject to change at whim.
The whole 'disappearing at death' itself was only a thing because the VFX weren't at a level where Lucas could show Obi Wan getting cut in half. It was never a planned part of the story, just something Lucas threw in because it worked better at the time.
And I suspect the real reason Qui Gonn didn't disappear is that it would have spoiled the drama of the moment, and would have looked really odd.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Again, that takes resources, which are finite for Thrawn. Fuel, ammo, troops. All you’d need to expend to find Ezra.
Or, your castle up, safe in the knowledge Ezra would have his work cut out for him getting to you. If he does that? Brill, blaze away as we saw. If he doesn’t? Get back to the Galaxy and never have to worry about him again.
Thrawn wasn't even on world until Morgan Elspeth arrived, He likely didn't consider Ezra that important
Lord Damocles wrote: The person responsible for stranding Thrawn in another galaxy wasn't considered that important.
Ok, sure.
Why would he be? Unless he also had a way to return you, he is irrelevant. Thrawn’s priorities are to preserve his resources and find a way back to the Empire; hunting down Ezra won’t help with the second objective and will directly compromise the first.
Why would the jedi (who your new witch allies dislike anyway) who is the reason for you being stranded possibly pose a risk to your plans to un-strand yourself? hmmm big think time for blue man.
Which means he’s going to have to come to you at some point. Hence, castle up, maintain an effective watch, and from there only worry about the Jedi when he comes a-knocking.
They’ve been there a Long time. We don’t know how many times he tried and failed to capture Ezra before now, until either running out of options or deciding it just wasn’t worth the effort. Do you think the Storm Troopers’ armor got that beat up just marching around the ship?
Critcal Drinker summed up my thoughts about this pretty well.
It was nonsensical, infantile, lacking any type of tension or surprise.
I think the worst thing for me is that not only the viewer knows that nothing bad will happen to the characters. Characters seem to know that too, and their cheerful attitude when they put lives in danger in absurdly risky situations for very little reason robs the viewer of any emotional response to yet another obstacle put in their way.
The only way he could have been more accurate is if the thumbnail had Ahsoka leaning back and folding her arms stoically three times, rather than 3 different characters.
all this, I've done my part and now I'm going to go have fun". And why not? What's the worst that can happen if she blows off a ceremony? Some annoying politicians whine about it? Once Ahsoka shows up and gives her something serious to worry about she clashes with Ahsoka and wants to do things he way but doesn't just blatantly blow off her responsibilities. Each thinks they're right and the other is hopelessly wrong but she's still doing what she thinks is the best thing for the goal of finding Ezra, not blowing it all off and telling someone else to worry about it.
